779: Mike Colameco Is the Original Food Video Dude

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27:31Mike Colameco, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you? Great. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Mike, I've wanted to do this forever. I just want to say a couple quick things at the top because this interview means a lot to me. I have so much respect for your work for decades, reporting on the New York City restaurant scene, reporting on agriculture. You've started to upload these old episodes into your YouTube channel. So listener, I'm linking to the show notes, subscribe and watch this stuff. We're gonna talk all about New York City and beyond starting in the 90s. You had an incredible show that lasted over 20 years.

28:11you're important to me in food media you're history, you're a legend and thank you so much for joining thank you again, thanks real pleasure to be here and I have to say also I'm not sure if you're aware but there's a lot of chefs who watch your shit like our completists our Mike Colameco completists like older chefs but chefs who are in the modern world I checked with him and said it would be okay but Craig Thornton, a terrific chef in Los Angeles at Wolf's Mouth amazing chef, him and his friends, they've watched every episode. One of the funniest moments that was just ad-lib spontaneity was we were filming with Missy in Williamsburg and it was the end of the shoot so we did Patty Jackson and her in one show.

28:56Yeah, Missy Robbins. Missy Robbins, sorry. The last thing we have to do is go back to her restaurant, get some B-roll and the camera were kind of winding down so we're rolling with all the equipment and I'm like, okay, camera one you do this camera two you do that and then missy comes somebody wants to meet you i'm like missy you know we're busy you know we want to get this thing done and it was action bronson and i'm like you've got to be kidding me that was like hysterical because my kids love action yeah you know and i'm like he comes up and he that couldn't have been a funnier scene yeah and and and action has said that you were a big inspiration for him when he was starting his television career and and there's so many i think listeners who know who you are uh we have a lot of chefs who listen to the show and they've watched you through the years but for those who don't just set up your work and your your television radio career well you know the crazy thing was they were really accidental um i was a chef because i was a shit student like pretty much all all the guys of my generation they were mostly all guys you know the charlie palmers the frank we're all like you know barely got out of high school didn't go to college maybe went i went to the cia tom colicchio keep Going.

30:03Great example, yeah. And so, but I had been cooking since I was a kid, so that was really like the, I liked it. You know, I really wanted to be a jazz musician, but I knew I wasn't good enough, so that was like a smart move, so I didn't do that. So cooking was the thing, and food media, I mean, cooking wasn't aspirational back then. It was like telling your career day you want to be a bricklayer. It was like, okay, that's great. Anything else, you know? So cooking is what I did kind of by default and came to the city, had that whole career, then met my wife in the cooking school. We worked together in New York, had a restaurant together.

30:38I was looking to, it was my idea. I wanted to move out of Cape May. We'd sold the restaurant. I wanted to be closer to Manhattan. So we're looking in Montclair. I kept driving up to Montclair to look at houses. Right. A couple of offers to fill through. Somebody said, try Maplewood. I said, okay, that sounds, looks like a cool town. Suburban life was in your future. But it was a cool, because these are sort of the hip suburban towns on paper. So I ended up just driving by a house in Maplewood, bought it. And if it wasn't for that house, nobody would know who I was. Because living there, one of my neighbors, he had two daughters my son's age, same age, little kids.

31:11And I was a stay-at-home dad that had the import business, and I had a little restaurant in town. So his daughters were always at my house after school. And the dad of that couple was a cameraman at New Jersey Public Television, PBS. And he said, you know, you're a funny guy. You'd be good on camera. We should do a cooking show. And I'm like, dude, I hate cooking shows. Back then, so we're in the 90s now. Early 90s, like it's TV Food Network. It's all bullshit. I'm not doing that. You know, who needs another guy that makes meatballs? Like I have no interest. And he kept bugging me. And I said, you know, if you want to do a show, let's do something nobody's doing.

31:47I don't know how we're going to pull it off. So we made a couple, a little demo reel of stuff that we shot that was about Craig Sheldon at the Ryland Inn, the Summit Diner in Summit, New Jersey, and the original Gamayoc. The original one when the Chorys were still married. Yeah, yeah. But on 32nd Street. On 32nd Street. And we cut it up and we shopped it around. TV Food, I went to TV Food Network first. That was like the only show in town, really. And I never forget the guy who was in charge of acquisition just said, no one's going to get this in Paducah. My jaw dropped him. Like, so that's your fucking market?

32:22Paducah? Like, that's the gold standard? Okay. Interesting concept. Then I thought, all right, what's left is PBS. And I got it over to Channel 13. They liked it and said, you know, production values aren't great. Clean it up. And if you can do three more. And we did a little three-episode pilot. and they I remember I was in Cape May the phone rang this was a million years ago and they said hey did you do anything to promote the show of course not you know there was no social media there was nothing they said well you're you had the best Nielsens of the day three weeks in a row you beat Lydia wow so there's something going on so the pilots aired on public television they are on channel 13 on Sundays just out of the blue it was called the food dude literally that was the name of the show what did we know I had a ponytail and a goatee and that era of you is ill, man.

33:09It's definitely WWE. It's funny. I mean, dude, you're so good and so compelling on camera and you really just understand right away that this guy cares about food and knows so much. But that errand alone was very WWE though, I felt. It was real. That was, and so they said, can you do a series? And that was the beginning. Yeah, yeah. I just said, what do I know? And luckily I knew one of my neighbors was John Profaci of Colaviette Olive Oil, John Jr. Yeah. and John was already backing Lydia's show. And we just had dinner one day, and John said, hey, let's do it. I'll be your first underwriter. I'll introduce you to some other people.

33:46So that's the interesting thing about public television where you produce the show, but you also serve as the ad sales side of it. You have to basically, you're given the airtime, but everything else is up to you. But I think just knowing a little bit about that era and obviously the current era, that's actually a strength. You're able to control your money and figure out how much you could spend, how much you could make, and just, like, make it happen and do the show you wanted, right? That's the main thing. That's the main thing. I mean, later on, the TV Food and Work approached me. Emeril's producer, she was great.

34:17Karen Katz. And by the time they got done, like, with what it would be, it'd be like, you know, Mike's cooking on a submarine or something. You're this big macho guy, and we'll use that. It'll be men can, real men can cook. I mean, that was one of the treats. And I'm like, I don't want to do this. So, like, the beauty of PBS is they never content is all mine whatever i wanted to do i did so well let's talk about i mean you had influence i mean you still do to this day in retrospect on the youtube but like you were covering the chef industry before eater when the new york times was doing their reviews and doing a very polite version of food media i know ruth reichel was there and obviously very very well established important journalist but certainly not getting in front of the camera the way you did And also the way you're interacting with the chefs, it was obviously peer to peer.

35:05I felt that was like something that was very different from the way we were covering chefs in restaurants. Did you feel you were pioneering in a way? That was, I mean, when I told Kirk, my original cameraman and editor, I didn't want to do a cooking show. The show I had in mind, that was going to be the strength of it was I know chefs will get in kitchens where they don't let cameras in. Because they trust me. This guy's an industry guy. He's not going to come in and be stupid. So in that very first season, we did Daniel Valud. We did the French Laundry. We did Chez Panisse. I mean, these are big doors to get into.

35:41I mean, Thomas wasn't letting cameras in the kitchen at the French Laundry in those days. And at the same time, we were shooting up to Harlem and, you know, trying to figure out the origin of chicken and waffles at Wells Famous. So that was the idea. It was just like it's not – I'll be the prism that the viewers can see the world through. but it's this big world of New York food, basically. Now, who was watching the show, let's say, like 95? Because, you know, foodie wasn't even a term. And, you know, restaurants were important, but they certainly didn't have the cultural importance of today. But still, you had an audience.

36:15Yeah, we had great audience. I mean, we had... PBS always had the weekend food block. They'd get great Nielsen's for that. I mean, people built their America's Test Kitchen, Lydia, Yankin Cook, on and on and on. That was what they did. but I think when we popped on it was just such a different show it wasn't Mike with the apron talking to the camera going okay we're gonna do the thing we're gonna make the we're gonna do lasagna my way you know that's what everyone else did I just wanted to be a storyteller there was enough great stories out there that weren't mine but someone had to tell them yeah I mean it's so interesting you eventually would go back to your kitchen and do some demo at the end eventually but most of the show was documentary reportage And I mean, what's the production like back then in like the mid 90s?

37:00What's it like shooting? How long does it take and how many episodes? You couldn't have been more ghetto than us. I mean, literally, when I used to live in a West Village, you know, in the aughts for a dozen years and they film a lot there. And you just see like television is a joke. We just feel sitting around doing nothing all day long. Just people holding people's hands. But it was me and a camera guy. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And we did our own sound. We did our own lighting. and that was kind of the I mean to me that was the strength of it was if you over produce it you slow it down. Let's just have fun and let's ad lib a lot of this stuff and we can always edit it out at the end if we don't like it but let's just shoot it on the first take and do the best we can and get it right and you know I'll help out with the editing.

37:43I mean there's that one scene in Harlem where I'm doing that show and I'm at Columbus Circle with a stick mic saying alright is it Strayhorn is at Ellington. Who wrote Take the A-Train? And I was just sticking mics in people's faces. And finally I get this guy who was actually, he's on Zoolander. I don't know how he did it. He's an Afro guy. But he's the one that got the right answer and sang the song for me. So we were just kind of doing, we were just really trying to have fun and do a show that really hadn't been done yet. How many were you doing a year? Originally 13. We had half the year. So 13 would air and repeat and give you 26 weeks.

38:14And then by the late 2000s, The numbers just kept getting better for us. And I was working at WOR at that point, doing radio for two and a half years, food talk for them. Channel 13, I think it was around 2008 or 2009, said, can you do a full season? Can you do 20-something? And this way we can cover you for the year. Plus the radio gig, too. Yeah, but the radio gig was an hour a day. It couldn't have been any easier. So you would roll into the studio an hour a day, like physically go to the studio? Yeah, I'd go down. I'd shoot. They were right down by Wall Street. They were right next to Trinity Church in those two tall towers.

38:52And show was 11 to 12. There's no reason to get there that early. I'd roll in at quarter of 11 and sit down at 11 and walk out the door at 12, 15. I mean, that's five hours of programming a week. And Sunday, two hours from my house in Cape May, too. Okay, so you would do seven hours of programming a week. And, I mean, this is obviously the birth of, like, food podcasting in many ways. Like, this is well before the podcast genre. and this is obviously we commit a lot of time here and it's a passion of ours here, the show, and your influence of doing talk radio with food. What's the show like, Mike?

39:23I mean, how are you producing this show and are you just like, are you calling up friends? Yeah, yeah. So at that point I had been doing the PBS thing for, I got the gig at OR September of 2006. So I've already been doing TV for seven years and I knew the community really well. And the trouble, you know, Arthur Schwartz started it and then Rocco did it and it didn't work and Tyler came in and it didn't work. And then I'm like, all right, let's just give every day a theme. And I don't remember what the themes were, but Monday I'll bring chefs in, Tuesday I'll bring sommeliers in, Wednesday we'll do mixology, Thursday it'll be some...

39:56And so every day kind of had a loosey-goosey theme to it. Yeah, yeah. And people were just real happy to come down and get on the mic. And the show was just, you know, I was having fun doing it. It was just real loose. And so that's kind of contagious. It wasn't, you know, me with the headphones on. It was me, just like you and I sitting down there. Yeah. Just talking. The only difference was my one, my youngest son worked with me for a while when I had a restaurant. And I remember when I was doing radio, he was, I guess he was just, just getting into junior high or something. And he said, hey, dad, you can go an hour without cursing.

40:31I don't like, apparently I fucking can. I'd never even thought about that. I guess I do have a filter. You have a filter. I didn't, I never thought of it. That's incredible. I mean, I think a daily radio food show is like a dream of mine. I would love to do it. I feel like it would be so much. We had a really great audience. It really grew. You know, back then, too, you're also, I'm producing the show myself. Yeah. Not easy. So back then there was like Philip Baltz and Jennifer Bullfrog and Baum. And, you know, and so I was working with them in tandem. Of course. They'd help Sherpa. I mean, if you leave it to chefs, they'll forget what day they're supposed to come down.

41:10Of course. They'll show up at 1 o 'clock or something, right? The show's overdone. So they were great. And it was just like, so then that kind of grew the community too. Because you had suddenly, you had not just chefs, but you had the PR people behind it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then, you know, it's funny politics. Look at where we are today. 2008, Barack Obama gets elected. And WOR is this funny station. Been around forever. Been around since the 1920s. That's when we have three call letters. and the rest of the numbers weren't great for the show on the weeks. The weekends were dead. The rest of the viewers were having trouble with advertising revenue all the time.

41:47I mean, I was bringing in clients right and left for my hour. That's kind of how it worked. And they just thought, let's go Red Meat Radio. And that's what that's – they replaced me with Glenn Beck and pretty soon they replaced Joan Hamburg with – what's that guy, the big fat guy? Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh. So suddenly it became this New York iconic station becomes this, like, whatever you want to call it. So interesting. Well, let's go back to television. And I just want to talk about over the 20 years of shows, again, on the YouTube channel, you're uploading it in real time. There are new episodes popping up all the time.

42:21Give me just, like, a couple episodes or scenes with chefs that just really are true favorites of yours. You see, you know, I get this asked a lot, and it's hard because I don't know how many shows we've done. I mean, it's got to be pushing multiple hundreds. But a couple, you know, one of the other things I wanted to do, and you guys talked about this with the New York Magazine. You know, everyone, and this was even true in the aughts, everyone's talking about the restaurant at the moment. What's just going to open? What just happened? I mean, I remember when Eater had Death Watch. What's going to close?

42:55Everybody wants that. It was the list of the time. And I hated that. To me, that's like not where I want to go. And I want to kind of pay back the older guys. So there was this chef that had a local park, Jean-Jacques Rachoux. And Jean-Jacques is an incredible story. Came here. He was an orphan as a kid. Had the worst childhood imaginable. Was orphaned. Lived like an indentured servant somewhere in France. Got a job at a restaurant. Finally, he was sleeping in a nice bed and getting fed a couple of – comes to America. He can't read, can't write. And he becomes one of the greatest chefs in New York City.

43:27But what he did, so you're going back to my time, late 70s, early 80s. All the great restaurants in New York were La Côte Basque, Lutèce, Le Pavillon, Le Cire. And Le Cire wasn't there yet, but the Les La restaurants, we call them. Those kitchens were all French. There were no American kids working in them. And I kind of get it because if you're a French executive chef, you know, and you have French guys that speak the language, that have the cultural familiarity with what you're doing, why would you hire an American? And you're reloading from France. Correct. They're coming to America. All of the above.

43:59Yeah. And so, you know, the Charlie Palmers of the world, the Frankie Crispos, you name it. They were coming out of cooking school and they were kind of running into this wall. And Jean-Jacques was the first guy that said, I'll hire Americans. And they threw him out of the Vitell Club. Just because the French were like, what are you doing, Jean-Jacques? This is ridiculous. These Americans. And Jean-Jacques said, they're better than the French guys I have. And so he was the first. So I wanted to do a show about him, but the surprise was what he didn't know was at like three in the afternoon, kind of midday, all these Jean-Jacques proteges would come in.

44:35Charlie Palmer, Frank Crispo, Henry Meir, Rick Moonen. I mean, all of his, they all came in. Some of them were living out of town. And he was in tears. And that was just like this great moment for me of like full circle, like paying this guy back. So you brought in kind of like the lineage of this restaurant. All these greats that went on to have these great careers. And they were talking about how they owed it to Jean-Jacques, what it was like to work in that kitchen and how scared they were. And, you know, Rick Moonen has this great quote, you know, Jean-Jacques tells me to make our lamb choux.

45:06And I'm like, how do you say choux? S-H-O? I mean, what the hell is a lamb choux? I don't know what that is. You know, he's going through his repertoire de cuisine, you know. But Jean-Jacques was really a pivotal guy. Really, really important. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Recently, I've been paying more attention to the items in my kitchen. Not the wedding stuff I pull out for the guests, but everyday pieces. The all-clad pan I reach for every time I roast a chicken. The Kramer knife I use for basically everything. When kitchen gear is well-made, it changes how cooking feels. That's what Quince is doing as well.

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47:40It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. I want to talk about a couple specific moments. First, I want to talk about Drew Nieperon and Tribeca with Montrachet and later Corton. What does Drew mean to New York City dining and how did you cover Drew? Huge. You know, you've got Drew, you've got Danny with what he did around 14th Street. And those two guys were really the impresarios of that era. I mean, Danny changed that neighborhood style of dining with it. And at the same time, Drew was, you cannot overstate how important he was to the fabric of New York. And for a while, he had restaurants on the West Coast, too.

48:16I mean, when Myriad was big, he was all over the place. Yeah. We'll just stick with New York. you know snapshot in time my very first apartment in new york i get out of 1982 i graduate cia snowy day drive my ford maverick down with all of my possessions and i had an illegal sublet at a michell llama building downtown 310 greenwich street all the way down by the world trade center across the street from my building was the martinson's coffee building that's what tribeca was back then they were roasting coffee batsini's nuts was a food block north atalanta which is this behemoth. Atalanta was on Varick Street.

48:51Their offices were on the top floor. The warehouse was there. That's what it was. Harry Wells was down there. Printing material, like books were being printed. Correct. And it was also a very food-centric place. Well, that's where Tribeca Grill opened up was in the old Martinson's Coffee Company. And when Drew opened up Monroche, which is really his first foray, I mean, that kitchen was Bill Eosis, who was going to become the White House pastry chef. David Boulay, one of the absolute genius talents in America, one of the great, great American chefs. Daniel Johannes in the front of the house doing wine, who now, you know, invented La Paulette.

49:25I mean, this was like the all-star team. And the food was fantastic. It was kind of new casual. And then Drew just ran with it from there. I mean, he had a great eye for talent. Yeah. And he's just a great front of the house guy, too. Yeah, he's always had that. I mean, he's great. I mean, the difference between he and Danny was, you know, Danny's sort of a little like the Wizard of Oz, a little bit backstage. Drew's on the floor. always working at the other moment I wanted to talk about was Wiley Dufresne and WD 50 and just like the lineage coming out of that kitchen and this like definitely a shift I mean molecular gastronomy edge cuisine you could call many things at that era it was very progressive and and really we've had many alumni and Wiley on this show talking about this era I'd love to get your uh remembrance of uh of that restaurant in that era yeah why I mean Wiley came out he'd worked That's what John George.

50:15So he came out of the same sort of trenches we all did. Yeah. But, you know, what is it about Wiley's personality? I don't know. That, you know, he's a real tinkerer. Like that whole deconstructed fried mayonnaise, you know, he would just look at things. And I remember when we filmed an episode at WD and we went downstairs into one of the rooms in the downstairs kitchen. And there was just this wall of little containers of cooking industrial kind of ingredient. And I'm like, man, what am I leaving looking at? And when I grew up, it was salt, pepper, and maybe sodium. If you were doing pate, you had cellulose, that little sodium nitrate stuff to keep it from turning brown.

50:59But he just bought this crazy intellect. But he struggled as a business. You know, it's funny, W.D., I knew people that worked in those kitchens. I mean, there were weeks when they had trouble making payroll. He had a great review from Bruni that gave him a lift for probably a year or two. And then it kind of went back to, you know, this thing again. Because I'm not sure that America was ready for kind of what he was doing. Yep, yep. And I think the lineage and the alumni going on to their own careers and much larger careers than Wiley in some ways. It speaks to that being ahead of his time. Way.

51:37Just too early. I mean, it's also nice to see Wiley getting this big check and hosting a show on CBS. Crazy cool. I so love that choice and really wish Wiley always the best in his weaknesses. Really good right now. I want to go back even further. This episode that you emailed me about and I watched it right away. It was a tour of Smith Street in 1999 in Brooklyn. It's such a time capsule. It's just great work you did just getting into these kitchens. I'm connected to that neighborhood myself. I moved there in 04 and really loved the scene there, which is very different from now. Talk about this realization that you had that people from Manhattan were actually going to Brooklyn for food, which, you know, before 99, it wasn't really happening.

52:26No, it wasn't happening at all. It was the opposite. I mean, look, we had the pejorative term bridge and tunnel people. Jersey in the Outer Boroughs, man. It was Outer Boroughs. It wasn't just Jersey. If you worked in Manhattan, you know, the weekend sucked because Brooklyn crowd, the Queens crowd, the Jersey crowd. Here we go again. It's another Friday night. Nobody likes this. And so, I mean, Manhattan was the center of the universe for the culinary world. If you were an ambitious chef, if you were an ambitious person, you wanted to live in the city wasn't Brooklyn. The city was Manhattan. So, you know, Brooklyn was what it was.

52:59It was this sort of third class thing. and then you began to see as you know rents got what they did I mean you know Tribeca used to be the flat iron used to be empty I remember I've been in New York for 40 plus years now and so I began to get this whiff of like so what's going on I mean there's guys that I've met in kitchens at Boulay and they're opening up in Brooklyn I gotta check this out and sure enough when you see that show then they say well think about Eric Asimov was living over there Pete Wells lives over there Sam Sifton lives over there a lot of sort of writers for the New York Times lived in those neighborhoods.

53:32And I think it was Alan Harding at Patois, who was one of the early guys that said, look, I wanted to open up in Manhattan, but the rents were crazy. And I thought, we know how businesses and restaurants go out of business. So I found this little place on Smith Street. The rent was$900 a month. And if it goes belly up, I'll just fucking live in it. And there were retail spaces on the ground floor that people just put paper up on the windows and they lived in them. Yeah. I mean, that's where it was. So you had the couple from the grocery. Yep. You had him and Benania and Saul, which was interesting.

54:06And Saul was another. These guys worked in New York City. Saul Bolton. Yeah. Absolutely. Great guy. He's a really super talented guy. And it was the same thing. He said, you know, it's fine. I live here with my wife. My kids go to school down the block. This felt, but that was the beginning. I mean, the real beginning was Verde Cafe, but that's a whole other story. That's a different era, Broken Heights. Completely. Yeah. And that's kind of a one-off. What Buzzy did with Larry Forgione, I mean, that should be its own book. Larry was so far ahead of his time. Oh, that's a very good call there. That American cuisine.

54:33I remember eating there and looking at that menu and going like, what the hell? And how do you even source this stuff? Because, again, this is before the internet. This was when you'd have to, if you heard about Morels from Michigan, you had to call some chef up and get a phone number on a dialed phone. And, hey, I'm this crazy guy in New York. And do cash on delivery. All the stuff. Stuff like that, yeah. But yeah, aside from the River Cafe, this was the beginning of sort of this fire that just, I mean, at some point, we're talking about potential questions. And if I had to rewrite that book, The Food Lover's Guide, it would be half Brooklyn and probably a quarter Queens now.

55:09And it wasn't. It was a very Manhattan-centric book because I wrote it in 05, 06, 07, submitted the draft, gets published a year later. Yeah. But I mean, what happened in Brooklyn, now to me, the Brooklyn scene, you could just compare Brooklyn to any great city in America and it probably kicks all of their asses. Very true. I mean, you could definitely compare Brooklyn to San Francisco. I think it's way better. Absolutely. Way better. Way more interesting. Just a lot more percolating up there now. It's crazy. Brooklyn's nuts. But Smith Street is just one example of just these very, very cheap rents and ambitious cooks.

55:44And was there like a cuisine that like there was a threat of this early Brooklyn era? I don't know. I mean, I can't say I didn't I didn't I didn't eat at Patois. I ate at the grocery, which was great. And I ate at Saul Bolton's place. And, you know, they were I mean, they had worked in Manhattan. Yeah. And I think one of the I think the half of the team at the grocery had worked for Peter at Savoy. Yes. Which was a super early. Peter Hoffman. Absolutely. He was one of the 14th Street Union Square guys. And he would go on his bicycle, buy stuff, and bring it back down. So you're kind of beginning to see that kind of, before it had a name, that sort of locavore.

56:22I mean, you could see sautéing. He's using black sea bass. And I remember seeing that on the menu at Montrachet. The very opening menu, Boulet had black sea bass en berigoul, that kind of with artichoke and a little light broth. And I remember Drew saying, man, this was back then. This stuff costs me a buck a pound. Nobody's using this except in Chinatown. That's like one of the best fish we have. But I think that was kind of an early theme to Brooklyn was also this sort of farm to table thing. Yeah, I think you're so right. And Diner opened that same year. Diner opened in 98. Yep, 98 in South Williamsburg.

56:54We just had Andrew Tarlow on a couple weeks ago. And I love talking about 90s restaurants. It feels like a million years ago. It was. It really was. The way time moves, it really was. It really was. It's like dog years or something. And Andrew was one of those first guys, again, back to the farm to table, where he was doing whole animal butchery. That was kind of unusual in, unless it was a super ambitious kitchen. I mean, even the French kitchens back, we were getting stuff that was broken down. You know, you get a leg of veal and break that down. Yeah. Or a saddle of lamb. But not full animals.

57:25Not full animals. No. That whole nose to tail thing, that was kind of the beginning of this. Yeah, it's a really, really strong point. Well, let's talk about pastry, because I think you were covering that aggressively as well. I think it's clearly an interest of yours. And you have this episode. I think you had the pastry chef from Kraft on and it showed and Pichet Ong like a little baby Pichet Ong and I mean everyone's a baby on it if you look at it now it's kind of incredible to see so many familiar faces years ago what were you seeing in pastry with that episode? So pastry again this is look I'm an old shit so everything I talk about is going to be Dude you look great you're almost 70 dude it's crazy so back in the day So I get to New York in 82, and let's talk about the great restaurants at the time.

58:14Bread was delivered at Lutece at 7 in the morning. They would leave it out the front door in a big brown bag. Every restaurant, the best restaurant, this is how it worked. So you got that bread for lunch service. It was okay. For dinner, you'd put it in a little bread heater, a little stainless steel drawer. Because that was the only way you could keep it from really being horribly stale. Because it was stale already. And pastry chefs of that generation worked from 5 in the morning until lunch. And they went home because it was all stuff that was, garmage would serve it. You just slice it, you put it on.

58:42If there's a sauce, you put that on, you go home. And then as pastry changed and we got more French influence over here, you began to see pastry becoming an a la carte station where suddenly instead of the pastry chef leaving at one in the afternoon, they were the last person to leave because they were plating desserts at pickup. That was new. That was something that hadn't happened yet. That was kind of the beginning of a modern era for pastry period. Multiple components, temperatures, warm, cold, this, that goes under the salamander. Something happens. And at the same time, you had women going to cooking schools and getting out.

59:23And again, I'm talking about the 80s and 90s. They weren't getting jobs on the hotline. Don't ask me why. It was that old white male cisgender European thing. I guess we thought they would explode or faint or something. I don't know what happened. So women were almost by rote. You came in a kitchen. You were good. You were gamager or pastry. I don't know why. And you had suddenly this huge amount of talent. Claudia Fleming and that whole crew. Karen Damasco. My wife was a pastry chef. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she went to cooking school like I did, but she ended up first job out. She's gamager, then pastry.

59:57So we ended up with these women leading these pastry departments that were now becoming a la carte. So now they were an integral part of the kitchen and service and the last people to leave the restaurants at night. And they were never paid as much. So, you know, again, I'm an industry guy, so let's show them some love. So I was always trying to shout out to what the work that they do is. Yeah. I mean, what were you seeing on the plate in terms of innovation with ingredients? Were you seeing maybe like Asian ingredients like leak into the menus? I mean, what – because I think you're covering this era, as you mentioned, you really outlined greatly.

1:00:35It's like a moment of change. And thank you for pointing out the gross differences in pay structures. And it's just like – it's an open question of why the fuck that was happening. It's still – I mean, this whole NOMA thing that just happened, we can go on and on about it. Our industry is a dinosaur of an industry. It needs a lot of help and a lot of change on a whole lot of levels. Yeah, yeah. And pay equity for back of the house is certainly one of them. Absolutely. But you saw, you know, you began to see, like, one episode, I forget her name, she was at Chanterelle at the time, who did this little kind of a rhubarb-y, soupy, naji thing.

1:01:10And, you know, pastry before that was, you know, it was butter, flour, sugar, flavorings, a lot of chocolate. It was heavy. It was this lump of stuff. Gâteau. It was all gâteau. All gâteau. It was all this stuff. And now suddenly you're sort of deconstructing that and making it lighter and doing these little nauseas and broths and, you know, wonderful stuff with things like rhubarb. I mean, who's doing rhubarb? It's like, what do you even do with that stuff? It's bitter. It's weird. And yet it has this incredible color. And I also think people's tastes began to – Americans' tastes just began to be a little bit more receptive for acid too.

1:01:46You have seen this in the last 20-some years. Such a good point. I mean, and then, of course, just the explosion of Asian cuisine. Yeah. New York City and not, of course, we had really historical Chinatowns and Koreatowns and Vietnamese restaurants, less but prominent ones. But then, you know, you saw, you know, Asian food become fine dining. Do you have a memory of like the first time or the earlier memories of when you, when Asian food broadly became fine dining? You know, credit to, I met Mimi Sheraton when I lived in, I used to live on Abington Square, literally on the square. Oh, cool. Cool address, man.

1:02:24Mimi lived on 12th. I love that. Same block. And I would see him and her husband, Mr. Falcone, all the time on the street. And we would talk. She knew who I was. And I had nothing but. I mean, I had her on the radio every chance I got because talking about glass ceilings. I mean, when she was working for the New York Times, there was a part of the paper called the women's section, which was like, here's what you're going to write about. It's crocheting this week or how to do a flower arrangement. So for her to be a food critic for the New York Times was huge. Yeah. But yeah, so, and Mimi was, I think, one of the real early ones to say, hey, like Shunley, back then, Shunley was the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Shunley Palace, you know, three-star restaurant.

1:03:03Why not? It's fantastic. The food's great. Service is great. The room's great. And that was, who was going to take this seriously? Yeah. I think, you know, she was kind of one of the earliest ones to sort of step out of the box and say, hey, ethnic food, Asian ethnic food can be fine dining, can merit the same stars that great Italian or great French does. Yeah. And Ruth Reichel, of course, did a lot of great work, too, in the 80s, writing about Korean restaurants and Chinese restaurants in New York, too. So getting through, busting through that glass ceiling is a very good analogy. Speaking of that, do you remember filming with Dookie and I in 2016?

1:03:36It was so much fun. I remember. I remember. And, you know, I'm trying to remember. One of the, I think that was the first time I heard kimchi used as a verb. Yeah. I'm like, kimchi. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, what? That was our thing. It's a thing. It is a thing. It's a noun. It's that thing. It's what you do with cabbage and gochew. No, no, no. You can do it. And my wife's Korean in the interest of full disclosure. Of course. I remember going home and just saying, this is a crazy idea. So he's got this recipe. For this basic blend that you just put in a cuisine art, pulse the shit out of it. And then you could toss and then we started doing it at home.

1:04:15I love it. No, we were really proud of that concept. It was a big part of Koreatown when we put that out. And kimchi is a verb is literally what we wrote. It's fantastic because it is actually. But we're, you know, culturally it's strange. And I mean, the explosion of Korean food just surprised. I didn't see that coming. And my wife's Korean. So I kind of once, we came to New York together. Yeah. In 1982, she was here before me. She went to Pratt as an MFA in art before she went to cooking school. So we were eating in K-Town, like early pioneering days, back when there was nobody. Like I'd be the only white dude in the room.

1:04:48Yeah, like Kong Su, Gammy O, places like that. Places that aren't there anymore, that were just the original. But, you know, I remember I'd go in with friends, white people, and a lot of times they'd hand you the menu and they wouldn't seat you. Yeah. Because white people would come in. Like if you went to Gamioca and you wanted mandu, they don't have mandu. If you went to Gamioca and you wanted japchae, they don't do japchae. They do like eight, ten things fantastically. It's a long time. Some other stuff. Yeah, exactly. And the kimchi was killer. And now it's just crazy how popular it's. I mean.

1:05:19Yeah. It's been. You buy five varieties of kimchi in supermarkets. Yeah. It's amazing to see that trajectory. Is there a chef you wish you would have interviewed? Jean-Louis Palladet. Oh, yeah. Um, he was, you know, he was more Washington DC centric. He was at the Watergate for years. But if you talk to the Daniel Bouludes and the older generation of French guys, he was really the guy that kind of brought them here. Yeah. Got them here. Yeah. Yeah. A super talented guy, just really intense. Always had those marble reds, I heard. Yeah. Well, I mean, 50 something lung cancer. And I always wore a scarf and very kind of, excuse me, very theatrical and glasses.

1:06:02Yeah, very, very. He was a really, really important guy. But it unfortunately passed away, I think, 2001, 2002, so I never got a chance. But he was huge. Pool days call for cookouts and lots of laundry. This Memorial Day at Lowe's. Save$80 on a Charbroil Performance Series 4 burner gas grill. Now just$199. Plus, get up to 45 % off select major appliances to keep dishes, clothes, and food fresh. Having fun in the sun is easy with us in your corner. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid for 527. While supplies last, selection varies by location. See associate or lowes.com for details. Where is Daredevil?

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1:07:28These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Well, I think I want to close and talk about, you know, the way I see it is the show that you made for 20 years. and you've really laid it out, this kind of documentary, just me and a shooter going in and really just capturing the moment with these chefs and these connections I have. You see it today everywhere with social video. You see it with these creators we love, like Rob Martinez, who I love. You see it with people who maybe have less talent, but this energy that you created and you innovated is so apparent today in our food media world.

1:08:16How do you feel about being truly one of the first to have done it? You know, luck beats brains. I mean, honestly. My kind of gut told me, again, back to that early conversation with my neighbor who became a cameraman and editor, that I don't want to do a cooking show. It's been done. There's nothing I can bring to the table there that's interesting. It's like, who needs more porn? There's too much of it out there already. But what there isn't is storytelling. What there isn't is. And then, you know, to film real kitchens in real time during service, you know, that's something. These guys are doing your favor to let you in and do that because we weren't filming kitchens off.

1:08:54We weren't staging any of that stuff. You know, we'd roll in, and when those dupes started coming in, that's when the cameras went. And the camera's behind the line right next to the saute guy. And he had to learn. I said, do be really careful. You know, sit behind me. You know, here's kitchen etiquette. And also, don't get burned because these guys are spinning around with saute pans. But, you know, but that was what I wanted to get. That was kind of the lightning in the bottle was that that's the excitement of restaurants. Yeah. You sort of build up the service and then bang, bang, that door opens.

1:09:21And who knows what's going to happen, you know. So do you watch any of these modern creators the way they shoot and cover restaurants? Yeah, I do. I mean, there's some great, again, props to action because he's just, you know, he's just this funny guy. And Vice is funny because I've always sort of like I never skateboarded. skateboarded but yeah you know the skateboard crowd who always hung with them and you know i remember the magazine you'd get it at like skateboard shops yeah of course back when vice was print then the old old days the analog days and it was such a funny like snarky little publication and you know there's so much great talent out there now and and and now with videography it's so much less expensive to do i mean you can i mean i do these things i 2017 i started doing these little pieces for pbs called the bite they're between all the cooking shows that's in my apartment with an iPad by myself.

1:10:08Yeah, yeah. What the fuck? Does that work? You know, you just give them a clean minute so they don't have to edit it. There's no editing, but you just deliver them a clean minute, load all the media on an iPad, press a button, and it goes up into the cloud and Channel 13 has it, and it's finished. On air, yeah. It's on air, which is just nuts. And that same idea that you can shoot with your cell phones and all that now, I mean, that was a radical change in the ability to sort of be more improvisational once upon. with storytelling. So you split time between the Lower East Side where you have an apartment and Cape May.

1:10:40So when you're in the city, what's your neighborhood like? Where are you going to dine out when you have, when you're in the city? Lower East is so great because you have, I mean, I remember when Frankie DeCarla opened Baccaro on East Broadway years ago. I'm like, East Broadway? Like, where even is that? Yeah. And then now, Dime Square is like, it's nuts. And there's so much great stuff around there. So we have that whole Chinatown West thing. down the street from me. Woo's wonton. I'm a wine guy. I hang around with wine people. I mean, that's a no charge, no BYO. So, I mean, I've been there at nights when I wake up and they send me the pictures and I'm like, what?

1:11:18When did we open the crew? I mean, there's so much good stuff. And then what's going on on Clinton Street and the East Village. It's just crazy. New York is, it's a remarkable time. Yeah, there's a new pizza shop on East Broadway, Hots. I've heard it's good. It's good. I went yesterday. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I've heard it's great. I've heard about that. And, of course, Anthony on Una Pizza Napoli, I mean, he's just— Killing it. He's just killing it. Yeah. He's, like, nuts. He's—I mean, that's—I still understand how he gets that hydration in his dough. It's a special one. It's really remarkable.

1:11:47You're right. And people line up for that. You can't get in. You can't get in. It's an impossible reservation. It's interesting how that place has remained consistent with these long lines and hasn't really changed. And he's—what's he, four nights a week? Yeah, he's not many nights a week. Smart model. So what are you up to right now? What keeps you busy? Are you filming anything? No, no. We're post-filming. Post-filming? Do you want to? You know, I mean, if I had control over what we're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. The problem is, you know, you sort of make these deals with the devil. It sounds great.

1:12:22And then you find yourself putting makeup on you and you're doing the 17th take. And can we do that? You know, so I'm pretty, you know, I've always worked for myself. Yeah. So even when I was a young chef, you know, I left New York and I was, last gig was the Ritz-Carlton, 1987. And then the stock market crashed. My wife and I were going to open up in Manhattan. October 19th, Black Monday was a trillion dollars went up in the air in a day. And then that was the fourth quarter in New York. So we were just dead. So we ended up in Cape May by accident because we wanted to work for ourselves. And we only had, I had a co-op.

1:12:55We sold the co-op. Cape May was cheap. We bought a building, leased it, and then bought it the next year. So, no, I've had a great run. I'm just going to be an old guy that goes out to eat once in a while. I like it. And eat great dinners at home and drink lots of good natty wines. Good natty, and you're in the wine world. Listen to loud music through my Macintosh tubes, through some big-ass speakers, and smoke cigars. Mike, this is awesome. I'm into the sunset. Listen, this is a great way to end a food media career. You know, it feels good. I mean, I don't feel like I'd left anything on the table.

1:13:27You absolutely did not, sir. And I, again, like what I said at the top, you're so important to us and food media. Well, thanks. And it's great. I mean, it's funny because, again, I go back to when I was a kid. There wasn't a, their chef kind of didn't exist. Restaurants weren't an aspirational career. And now I just look at what happened in the span of this short lifetime. It's nuts. All of you brilliant guys and gals bring what you do to all the publications out there. It's fantastic. Well, I would love to have you back. Thank you. Talk more restaurants. Talk more stories. Thank you so much for joining This is Taste.

1:14:00Pleasure. Thanks so much.

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