631: Lei Is an Exciting, Singular Chinese Wine Bar in NYC with Annie Shi

28:50Yeah, I really have to give props to Arthur, your Soms, who I was like sitting at the bar chatting with. And I mean, he's just a really fun person. And I think that really came across in the way he was talking about the wine on the list for us and making recommendations. And he also recommended getting the chilled Celtus salad, which I love Celtus. And it wasn't something we initially were going to order. And then it has what kind of jelly is that? It's a kombu jelly. It's such a like cooling, like in the hot New York summer to like crunch into that and then have the jelly together. I thought it was so cool.

29:24Yeah, that was, I mean, it's inspired by like, you know, the mung bean jelly noodles. So that was really part of the inspiration. And celtus is my all-time favorite vegetable. We're sadly coming to the end of this season of celtus, so it'll have to go. But it's been such a fun dish to have. Patty, our chef, is just incredibly talented, and it has been a joy to collaborate with her. Yeah, Patty was at Mission Chinese before, right? Yeah. Yeah. How much of like did you give her like I want these set dishes and can you ideate on top of them or how did you kind of land on the food together? Yeah. So I had actually written a sample menu that was like my dream menu of things that I thought were really interesting that I thought would showcase a variety of different regions of Chinese food that I thought would taste great with wine.

30:13And then I met Patty and we had our first meeting. We just sat down and talked about Chinese food for like over an hour. I met her through Danny Bowen of Mission Chinese and she wasn't working there anymore but he was like maybe you can convince her to like join you on this project and after that conversation I think we realized that we have really similar palates like we like the same kind of food and we were both drawn to really simple ingredient driven Chinese dishes that showcased what was seasonal and it was a really great conversation and I think following from that it was a really seamless collaboration she took the menu that I had started with and that was our launch pad and you know there are dishes that have made it from there like the katser noodle and then things like I'll be like I really really want seltis on the menu I think it's so cool she'd like, great, I love saltus too.

31:12And then she'll go and come back with that dish or a more direct translation of like a childhood dish, like the sweet and sour short rib. Just like little tweaks where I'd be like, okay, this dish is great, but like this, the sweetness of white sugar is just like killer for wine. Like it destroys your palate. Like how can we like work on that and balance the dish? And she came back with the current iteration of it where she subbed out the white sugar for like a strawberry and like stone fruit jam and it just it still tastes really traditional like when my dad came for us our parents are the ultimate like our vip guests that we want to impress and um her parents just ate at the restaurant for the first time yesterday my parents were able to come during friends and family because they're in new york and my dad was like this is delicious and for my dad a shanghani's man to sign off on that dish that was like the ultimate praise because it meant that it tasted traditional and correct but and now paired well with wine yeah and that was like the magical like moment for us i'm so happy for you what did patty's parents think do they have a favorite dish they really liked i mean they liked they it was a lighter meal but they really liked the salad um crown daisy is a really it's really rare to have any greens raw in Chinese cuisine but they obviously knew that that vegetable and like loved the flavor they loved the omelet um they had the scallop crudo they enjoyed everything I think Patty always feels like they're going to be critical of her food but they really did enjoy everything um and they're coming back Friday night for the rest of the menu so oh my god maybe Y 'all have to like peek in and see if I can find them.

33:05I think there is so much thought and care that goes into the menu and it really extends to the space as well. It's such a sexy dining room. And I'm curious, like, if you had this specific vision starting out, like how you kind of landed on what the aesthetic of dining in Lay would feel like. Definitely had a really strong sense of wanting it to feel like very moody and intimate. I think that's the nature of a wine bar. You want it to feel you don't want it to be like too bright and too big. And so for that purpose, I think I've always imagined it with that dark wood paneling. And then a lot of the design was through the vision of like through the translation of my friend Rachel, who was the architectural designer on the project.

33:53She's my childhood friend. We grew up together and we've always dreamed of kind of doing our own thing, particularly since she just started her own practice. And so Lay is really her first commercial project on her own. Wow. Which is really, really special. She lives in San Francisco. So this whole thing was done through FaceTime. She saw the space once in the middle of construction. And she was able to take like all my jumbled thoughts. I was like, I want like this and that and this. And then she just like made it happen in real life, which is incredible and is really a testament to her ability to do so remotely because the space looks so much like her renderings.

34:35It's actually kind of crazy. Yeah. I love the textures at play. There's like stainless steel bar and then the dark wood paneling and then even like the chopsticks. I didn't know that Sabra made chopsticks. I know. That just happened. They just released their chopsticks and I saw it. I don't even remember where. Somewhere on Instagram. And I hadn't even held one in my hands, but I was like, I need these for a lay. Like this is, I had been hunting for chopsticks for weeks and weeks and weeks and I could not find the right ones. And so I ordered them kind of sight unseen. And then they arrived and I thought they were so beautiful.

35:15But then I tried using it and I was like. They're not the easiest. They're not the easiest. They're definitely for advanced chopstick users, but I think they're beautiful enough that they kind of make up for it. I obviously grew up using chopsticks and I was like, I don't know if I can use these. But so far, we've checked in with a lot of guests and no one has said that they've had issues with it. So, yeah, I think once you just adjust, it's not difficult. And I think that they're so pretty that I'm into them. But when I sat down with my friend, she grew up in Hong Kong and she was very surprised to see that it wasn't like the more traditional Chinese chopsticks dip.

35:49shape. Yeah, I know. I think the green on that chopstick was so beautiful and it was like such a big component of like the lay branding. I just like felt like it needed to be on the table. Oh, I mean, I considered getting married so that I could put them on my wedding registry. Like they're so pretty. Do you have a favorite detail from the interior? There's so, there's so many. I love obviously the wallpaper and the bathroom is really special. Um, it's by Dominique Fung, who is an incredible artist and a dear friend. And it was actually part of a exhibit that she did with Jeffrey Deitch. So it's a real honor to have it in the bathroom and it's so fun and so playful.

36:33It's perfect. Um, it's like a bunch of different cranes that when you look at it, you're like, oh, it's just beautiful and elegant, like chinoiserie. And then you look more closely and they're like in all these compromising positions. It's really, really fun. Naughty cranes. Yeah. And then I also love the mural on the wall. It's depictions from Journey to the West, which is a really classic Chinese folktale that I grew up listening to cassette tapes of my dad narrating it. He was a voice actor growing up, so he did the whole series on tape. And we found these lithographs of the whole story from the 17th century.

37:17So it was the very first time that the folktale had been visually depicted. And my dad selected six vignettes from the woodblock prints. And then Ivana Stulic, another very talented artist, combined those six images into vignettes and reproduced them on the wall. That's such a special detail. And I love picturing little Annie. How cool do you get to listen to your dad as the voice of that iconic story? Yeah, it was very cool. And I think that's why that story looms so large in my memory. Yeah. And then I wanted to ask you about like the name for lei. I think choosing names for everything, but especially restaurants is like such a special practice.

37:57Yeah, I wanted something that was one word that could fit King and Jupiter, but was distinctively Chinese and personal, but like easy to pronounce and kind of mysterious. And I ended up landing on Lei, which is my sister's name. And she actually passed away in the Southeast Asian tsunami in 04. But it felt really simple and elegant. And it kind of just fit. Like, I didn't really have backups. I, at one point, was considering using her nickname, which is Lei Lei. And then I thought it felt too, like, cutesy and diminutive. And so then I shortened it to Lei. And it just fit. And yeah, there was no backup name, no alternative.

38:48But it really felt like it was the right name. Yeah, I think it's really special. And obviously so terrible that that happened. And to be able to have her spirit living on not only just in a place, but in a place that family and community can come and be in together, it feels really special. Yeah, she always dreamed of like hospitality, like of actually she was more interested in bed and breakfast and hotels. And obviously she was in finance and subconsciously that must have been part of the reason why I made the career decisions that I did. But it is really special to be able to remember her in that way and to have it be part of Chinatown is really, really great.

39:28Yeah, maybe Lele will be the like upstate bed and breakfast five years from now. I really liked what you said earlier about how people have been using Lei as a jumping off point to go eat and explore other places in Chinatown. I'm wondering for anyone listening, if you were going to plan like a mini date that somehow involved Lei, like what else you would suggest doing? Oh, there are so many great spots. I would like go into the day with a strong appetite, like maybe skip a meal if you have to. But I would make a stop at Maxi's a requirement because the wontons are truly so delicious. You can go there for lunch.

40:10You can stop by You and Me, the bookstore, and do a little bit of browsing and shopping. I would definitely keep that shopping mindset and stop in at Wing on Wo, which is celebrating its 100th year, which is incredible. And they have such cute ceramics and like fun little tchotchkes. And then I would stop by, lay for a drink and a snack. And it's your choice. Like the menu is built so that you can have a lot of small plates or you can like make a full menu of it. And then I would go on to Chinatown Ice Cream Factory afterwards for a scoop of ice cream. I really like their black sesame flavor. Do you have a favorite there?

40:53I love their banana. Whoa, I've never had that. If you love banana, it's so good. It's not like artificial banana proper. It tastes like frozen banana. Wow. I think that's a perfect date. I'm going to copy it. Exactly. I would also suggest stopping by the ladies that sell fruit on Canal Street. Like the fruit is always so beautiful and you could take it home with you. So beautiful. That whole like it's a long canal. It's like an L shape. I would make sure you hit up all the stands. They have such great fruit at like very reasonable prices and the quality is so good. Like they had pink pineapple recently that was spectacular.

41:31They had really, really sweet lychees. They had really great rambutans. Yeah, those. I've been stocking them lately because I saw somebody get wax apple, which is like so hard to find here in the U.S. And they have not had it since. But every time I'm around there, I like walk around and I'm like looking and seeing if I can find it anywhere. Yeah, we actually shop at a lot of those stalls for our groceries for the restaurant because we don't buy in huge quantities. We don't have a basement. We don't have like a giant walk-in. And so it actually makes more sense to like pick some stuff up like from nearby stalls.

42:07And we love being part of the fabric of like the Chinatown economy and supporting small businesses around us. So, yeah, they're really, really great. I love that. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. If you're one of those last-minute shoppers, you might know the feeling. Ideas are running low and the clock is ticking. Here's a fun idea. Aura Frames. Aura Frames is the solution with a gift that feels personal, a little curated, and sent with love. And a gift that can be purchased in no time with a few clicks of the mouse. Aura Frames are great. They sent me one to check out and it was really cool and dumb simple to set up.

42:45I loaded photos using the app, and it was displaying them instantly. There are no limits to the amount of photos you can load, and you can customize messages with each photo. And here's the deal. You can preload an Aura frame with photos and have it directly sent to that special person in your life, gift-wrapped and all. There will be no price tag, and you can include a personalized message. Think about it. All those photos from this past summer's family reunion delivered in a digital frame. That is pretty cool. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get$35 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames, named number one by Wirecutter, by using promo code TASTE at checkout.

43:28That's A-U-R-A frames dot com, promo code TASTE. The deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts. There's big talk about cooking simplicity, but you're usually left with disappointment after smashing that promo code. Now, Clayton, have you ever tried one of those subscription boxes? Yeah, Matt, my friend gave me a code for that one that has all the chopped vegetables in little baggies.

44:06I felt like a drug dealer trying to cook dinner. Yeah, man, I have so been there. ButcherBox is a true exception. I was sent a box of premium beef and pork and was blown away by the quality and variety. There was 100 % grass-fed pasteurized ribeye, tri-tip, and ground sirloin for my favorite at-home smash burger recipe. George Motes, you better watch your back. For pork, they sent me a beautiful center-cut pork loin for slow roasting. I was super impressed, and I haven't even talked about the ribs, which I cooked in my Instant Pot. There was a rub of salt, white pepper, and togarashi, and I pressure cooked with water and apple cider vinegar.

44:46It was incredible. These ButcherBox ribs are amazing. For nearly a decade, ButcherBox has led the industry with meat and seafood that's antibiotic-free. As an exclusive offer, our listeners can get free protein in every box for a year, plus$20 off your first box when you go to butcherbox.com slash taste. Visit butcherbox.com slash taste to get this limited time offer and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. To close today, I want to play a rapid fire game with you. So I'm going to make you play some favorites. Okay. Okay.

45:26Your favorite dish on the menu at Lay right now? Has to be the Katzer noodles. Yeah. Can you briefly describe what the Katzer noodles are? They are little, like, almost aracchiette-shaped noodles that have an amazing, like, chewy, bouncy, almost like QQ texture to them. They're from Shanxi, and we paired it with a braised lamb and, like, loads of cumin and fennel seeds and, like, a flick of tomato. And it's topped with a lot, a lot of dill and cilantro. So good. Your favorite bottle at Lay right now? Ooh, has to be the Ellen Charbo champagnes, which we have been selling. She's a fairly new producer.

46:09It's like her first or second vintage right now. She has her own sheep co-op, which I think is a real selling point. What does that even mean? She has a flock of sheep that graze her vineyards because she's really into biodiversity and the health of her soils. And then she lends her flock of sheep out to her neighbors. Oh, that makes so much more sense. I was picturing like Wallace and Gromit. I don't even know. That is a selling point to me. Your favorite cookbook right now? Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop. Your go-to bodega snack? Ooh. Has to be Heinz ketchup chips. I've never had those.

46:52Really? Yeah. It's like a potato chip? Yeah. But it has like the Heinz. It is Heinz ketchup flavored. Okay. Hot tip. Next time I go to the bodega. Your favorite wine shop in New York? I love Chambers in Tribeca. Your favorite New York City grocery store? It's really expensive, but Eli's Table is where my son has been grocery shopping with us for the past two years, so it's really special. What you would consider to be the best sandwich? Has to be Fico's. when you're in the mood for one of those like three inch tall subs they just like hit so hard your favorite quick lunch spot in new york me some cafe in chinatown the chicken rice it's so good your favorite special occasion restaurant in new york i love red hook tavern i've brought a lot of friends from out of town and family there and it's so special to see that corner of Brooklyn and the burger is always just such a crowd pleaser and Billy's a really good friend.

48:00I love bringing people that are visiting to Red Hook. I feel like it's not what they picture when they think of New York. Okay, finally, a fictional food scene like from a book or a movie that you wish you could magically eat in real life. Ooh, I grew up loving the Red Wall series and there's always these amazing feasts like right before every battle scene. So there's always like mushroom pasties and like damson plum scones with meadow cream. And it always just sounded so good to me. I've always like wanted to recreate a Red Wolf feast. I love that answer. And it's been so much fun talking with you, Annie.

48:39Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Austin Henley, welcome to This is Taste. Great to see you. It is wonderful to be here. I'm a big fan of the show. Thank you so much for coming in. You're in from L.A. I've sat across your bar at Cato. I've read your writing and you're a real thought leader in this industry. You're not just a talented bartender and we're gonna talk about your real ambitions around the NA cocktail movement, but you're an industry leader. You can speak about LA and we'll get into that too. Yeah, I was very kind of you to say. Yeah, it's all true, man. I have deep respect for what you're doing at Cato.

49:13Well, take me back to your time at Booker & Dax. It's kind of where you get your start in some ways. And that's a bar that is highly influential in the cocktail scene. It's no longer around. And just tell me about what it was like working there in the early days of this really influential spot. I mean, I had no idea when I started there how important that bar was. I think I was 23 years old, something like that. I'd never worked in a bar or restaurant before. No way. Yeah, it was my first job. I know that's kind of unbelievable. Were you just like into cocktails, like the education party, did you have books?

49:47No, not at all. I had just moved to New York City after college, and I was looking for kind of any job. And my girlfriend at the time worked at a cafe. One of her regulars was one of the opening bar managers of Booker & Dax. And he said that he was looking for someone to bar back at this bar that he was running. I think it was about six months into their opening. And I had no restaurant or bar experience, but I spent a summer in college working at a biology lab. It was just a, I didn't go to school for biology. It was just a job on campus that I had. And in that job, I had to operate a centrifuge.

50:26Yeah. So I was kind of strangely uniquely qualified for a bar back job at Booker & Dax, even though I had no other restaurant or bar qualifications. And they took a chance on me. And I very quickly realized that I either needed to get very good at that job or figure out something else to do. Yeah. Because everyone there was so passionate and so intelligent and so intense and serious. So it in every way was the genesis of my career. And a little context, you know, Dave Arnold, right? Dave Arnold is somebody who has written extensively about food science, about cooking, and of course is a legend in the cocktail industry.

51:09And this was his bar, but he was changing the game a bit. He wanted to really show some of these techniques that he'd been working on as an instructor, as a culinary school professor. And really, when you walked into Booker Index in the early days, you're getting like a hot poker to put into a cocktail. You're getting solid cocktails. And what's Dave Arnold like as a boss at that time? I mean, he's such a dynamic person. I mean, he is so incredibly intelligent and so enthusiastic about what he's doing that it's contagious. It's absolutely contagious. And when you're around him and you're working with him, you can't help but be swept up in that passion.

51:55Yeah. And you clearly got the bug right away. Oh, absolutely. This is your industry, your leader, your award winner. I mean, this is what you do. And clearly you saw something. What did you what interested you? Because you didn't study food. You didn't go to culinary school. No, I studied philosophy in school. Yeah. And I was, you know, I'm a I'm a big nerd. So there you go. I when I catch interest in something, I tend to go very, very deep into it. And I didn't realize when I started there that cocktails were was something that you could do that with. So when that, you know, when the veil kind of lifted on that and I saw how deep you could go, there was no turning back.

52:40You're somebody I think can really articulate this because we think about the cocktail movement. And of course, like in the 2000s with the revival of cocktail culture and looking back to offer these restored and historical recipes and, you know, all these places in New York and Andre Saunders being at the center of that kind of movement. It was a party as well. Like it was really about consumption. knows about a good time over consumption and a lot has been said about it it seems that if you're coming at it from a nerdier way consumption might have been less interesting to you like be be honest about what it was like you know thinking about the history of cocktails in this context of a lot of people just getting up um well i was uh you know in my early 20s starting in the in the bar industry so i'm not going to say that i never over consumed um i for for sure did um and especially as someone with you know pretty extreme anxiety and social anxiety especially i definitely used alcohol as uh as a social lubricant or as a crutch um as i was kind of first starting to make my way in the industry yeah but you you kind of shifted though at some point where maybe consumption was less the interesting part and the better part was actually the building of these incredible, these innovative, these historical cocktails.

54:14Yeah, I mean, that was always the focus for me, but those things exist in tandem. It's a both and. Yeah. And so I made the decision about four years ago to stop drinking alcohol. Yeah, we'll get to that because I think that's progressive. I think four years ago was a very different time than now. I want to continue in your career, though, because it's really good. I mean, you worked at Maison Premier and Amore Margo and were working the bar and managing those spots. And then you end up— I never managed either of those spots. Okay, well, I'll— No, I was a bartender. Bartender, just like, you know, hired gun, doing the work.

54:51Great bars, though. Pioneering, influential for different reasons. But you head west. You had to California and you end up helping launch Major Domo. Yeah, I opened Major Domo. You opened Major Domo and that's David Chang's extension to the West Coast. Just an incredible restaurant today. I mean, I visited about a year ago, said a bunch of nice things on Three Things. Tell me about that move west and like kind of addressing the L.A. cocktail and wine drinker. Yeah, I think that I was very fortunate, as we mentioned, to have incredible mentors. I mean, we've talked about Dave Arnold, William Elliott, Maison Premier, Souther Teague, and Amoria Margo.

55:35And, you know, it's an incredible stroke of good luck that I was able to work under all those people. But, you know, when you have mentors that are that totemic, they also kind of cast a long shadow. So sometimes you need to kind of separate yourself from that in order to, you know, forge your own path and create your own style. So the move west was really a great opportunity for me to figure out what my own style was. And I think that opening Major Domo was a really important step in that direction, because it was the first time that I was in charge of a program. It was the first time that I was in charge of managing people.

56:18And that was a huge, buzzy opening. That's an understatement. Yeah, it was a very, very intense experience. And for the first two years, I mean, that was the place to be. Everyone came. Yeah, I mean, also just like a lot of pressure, you know, it's David Chang introducing his food to the West Coast, high-profile market. Did you feel you had a little target on your back from like the locals that you were coming in to open? um i know that i mean i don't want to speak for them but momofuku and dave in general felt that there was a lot of pressure yeah coming in from out of town and for the simple reason that a lot of out-of-town chefs have come to la and completely face-planted um yes i mean at the same time that major domo opened the nomad opened in la and very quickly closed yeah um they're you know John George has come to LA and closed.

57:18Poc Poc, the list goes on and on. LA likes its hometown heroes. And people from outside of LA can be seen as interlopers. I think that the smart decision that Momofuku made was hiring Jude Parasycles as the executive chef, who is a native Angeleno. So Major Domo was much more of an LA restaurant than a New York transplant restaurant. The Jude connection is amazing. He's a really like underground, less known chef. I think I first met Jude when he was cooking at Pot, the Roy Choi restaurant at The Line. But higher, and he just has deep LA roots, as you mentioned, and just a really great chef too.

57:59Yeah, he's a journeyman chef. He's not someone that ever seeks limelight or spotlight. Yeah, it's a great, great restaurant. What's the cocktail that you feel really proud of over that time? We haven't really talked about your own creations. Oh, from that time? Yeah, yeah. There's a little cocktail talk on here. Yeah. I loved the grasshopper that we made. It was a frozen drink with coconut milk, creme de minthe, creme de cacao, brandy, and pistachio pudding mix. Wow. Like just straight up like industrial? Jell-O brand pistachio pudding mix. Wow. Yeah. How do you make that work in terms of the texture?

58:37Like it feels like that would be a challenge. I mean, there are things you can add, things you can do, hypercolloids, things like that, and just making sure that the sugar is balanced just so. Yeah. Well, I want to then segue to your work at Cato. And, of course, Cato serves alcohol. We're not going to frame it as a restaurant that only has non-alcoholic beverage. Yeah, I mean, we have a wine cellar of over 3 ,000 selections and a back bar of nearly 400 unique SKUs of spirits. Yeah, it's a wonderful place to have fully loaded cocktails. And that's my crass way of calling it. Cocktails is what we know them as.

59:14High test. High test, right? Funny. I do want to focus on NA because I think you really, really are somebody I've looked to. We've interviewed you for Taste, and I've gotten to know you. And I think you really have a great sense of the NA movement, and it really is a movement. But just broadly speaking, you know, what's what are some big misperceptions about the NA cocktail? There are a lot. And understandably so, I think, because for years, you know, you were kind of scoffed at for ordering an alcohol free cocktail, if there even was the ability to do so. And most things were kind of slapdash, you know, a syrup, a juice and some sparkling water.

1:00:00Right. And that's not a cocktail. Right. Love that you say that. That's just like, let's set that baseline. Yeah. That's a lemonade. And lemonade's great. Lemonade's delicious, but it's not a cocktail. And one of the biggest misconceptions right now, I think, is that having options at all is good enough. And it's not. There's no consolation prize. it needs to be good in the same way that the food needs to be good in the same way that you can't just buy wine that you can find at the grocery store and put it on your restaurant wine list you need to be thoughtful and you need to be diligent and you need to be creative well i'll just observe and then we'll get into the work you're doing at cato and how you're you're really putting your own stamp on any cocktails what i'm seeing now and i've been traveling a lot in the last year around the country, I'm seeing people who are following your advice.

1:01:00Like they're not putting just lemonades on. They're really, really, really trying. But what I find time and again, and this is everywhere from like a craft beer bar, which has a spirit-free menu, to all styles of restaurants, fine dining all the way down, to QSR, which have mocktails, as we call them sometimes. I'm seeing a couple of things. I'm seeing, of course, this overtly sweep of flavor profile. I'm seeing nobody. And I'm seeing them use some of these junky products that are like spirit-free products. I'm not going to name names, but you know who you are. And I'm just seeing that there's effort being made and they think they're proud of these.

1:01:43But time and time again, there's no nuance with all the things I said. So we've gotten to a time where people, bartenders, bar managers are thinking about cocktails, but they seem to be consistently doing it wrong. I think that the one thing that I can put my finger on as the most pernicious kind of cause of this are those alcohol-free spirit replacements specifically that you're talking about. These products are marketed as an alternative or a one-to-one replacement for spirits. They are not. When you're making cocktails with alcohol, you can kind of swap out pieces of recipes in templates. It's called, you know, people call it like the Mr.

1:02:32Potato Head approach, right? Take one piece out, put a piece in and you're replacing that piece with a piece that is comparable. So maybe we're taking out lemon and we're putting in lime juice. If you want to get a little more technical, maybe we're taking out lime juice and we're putting in orange juice and adjusting the acidity up. right, with some citric amalic acid or something to balance it. But we're keeping the pH of that ingredient the same. Or if we're swapping out simple syrup for honey, we're making sure that the Brix level, the sweetness is the same, right? If we're swapping out gin for mezcal, we're making sure that the proof is relatively the same.

1:03:08And that works. Those templates are, you can swap out things one for one. When you're swapping out a spirit for one of these spirit replacements, you're swapping out something that's not a difference of degree. It's a difference in kind. Yeah. Because it is structurally not the same. So whatever you want to say about how the spirit replacements taste, I don't think that they taste like the spirits they're trying to emulate, But we can even do a thought experiment. Let's grant, let's say that there is the best whiskey, non-alcoholic whiskey spirit replacement. Let's say it tastes exactly like a high quality.

1:03:54Like an N.A. Craft beer, like a really great N.A. Craft beer. Yeah, let's say it's that good. Yeah, that good. Because I think beer is the best of these categories. It's the most successful for sure. Those work really, really well. But let's grant that this whiskey replacement tastes identical to high quality rye whiskey. The texture is not the same. And that is the thing that undermines all of these alcohol-free cocktails that are using spirit replacements. because these companies market themselves as an easy answer to the overworked bar manager, bar director, who now all of a sudden needs to add this NA program to their list of things that they already have to do.

1:04:44And it seems like this kind of burden. So here's this answer on a shelf. I can just swap that right in. And these brands are telling me that that's what I'm supposed to do. They're not just telling you. They're putting cash in hand in some instances to put these products on shelves, too. And there's that whole industry. Sure. I can't speak to that. I don't want to smirch anybody's. No. And we're being a little tough on the NA swaps. And I'm always looking for good NA swap products. So, like, I'm open-minded, but I haven't found any good ones. So, let's. There are some. And. But you have to do work.

1:05:22They're a great jumping off point. Yeah. Yeah. But it's almost never the case that I'm going to use one of these products unadulterated in a cocktail. And there are things that you can do in order to help them along. Let's go there because I was I was really interested in what you said about in speaking to the industry because we have a lot of industry listeners. instead of using one of these products and just like doing a full swap, as a bar manager or somebody even at home, what can you do to adjust some of these? If you have a bunch of these products, what can you do? My recommendation when you're considering building alcohol-free cocktails is to not think about classic cocktails, right?

1:06:11Don't think about that template build of a daiquiri or of a Manhattan. Stirred cocktails are a whole different thing. I don't, I haven't ever had a successful alcohol-free stirred cocktail. I'm not sure if it's possible. I would love to be proven wrong, but I've yet to try one. It comes out like sugar water. And I've yet to make one that's any good.

1:06:38But start thinking about alcohol-free cocktails in terms of texture first. if you're using high quality ingredients, flavor can kind of take care of itself. Don't get overly complicated with the flavor combinations. Stick to things that you know will work first when you're first starting to think about this. And think about building alcohol-free cocktails from a texture perspective. Take care of the texture and then the rest will kind of follow from there. So some things that you can do to enhance texture in an alcohol-free cocktail are carbonation. That's a great one. So if you've ever tasted a still dealkalized wine and then a sparkling dealkalized wine, the sparkling dealkalized wine is much more successful than the still dealkalized wine.

1:07:29Oh, the Germans know what they're up to. They really do. And that's also, I think, why N.A. Beer is so successful. Because the carbonation makes up for the lack of alcohol bite and lack of alcohol texture because you have the texture of the carbonation and of the bubbles on your palate. It's a smoke screen in some ways. It's kind of masking that lack of a backbone or body of an alcoholic. I mean, everything with cocktails is a smoke screen. Yeah, no, no, true. I mean, you know, we're adding sugar and lime juice to our rum to make a daiquiri. to kind of not not to mask but to kind of smooth out the edges of a distillate right so i mean cocktails are all magic tricks i think like the i go right to the cuba libre or like the rum and coke like i feel like that you can like somehow figure out rum in an na setting and you've got that great carbonation that iconic cola you got something there and then lime yeah so carbonation is a great way.

1:08:33Incorporating tannin. Yeah. Yeah. So that kind of grippy feeling that you get from red wine for something like Nebbiolo, right? That grippy kind of sticky feeling on the back of your teeth and your tongue. It doesn't sound great when you describe it that way, but it really does help when you add that to an alcohol-free cocktail. You can do that by steeping some of these alcohol-free products with tea tea adds tannin coffee adds tannin oak chips could even add tannin and a little bit of if you want an american oak flavor that kind of vanilla baking spice kind of flavor but tannin really works well bitterness yeah bitterness is so crucial with alcohol-free cocktails because we were talking about you know the juice and syrup and soda water mocktail yeah right that's missing something it's missing complexity yeah and bitterness helps to achieve that complexity it gives you something other than sweet and sour for your palate to consider and you can even use bitterness in kind of a sub-threshold way like it just below your your your ability to perceive it where the cocktail is not reading as oh this is bitter like when you drink a Negroni, you think this is a bitter drink, right?

1:09:56But you can use bitterness in a way to add complexity and to add the kind of illusion of texture in a way that doesn't read fully as bitter. You can do that by doing something as simple as buying some dry gentian root and steeping that in your alcohol-free aperitif. Oh, okay. We do that all the time at Kato. So just doctoring some of these alcohol-free products and doing some infusions to make it - But not infusing necessarily for flavor. Yeah. Infusing for texture. Yeah, exactly. Very interesting. I want to talk about being four years NA and really building this menu at Cato and really thinking about innovation and creating a tasting menu around NA.

1:10:44Did you launch Cato as an NA guy or did you transition while Cato? Cato's been open for three years now. Yeah. And so I was a year into not drinking and I was doing a bunch of my just my own research into the category to see what options were out there and what was going on. I was definitely felt a lack of options and felt a void in the in that in that in that beverage space. And four years ago was a lot different than now. There were many fewer options on the market. it. And when I first came on board at Cato and I was talking to Ryan and John, who are the co-owners of Cato, John is the chef and Ryan is the wine director and director of operations.

1:11:33They were both very adamant about having a strong alcohol-free program for Cato off the bat. So it was just kismet that that aligned with my initial interest in pursuing that. And we decided that if we were going to do it, we should just go all the way and do it as well as we possibly can in the hopes that, I mean, for me, it's partially selfish, right? I was thinking the same thing, not selfish, but just you had motivation. Yeah. Well, I want good things to drink when I go out to eat. I don't just work in this industry. Like, one of my favorite things to do is to go out to restaurants. And there was not a lot of options in L.A.

1:12:17or New York or really anywhere at the time. And I don't want to shortchange anyone. There have been places that have been doing great alcohol-free pairings. Some fine dining restaurants have been doing it for a long time before Cato came along. I don't think that we are not at all the first one to do this. You never have said that once. Um, but at the time that we opened in Los Angeles, we were the only restaurant that had an alcohol-free pairing. Um, and the hope was if we did it and we did it well and it got attention and people liked it, other people would follow suit. And they have. Every tasting menu restaurant in LA that has opened since Cato opened has opened with an alcohol-free pairing.

1:13:02and even some restaurants that have been around for decades have started to have one. And I'm going to guess that many of them have sat at your bar and tried your own cocktails too. Yeah. And I mean, I would hope so. I go to as many places as I possibly can to try what people are doing. And I will always, you know, I will go to restaurants specifically for their alcohol-free program to try what they're doing. There's something about LA that makes this work, about the dining population. It could be the cannabis movement and how alcohol is not a focus for many diners. It could be about the driving component.

1:13:40It could be about the early hours. A lot of LA folks work East Coast hours for a variety of reasons. So there's a lot of motivation. Did you find the LA Diner was special and really attracted to this NA tasting menu? It was immediately apparent that people were enjoying it. and that there was a desire for it. I would say somewhere around 20 % of diners that come to Cato have something from the NA program just in general. And that could be that they have a cocktail with alcohol and then do the alcohol-free pairing. A lot of people do that. A lot of people will have an alcohol-free cocktail and then do the wine pairing, or they'll alternate between cocktail and alcohol-free cocktail.

1:14:30The what's I think so great about the beverage program at Cato is that it is comprehensive. So we have strength in every category of beverage. So whatever someone wants at any given moment during a meal, we can we can provide that and in a way that is deep and thoughtful. Give us a couple of examples of what you're serving right now. In the summer, we're recording this. What are a couple of drinks that you're really happy with right now? I think that the alcohol-free pairing is in the strongest place that it's been since we opened. When we initially opened the restaurant, it was a combination of things that were sourced.

1:15:13So whether or not that was sparkling dealkalized wine from lights in Germany or some fermented Wenchen Biazang oolong tea from Unified Ferments or New York based company, really, really great kombucha company. But we've recently have overhauled it completely to be 100 percent made by the bar. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. So it's a big change for you. It's a lot more work. Yeah, it is. But it's but it's worth it. We're finding it. It's been an incredible response from people. even more people are choosing to get the pairing. So we, myself and our head bartender, Hansuk Cho, who's been working in the NA space for a long time, even before starting to work at Cato, we worked together on this pairing.

1:15:56And one of my favorite is the pairing for the Yotiao or donut course. I think you had that. Yeah, absolutely. It's a donut filled with sea urchin and brown butter. It's a gorgeous dish. Ham and caviar on top. It's a really decadent single bite. And the pairing that Han came up with for that course was clarified carrot that we're getting from Wiser Farms, passion fruit, and then dealkalized Riesling that we steep with dehydrated mango skins. The kitchen was making a dessert last year with mangoes from Wong Farms, and they kept all the skins, dehydrated them, and saved them. So we've been steeping that in the Riesling for texture and to add a little bit of flavor.

1:16:42So those things are all combined together and then carbonated. It's incredibly refreshing, unexpected, and really, really delicious. I think that's my favorite thing that we have on the menu right now. That carrot and passion fruit pairing, amazing. Amazing with the mango. That's cool. Yeah, Han has a knack for clever flavor pairings. Yeah, and it reads really well. It's interesting. And I think you can do that as a pairing or order it as a single drink or is it only pairing? That one's only pairing. There are a few drinks that are crossed over. The opening drink for the alcohol-free pairing is actually a shaved ice cocktail.

1:17:18And this is a great example of taking a product. In this case, we're using the Bronte from Martini Rossi, which is their red Italian-style bitter. and we're infusing that with gentian and schisandra berry, which is also called like five flavor berry. It's called wu wei zu in Mandarin. And that is mixed with Beijing yogurt, some lime juice, some verju, and then poured over some shaved ice. So you can get that as the first course of the pairing or you can get that a la carte. It's just gorgeous stuff. You gotta go to Cato and you can, of course, make a reservation and have a menu in the dining room or you can dine at the bar.

1:17:59Yeah, we have a separate menu at the bar that's completely distinct from the dining room. It's not just a shorter version of the dining room menu. All the dishes are distinct. And you can also just walk in and have a cocktail. Nice. You're on Resi? We're on Open Table. Open Table, okay. Well, I want to ask you about this sentiment that you hear thrown around, and you're right there in the industry. You're seeing these trends. And you're hearing that Gen Z is drinking less. What do you think about that? I think that's all the more reason to have a compelling alcohol-free beverage program. Because at the end of the day, restaurants are businesses.

1:18:41And not only are they businesses, they're very difficult businesses to be profitable. Of course. So if you have an entire generation, the rising generation, right? They're going to be the people soon who have the disposable income to come to restaurants, hopefully. And hopefully, the sentiment is not Gen Z is not going to restaurants. No, it's definitely not. It's quite the opposite. Yeah, it's that they're drinking less. So you need to have options to be able to capture that revenue. If your wine sales are going down, you can't just allow that ship to sink. You need to figure out how to make up for that lost revenue.

1:19:20And I think the way to do it is to have a fun, exciting alcohol-free beverage program. Oh, we agree. Do you think Gen Z is drinking less? You know, Cato is a very elegant and, yes, admittedly expensive restaurant. Has to be. I don't think we have a ton of Gen Z clientele. Got it, got it. I think our clientele tends to be mid-30s to mid-50s in that range. I think the restaurant is a little bit of an older clientele. It makes sense. I mean, completely. And you've done a great job of kind of extrapolating for operators who have a lot of Gen Z clientele. Just a reason to have great NA craft beer. I mean, what's your NA beer list looking like these days?

1:20:09We it's it's it's kind of it's kind of rotating. We have at least four at any given time. But the one that's always on there is my personal favorite, which is Centauri All Free. I know. Which is technically not an alcohol-free beer because it never had alcohol to begin with. So it's not de-alcoholized in the way that some NA beer is. But it is a malt and hops flavored sparkling water beverage. I know that doesn't sound too appealing, but it is truly zero alcohol, which is another thing that's important to consider when you're doing your program. because there's a difference between what is legally allowed for something to be considered non-alcoholic and that is below 0.5 percent alcohol by volume right and something that is truly zero alcohol and there are some people who are okay with having something that is less than 0.5 and there's some people that aren't there's some people that have for example severe alcohol allergies who can't have any alcohol at all and there's some people who are in recovery.

1:21:14Yeah. Who don't want to have something that even has a trace amount of alcohol. And that's totally understandable. You should be able to have multiple options for people who are not drinking for whatever reason. And Centauri All Free is a great option because it is truly zero alcohol. Yeah, it's a great product. And I'm sure you're getting sent lots of these NA craft beers. And last question there, I mean, why has this industry worked so well? Why is craft beer really, really embraced NA in the coolest way? And do you feel like there's a bright future for NA beers? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's just getting better and better.

1:21:50I think the reason that it's been successful is that it, as opposed to the spirit side or the wine side, they figured out first how to make something that tastes good. Yeah, exactly. So if you figure out how to make something that tastes good, people are going to buy it. If people buy it, then the industry has more resources. The industry has more resources. Then it can put more of those resources into R &D, into growth. I want to talk about Los Angeles a little bit, the dining scene. You know, Los Angeles is my favorite city in America to dine out in restaurants. It's truly incredible. I think Los Angeles has had a tough time combination, of course, the devastating wildfires.

1:22:30There's been social unrest as of late. And, of course, this drastic change in the entertainment industry. There was a big writer's strike a year ago and even deeper changes in the industry. But you're really – you live there and you operate a restaurant. Tell me a little bit about the current Los Angeles scene right now. Yeah, L.A. can't catch a break lately. It's been, as you were saying, COVID into the double writer and actor strike, which for a long time, the only industry in Los Angeles or the predominant industry in Los Angeles was film and television. And, you know, of late, those businesses have been outsourced to other cities like Vancouver, like Atlanta.

1:23:15People aren't filming film and television in L.A. And what that means is that all of those middle class jobs, it's not just the actors and writers and producers and people, you know, those people still have incomes. They still live in L.A. They can still go out to eat. But it's all the people kind of in that middle income bracket, the people who do hair and makeup, the people who do lighting, the people who do sound for film and television productions that are moving out of L.A. because the work isn't there. And L.A. is still just as expensive as it was before to live in. So the loss of that group of people, I think, has profoundly affected the restaurant industry.

1:23:56And then add to that the wildfires that recently happened, which I think have had a hand in a downturn in tourism in L.A. But I think what people who don't live in LA don't understand is that LA is absolutely enormous. And while those fires were very devastating, there are still the majority of the city of Los Angeles was physically unaffected by those. So if people are hesitant to come to L.A. because of the fires and things like that, they absolutely shouldn't be. Because, you know, the rest of the city goes on and is open for business. So people should be coming to L.A., visiting L.A. to eat and drink for sure.

1:24:43Into that sentiment, I've said it myself many times, just go to L.A. It's just you got to go. It's open for business. It's a beautiful city. Yeah. Go to Kato too. Whatever kind of food you like eating, L.A. has a great example of that. Multiple great examples. Absolutely. You're here for the Bar Covenant Conference, an influential conference that brings thought leaders in the cocktail and spirits world. Wine as well, I imagine. Or is it just a bar? Is it just? I think it's mostly a cocktail. Mostly cocktail. I guess going into the, I know you haven't been before, so it might be abroad, but what do you suspect are some big topics that will be discussed at this conference?

1:25:21Well, just looking over the list of the speakers, I think NA is a big focus. I think that is a big driver of the industry right now. But in general, what people are talking about is things that are, frankly, not incredibly sexy to talk about, which is cost of goods, cost of operating a business, labor models. how do we continue to operate as restaurants and bars in a sustainable way, both from a human resources perspective and from a global climate change perspective? Yeah, those are all huge topics. And I really wanna check out the conference one day because I think these are huge topics we talk about on the show and it's a great event.

1:26:11Well, Austin Henley, this has been incredible. Thank you so much for joining us this day. Thank you so much for having me, Matt.

1:26:20This is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell, logo and guest illustrations by Ellie Skrzat. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.