Speaker 1: If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
Speaker 1: was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
Speaker 1: the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He treats
Speaker 1: crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
Speaker 1: pill poppers in the penthouse, to clearinghouse of hot takes,
Speaker 1: break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
Speaker 1: Maller starts right now that it does in the air
Speaker 1: everywheres we loviate the weekend away, even on a Friday
Speaker 1: Friday Friday, as we kick off the weekend festivities here
Speaker 1: because four hours a night are not enough. Eight days
Speaker 1: a week, eight days a week. Broadcasting live and in
Speaker 1: stereo were available from the newly Voice My Voice, Sound
Speaker 1: Good Mallard podcast studio Deep in the north Woods. Deep
Speaker 1: in the north Woods. Of course, the Fifth Hour a
Speaker 1: spinoff of the Overnight Show. And since I was away
Speaker 1: from my host quite a bit this week because of
Speaker 1: some moving, we'll have more on that on the Saturday podcast.
Speaker 1: We have to make up for it on the weekend
Speaker 1: here with the Fifth Hour. The show must go on,
Speaker 1: as we like to say in the air, everywhere. The
Speaker 1: vast power of podcasting, and you've obviously found the show.
Speaker 1: We thank you for that. Man, that's cool that you've
Speaker 1: downloaded it and remember sharing his caring. So if you
Speaker 1: like the podcast and you know somebody that might like
Speaker 1: it or hate it, for that matter, as long as
Speaker 1: they listen, we get credit. That's all we care about,
Speaker 1: just to direct them to the podcast. We are joined
Speaker 1: again another weekend in a row. Here I was, there's
Speaker 1: a two or three in a row now David Gascott
Speaker 1: making gallon vancing across the wide open state of California,
Speaker 1: at least for a short period of time. But I
Speaker 1: have found my way home into the studio and uh,
Speaker 1: and here I am. So we'll get more into it
Speaker 1: in future podcast. But people said, well, when you're going
Speaker 1: back to the studio, what's going on? And well, you know,
Speaker 1: l a man, they keep shutting stuff down. I don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about that. I I'm good on that.
Speaker 1: I think this will be going on for years. I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about about going back in at
Speaker 1: all at all. So uh, anyway, listen, this is not
Speaker 1: about us. We'll get into all that stuff in future podcast.
Speaker 1: But I'm excited, you know. I I like to dabble
Speaker 1: in the kitchen as you know, I guess, and I
Speaker 1: send you pictures of my creations with a few days
Speaker 1: I eat occasionally when we eat, and I will send
Speaker 1: you my mallard pie that I make rather painful to
Speaker 1: look at. I don't know if you want to call
Speaker 1: it dabble, you know, like dabble means like it's a
Speaker 1: little tapped dressing. Listen. I have I have ripped off
Speaker 1: many YouTube recipes, you know, mimicking other things. But I
Speaker 1: I do like to cook, and my wife actually has
Speaker 1: helped me. I when I was a bachelor. I got
Speaker 1: married almost ten years ago, and before then I knew nothing.
Speaker 1: My idea of cooking was a hungry man one pound,
Speaker 1: one pound dinner, a TV dinner. I was very good
Speaker 1: at making that. I could make the frozen pizza. I
Speaker 1: knew that I could even heat up some frozen French
Speaker 1: fries in the like you know, on the oven whatever.
Speaker 1: I knew how to do that, but that was about it.
Speaker 1: That was the extent of my cooking. So I'm very
Speaker 1: very proud of myself, humble bragg, but I'm not anywhere
Speaker 1: near the level of a professional professional chef. And we
Speaker 1: have one eight and the guy's on TV as well, Uh,
Speaker 1: he's owns a bunch of restaurants, a pizza restaurant, a
Speaker 1: very popular seafood restaurant, and you've seen him on the
Speaker 1: Food Network. He's been a judge on a number of
Speaker 1: these cooking shows over the last almost a decade. I
Speaker 1: guess he's been on. So I'm excited. So we should
Speaker 1: without further Adoe, David, let's give it up now for
Speaker 1: the chef. And his name is Andrew Gruel and he
Speaker 1: joins us now in the fifth hour with Ben Maller
Speaker 1: and David gascoont and Andrew, we welcome you in. And
Speaker 1: so I guess we'll start with this. Was this always
Speaker 1: your plan to to be a television cheffer? Is this
Speaker 1: something that you stumbled into? Stumbled into it like I
Speaker 1: do it with everything else in my life. So how
Speaker 1: did how did it happen? I mean you were obviously
Speaker 1: you're you're professional, You're doing it. And did did somebody
Speaker 1: contact you? Did you? Did you end up in the
Speaker 1: wrong place or the right place at the right time?
Speaker 1: How did it happen? Uh? You know, I've always been
Speaker 1: pretty outspoken about what I do and how I do it.
Speaker 1: And I had opened a restaurant out in New Hampshire, Gosh,
Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's, and there was a local
Speaker 1: radio studio there. It probably broadcast to maybe hundred homes,
Speaker 1: and I started a little a little radio show called
Speaker 1: Cooking with Gruel, right, so a play on the old porridge.
Speaker 1: And I loved just talking and getting to know people
Speaker 1: through the radio. And then was simultaneously there was a
Speaker 1: new PBS show called The Endless East that had come out,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to highlight and promote restaurants that
Speaker 1: were serving a lot of local, sustainable fair This was
Speaker 1: once again kind of way before the farm to table stuff.
Speaker 1: So given the fact that I had a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit a skeach of media experienced by virtue
Speaker 1: of the radio show, they threw me into this episode
Speaker 1: and I got to shoot uh this TV show with PBS,
Speaker 1: and then from there it was the bite Um. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. And then that far laid into a
Speaker 1: few more opportunities and then ultimately caught the eye of
Speaker 1: Food Network back when I started my food truck in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. So that's the the short history, if
Speaker 1: you will. Nice and so now as a radio guy, Andrew,
Speaker 1: I love that you did a radio I guess you've
Speaker 1: still done some up until now, also on the radio.
Speaker 1: But how difficult is it because cooking is such a
Speaker 1: visual thing and and you know, you're talking about your
Speaker 1: senses and you can't obviously radio. We have the audio,
Speaker 1: that's all we have. So how difficult is it to
Speaker 1: train in late what you do and talk about the
Speaker 1: restaurants on the radio? Great question. Incredibly difficult. And it's
Speaker 1: not as simple as just posting a photo up on
Speaker 1: Instagram that says it all right. There's a way you
Speaker 1: have to describe the fact that the sauces are dripping
Speaker 1: down your arm, and you've got to use chewy words
Speaker 1: quite literally to get people to salivate. And we got
Speaker 1: into a lot of technique, right, But then that also
Speaker 1: borders into this boring curse of knowledge where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's great, turn the oven to three fifty blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: I mean you almost have to describe the oven, right,
Speaker 1: You've got to bring the listener into the oven, which
Speaker 1: could be quite dangerous. Frankly, Yeah, yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: for sure, yeah absolutely, And but I went done right.
Speaker 1: I mean anything in radio, when it's done right, people
Speaker 1: obviously want to want to hear, But it was this
Speaker 1: always when you were a kid, like a little Andrew
Speaker 1: growing up, Little Andrew grow did you always imagine you'd
Speaker 1: be in the kitchen cooking professionally or you know, is
Speaker 1: this something that came a little bit later? No, well,
Speaker 1: great question, and to thie topics together. So I used
Speaker 1: to skip school when I was in second, third, fourth grade.
Speaker 1: I don't recall it all kind of merges together to
Speaker 1: stay home and watch these old school cooking shows. That
Speaker 1: was like this weird addiction of mine, yon Kin Cook,
Speaker 1: Julia Child, Jacques po pen Um. There was some mingti right,
Speaker 1: he had started some of his PBS shows. There was
Speaker 1: no Food Network back then. It was just those old
Speaker 1: school dump and stir cooking shows where you're watching somebody
Speaker 1: trust a chicken and rub all of these herbs all
Speaker 1: over it. That as a kid, you have absolutely no
Speaker 1: idea what any of it it is, but it's it's
Speaker 1: mollo fluous, it's beautiful, it looks delicious. Um. And then
Speaker 1: I would sneak into the kitchen and try and do
Speaker 1: some of this. My mom and dad were at work.
Speaker 1: I was really a latchkey child, and you know, they'd
Speaker 1: come home and there was granola and chocolate wall to
Speaker 1: wall and burnt grilled cheese all over the place, and
Speaker 1: I was still pretending to be sick. So that's how
Speaker 1: it started, and I fell in love with those shows,
Speaker 1: which still to me, Um, you know, that's that's where
Speaker 1: it all started. It's it's I will watch any of
Speaker 1: those dumping stir cooking shows nowadays over any of the
Speaker 1: kind of crazy American Ninja Warrior meets Chopped meets uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Real World road Rules on Food Network. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: total I I you know, I went around the same age.
Speaker 1: I think I'm a little older than you, but I
Speaker 1: watched Julia Child. I don't remember the other ones. I
Speaker 1: remember watching Julia Child and she had one of the
Speaker 1: great quotes which I think is just perfect for for
Speaker 1: what you do and just cooking in generously. She said
Speaker 1: everything can have drama if done right, even a pancake.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's just to me, that's the perfect quote there.
Speaker 1: But you're right, the difference between those PBS cooking shows
Speaker 1: like Julia Child the other ones you mentioned there and
Speaker 1: today you got like, as you said, Ninja's the cooking Ninja,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, is there any end? What is
Speaker 1: the next layer? Andrew is someone that's done television and
Speaker 1: worked in that business. There, how far can we push
Speaker 1: the envelope? Yeah, you know, and we of course see
Speaker 1: a lot of the same formats being cut cop you know, rinse, wash, repeat,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, cut, copy paste, you know,
Speaker 1: there's always a little bit of a tweak, but these
Speaker 1: formats work right, and television is obviously a business. So
Speaker 1: if you can kind of fit these formats into a budget,
Speaker 1: tweak one thing and do it. That's why I think
Speaker 1: we start to see a lot of the same format
Speaker 1: TV shows and then they just keep getting amplified episode
Speaker 1: by episode or series by series by adding like yeah,
Speaker 1: an obstacle course, or the floor is made of lava
Speaker 1: and you've got to cook a tureen. Um. But what
Speaker 1: I'm what I'm loving right now across the media landscape,
Speaker 1: if you will, is this digital world where people are
Speaker 1: producing their own content across platforms like YouTube and all
Speaker 1: these you know, kind of new digital avenues, and it's
Speaker 1: very very uh personal, right, So you don't have to
Speaker 1: bring in a big budget and you don't have to
Speaker 1: get all these producers to sign off on it because
Speaker 1: a lot of what we saw in food TV it
Speaker 1: was incredibly produced, and where it merges with this reality
Speaker 1: TV format in so much as like we're all competing
Speaker 1: for this hundred thousand dollar prize. You know, I judged
Speaker 1: a lot of those shows, and I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: reveal any secrets that we don't know about, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them are produced. I'm not saying fake, but
Speaker 1: produced takes away that spark, that charisma, that love, the magic.
Speaker 1: So now we're seeing that in these digital formats where
Speaker 1: it's just food, but it's done so in this like
Speaker 1: really really really uh um, you know, high focus on
Speaker 1: the actual ingredients and the sizzle in the pan and
Speaker 1: the fire, the smoke, the flame, all those visceral things
Speaker 1: that make us d rules. So that's so cool, and
Speaker 1: I love I love the fact that that world has
Speaker 1: really been blown up, especially through the pandemic when everyone's
Speaker 1: been sitting at home watching a lot of it. Be
Speaker 1: sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller Show
Speaker 1: weekdays at two a m. Eastern eleven pm Pacific on
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio. And I heard radio app Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and what you're talking about of course, and you know
Speaker 1: this from working. Uh, you know the front lines there
Speaker 1: on TV is the rule of drama, right, you always
Speaker 1: have to create some kind of uh artificial drama competition, UM,
Speaker 1: make it, try to make it unpredictable. But as you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is is preticularly. I remember one
Speaker 1: time Andrew I was driving I lived in Hollywood and
Speaker 1: I was driving to work and it's one of the
Speaker 1: early modern reality shows, and they were filming this couple
Speaker 1: walking across the street and apparently didn't get the right angle.
Speaker 1: I'm at the red light, right, I'm I'm there, And
Speaker 1: they had to go back and do it again so
Speaker 1: they get the right angle. Then the whole time I'm
Speaker 1: watching this, I'm like, wait a minute, that's supposed to
Speaker 1: be just people walking on the street. But the but
Speaker 1: but so be it. And uh And as far as
Speaker 1: you know your your business, you're you known, we know
Speaker 1: you because you've done the television stuff. But you have
Speaker 1: a bunch of restaurants right in Orange County. From what
Speaker 1: I was reading online, as I understand it, like you're
Speaker 1: very hand on your You're not just a TV guy
Speaker 1: that's just on the side, right, Your main gig is
Speaker 1: running and operating and overseeing restaurants. Is that accur Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I I uh, I went independent, if you will.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand eleven, I started a food truck
Speaker 1: called slap Fish Fish so fresh and it will slap you.
Speaker 1: And and it was, you know, through and all my
Speaker 1: money leveraged everything out on credit cards, went from one
Speaker 1: to four food trucks, and then we rolled that into
Speaker 1: our first brick and mortar about ten months later. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then from there it was just kind of my
Speaker 1: wife and I growing this. Now we've got we've got
Speaker 1: twenty seven slot Fish locations and then we've got a
Speaker 1: few other concepts. H all based still out of out
Speaker 1: of southern California, Orange County, but the slot Fish has grown.
Speaker 1: We took a shotgun approach, so we've got franchise locations
Speaker 1: actually throughout the United States, from Florida, Georgia, the DMV area, Indiana, Albuquerque.
Speaker 1: I mean, we really just it's like you closed your
Speaker 1: eyes and through darts at a board and okay, we'll
Speaker 1: open a slot fish there. Andrew, Andrew, I need to
Speaker 1: break up this bromance real quick between you and just
Speaker 1: just one of these moments, I I gotta be, I
Speaker 1: gotta be perfectly transparent with you too, Andrew on this
Speaker 1: because I have I have watched, I have seen, and
Speaker 1: I have enjoyed the food porn that you display on
Speaker 1: Twitter thoroughly. And when I told Ben that I wanted
Speaker 1: to have you on our podcast, it was like it
Speaker 1: was like a knife in the side of him. And
Speaker 1: the reason why is because Ben typically fasts Monday through Friday.
Speaker 1: This is true, not the whole week. So the fact
Speaker 1: that I am showing him content of yours while he's
Speaker 1: fasting just makes it that much more special. Um, well,
Speaker 1: he's my he's my target audience. Then people say to me,
Speaker 1: They're like, do you eat all this? You're promoting obesity,
Speaker 1: And I said, no, I am true food porn. I'm
Speaker 1: here to provide the you know, the intangible, drew worthy
Speaker 1: food that people can't eat so they'll look at it instead.
Speaker 1: So if you look at it from that perspective, I mean,
Speaker 1: we should be working together. Oh no, no, Andrew, let
Speaker 1: me tell you, Like I I I usually I was
Speaker 1: very obese and I lost a lot of weight and
Speaker 1: to keep it off, I don't eat a lot during
Speaker 1: the week, So that's my But I love food. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it was up to me, I would eat all
Speaker 1: of that. And I mean, I'm looking, uh, the thing
Speaker 1: you had pinned to the top of your your Twitter
Speaker 1: page there that pizza. My holy crap. I feel like
Speaker 1: I can taste it just in the photo there that
Speaker 1: you you have of of the pie. My god. So
Speaker 1: that's my yeah. But David does bust my balls all
Speaker 1: the time because he knows. Unfortunately, I made the mistake, Andrew,
Speaker 1: of telling him like when I don't eat the days
Speaker 1: I don't eat, and then he sends me those days,
Speaker 1: will send me like a lot of your stuff photos
Speaker 1: of food, and it just drives me nuts. I'll tone
Speaker 1: it down. I've got some amazing glasses of water they
Speaker 1: photographed really well. Well, I'm glad you brought that up
Speaker 1: in terms of toning it down, because Andrew, I have
Speaker 1: a personal and professional question for you, and this goes
Speaker 1: along the lines of what you're doing right now and
Speaker 1: what you you do on social media. So walk me
Speaker 1: through this. If you were to buy let's just say,
Speaker 1: a a Tomahawks steak and you call and you call
Speaker 1: it quote the original protein bar, would you let that
Speaker 1: original protein bar marinate for a day or two, or
Speaker 1: a year or two, and I'll wait for your answer. Well,
Speaker 1: so I don't marinate meat. Um. I always just use
Speaker 1: salt on meat. I do a dry brine, especially red meat, um,
Speaker 1: but but even lamb and chicken for that matter. I
Speaker 1: usually if I do marinate, it's only for an hour
Speaker 1: before and then I do what I call like a
Speaker 1: post marinader a post glaze. So the key is the
Speaker 1: salting of the meat. Right, you can do that for
Speaker 1: twenty four hours, because what's happening is is that you're
Speaker 1: drawing the moisture out of the meat, which is actually amplifying.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if you're putting a dry age on
Speaker 1: fast forward plus your tenderizing, because then the osmosis the
Speaker 1: salt will go back into the meat. So you get
Speaker 1: this really succulent and beef your flavor of meat out
Speaker 1: of that particular cut. Now does that mean that you'll
Speaker 1: ever add pepper or there spices when you apply salt
Speaker 1: or do you wait until after after you've done cooking
Speaker 1: it meat? Personally, I don't, only because I find that
Speaker 1: it gets a little bit bitter as it cooks, and
Speaker 1: I like that fruity flavor of pepper. I know you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think fruity in terms of peppercorns, but freshly
Speaker 1: ground peppercorns are somewhat sweet um and and you know,
Speaker 1: and bitter and and uh spicy to the palate. And
Speaker 1: you get all those beautiful aromas and those natural oils
Speaker 1: out of the peppercorn right when you crack it fresh
Speaker 1: at the end on top of the meat, and then
Speaker 1: it just marinates and mixes in as the meats, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of just sitting there hot and steamy, those beautiful
Speaker 1: beef juices in the carmelization of the meat on the
Speaker 1: exterior with the peppercorn perfection. So that sounds great. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can encourage my friend Ben
Speaker 1: here over to do this, But I had bought him
Speaker 1: a Tomahawks steak a few days ago. Actually I bought
Speaker 1: him a Tomahawks steak a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: and it's still in his freezer. I Andrew, I tried, Man, No, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a time machine, Andrew. Like it'll come
Speaker 1: out and then I'll defrost it and then it'll be
Speaker 1: pretty good, like the way I could you understand, Andrew,
Speaker 1: Like when it comes to meat, I am my My
Speaker 1: brother loves to eat meat like kind of raw where
Speaker 1: it's kind of like blood coming out of it. But
Speaker 1: I'm the opposite. So for me, I feel like I
Speaker 1: have an opportunity here Andrew too. When I take it out,
Speaker 1: it won't be bad for my my taste, is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I like stuff well done, that's fine, and look,
Speaker 1: freezing isn't a bad thing. And I recommend too, is
Speaker 1: is that don't even let it bought, just go right
Speaker 1: onto the deep frost button in the microwave and then
Speaker 1: that way you're cooking it and deep frosting the time
Speaker 1: I can multitest. See that's you guys stock No, No,
Speaker 1: that's from a professional table. I think that's a professional. Okay,
Speaker 1: how many restaurants you said? They're all over the country, right,
Speaker 1: so how many do you you own? Per se or
Speaker 1: your name is on about thirty? That's a ton of restaurants.
Speaker 1: That's a massive amount of restaurants. Does that? Does that
Speaker 1: blow your mind when you think about that, that you
Speaker 1: started something that has thirty you know, thirty something locations,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. I still spend most of my time in
Speaker 1: the dishpit or online, so I don't even think I've
Speaker 1: taken the opportunity to step outside of that arena and
Speaker 1: an assess where where we're at. So I don't want
Speaker 1: it to go to my head. Let's not talk about it, Okay,
Speaker 1: we will. How about this though, Andrew, since you're not
Speaker 1: from from California, but it sounds like you're well traveled.
Speaker 1: What do you take from from other parts of this
Speaker 1: country or maybe even internationally and try to infuse into
Speaker 1: your into your restaurants, into your style of cooking. That's
Speaker 1: a great question. And that's been the coolest thing about
Speaker 1: growing through franchising the way that we have that it's
Speaker 1: forced us into really getting into each one of these
Speaker 1: markets like Salt Lake City, Utah, or Indianapolis or um,
Speaker 1: you know, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to learn what types
Speaker 1: of flavors and sauces and different kind of nuanced bite
Speaker 1: they use in those markets and then introduce them into
Speaker 1: our food. So if you use, for example, Albuquerque, right
Speaker 1: hash green chilies, everything has to have green chilies on it,
Speaker 1: especially the hash green chili which has grown there in
Speaker 1: Hash New Mexico, which is just this incredibly through the
Speaker 1: er spicy or green chili that's somewhat smoky I mean,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. So on all of our dishes, we offer
Speaker 1: these roasted green chilies. We do a chowder fry, so
Speaker 1: the natural cut fries smothered with scratch made clam chowder,
Speaker 1: double smoke bacon, and then we add that roasted green
Speaker 1: chili on top, and it's just unbelievable. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: the fun part about being in all these different markets.
Speaker 1: Have you taken your acts let's just say, down to
Speaker 1: like sec territory or to a call venue for for tailgating?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I would absolutely love too. It seems like
Speaker 1: that there's a demographic there that loves loves my Twitter
Speaker 1: and I'm missing out on that community. We do have
Speaker 1: a location in Pooler, Georgia, and one in Hilton Head,
Speaker 1: which is you know, down in the South Carolina area,
Speaker 1: and one one in Orlando right outside of UCF, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we we we should definitely take all of
Speaker 1: that on on the road itself. I think we're ready.
Speaker 1: I think, well, it's one of those things that Ben
Speaker 1: and I had talked about. Ben was flirting with the
Speaker 1: idea of doing like cooking with Ben during this whole
Speaker 1: pandemic and having his his wife videotape him and put
Speaker 1: it on YouTube. Um, we produce a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: on our own for gambling purposes. So I say, like,
Speaker 1: we should combine these sports and the cooking, like the
Speaker 1: expertise from one side of the aisle to the other
Speaker 1: and uh and take this act on the road. Man,
Speaker 1: I think that would be quite enjoyable for everybody involved.
Speaker 1: Down And I'm actually not just down, I'm double down. Nice.
Speaker 1: See you can wait. Wait, we can get like circus
Speaker 1: animals and I think that's been banned. I think they
Speaker 1: banned no animals anymore. But we can like a dog
Speaker 1: and pony show. We could do that right traveling? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know there's gonna be somebody encouraging us to cook
Speaker 1: one of the animals, so we probably shouldn't do that. Yeah, Andrew,
Speaker 1: how do you cook an elephant? What's the proper way
Speaker 1: to cooking? I can tell you how to eat it
Speaker 1: at a time you Andrew, what is your favorite time
Speaker 1: of the day. I guess in terms of eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. Like,
Speaker 1: what if if you had to pick something to live
Speaker 1: off of, what would it be. I love breakfast meals,
Speaker 1: but I typically eat them at night. Uh. I just
Speaker 1: I've never been able to become a huge breakfast guy
Speaker 1: because I'm up and I'm going. I got four kids, right,
Speaker 1: a lot of coffee, just move, move, move, trying to
Speaker 1: get the kids conditioned to eat more breakfast. Uh. But
Speaker 1: I'm also a sandwich guy, right, so you know, I'll
Speaker 1: have a sandwich for breakfast or a sandwich for dinner.
Speaker 1: So it almost feels like lunches every meal of the day. Nice. Well,
Speaker 1: I know that that Ben gets these shots, especially over
Speaker 1: the last eighteen months, about it, like stay in your lane.
Speaker 1: I know what social media you're You're a firecracker, like
Speaker 1: you have your profession what you tweet about, but you
Speaker 1: also also have other things outside of that. In this
Speaker 1: political warlike state that we're in right now, do people
Speaker 1: ever attack you and say, hey, Chef Andrews, stay in
Speaker 1: the kitchen. Oh that's all I get, right, so much
Speaker 1: stick to food. You know, um, as if, as if,
Speaker 1: as if I'm not allowed to have opinions. And you
Speaker 1: know what's hilarious about that is my response is always
Speaker 1: the same. I've got to I've got to pull up
Speaker 1: social media every Sunday morning and read everybody's crappy food blogs, right,
Speaker 1: and but but but I'm not allowed to say anything
Speaker 1: and I'm not allowed to have an opinion outside of
Speaker 1: my own profession. Come on, right, If that's the case,
Speaker 1: then I don't want to see anybody trying to make
Speaker 1: a product in on you know, Thanksgiving that ends up
Speaker 1: shooting out of somebody's turkey prior onto the roof of
Speaker 1: the neighboring house. Too much of that. But but but Andrew,
Speaker 1: I mean, I credit you because you're you know, you
Speaker 1: have a lot on the line, the thirty restaurants and
Speaker 1: all that. I do a radio show, and I do
Speaker 1: a sports show, right, which you think is like the
Speaker 1: most benign thing. We talked about sports, But people get
Speaker 1: so upset. The tribalism is insane. And and how have
Speaker 1: you been able to to avoid the Obviously you take
Speaker 1: some online flak on social media, but have you been
Speaker 1: able to avoid a lot of stuff outside of that
Speaker 1: realm Um? Well, I'm never able to avoid it. They've
Speaker 1: come hard for me on many occasions, um, only to
Speaker 1: be disappointed that what they were coming after me for
Speaker 1: wasn't the truth. You see. And that's the problem nowadays,
Speaker 1: is that that truth is so ambiguous and facts don't
Speaker 1: necessarily matter. And I know that's a cliche, but I'll
Speaker 1: use one example. Right, I was talking about the labor
Speaker 1: issues that we're having in the industry, and my my
Speaker 1: perspective on it wasn't that people weren't working because they
Speaker 1: were lazy. My perspective was that people were scared to
Speaker 1: come back to work in many situ nations, and or
Speaker 1: they didn't have the proper childcare. I mean, that's something
Speaker 1: we deal with, is a working you know, working parents
Speaker 1: for kids, is that we don't have school for the kids, right,
Speaker 1: so we either bring the kids with us everywhere, and
Speaker 1: a lot of my team members had to make decisions, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay home and watch the kids versus going
Speaker 1: to work making the money but then paying someone to
Speaker 1: watch the kids. And it's the net zero. And I
Speaker 1: didn't even get to watch my kids, right, so they
Speaker 1: take the unemployment benefits. Nothing wrong with that. So I
Speaker 1: brought that up and I kind of was just laying
Speaker 1: out my ideas and I got completely attacked by just
Speaker 1: this whole wing of Twitter that I wasn't even aware existed.
Speaker 1: I mean, death threats, um pay your employees more. We're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna unionize you, this and that, and there
Speaker 1: was some blue checks and some elites who said, yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd love your you to open your books and show
Speaker 1: me what you actually pay your employees. Live to see
Speaker 1: you pay your employees of living ways, I said, good,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Open the books. We're paying our entry
Speaker 1: level workers an hour. I pay more than most businesses.
Speaker 1: I don't take much for myself, right Like, it's oh,
Speaker 1: that's been the reason I started the business. And they
Speaker 1: looked at it and they were like, oh, wow, you
Speaker 1: actually pay way above a living widge. Okay, you're not
Speaker 1: the guy we need to target, but still we don't
Speaker 1: like you, right Like. The point being is is that
Speaker 1: I'm supporting the same people that are coming after me.
Speaker 1: But nobody wants to hear that because perhaps the way
Speaker 1: in which I said it or the commentator in which
Speaker 1: I spoke with wasn't up their liking, so they attacked me.
Speaker 1: It's such a crazy world. Um, And my wife gets
Speaker 1: mad at me, She's like, why do you even fight
Speaker 1: back on it? I'm like, I fight back because I'm
Speaker 1: passionate and I actually agree with some of their message too.
Speaker 1: They're just being jerks about it and we can all
Speaker 1: kind of find a meeting ground in the middle nuts nuts, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it is. I mean we I was. We talked about
Speaker 1: this a lot when the political stuff that's been going
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years. But when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, and again you were around my age, my
Speaker 1: my mom was a liberal, my dad conservative, and at dinner,
Speaker 1: like whatever the issues that they were, they would duke
Speaker 1: it out and then they know, hug it out afterwards.
Speaker 1: But with with social media, it's like, no, you you're
Speaker 1: only on one team. You cannot there's no way that
Speaker 1: you can have a belief that is against that. If
Speaker 1: you think the other way, you're some kind of lunatic.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know when this happened, Andrew, and I
Speaker 1: don't know how to get back from that. But we're
Speaker 1: in a pretty dark place right now when it comes
Speaker 1: to the political conversation and the any ideas on how
Speaker 1: we can get back to what it used to be Like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so what I always say is food is the great unifier, right,
Speaker 1: And one thing that I've noticed with my social channels
Speaker 1: is that I bring together people of so many different
Speaker 1: opinions and look at the end of the day. Social
Speaker 1: media also amplifies this division. It's so funny, Like I
Speaker 1: posted a picture of a file at the other day,
Speaker 1: and I said, I could just post a picture of
Speaker 1: a file at and no matter what, it's going to
Speaker 1: start an argument. The first comment was, first of all,
Speaker 1: that's a speak, right, It's like it's it's it's no
Speaker 1: matter what it is, but it's fun when it's food. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I've always been talking about how if I can use
Speaker 1: food as a mean by which I can bring people
Speaker 1: together so that they realize, hey, you know, maybe we're
Speaker 1: not so different, or we can at least break bread
Speaker 1: literally and figuratively and disagree but still enjoy food together. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know. And if there's a way that that platform
Speaker 1: can parlay into some more formalized content, then I'll try
Speaker 1: and do so. But as you know, selfishly, I'm promoting
Speaker 1: that food is the great unifiers. True. What's what's the
Speaker 1: ultimate goal with you having all these restaurants across across
Speaker 1: the United States? Like, what's the next chapter for you?
Speaker 1: Are you looking down the road at all? Are you
Speaker 1: looking just right now with what's in front of you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's short term for me. Um, you know, I'd love
Speaker 1: to continue growing the restaurants, and I would love to
Speaker 1: be able to continue to create really good jobs where
Speaker 1: people can be respected and paid well. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: where food can be just simple and what it's meant
Speaker 1: to be and not overly intellectualized. A great space, you know.
Speaker 1: I call it the quality of fine dining at the
Speaker 1: cost and convenience of faster food. In all of our restaurants,
Speaker 1: we support a lot of fishermen and sustainable producers, so
Speaker 1: we feel like this is a great means by which
Speaker 1: we can kind of loop in so many different elements
Speaker 1: of society and different communities. But for me, I also
Speaker 1: want to create a nonprofit where we where we have
Speaker 1: restaurants and food trucks that give people second opportunities through food, um,
Speaker 1: whether they're ex cons or you know, juvenile delinquents who
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily have a foundation upon which they could learn
Speaker 1: the basic principles of you know, you know, treating thy
Speaker 1: neighbor well or just you know, sense of urgency. Some
Speaker 1: of these real simple principles that are lost and I
Speaker 1: think that you can find them in the kitchen. And
Speaker 1: that's been something that's been paramount to us as business owners. Anyway,
Speaker 1: and the people that we've brought through our systems who
Speaker 1: have then gone on to do amazing things and to
Speaker 1: just kind of take that a step further, and hey,
Speaker 1: if there's politics in there somewhere along the way, you know,
Speaker 1: so be it not really get canceled. Where do you
Speaker 1: where do you sit in this whole sports world? Like
Speaker 1: do you ever take do you ever take these trucks
Speaker 1: to two venues? Like whether big or small? We've like
Speaker 1: being here in California. One element that we have is
Speaker 1: obviously the professional teams, but we have a boatload of
Speaker 1: minor league teams. So all these all these minor league
Speaker 1: teams for baseball or basketball or hockey or basketball will have, um,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll have like their little vendors that will
Speaker 1: come in and out. They have their beer gardens, things
Speaker 1: of that nature, and they usually have some pretty awesome
Speaker 1: lines of food that are are rolled on out. Like
Speaker 1: do you ever do that for for college? Professional anything
Speaker 1: like that? We need to do more of it. We
Speaker 1: used to have it when they reopened the Ram Stadium
Speaker 1: and it was they were sorry at the Coliseum when
Speaker 1: the Rams were playing there and USC we had a
Speaker 1: container on the concourse slat fish. Um, and that was
Speaker 1: really cool. We loved that. Uh And we've tried to
Speaker 1: get involved in different ways. We just need to keep
Speaker 1: kind of pushing that angle. Yeah. And one of the
Speaker 1: more controversial positions Andrew, that you took on social media
Speaker 1: was the anti pineapple on this one. You took a
Speaker 1: lot of low back on that pineapple. Now, I I
Speaker 1: can go, I don't usually get pineapple my pizza, full disclosure,
Speaker 1: but I have a friend that loves pineapple on pizza. So,
Speaker 1: as a professional in the restaurant industry, what do you
Speaker 1: say to the pro pineapple contingent that are listening to this? Well?
Speaker 1: Number one, UM, order your own individual pie, because when
Speaker 1: you say give it and give it to me half pineapple,
Speaker 1: all you're doing is just urinating pineapple all over the
Speaker 1: entire pizza, which is uh so first and foremost. Um.
Speaker 1: Then Then what I would also say is that the
Speaker 1: pro pineapple crowd, you know, they just kind of need to,
Speaker 1: uh you know, question some of the decisions as they
Speaker 1: make in life. It's that simple. Well, you said, there's
Speaker 1: a was it pineapple drip? What is that? So my
Speaker 1: pizza joint called Big Palm, uh not to be confused
Speaker 1: with big perm or I guess big farmer. Now I um,
Speaker 1: I say no pineapple allowed. Now you can bring your
Speaker 1: own pineapple you want. I don't want to, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be too much of a tyrant.
Speaker 1: But the way in which I have tried to compromise
Speaker 1: with the pro pineapple pizza crowds by creating a hot
Speaker 1: sauce fermenting pineapples and adding chilies to it. And it's
Speaker 1: called our pineapple drip. So you get that wonderful flavor
Speaker 1: of pineapple and the and the spice from a chili. Uh,
Speaker 1: just in the form of a hot sauce on your pizza.
Speaker 1: So it's it's my olive branch to the other side. Nice.
Speaker 1: Now I this the pizza. I'm looking at a bunch
Speaker 1: of photos again, the pizza photos here. So where I'm
Speaker 1: in Soca? We're in Soca. Where is this place? Look?
Speaker 1: I gotta go eat. I gotta go there at some
Speaker 1: point here. Where's your So that isn't tusted Tustin, California? Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Like, uh, that's not you know. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Irvine, so I know that. Yeah right next
Speaker 1: to Irvine. Yeah, yeah, you know where those big flight
Speaker 1: buildings are over by the uh not by the spectrum,
Speaker 1: but they're the old airplane hangars, Yes, the old the
Speaker 1: old Tusting Marine base over there. Yeah, exactly exactly. So
Speaker 1: they redeveloped an area in there, and they put in
Speaker 1: a bunch of offices and then they put in a
Speaker 1: food hall right in the center. It's called the Mets Hall.
Speaker 1: And we've got the pizza joint in there. We've got
Speaker 1: a slap fish in there as well. Nice all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm very familiar with that. In fact, when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, we used to go on the
Speaker 1: the open house at the marine base and we used
Speaker 1: to why I was back in the old days. We
Speaker 1: could walk through the tanks and stuff like the plant.
Speaker 1: They didn't care because it was whatever. But yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I know. It's a great area too. It's wonderful down there. Yeah, definitely, Yeah, Andrew,
Speaker 1: I am looking at all this stuff, I got to
Speaker 1: imagine that, you know, the the restaurant environments are obviously
Speaker 1: all different. Food trucks obviously are assembled indoor outdoor, different
Speaker 1: type of dynamic. But do you ever see yourself venturing
Speaker 1: into like any of these four and five star hotels
Speaker 1: that are in like let's say Vegas, Beverly Hills, New York. Like,
Speaker 1: do you feel like there's a chance for you with
Speaker 1: the food that you do present, that you could be
Speaker 1: a like a disruptor if you will, like you take
Speaker 1: away from all like the fine dining elements and give
Speaker 1: people something a little bit different of a flavor, no
Speaker 1: pun intended. I would absolutely love to. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know there's a certain breed of chef that they're
Speaker 1: looking at to bring in their very high class and
Speaker 1: uh um speaks properly. I don't do that, but maybe
Speaker 1: maybe one day they'll downgrade and bring me in nice.
Speaker 1: And as far as just with the COVID stuff, which
Speaker 1: is still still bouncing around here a lot come back.
Speaker 1: You see it on the news all the time. So
Speaker 1: as a restaurant tour like, what is what's the future
Speaker 1: of the restaurant business? I mean, you know, this COVID
Speaker 1: things will be around for a while and with certain
Speaker 1: parts of the country a lot of restrictions and whatnot.
Speaker 1: What's the future of restaurant design? Your your your thirty
Speaker 1: restaurants you said there, you know, how how are you
Speaker 1: going to handle this? Going forwardhen you open new restaurants,
Speaker 1: is this a factor Do you just say eventually we'll
Speaker 1: get back to normal. Yeah, pick up and delivery is huge.
Speaker 1: I think that that whole system, the delivery system, needs
Speaker 1: to change within the restaurant industry. And it is of course,
Speaker 1: the third party delivery apps right now take so much
Speaker 1: off the check it's just not feasible or financially sustainable
Speaker 1: for most of these restaurants to use um. But I
Speaker 1: think that overall, look that two things have happened. One,
Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of restaurants that didn't make it
Speaker 1: through the first part of the pandemic that have been
Speaker 1: lost and forgotten about. Now that left a ton of
Speaker 1: real estate for people to come in and swoop up
Speaker 1: for pennies on the dollar, and that happened immediately right
Speaker 1: And now those restaurants are facing failure because so many
Speaker 1: people get in thinking oh, it's so cheap, not recognizing
Speaker 1: they're also signing onto the lease and that the financial
Speaker 1: barriers are always going to be there. So you saw
Speaker 1: restaurants go under not open back up. Now you saw
Speaker 1: other independents go in and take their spaces, or you
Speaker 1: saw a lot of these large multi unit chains come
Speaker 1: in and take the spaces and now they're redesigning and
Speaker 1: redeveloping them. I haven't seen it, and this is more anecdotal,
Speaker 1: but I what I what I've heard through a lot
Speaker 1: of larger franchisees is you're seeing massive franchise growth in
Speaker 1: the sense of these bigger you know, your Applebees of
Speaker 1: the world that are taking out a lot of these spaces.
Speaker 1: So I think we're gonna see a bit of a
Speaker 1: customization or or lack thereof, and more of a commercialization
Speaker 1: of restaurants across the landscape. But these ghost kitchens, right,
Speaker 1: that's going to be the future too, are these offsite
Speaker 1: virtual concepts that we're ordering off of our apps. Businesses
Speaker 1: are learning that I don't need to go into a
Speaker 1: three thousand square foot space and pay all this overhead
Speaker 1: and all these entry fees when I can just take
Speaker 1: a little commercial space rented, develop a couple of concepts,
Speaker 1: have two cooks, and then have a delivery driver come
Speaker 1: pick it up. Um with no dining room. Right, that's
Speaker 1: going to be huge, especially in cities. Now the question
Speaker 1: becomes who delivers it and what company is ultimately trying
Speaker 1: and aggregate all of that revenue right now. The door
Speaker 1: dashes of the world are trying to do so, but
Speaker 1: I think there's major opportunity for small players to come
Speaker 1: in and disrupt that space. So, uh, those are a
Speaker 1: few opinions about where it's going. But we can only
Speaker 1: hope that we don't see the lockdowns and the shutdowns
Speaker 1: that we saw in the beginning of the pandemic, because
Speaker 1: if you look at the data, what you'll see is
Speaker 1: that it wasn't the restaurants in the retail that we're
Speaker 1: perpetuating the spread. We were inherently trained to create safe
Speaker 1: and sanitary environments that could take on a lot of
Speaker 1: this these regulations and manage them properly and model the
Speaker 1: right types of behavior through the pandemic. So we could
Speaker 1: kind of have the best of both worlds, right safety
Speaker 1: consideration for others, while simultaneously also allowing our economy to
Speaker 1: do what it does best. Um, so hopefully that's the
Speaker 1: approach if there are going to be subsequent shutdowns. Yeah, absolutely, Andrew.
Speaker 1: Thanking you very informative, big fan, and I am gonna
Speaker 1: know that pizza place your big part in tested. I
Speaker 1: will get there at some point, So thank you, Andrew.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's an honor.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Be sure to catch live editions of
Speaker 1: The Ben Maller Show weekly sit two am Eastern eleven
Speaker 1: pm Pacific, on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app