310: Burlap & Barrel

23:52You're for that. Yeah, exactly. I'll let her answer that question. And I'll tell you, I've been thinking about this and I've been dreaming about still doing some kind of tinned fish collaboration. There's all these new companies doing cool experimental stuff with tinned fish. What's the garlic in there? What's the paprika in there? We could do something really fun. I even recently got a sardine tattooed on my forearm. So I'm all in on the tin fish. Wow. Where's the sardine from? Is there like, does it have an origin? My mother hates it. Single origin. Yeah. Single origin. This is for those listening.

24:19Anyways, but no, it's a woodcut of sardine just because that's kind of what brought my family here to this country. It's very cool. And I love sardines. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the spices in particular. And I wanted to go over a couple. maybe you could give us a little bit of a sense of what it is, how we cook with it. And I think these are words and terms and products that we write about. And one is Urfa, black Urfa. I love cooking with it. I put Urfa on popcorn. I love that. But Ethan, what do you think about Urfa? Yeah, Urfa is a city in Turkey, an area in Turkey. And there's Bieber, Biber.

24:55Yeah, Bieber means pepper in Turkish, same root as the English word. Also, you know, black pepper and white pepper. It was Christopher Columbus called the chili peppers he found in the Americas peppers because he was trying to make everybody think he had made it to Asia. So we're still stuck with this confusion. And it's extended into other languages. So Turkish, Urfa Biber is Urfa pepper. It's a black chili flake. The peppers themselves start out as red peppers. It's an Aleppo variety pepper grown in southeastern Turkey that get cured. So after they're harvested ripe, red, they get cured in the sun and they oxidize.

25:30They turn black. They develop these kind of roasty, chocolatey. I mean, you're talking about coffee. They have this kind of espresso flavor profile, as well as being a chili. So there's still the heat. And then after curing, they get stone ground, a process that can take 24 hours in a stone grinder with a little bit of salt and oil to create this really special texture. It's a texture of chili flake that you don't find really anywhere else in the world. The Turks have perfected this stone grinding process. How do you cook it with it? What's your favorite? Honestly, use it any way you'd use a chili flake.

26:02There are lots of traditional applications, but it's great on pizza, great in a tomato sauce, great on scrambled eggs, great mixed into beans or a stew. It's an umami booster. So it really adds this depth, this kind of chocolatey, spicy depth. Next one is the, and this is something that I've always been puzzled by. I've cooked with it. I remember back in the day, there was a pancake serve smell that was gripping New York, and it was the cause of it particularly. But this is fenugreek, and Giza green fenugreek. Yeah, fenugreek. I'm just opening. I have a jar in front of me. Let's pass it around a little bit.

26:39Do you remember this maple syrup smell? Gawker covered it, I think, in 2005. It was like, why does New York smell of maple syrup? Apparently it was fenugreek. It's fenugreek. Fenugreek is a seed and an herb used in a lot of South Asian and Persian cooking in the leaf form and in the seed form. Ours comes from Egypt. It's an heirloom variety. It comes from Egypt, so it's called Giza. Giza variety, green fenugreek, which is unique to Egypt. Most fenugreek that you come across, the seeds at least are yellow. And these are green. I don't know why exactly, but they are. And they have a, I find a more herbal kind of complex flavor.

27:18Fenugreek is known for smelling like maple syrup. And I find the green one, the one that we carry, is a little farther from maple syrup. It has this extra dimension, this sort of herbal profile. What do you think of it? I mean, you definitely have this like a little bit of that synthetic log cabin maple syrup style because I don't think it smells like a pure maple syrup. But then it goes into a, I get coriander. It goes into that realm a little bit more. and which is like herbaceous, maybe effervescence. I mean, it's complex. I mean, I'd like to know how you cook with it. Yeah, I mean, the whole room, the studio that we're in now, like I smell it.

27:55Yeah. It goes into a lot of curries and stews as a base along with other spices. It's a background flavor to add a little bit of sweetness, add a little bit of nuttiness, but you would use it alongside something like our Floyd Cardo's Goan Masala or Garam Masala. You would use it in a Persian dish, you know, alongside sumac or turmeric. I've even just been using it in stir fries or anything. Anywhere where I want a bit, a hit of sweetness, like sure, I'll add a little bit of sugar. But this just fills with that kind of mapley aroma that really ends up kind of almost tricking your senses. Yeah, it's definitely a trick.

28:31Yeah. Ori, that's a good point. I love that. Let's do one more. I think we should do, let's do, yeah, royal cinnamon. I think that's something that we're entering the holiday season right now. and like we obviously love baking with cinnamon, but cinnamon can be used in savory cooking. You know, it certainly is used in a lot of Chinese cooking and Chinese five spice, of course. But what do you - It goes great with fenugreek. Royal cinnamon is a very rare species of cinnamon. There are four different species. So it's a species that most people in the US probably have not tasted before. It's the historic Vietnamese cinnamon.

29:06So, you know, when you buy Saigon cinnamon now, it's grown in Vietnam, but it's the Chinese species. This is the real deal, the older one. We got to visit the mountains where it grows last summer, a pretty incredible trip, an area called Quang Nam, central Vietnam, way up in the mountains. And farmers grow cinnamon trees for 15 to 20 years before they harvest them. So it's a real intergenerational process. Farmers are planting trees that their children are gonna harvest. They see that investment literally grow over time. you're making with the other products. You're paying above the commodity value for these products because you've appointed them and you've tasted them and you know that these are the finest examples.

29:50It's the best cinnamon in the world. How many reviews do we have on our site? Almost a thousand now. A thousand five-star reviews. It's cinnamon. You know, like you buy cinnamon at any supermarket, but this is, it's really special. I mean, I'm getting, and no offense, Jolly Rancher. Now, Cinnamon Jolly Rancher, if anyone has ever had that, It is like the purest, pepperyst. I feel like that's cinnamon because it's chemical. I've never tasted a cinnamon Jolly Rancher. So they had them in the 90s. I don't know if this has actually been discontinued. But I remember I was playing Little League and I would go get the cinnamon Jolly Rancher stick.

30:21Maybe that's my dream collaboration answer. Maybe we could get a Jolly Rancher to make a Jolly Rancher with our royal cinnamon. Can you imagine a royal cinnamon or even like, I mean, you could do a savory. I mean, there's so many ways. We do have a new cinnamon product that is launching later this year for the holidays. We're doing a line of spiced sprinkles. Oh, cool. Like ice cream sprinkles. That's neat. I don't want to give away too many details, but the cinnamon is one of the ingredients. Or let me ask you in both. We're talking about people here a lot, and this is a big part of your business.

30:53Now, you said that you represent 26 countries. How do you get to origin? I mean, it seems like it would be very difficult to do that much travel. But is it something that you've committed to and you actually go to all these places? Well, I can share a little bit of just like we build this big international supply chain. And so many there's so many things about our business where they can happen when they happen. You know, like we started this business only with a handful of countries that you can travel to and built built supply chains over there. We have our wish list of spices that we'd love to bring in and to be able to kind of expand into the lineup.

31:28But as everybody knows, so many businesses make decisions based on these big industrialized things and market research. And most spice blends are made domestically. What we're learning here is that it takes time. We need to build up these relationships. We need to meet these farmers. We need to go slowly. We went to Vietnam for three weeks in search of the best cinnamon and the classic Vietnamese cinnamon. We traveled all across the northern border with China. We didn't find anything there that matched our standards. And then we went and we were walking through in central Vietnam. We were walking through and literally these people in a garage that was open were going and cleaning cinnamon, you know, bark and processing it, grinding it.

32:00And we were overwhelmed by the smell that, right, this was the biggest purchase that we'd made as a business. We bought a thousand kilograms of the cinnamon on the spot from these farmers that we had met that day because we were convinced that they were doing stuff the absolute right way. We went with them. We spent time. And now we are one of their, if not their absolute biggest customer. And we've invested in that relationship time and time again. And so each of these relationships, Ethan's our supply chain guy. He's the one that's been traveling now with a little kid. Now his son is getting spice farm trips also.

32:32Oh, cool. But it happens slowly and intentionally. And we build these long-term relationships that we just keep coming back a year time and time again because many spices. It's an annual harvest. The farmer's entire livelihood depends on this. How can we be that partner that gets the absolute best stuff that they can grow and allows them to grow things that the commodity market would never pay them to grow? I mean, like, are you just like, like you're just shoving a suitcase of dong in, in, you know, to these folks and just like saying, I'm going to buy 1000 kilograms. I feel like, how do you do this?

33:04It's all about trust. It's all about building a relationship. The visit to origin, I mean, you know, maybe it sounds expensive, really. The trips are not that expensive, but the showing up, literally showing up is really important. It sets a tone for a long-term relationship. It lets us explain our business model to a new partner farmer. It lets us understand what they're doing. You know, we'll sit down and have a conversation, walk them through our whole business. Here's what we spend on shipping. Here's what we spend on warehousing. Here's how all the costs come together, we'll show them our website and see, you know, a jar of cinnamon is being sold for$9.99 on our site.

33:38How does that ladder down to all of the costs and then do the same exercise for their business? What are their inputs at the beginning of the season? Are they hiring people to help with harvest or planting? What do they do in the off season for income? You know, like really get into it so that we can then work together closely for the long term. Okay. So how do you both deal with like customs and tariffs? I mean, all these countries, you need to keep your supply chain going, flowing. You need to have actual product because you can't promise product and then have it be out of shipment or out of service for two years.

34:14I mean, that's not good business. How do you deal with all that? Our number one rule is never import on a deadline. It's just gonna take as long as it takes. That's a great, you just can't look at the clock. You just can't look at the clock. You know, everybody moves at their own pace. It's gotta work its way through the system and we do our best to have our paperwork right. And, you know, no matter how hard we try, There's always something. There's always some delay or some misconnection. And you just got to, you know, you just got to go with it. Yeah, I'm sure during the pandemic, too, it was even worse because of those boats were just not getting to shore.

34:41Yeah, the pandemic was a whole, I mean, really a huge positive change for our business in a lot of ways because it grew our direct-to-consumer audience by 1 ,000 % in 2020. From 2019 to 2020, our e-commerce grew 1 ,000 % because everybody was stuck at home, cooking more, shopping online for food often for the first time. But we've been really gratified to see that that has continued. We have a really strong direct-to-consumer business. That's 80 % of our business today. It's amazing that you say that, 80%. Is it all by boat or is there any air freight? It's air freight. It's boat. It's trucks.

35:11It's, you know, donkeys. I mean, every transportation method you can imagine to get spices from small farms all around the world to home kitchens across the U.S. That's amazing. You guys are on Shark Tank. And I'm not going to spoil the show, but it seems like you didn't take the deal. I just want to know, like, both of you, what was that experience like? It's a really cool show. We all love that show. I'm sure you were fans. But what was that like? Yeah, my mom is the biggest fan, honestly. For years, since we started the business, she was like, you should go on Shark Tank. And we eventually figured it out.

35:43She was right the whole time. Shark Tank was really fun. I don't know. Shark Tank, they have a massive audience. Introduce entrepreneurs and businesses to this huge, huge group of people. We were really happy to be on the show. We were excited to see if the sharks, you know, would have would have been excited and kind of bid each other up and all of that. But we just knew that getting on the show, we knew that getting the sharks to try the spices. We went through this whole process with hair and makeup and wardrobe and all this. And the producers really wanted us to get the sharks like make a yogurt dish, make popcorn, make something with the spices.

36:13And we're like, they're going to try these pure uncut spices. And Mark Cuban is going to eat a peppercorn. And Gwyneth Paltrow, who was our guest shark, is going to is going to kind of like get a nose full of cinnamon. And so it was really a beautiful experience because what it did, forget the deal or no deal or any of that stuff, which we were pretty happy to also not have. We didn't want to invest. We're a bootstrapped company. We didn't want to invest. You're taking no money. You're friends and family only. Yeah. Ethan and I turned out our own pockets. It's just us, not even friends and family.

36:41It was just my savings and Ori's savings. And American Express, I'm sure. Yeah, exactly. And extending some credit here and there. But we were excited to be on the Shark Tank because it effectively introduced us to so many new customers. So many people across America watch that show and really love it. And having the sharks try the spices, absolutely loving them and giving that endorsement and saying, oh, my God, I've never had cinnamon like this. These are the most potent, intense, wonderful peppercorns I've ever tried. Having that kind of endorsement was the best case scenario that we could have probably had.

37:10And you saw the spike in traffic on your website. We saw a huge spike in traffic. And even still now, people are watching the episode and coming in there. And our Shark Tank collection is selling well. So it was really a wonderful gift. We were so excited to be on that stage. We tried our best. We prepared for months. We were so damn prepared. We had, you know, they call it reality TV, but we scripted our entire performance. Literally practiced. Like we were rehearsing for a play, running lines, flashcards, quizzing each other, mock interviews with my mother and any random entrepreneur or friend we could coerce into helping us out.

37:42It took us a year to get on the show, and we took it so seriously. I love it, and it paid off, clearly. It paid off, and I'm sure, did you guys get nervous? Was there nerves involved? I mean, I was absolutely nervous, and there are cameras in your face. Like, I don't think you understand this, but the amount of gigantic cameras that are kind of tracking you and zooming in, and when we were watching it back, half of the shots of there's them rapidly zooming into one of our faces, and that was nerve-wracking, but they're waiting for you to, like, trip over your shoelace. They're waiting for you to, like, you know.

38:08Oh, yeah, they want to see a choke. They want to see the nerves. Oh, my God. We prepared so much to just avoid that. But, you know, you mentioned earlier, you described our business as sort of a non-capitalist business. That was also sort of the fun of being on Shark Tank, which is this like, you know, a display of the most capitalist kind of behavior you can imagine. This like haggling over shares in a company that barely exists. We wanted to make a little bit of a subversive presentation of, you know, let's put a non-capitalist business on this stage. I'm sure Cuban was really, really, really loving that.

38:38You know, it was a little subtle. well, maybe he's not paying such close attention. No, I mean, we still, it had to come across as a commercial for the company, which it did, but also we were trying to make a deeper point. A little bit of like coded language. I'm going to have to check out that episode. My friend Marijuana Irani runs Spice Wallet. He just opened up, recently opened up a retail space and I love it. It's in Nashville. It's beautiful. Have you thought about doing retail? Like a space, like a physical space? Do you know us, the e-commerce business is so beautiful. You were asking about what happens when we run out of spices in the pandemic.

39:09We were running out of everything. But what we were able to do is set up a domestic supply chain. So we started bringing in salt from Syracuse. We started bringing in ramps from upstate New York. And all of a sudden we said, don't look over here. These things that are sold out, look over here at all these wonderful, really fun new things. Retail would be great. We're trying to get into more grocery stores because the grocery stores, especially specialty, people come in. Everyone has their favorite wine store, cheese store, butcher shop that they go to find really cool new stuff. We want to be there.

39:34But nothing beats. I mean, our e-commerce, our site is one of the best food e-commerce experiences on the internet. You can get a masterclass in spices. We have a techniques book. Ethan wrote that about like to learn how to cook with spices. We just can't do that in the same way at retail. Yeah, sure, you can grab and go if you need something really quick for dinner. But we have industry leading speeds of shipping. We have over 100 spices on the site. We have depth of recipes. And if you want, we have our spice forum on Facebook, a group of 10 ,000 people. that's just dying to give you recommendations on how to cook with the spices.

40:06So you work with food service in like QSR? Do you have like those accounts? We started, I mean, I came from the restaurant world. So that was where we started selling to restaurants. Right, because I hear you said your friend had come in and bought from you or whatever. Ham, Ham. Ham, sorry. Ham Lly was a customer of ours. Yeah, I mean, we sell to 11 Madison Park, Blue Hill, Chez Panisse, but we've also worked with Sweetgreen and Chopped and a very wide range of restaurants. That's fun, like dipping your toe into food service and not being the chef anymore and being able to like work with them but not be a chef.

40:37Yeah. You know, we're the experts in spices, which chefs are experts in many things, but often not in spices. And especially, you know, we do a lot of work with DIG, the New York and Boston farm to table kind of quick serve concept. And they're really good at sourcing and cooking Brussels sprouts, but we get to be the resource when it comes to spices. Got a couple more. What's the biggest challenge in running CPG right now? I mean, it seems like COGS are really, really, really, really high and increasing at a rapid pace. But maybe that's not your concern. Ori, I'll start with you. Yeah. COGS, good.

41:10I like it. We're getting into the nitty gritty. We're getting into a little industry talk. You're 40 minutes in, so we're getting into that. COGS, cost of goods sold, the cost to us. I think what's really hard right now is that big national grocery stores, everyone thinks that's like getting into Whole Foods is making it. Those are the most expensive places you could possibly sell your products as a small producer. And so we're really trying to figure out how do we keep building our e-commerce, make it more engaging, making it faster. We just added a mystery spice to our site so that, like, you're going to get a random spice from our lineup.

41:41We have our Spice Club, which is our quarterly mystery box subscription. Every three months, you have four full-size jars of spices, new spices, new harvests, plus an extra collaboration item. What's that cost? It's$45. once a quarter. And we have almost 4 ,000 subscribers to that. And our whole team is involved in putting it together and coming up with the theme and recipes and all that. But this is the biggest challenge is that the traditional ways of running a spice company, which is through grocery, are so expensive and often kind of off limits unless you have giant, giant investors or that you're owned by Unilever or Procter & Gamble or one of those gigantic companies.

42:18So our big challenge is how do we make this online so fun, so fast, so creative, so easy, so expansive, so specialized, that it feels like a whole new world of kind of getting into, you come into our kitchen and we're able to show you around and walk you through all the spices. So we've been working at that for years since the beginning of the company. And if you haven't visited our site, it's burlapandbarrel.com. It's super fun. And I encourage all the listeners to check it out. Yeah, we'll definitely link to the show notes. So Ori, I want to ask you about your family in Israel. How are they doing?

42:48They're doing okay. They're accounted for. Some have been drafted back. Some of them are just kind of staying put. So let me ask you, you know, living in New York and witnessing, you know, the last, this is recording this in late October and what you've been seeing online and just, there's been a lot of conversations around the conflict and the war, the Israel-Hamas war. So I want to ask you, Ori, like how are you feeling right now with what's going down? It's been really overwhelming. I think everybody, all my friends, everybody in their lives, like there's just this like cloud hanging over all of us.

43:21We're just watching. We're just waiting. We're just hoping for the best. But it's really been just absolutely heartbreaking to just see how things have been developing. It's been a known issue, a known tension. It's been really terrible. And it seems like the civilians, which, you know, we travel all around the world. We work with farmers everywhere. We have farmers in Palestine that grow and blend this incredible za 'atar. We're concerned for them. We're concerned for the family members. But so often it's civilians that pay the cost for these kind of international conflicts on an ongoing basis, even way before this conflict.

43:55But even now moving forward, things just seem to be escalating. And it's just absolutely heartbreaking to see the kind of human cost of it. What is something that our listeners should know about the conflict, especially from the Israeli point of view, that maybe is being forgotten or just not talked about enough? I just always come back to the fact that just to remember there's humanity behind this. There's so much stuff online that gets forwarded to me that I keep seeing people come through and everyone's just trying to kind of like punch each other. And just to go back to the people that are parents making dinner for their kids, trying to go to school, trying to live a life without having to worry about running into bomb shelters or going into hiding or losing a family member.

44:35I don't know, every time I just bring this back to humanity and to the people behind it and to the people that are just there trying to live their lives. Like this is really what government is meant to govern and that's their job. And it seems like there's this totally other larger agenda that people are pushing and masculinity and who's punching who back harder and what's going on that is just absolutely heartbreaking. They're human lives here. And so if we can come back to human decency and human care, that I think is let's start from that point and then we can continue the conversations from there.

45:05So you were born in Israel and lived there and have a lot of family. My father-in-law was born there as well. And I still get a sense of your relationship with Palestinians. I mean, I'd like to get that down. I mean, I feel like we don't talk about Israelis and Palestinians and like relationships, especially living in places like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, cities, like real things, not constructs, not abstract, you know, spaces, but real spaces. What is that like? I think that I speak I can speak for myself and my family. But like you just want to live your full life. You want to live a warm life.

45:37You want a life full of diversity, interesting people, different backgrounds, different foods. I don't know. There are very few Israelis that would argue that the best hummus is Israeli. Just as a as a concept, like, right, we want like it's just a fuller, warmer, better life when we can when we can integrate and kind of coexist in a much in a much better way. And so it doesn't feel like that's been the priority of the of the Israeli government. It doesn't feel like we're close to that or there's a way through this. So it's just been really heartbreaking knowing that the people that are going to pay a lot of the price for this are the everyday people that are just trying to make a living, put food on the table, go to school, give their kids a better life.

46:16Like these are the human things that are behind all of this. And I think that it's very easy to get away from that when we start thinking as in groups or we start stereotyping, we start kind of zooming out. You lose that kind of core humanity to it. So in Israel, there are Palestinians. We live together. We work together. We build really cool stuff. We eat better together. And so there's so much commonality there. And it's just heartbreaking that the two groups just to be ripped apart by the people in charge. External forces. Yeah. So, Ethan, I want to ask you, your business partner is Israeli.

46:50I'm not sure about your background, but how does that affect you? Yeah, I'm a New York Jew, but have spent a lot of time in Palestine working with Palestinians. I worked for Doctors Without Borders in Jordan. All of my colleagues were Palestinian. I wrote my I have a master's degree in conflict violence conflict and development I wrote my thesis on the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade during the second intifada in Janine I'm on the board of a youth theater organization in Janine and we carry a Palestinian za 'atar because Ori and I both thought it was really important to have a Palestinian za 'atar in our lineup you know we could have gotten a za 'atar from a lot of other places we explored a lot of other options but the herb the thyme sort of thyme oregano hybrid that's called za 'atar that's used in the blend is native to the Eastern Mediterranean, to the Levant and to Palestine in particular.

47:40And we spent a long time, it took us a long time to find a producer who was using not only that herb, the real thing, but also other ingredients grown in the West Bank itself. You know, our company sort of overlaps with geopolitics in a lot of places, in a lot of ways, Afghanistan, the earthquakes in Turkey earlier this year, the current crisis in Israel and Palestine. And we've just seen time and time again, like Corey said, it's about entrenched interests and money and power and people, the regular people are often sort of left by the side of the road, treated like a commodity, you might say.

48:17I mean, there's a real, you know, something that's lost when we're focused on numbers, whether it's money in a business or sort of in a government kind of context and lose the connection with individuals. As an American Jew, as I am, how do you feel when you go to Janine and spend time with people in Janine? How do you feel about what the conditions in Janine? That's a complicated question. I've been through the West Bank many times, but I've also been to a lot of other countries. You know, I lived in Afghanistan for two and a half years. I've seen a lot. I've seen a lot of the best and the worst of people, but it's people in systems that cause problems.

48:57You know, it's the system between Israel and Palestine, between Israelis and Palestinians keeps them apart. You know, you asked, what about Palestinians that you know Israeli? As an Israeli, do you know Palestinians? I think the answer is most Israelis don't know Palestinians. And the picture that has been painted for them is somebody's agenda of what they want an Israeli to think of as a Palestinian. And even in the way that you see the media coverage of the current crisis, the words that are used, the framing, the headlines. It's all about creating an image of a diverse group of people with a lot of individuals and a lot of religions and backgrounds and interests and political ideologies that get looped together for somebody's political convenience to kind of paint a negative picture that then allows the Israeli government to continue oppressing them and continue keeping this distance.

49:46Israelis don't want to know Palestinians because they've been told that all kinds of things. And then that just sort of entrenches the division that that Ari was talking about, the situation in Janine and in a lot of small cities in the West Bank. I have never been to Gaza, but I've been to quite a few cities in the West Bank. They're beautiful. They're beautiful. Ancient cities with ancient traditions, beautiful architecture. Nablus is famous for its olive oil soap, incredible olive oil soap, and this beautiful cheesy dessert called kanafa. And if you have kanafa with anything other than nabulsi cheese, you're not really having it.

50:20I know I've had in Jerusalem and certainly it's good. So, you know, there's a lot more history and complexity and tradition to be valued rather than blown up. I mean, it's crazy. We can work with a group of producers in Palestine, pay them a lot of money, connect them with customers in the U.S., you know, our customers, home cooks, professional chefs. I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a better direction than creating conflict. You can bring people together over a shared interest, whether it's in food or making money or whatever it is. That's way more fun and productive. I'll link to a story in the show notes.

50:54We went to Ramallah about four years ago, and I have a great photo essay from my friend Ayel. And I think it's important to talk about the people in the West Bank and in terms of not the conflict and not war, but as the people. Yeah. Yeah. The people and traditions and culture that is so fleeting, right? It's fleeting. People are connected. People are connected to culture. And when people lose their connection to their home, when buildings are blown up, new buildings or old buildings, you lose that. We almost lost, I mean, you asked about the Irfa Chile earlier. If you had asked me that question six months ago, I would have told you that we were never going to carry it again.

51:33Our supplier's factory in southern Turkey was totally destroyed. They sent us these crazy pictures of the factory just collapsed. And somehow they were able to move some of the equipment out, get into a prefab facility. We placed a big order to help finance that move. And they were able to get back on their feet. I think it's a little bit cliche to talk about resilience. Sure, people are resilient because they have to be resilient because other forces, governments or militaries or whoever is forcing them to be resilient. People shouldn't have to be, but they are, thankfully. And all I wanted to add is that as co-founders of Burlap and Barrel, we get to put our finger on the scale.

52:10And where we are putting our finger is in supporting smallholder farmers and supporting businesses. And so as you buy our spices, sure, you can care about the farmer's lives and who's behind them, but you can also just enjoy the best za 'atar you've ever had in your life. And our supply chain is one that's anchored in Palestine. And that's where that money flows into because we believe that we can create kind of prosperity by building these farmer-led supply chains. And that's how we put our kind of foot on the scale. On This Is Taste, we ask guests about their discerning tastes. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check.

52:42Are you guys ready? No. Well, Ethan, I'm starting with you. The best breakfast. A Turkish breakfast is the best breakfast. A million little tastes of different cheeses and jams and eggs and breads and olive oil and za 'atar and tomato. Just amazing. Okay, okay, we're going, okay, I'm in. Both of you are going to answer these. Honestly, my favorite breakfast is, I just like to do like a fried egg on an open-faced sandwich. which I throw in, cobonero chilies or za 'atar or urfa or all that stuff. Just get a sliced sourdough toast, slather it with butter, put a couple of fried eggs on there. It's perfection.

53:18The best dessert? Ice cream? I'm going to tell you, no, you should tell them about what's going on in Jackson Heights with that combo dessert. That's the absolute best. Oh, there's a bakery. I live in Jackson Heights, Queens, and there's an amazing little neighborhood Italian bakery called Letty's that does a combo cheesecake flan that's just epic. Like cheesecake on the bottom, flan on the top. My wife got it for me for my birthday. You know, that's... Letty's? Stop it. L-E-T-Y-S. Shout out to Letty's. Shout out to Letty's. 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights. Your favorite American fast food chain, Ori.

53:51Oh, my God. People are going to get mad about this, but I really think In-N-Out's doing it right. When I was a kid, I grew up in Baltimore. Fuddruckers was the best hamburger that you could possibly get. Right? But now that I'm in New York and there's still no In-N-Out, I go back to California. I'm dining there for most of my meals. I have a lot of nostalgia for the Burger King onion rings. Okay, so why so good? There must be like a spice flavor. They're sweet. You know, the breading is like this amazing crunchy texture and it's pretty sweet. So it's like kind of a crunchy, salty candy. It's highly recommend.

54:24You're speaking my language. Your favorite recent cookbook discovery? Barca Cardoza, our collaborator on the Floyd Cardoza misalas, has written a cookbook, which we worked very closely with her on. And there's a dish in the cookbook, a um it's it's a savory speaking of sort of sweet savory crossovers it's a savory tapioca dish sort of a stir-fried tapioca pearls with aromatics and spices uh it's pretty cool your favorite new york city restaurant classic edition both of you can answer this or you first oh my god i i don't know this this isn't this is classic at least for my time in new york city i was here like right right out of college for for and then and then did a stint in san francisco but don't judge me please um honestly i can't stop thinking about superiority burger oh same same that was gonna be my answer right we're just big fans brooks is doing such incredible food they moved into the larger odessa diner space he's so creative you don't you go there and sure it's vegetarian and and mostly vegan and like you're not tired it's so creative it's so thoughtful the flavors are so rich and robust and sure they're burlap and barrel spices in the recipes but just He's such a wonderful, creative, and thoughtful chef that, like, you take the biggest carnivore there, and they're like, I get it.

55:37You get it. And also, he's a pastry chef by trade. And pastry chefs, as we all know, are so, so tuned into flavor profiles. And spices create ultimately that. And I would imagine he just is really keen on great spices. Makes a lot of sense. And it's a party. And it's, like, such a cool, fun, different dining experience. A couple more. Your favorite sandwich. This is a hard one. I don't know, probably like a bagel with cream cheese and lox. That's probably my favorite sandwich. Is a bagel a sandwich? Absolutely not, but that is okay. That's a debate. I don't know. I love those like big textural crunchy veggie sandwiches that just have every single vegetable you have in the refrigerator in there.

56:17That's one of my favorites. I'm also a tinned fish guy. So if one of those fish ends up in there, that's okay too. Last question. What is the spice of life? That's a great question. I don't know. I think for me personally, like it's been so fun to move from starting my career in big corporate advertising and marketing places, learning about that. Sure, learning business. But now we get to do and run and build our own business. And that's so much more interesting. We have independence. We can do cool things. We can find great collaborators. We can hire people that are so nontraditional to those roles.

56:52Half of our team have no experience in the roles that they're playing, but they're really good home cooks and they're really thoughtful people and they love the spices. And so everything else they can figure out. So we've really, really, the spice of life is being able to really build a business in this way with kind of no boundaries on it. And we've been able to come up with so many fun, unexpected creative solutions for it. So it's been really fun. The spice of life. Yeah, that was a great answer. What is the spice of life? That was a great answer. You're right. Can spices be the spice of life?

57:21I mean, is that a cheap shot? You know, like the flavor, the evocative nature, the history, the botany, the science. It all just sort of spices are such a fascinating category. This is such a fascinating conversation. Ori Zohar and Ethan Frisch, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

57:50Brad Metzger, welcome back to This Is Taste. What's up, man? Not much. Recuperating after LA Chef Con. So I wanted to have you back because our initial conversation and I'll link to in the show notes was about, you know, what LA Chef Con is and like what you're a little bit about your history working in the restaurant industry for a while in LA. But I wanted to have you back to talk about the actual con because, man, I was there and I saw a lot of themes and I just like was really impressed. I really enjoyed myself. Thanks for having me, buddy. Thank you. Thanks for coming all this way for that.

58:26Yeah, man. So tell me this. I feel like there were a couple audiences there. One thing that I liked about it was that it was definitely industry, which is something that we talk about on the show a lot. And I think a lot of thought leadership starts in the industry and then trickles down into the consumer side. But then there was a lot of media there, a lot of media. It was great, like seeing all sorts of media friends. Do you feel like this iteration of ChefCon was different or same from previous years? It was different. It was definitely the best so far. I think that we really, really did a great job last year.

59:03And the word got around like it never has. And the level of people, the industry that really came out to support and even bought tickets was really incredible. I mean, we had people like Walter Manske calling me saying, Brad, I see it's sold out, but I want to bring five of my chefs and my GMs. And I'm like, Walter, of course, we'll make room for you. We had Curtis Stone. Curtis always participates as a speaker or does some cooking. He's one of the first people I always reach out to. And he couldn't commit to it like four or five months ago when I started lining up all the panels. But he said, you know, I can't because I'm supposed to be out of town.

59:45Um, but if I can make it, I really want to come. And I just forgot about it. But then at like 1030 in the morning, he's texting me saying, Hey, Brad, you know, I want to come with my wife, Lindsay, and just hang out for the day. Can I come? I'm like, of course, Curtis, come on down. So like that, that's a big deal. You know, when my clients and friends and that level of people from the industry want to come, and these are very busy people that usually only do events if they're working the events. To me, that's like the defining factor that we're doing a good job. and we're offering something that people want, people in the industry want in terms of conversations, networking, bringing the community together, as well as the food piece.

1:00:25Yeah, absolutely. I got to hang out with Curtis, got to see him and then meet Lindsay. Yeah, I got to, it was great to see lots of familiar faces and I fully felt the vibe of community in LA. I know New York is a little different, but there's a really strong sense of community. Let's just talk about some general themes. You start and then I'll, you say one, then I'll say one. Let's do it that way. So what's one general theme that you felt that you were observing with the participants at the LA Chef Con? Well, the biggest theme to me, which was so meaningful and a complete surprise, was the student aspect of it and the mentorship aspect.

1:01:07This blew me away. I didn't expect it. It sort of all came together. I guess I wasn't paying attention as we sort of created the whole conference. There's many aspects to the student piece. So maybe your listeners are aware we had it at LA Trade Tech Culinary Arts Pathway, which is a culinary school in downtown LA, part of the LA Trade Tech Community College. And they have a brand new building that they finished a couple of years ago, Culinary Arts Building, which is an incredible, incredible facility. It looks like it should be or could could be on the campus of the CIA or, you know, Johnson and Wales.

1:01:44It's absolutely spectacular. I mean, it was I've been to both of those campuses. It's nicer than the CIA. I mean, for real, like it's it's a really, really stunning facility. And it's it's in it's kind of like off of downtown. I'm not sure the exact neighborhood, but it feels like the community around the school is are the students. It's not like a lot of out-of-town students, so ACAA is run. So it's really for LA. I love that you bring up the students. Yeah. So that whole piece, you know, we created a student conference adjacent to our main conference for the students. So what happened was when we started having discussions with them, we were going to originally have about 160 students that we would put to work basically and give them an experience as part of our conference, because they closed the whole building and all the classes for the day.

1:02:37And they had very good enrollment for the quarter. So that ended up being about 230, 240 students, which we couldn't incorporate. That's too many of them to incorporate into our conference, helping the chefs, welcoming people, giving people directions, just helping overall with the conference, which over 100 of them did, but we couldn't use over 200 of them. So So we basically came up with a little mini conference just for the students with three panel discussions that were curated just for them. And basically we invited some new people, but we also incorporated people that were there as speakers and participants of the main conference because we had them there.

1:03:21So like, you know, why not give the students an experience? We had the extra rooms. I think Phil Rosenthal said he had spoken with the students prior to his panels. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. So Brad, one thing that I saw, I'm going to jump in and say, is Ruth Rochel, she was on a panel and she mentioned something that I think is obvious, but it's not said enough, is that how the audience for restaurants has changed. And it's really applicable to the conference that you run, which is for a lot of trade. But how back when Ruth was starting out in her career and then later working at the New York Times, LA Times, you know, food writing was for a high, highly educated, maybe wealthier, definitely white audience.

1:04:06And it's changed so dramatically. And really in the past decade, we see it in who the critics are and who the editors are, but also who is into food. It's more unified. And I just thought that was something that I really that resonated with me. Yeah, that was cool. I mean, she was on the panel, The Evolution of Food Criticism with Ruth Reichel, Bill Addison, Kuch Bouchard, and Leslie Suter. I think that was one of the panels that got the most attention and people talking about it. We had Bill Addison, who's the LA Times restaurant critic. We put him in a disguise. So that was really cool. He looked really hip.

1:04:39He looked like perfect like East Cider LA hipster. I know. I love the wig was incredible. I know Bill pretty well and I've hung out with him a bunch. And definitely the goatee was really a nice touch. Did you recognize him in his disguise? I mean, only because he was on stage. I mean, like I probably wouldn't have recognized him if I saw him like face to face. but honestly what do you think about this changing audience i feel like your clients are are are tackling this this idea of how restaurant you know goers the dynamic has changed completely yeah i mean and it's it's the the clientele has changed and what they're looking for has changed as well you know they're not necessarily looking for all the bells and whistles and you know fancy linen and China, you know, it's definitely a different landscape, especially here in LA.

1:05:33Yeah, I agree. And I think media is the way media covers restaurants is changing drastically. You get guys like Keith Lee on TikTok, just made the top of the Blackbird most powerful players in food, which I think is a good call. And I think the democratization of food is upon us. And I thought that panel really struck a chord and Leslie did a great job moderating it. What's another big takeaway that you had, Brad? I mean, I think that the food piece was really just incredible. Like the kitchens there. So what we did was we brought in a lot of, we had a food festival for the lunch, a two hour food festival.

1:06:12And we took over five of the kitchens there at the Trade Tech Culinary, you know, Arts Pathway building. And we had a meat kitchen that was just devoted to some incredible wagyu beef and lamb. We had eight chefs in there, including Jet Tila and Mary Sue Millican. Then we had a Santa Monica seafood, sustainable seafood, two kitchens devoted to just seafood. And we had a fisherman, for example, do an Ikejime demo, which is very rare to see, which is a Japanese technique of preparing a fish to eat after you catch them. and we had John Yao, One Star Michelin from Cato, do the incredible shrimp toast with Astria caviar.

1:06:56We had One Star Michelin, Kevin Meehan in there, Brian Bornman, who has crudo enudo. So we really, really took the food to a very high level. But we also had a kitchen devoted to Porto's, which is an L.A. institution. And it's not super fancy. It's an amazing bakery, super high-volume bakery. and they came in and took over kitchen, but they did dishes that they don't do at the restaurant. So it was a way for their chefs to stretch and expose what they can do. And to have like a two-hour food festival in the middle of a conference, I think is pretty cool. And what we learned from doing it since 2018 is that a lot of people come not only for the content and the food, they really come to see their friends in the industry that they never see.

1:07:45So we've always, over the time, we've stretched these times. So we have half an hour breaks in between the sessions so people can hang out. We have a two-hour lunch. We have a two-hour after party with more food and drinks and networking. So yeah, the food piece is a big takeaway. Super cool that you bring that up. I thought the food was excellent at all the events and the opening party as well. You really paid attention to details. One theme I saw was technology rapidly changing, but also a little bit of an old school streak. I think that the panel with Lawrence Longo and Suzanne Goen, it struck me that, you know, Suzanne is more old school and it seems like she uses like Google Docs and text to kind of organize her thoughts with her group and her stakeholders.

1:08:31But then you've got a guy like Lawrence who's like very, very savvy with especially digital marketing through social channels and also working with like a lot of brands. That's his gig. But I liked I liked that. It wasn't like the kids are taking over mentality. It was like we have many generations here in the restaurant industry. It's OK to have like a notebook and have that be part of your your your workflow. I just felt like that was almost calming that Suzanne was was immediately a little more old school. I don't know if you can agree with this kind of split audience or the split kind of mentality.

1:09:07Yeah, I do agree. I mean, there's a lot of old school, you know, chefs and operators that do things the same way, similar, you know, similar that they've been doing for many years. And then you have, you know, you know, younger, younger people that are definitely doing things different, very, very, very differently. You know, it's true. It's cool. I'd like to. What is Lawrence Longwood? What is this deal? Like, I feel like I really liked, he was probably my favorite speaker of the day. Oh, wow. He's a very cool guy. He does a food festival himself called the Tender Fest. Oh, right, right. And it's all on chicken tenders.

1:09:40And it's amazing. He had it, like, about a month ago. It's always really, really good. But he, so he's growing Prince Street Pizza, which is a very delicious pizza. and he has um irv's burgers which is like an la institution that was a family business for many years that he's he's um partnered with now and he's growing that and um you know he's aggressive and he's very savvy he's very connected and like you said he's great with sort of you know social media and just really getting the word out he has you know relationships with you know so many influential people here in LA, but it's also really great quality.

1:10:23I mean, even the, the Irv's burgers that they served, they, he did a, um, so he w he was at LA chef con for the after party. So they did Prince three pizza and they actually did a white pizza with Astria caviar, which was delicious. And then a few other pizzas. Oh, I had one of those from Prince three. That was, that was a cool, that's first time I've come out, come by those two foods to be honest. It worked. It worked. And then he did a collaboration with Jordan Okun for a burger, an Irv's burger. And it was delicious, man. That's really good. That was really cool. Yeah. The after party part was cool.

1:10:55Brad, let me just let you close. And I want to get a sense, you know, are you going to do this again, do you feel, next year? I know it's fresh for you. And really, who are you most excited to meet at the con? I feel like I got to meet so many great people that I know from the industry. But who did you get to meet? You know what, man? It was the students. The students blew me away. Like to incorporate the students and the instructors and the staff of the school was magical. And again, we didn't expect it. We did create a mentorship program where five winning students, after presenting resumes and letters, cover letters, we did interviews with them.

1:11:36But we paired them up, five winning students that each got$1 ,000, and we paired them up with industry mentors that are mentoring them for one year. and we have Susan Feniger and Keith Corbin and three other amazing, Ari Rosenson from Spot, Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Ryan Wilson from Lowry's, Della Gossett, Executive Pastry Chef at Spago. And we paired them up and they've already started their relationship and they're going to get mentored for a year. And I got to know some of these students and these are just very, very special, hard, very hardworking, amazing future professionals of our industry.

1:12:16So for me, like bringing this experience to so many of those students and seeing how valuable it was working with the chefs in the kitchens and seeing how these super high profile, you know, chefs work in the kitchen and bang out, you know, a lunch for 550 people, which a lot of these students have never seen. And to give them that experience, to me, that was my big takeaway and what will fuel me to do it again. I love it, Brad. Thanks a lot for sharing that. And I agree. This is the future of the industry. And really, the mentorship program that you've structured is something that you don't see every day.

1:12:54And I appreciate that you were able to make these links. So I hope to talk to you again, man. I really enjoy spending time with you. I hope you come next year. You are officially part of the LHFCon family, Matt. So don't book your travel yet. But we should have a date in the next few months. I love it. Well, we'll definitely keep talking about it. I think it's important to keep LA in our minds because it's such an important food city and appreciate your time here, Brad. Thank you for your support, Matt.

1:13:25This 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. Thank you.