366: George Motz

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I see myself as a steward to history. My job is to not try to create new things and be flashy and to have fun with it, I should say. My fun with it is making sure that when I make something, I'm not trying to add something to it. I'm just trying to make it the exact same way they would have made it years ago, or even the way they still make it today in another part of the country.

0:53This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rothbard.

0:59Today on the show, we welcome back George Motes, the owner of Hamburger America, a new hamburger shop in New York City. You may have read about it in New York Times, New Yorker. It's getting great reviews. We welcome George back. He came in about a year ago, and we talked about what it was like to build a concept like Hamburger America. Well, guess what? It's opened, and it's a huge hit. We also talk about what it's like finally going pro, going from pop-up to proper chef, working seven days a week in New York. This is a wide-ranging conversation with one of my favorite food personalities. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:42George Motz, welcome back to This Is Taste. What is up? Hey, thanks for having me back. Man, I had you in, I think, late May, early June, and Hamburger America was just about to kind of open-ish. And I've been back and I'll get to my experience there, but man, you back your shit up. It was as good as you said it was going to be. Well, if I said I was opening near June, I was wrong. I was probably right. I couldn't believe how much longer it actually took. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that you obviously had to deal with New York City. But the press has been just there. But I was waiting in line week one and I waited in line for your burger.

2:20Yeah, I saw you in line. I was kind of surprised, but I was happy to see you. Not surprised you were there, but I was surprised that you didn't text ahead and try to get a seat at the counter. I was very impressed that you just wanted to be like everybody else. Listen, my guy, if I'm going to put stuff on the gram, I'm going to go, and I'm going to go unannounced as much as I can because - Good for you. I'm trying to be a little objective here. Let's just talk about, were you working service last night, yesterday? No, actually, yesterday was my day off. Okay, yesterday. We're recording on a Tuesday, so I was hoping.

2:47So what was Sunday like? What was the Sunday service? Sunday is nice. Sunday is a little bit of a goat rodeo in there because it's a lot of strollers and families, which is great. We love them so much. We've got to put on some lists like top 15 places to take your kids for lunch like in the first week we were open, which is great. That's exactly what we are. We're not a bar. We're not supposed to be some late night hang. We are literally, at its core, a retro diner in a way, like a beautiful – to me, it's a very beautiful diner to me with great simple food, nothing complicated. And that's exactly where kids and families are drawn to.

3:18I mean, and it feels like there's also, with that being said, I would say every like 20 to 28-year-old like hypebeast streetwear aficionado on the male side and the female equivalent, honestly, they're all there too. I know. There's been a lot of talk about how we – maybe did you pay people to do this? No, we have not paid a penny to any influencer or anybody. No, and really it's equal. And really a big reason for that is your hamburger is$7.25. cents and i really wanted to ask you not and i love and i had i had the classic i didn't have the smash the oklahoma smash and i'll go back and have that but i really wanted to try the classic and it was it was as advertised you know beef was was perfectly seasoned it felt like the bun ratio was right but you're selling it at seven dollars and 25 cents just be honest with me like is this like the best buy c dvd model of the 90s a loss leader just to get people in to check you I like that.

4:15It's funny. It's actually not designed as a loss leader. We saw this as an accessible food you could probably eat every day, probably wouldn't be totally healthy if we eat every day, but at least once a week, twice a week, sure, why not? And it was designed to be a burger that you remembered as affordable and fantastic at the same time. It's not one of the other. It's not fantastic and expensive. It's not affordable and disgusting. It's actually both, I think. And it was really designed to be sold at volume. We're selling a lot of hamburgers. We're selling a lot of hamburgers. I'll tell you right now, it's a lot of hamburgers.

4:45They are unquestionably the king of the menu right now. Our sandwiches are doing great. Yeah, well, they're doing really well. People are hitting the egg salad? People are loving the egg salad. It's my mom's egg salad. I know. You said that in the last interview, and I think I was skeptical, but I did order the egg salad as well. It's fucking good. It's nice. It's only three ingredients. It's just perfectly cooked, hard-boiled eggs, good mayo and salt. I'm sorry, and mustard. We use a little bit of salt, but also French's yellow mustard. That's it. You're using French's, what's the mayo? The mayo is actually, we talked about this the last time, it's admiration mayo.

5:14That's what I thought. So I went and bought admiration. You found it. My sister-in-law runs a pizzeria. And for Hanukkah, she listened to the episode and was cool. And she bought me literally the food service size. It's a one-gallon jug. Yeah, it's one gallon of celebration admiration. admiration yeah mayonnaise yeah i like it it's good yeah i mean it's definitely it's not hellman's that's for sure it's not i think duke's is still higher in my book but i it's i i use it i literally will be using it um until i'm 70 so because i have a gallon of it i actually go through about i can actually go through a gallon in about four months are you serious not kidding i probably do testing once in a while but in my own house i'll go oh in your house i'm like at your restaurant no no no we go we go through that two gallons a day probably i would imagine um back to the burger $7.25.

6:05You're not doing like that drug dealer thing where you're giving people a taste and then you're going to raise it to$11.25. No, no, no. We actually, I mean, it's funny. When we were about to open, we had the paper on the windows and I would see people stick their head in the door and say, when do you open? And we'd tell them. And I remember thinking, they're probably thinking this is going to be some other, you know, another like$20, you know, Soho hamburger joint, but it's not at all. It's not at all. We were trying to make sure people understood that we were, the prices are, I think are in line with the way the American hamburger should be appreciated, which is, you know, a very straightforward, simple, inexpensive sustenance for you to enjoy.

6:38Yeah. Yeah. I mean, enjoy we are. And what's the biggest surprise since you opened? I mean, we talked about like that we were trying to predict the future in our June conversation. We're at the future and the present now. So what was the biggest surprise? The biggest surprise was all the media attention. I was still kind of shocked. I mean, I spent 20 years working in the hamburger sphere. But to me, really, all the attention has been intense. It's been a lot. It's been a little too much. So I jumped from the other day. It's like, okay, I wish we could have spaced all this out. It would have been nicer to have it, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there.

7:09But it's all sort of come at the same exact moment. I mean, George, let's be honest, though. You had, was it Michael Bloomberg there? Well, he's an old friend. So that's why he was there. Okay, okay. Well, I mean, I feel like that, you've got like this big personality. He's an old friend. Okay, okay. He's an old friend. We go way back. I actually helped. I wasn't allowed to talk about this at the time. But I actually helped make – I taught his chef at Gracie Mansion how to make a great burger years ago. Oh, let's talk about that right now. Years ago. So Bloomberg is like – I like hamburgers. I am Michael Bloomberg.

7:41And if you lived in New York, he was – he ran the city – he's not a technocrat, but it's definitely in that vein. Yeah. Some would call it that, but it's not a political show. But he's like, I want the best. I want to outsource. So what did you do in this lesson in Gracie Mansion? He came to an event we did, and he said to somebody, I don't care what it takes. I need to get him to Gracie Mansion to show my chef how to make a burger. So? And he paid me privately. It was nothing done by the city at all. At the time, remember, Gracie Mansion was also open to the public. Oh, sure. So if you had an organization, you could technically rent for a donation, Gracie Mansion, for your huge event.

8:24So when the Bloomberg Venmo hits, what are you buying? No, it wasn't that much money. All right. I would imagine it was a – Oh, it was a stipend. It was a thank you for doing this. No, I know. But I did it three years in a row actually. I went back and retrained the chefs once a year for all their public events. We call that dialing in. You're just dialing in to Gracie Manchin. I'm just dialing in to Gracie Manchin. So here's the thing. If you went to Gracie Manchin in those years during the Bloomberg administration and you ate a cheeseburger, that was probably my burger. Yeah. Damn. Well, that's a whole – I'm not even prepared for that, but I want to get to other points.

8:56But, man, I want you back. We're doing this every six months. I love talking to you, George. Let me ask you, what would Josh Ozersky say about hamburger America? You know, Josh is somebody who I think a lot of our listeners may have kind of forgotten about Josh. And he's a problematic character. I think he had some ups and downs in his career. I knew Josh personally. I saw him very close the night he passed, unfortunately. That's a very sad story. But back to Josh, he was a hamburger scholar like yourself. I think you've kind of taken the Josh Zuzerski reign. But what would he think about your restaurant?

9:28I truly believe that this is – I mean this from the bottom of my heart. He would take the first bite of that cheeseburger and a tear would literally slowly creep down his cheek. Because he would say – he would know that there's good in the world and that we actually did the right thing. I'm not just making that up. I truly believe that – I really respected Josh when he was around. I'm sad. We're all sad that he's gone. We are sad. He was bigger than life. Yeah. I could never be as big as him in terms of like the persona and the bravado. But he definitely unquestionably would have loved this burger.

10:01I almost sometimes I almost think that I've made the burger for people like him and maybe even specifically for him. Well, I mean, you did because of the way that you're talking about your guest burgers. And we'll get to that. Your hamburger heroes, you call it. I think that's part of the Josh Wozarski ethic. I will just say and interject that you've certainly surpassed Ozerski, in my opinion, because of the way your YouTube media has really blown up and just the way you conduct yourself. I really respect you, George. I think you are there a lot. And I think people who meet you are like, wow, that guy's actually cool.

10:32He's not just like some dude on YouTube. Actually, I'm also there. I'm doing the work. I cook in the griddle. Every day I'm in the restaurant, I'm on the griddle. There's no question about it. We're open now seven days a week. and what I do is I actually make sure that I'm on at least one shift. I almost had a little burnout. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine texted me and said, how are you holding up? And I, for the first time, I wrote back to somebody who asked that question, I think I'm kind of burning out. So, and I realized that I was doing about, you know, doing two shifts a day for five days a week.

10:58We went to seven days and I started doing, you know, one shift on those two days that I should have been taking off. My partner said to me, you need to take the day off. You need to actually, you know, don't try to be, you know, one day, we'll just take something off, you know, and I was, at one point in the very beginning, I was working about seven, eight hours, sometimes straight on the griddle. It was insane. And I was used to doing one pop-up a week. Well, yeah, let's get into that. Cause you told me you were going to be the seven days you've backed it up. I love that. And, and going from pop-up chef who's doing big service once a week at like bars to like doing these eight hour shifts, seven days a week.

11:29How are you holding up physically? What does it take? Like, are you, are you like feeling aches and pains in places you never knew would, would ache and pain? Oh, absolutely. I'm learning all things, all new things about my body and my hands. I mean, my hand, I have this, you know, trigger finger is, you know what that is? Yeah. So I have one on my right hand from Smashing Burgers. I wake up in the morning and I cannot straighten out my ring finger. It won't straighten out. Yeah. I have to actually push it into place and it clicks like a trigger. It's like a trigger thing. Yeah, I know. It's like a little bit, it's like a palsy.

11:56It's like a lockup. Yeah. And it's just from where the way I hold my spatula and smash. I think you gotta get some ergo. I've got smash finger. That's what I mean. You gotta get some ergo guys in there. I feel, George, I'm looking out for like a New York burger scene. We don't want to lose you to like some PT. Well, it's not even just me. I mean, I've got people who I've trained to work on the griddle who at this point are honestly probably doing as well as me if not better. Yeah. And they're going to have the same aches and pains, I guarantee. The way we scrape the griddle, the way we smash patties, it all involves certain parts of the way you use your hand.

12:25And I guarantee that they're also feeling the same pains. I mean, keep in mind, a lot of these guys are like 30 years younger than me. I know. I mean, you're young at heart, but you're not the youngest man in the world. But I feel the one big part of what Hamburger America does is you sit at the counter and you talk to people. People take selfies with you. People take paparazzi photos of you. So what are these exchanges like at the counter? I mean, you're getting your photo taken 100 times a day. Yeah. It's kind of intense. 600 times a day. It's insane. Sometimes I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing.

13:01I'm looking down at the griddle. I liken it to like, it's like a surfer watching the waves. You know, I look at the griddle. I'm actually looking at the griddle and trying to figure out what's cooking, what's finishing, what I just begin. How is this going over here? And I look up and there's cameras in my face all the time, which is fine. And some of my newer cooks, younger cooks who are not really ready for that kind of sort of air quotes fame, don't really like all the attention because they take pictures of them too. They're taking pictures of them, but also the burgers on the griddle. They just look up and they see cameras too.

13:32They're putting their pixel like three inches from the smash and you're like – they're like, yo, bro, I need to do my job. But that was – we designed the restaurant to be that. It's supposed to be – Yes, you did. We're joking around calling it hamburger Benihana. I mean it's pretty sweet. Yeah. And that's a big draw if you get one of those counter seats. And of course, there's seating in the back. You don't have to sit at the counter. But those are like the prime time seats. Those are the prime seats if you really are into the show. If you're just into the burger, go in the back. It's fine. And it's the same burger.

14:00It's the same exact burger. It's just the difference is you're not watching it being made. And people actually think they like being able to look into the kitchen. I mean, the other end of this would be like Blanca. If you go to Blanca in Brooklyn, you spend your whole meal either looking at the plate for a few seconds while you eat that one bite or you're looking out at all. There are more cooks and chefs and people in the kitchen at Blanca than there are at the counter. Oh, my God. It's kind of the case with hamburger bar. That's so interesting. Also, is Blanca still going? They just reopened.

14:27I'm pretty sure they just reopened. George, with the breaking news from Williamsburg, Blanca is open. I'm excited personally to hear that Blanca is open. I'll have to get Carlo on the show. I love Blanca. It's a good spot. But like Blanca, there are more people behind the counter than there are at the counter. So if we have 11 stools at the counter and we probably have 12 in the kitchen. Yeah, that's a great ratio. So what are weights looking at these days? Say like on a Friday or Saturday, are we still looking at 20, 25 to get in? So it all depends on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to go to the counter, it will take sometimes 20 minutes to a half hour on a Friday or Saturday.

15:01Sunday, it's up and down. It's all over the place. But I tell you right now, we tell people, we're open seven days a week now. And Monday, it's dead. Yesterday, we did steady, great business. But you could walk in and get a burger and be out of there in five minutes, honestly. Yeah, and that's the beauty. You really can. And I love the service. I had a wonderful experience with a server who just was like great vibes. We talked a little. It wasn't over-talking. I mean, you clearly are training your guys. Right. So that was probably Allison. Was it a guy or a girl? It was a black gentleman. Yeah, that's Dell.

15:30I mean, Dell? Yeah, Dell, yeah. Let me give Dell a shout. Dell is really cool. Like, Dell, I thought was, he didn't know who the fuck I was. I'm just a guy, and I'm like asking him a little bit, and he just treated me like I was the way I get treated sometimes when people know I'm a food writer. It's just beautiful to see that. Like, just a really cool experience. We've been blessed with these servers who have come to us. we've been blessed with some really amazing people, really great characters, you know, who really understand like what it's like to be a server. And Dell's a perfect example.

16:01Dell walks around with his own Polaroid camera and sometimes takes pictures on his own dime with his Polaroid camera. I think just for fun. Yeah, say hey to Dell for me. I'm going to go back and definitely hang with him. Okay, so was there a menu item that flopped off the opening menu? That's funny. The only thing I would say was that so far we're doing great. Everything on the menu is selling. Every single thing on the menu is selling. You were selling. I was actually surprised. I'm surprised too. I think it's cursed. It's a cursed beverage, but that's just me. Sorry. You was a great beverage.

16:33Oh my God, we disagree hard on that. Oh, it's chocolate water. It's wonderful. Oh, it sounds great. You're selling it hard. I mean, the reason I'm saying it's not my favorite is that you've got great milk. You've got great dairy. Are you doing Ronnie Brook? No, we're just doing regular milk. Yeah. The milk that comes in from the big box trucks. Yeah, it's all good. Yeah, all good, man. But like I'm not judging about that, but like Yoohoo to me, I don't know, man. If you're going to have like a – you have great milk. You have chocolate milk. I just go that way. Well, it's based on the brand. I mean it's actually a pretty strong tri-state area brand.

17:05Oh, okay. People don't border if they come from there. What the? Yoo-a-hoo? What is that? Wait, Yoohoo is tri-state? Oh, yeah. I mean it's available all over the country pretty much. But it's – Cool. I mean it was invented in New Jersey by a chemist or something. Yeah. I'm not trying to pick on Yoohoo, dude. and write in if you like you. We could have another conversation. But I'm glad everything's working. I mean, what about the, honestly, the other menu items, the sandwiches? Are people going in that direction too? Yeah, the sandwiches are actually selling very well. And the egg salad is selling surprisingly well.

17:37We had an original party just to thank the investors. And there was a woman at the party. And she said, we had a test menu on the wall. And she said, it was like a year before we opened. And she said, you should definitely have egg salad. I said, I hadn't even considered it. And it's our biggest selling sandwich right now. Speaking of thanking the investors, I believe the investors probably are going to be thanking you at some point. And I'm joking, but from the optics, our long lines, great Helen Rosner review in The New Yorker, I'll get to a quote by her, other great press. Are you making money?

18:08Yeah. I mean, we are. We're making money. There's no question about it. We're still working on paying off some of our debts, but we're doing great. Of course. You'll pay off debt. Yeah. And then, of course, I have to ask expansion because this is obviously set up where you're going to be there all the time. So I would say a big no for expansion. But that said, if you get this beautiful tribute to a hamburger restaurant from the 50s and 60s in like Vegas or Brooklyn or Madison, Wisconsin, it's probably going to crush. I think it will. We do believe it will. But we're not even talking about expansion until we get this one completely 110 percent right.

18:44That's the plan. But we are thinking about it. We're considering it but not talking about it. Okay, I respect that. What needs to get right then before you start thinking about doing another two? Just the training. The training is a big one. And we're getting the training right. But then if somebody walks in new, are they ready to go? Are they trained? Is someone there to train them? Originally, we had one shift. We're open five days a week with one shift. Now we have two shifts. I think we have something called a swing shift. I don't know. And it's expanded now. And people are there right now.

19:16I don't know who's in the restaurant right now. I'm not there. I will go down there after this podcast and I will find out who's there and I'll see. I'll have to look at the griddle and see who is the trainer. Was the trainer just trained? Yeah. These are things you have to worry about. So once we get into a groove where everything is working, right now the good news is that all the food is coming out, I think, perfectly, which is nice. I mean, for the most part, it's all coming out the way it should. I mean, we have very, very few things to worry about in the restaurant in terms of the food. But there are every menu item, and there's only 10 food items for 14 drinks.

19:49Each one only has a few ingredients in it. I mean, the lemonade is lemons and sugar and water. That's it. For example, the tuna salad is a few ingredients, and that's it. Egg salad is three ingredients. The burger, the onion burger is five ingredients. Less variable costs, I would say. Less variable costs you can project in price of beef. I was just spending time with some pitmasters in South Carolina, and we were talking beef prices. I mean, how do you protect yourself against spikes in beef prices? We know what's going on. We work with a great meat packer, Schweid & Sons. And they're also friends.

20:20They were friends of mine first, which is nice. And so they want to make sure that we're protected in terms of the prices. They're very upfront with us. And there has been already some fluctuation, but we're okay with it. But you're keeping it at$7.25, and I'm believing that this is going to be the price for a little while. It's going to be a little while, yeah. We may have to bump it up a little bit depending on what goes on with the beef prices. Yeah. And the raise in minimum wage, I think, may be also an issue. I think that will be an issue. That will be the bigger one. I'm going to quote Helen Rosner.

20:46She wrote a great piece in New Yorker. Quote, Moza's restaurant may be a pastiche as much as it's a temple, a meticulous facsimile of the time-worn and beloved, but at least he's not stingy with the credit. The question at the end of that great quote is, what credit was needed for hamburgers when you were thinking about opening Hamburger America? That's a great question. I see myself as a steward to history. Like my job is to not try to create new things and be flashy and do – just have fun with it, I should say. My fun with it is being a steward to history. It's making sure that when I make something, I'm not trying to add something to it.

21:25I'm just trying to make it the exact same way they would have made it years ago or even the way they still make it today in another part of the country. I think that's what she meant. I'm pretty sure. I think that's definitely what it meant. And I think part of that being a steward of history is your tribute to the hamburger heroes. And, of course, the one that jumps out at me, and we talked about this in the last interview, is the Olive Burger from Westin's QP in Lansing, Michigan. I'm from West Michigan myself. Oh. I have to shout out Hot Now in Sturgis, Michigan, the only remaining Hot Now that remains.