653: Evan Funke Makes up With the Pasta Machine

26:33I love Parks Barbecue. I love little hole in the walls where you can get a nice japchae or like a nem yang, like cold noodle soup. I love Vietnamese food. We order in a lot. We have our favorite places. I live close to this studio. So the interesting thing when I go out to eat, and this has been because the community in L.A. is so small, Chef community in L.A. is so small. When chefs go out to other chefs' restaurants, they try to murder you with food. Because it's how we express love and respect and whatnot. It takes its tolls, though, sometimes. It does. And it can get uncomfortable if you eat too much.

27:18But it's all in good fun. It's all in good respect. But I think most recently, I've had spectacular meals all over L.A. I love what John does at Cato. I love what Brian Dunsmore does that does more. There's extraordinary talent in the city, and there's no shortage of wonderful experiences in the city. For me, it's one of the most dynamic and culturally diverse culinary scenes in the country. No doubt. And have you been to Seoul with your wife and visited Korea? Actually going in November for my first time. No kidding. Oh, that's amazing. I'm very excited about it. I've actually written two books about Korean food.

28:00Oh, really? And I've been there many times and I hope you're documenting. I want to know what your first soul experience is like. I document frequently. Yeah, I know you do. That's great. Well, enjoy that trip. Tell me, growing up in LA and just early days, what's food like in your household, both home cooking, but I'm really curious about restaurants. Like, you know, lighting that spark, which eventually become your life as a chef. Well, I grew up in a large family. My mom had to cook for seven of us. Four boys and a girl. So hungry, hungry hippos. There was a lot of like Americana. My mom was raised by like a group of Italians in North Beach in San Francisco.

28:50Her mom was kind of a absentee landlord, so to speak. So after school, she would go to Mr. Michi's house and go hang out with them and eat what they had for dinner. So a lot of that influence ended up on our tables growing up. So you would see pesto genovese. You would see regu bolonese. You would see porcini. You would see my brothers are culinarily illiterate. Like to this day. Oh, yeah. Not a bone in their body. They eat like seven-year-olds. Is Thanksgiving like on you and your family? Like what's that like? Well, ever since I went to culinary school, it's been my job to cook for Thanksgiving, which is totally fine.

29:27But again, like, you know, my brother's going to, we have some special dishes that are very unique to the Funky family because they don't eat too much. But, you know, we do regular stuff, roasted turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and whatever. But the brothers aren't pitching in it one bit. No, no, no, no, no. They might clean up. They're great at washing dishes. I bet they're great at going to your restaurants too. They are, but it's a bit of a chore because they're very specific. Like, you know, no cheese and this is this and double spaghetti with arrabbiata, no cheese, this and that. What's up with your brothers in cheese?

30:06Are they vegans? No, no, no. They're just, they have discerning palates. Fair enough. I love the way you put that. You're being diplomatic with your fam. But what about restaurants when you're growing up, in LA in particular? One of my first culinary memories was at a place called Bob Burns. Bob Burns was like this continental restaurant. I think it closed in the early to late 90s. Houston's is now there. It's on 2nd and Wilshire. and it was this blast from the past steamship overstuffed leather chairs um scottish tartan carpet you know and we went there multiple times my my grandparents would come in from san francisco jazz weiss he was this big larger than life he was the district attorney the state of california for quite some time and um he was this larger than life guy and i remember him ordering french onion soup and me sitting next to him uh and in this perfect suit and tie and eating the soup and watching the string of emmental cheese come off of i was like yo what is that first cheese bowl what is that so that's like one of those things so bob burns actually the the author of my book coleman andrews did a review in the 90s of bob burns before it closed.

31:44It's fantastic. It's like from 1992 or something like that. But the things that they would do there, very, very continental cuisine, which nobody really does anymore. I think, you know, Mario Carbone kind of touches on that at the grill and the things that he does. It's very modern continental that you don't really see that much. But Bob Burns was like one of those restaurants. And then San Francisco, there are icons in my memory. Liguria Bakery, which is a focaccia Ria since 1910. Um, loved going there. We would frequent San Francisco every other weekend to go visit my grandparents. Oh, wow. You would have that.

32:20You really were that tight of a family. My mom's side of the family has been in California since 1848. Yeah. My dad's since the early 1900s and, um, you know, pre-statehood. And, uh, so they still have a house there. And, uh, my sister, both my oldest brother and my sister lived in San Francisco for extended of periods of time. So San Francisco has always been kind of at the heart of our family. But, you know, North Beach Pizza and Liguria Bakery and, you know, San Francisco's really cool. Tosca, do you go there? I've never actually been. Okay, interesting. I've never been. I think of that as an old school place.

32:53But what's it with Italy? When does that enter the picture for you? And as like a place that you think about, like, familiar and spiritually, but also with just culinary side? Well, I think that the love of pasta was always there. We always had pasta. Pasta is one of those things that is completely woven into the fabric of this country. Yes. And, you know, you can't name a family that hasn't had some form of spaghetti meatballs or whatever. So it was very present. So I always enjoyed eating it very much. and Italy kind of emerged as a magnet for me after I left Spago in 06. I worked for Wolf for six years and I took a couple of jobs that were kind of dead end and through some relationships I got introduced to American Italian food, sausage and peppers and things of that nature.

34:01and um but it really didn't ignite a spark until my last years at Spago where I started to notice this gentleman who would prep right behind me this guy named essay who was the pasta maker and I just found the process so beautiful and uh the architecture and the the the the balance of of the pasta and uh I wanted to work that station so bad I wanted to work pasta station so bad so So after I left Spago, I got a job at this hotel. And the chef there, I was sous chef or chef de cuisine. And his family was from Bologna. And he wouldn't teach me anything. He was really good. He could make pasta. So that was the first time I was like, Bologna?

34:51Okay, that's cool. So I actually went to the library. Oh, cool. I went to the Palisades Library and Santa Monica Library. And it just started to read about Italy, about Tuscany, about like all of these, you know, the 20 regions. And this one, you know, pre-internet or very beginnings of internet, whether or not websites, they're web pages. No Wikipedia. No, you know, little Macintosh computer at my parents' house. And I just did a deep dive. I read, you know, cookbooks from the 1960s where they talked about rolling pasta with a stick. Yeah. What? What is this? I've only seen machines up until that point.

35:29So eventually found a webpage by a woman named Pella Ferrara who had like a catering business. And she had worked with Alessandra Speesney. And that was like, that's it. I found Alessandra Speesney. Did you have it in you at that time? You seem you're studying things. Like, is that part of your DNA? Just to study? I hated school. So this is interesting. I want to know, like, you hate the traditional school, but you clearly had an interest in knowledge, like going to the library. Like, what's, there's something encyclopedic about you that's deep down. Man, I hate school so much. Yeah. I think that when you see someone who's really talented at something, you can define it as an intense desire to be good at it.

36:13Yeah. Talent is not God-given. It's actually, it's practiced. and I just had this intense desire to know more because nobody was doing it and I wanted to do something hard I wanted to do something with my body I wanted to like be a part of something that had camaraderie and kitchen solved a lot of those things I played a little football in high school whatever night and I enjoyed the physicality of it and the competitive nature and the and the the expression of this interior, this internal fire that I didn't really know I had until I found the kitchen. And I just focused it on pasta making and then eventually focused it on collection of histories and data and mentors.

37:06Because I'm a product of mentorship. Yeah. 100 percent i'm i'm a product the six years at with spago 100 you set sets you sets you up absolutely set me up for for the for the the foundation of of how to work hard yeah and how to work under pressure with with exacting detail that's that's kind of what i gained there but it wasn't until i moved my mind body and soul to italy and gave myself to the experience did I realize how much of a giving experience it actually was. And I didn't go to college. I was out of high school and a dead-end job. Culinary school? I did eventually go to culinary school, but three months into culinary school, I got a job with Wolf, and I was like, okay, I'm learning way more from the people around me, the cooks and sous chefs, than I am from this talking head who is an instructor.

38:06And I eventually actually went back to go to be an instructor at Le Cordon Bleu, which is totally incestuous and terrible because they only needed five years of, you know, experience in the industry. And imagine this. You go to be a doctor and then you're a doctor for five years and then you go back to med school to teach other doctors how to be doctors. It's crazy. It's not happening. So more people who are doing that first semester at a culinary school do what you did and just like leave and go extern? A lot of them did. And I saw a statistic the other day. I did a commencement speech for ICE, which is now kind of the cordon bleu.

38:46And they said that only 14 % of people who go to culinary school actually stay in the industry. And it's a very, very frightening detail for me to know. I mean, there's a lot of people who want to go there to learn to cook, I guess, for their own personal background, or they can't hack it in the professional world in some ways. It takes a special animal to work in restaurants and be happy doing it. Yeah. And there's a lot of people that are unsung heroes of this industry that don't get press, who do this every day for loving what they do. Those are the best. They are the best. When you find a chef you've never heard of, you get to try their menu and you're like.

39:27I mean, I'm sure you do that a lot. You travel a lot. You eat out all the time. And like, I love finding hidden gems. Like, where has this been this whole time? Yeah. And they don't have a social profile and, but they're still there 80 hours a week. Well, everybody has a social profile now. Fair enough. Everyone has a social profile, but not a big one. We'll clarify that. Let's go into your modern history. I want to go back to Rustic Canyon because I tried your food there and it's kind of like setting up, setting the groundwork for the opening of Felix, which we'll get to you. But what's your time like at Rustic?

39:57It was definitely a learning experience. I think when I took over, Josh Loeb, who's the owner of Rustic Canyon, was still kind of cutting his teeth in the restaurant business. And this was the first time that I had taken over a kitchen myself with my own team, working with individuals that I was inheriting from the past chef. and uh there were a lot of there was a it was a struggling restaurants on wilshire you know on really unknown you know maybe a bit of a local celebrity with with the dining community but they were doing mediterranean food when i took over it interesting and and josh really had a vision to to be a neighborhood restaurant that was a reflection of you know his initial concept was he had these dinner parties in this tree house because he had a – his childhood home was in Rustic Canyon.

40:56And we eventually got there. But, you know, I had a nervous breakdown when I was around. Yeah. Like for real, for real. Like you had to take time off? No, no. I just had a nervous breakdown. I went right back to work. An untreated nervous breakdown. Like I totaled my car on the way to the farmer's market and drove – it was – my parents had the truck. So I would drive there at like five in the morning to go pick the truck up from my parents' house to take to the farmer's market. And on the way to my parents' house, I got T-boned. And so I parked the car, totaled parked the car, walked the three blocks to my parents' help, picked up the truck, went to the farmer's market, and then went back to work.

41:34And I was just totally exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally exhausted from just going so hard. and josh and zoe at the time was just a pastry chef they weren't married yet they were like you need a massage dude like go and get a massage at burke williams i was like all right that sounds like a cool idea and you know so i go and i can't find the address it's in santa monica so like i'm so frustrated and it just hits me like a ton of bricks and i just start just full emotional breakdown i'm just driving around crying screaming and like crazy And then I drove around for like an hour, the exact time that it would have taken to get a massage.

42:16And I just went back to work and they were like, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. It's all good. So that breakdown was that moment of just getting rid of all that. Yeah. And honestly, it provided me a lot of clarity. It was a full on release. It provided me with a lot of clarity about the things that I was frustrated with, that I was inept at dealing with because I was so immature as a leader. Interesting. To recognize that. Now. Yeah. I mean, I can articulate that now. Yeah. But in the moment, I was just like feeling totally shitty. And, you know, eventually, you know, I think we left a high watermark at that, you know, we ran a successful business in the worst economy in America.

42:582008 to 2012 and somehow gained a following and a love and a cult following for the burger and all that stuff. Those are the days. Those are the days. And I had a lot of fun, but I also learned a lot about myself as a leader and as a chef and also creatively. And I took that time from 08 to 2012 to save all my money and to go back to Italy as many times as possible because All I wanted to do was make pasta. But I had to make burgers and I had to make soup and I had to make other things. Your burger is still legendary, they say. I pull it out. Like a Rusty Canyon 12 burger. I was talking to a journalist this weekend.

43:39Yeah. You pull it out sometimes. Sometimes. Which restaurant? We actually just did a pop-up, not a pop-up, but a collab at my good friend Ben Hundreds' place, the Benjamin. Benjamin, yeah. We pulled it out there. Okay, so what is it about the burger, I guess? just simply put. So when I took over Rusty Canyon, they had a burger on there and it was like, you know, it was something I didn't want to serve. I had blue cheese on it, which I don't do. I do not do blue cheese. Yeah. It's the only thing I don't do is blue cheese. It doesn't really have a great place in culinary history. Just going to say that.

44:14In France, it does. Well. And also Spain, you know. But the reason why I had a really gnarly run-in with some super aged Cabrales that just blew my whole face off. I was like, I'm never doing that again. Yeah. So anyways, this burger had blue cheese and bacon on it and all this stuff. And, you know, one of my favorite burgers is the double-double animal style. Yeah. So I love that kind of robust and greasy, roasted, you know, long-cooked onions or whatever. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to do that. And we messed around with it for about, you know, three or four months and finally ended up with this kind of like, you know, very much French onion soup style onion fondue.

44:56tillamook cheddar brisket brioche a little arugula and that was it it just it just took off yeah but then you got sick of it i mean you got yourself to italy you just like you were kind of over doing the burger and you wanted to go to italy you wanted to build this this yeah but honestly the success of the of the burger allowed me some creative uh input on the menu so i could make more pasta i like that you know so it was your trojan horse i love that you articulate that i'm I'm going to fast forward to 2017. Sure. Felix is open for a few months, and I was able to dine there pretty early, and just like your presence was constant.

45:33You were there on Abbot Kinney. And Jonathan Gold writes about you, and he writes about your constant presence, and he writes about the iconic statement about pasta machines, fuck pasta machines. And I want to ask you, I've always wanted to, because, you know, these moments come, these reviews by these critics, and it can be like make or break for a career. And it seems in assessing your career now, it really feels like an important moment. Yeah, I think it was. I wanted to make a statement, albeit short-sighted, controversial, immature. But I think at the beginning, it was like from Fuck Your Pasta Machine birthed Bucato, which was this church, so to speak, of handmade pasta.

46:21And I think Bucato was one of those restaurants. I liken Bucato to an amazing 80s band that releases one album and they go on tour and then the bus crashes and the bass player dies, but the music lives on. That's Bucato. People still talk about the restaurant. But for me, looking back, I wanted to accentuate my reverence for handmade pasta and differentiate texture, history. I wanted people to feel that it was special and that I held it very close to my heart. That said, looking back now as a businessman, not just a chef, six restaurants, over 650 150 employees that all depend on me. I cannot do what I do without the extruder.

47:16That's not to say I use sheeters. I do not use sheeters. And that's the machine I was really referring to. It wasn't like literally every machine that extrudes pasta. It was a sheeter style, rolling it out with a machine versus your hands. Yeah. And there's honestly, there are people, I got in trouble with Joe Rogan when we did the 2020 interview and I said, nobody in America knows how to make pasta. And I was again, it was COVID people. COVID brain, maybe? COVID brain. There are so many people in North America that make extraordinary pasta with a sheeter because they understand the limits of the machine.

47:55It's not about what the machine can do. It's what the machine cannot do. Familia Baldazare in Toronto probably makes some of the best machine sheeted pasta in North America. The guy is, he's a virtuoso for real. You know, people like Marfetri and Michele Forgione and Missy Robbins and a slew of other people that make pasta with machines are doing amazing work. And I don't ever want my words to be misconstrued. I just choose not to eat pasta in America because I save it for Italy because I can't enjoy it here because my brain goes to analytical mode and I can't enjoy it. There I can suspend reality and really give myself to the experience and enjoy it from the grandmother's hands or the mother's hands or the niece.

48:53I absolutely respect it. I think like we in the media often take the sound bites and run with it. And I think, listen, having a hot take is effective in getting your word out there. It definitely made an impact for sure. I mean, listen, and I'm not going to assume it was calculated. It could have been off the dome, but like it did something. It caused people to have an emotion about you. And that's kind of the name of the game. True that, but I'm a sensitive soul. I might look like a biker from the outside, but I think people who are good in this business are the most sensitive ones. That's what makes them good cooks or makes them good at hospitality because they operate with emotions at the forefront.

49:33But going back to the pasta machine, like as a business person, I can't operate without the extruder because my labor costs in this state are astronomical. And as we all know and beat this dead horse, the margins for error are massive and the margins for profitability in this industry are very, very small. And we have to utilize every technique possible to make it. furthermore i think to be considered a craftsperson uh or an expert or a master of whatever your chosen profession is you have to be able to utilize any and all relevant techniques within your chosen field and at at the very minimum have a mechanical sympathy of those things i mean so you've had a little bit of a pivot since growing your business but i think ultimately deep down you had a respect for pasta.

50:35Deep. So even though you said that and had that taped the wall and that was a hot take, you probably deep down believed that there was probably okay pasta being made from at least an extruder. 100%. And it was media, a little bit of a media thing you were doing. Yeah. I get it. Like we have to own, we do things for media that is like part of what we do. I take full responsibility for it and I dealt with the nastiness And, you know, I think that it all comes out of my deep respect and admiration for the women that started everything. You will eat pasta in America that you did not make. Yes, I will.

51:21I will. I will. I'm happy to hear that because there are some good pastas here. There are very good pastas here. And it would be a shame to miss them. You named Missy and many others. You make them in America. So thanks for having fun with that one. This expansion has been very interesting. And I've dined at many of your restaurants. Interesting is a word. Well, I think it's like hard. It's interesting to talk about because in this day and age, we talked, you brought up labor costs, but just, and we talked off, Mike, how you're on the plane all the time. But like, you've got, you know, Mother Wolf in Las Vegas, in Los Angeles, in Miami, you've got Funky in Beverly Hills.

51:55You've got a Chicago restaurant as well. And there's probably some more planned. So, Evan, how do you keep it all together when knowing you have 650 people working for you every night? I'm an expert multitasker. In the same breath, I have an extraordinary team. I am, one, a product of mentorship, and two, I am a student of getting better at whatever I'm focused on. My success is shared with the people that got me to the stage. and all I want to do is be worthy of the stage that I'm standing on and I wouldn't be where I am today without the people who actually got me there. Good and bad. Good and bad.

52:39The team of people that I work with that I work for, essentially, they don't work for me. I work for them. They're just amazing. I've somehow curated this set of people that are so good at what they do because they give a shit. Yeah. So many people just don't care. It's been crazy. We did four restaurants in 18 months. We opened Funky in May. And then it was right after that, it was Vegas. And then right after that, it was Chicago. And right after that, it was Miami. And those were honestly like full transparency. Those are all COVID deals because nobody wanted to make restaurant deals in COVID.

53:21And I say, I've already tasted restaurant death. I've already been in bankruptcy. I've already seen what it tastes like. this is not it this is not restaurant death and i knew out of covid the two businesses the two industries that were going to navigate out of it creatively was going to be the movie and television industry and the restaurant industry because they're filled populated with critical thinkers who are very creative who solve problems on a daily basis so i knew that this wasn't the death People were just really scared and fear does crazy shit to the mind. Yeah. So you were there raising your hand when you had these real estate deals.

54:00I will do it. I'll do it. Let's do it. We opened Fingers Cross, which was a six-month pop-up. Yeah. Deep COVID 2020. Yeah. Signed the deal for Mother Wolf LA. Signed the deal for Vegas. You know, I think Trey Dita was a little bit later into 2021. We were still in the throat. How did Mother Wolf just explode like that? Was it a lot of, this is all the culinary stuff aside, was it just like a pent-up demand to go to a restaurant like that? It was that for sure, but it was a lot of things. I think that the story was something that resonated with people doing something very grand in a city that has a lot of small, quaint, warm chef-driven restaurants doing something big and beautiful and has this juxtaposition of, you know, living museum as is Rome and, you know, Biggie Smalls on the jukebox and that kind of like very opulent background with very simple peasant food.

54:57I just think that, you know, it hit. It just hit and it was an immediate success. But I also threw myself at it. I didn't look at another restaurant when I was at Felix from 17 onwards. I didn't even look at anything. I was there seven days a week, 14, 16, 18 hours a day, making sure that we were successful because I was coming off of bankruptcy. Oopsie. Yeah. When you're at Felix and you're working these hours, are you watching these new restaurants open and get the buzz and get the buzz and know that you have this big, I mean, it's crazy. When I went to Mother Wolf, I'd been to Felix. I was like, what the fuck?

55:41This is a very different. That's the response I wanted. And I don't, I didn't know you. We've just met today. I mean, I've always thought of you as like the quiet guy with the rolling pin. And then you've got this thing happening here and you've got these celebrities there. And I'm like, holy shit. what a great second album yeah it was great it was fun i spent all that time at felix and and i know now when you do an expansion going from one to two is the most difficult yeah okay two to three four to five like that going from two to six was actually relatively easy because of the amount of work that collectively the team put into it to to solidify the team but you have to know that the team you're leaving behind when you expand has to be double strength because they have to tell your story and hold the line because the team that you're going to go build they're going to have face first undiluted leadership from me yeah so the team you leave behind has to be double strength because they have to they've got to toe the line and that was so hard for me it's only because i had you know a very very strong chef vicky yeah vicky crushed like she's been this extraordinary leader at felix for the last you know four or five years yeah and um i couldn't have done the expansion without her being there okay and holding it down and um but then i was in you know it took me less time didn't take me four years i spent six and seven days for 18 months at mother wolf i didn't i rarely went to felix i went to felix as much as i possibly could but i was i was there in it yeah working making sure that both front and back of the house knew the stories they knew the histories they knew the provenance they knew the food and it's it's quite difficult when you paint yourself into a box it's a big box but it's a box nonetheless of roman food because they're almost dogmatic when it comes to what is what.

57:44The five pastas, right? The Jewish food, you know, there's like very narrow lens when it comes to Roman cuisine. So it's difficult for cooks just at that level to execute consistently 65 to 75 cacio e pepe at speed with accuracy. So working with the chefs there, it was a task. but I conceptualized this restaurant to produce it multiple times because I knew Roman food is very consistent. So if I could instill that into a staff, these are the stories, these, these are the recipes. This is the technique. Do not deviate and we will be successful. It sounds like you think about front of the house as much.

58:34It just sounds like, I mean, just from you talking about verbalizing i think it's short-sighted for chefs to think that people come to restaurants just for the food it's they'll go just for the food if that's the only good thing about the restaurant true not right but it's it it is about the entire experience and hospitality uh hospitality on a whole is really about how people feel when they leave the experience and it's not just good vibe. It's not just a great wine list or a good service staff. It has to be the whole thing. Absolutely agree. So you opened Funky last May. So what a crazy, you know, 18, 17 months you open and then, you know, people are there all the time.

59:20It's a Buzzy's restaurant in LA, but then January happens and the fires happen and you've got this constant headwind with LA. what has been the funky opening experience? I mean, you were there last night. I'm sure you're, I'm going to guess that you were, you've been at funky a lot. My name's over the door. Yeah. I mean, there's that whole thing too, which I think is really a masterstroke to brand this restaurant and really signal that this is a, your namesake restaurant. Well, I think Beverly Hills is the place to do it because it's a bastion for houses. Louis Vuitton, Gucci you know Cartier these are all houses that do things very very well so originally I was not going to name it funky and I listened to the close confidants and conciliary around me said you should do this if you're going to do it you should do it but you can only do it once and if you fail it's bad It's your shot.

1:00:23You can't do funky 2.0. It was a moonshot to do it. How stressed were you about that? I don't really get stressed. That's interesting. My mom says to me, I don't want you to be stressed. You're so stressed. Honestly, I don't get stressed. Stress happens when you don't enjoy what you do. I like that. There are stressful moments, but if it stresses me out, I just don't do it. and I've somehow navigated restaurant deals where I'm fortunate enough and have the privilege to say, I just don't do that. And if you want to work with me, you're going to do this and I'm going to do this. So it's like you're setting yourself up to not have those uncomfortable, stressful moments by saying no to some things.

1:01:06Yeah, it's a little bit of sandbagging, but it's also, it's all - That's rough. It's protecting what I do well and I want to continue to do well. Well, that said, I try to surround myself with people that are way better than me in their fields. And it's worked very well. I have a lot of multiple partnerships. And those partnerships were chosen because of the people that are good at what they do in those partnerships. How fun is it having your own spot in Beverly Hills and having this rooftop where you can have events. You've got this second level that you can do events. I mean, L.A. is such an event town and you're right there in the mix of it with agencies nearby and the studios kind of nearby.

1:01:47And just I know you grew up here. So this is an industry town and maybe doesn't faze you. But, man, it's like where people go to do things that are very important to our entertainment industry. It's not lost to me. I breathe rarefied air. I really do. And it is a privilege to, number one, cook in California. Number two, have the diversity of demographic within this city to have the clientele that is happy to pay Beverly Hills prices because it's still a business. And if the rent number does not work for the model, then you should not take that deal. And rent in Beverly Hills is rent in Beverly Hills.

1:02:35And it's a serious thing. So I think a lot of people, not that they should care, but a lot of people don't understand how much it actually takes to run a restaurant with three levels in the middle of Beverly Hills and the Golden Triangle. It takes a lot of money and a lot of thought. The capital needed for that restaurant just walking in was significant. Do you ever pinch yourself to think about you're doing a lot of pasta and a lot of pizza in Beverly Hills? I'm not going to call your restaurant that because there's many more dimensions to it, but that's 20 years ago. What? Yeah. No, I mean, I try to operate from a position of gratitude on a daily basis.

1:03:18Yeah. I'm very, very grateful. I'm very fortunate to have the opportunities that flow into my life. I'm like, you know, I'm into manifestation. I think about things very deeply and wholeheartedly with good intentions. And I think that's why I've attracted the restaurants that I work in and the people that I work with. I can't let you leave and not talk about your upcoming cookbook. Yeah. Southern Italy. Is Coleman working on this one? Coleman is the writer, yeah. I love that. I didn't know that about that. And Coleman, what a character, what a legend in the game. He's a legend. He really is. His writing.

1:03:57His memoir I read, he's been on the show like two and a half years ago. So Coleman Andrews is his name. Please look that up if you do not know him. He has wonderful books. On This Is Taste, we ask guests about this turning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Evan, are you ready? Let's do it. The best fruit. What season? Good question. Good follow-up. Let's say all seasons? Braba, Crop, Figs, Tiger Stripe, Mango, Gaviotta Strawberry. You're going through the seasons. So there'll be some overlap. Cameo Apple Dry Farmed. Yeah. Mountain Magic Tomato.

1:04:36What is that, late summer we're in? We're right now. Right now, basically August. And I think winter. Winter's hard. a perfectly ripe d 'anjou pear. A plus on that. Nice work. The worst vegetable. The worst vegetable? Can I do the worst fruit? Durian. Tough hang. Some people like it. But worst vegetable, I don't... Something. Like something you avoid when you're like a menu building. You just don't want to... That's a hard one. Parsnip. Yeah. I worked a fish station espago and i had to make puree yeah parsnip puree was a mother good god yeah we had a guest say that exact word parsnip and uh we put on reels it had like 250 000 you have to realize people love parsnips out there they're delicious if someone else has to process them and make them sure i didn't want you to have to capitulate that was just like an aside i you're living you're owning the parsnip all right the the what is your typical breakfast i don't eat until about 4 30 uh 3 30 is that a medical thing or just your no it's like i mean it's very in vogue like it really is the 18 off and honestly 25 almost 26 years in the restaurant industry it's when staff meals serve so i drink coffee and water until then and then i eat staff meal and then i don't really eat after that.

1:06:04I might have something like late night. I used to be very bad at it. I would just go home and crush bagels and cream cheese at one in the morning, but I don't do that anymore. You don't do anymore. It works for you. The best dessert. That is a very hard one because I don't do a lot of desserts. I would probably say ice cream. Oh, yeah. I would say ice cream. I like donuts and I like ice cream, but I like glazed donuts. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. just for one day. Yeah, it could be one day. Honestly, going back to the first portion of the conversation, I bring back Bob Burns for one day.

1:06:42Bob Burns for one day. Just to see, like, just to show everybody how weird it was. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food? Mexico City. Love that answer. Love DF. That's awesome. Last one, your favorite sandwich? Ham and butter on baguette. Jambon bear. Jambon bear. I love that. It's common on the answer, but it's probably the best answer. Well, Banh Mi and John Bomber. Banh Mi is a— I'm not trying to— I was in Vietnam, and I got really, really, really sick on a Banh Mi, but I love Banh Mi. That will change you. No, John Bomber is so good. So classic. It's so good. Evan Funke, thank you so much for joining us.

1:07:18Thank you. It was fun. My pleasure.

1:07:24This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. 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.