Andrew Zimmern

And what I mean by that is that we've needed the help of our fellows, and I'm not sure we've gotten that. A percent. We've needed the help of our governments, and I'm not sure we've gotten that. I think we've needed to come together in a way that is quite frankly been because Austin and we we haven't been able to achieve that as a nation. I thought this would

be the kind of thing that would be an automatic. Um, you know, a a public health crisis, global public health crisis, and safety and wellness of our citizenry is government's number one obligation in my opinion. So tired, Uh, sad, I've lost I've lost friends, I've lost loved ones, I've lost businesses, I've lost money, I've lost time. I've lost so many things to this horrific uh pandemic. And UH angry because when I start talking about those first two, it just

makes me really piste off. We we we we could have had this thing. And I mean that in the full expression of the colloquial sense in which I suggested. I mean, we really could have had this thing. Um. I was very publicly outspoken about the I even used the word genocide at one point with the Trump administrations handling of this uh pandemic in our country, although it did have very serious international implications, as we found out later when when tapes of the former president came out. Um.

And I wasn't joking about that. I I you know, we we fumbled the ball, fumbled the ball, fumbled the ball. Uh, then we get a vaccine. Uh. And we're now in a situation with the delta variant where we're we see ourselves going down the exact same path that we did uh in uh you know, a year and a half ago. So UM, Yeah, tired, sad, and angry, Okay, let's break it down to the more micro level. Since the lockdown of March. Where have you been? Have you been still

been in the Minnesota area? Has you traveled at all? Sure? Uh? I did the Bill Mar Show. I think the last weekend before the country shut down. Uh it was either the first uh weekend of March, end of February, beginning of March. I did the Mars show. Uh. There was no one in the audience. They didn't quite know what to do. They were about to go into lockdown. UM. I remember no one being on the streets in Los Angeles.

I remember coming home and was here for uh, you know, going back and forth between my home and my my private office. There was an advantage to having an office that's a huge loft space with uh four different doors uh going into it. It's a it's a one floor uh sort of little mini complex we have for all

of our businesses. So we very quickly you know, masked signs tape on the floor, and three or four business leads and are controller in there every day, uh, trying to make sure that, um, you know, to keep our businesses to float. And you know, we had to downsize and you know, lost some businesses and and lost some

business within the businesses that were open. UM. I've started traveling again in uh early summer, UH because we found a window and the ability to shoot some stuff outside that we could make some episodes of Family Dinner, my show for Magnolia and do it safely, UH, with testing with masks, with all of the precautions that were necessary to take and UH, you know, no one's sick. I'm super proud of the fact that our company we have a spotless record. UM. And and that includes the families

that we worked with. I did one or two day trips to places during the summer. You know, I looked at some real estate and Nashville for a restaurant deal. I did you know, some other stuff like that. UH went out to l A and shot a bright shiny floor you know, game show for another network. UH, and did some stuff like that. UM. And went and visited my kid. You know that my son goes to school outside of the home in another state, and UH I was unable to see him. He was home, I guess

for his last home visit. The beginning of February, right for COVID went went bonkers and they didn't allow kids to leave the facility or parents to pick up their kids for a a local visit until the end of June. And that was the longest I went without seeing my child. UM. And I know some people haven't seen their parents or other family members in in longer. UM. I only have my own experience. Those five months were absolutely brutal. UM. And you know I you know, no vacations, no nothing.

We we shot a couple of things over the last couple of months. Uh. It's been nothing like our my regular travel schedule, that's for sure. Everything's been canceled and UH. And now I'm not so keen on traveling again until I see where this thing is going over the next couple of weeks, and certainly not to the places that we uh you know, typically find very easy uh pickings

for shooting. UM, which is in a lot of states that offer us a lot of flexibility, but also happened to be ones that are exploding with outbreaks of real life cases of the Delta variant and shuttered hospitals and and story numbers. UM. We're in a Minnesota. By the way, I think rates is substantial on the CDC website in terms of UH uh exposure and caseload for the Delta variant. Uh, but we're in the orange, but we're not in the red. Okay,

almost a non sequitur. You said you were on the Bill mar Show, and I watched the show and it's a fun show. Other than literally the experience. Do you find that gives you any benefit? Does it? You know, in the old days viewer on TV, everybody saw you in a world where only a couple of million people might see the number one readed network show. What's that like? Brilliant question. Um, some shows I do because they're fun and I want to do them. Uh. And it has

nothing to do with the exposure. You know. Sometimes people say to me, hey, would you do this show? Do you do that show? You're gonna get a lot of exposure, And I remind people that I have, you know, hundreds of hours of television available on an international streamer. That's you know, available in a hundred and seventy five countries around the world. Um. And I certainly am at that point in my career where I'm not doing things for

for exposure. Um, the Mars Show, you have to remember, timing wise, my MSNBC show What's Eating America had just UH premiered two weeks beforehand, and so I wanted to promote that show to a very like minded audience. UM. I had done the Set Meyers Show, I had done a whole bunch of other uh, you know, marketing and pr stuff around the MSNBC show UH in early February and late January, especially UH with jose Andres, who was

the in the first episode with me. UM. And when I got the invite to do the mar Show as someone who watches it every weekend, it was an automatic. Yes. Bill is very food obsessed and very opinionated about the necessity for human beings to eat clean, healthy food, and he actually wanted to talk about things that other shows would rather not discuss, and I find that fascinating. UM.

And you know, fun these days in my career. If it's not fun, and if it's not with people that I'm really excited about talking to, sitting with, UH, visiting who are who are kind of into talking about ideas the way I am, I'm much less interested. What is the number one publicity vehicle to get your message out? UH? Great? Great,

great question. UM. I would love to be UH doing more in in cable news because as noisy as that is, I know that a lot of people who deal with public policy and and the making of laws are watching those shows. And I believe if I do, if I rant for fifteen minutes in one of my shows on a lifestyle network about UH food policy or about uh you know, aquaculture or other things that I believe are are are vital or the necessity for a foods are a cabinet level position UH and pulling food out of

AGG and and U S d A, f DA, etcetera. UM, I think that the percentage of people who are watching that lifestyle show do not that they want to be entertained by me, and they want me to be teaching them other things. And I believe when I'm doing my work, most notably on MSNBC of late, UM, I believe I have the greatest impact. And that's kind of what I'm

looking to do uh these days. UM. And they are also you know, UH opportunities online in the digital space where you know, a good one minute clip of me UH talking about the something that I'm really impassionate about on certain websites, podcasts, etcetera. I think I have a tremendous opportunity to influence UH outcomes or a greater percentage of a chance to influence outcomes. Okay, there has been a lot of news about the impact of COVID in

lockdowns on restaurants. UH. The latest news prior to this delta variant putting a huge question mark in was the ability to get help. So this is where you have a lot of expertise. What I'm asking you is to what degree have the restaurants and the restaurant industry been affected by this? To what degree can they get out? And what are the economics of a restaurant. I know some people that say, well, you know, they're asked to invest in restaurants in Los Angeles and they get reservations,

but they're not looking to get their money back. Then you have Danny Meyer's got an empire. So what are the economics of the restaurant world? And then square that with both the economics during COVID and especially the help situation. Well, it's it's both those things are true at the same time. It's it's as if you could invest in a a Taylor Swift record and the latest Crosby record at the same time. You know, you're you're you're looking at two

very different things, but both our music. Right. UM, let me let me take a step back and then bring up to this this question of what we're looking at now in terms of pay rate in restaurants, which is

extremely extremely important piece of the puzzle. UM. When COVID went down and restaurants started to shut her, and we saw the writing on the wall, seventeen of us, then forty of us, on a series of emails and phone calls and and skype calls and then zooms over a two week period, co founded a group called the Independent Restaurant Coalition Save Restaurants dot com. Every One can go

there and see everything that we've been up to. UM. Chief among us were some people from very diverse backgrounds. Uh Sam Cass uh incredible chef, but had also been uh former First Lady Michelle Obama's Uh foods are uh, Tom Collichio Jose Andres myself, Uh, the whole slew of

incredible human beings. Um. But several of us, especially people like Tom Jose myself who had been talking for years about raising a hundred thousand dollars at the gala to dump that money into a bucket with two hundred thousand dollar holes at the bottom of it, wasn't doing anything to advance the causes that were so near and dear to us. UH. Tom had started a Food Policy Action Committee a few years beforehand, and for him, politics was

a love language. Jose Andres had founded World Central Kitchen a few years before UH, and for him, UH, it was feeding a hungry planet, especially those in crisis, was his love language. UM I was about educating human beings and and telling stories and changing hearts and minds with that storytelling. With the politics kicker on the end of it, and you know, with along with all the other folks who were involved U with us, we knew that we had to get federal funding for restaurants and we need

to start working on it right away. So the i r C was founded with a very very simple premise protect independent restaurants UH and do so by making sure that we were getting laws passed on Capitol Hill. So first UH we worked to get the p p P. Then we worked to change the p p P. Thanks to UH Republican Chip Roy of Texas and Democrat Dean Phillips of Minnesota who pushed the p p P change legislation. It fixed a Swiss horrible piece of legislation, actually made

it work for some people. And then we went to work with UH Senators uh wicker And and Cinema and Earl Blueman, our Congressman of Oregon, and UH they drafted Earl drafted the Restaurant Relief Act Restaurants Act, excuse me, and the Restaurants Act. We had done a lot of work and invested tons of money on a lot of economic studies to see exactly how much money was needed.

We came up with a figure of a hundred and twenty billion the OMB, a whole bunch of other independent studies I think Mackenzie had done one as well, a bunch of other big accounting firms had done them. Everyone came up with roughly the same number. Cost a hundred twenty billion dollars to save restaurants. But that would be worthwhile because you know, independent restaurants would lose a quarter of a trillion dollars just through the last three quarters

of that year. UM. So it seemed like the easiest thing to do. Let's let's get those restaurants back stopped, UM so that we would have those restaurants to return to whenever UH this thing ended and restaurants could fully open.

That never happened until finally, with some last minute wrangling and thanks to some incredible work from some of our members UH Centator Schumer included or got included twenty five point nine billion dollars into the Restaurant Relief Fund administered by the s b A in the America Cares Act, which was the big tranche that the Biden administration passed

UH earlier this year. Now, the s b A opened and it took applications for UH for these forgivable loans and grants, and they took on eight billion dollars, rounding up from seventy nine points something eighty billion dollars in applications. They only had twenty five point nine billion to give out. UH. So there is a substantial number of people who have applied for this, deserving of it been approved, who were

sitting here waiting for money. So the I r C is desperately trying to get that Restaurant Relief Fund refilled. It is of vital importance. If we don't, we're going to have an economic tragedy of what I fear will be biblical proportions, and here's why, and then we'll get to the cost of doing business with the employees. The independent restaurants, when you pull them on together, pull them all together, are the second largest business in America behind

only behind the US government. UH. It is a trillion and a half dollar industry, represents about five and a half percent of g d P. But it only keep seven percent of the money that flows through it. And of that seven percent, well over half of it is put back into the business buying broken glass, replacing broken glasses, broken dishwashers, stuff like that. So it is an incredible

vital piece of turnaround money economics. UH. And restaurant taxes also go to give municipalities to buy books for schools and paint lines on roads and put new lights on main Street and all that other stuff. Restaurants are also vital to the tourism industry. They're vital to the cultural identity of main street America. UH And most importantly, because

I believe that that everything is about people. When you look at the people that are employed in restaurants, where the number one employer of single moms, number one employer of single dads, number one employer of returning citizens, those coming back from jails and institutions, number one UH first time UH job provider and now most recently the number one last job provider. UM. It is a depending on whose stats you look at, the number one or number

two for immigrants and new arrivals to this country. So you can see this is a very very special population. They're not gonna go leave a restaurant and the next week go to work at Ernst and Young. It's just not how it happens. It is a vital population that needs these jobs. The if you look at the supply chain, all the food and the goods and the booze and

everything else that goes into a restaurant. Uh, the impact on our economy isn't limited just to that trillion and a half dollars and that five percent of g d P. It multiplies by three or four times. Quick little fact, just to to justify my point making UM, seventy five cent of fish and seafood harvest did in America in all our coasts, by all of our fishing industries is sold in restaurants. Right, That's where the majority of people eat their seafood. So just the impact on the American

seafood industry. You're taking away eight When when restaurants were closed, uh, you know, four or five months into COVID, UH, the American fishing industry literally came to a halt. Just to

give you an idea, that's where you saw it. By the way, those tragic pictures on the cover of the New York Times of the zucchini farm in a Maacoli, Florida, or the lettuce uh farm in the Salinas Valley literally tilling under the fruit and vegetables as far as the eye could see because there's no one, no one to pick it, and no place to sell it into, and no one to ship it truck it right. It's is

an incredible, incredible impact on our nation's economy. And when restaurants closed, So when restaurants reopened more vigorously a couple of months ago, and some were getting federal bunnies and some had been able to finatal things with p p P, the vast majority had taken on a ton of debt, everything from people who in a little pizza parlor who had maxed out their credit cards to UH savvy restaurateurs who've been able with their track record to get loans

from banks. Everyone took on a staggering amount of debt, gambling that they were either going to get relief from the government in form of the restaurant refund being top back golf, or they were going to be able to open fully. Now you have to remember even those restaurants that were open fully, and I walked by some in my hometown and was like, Wow, they're doing great business.

But I also knew that they had taken on a year and a half of debt and they missed a year and a half of profit, and to make that up would take five or six years of being full all the time just to get back to zero, just get back to where they were at the end of beginning of One of the things is that UH folks never saw coming with COVID UH was the the human capacity for enduring pain and misery and coming up with

a better solution for their own lives. And I believe that and the low pay and some of the toxic UH issues surrounding the restaurant business are the two biggest reasons that we are struggling to find people to work in restaurants. UM. So many people who were servers, bussers, hosts and hostess bar backs, uh line cooks, dishwashers, simply found a different way to make a living. And as things went on during COVID, they realized, wow, this is this is pretty good for my lifestyle, or or I've

changed what I'm doing. Um, I've found another way to supplement my life. Remember a lot of people in the restaurant industry are lifers. They're they're devoted to restaurants. They're always gonna work in restaurants. They love restaurants. But the vast majority of them are actually they're temporarily their college students moving on to something else. They're actors in New York, their musicians in Nashville, right, Um, they're doing something else

in transitioning. So people found a better and different way. And I believe very very strongly that a lot of people were working in restaurants that we were unbalanced, where there was no vacation pay, there was no health benefits, there was no types of insurance there there there wasn't a professionalized atmosphere within the restaurants they were working in, and they felt that those issues were toxic to their returning that decided to make a career switch. I have

seen now. I was just on a two weeks ago, was on an interview and with Tom Collegio. And the reason I bring him up is that extremely famous chef with you know, a half dozen restaurants around the country, uh, maybe more um and someone who very much uh is at the the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fame and and also skill set, an incredible chef, incredibly talented. Right before we went on, he was telling me that, UM, he was only open I think at

that point Wednesday through Sunday. Uh. And the reason was is, uh, he couldn't find enough staff. And there were some people in this position who actually found that their restaurant in their own lifestyle function better than being open seven days. They were willing to do less money and keep a

little bit themselves and find it easier to manage. I know of a lot of local restaurants here in the Twin Cities, obviously, and I speak to more restaurant owners here in the Twin Cities on a regular basis that I do anywhere else. But we're a big modern metro uh. And by the way, in summertime where people can sit outside, they're all off there. Only there some are open limited hours. They've limited their menus so that they could shrink the number of people on their staff. It is a huge,

uh crisis. The employment crisis and restaurants is very real. UM, I do happen to believe, uh, like uh some other people in my industry, UM that a level setting of hourly and salary employees, a level setting of the tipping mechanisms, a level set, level setting of guests charges. In other words, letting everybody in the restaurant profit equally from this success is of vital, vital, vital importance. Okay, Denny made that. You know, we included the service me then after COVID

got eliminated. Uh, I know him, but very you know a fraction. Have you spoke with him in terms of how that worked before the COVID? Was it working for him? Yeah, well, Danny, I've I've known Danny for twenty five years and I consider him a good friend and uh we do speak and uh he is someone who I consider to be uh one of the brightest, uh smartest business people and human beings I've ever met in the restaurant business or elsewhere. He also is one of the folks. If he's not

the leading light. He's one of the two or three leading lights in our industry. Everyone looks at what Danny does in his businesses um uh and his book Setting the Table is probably the only mandatory piece of reading and the restaurant business that I reckon. When everyone says, what's the one thing I should read, I said, you

read Setting the Table by Danny Meyer. It's the It's the best book about restaurants and hospital so much so that there you know our business leaders who who make it mandatory reading for their C suite people, they're not even in the food business. It's a it's a really brilliant book I recommended for everyone. Danny several years ago, pre covid H, decided to experiment with service charges and

doing away with tipping. He was, like many other things, way ahead of his time, too much, too soon, and without other people doing it in the industry, was very, very confusing to consumers. So Danny went back to tips. Uh. The other issue that restaurants have charged. I'm being completely transparent here is someone who is a partner in several restaurant groups and invest in restaurants himself and talks to a lot of restaurant owners. People had talked about doing

this pre COVID again, because it is very crucial. Restaurants have not been able to charge what food really costs on a plate for many, any many decades. They've been artificially deflating their prod uh, the their what they charged their prices on their menu and trying to make it up at the bar. You've probably heard this colloquially at dinner parties a lot for anyone who's invest in restaurant. Well, we're gonna do at the bar. We're gonna do fifty

percent of revenue from our bar. We're gonna make a bar that happens to serve food and every other version of that and in every because your profit margins are higher and there's less waste than all the rest of that kind of stuff, and you need fewer people to

serve liquor than you do to serve food. Uh. But fascinatingly, um, right before COVID, a lot of restaurateurs were calling me to explore the idea of what it would take to go with a service charge, And in talking to them, the one thing they all had in common was they all believe they would lose a lot of employees, they would have to go to restricted hours for a couple of weeks or a month as they onboarded new employees.

Right as you in board those new employees who have different expectations of dollars, you can then retrain your staff.

That's a huge expense for a restaurant. One of the biggest expenses restaurants have, uh independent restaurants is that is the dollars takes to train and on board a new employee, and the the old employees would leave because a server that was making a good night is now gonna make twenty five and a good night and he's gonna be sharing money with other people and taking less for himself. So those people tend to leave and go to another

restaurant that isn't implementing service charges. So a lot of people shied away from it. COVID put everyone in the same boat. And so now that we're out of COVID, I would say the majority of restaurants that I've been in in the last five six months, uh and that's uh four months that I've been dining out. Uh. The I would say the restaurants that I go to all have a service charge on them. We just in Minnesota today one of our the Twin cities most beloved newcomers.

A and by the way, this place that serves hamburgers uh and ice cream and French fries. That's not a fancy restaurant UH called baby Zito's, just beloved by Minnesota's hot new place. Everyone loves it. Have you had their burger? Have you had their ice cream? Run by incredible young people, really impassion just announced that they're going to a service charge of eighteen percent so that they can share the money with all of their employees and and actually get

the economics of their own business right. And you're seeing this more and more and more. And the reason is, we have to pay our employees better. We have to offer them paid sick leave, we have to offer them some form of insurance that they earn into. We have to professionalize and get those dollars up for these employees because so many of them have been kicked in the

butt by artificially depressed wages. And the reason that restaurants can't pay the same dollars that other businesses do is because they haven't been able to charge what that plate of chicken really costs on the plate. For decades and decades because no one, because the American consumer, and I'm sure you've heard this before from from other thought leaders, is hooked on cheap fast food. And I don't just mean, uh,

you know, the McDonald's of the world. You know, Americans believe that, you know, a red piece of red meat that's eight to twelve ounces should only cost them X number of dollars and come with the giant baked potato and a salad bar. And they're not factoring in what that food really cost to get to the table, what it costs to be planted, picked, trucked, prepped, stored, cooked and served and cleaned up after that plate of food.

Dining in restaurants is a more expensive proposition. As we want this huge moment in American history where food is the new rock right where we've we've never had. There's no culture in America, no culture in the world that has had a more romantic relationship ever with food that America has in the last ten, twelve, fifteen years. But we're not willing to pay for it. And now the swallows have returned to Capistrano, and in the spirit of

tortured metaphors everywhere, it's time to pay the piper. Okay, you mentioned all these household names. Certainly two people paying attention, uh, you know, Tom Collickio Jose Andres. I gotta ask you some of these people, certainly Bobby Flay seems to be on food television seven. To what degree is their camaraderie and to what degree is their competition both? I think it's like any other business. You know, food people are

the best people in the whole world. I really truly believe that I'd rather be with food people than any other human beings on planet Earth. If I'm with uh, food people who are recovering addicts and alcoholics as well, that to me is the the apex of human being. But I have a lot of personal bias there. Um. You know, there is a ton of mutual respect to some people not like each other. Of course, it's just

like anywhere else. Um, But there's a ton of respect because you have to work really hard, uh to get to a place of achievement uh in the food world, and it's even harder to stay there. I think people unfairly criticized people like Bobby Flay. I'll just use him as as an example. I've heard things from friends of mine like, well, he can't really be a good cookies on TV. He's actually one of the most phenomenal chefs cooks.

When he actually touches food, he's he's an incredible, incredible craftsperson. Same thing with Tom Callikio. There's a whole generation of people who only think of Callikio as someone who turns to Podma when she's ready to tell folks to pack their knives and go home. It's one of the greatest chefs of his generation. Um. These are people who I believe thirty years from now will still be talked about

for their cuisine at the same time that camaraderie. Uh. You know, there's only so many TV stations they're willing to put people on. There's only so many customers, there's only so many fannies to go in so many seats. There's only so many hotels that will give a chef a deal and take their one or two units and turn it into ten. Um. So obviously there's a lot of healthy competition. UM. I don't think there's any competition for people like Jose andres Uh. Josiandre's is uh to

me uh in rarefied air. Um. Not only is he one of the handful I'm talking about Top thirty forty best chefs in the world, Top fifty for sure. I don't get an argument from from anyone. His skill set is legendary. Um, we're talking three star Michelin. But can also put together a sandwich on his vegetarian food truck Tomato as well as anyone. Um. But he's also created a a a global UH network for help with his

nonprofit World Central Kitchen. That I mean he was. He was one of the three finalists for a Nobel Peace Prize this year. For gosh sakes, first time a chef has ever been a finalist for a Nobel Peace Prize. And I hope people understand because of the unique aspects

and talent sets that this community of culinarians has. It's why I really want to see UH, someone with a food background become our first foods are And I really hope before his time as president ends, whether that's one or two terms, UH, that our current president UH adds a cabinet level position UH to deal with food in America because it is that big an issue. It touches everything. You know, we're in a state of permanent climate emergency.

We're in a permanent state of hunger and waste emergency in this country, all related to food. The immigration issues in America, the largest number of illegal immigrants work in the food business, and and the legal migrants come in on visa programs that are managed by a group that doesn't understand food. And so consequently, I believe that all those things, lumped together, as well as a dozen other issues we can talk about, make it a requirement that

we established a cabinet level secretary position around food. Okay, that foods are you talk about all these issues of production, et cetera. How about something that's been bandied about a lot in terms of consumption. You're old enough to remember in the Reagan era when it's school lunches, catch up was considered a vegetable. So the issue of what people are consuming, these big multinationals, they literally we have people creating what is commonly referred to as junk food to

be addictive. Okay, so on some level you can't even blame the consumer. Can this be turned around? Can of foods are do something? Or is it's just too late? No, it's not well for the for a national school lunch program, it's not too late. In fact, we're seeing it. I think we're up to uh fourteen states now that have taken it upon themselves to pass legislation UH requiring all schools to provide food free of charge to students. And that's the first step. What I'm insisting on is a

two step process. I would like food two or three meals a day uh to be because it's the place to feed kids. Well, let's let's back up one second. We have a hunger crisis in America. We had it beaten down to of human beings that were food insecure, which I think is a bullshit piece of terminology. I think it's too areadite. It's called hunger of Americans were hungry, they didn't know where their next day's meals were coming from. COVID dropped another fifty of human beings below the poverty line,

So now many of those are hungry. I believe we're backup. Statistics say twenty uh to I think realistically the number is more like thirty uh. But even those that are eating are not eating well. To your point, they're buying their food at dollar general stores. We profiled all these stories in my MSNBC show What's eating America. I could cite you chapter and verse on the explosion of these dollar general stores that do not sell fresh fruit, fresh vegetables,

produced fruit, meats, etcetera. Uh, they sell process food. It's it's like a a cheap dollar store version of the center of the super market is supposed the perimeter where all the fresh food is for kids. I think it's it's I mean, look, hungry children in America are no longer a national embarrassment or a shameful piece of our current situation. I believe it's a criminal situation. Hungry children in the richest, most successful country in the history of civilization,

to me, is a criminal act. To keep children hungry as a criminal act. The solutions are widely available. We have the skill in this country to fix the problem. We do not have the political will currently to fix this problem. And this is not red or blue, or left or right. This has been an issue like the immigration reform that is so desperately needed, that has been

kicked down the road. Uh, you know, like an old tin can for thirty five or forty years, going back as you so, you know the reaganeer, a ketchup is a vegetable, right, so what do we have to do. We have to makes school lunch free for everyone. We have to start cooking again in schools. You and I

are of the same generation. When I was young and was in school, there were lunch ladies and they actually had tilt skillets and giants saw tape, and they actually made food, uh and it and and it came from There were boxes with heads of lettuce that were cut up that went into a salad bar. And you know that that Salsbury steak sometimes tasted like a hockey puck, but it was made with fresh meat and real ingredients

and what we call whole foods. Right, they weren't empty calories. Now, even in public schools that are offering free lunch, so much of the food that's being uh served there are empty calories. And because the laws in this country say that kids have to have a certain number of calories, the easiest way to make the number up if you're putting healthy food, fruits, vegetable salads, lean meats on a tray.

The way that these schools get around so laws is stick a caramel roll onto the corner of the tray and you've you've got your caloric intake number. We're poisoning our children. Kids who don't eat well in school are tired, they don't get good grades, their outcomes are are less successful. This is statistics that I mean. You know, it's very easy to access from the biggest and most reliable UH institutions in the country. The pew UH Foundation does incredible

research UH in this regard um it is. It is horrific. And I will add this to that. Anywhere I've I've been screaming this from the mountaintop for twenty years. Any place that the public dollar intersects with food, we are under serving the people that need the hug that good food h gives. Public hospitals, public senior centers, public schools,

UH jails, institutions. These people need good, healthy food to help them recover, live respectfully, get better outcomes in the cases of kids, lower recidivism rates, the cases of people who are incarcerated. The warm hug that food gives. That's talked about in the center fold of those food magazines where there's like that ten million dollar house in Nantucket and all the wonderful red, white and blue pley, the golden retriever, you know, roving around and piles of lobster

and clams. That's a fantasy. That is for the one tenth of the one percent we have of the population in this country that need the hug and the nutrition that good food gets, and we we have the ability to give it to them. We just don't have the

political will right now to make that a reality. And that's why I'm working so hard to make that a reality by trying to talk to politicians, tell these stories, you know, my MSNBC series What's Eating America out there and talking about this on shows like yours, because it's vitally important for people to understand that, you know, as the late great center of Paul Wellstone, my political mentor here in Minnesota, used to say, we all win when we all win, and if we want, if we want

to fulfill the promise of this great nation, we have to start feeding people properly. We just have to to not do so is is criminal dereliction. Okay, But one thing we know is it's expensive to eat healthy. So it's easy. It's cheaper to eat at rallies than to make a fresh meal at home. And in an addition, if you it takes time. Okay, In addition, if you're Oprah and you have a private chef, it's amazing what they can make taste good, but we also know their

costs involved. Is there any way to make healthy food more economically available to people who are challenged financially? Of course there is, and there's tremendous their tremendous programs out there in the school lunch front. Uh, you know, challenged with that same problem. Hey, there's no way for a dollar seventy nine a meal, you know, or whatever it is that the public schools at Can you make a healthy,

nutritious meal for kids that they'll eat well. Chef Dan Jiusti, who was the Chef de cuisine at Noma when it was America the world's number one restaurant, started a group called Brigade B R I G A I d UH in the UH Northeast. He's based, I believe, out of Connecticut, UM and his company is now working with public schools I think in three or four states and has proved that you can by buying smart and preparing fresh, uh, you can do it and still meet the economic requirements.

It does require extra investment from the government, but what better use of our funds? And I don't want to use the old cliche, uh, you know, let's have more bake sales and fewer aircraft carriers. But that cliche was true for a reason. I think we do overspend in a lot of areas that we don't need to overspend in.

Where just a few hundred billion dollars a year, and I know that's a big amount of money, but when you compare it to some of the costs of things we're wasting so much money on, becomes a drop in the bucket. And I also will say this, Bob, that we have skewed the food system in this country to reward the farm to freighter agricultural community. Giant agribusinesses that grow seed corn and soybeans and cotton and all the rest of that are the ones that get what are

now insurance incentitives, incentives that are also called subsidies. Right. It's it's just transferred over into crop insurance and stuff. They're able to farm ten thousand acres with just five to ten employees because they're driving these giant behemoth machines that plant and picked the food food fit for human consumption. All of it has been legally labeled. This is why we needed. Foods are has been legally labeled a specialty crop so they can't get crop insurance right. And yes,

in a sense it is especially great. It has to be picked by You can't a machine can't pick a tomato or a great has to be picked by hand. Let us has to be picked by hand. Payers have to be picked by hand. But if we could invest in food, what better thing to invest in then feeding Americans. It is the to me, it is a no brainer.

That's where we should be investing. And if we invested federal moneys and subsidized farmers who were raising food for human consumption to the same degree that we're allowing insurance subsidies for these farms to freighter economy farmers, uh, the system would literally self correct all by itself. If we invest in real nutritious food. We've just done the opposite. You know, we all know we've heard that that point. It's true. Seventy of the food in America is produced

by the same seven companies. We're destroying our biospheres with these giant agri businesses. All of the runoff from those farms and those chicken uh, giant chicken farms and feed lots where the cows are standing in their own filth goes into our water system. We never had algae blooms to the degree that we do now. Uh, stifling algae blooms that kill off huge swaths of our coastal fishing zone. UM.

Until we started interesting these chemicals into the waters. We can literally trace them from the Gulf into farms in the giant agri businesses in the Midwest. Because all of that filth is going into the rivers like the Mississippi and dumping into the Gulf. We need someone with common sense ruling the roost. Here. Foods are for the wind. From time immemorial, there's been the image of the tyrant, abusive chef. All of a sudden seen comes along. We have the me too era Mario Batali, let's use the

word was outed. What is really going on? And will progress be made? Has progress been made? An amazing amount of progress has been made, and it requires a lot more progress. That toxic environment that I talked about before, the part that relates to this question is often referred

to as toxic masculinity and restaurants. UM. You know, the the majority of chefs in America for generations have been uh you know, old white men, and they have been allowed uh societally, culturally, uh to create environments that are uh unfair, uh in many ways, illegal in many ways, and toxic in many ways. UM. Let's start with pay structure.

It's it's ridiculous that the you know, a active man or woman at twenty something up at the front of the host and makes thirty dollars an hour and a dish dishwasher makes eight nine or ten and worse, eight nine or ten under the table with no benefits. UM, that's ridiculous the amount of uh. And this is something that has been a problem in our industry for a long time, and I think it's unfair when people say that,

uh it's no longer a problem. It's a problem. Alcohol, drugs and mental health issues in the restaurant community is at a number that is, depending on who study you look at, uh six seven percent higher than it is in the in the rest of our population. UM. I'm working with an organization out of Atlanta called the Giving Kitchen UH working on their alcoholism and addiction programs as they roll out these programs into other states to try to help people because the restaurants have done a really

lousy job of doing it. If you work at you know, uh, the company down the road and you're having mental health issues, rugger alcoholism problems, you can actually get your company to help you with the HR department will help you access treatment, etcetera.

It's one of those places that restaurants, despite being a trillion and a half dollar industry, are hundreds of thousands, six hundred seventy, six hundred and eighty thousand, to be exact, uh, independent, little micro businesses, some of them very small, couple hundred grand a year little mom and pop Delhi on a tiny little town on Main Street, or that twenty million dollar a year restaurants in New York City or Los Angeles that everyone is dying to get into, and everything

in between. We need to service our employees better, We need to take better care of them, and we need to understand that the byproducts of decades of decades and decades, and in this country four hundred and two years of white privilege has created toxic levels of intolerance in many businesses all across America, and restaurants are no exception to this rule. Um, but restaurants can fix themselves faster than big corporations, and what we've seen is incredible leaders uh

in all states. I mean I could start naming names and and never stop. We don't have time to list them. All of people who have created open source playbooks for retraining employees, for managing restaurants, for instituting profit sharing and coop based revenue systems, who have figured out ways to to pay people better than a living wage, uh, so that people don't have to have two or three jobs to uh, you know, put a roof over their family's head and feed them uh and pay for the basic necessities.

And still doing it in the restaurant industry, I think one of the silver linings. And I hate talking about this topic. I almost feel guilty, and I know I'm

gonna get a lot of letters about it. The fact of the matter is is that while COVID has kneecapped our industry and has destroyed, you know, put thirty percent of it out of business, and maybe more now with this explosion of the delta variant, the one saving grace, uh is that I think twenty years from now, when we have the numbers and we're gonna be able to look back and realize that it was in knock on Wood.

Things don't get too much worse that we literally shifted from doing business and restaurants one way to a variety of other business models that actually worked better, were fairer for everyone, and didn't just reward the few, but instead rewarded the all. And I don't mean that in the commonly when whenever I talked about these people immediately start screaming socialist at me. Couldn't be further from the truth. I am very much a capitalist. Uh I believe in capitalism.

I actually believe as an entrepreneur that that small business and big business can actually save uh culture can save this country uh In for many different reasons, UM, but I very much of the capitalist. I just believe that we have used the wrong economics and the wrong revenue system in restaurants and been benefiting the onlys. And I

think that the I think that's time. That time has come, and I think smart and savvy operators have realized they can actually be more successful in uh In using more varieties of business models, keeping the cash register ringing, not just in lunch and dinner, uh using bonuses and incentives and and yes even co op models, and yes, even

paying their employees more Uh. Michael Thestoria Um owns a a booming franchise, one of the one of the most popular pizza franchises in America and one of the fastest growing, by the way, called and Pizza. Uh. People can look him up Michael Historian his companies and Pizza. I think he's got forty locations around the northeastern United States something

like that, and growing very quickly. Um. He's paying people what everyone else considers an exorbitant rate and is one of the most outspoken proponents of taking care of your own people first, which, by the way, is a Danny Meyer idea. Danny Meyer was the one thirty years ago who said the customer is not the most important person in the restaurant. The most important person in the restaurant are the employees. If you don't take care of your own people, then you have nothing to offer someone who

walks in the door when you're open. And I believe those principles are very very important. Okay, Earlier you mentioned that given a choice, you'd like to hang with restaurant employees in those in recovery. What is special about those in the recovery? Is it just a shared experience, or do you learn something that those who have not been through the process don't have uh the latter um, And by the way, I should expand that, I was saying

that with a with a smile and a wink. UM. I like hanging out with people who have been through some heavy ship. I like hanging out with people who have been forced to make some changes, have either had a phoenix like experience rising from the ashes, had the Joseph Campbell Hero's journey, and he was talking about, you know,

the odisious of of ancient Greek mythology. Tested kept away from home for thirty years until finally returning to his beloved athens um and that was the way that he became spiritually fit and closer in understanding to what made him happy. UM. I believe that people who have uh not been tested in life, who have not faced uh at because I think we all do at some point incredible challenges UM, don't become the fullest versions of themselves. And I really love being I think food people are

most generous people in the whole world. I mean one reason while our industry has been kneecapped for the last nineteen twenty months. I mean literally kneecapped. Who are what are we doing? We're just borrowing money from banks to feed first responders. I mean, you know, food people are still cooking for other people and we can't we can't help it. We This is how we believe in serving

our communities. UM. And I believe people in recovery once they've established a a a firm handle on their own sobriety from whatever they're recovering from whatever there is um is UM. I think those people who are doing the real work to change themselves are some of the most

inspirational people in the whole world. UM. I wish uh that uh someone who look like Santa Claus but without a hat, parted the clouds and whispered the the truth of life, the answer to all the questions that I have about you know, how to be happy, joyous and free. I wish that that that happened to me, but it never has. Where I've heard and learned from people is from folks who have been through the same challenges in life that I face or will face. UM, who share

their experience, strength and hope with me. And when they do that, I believe that's actually my higher power talking to me. Without getting to out there. I hear the answers all the time from other human beings. That's who That's where I get my spiritual strength from. Uh. Is not from Santa Claus in the sky, but from other human beings. Okay, how does a nice Jewish boy from New York City like you who goes to you know, high level institutions like Dalton and end up in the

food world? Oh? Boy, I knew when I was four years old. I think those other detours were I was very lucky that my parents had me in those places because I I received an education that allowed me to read, write, and think critically, um, and have some heightened level of intellectual curiosity and really be tested at school and enjoy it um and uh. But all along my parents were also traveling with me all around the world, cooking with me. My mother was an incredible cook, my father was an

incredible cook. They both loved to travel. UH. We ate to travel and travel to eight. I've been around the world two or three times by the time I was fifteen years old. Um, what did you My dad was in the advertising business, and at one point his domestic agency decided they were going to go international and so they had to take a bunch of executives and actually be out on the road for years and years and years establishing these outside agencies. First by uh what's now

called acquisition, right. You acquire an agency in London or France, or Rome or Paris or Rome, uh, and then you stock it with some people to establish your own culture. And then you send your c suite executives over there on a regular basis to be checking up on things. You know, there was you know, this is the sixties and seventies, by the way. Um. And so my father would you know, he'd have to go to Paris for three or four days because there was an issue over there.

And if I was staying with him my parents were divorced, I would go. There was no nanny or babysitter. And my father believed that me going away with him was learning as much as I would anywhere else. Uh. The very progressive Dalton school that I was in h agreed. And so I would find myself at age nine sitting

in a little seafood restaurant in LaSalle in Paris. The old the old fishing docks and and the just a place where there was danger, where there was you know old, you know, dirty music on the jukebox, where the lights were low, where there was a baseball bat and a gun behind the bar that had been used. But the

food was incredible. And we're sitting there eating these tiny little big ornio, these steamed periwinkles, these little tiny blue snails because my father's counterpart, who ran the French agency, Jacques Lange, loved drinking pastie and eating uh, these big orno and then having a saute piece of fish for dinner. And my father loved it too. And I just sat there reading my book while they talked business, and it was it was life changing for me. I was hooked.

I want it to be a part of that mystique and that that that or I loved everything about the food business. And then when I was the summer I turned fourteen, I asked my dad for that the spring before I turned four. You're the only you're the only kid or the other only child, only child, but my my father, I'm a July baby. So in you know, April of that year, I went to my dad and said, hey, summer's coming up. I kind of like an allowance raise, and you know, I think I was getting whatever seventy

five cents. I'd like a buck And my dad looked at me and he said, what do you mean? And I said, you know, allow, it's a little a little something something for me. Now. My father, greatest generation, lied about his age, went into the Navy, you know, it was in the Pacific for three years, came back, helped build a big company. Um didn't take any crap from anybody.

He was a legendary figure in the ad agency world of the fifties, sixties and seventies, and and you know, he was the He was one of those people who had gravitational pull around them. Everyone loved my father, UM, and you know that that everything slanted towards him when he walked into the room. I'm a pale version of my dad, much paler. And my father looked at me and laughed and told me to to get out of his room. I mean literally chase ma. And I was like,

what what did I do? And the next day he explained, my dad loved to make me sleep on stuff. And the next day he explained to me that I was going to turn fourteen, allowance was over time to get a job. M That irked me for a while, but I immediately countered with great, I want to work at the Quiet Clam, which was a seafood restaurant that some family friends owned on the Montauk Highway in East Hampton. This is nineteen and uh, my father said, you can't

work in a restaurant. How are you can't bike there? It's too far. I said, I'll get someone to drive me. I'll find I'll get a lift. He goes, well, Maggie and Irene haven't even offered you the job yet. I said, I'll go ask them. And thus became the process, a month long of negotiating with my parents to work at this seafood restaurant, which I did, and I had a natural ability for it. I cooked with my mother for you know, a decade. Um, I'd forged. We didn't call

it foraging. Uh we we we gather food. We'd rake for clams at Barnes Landing. We'd surfcast for striped bass. We uh you know, go crabbing in the ponds beyond the Georgia Coad Breakwater. Um, we would go ealing in three mile Harbor. I mean, you know, my father loved to collect food and throw it on the grill at the beach or whatever. We pull muscles up from in between the rocks on the jetties. Uh. And my mother had a huge garden at our home, and so I'd been food for so I knew how to chop a tomato.

I knew how to shock a clam. I knew how to grill a piece of meat. And I also had a natural aptitude for it. And so I became pretty successful throughout my high school years cooking at this restaurant. Went away to college because my father believed I needed to go to a good college, uh and studying art history and history. For a while, I thought I was going to teach art history. Um, there's a lot of similarities that art history has uh with with food. You know,

you look at a painting. I remember Madam Karetsky in the in the first day of the first class of you know, Renaissance painting, put a put a painting by a Dutch master up on a wall from from the Northern Renaissance era. UM. And you know, it was a woman and she's standing in front of a window, and there's a table and a dog and a bowl of fruit on the you know, and that's really all you can see. And she asked everyone to write down everything you see in that painting. So everyone did. It wound

up being, you know, fifteen twenty nuns. And then she spent the rest of the forty five minutes after calling on a few students, just to verify that no one could actually look at this painting the way she could. And she then spent forty five minutes explaining what she saw. Uh, there were pineapples. They don't grow in the fruit ball, they don't grow in holland that met the family was wealthy. Through the window you could see boats. That was probably there's.

They were traders based on the dress, the material, the jewelry she had. And so she told this story of you know, of of you know coastal uh the coastal Netherlands, um, you know, in the fifteen hundreds in a way that was like Sherlock Holmes to me. I mean, how did she deduce this? I was staggered, and so I fell in love with our history. Had always studied history. I'm a double major, you know, got a essentially a degree

in both. And I realized one day when I was staring at a bowl of china fina a jungle market in nicaraguach. I'm fine as a stew made of inners guts of the animals. It's you know, couching, a povera, the food of the poor, right, and it's it was made in big ten gallon barrels and all the workers and the people who finally got off work at ten o'clock at night after starting at seven in the morning.

By the way, I would come by and for a few uh you know, shekels be able to have a big bowl of this incredibly nutritious food, but one made with parts that other people overlooked. And I looked at my bowl. It was probably the third or fourth season of Bizarre Foods and I and I just started talking about what this bowl of food looked like to me. And I didn't see, you know, intestines and livers and hearts and lungs um and onions and hot chilies, uh

and and coconut milk. I saw, you know, families and the struggle to put food on the table and not being able to afford anything else, and raising animals and keeping the the innards to yourself when you had to harvest them and sell them, uh so that you could, you know, buy some school books for your kid. And I started to talk about Nicaraguan culture in you know, fourteen uh, the same way that Madam Koretsky talked about you know, Northern European culture in fifteen sixty eight, and

I realized that it was the exact same thing. You have to look at something and get a snapshot of history. It's actually what drew me. And I'm not blowing smoke where I shouldn't. We've just met, but in full transparency, we have been emailing each other back and forth several times over the last couple of years. It's one of the things that I loved about your newsletters that I'm

addicted to because you you do the same thing. You draw inferences and are able to illuminate parts of our contemporary culture or do comparative cultural studies to the way things may have been thirty or forty years ago to the way they are now in talking about music, and I feel that I do the same thing, uh in with food. Maybe I'm also a paler version of you, although I am an art history major too. Are you really absolutely, oh my gosh, fantastic, But making it about you,

You're in college, you know, the next period of your life. Hey, are you working in restaurants? Be? Does that make it separate? You separate from the people? Advass or see you graduate? How do you get into the industry? And how do you fall off the edge with alcohol and drugs, etcetera. So that period, I was already a daily cocaine user

and a a chipper, a weekend heroin user. By the time I graduated college high school in the nineteen seventy nine, I mean pillows every day, smoking weed every day, doing coke every day. Weekends are for uh, we're for sniffing heroin. And I had fallen in love with hallucinogenic mushrooms and so two or three times a week I'm eating those. I'm a true New York City garbage head. Um. It

was impossible to uh maintain the focus on my school work. Impossible. Um. After my first Tuesday after my freshman year in college, I was asked to take a mandatory semester off. UM. So the summer of nineteen eighty I went to Italy and I worked for nine months uh in a restaurant. Lie.

I worked for four months in a restaurant in Venice during their peak time, UH called a La Columba restaurants that's still there, uh, right around the corner from the tavernas La Finch uh stone's throw from Saint Mark's Place. And I worked there for four or four and a half months, UM, and then I went to Paris and worked for at Last Center at a restaurant called Larca Strata uh, in the same building that now houses are Peg another very famous three star Michelin restaurant. A Larca

Strata had three Michelin stars. At the time, there was no Italian How did you get these gigs? Well, those were the days. This is fascinating. I mean you talk about a time shift. Those were the days when if you were an American culinarian, uh, you could knock on the back door of a fancy restaurant and asked to work there, And if you were smart, you just said, I'll work for free, knowing that if you're good, they'll

wind up paying you something. But at least they'll let you sleep on the banquets at night, or they have a place where people can sleep. I remember at one point at Alla Columba, I was sleeping in in literally an attic of a of a farm. There were cows living below me. And I was up in the attic. It was the best living. I slept like a baby

every single night, probably because I was so exhausted. Uh But but then the chef would pick me up in the morning and we'd walk to the vegetable market and the rialto seafood market, and we pick up all the stuff for the restaurants. And I learned about ingredients because I was the guy carrying the chef's stuff and wheeling it on this two wheeler through the cobblestone streets of Venice, because I was the lowest guy in the totem pole. But as that uh well about to term nineteen year old, um,

I was learning about ingredients I've never seen before in America. Right, I'd never seen a razor clams as thin as a pencil. I never knew to open them. You dip the end in a little pile of salt that you keep in a cup in your station, and they sort of open up for a second. You can run your finger through and not damage the raw razor clam, still keep them alive and remove them from the shell. I didn't know there were eight types of trevisa lettuce that we commonly

call ridicio in this country. Um and that the tight head of ridicilo that we eat in this country was unknown to Italy. We actually genetically engineered it to the whole and tight use Americans like stuff where you get a lot of weight for your money, right, um. And so I learned all this stuff in this restaurant. Then I went to Paris to stand knocked on a door. So in those days, this is the late seventies, early eighties,

you could actually do that. I was talking to Thomas Keller, one of the deans of American cooking and you know, arguably the most important chef of the last fifty years in America. Um and and again someone for whom he will still be in the books a hundred years from now. Um. And I asked him about stagiers and interns from cooking schools. I said, how many applications do you get a year

two stage and intern in your restaurants? Because if you could work for three or four months in a Thomas Keller restaurant, it gets you a much better, more plumb position at the next place that you move on to and it and it gives you connections to some of the best culinarians in the world. And uh, he said, well, we stopped counting fifteen years ago when we hit ten thousand applications a year. So that just shows you how

popular food is. I went to the Culinary Institute of America at one point because I thought I should go to cooking school. And I didn't have a great experience there on the on the day that I was I was there, Um, I already knew a lot, had been cooking a lot, and and the CIA was you know that there was no waiting list. I think now there's like a five year winning list to get into the c I A. I mean, it's just it's it's an incredible, incredible explosion in the food business in America on every

single front. Um, when I was cooking and coming up, and I think it was a good thing, because I may have abandoned the thing I love more than anything in the whole world if it had been more difficult for me. Um, I was such a horrific drug addict

and alcoholic. I somehow and by the way, alcoholism at the level that I was, uh suffering from the disease is oftentimes exemplified by you know, gross irresponsibility and gross responsibility at the same time, right, So I would show up for work and kick ass and make myself literally indispensable, right, I mean literally indispensable. Um. And then I would just disappear on a bender for three days, or steal a hundred dollars from the till, or take two bottles of vodka.

And folks in the food business and the restaurants that I was working in, and by the way, some very good ones put up with this because I was the only guy that could put out two d orders of risotto on a Saturday night in three hours on only four burners. Um. I remember one restaurant I was in hearing a discussion between the general manager and the owner. The owner saying, you have to fire this guy, the general manager saying to him, who's gonna do two hundred

egg dishes on Sunday brunch? We don't have anyone to do that. So I the general manager, saying, I don't care that he steals bucks worth of booze from every weekend. You know, is he an addict? Sure? Is he you know, a reprehensible mess? Sure? Is he an alcoholic? Absolutely? Is he a thief? For sure? But we know what he's doing and he can cook the gosh darn eggs um and eventually my food career. I cooked in some really great places and made quite a good name for myself

in New York. Then the wheels came off and I became a homeless mess. I wound up trying to kill myself in a flop house hotel in January, uh, in New York City. Some friends found me, and a few days later I woke up and I was in a hospital attached to what is now Hazel and Betty Ford. You say you tried to kill yourself, A little bit slower. You were in such a bad place. Was his heroine? You're in the floor. Give me a little more detail, a little more fot I kicked. I kicked hard drugs

three years before I went homeless. Um. In negotiation with my friends, my girlfriend, my parents, Oh, the problem is hard drugs. I'll get rid of those, right. The problem wasn't hard drugs. The problem was me. The problem was I couldn't handle taking anything that affected me from the neck up. Uh. But the drugs and alcohol are just a symptom. I I had a life problem. I had a responsibility problem. I had a spiritual illness. I was I was soul sick. I was I was incapable of

living life on life's terms. I I I I didn't need to be rehabilitated. I needed to be hubilitated. I didn't have any of it. So um, little by little, I gave up everything, and then eventually I just got you know, I went from that phase. It's it's a

very unique thing for alcoholics and drug addicts. You you you're in a phase where you tell people, when confronted with the truth, you know, by by people who love you, Hey, I love you, You're my best friend, You're you're you're a mess, and you've done X, Y and Z, and you got fired from your job, and your wife is leaving you, and the dog won't talk to you, and you you're you've got no money in the bank account.

And the police said all this stuff is you have all these horrific things that have happened to you, your consequences, and you sit there and and you deny it. Oh, oh, well here's why, and that's not really the case. And well I wasn't really arrested. And she I really don't want to have that relationship with her, So I'm happy she's out of my life. And you just make every

excuse in the book. And I went from that place about four years before I sobered up, to a place where if you confronted me with those things, I told you to go screw yourself and get out of my way. I didn't care. I didn't care that I was that way. And then eventually you get a case of what in recovery we call the buckets, where you're just like, you don't care. Fuck it. And at that point I did lower and lower and lower and lower, and crossed lines

and barriers, uh that I never thought. I never thought I would I would cross. I never thought I would become a petty, petty criminal. That wasn't when when I was ten fifteen years old, that wasn't in my Hey, someday, I want to be so desperate that I'm gonna stand in the freezing cold outside of nightclubs in New York that I know, and when a drunk business guy in an expensive custom suit, because I could recognize one right

go stumbling by. If he's not with any other friends, I'm gonna follow him, push him into the alley, grab his wallet, and run, or I'm gonna steal purses off the backs of restaurant chairs on a summer's day and Madison Avenue, run to the wall at Central Park, vaulted and head down to Alphabet City and sell the credit cards and passport and get some cash to to get high with. I never thought I was going to be that person. I never thought I would be the person

whose parents would think they were dead. And I knew they thought that I was. It wasn't around, but didn't care. I'd rather just keep drinking and drugging endlessly. Wake up and use pass out, wake up and use pass out. UM. Eventually I got UH evicted from my There is a Sheriff of New York by the way. This was are a sheriff of Los Angeles, UM the UH. Shockingly, the Sheriff of New York UM knocked on my door one day with an eviction notice, and I wound up going

down to the bar. I had no one to call for help. There was there was not a single human being whose number I could call. There was not a single human being who would take my call. UM. I had burned every bridge, and so I went down to the bar where I drank. This is by the way around the corner from the port authority a shot and beer bar that is the last stop on the on the subway for uh many people. Most of the regular customers in there just died of alcoholism, were wound up

in institutions. And um, I would drink with these people till four or five in the morning. Then they closed the place for half an hour, spray it down, and then let you back in. And I went down there and this this old drunk named a J. I can see him. I've never forgotten what he looked like that night. He didn't have all his teeth, he had a big beard, glasses. He was the loudmouth guy, but he was kind of like the ringleader, was the cock of the walk in that bar. And he's like, what's up? And I was

just like God evicted. And he said, sleep with us tonight. And I said, where are you sleeping? He goes, we have an abandoned building down on Sullivan Street that were squatting, and uh, I said, okay, I had a by the way that I had a duffel bag of dirty clothes with me, and so I spent eleven months of my life sleeping on that pile of dirty clothes in an

abandoned building on Sullivan Street. Uh, cement casements in the windows. Um. It was when I look back on it, it was awful, and to me it was completely okay at the time. I used to steal a bottle of comic cleanser, uh every couple of days at the bodega down the street. Uh, you know, put some comic cleanser in your jacket pocket by a pack of smokes kind of thing, and then sprinkle a circle of comic cleanser around, uh my pile of dirty clothes so the rats and roaches wouldn't crawl

over me when I passed out. Um. And eventually one day I woke up there and I just realized there's winners and losers in this world. Will Actually, right after New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, I woke up there and I just thought, I've I'm irredeemable and I'm hopeless.

This is I literally should just end it all. I was in so much pain getting up every morning that hitting the bottle even you know, chugging at it, and you know, you know, like I said, I kicked the hard drugs, but I was still drinking booze and smoking with and drinking. By the way, a lot, a lot large volumes of alcohol. I was very turned out. It

was very sick. I found out when I got to the hospital unit at Hazelden I needed to be there for four or five days and said the usual one or two because they were very concerned about my body giving out, UM, my organs, my my liver and kidney's most importantly. UH. And I just decided that I was I was gonna end it all. And I stole some jewelry from my godmother and I went in and I hocked it in New Jersey. By the way, huge mistake.

Never steal something in one town, cross the state lines and hocket another and leave a paper trail with your

name on it. UH. That's very typical alcoholic behavior. I wound up facing that charge when I was two years sober in Minnesota, UH, and pled guilty to it because I did it, and recovery had taught me to answer for the stuff that I did, and I was facing a couple of years in the workhouse at at best, and I wound up getting an action in contemplation of dismissal because of the service work that I had done.

Thanks to the loving community here in Minnesota, that got me. Well, um, but when when I went to kill myself and I well, I took this money that I from the jewelry at Hawks, and I went to the San Pedro Hotel and I just bought a ton of vodka and just went into this hotel and just started chugging booze around the clock, knowing I just knew in my gut my body's gonna gonna quit. I was very, very sick, and I drank around. I know I was there for at least three days,

but no more than five. Uh and uh based on you know, the information my friends had about that they got from the hotel person about when I got in and when they came around me. And uh, two days later, I was on the plane one way ticket to Minnesota. Okay, a couple of things. One, you know, just like the TV show Intervention, someone can need to go to rehab, but they either don't want to or they go and

they jump. So, okay, what's your thought process? And then you get out your Minnesota, how do you get back into the food world? Super super easy, I mean easy answer to both, but I guess I'm really talking beyond that. You end up building let me let me get to my question a little more specifically, you end up building this empire. Most people, when asked that question, they say, well, it just happened. Okay, I'm sophisticated enough to know it

never just tapped. It was very intentional on very so walk me through accepting rehabilitation and then deciding that you wanted to be more than just a chef and a restaurant. Um. Really very simple story. Um. It was not my first go round at recovery. The difference was that that particular uh time, I would have sobered up in a liquor store. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I had just this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little light that came under my door, and I just focused

on that little tiny light. And I had a series of experiences my first thirty days in recovery sufficient to get me to point C, D and E. I went to a half I had a good experience in my primary treatment at Hazel, and I went to I. I just said yes to everything I was told to do. I got a sponsor, I went to meetings, I went lived in the halfway house first seven months. Uh, they told me get a job. I got a job washing toilets uh in the the workhouse and jail system in St.

Downtown St. Paul. That was so horrific a job. I got another job two days later as a dishwasher in a coffee shop. Now a coffee shop here in Minnesota kind of like once in New York. Uh is a place not like a Starbucks, but a place that opens at six am and serves breakfast and lunch all day long. And they have lots of hot coffee and just sit on stools and UH. Sometimes that the employees who worked in the kitchen, there were two of them, wouldn't show up. I showed up every day, uh for that job. It

was the best job I ever had. I never wanted a job so much in my life is that job. And I treated it like like gold. And uh when they were sick, I would cook or or they wouldn't show and I would cook and the owners were like, Wow, you're sandwich is looking really good today. In the soup seems really good. And uh so I got, you know, a little bit of a raise and some preferential hours. But I was just very anonymous and going back to

my halfway house every night. And eventually I decided to become a dishwasher at a better restaurant, and my plan was to still to go back to New York when I got out of the halfway house, and so I went to this uh, French restaurant in that had just opened. It was like two days old. And I knew that the restaurant was owned by two French guys in New York that I knew from partying days in sag Harbord. They owned a restaurant in New York of the same name,

Cafe and de Ti in the Theater District. And they had opened a Cafe and de Ti in the Fauchet Tower right around the corner from the Theater District here in the Twin Cities. Um and uh, you know, so I knew that it would be a good place to work, and so I went there and I got a job as a dishwasher. And one day one of the cooks didn't show up for work, and um, it was really pretty straightforward. I went up to the owner and the chef and I said, look, I can put out that

guy's station. And it was the grill station onion, soup, steak free. It's you know, a couple of appetizers, scargo went under the broiler there. It was a very very simple station. It did a couple of specials that day, and the lunch menu a chicken pie ard, a couple other things. Um, but you know it's ten twelve items on the menu came off of that station. It was the easiest station I thought in the restaurant um. And

I've been watching for a couple of weeks. You know, as the dishwasher, you're running down and grabbing bus tubs of pots and pants from underneath the counters where the chefs are cooking. The cooks are cooking, and you know, my perch in the dish room, I could see what all the people were doing. And frequently, when there's no more dishes to watch your peeling potatoes, are working on prep for the chef. And so you know, I'm just oiling an anonymity. They're very blissfully by the way. This

guy gets sick. They don't have a choice. They have to let me cook. And they're like, well, the dish washer, okay, keep an eye in and we'll take a couple of dishes away from you so it's easier. I'm like, I can do it. I can do it. They're like, well, do you know how to grill the salmon. It's like, I don't know how to I know how to grill

the salmon. Um. And after the lunch shift ended, the owner of the restaurant, I remember, opened the door to his office and as I was walking by, and I remember just seeing his finger and I walked in the office and he he sat me down and he said, can you answer me one? I have one question for you? And I said sure. He said, can you explain to me why my dishwasher just put out food better than the chef in my restaurant does? And why when everything went to ship on the line in the middle of

lunch because they were packed. I mean they were just murdered with business, um, and with lunch, you're just slammed all at once. They were doing a full second turn, which is how popular it was. But great, there was no French bistro in that town. Every rest every city needs a French bistro in a big seat like Minneapolis, right in downtown. It was quite famous. Um. And I said, I've worked in restaurants all my life and I'm just

here in Minnesota for a while. And the guy said, why And I told him and he said, well, he says, I, I'll make you the chef in this restaurant. And I said, well, first of all, you're you're offering that to me immediately shows me that you don't know what you're doing. I said, so I'm less inclined to take that job. But I also can't take that job because I'm living in a

halfway house. I have to go home and I have to be there every night at five o'clock, right And uh, I said, but I love my my job dishwashing here and I'd like to keep it. And he said, uh, well, I'm gonna talk to the chef. We're gonna have you prepping and do it. So I was washing dishes, I was waiting some tables, I was prepping and uh. I worked there for four months and then I got out of the halfway house and I needed to earn money

to put a roof over my head. And I went back to him and I said, is that job offer still available? And he said yes, and I said, great, I'll take it. And he said, do you want to negotiate salary? I said not at all. I said, you

pay me whatever you think is fair. He said, you're kidding me, and I said no. I said, you're gonna pay me more three months from now and six months from more, but you start me whatever you want, because remember I'm going from dishwasher at six dollars an hour whatever it was back then, to like the highest salary position in the restaurant. Um. But I also knew that I could change that restaurant and make it great, uh, and that the current team there was was not capable

of that. And I told him I just need these These are the three nights off that I can't work because I need to go to my meetings. I want permission to have a daytime meeting from noon, sorry, from two to three o'clock, three days a week in the back of the dining room. He said sure, And I negotiated some other stuff all around my recovery, stuff that my my sponsor in the twelve step program that I was attending, had insisted on, by the way, and uh.

And that was it. And after five or six years of you know, that restaurant, we within a year I replaced everyone and was arguably I mean not my words, wasn't are the magazines and newspapers you know called it the best restaurant in town. It was. Uh. We did so well it allowed the managing partner in Minneapolis to buy the place back after I've been there a year, from the French partners in New York who didn't want to run it or own a restaurant in Minneapolis anyway.

UM and so I felt very good about what we achieved there. And then I decided. I had a moment of clarity about five six years in. I realized I was telling stories with my food and telling stories to my staff, but I felt my stories needed a bigger audience. And I wasn't going to be the best version of myself if I stayed cooking in a restaurant as much as I love them. And this is ninete eight nine nine, UM,

and I left. I resigned, and I got a job, an internship, unpaid at a radio station, a magazine, the Big Glossy Monthly Minneapolis State Paul Magazine, Radio State, big radio station in town doing a weekend radio show for an hour on food. And a TV station, a local Uh. It was a up N station after it was Channel nine. It was an independence In those days in the Midwest, there was still radio independent TV stations owned by single people.

Like a person owned this station and programmed it with stuff from all the other stuff that just doesn't exist. And I don't think there's a TV station like that left in America. But Stu Swartz owned this, this station that him a up N station, then a Fox O and O, UM and I started doing their morning. I was a food feature reporter and once the week I would do a little food recipe thing. And after ninety days of working for free for all of them, I just,

I mean, it's my it's no secret. Get a job for free, make yourself indispensable, the wind up paying you. UM and I just I very much had a one, five and ten year plan, and I just put you know, my dream wasn't a dream, it was a goal because I had actual steps leading up to what it would take to achieve my goal. I wanted to have a TV show that broadcast internationally talking about food and culture as a unifying element in a world that I felt we were only talking about the things that divided us.

And I I, if you try to sell that show, no one's go to Bube. So I knew I had to invent a hook. So I sort of sold a Trojan Horse UM and I the hook that I created was, you know, fat white guy goes around the world, eats bugs and sort of exaggerating, but you you get where I'm going with this. And the network said, okay, great, okay, but a little bit slower. Which network? And this was literally your first pitch other than Stu Schwartz station. Yeah, well it wasn't my first, UM, but it kind of

was my It was my only. Uh I, So I'm working. My goal was to be good enough at the TV station, the radio station, the magazine to put together a deck on myself. And with the TV work, I could put together a real and if I was doing food feature reporting and interviewing, and I was like, you know, Al Franken was had returned to Minnesota, was doing a radio show and writing these books. So his very first book came out and he came on and cooked with me. So I snipped that clip out and I went out

to this farm and did a package. You know, because I learned, I created my own syllabus. I wanted to learn how to be in front of a camera, edit with a cameraman. I needed to know about cameras and lighting and I just had to learn the basic stuff of the business. And the only way to do that is do it in live local news. There's no other place to do it, right. And then I had enough stuff and I started trying to take meetings, um, but no one would meet with me. I was just a

guy with an idea, right. Uh. But eventually I weaseled my way into enough doors and uh that I got the attention of some people here in town who were producing shows for h G TV local production companies, and so I became the in house chef. I was doing episodes a year on Typical Mary Ellen, which was an HDTV home tips show early days of h G and

on a syndicated program called Rebecca's Garden. And so then I had clips of myself on nationally syndicated TV shows, and so that I took that and sent it around and eventually it caught the eye of a first year employee, the lowest person on the totem pole at Food Network, by the name of Alison Page. Alison Page wound up running Food Network twenty years later and is now the runs Magnolia Network, the partnership between Chip and Joanna Gaines and Discovery, and she is one of the smartest and

best human beings in the TV business. Um, and I got to meet with her and uh, she said, I don't know if I can help. I know, I'm literally the person here was the least amount of juice. But I'm gonna tell them that you're great and you've got great tape. She did. She actually told them to try to do something with me, and it of course they said no, uh, but she did tell me. Uh, she

gave me one great piece of advice. She said, look, if you come on Food Network, you're gonna be on Saturday mornings and there's gonna be there's twenty other shows being tried out then. And I said, well, my show's difference about Traveling is that she goes, yeah, why don't you talk to Travel Channel. Travel Channel is just hired a new president and they're trying to change and it really sort of hasn't been put out there a lot, but they're they're they're going away from unhosted programs and

they're gonna start doing hosted shows. And that was radical Travel Channel at that time. This is about two years three years before uh, the first episode of Bizarre Foods. There was just like World's Best bathrooms, world sexiest beaches, world's you know, biggest houses, all that kind of stuff, all unhosted. Um. So I started knocking on the because I'd rather be one of my business gurus taught me a long time ago, better to be the only than be the best. So I decided that I wanted to

be the only food guy on Travel Channel. I wound up being one year late by the time they bought the show, but it wound up being good for me because that other person was Anthony Bourdain. Um. But I went and I just all I do is I focused on Travel Channel. But at this point I'm a I'm known to people in the business because I'm on two nationally syndicated shows and sort of like I'm only doing five minutes an hour on someone else's show, but I'm a regular, right. So I finally got someone to meet

with me a Travel Channel. I made a tape on my own. They didn't look at it for six or nine months. Meanwhile, they hire Samantha Brown to host a show. They buy Tony Show a Cooks Tour, put it on for a year, and then wind up doing uh no reservations with him, uh and uh one day uh. The the head of the network, uh, finds my disc in

his briefcase. This is a true story, and he hadn't watched it, and he'd run out of content and others up to do when he was stuck in an airport and he slid it into his computer in the days when for those who are younger, discs actually could go into your computer in the side. There's a little port that opened up, and he watched it, and he really

liked me and the show. And I got an invitation to go to Discovery headquarters in Bethesda, Uh, Maryland and pitch my idea to the head of the network, Pat Young and about ten other people in the room. Okay, just as an intermediary point, why Bizarre Foods. I didn't name it. I had a worse name for it. It would have died if I had been allowed to name the show. But the wee relevant of the moniker. Well what here here, here's what Here's what I came up with.

I walked in that room and I told him, I said, you know, here's you know, the Wandering Spoon or whatever horrible show that I had. I'm going to go into countries and cultures and I'm going to tell stories through food about their culture to illuminate our commonalities and not dwell in our differences. I'm going to show viewers that through fun and entertaining food series, uh, we can learn to practice better patients, tolerance, and understanding with each other.

Because at the end of the day, sitting down to a meal with a family in Chicago is identical to sitting down with tribal people in the middle of the African veld Um. It's just that what's being served at the table is different. And here's my point of difference. I'm not telling stories about chicken breasts or you know,

fetucchini alfredo or you know, pork wantons. We're gonna be eating you know, grilled African word hog and scorpions and in but in the countries where they actually eat those things, question why why this fantastical, crazy food that sounds nuts And it's like, well, everyone loves to eat. So if we can accept that this is what's part of the

regular diet in another part of the world. Uh, you know, one man's weird as another man's wonderful, then maybe we'll have some empathy and some level of understanding for a culture. I said, Americans inhale other cultures first and foremost through their mouths. Then we learned to love their music and their people and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But we love other cultures food first and foremost and uh.

The next day, I got a call from the network and they said, if in its current format, we're gonna pass. And I said, well, what do you mean is his current format? And Pat Young said to me, it's entertainment educational. He says, but if you can figure out a way to come pitch it to me again where it's seventy entertainment, uh, education, I'll help you find a production company and I'll put this show on in a hundred and seventy five countries. He says, I think you're gonna be a big star.

And I I went back to the drawing board and I kind of repositioned the whole thing and created six acts that were all different in this show. And he ended up giving me a list of approved production companies, some of whom were in Minnesota. I went to because I had never delivered a show before, so I went to this production company. They were thrilled to get a show that was essentially sold um. And when we went to shoot the pilot. They were still airing Cooks Tour

reruns of Cooks Tour, Tony's first show. By the time my show delivered, he'd had a season on Travel Channel. UM, they put Pat Wanted Immersive Talent, and you know, it was just uh, Samantha Brown, Tony then me. He put Tony and I on Monday nights back to back, UM, and the ratings just exploded, and it was you know, the following year, I got my own night Tuesday, and they built shows around me. UM. I got very lucky. The show's you know, everything is ratings, as you know.

So the premier comes out, we do okay. Second week, we go up a couple of tents of a point. Third week, third week we come out and we come out of the gate and we're a couple of tents below and I'm ready for them to cancel the show, fully ready for them to cancel the show. But it was the episode when we were in uh Ecuador and a shaman, the witch doctor, who is not supposed to

be in the show. I had to beg the producer of the photographer to come into this witch doctor's residence with me to get an exorcism performed on my body and he spat up on me and he I mean, anyone can google this. It's it pops up right away and resimmering witch doctor Ecuador, and he spits on me. He lights me on fire. I'm naked by the way in his us he kills two guinea pigs by beating

him on my chest. He throws all this stuff. He break out in hives because he beats me with this giant bunch of herbs and he Uh, I walk out of there and uh, I'd like to say something funny the camera. Well, I feel better, And it was a very very very very funny sort of moment in the history of the show. Um. Now, when it aired, the ratings the next day were not as good, and I'm ready for the thing to be canceled. But you can't remember I'm on Monday nights, right, So the next day

was Tuesday, we get the ratings. Wednesday morning, I get a call from the booker at the tonight show. Uh, we've we saw this scene and we showed it to Jay and Jay would like you to be on the show Friday night. And I literally I said, you know, you know, Michael stopped I thought it was my friend pulling my leg and I flew out Thursday night. Friday night, I was on the Tonight Show. UH and Jay we we had a great time and Jay said, You've got to come back. We love having you. Uh. And the

next week the ratings quadrupled. Quinn tuppled because those were the days when your very first question that you asked me, what do you what? Where do you need to be to spread your message? In those days, the Tonight Show was the most watched thing other than the Super Bowl and Saturday Night Live, Right, And um, I wound up doing the Tonight Show four or five times over the next two or three years. And UM, I think without that invitation from j the show, who knows who would

have happened. It could have found an audience or not. But all I know is thanks to that that witch doctor in Ecuador, I had a great year after that exorcism. I mean it was good. Uh. And the moral of the story is, anytime you can have an exorcism in Oda Vallo, Ecuador, in the Central Highlands, do it the brew harrows. They're the mail which is have incredible power. Um. And it was successful. But I also to your point, had a desire to start multiple businesses and do multiple

things with the gifts that I had been given. UM. I have a marketing company of a production company that's now eight years old that makes TV for me and lots of other people, that's successful hospitality company, and I've you know, I've written books, and I've written for magazines, and I've done all the things that you're supposed to do in in my career, mostly because it's stuff that I want to do that has fun, but it also

has to have a service element to it. We we believe very seriously at our companies that everything has to leave the world a better place, otherwise we're not going to do it. That that feeling has become stronger over the last ten years than it was the first ten years when we started um Our Companies. Uh, my first company is still alive part of this triad of groups and we're nineteen years old. UM it's a very very powerful statement. I think about what can happen when you

treat human beings with dignity and respect. UM. I I was an unredeemable user of people and taker of things when I arrived in Minnesota January and the community here, loved me up and gave me, uh a little bit of respect and a little bit of dignity even when I didn't deserve it, and they watered me like a plant.

And I think this is why human beings need to be treated better in this country, because there's a million versions of me out there that they're they're sleeping on corners, they're in homeless shelters, they're in public hospitals, they're in jails and institutions, and we need to take better care of them because our society would be better off if we actually love them up and gave them the dignity and respect they needed to get well. Uh Um. It's why I'm proud is when people say what's the what's

the most important thing you do? It's like I'm I'm on the board of a group of New York called Services for the Underserved, where we're able to take care of thirty five thousand New Yorkers that no other agency will take care of. Those are the things that that I'm proud of. St of I. I love having an Emmy on the mantel in the house. I love having, you know, all the James Beard Awards and all the other stuff that I have, and you know, I turn on the TV and there I am and a bunch

of different streamers or Magnolia or whatever. That's great, but it pales in comparison to all the other stuff that I do, because that's the stuff that makes me feel like I'm actually of this world and not taking from this world. Okay, I only have a few minutes left, so let's do lightning round quick answers. What's your goal now? Change more public policy and laws in America to make it easier for people uh to get fed, take themselves out of the hunger category that they're in, and help

to remake our food system in America. It's a small goal. You're divorced. And to what degree did your lifestyle terms to travel around the world contribute to that? And can people in this world, in the food world, certainly in the food travel world, can they maintain a healthy relationship? No, I think you need to. I think you need to change things in your life. If you want your relationships to prosper, you need to invest in them and you

need to do the work. Um, you can't be I mean nowadays we can play words with friends, so you know you can you play scrabble from anywhere in the world. Sure, sure you can, there's an app for that. Uh, all the face times in the world can't help you with your primary relationships. You have to put the work in. Where have you not been that you want to go to Czechoslovakia? And why? Why? Is so ready an answer? And why have you not been? And why do you want to go? I've been to a hundred and seventy

seven countries, and I'm not talking about passing through. I mean actually been, uh, spend time there. I've been to China eighteen times. I've never been there for less than two weeks. I've never seen the Great Wall. And the reason is that I go in and I and I haven't experienced there that no one else gets to have. You know, I go to Botswana. I saw one square mile of that country because I lived with the Juntoasi, a protected tribe, the tribe from the movie The Gods

must be Crazy. No one has been allowed to live with them for a week in forty years except me. Um, you know, you know there's I nothing can come to measure that. But I'd love to go back to Box want and see the rest of this amazing country. I'd love to go to China's a tourist and actually see some of the sights and sounds and smells that I never saw. Um. I'd like to go back to some of the countries I've only been to once that were really awesome. I actually I've been to Croatia twice. I

wish I could go to Croatia every year. It's an incredible country with amazing people. Um, killer food, beautiful, But never been there, just just scheduling and a couple of times that it was on the docket to go shoot there, some other talent was going there and they decided we want zimmer and somewhere else. And you know, you don't get everything you want, even if you're successful in this industry, so a lot of times I had to take a

back seat to somebody else. Um. And just this is crazy that I've been to a hundred seventy seven countries and and someone like me has never been to Prague or any of Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic. I mean, it's just so a lot of people want to travel where ultimately it's somewhat familiar. They go to the UK, they speak English. My experiences I've had the best times in places like bo Guitar and Mumbai. Well, mum by the speaking to But you know, for me, just like with food, the

crazier if they don't speak English. The more out of place I am, the better I enjoy it. How about you, you want to go to an exotic place where your number or you want to go with her some comfort. I will double down on that actually and turn it a little bit around. But I bet you can relate to it. My guess is knowing you, having read so much of what you've written and listening to your podcast,

I get the feeling you'll really relate to this. I am the best version of myself when I'm traveling in a place, and I'm the best version of the best version of myself when I'm challenged the most. When I'm out of my comfort zone, I take more risks. I'm I'm less risk averse, I asked more questions. I'm not a smarty pants. I don't pretend. I like myself best when I have a bag over my shoulder and I'm walking across Ethiopia. That's the best version of me there is.

I am curious, I am friendly, I am alert, I am open to everything. I'm teachable, I am spontaneous, I am all the things I want to be in my life. I am that person because of the challenges of travel is transformative. Travel is transformative. So consequently, what's amazing about it is that you can then export some of that

back into your life in America. Right, So, like you in those places you mentioned, you were forced to do some new things, and you come back and changed human beings, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big impactful ways, but you're changed. Travel is transformative. Okay, what are your favorite one or two cuisines? You know there's a song by Sunday Afternoon by the Kings and Ray Davis. You know, give me two good reasons why I ought to stay.

So I usually say too, but you know I'm not holding you to the ones that you know, Hey, you gotta eat this cuisine for the rest of your life. I'll answer it this way. The two most sophisticated cuisines for depth and breadth, for variety of ingredients, for variety of techniques, for uh, just just for just the deepest and the widest. And I think they are the two cuisines that sit atop the culinary in culinary Valhalla, are Chinese cuisine and Mexican cuisine. Now from that comes a

lot of stuff. So if you go down to southeastern China, you're gonna eat fusion cuisine that has a lot of tie and vietnames. E vibe to it right, with fresh chilies and garlic and their version of fish sauce and things like that. Now, look, do I love the beauty and simplicity of Japanese cuisine? And Japanese cuisine is always the easy answer, or Italian cuisine. Every time I'm in France, I turned to whoever I'm traveling with, I'm going you know something, as cliches as it is, French food is

fucking amazing. And it is. But at the end of the day, when I'm really being intellectual about it and I'm measuring all the strengths and weaknesses, I would rather take from high to low, bottom to top, side to side. Chinese and Mexican. I think they are the two cuisines that are the most complex in every measurable way. Uh we can. And I've eaten enough around the world to have some some perspective on that question. Eat out or stay home? Stay home? Just because you travel so much, No,

I like to stay home and eat. Uh. Here's here's the difference I think from professional chefs. Um and certainly you know, I'm sixty. I've cooking for for money since I was fourteen, almost with you know, except for a couple of times. Here they're almost an unbroken line. Um, And I've had the experience of you know, I mean the food experiences that I've had eating out and traveling,

I would put up against anyone's. I'm not sure the way that TV is no longer made in in oh will buy thirty or forty more episodes they buy eight. In the age of the streamer, they're buying eights and twelves. I don't think anyone will ever travel the world and eat the way Tony and I have had the opportunity to when we were doing what we were doing at Travel Channel. When we were doing that, I just don't I don't think it will ever happen again. Um and I.

I love restaurants. I love the feeling of being in restaurants. I love seeing what other chefs are doing. But at the end of the day, and maybe it's more about the age that I am, Um, I have the ability to look so many different things. There's so many things

I want to cook. I'm now it's switched around. Instead of like I have to fly to Hong Kong to eat at restaurant X. Instead of that, I'm like, I have to be able to get these ingredients so I can recreate this dish or series of dishes from this book, from this restaurant in Scandinavia that I've been dying to And I where am I gonna find baby seagulls legally in America? This is gonna be a toughie, but I gotta find him. Has got to recreate this dish. That

is the stuff that excites me. Uh now, okay, hey was norma as good as the rep B. What are the two best restaurants you've ever been to? For you? Uh? Noma was because and is because not only is Renny Riseeppe is as phenomenal an executor of food. If you asked him to make you real scalapini, he would do with lawlessly. He has that skill set. It's like you've studied art. It's like the impressionists. You know, mon A man A, Sir, all those folks. They all went to

the Accold, to Bozar and then they rejected it. They could literally paint a hand as if you were looking at a photograph, even though photographs haven't been invented. When they were paying the they once you can create a hand that looks like it does in real life, then you can create your impression of one. So these people who are doing molecular gastronomy or very progressive cuisine or cuisines that we see as being way out there, um,

have the culinary skill set to do anything. They are masters of technique and craftspeople and so yes, Noma was. But it was also progressive in the sense that they were using ingredients from a part of the world that wasn't the southeastern United States or Mexico or Vietnamena where you can get so many things and everything grows and it's incredibly fertile. They were were working with a limited

number of ingredients, doing a limited number of things. Um. So the answer is yes, it was two best meals of my life. Uh Well, prow house seafood house um off an island uh In at the bottom of the Filipino island chain just north of Borachai. Uh. You park your car in a field and you walk down a

series of planks laid on logs in the mud. Thank God, the tide goes out at night when they're open, because the only way to walk to the restaurant, which is a hut in the middle of a tidal estuary, and the fishermen come by and push food and fish and vegetables up through a hole in the middle of the restaurants the whole middle of restaurant, like huge bunches of bananas. They were making a banana drink that night with ice

that I had like sixteen of. But all the fish in the shrimp they you know, it's whatever the chef is making, and he makes batches this stuff and spreads it around every table. We probably had thirty seafood courses that night. Once you're there, you're there. You can stay for five hours, six hours if you like, or you can just walk back to your car at any point in time and pay your bill. Um. I wrote about it in my first book, UH one of the most

transcendent food experiences of my life. UM. And then the second best one was at a um Uh, a little az tech village about two hours north of Mexico, two hours sorry south of Mexico City, um a town where there's a large number of people of ast Aztec descent still cooking pre contact, pre colonial food and still speaking what is essentially a dead language. But it's not dead

because there's enough of them speaking it. But it's the last place to get a taste of history where these people that the oral tradition has passed these foods down. And there's a small, little six seat restaurant in the market there that a husband and wife run. Uh. That, to my mind, is still the one of the top meals that I've ever had in my life. I find it interesting when I think of that question, just without

thinking about it. It's two restaurants that are as far off the grid and as far away from anything resembling tablecloths and silverware as anything I could think of. I think, the more stuff you have. Uh, sometimes we forget that food comes from the heart, not from the head. And those two food experiences were ones that I consider them a restaurant because number one, there was a financial transaction,

but more importantly, there was an emotional transaction. I don't believe the history of restaurants by definition, is one that starts with a financial transaction. I believe it starts with a a an emotional transaction. Um, I think restaurants are thousands of years old, not hundreds as other historians think.

And my favorite thing to argue them, um, and both of those restaurants gave me an emotional transaction experience that I think we're superior to anything else I've ever had, be it a temple of gastronomy or some great street food place or whatever they were. They price stand above and beyond all the others. Is the two best meals of my life. Okay, going back to the beginning, let's say money was no object. You know, the billionaires coffers

were open. Do you believe this is fantasy land that as a result of foodie culture, et cetera, could we bring blue and Red together from the bottom via food is Would that even be possible because we're not bringing them together at the top. Yes, I believe. I mean and and Jose and I talked about this all the time. Uh, we need bigger tables. It's it's really that simple. We need bigger tables. I wanted to do a show called Dinner with the Dictator. Hopefully, if there's some network person

listening for me, we'll we'll talk about it. Um, because of some of the places I've traveled and being the only person who's ever made TV in some of these places, or the first person to make TV there. Um, the head of the country wants to have dinner with you, and I don't believe in saying no, because I'm curious, even if that person is a international narco trafficker, terrorist, bad guy person, I want to go. I'm I'm an experienced collector and a storyteller, and so I want to

go and see what that's like. And UM, I've never left a table having a meal with someone disliking them more. I've always understood more about them, and I believe if we actually sat down and broke bread in the literal sense with other human beings. I did a food dinner once for four hundred people in Aspen, Colorado. Uh. It was a buffet thing. We did whole roasted lambs, uh

in two different ways, lots of sauces and sides. But I had assage, which is a North African Middle Eastern dome that's used to cook very thin flatbreads on and we're making bread to order. It only takes like thirty seconds and it's enough for like three or four people,

so it kind of worked. As they came through the line and we're throwing these giant loaves of flat bread down into this basket and people would stare it, and I said, just you and these other two people in line with you, just grab it and tear it and break it. That's for you. Three. This pieces big, it's for you for this piece is smaller. It's for YouTube.

And we'd actually have them physically break bread and watching them do that, this is seven or eight years ago, watching them smile and watching what happened when you physically broke a piece of bread with someone as you had by the way, people you did not know just reaffirmed for me. In addition to the hundreds of times I've sat down to eat with people I was sure I hated.

I may leave. They're still knowing they're a bad human being doing bad things, and I don't believe in what they're doing, and I would still call the cops on them if I could, or whatever. But I understand more of them because I actually listened to them when we're at a meal. I believe the shouting ends and we can listen to them. What's heat in America? My MSNBC show, I had I had a meal with people who were

on the other side of the issues. And in the case of the Secretary of State of Alabama, UM John Merrill at the time, someone who I thought was, you know, the architect of the Southern voters suppression UM and still a very very polarizing figure, and I believe a very very evil person, UH with with bad intent and UH and I and and the voting suppression issue in America is is one that I mean, I devoted a whole hour to it in What's Eating America? So I mean,

you know where I stand on this. But in that What's Eating America episode, I actually dined with several people who were on the opposite side of the issue for me, and it changed none of my viewpoint about the issue, but I I got some insight into where they're coming from. Sufficient Two, if I was another politician or someone who was in that place to be able to work with them on something, could begin to do some things to at least put all put some hold, put some awareness,

put some boundaries, make some improvements. The way we're going scares the ship out of me. I mean, this thing with vaccine, you know, we talk about restaurants. You know, these cities all around the country and restaurateurs. Danny most famously on CNBC the other day said, we want vaccine people have to show a vaccine card to make a reservation in the restaurant, right, So these vaccine mandates where you have to show your vacs to get into something.

I do believe the federal government needs to come out and say that and take this awful burden off of restaurants and businesses and municipalities and states. We we we've got to start to do stuff like that. I don't think there's an option for it. But that's also going to create some real tension and some real escalation of trouble in this country, and I don't know if we're gonna be able to recover from it. It's a we're in a very, very dangerous time in America. Andrew, we

could go on for another two hours. There's so many other things I wanted to ask you about. We'll have to wait for another time. You're fantastic your natural rock and tour. Thanks so much for doing this. Thank you as a real, real honor and a privilege. I wanted to do this for a long time. I've been a big fan of what you do UH for several years now, and and this conversation I feel the exact same way. Next time I'm in Los Angeles and we if we can go out to eat, let's go share our meal somewhere.

I would love that. Until next time. This is Bob left sitt