October 7, 2025 • 36 mins
From hidden seed oils and synthetic dyes to corporate greenwashing and regulatory carveouts, restaurateurs Andrew and Lauren Gruel expose the uncomfortable truths behind America’s food system. In the premiere episode of American Gravy, they break down why you can’t trust big box promises (looking at you, Walmart), how political elites like Gavin Newsom carve out exemptions for their own businesses, and what really drives restaurant costs through the roof.
You’ll also hear why most restaurants can’t serve you healthy food even if they want to, what’s wrong with the so-called “influencer-led food revolution,” and how government policy is wrecking small business from the inside out.
Raw, funny, and refreshingly unfiltered... this is food talk for people who want to know what’s really going on. New episodes drop every Tuesday & Thursday!
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And here we are. This is our first episode of
American Gravy. I'm chef Andrew Gruhl and I'm Lauren Gruel
And as many of you may know who have followed
us for the years or you're just newly tuning in,
this is an episode that's going to cover everything from food, lifestyle, politics, culture,
our own personal stories, anecdotes, a little bit of everything.
But consider it almost the kitchen sink pun intended. You
(00:27):
are a funny man, Yes, thank you. She's the only
one who doesn't laugh at my jokes. That's why we
keep having so many kids, is because then I have
an audience that will continuously laugh at.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
My You know what, that's not true. But over the years,
you keep using the same jokes on me, so I
don't find them funny anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Whatever, I give them new little spins and twists and garnishes.
So American Gravy, we are restaurant owners of family. We've
got four kids. We've got a little bit of a
media something going on. I don't know exactly what that is,
but we are based out of Huntington Beach, California. We're
really excited to be giving you guys the little tidbits
every week on what's happening in the food world. So
(01:04):
why don't we kick this off with a couple stories
that we've seen over the past few weeks and dive
right in.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I love it. I love it. Let's start off with Walmart.
They're getting rid of their synthetic dies.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Everybody has been announcing since RFK has taken over in
this new Maha movement, obviously a motivation to clean up
their own food system and food supply. I got to say,
I'm a bit apprehensive. Although it is good news.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's great news. The thing I guess I'm apprehensive about
as well is that they said they're going to start
implementing this in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, and that's the thing, right, So, first of all,
when they made this announcement, they big press release they're
going to eliminate all the synthetic, our artificial dies, and
thirty other controversial additives from their US private label food brands. Okay,
so that's like great value market side freshness guaranteed. I
used to hang out at Walmart a lot, so you know,
I know the brands. And one of the things in
(01:58):
that press release that I found interesting was they said, well,
ninety percent of our existing private label foods are already
free of the synthetic dies. They said ninety percent. So
they're making the announcement that they're removing the synthetic dies
and they're removing these ingredients, but they're also saying, well,
it only applies to ten percent of our supply chain.
I wouldn't have even thrown that out there. I would
have been like, big changes, a lot of work that
(02:19):
needs to go into this.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, exactly. Why would they, like, you know, kind of downplay.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It, well exactly, And that's the thing that I find interesting.
And then furthermore, if they're pushing it off for another
two years, I think that that's curious because what we've
seen with a lot of these massive food manufacturers is
they came out and made these huge pr announcements, but
then they put their timeline passed or into not past,
but at least moving into the potential new administration.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Question for you, why do you think that you know
it's going to take so long to implement these changes.
Why are they saying twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, if you think about it, Okay, so they've already
produced and developed and manufactured all the products they're going
to be selling into holiday season of twenty twenty five.
All Right, They've got all their ingredients already in place,
probably for the next year's worth of production supply, in
addition to how they automate that, So that's going to
be a huge piece of it. However, what I will
say is is that with a little bit of energy
(03:16):
and kind of rapid movement, you can change those ingredients,
you can change the formulas, and you can change the
manufacturing process. You can do it instantaneously if you will.
So that's why I'm a little bit apprehensive about this,
because this is a company that's been using these products
for the past twenty thirty years and has made a
lot of money on these products. So is it a
pr stunt.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Possibly, I don't know. I think they're doing the right thing,
though you know.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
They are doing the right thing, obviously. MY bigger concern
is going to be the other products, right and the
other ingredients that go into these products, because at the
end of the day, and you and I have talked
about this, is that even if you're removing all of
these colors from the foods, the foods are still junk.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
They are exactly I know, it's like, you know, even
if I'm not going to say the brand, but there's
a brand of you know chip that is, you know,
promoting it being healthier for you. At the end of
the day, you're still eating fried tortilla chips or whatever
whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, they're not even tortilla chips. I think that's what's
interesting and people need to realize that is like when
you eat these corn chips, Doritos, Fritos and even the Cheetos,
is that that's not like a natural cut product that
dens fried. What they actually do is they take the
flour and they take the corn and the sugars and
all the chemicals, and they grind it up into really
just kind of like a like a mulch, almost a
culinary mulch, and then they process it through this machine
(04:34):
that feeds it into the fryer oil, which is really
just low quality vegetable oil, probably soybean oil. They deep
fry it and then they toss it in all those chemicals,
which include the addictive powders and spices that make you
want to eat an entire bag in one sitting.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Sounds delicious.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, you've done that. You eat the whole bag in
one sitting.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Sometimes I have.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah, I know, Lauren's got an addiction to hot cheetos
and talkies, so I just want to think that out there.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
No, I used to weird.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Weird.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I used to be addicted when I was pregnant. It
was like the weirdest thing. I would crave this horrible
food item when I'm pregnant.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I know. And the thing is that I had what's
called secondary cravings when Lauren was pregnant. I felt pregnant.
So I was eating pickle sandwiches and the like. And
you know that they say, actually.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Psychologists say this back, you felt pregnant.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yes, I felt pregnant. When I looked at you, I
felt pregnant.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, I felt it all over my body. You know.
I almost went into bed rest for a while there.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, I know, I think you did.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
If you could see the look on her face, She's
not happy about this conversation. I'm going to move on.
One of the things I wanted to mention and bring
up when it comes to these changes in the food system,
This is that you're seeing a lot of the retail brands,
the consumer facing brands that are making these changes, but
a lot of if not the lion's share of the
food that we eat. It actually comes through food service, right,
and that's everything from restaurants to institutional food service, which
(05:53):
I should probably define that like the era marks of
the world. The concession stands the hospitals, universities, school cites,
which is a huge one, and furthermore, restaurants. So when
restaurants or any of these secondary food service operators need
to buy their products, they've only got two or three
main distributors or what's known as purveyors in the restaurant
(06:15):
industry that they can buy their products from. Right. I
mean it's like what Cisco, Yes, Cisco US Foods Performance
Food Group. And then in certain markets there's like boutique
distributors or even your restaurant depots of the world. You
have a limited supply of ingredients that you can buy.
So if I as a chef or we as restaurant
owners tomorrow say well, we go to our purveyor that
(06:37):
drops off our plates and our straws and all the
basic parstock items, and we say we want you to
bring in all of these healthy seed, oil free products,
natural foods, real ingredients. They're gonna laugh at you right,
because they're not going to stock it for you unless
there's a twenty palletsful for them to actually utilize the
space in their warehouse if they're not gonna have high
(06:59):
velocity to move the product out. So the restaurants tomorrow,
if any restaurant in America said I want to change
my entire menu and I want to make these changes,
it would be incoming upon the food distributors and the
purveyors to actually change the products they are carrying. Yes,
over the years, people have been shifting from dining at
home to eating in restaurants in food service operations.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yes, And I don't think people understand that too. You know,
they come down on the restaurant, well why aren't you
serving this, why aren't you using this? But it's like,
we have only so many options to buy what we buy, right, We.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Only have so many options to buy what we buy.
And at the end of the day, if you want
to go and start buying directly from the farmer, directly
from the rancher, which has really been the DNA of
our business footprint, we know how much that takes. That
means you've got to get vans, You've got to get
a distribution driver. You've got to go out to the farms,
you've got to create the relationships, so you've got a
ton more expense when it comes to labor. And then furthermore,
(07:57):
the cost of those products are going to be a
lot higher because you're not buying them in the bulk
that a Cisco would buy, because you're sharing in those
economies a scale that from forty other restaurants in your community,
which is how you get the lower price exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
So what drives me nuts about this, I guess, is
that I've seen a lot of you know, more influential
people talk about, well, you know, don't go to this
restaurant because they're using this product. But it's like they
don't know the workings of that, they don't know how
they're getting this product, they don't know that you know,
all these we're going to say the Ciscos of the world,
like we're buying it from them because it's our only.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Option, exactly. And when restaurants are surviving week to week,
paycheck to paycheck, because what used to be the norm
in the restaurant industry was five percent profits. So if
you grow some million dollars on a restaurant you make
fifty thousand dollars a year. Right, Let's say the restaurant
costs five hundred thousand dollars to build out, that's going
to be a ten year return on the investment. A
(08:50):
better restaurant, a great restaurant, typically a multi unit chain
restaurant or franchise, maybe they're up to ten percent. So
on a million dollars, it's one hundred thousand dollars a
year on a five hundred thousand dollars investment, which is
still a five year ROI, which is not a great
investment proposition. So if you're now going to increase your
cost of goods by five percent, which would be the minimum,
you're eating the entirety of your profit exactly. People think
(09:13):
that restaurants pump out money, and it's hilarious because the
gauge that they use, and I'm sure you've heard this
so many times, it's like, well, you're selling me a
cheeseburger for fifteen dollars. But I can go to the
store and I can buy a pound of ground beef
for four dollars and make two cheeseburgers for two dollars
plus the cost of the bun, plus the vegetables, right, lettuce, tomato,
and obviously on my burgers, I like to put litle
(09:34):
peanut butter on there.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Oh, don't be weird.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I know I don't do that. That is disgusting. How
many times do I hear don't be weird? So at
the end of the day, right, you're like, well, I
can make that cheeseburger at home for four or five dollars.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, but and my answer to that is go ahead
and do it.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Then I know who's cleaning the dishes, who's provided you
know who's providing the wear and tear for all of
your equipment, plus the labor, plus the ability to be
able to have it serve two and the ambiance and
the environment, etc. And everything that comes along with going
out to eat at a restaurant. So that's how those costs.
Because in a restaurant, if you're just so everyone knows
the formula, the calculus, the rubric, if your product costs
(10:13):
four dollars, you want your food cost to be roughly
twenty five to thirty percent, So you're going to four
ax that. So a restaurant would have to charge to
make five percent profit sixteen dollars on a four dollars item.
So if you're buying in retail and your burger costs
four dollars, that's how you get a sixteen dollars burger
in a restaurant setting.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, that's good, that's great. I hope people understand that.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Well, you know, just a little bit of restaurant education,
restaurant one on one right there. And to your point, Lauren,
I think that is a great point you make, is
that with the MAHA movement, which I think is one
of the greatest things that we've seen in food service
and policy and politics over the past thirty plus years.
I mean, I've been railing about this for decades and
finally people are talking about and asking questions as to
where their food comes from. You've got an entire cottage
(10:56):
industry of influencers who now suddenly are food experts. Boy,
and I'm going to open up Pandora's box here with Lauren.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Don't start.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Don't start, because they're telling you as a restaurant what
you can and can't do, and not to go to
that restaurant. Even if they're making incremental changes, it's not enough.
It's never enough.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
And you know what's funny, I wish these people, then
go open your own restaurant. You go open it. You
tell me how easy it is to do all this.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Well, a lot of people do think they can own
their own restaurant.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And they let them and they can have the best
restaurant in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Somebody brought something up to me the other day in
an interview where they said, you know, it's amazing that
business is increasing in restaurants by way of the number
of restaurants that keep opening, but the sales in restaurants,
and this was specific to California is going down and
restaurants are closing in cities. So it's fascinating because it's
a testament to the fact that the cities, by virtue
(11:49):
of the regulation in California, are driving restaurants out, but
then people keep coming in and backfilling those spaces. So
really what it is is that a restaurant will close
and they'll always be somebody right there to open another
restaurant in its space and then close again.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
To touch on this though, don't you notice there's certain restaurants,
or I wouldn't even say restaurants, just the area of
the building there's like a you know, there's like a
dark cloud over it. No matter what, every restaurant will
continue closing. Do you find that weird?
Speaker 1 (12:17):
We call that the restaurant graveyard in the industry is
that people will pitch you a space that's opened a
year ago. They'll say, we've got this amazing space. It's turnkey.
You don't have to pay for all of the fittings,
the infrastructure, the build out of the restaurant. It's turnkey ready,
which it never is, by the way, ever, but the
only condition is you've got to pay the monthly rent. However,
(12:38):
you saved a half a million dollars by not having
to build the restaurant out. So twenty five thousand dollars
a month for the lease on this restaurant, no big deal.
Call it downtown Los Angeles or an inner city San Diego,
San Francisco, where those rates are going to be that high.
And then you go in there and you realize, wow,
my sales can't meet the demand for the lease price.
And you get out within a year. Yep, that's what
(13:00):
ends up happening. We want to move on now to
a local story in California, which is where we're based
out of. And this is more in policy and regulations.
So two years ago we passed AB twelve twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
What is that sweetye for those that don't now.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Those that don't know, AB twelve twenty eight is known
as the Fast Act. And what that was was it
was a mandatory minimum wage increase for all restaurants fast
food restaurants that had twenty or more locations. So your
McDonald's the World, your Wendy's of the World, all your
multi unit restaurants. Of course, Panera Breads was exempt from that.
Why well, I mean, there's speculation that Gavin Newsom took
(13:48):
a significant amount of money to his campaign from the
founder of uh Panera. That's a legend. I don't want
to get I don't want to I don't want this
to be a defamation.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Wait, so even though Panera has twenty plus locations, they
didn't have to yes, because.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
They say that they're a bakery because they bake their
bread on site and that was carved.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Oh I remember this. Everyone kept saying, Oh, just start
baking your own bread. So yeah, okay, I remember.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
It's always interesting in California when there's restaurant regulations that
are passed because interestingly, a lot of the lawmakers, specifically
the head lawmaker or the head honcho, Lord Gavin Newsom.
He has a restaurant enterprise himself, Plump Jack Winery, and
all of its kind of like tentacle restaurants that are
associated with that. So one thing, they just passed a
bill in California about a year ago. And I'm going
(14:33):
off tangent here, but I think it's an interesting point
where they were banning certain types of it's called rodenticide, right,
or I'm probably not even enunciating it properly, but it
was an animal rights bill that was targeting the actual
chemical they were using to kill rats in certain rodas, etc. Now,
the reason I bring this up is I spoke recently
(14:53):
at the San Diego, California chapter of the Restaurant Association
and they had mentioned that there's a major issue in
Sandy Ago since the passage of this bill with restaurants
getting shut down due to vermin because the eco labs
of the world and the chemical companies of the world,
they have to use these lighter chemicals that actually the
rats essentially are almost becoming immune to. So these rats
(15:14):
are just running rampant everywhere. In addition to the fact
that the city itself isn't upkeeping the public works. Well,
guess what do you know that in this bill? Guess
who was exempt plump Jack wineries? No, yeah, wineries were
exempt from wineries. Yeah, in general, I mean yeah, Plumpjack
would fall under the right. So I find that interesting.
Every restaurant bill that gets piled onto restaurants in California,
(15:37):
there's always some sort of a carve out.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
But also, why wouldn't you want why would you try
to treat these rodents with lighter chemicals for one purpose.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
That is horrific. One you don't think about these these
rats feelings. Have you not watched Rat Tattooy?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I mean, I love that movie, but no.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Could you imagine just that poor little rat from rat
Tattooy getting crushed by rotent a side? Yeah, I don't know,
I don't know. I guess there's there was an ethical movement.
In addition, I think they they well, what I find
fascinating is they tried to make it an environmental piece
by saying, well, some of this can run off in
the storm water and end up in the ocean, and
it's going to hurt kind of the marine biodiversity of
(16:13):
the environment. But wouldn't you think it would actually be
worse in wineries because it's going right into the soil,
and then that soil is going to get infected.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And then people are going to be drinking drinking wine.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The next glass of wine you have, enjoy a nice
little flat when you taste the wine, right like when
people taste one like cherry, taste a little cherry, a
little bit of a raid some rosente side.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Got killed the name.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It's earthy.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I think I've absolutely killed the name of it. Moving
on to another restaurant's story. Did you know that Ben
Stiller has launched a natural soda brand?
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I did not until you told me, and I have
not heard that name in so long.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Well in relation to food. I have because every single
time I hear the name, I think about how he
can get the beans above the frank I met her laugh.
There we go one. We should have a dang right there.
Every time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
That was a good one.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, So he launched his awn natural soda brand. It
actually looks pretty good. I mean I want to try it.
And good for him for jumping on the Maha movement.
I think that that's really important.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
But do you think he's just doing it because it's
hot right now, or do you think he really believes
in this stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
You know, that's an interesting question because people ask me
that when you see restaurants that are green washing or
coming out and talking about sustainability when they were never
for that. Well, so what I mean, that's good if
people are if that's the trendy thing and it moves
the industry in the right direction, I'm all for that.
Whether you're doing it for your own vanity or you're
doing it for the right reasons. If it's the right
thing for our health and it's the right thing for
(17:38):
the food service industry, then more power to him.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Good for Ben Stiller well, especially.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
In a world in which people have politicized food in Maha,
so that it's if you're for any of the Maha thesis,
which is, you know, eating better, getting rid of the
seed oils, getting rid of the artificial ingredients, the food dies,
et cetera, suddenly like you're you're not just Maha, You're
Isn't that ridiculous? And what we saw recently when they
(18:03):
talked and made the announcement about the potential for talent
All to be causing autism and kids, and I don't
want to go too deep on that subject, but the
insanity of people.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
First of all, the amount of people pregnant women, especially
jumping on social media and throwing back a ton of
tilan all one that was very odd, but like too
tailan all isn't good for your liver, like regardless, like
even like the pregnancy alone, which that's just strange. Why
would you do that? You know, you don't know the
(18:34):
side effects of it, but like it's bad for your liver,
So why would you just like randomly start popping thailand all.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Wait, so are you saying it's bad that I snorted
talent all between the ages of eighteen and twenty.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Two and that worries me a little bit, if it
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
My mom definitely had a lot of time in all
uh when she was probably pregnant with me. I wrote
to her afterwards. I asked her, I said, Mom, did
you have any talent all when you were pregnant with me?
And she goes only when I was hungover. That's horrible,
I know it is.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
My mother would never do that, by the way.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, so a quick, a quick little tip though on
the soda piece, because somebody asked me the other day.
They're like, what are some everyday hacks, if you will,
or tips and tricks that we can utilize in order
to eat healthier or to give our food our kids
better foods. It's so easy sometimes to just grab the
soda to you know, pop open the can of sprite
or diet coke or whatever it is. And don't get
me wrong, Hey, I love my diet coke from time.
(19:26):
Why do you give me that line?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I'm laughing because him and I both love diet coke. Yeah,
give me a fountain diet coke and it's all.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
A fountain dieting diet coke is great. And I think
that that's what this is about, is it's like you
don't have to you don't have to let perfect ruin good.
Like you're flying on a plane, You're gonna throw back
a little diet coke, No big.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Deal, diet. That's where I drink Most of my diet
coke is on an airplane, which is hilarious. But I
have a tip on a quick healthy soda. Shoot, yeah,
anybody wants to try just a little club soda, Okay,
a little splash of a Gabe and a lime and
you have like a little healthy sprite.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
What if it's not little, what if it's big?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I mean, it'll still be healthier because it's just clip
sod up.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Well, you just kept saying little, and you were staring
at me. I Well, and actually, and I was gonna
say the same thing. Is is that I was trying
to explain to some people on X the other day
about simple syrup. Right, simple syrup is just one part sugar,
and you can get a good sugar or even use
brown sugar to one part water. You boil it or
you just simmer it so that it actually dilutes or
it dissolves into the liquid, and then you've got this
(20:27):
natural organic syrup depending on the sugar that you're using.
And you know, like we're not saying in some cases
we are saying remove sugars, but or some people are.
But if you're gonna have a little bit of sugar
or honey, you do that, do some natural flavors, muddle
some fresh fruit in there and sparkling water and bingo.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Or you can try monk fruit. Oh is that zero
zero col? What did you call me a little monk fruit?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Monk fruit? I don't like I don't know if I
like munk fruit et Stevia too.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I don't like stevia. It's I can't have anything with
stevia disgusting.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Lauren's been. She's one of like I could put a
packet of stevia in four hundred gallons of water and
then she would stick a straw in there and be like, oh, put.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
The ski on here, my ninety year old man, When.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You yell at me, you sound like a nine year
old man. Well on that note, all right, So here's
a little piece for our next segment, which we can
we call WTF. Okay, so WTF What the Fork? Get it?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
What the Fork?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
And we took that from the California Restaurant Associations with
the Fork campaign, so I got to give them credit.
But I love the WTF What the Fork? And we
see these stories every single week where I think to myself,
what the Fork give us this week's.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Story, Lauren, Oh boy, all right, So this one is
going to be about the taco bell fifty K. So
people have to eat on miles four and eight. I
believe they have to down like a oh my gosh,
a crunch wrap supreme or what have you. I don't
know what.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, so you have this, this library of Taco Bell,
I cons the Chiloopa, the crunch Wrap Supreme, the Mexican pizza.
Is that still being sold? I think it came back.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
It came back. Yeah, But like you guys, they have
to there's ten stops along this race and they have
to down Taco Bell. Could you imagine pooping your pants?
I would definitely poop my pants.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Well, pooping your pants is already a problem when it
comes to distance running, as it is any anybody who's
run distances, they know about the bubble guts or the
runners the runner stomach, which is always hilarious when you
Laurena and I ran a half marathon together, and I'm
glad there was about seven hundred Porta Johns along the way,
(22:41):
a little extra coffee in the morning. But in any case,
like Taco Bell and distance, canny.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Can I just read you some of the race rules?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Shoot?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Okay, so et a menu item from at least nine
of the ten Taco Bell stops. By the fourth stop,
all entrance must have consumed at least one chilup A
Supreme or one crunch Wrap Supreme.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
What what is the purpose behind it, so obviously it's
a Taco Bell marketing thing, and then people want to
go extreme on the sports with the Taco Bell, but
those are just not inherently connected Taco Bell. There was
a story that went around five or ten years ago
about Taco Bell's meat not being real meat, and Lowe
and I dove deep into that story to get the
(23:23):
real detail on the recipe of the meat. So I
think we should throw that out there as well as
part of this. You're not eating one hundred percent meat,
It's not fifty to fifty. I think that the urban
legend that it was fifty percent plastic to fifty percent meat.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
It's not that it was like eighty eight percent meat
and then twelve percent at fillers.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Right, So it's eighty eight percent meat, which who knows
where that meat is coming from. It it's not American meat.
I can tell you that right now, most fast food
restaurants and that large scale, they're buying Brazilian meat. That's
why we had the issue with the deforestation in Brazil
twenty years ago, because McDonald's was ripping the forest apart
so that they could more cows for their meat. So
(24:01):
those that meat in addition do you know that ground
beef in America, you could have like beef that's been
ground from Brazil, beef that's been ground from Costa Rica,
beef that's been ground from Lake Titty Kaka, you can
Citty Kacca. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
But is that so even if you buy like, you know,
grass fed, grass finished beef, you would still be getting
beef from all over.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well in theory you could actually, yes, that is true.
If you buy grass finished beef, it could be from
an American steer or it could be Australian.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
That's very weird. But I also have to get back
to the Taco bell thing because there's another challenge on here.
It says Baja Blast Challenge drink and aggregate of two
leaders of Baja Blast during the run without vomiting.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
What's the point of doing it? You're killing yourself. I mean,
this is so extreme we have This is like we
have a buddy, boyd Myers, and he is an extreme athlete,
he's an extreme person, and he did one day he
woke up, you ready for this? He woke up and
he said, I'm going to run a marath on today
and I'm going to drink one Core's Light for every
mile I run. So he ran. He ran twenty six
(25:07):
miles and drank twenty six beers. The funniest thing about
Boyd does he actually ended up drinking five beers before
he even hit the road. I don't know whether he
needed to loosen up a little bit, so he ended
up drinking thirty beers over twenty six miles.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
But like, how does your liver not fail?
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Well? And he did it in and I want to
say worked. He did it in like four hours or
four and a half hours. I remember he did it
twice and I was following along on his second one,
and his first mile was like five point fifty. His
second mile was in the sixes.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
He ultimately worked up to the elevens or twelves, but
he never went any slower than that. He drank thirty beers.
So shout out to Boyd on that one. Boyd, So
What the Fork? That's our What the Fork story of
the week. If you see anybody at Taco Bell, just
know they may have just run a fifty k and
they're probably wearing a big old diaper.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
You're gonna give us a little quick cooking tip.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
We're gonna sharpen skills to sharpen your skills for anybody
who's listening. Uh So this week's cooking tip, I wanted
to talk about the cold seer.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
What is that you've seen?
Speaker 1 (26:14):
You've you've heard of the reverse here if you've followed
me for years, because I've I've actually got reverse here
tattooed across my chest. Uh that's how serious I am
about the reverse here. But the cold sere is actually
something that I've picked up, and it's really a stovetop
reverse sier, but it is a cold sier. So you
take your meat, okay, and you put it in a
cold pan and then you slowly turn the heat up.
(26:36):
You're thinking to yourself, this goes against everything that I know,
well it does, but the idea behind it is twofold.
You're not seizing the meat up immediately through the seer,
so you're allowing the meat to slowly heat up, which
allows the enzymes to basically remain effective to slowly break
the meat down number one. But number two, by slowly
releasing the moisture in the pan, you're going to get
(26:59):
a better seer at the end. So there's still a
reverse seer process here, but you don't get that gray
ring amount around your meat. When you sear meat, what
you're doing is is that you're releasing the moisture in
order to get mallard browning, which is that deep golden
brown on the xterior of the meat that tastes so good.
But in the in the process of doing that, you're
also drying the meat out, So that's kind of the
(27:20):
counterpoint to this. With the cold sere, you don't dry
the meat out as much on the exterior. You slowly
bring it up to heat, and then once you bring
it up to heat, about fifty percent of the way
through the cook process, as it's slowly searing, you remove
the meat from the pan and you pat it completely dry.
Then you blast the heat of the pan up and
you put the steak back in the pan, and you
(27:42):
get your dark brown at the end of the cooking process.
And you can do this directly in your pan, no
oven needed, no smoker, you know, no convection style cooking,
which is typically characteristic of the reverse seer, and you
get that beautiful seer at the end, and when you
cut into the meat, what you'll know notice is that
you've got that beautiful browned exterior on the outside and
(28:03):
it doesn't have the gray gradient through then it's just
an even nice rosy red from edge to edge. I
always talk about that beautiful color from edge to edge.
So that's the cold sere and it works particularly well
on things like chicken, where you can actually put the
skin side down in the pan, start in a cold pan,
and then slowly let it come up to heat and
(28:24):
render the exterior of the chicken skin and it gets
a beautiful, crispy, crusty exterior and the chicken is moist
and succulent all the way through.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I feel like the reverse seer is a lie. Now,
how is it a lie?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
This is a derivative of the reverse seer. And when
I said the word moist, you actually looked like you
were going to throw up.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Oh gay, I love that tip, great tip, honey.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
All right. So one of the things Lauren and I
talk about all the time are the things that we
think need to die in the food industry. And we
call this like eighty six it.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
So yeah, food trends that need to go away forever.
I will tell you mine what. I love cottage cheese
as it is, but suddenly cottage cheese is now being
turned into bagels in ice cream. If you're gonna eat
a bagel, just eat a freaking bagel. Why why do
you need to create a bagel with cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
That's a really good point. It's like we all glamor
onto a single product and then try and work that
product into every single item that we eat.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Lives everything.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I've seen it recently with like toothpaste, right, cottage cheese toothpaste.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
No, I haven't seen that, but it's almost like remember
the trend a couple of years ago. It's like cauliflowers
like everything, cauliflower crust, cauliflower rice. Suddenly they find one
item and they try to turn it into everything.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
It's true because cauliflower crust, cauliflower rice. And then suddenly
you've got mma who's like, well, we've got cauliflower ears. See,
I mean they took it so far.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, they took it way too far.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We don't want But then again, I don't think that
you want cottage cheese ears.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That would look weird. That would be you'd need to
go to a dermatologist.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Isn't it ironic that people eat cat cheese to get
rid of the cottage cheese in their legs.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Is that how it works?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I don't know, although I will say this too, I
think that the cottage cheese trend is hilarious because you
have like a younger generation that's now like eating cottage
cheese and everything.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
The funniest part is there's certain brands of cottage cheese
that are being sold out, like they're off the shelves.
They're flying off the shelves because people are trying to
get this certain type of cottage cheese. I'm like, when
did cottage cheese become so popular?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
I saw Lauren the other day crossbody block an eighty
five year old lady to get the last pint container
of cottage cheese, and it was it was that it
was the first time in years of us being married
that I actually questioned whether she was the woman that
I that I'm married.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Okay, that is not true. I don't even buy cottage
cheese very rarely.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And why was that eighty five year old lady laid
out on the floor of the egg and cottage cheese asle.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Was this the dream of yours.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Might have been? I have been taking some of that
weird Walmart brand melatonin, so yours's cottag cheese. I'm gonna
tell you what mine is. Mine is hot Cheetos on
every thing. So about five years ago, everyone started with
a hot cheeto trend, right, it was hot cheetos onto Michellattas.
It was like hot cheeto studded mac and cheese, hot
Cheeto burritos, hot Cheeto. I think even Chipotle.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Is it still a trend though?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yes, I just saw it the other day about the
hot cheeto mac and cheese, and then like it it's
still happening all over the place. Oh, the hot cheeto
Bloody Mary's. That's what I saw the other day. It's like, guys,
it's done, okay, Like stop with it. It was never
good to begin with it.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Excuse me. Then I must have started the first trend
because in junior high our bean and cheese burritos were amazing,
right at lunch, at lunch, and we would stuff them
with hot Cheetos.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Did you have hot cheetos at school in the Venaians?
That brings me to a bigger point.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Serious if you don't start, okay, listen, I go way
back with hot cheetos. I had my first hot cheeto
when I was like seven, So.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I think they're getting a little emotional here. We might
need to take take us take a break. I might
be the first husband to get shived by a hot cheeto.
You relax, Well, no, actually I can't. You're getting very
serious about this. This is what happens. So just so
everybody knows. When we were coming up here today, I
was we have a sink hole in our backyard that
came out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yes, you guys, So this is very funny and it's
very true story. So we're outside in the backyard and
our four year old says, mom, there's a big hole,
and Andrew comes inside goes, Lauren, did you dig up
a hole? I literally go by this, but I go yes,
But I thought he was referring to our planner box.
I took out one of the plants. Was driving me crazy,
and he goes, no in the grass, I go, why
(32:32):
would I dig a hole in the grass And it's
like a five foot deep Well I took.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I took a broomstick and I stuck it in a
hole and it just kept going and going, and it
was like a five foot broomstick. So I'm like, that
whole hole goes down pretty deep. And so then I
pulled back the layers a little bit, and the hole
just kept expanding. So now suddenly I'm online googling, and
by the way, don't google sinkhole. You don't want to
know what's going to show up. But we are now
(32:58):
like freaking out about this sinkhole that suddenly it's going
to be a Remember the movie Poltergeist when the tree
goes crazy and all that. That's how far my brain went. Well,
in any case, fire department comes over this morning, because
how did you notice call the fire department besides the
fact that we know the fire department well our neighbor.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I didn't want to be dramatic. I was like, is
this a big issue? But then I googled and it
actually said to call the fire department, so I called. Luckily,
one of our neighbors is a fireman, a local fireman,
so he's like, yeah, yeah, we'll come tomorrow morning. So
this is very funny.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So fire department rolls up right and like now they're
into this trying to figure out what the whole is.
So they're pulling it back and they're peeling it back.
But end of the story here is that the family
that we bought the house from They were preppers, right,
like they were doomsday preppers, and they had six kids.
Seven kids.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Well at the time they had six. Now they have like.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Ten, Okay, so at the time they had six kids.
In any case, they were doomsday preppers. They buried underground
like a multi like thousand two thousand. We don't know
exactly the capacity gallon fresh water tank in the event
that there was, you know, a nuclear fallout or a
civil war and there was no water, and they it's
buried under the ground and it had been it's been leaking,
(34:09):
which we haven't figured out yet because now I need
to go get like an excavator to pull out a
five hundred thousand pound tank of water that's under the
foundation of our house.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Like, we can't make this up. And it was so
funny when they're digging, we can see the edge of
the tank and it's like the top almost corroded or
something top corroded.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And I'm thinking, I'm like, oh my god, we're going
to find a big chest with like millions of dollars
in there. Maybe an Onus Wagner rookie card, maybe there
is who knows, No, there's nothing.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
There's a freaking water tank on our house.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I think I saw a tooth by the outside. That's
about it.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That scary.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
It wasn't my tooth. But they back to the original
point of the story is that Lauren likes to dig
holes and they're always four foot by six foot. I
don't know why.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
That is not true. First of all, First of all,
I do not like to dig holes.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Well, that's a great movie. Holes love that one.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
That is a good movie.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That is a good movie. So in any case, that
was our drama for the day. But we've got it resolves.
If anybody needs any fresh water with just a little
bit of mudd and it swing on by our house.
Are you know this is plenty? Yeah, this is going
to connect to the beach Huntington Beach, California. Come by
free cups of water.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Also, I would love to hear anyone else like what
your thoughts are on, Like what items you would want
to see eighty six? Yeah, give us your trends you
want to see.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Go, give us your eighty six suggestions. What do you
want to see? Go? What are some of the WTF
stories that are happening in your lives? Obviously you can
follow us on x at chef Cruel at Lauren Gruel
and then Instagram is the same. Well I'm at Andrew Girl.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
And I'm Lauren Underscore Lauren under No.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
One's going to be able to figure that out, but
you know, you know where you can find us, and
then just message us or drop a comment on any
of these posts about what you want to see eighty
six from restaurants or just trends. Trends, y yeah, kill
the trend alrighty well, that's it. That's uh, that's going
to be a wrap today, but we're gonna be touching
(36:00):
on some really exciting stuff that's happening in the next
week in regards to food system, restaurants, food service, and
who knows, maybe Laura will dig a new hole.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Bye guys,
And here we are. This is our first episode of
American Gravy. I'm chef Andrew Gruhl and I'm Lauren Gruel
And as many of you may know who have followed
us for the years or you're just newly tuning in,
this is an episode that's going to cover everything from food, lifestyle, politics, culture,
our own personal stories, anecdotes, a little bit of everything.
But consider it almost the kitchen sink pun intended. You
(00:27):
are a funny man, Yes, thank you. She's the only
one who doesn't laugh at my jokes. That's why we
keep having so many kids, is because then I have
an audience that will continuously laugh at.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
My You know what, that's not true. But over the years,
you keep using the same jokes on me, so I
don't find them funny anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Whatever, I give them new little spins and twists and garnishes.
So American Gravy, we are restaurant owners of family. We've
got four kids. We've got a little bit of a
media something going on. I don't know exactly what that is,
but we are based out of Huntington Beach, California. We're
really excited to be giving you guys the little tidbits
every week on what's happening in the food world. So
(01:04):
why don't we kick this off with a couple stories
that we've seen over the past few weeks and dive
right in.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I love it. I love it. Let's start off with Walmart.
They're getting rid of their synthetic dies.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Everybody has been announcing since RFK has taken over in
this new Maha movement, obviously a motivation to clean up
their own food system and food supply. I got to say,
I'm a bit apprehensive. Although it is good news.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's great news. The thing I guess I'm apprehensive about
as well is that they said they're going to start
implementing this in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, and that's the thing, right, So, first of all,
when they made this announcement, they big press release they're
going to eliminate all the synthetic, our artificial dies, and
thirty other controversial additives from their US private label food brands. Okay,
so that's like great value market side freshness guaranteed. I
used to hang out at Walmart a lot, so you know,
I know the brands. And one of the things in
(01:58):
that press release that I found interesting was they said, well,
ninety percent of our existing private label foods are already
free of the synthetic dies. They said ninety percent. So
they're making the announcement that they're removing the synthetic dies
and they're removing these ingredients, but they're also saying, well,
it only applies to ten percent of our supply chain.
I wouldn't have even thrown that out there. I would
have been like, big changes, a lot of work that
(02:19):
needs to go into this.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, exactly. Why would they, like, you know, kind of downplay.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It, well exactly, And that's the thing that I find interesting.
And then furthermore, if they're pushing it off for another
two years, I think that that's curious because what we've
seen with a lot of these massive food manufacturers is
they came out and made these huge pr announcements, but
then they put their timeline passed or into not past,
but at least moving into the potential new administration.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Question for you, why do you think that you know
it's going to take so long to implement these changes.
Why are they saying twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, if you think about it, Okay, so they've already
produced and developed and manufactured all the products they're going
to be selling into holiday season of twenty twenty five.
All Right, They've got all their ingredients already in place,
probably for the next year's worth of production supply, in
addition to how they automate that, So that's going to
be a huge piece of it. However, what I will
say is is that with a little bit of energy
(03:16):
and kind of rapid movement, you can change those ingredients,
you can change the formulas, and you can change the
manufacturing process. You can do it instantaneously if you will.
So that's why I'm a little bit apprehensive about this,
because this is a company that's been using these products
for the past twenty thirty years and has made a
lot of money on these products. So is it a
pr stunt.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Possibly, I don't know. I think they're doing the right thing,
though you know.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
They are doing the right thing, obviously. MY bigger concern
is going to be the other products, right and the
other ingredients that go into these products, because at the
end of the day, and you and I have talked
about this, is that even if you're removing all of
these colors from the foods, the foods are still junk.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
They are exactly I know, it's like, you know, even
if I'm not going to say the brand, but there's
a brand of you know chip that is, you know,
promoting it being healthier for you. At the end of
the day, you're still eating fried tortilla chips or whatever
whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, they're not even tortilla chips. I think that's what's
interesting and people need to realize that is like when
you eat these corn chips, Doritos, Fritos and even the Cheetos,
is that that's not like a natural cut product that
dens fried. What they actually do is they take the
flour and they take the corn and the sugars and
all the chemicals, and they grind it up into really
just kind of like a like a mulch, almost a
culinary mulch, and then they process it through this machine
(04:34):
that feeds it into the fryer oil, which is really
just low quality vegetable oil, probably soybean oil. They deep
fry it and then they toss it in all those chemicals,
which include the addictive powders and spices that make you
want to eat an entire bag in one sitting.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Sounds delicious.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, you've done that. You eat the whole bag in
one sitting.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Sometimes I have.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah, I know, Lauren's got an addiction to hot cheetos
and talkies, so I just want to think that out there.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
No, I used to weird.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Weird.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I used to be addicted when I was pregnant. It
was like the weirdest thing. I would crave this horrible
food item when I'm pregnant.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I know. And the thing is that I had what's
called secondary cravings when Lauren was pregnant. I felt pregnant.
So I was eating pickle sandwiches and the like. And
you know that they say, actually.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Psychologists say this back, you felt pregnant.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yes, I felt pregnant. When I looked at you, I
felt pregnant.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, I felt it all over my body. You know.
I almost went into bed rest for a while there.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, I know, I think you did.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
If you could see the look on her face, She's
not happy about this conversation. I'm going to move on.
One of the things I wanted to mention and bring
up when it comes to these changes in the food system,
This is that you're seeing a lot of the retail brands,
the consumer facing brands that are making these changes, but
a lot of if not the lion's share of the
food that we eat. It actually comes through food service, right,
and that's everything from restaurants to institutional food service, which
(05:53):
I should probably define that like the era marks of
the world. The concession stands the hospitals, universities, school cites,
which is a huge one, and furthermore, restaurants. So when
restaurants or any of these secondary food service operators need
to buy their products, they've only got two or three
main distributors or what's known as purveyors in the restaurant
(06:15):
industry that they can buy their products from. Right. I
mean it's like what Cisco, Yes, Cisco US Foods Performance
Food Group. And then in certain markets there's like boutique
distributors or even your restaurant depots of the world. You
have a limited supply of ingredients that you can buy.
So if I as a chef or we as restaurant
owners tomorrow say well, we go to our purveyor that
(06:37):
drops off our plates and our straws and all the
basic parstock items, and we say we want you to
bring in all of these healthy seed, oil free products,
natural foods, real ingredients. They're gonna laugh at you right,
because they're not going to stock it for you unless
there's a twenty palletsful for them to actually utilize the
space in their warehouse if they're not gonna have high
(06:59):
velocity to move the product out. So the restaurants tomorrow,
if any restaurant in America said I want to change
my entire menu and I want to make these changes,
it would be incoming upon the food distributors and the
purveyors to actually change the products they are carrying. Yes,
over the years, people have been shifting from dining at
home to eating in restaurants in food service operations.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yes, And I don't think people understand that too. You know,
they come down on the restaurant, well why aren't you
serving this, why aren't you using this? But it's like,
we have only so many options to buy what we buy, right, We.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Only have so many options to buy what we buy.
And at the end of the day, if you want
to go and start buying directly from the farmer, directly
from the rancher, which has really been the DNA of
our business footprint, we know how much that takes. That
means you've got to get vans, You've got to get
a distribution driver. You've got to go out to the farms,
you've got to create the relationships, so you've got a
ton more expense when it comes to labor. And then furthermore,
(07:57):
the cost of those products are going to be a
lot higher because you're not buying them in the bulk
that a Cisco would buy, because you're sharing in those
economies a scale that from forty other restaurants in your community,
which is how you get the lower price exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
So what drives me nuts about this, I guess, is
that I've seen a lot of you know, more influential
people talk about, well, you know, don't go to this
restaurant because they're using this product. But it's like they
don't know the workings of that, they don't know how
they're getting this product, they don't know that you know,
all these we're going to say the Ciscos of the world,
like we're buying it from them because it's our only.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Option, exactly. And when restaurants are surviving week to week,
paycheck to paycheck, because what used to be the norm
in the restaurant industry was five percent profits. So if
you grow some million dollars on a restaurant you make
fifty thousand dollars a year. Right, Let's say the restaurant
costs five hundred thousand dollars to build out, that's going
to be a ten year return on the investment. A
(08:50):
better restaurant, a great restaurant, typically a multi unit chain
restaurant or franchise, maybe they're up to ten percent. So
on a million dollars, it's one hundred thousand dollars a
year on a five hundred thousand dollars investment, which is
still a five year ROI, which is not a great
investment proposition. So if you're now going to increase your
cost of goods by five percent, which would be the minimum,
you're eating the entirety of your profit exactly. People think
(09:13):
that restaurants pump out money, and it's hilarious because the
gauge that they use, and I'm sure you've heard this
so many times, it's like, well, you're selling me a
cheeseburger for fifteen dollars. But I can go to the
store and I can buy a pound of ground beef
for four dollars and make two cheeseburgers for two dollars
plus the cost of the bun, plus the vegetables, right, lettuce, tomato,
and obviously on my burgers, I like to put litle
(09:34):
peanut butter on there.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Oh, don't be weird.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I know I don't do that. That is disgusting. How
many times do I hear don't be weird? So at
the end of the day, right, you're like, well, I
can make that cheeseburger at home for four or five dollars.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, but and my answer to that is go ahead
and do it.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Then I know who's cleaning the dishes, who's provided you
know who's providing the wear and tear for all of
your equipment, plus the labor, plus the ability to be
able to have it serve two and the ambiance and
the environment, etc. And everything that comes along with going
out to eat at a restaurant. So that's how those costs.
Because in a restaurant, if you're just so everyone knows
the formula, the calculus, the rubric, if your product costs
(10:13):
four dollars, you want your food cost to be roughly
twenty five to thirty percent, So you're going to four
ax that. So a restaurant would have to charge to
make five percent profit sixteen dollars on a four dollars item.
So if you're buying in retail and your burger costs
four dollars, that's how you get a sixteen dollars burger
in a restaurant setting.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, that's good, that's great. I hope people understand that.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Well, you know, just a little bit of restaurant education,
restaurant one on one right there. And to your point, Lauren,
I think that is a great point you make, is
that with the MAHA movement, which I think is one
of the greatest things that we've seen in food service
and policy and politics over the past thirty plus years.
I mean, I've been railing about this for decades and
finally people are talking about and asking questions as to
where their food comes from. You've got an entire cottage
(10:56):
industry of influencers who now suddenly are food experts. Boy,
and I'm going to open up Pandora's box here with Lauren.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Don't start.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Don't start, because they're telling you as a restaurant what
you can and can't do, and not to go to
that restaurant. Even if they're making incremental changes, it's not enough.
It's never enough.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
And you know what's funny, I wish these people, then
go open your own restaurant. You go open it. You
tell me how easy it is to do all this.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Well, a lot of people do think they can own
their own restaurant.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And they let them and they can have the best
restaurant in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Somebody brought something up to me the other day in
an interview where they said, you know, it's amazing that
business is increasing in restaurants by way of the number
of restaurants that keep opening, but the sales in restaurants,
and this was specific to California is going down and
restaurants are closing in cities. So it's fascinating because it's
a testament to the fact that the cities, by virtue
(11:49):
of the regulation in California, are driving restaurants out, but
then people keep coming in and backfilling those spaces. So
really what it is is that a restaurant will close
and they'll always be somebody right there to open another
restaurant in its space and then close again.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
To touch on this though, don't you notice there's certain restaurants,
or I wouldn't even say restaurants, just the area of
the building there's like a you know, there's like a
dark cloud over it. No matter what, every restaurant will
continue closing. Do you find that weird?
Speaker 1 (12:17):
We call that the restaurant graveyard in the industry is
that people will pitch you a space that's opened a
year ago. They'll say, we've got this amazing space. It's turnkey.
You don't have to pay for all of the fittings,
the infrastructure, the build out of the restaurant. It's turnkey ready,
which it never is, by the way, ever, but the
only condition is you've got to pay the monthly rent. However,
(12:38):
you saved a half a million dollars by not having
to build the restaurant out. So twenty five thousand dollars
a month for the lease on this restaurant, no big deal.
Call it downtown Los Angeles or an inner city San Diego,
San Francisco, where those rates are going to be that high.
And then you go in there and you realize, wow,
my sales can't meet the demand for the lease price.
And you get out within a year. Yep, that's what
(13:00):
ends up happening. We want to move on now to
a local story in California, which is where we're based
out of. And this is more in policy and regulations.
So two years ago we passed AB twelve twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
What is that sweetye for those that don't now.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Those that don't know, AB twelve twenty eight is known
as the Fast Act. And what that was was it
was a mandatory minimum wage increase for all restaurants fast
food restaurants that had twenty or more locations. So your
McDonald's the World, your Wendy's of the World, all your
multi unit restaurants. Of course, Panera Breads was exempt from that.
Why well, I mean, there's speculation that Gavin Newsom took
(13:48):
a significant amount of money to his campaign from the
founder of uh Panera. That's a legend. I don't want
to get I don't want to I don't want this
to be a defamation.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Wait, so even though Panera has twenty plus locations, they
didn't have to yes, because.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
They say that they're a bakery because they bake their
bread on site and that was carved.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Oh I remember this. Everyone kept saying, Oh, just start
baking your own bread. So yeah, okay, I remember.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
It's always interesting in California when there's restaurant regulations that
are passed because interestingly, a lot of the lawmakers, specifically
the head lawmaker or the head honcho, Lord Gavin Newsom.
He has a restaurant enterprise himself, Plump Jack Winery, and
all of its kind of like tentacle restaurants that are
associated with that. So one thing, they just passed a
bill in California about a year ago. And I'm going
(14:33):
off tangent here, but I think it's an interesting point
where they were banning certain types of it's called rodenticide, right,
or I'm probably not even enunciating it properly, but it
was an animal rights bill that was targeting the actual
chemical they were using to kill rats in certain rodas, etc. Now,
the reason I bring this up is I spoke recently
(14:53):
at the San Diego, California chapter of the Restaurant Association
and they had mentioned that there's a major issue in
Sandy Ago since the passage of this bill with restaurants
getting shut down due to vermin because the eco labs
of the world and the chemical companies of the world,
they have to use these lighter chemicals that actually the
rats essentially are almost becoming immune to. So these rats
(15:14):
are just running rampant everywhere. In addition to the fact
that the city itself isn't upkeeping the public works. Well,
guess what do you know that in this bill? Guess
who was exempt plump Jack wineries? No, yeah, wineries were
exempt from wineries. Yeah, in general, I mean yeah, Plumpjack
would fall under the right. So I find that interesting.
Every restaurant bill that gets piled onto restaurants in California,
(15:37):
there's always some sort of a carve out.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
But also, why wouldn't you want why would you try
to treat these rodents with lighter chemicals for one purpose.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
That is horrific. One you don't think about these these
rats feelings. Have you not watched Rat Tattooy?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I mean, I love that movie, but no.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Could you imagine just that poor little rat from rat
Tattooy getting crushed by rotent a side? Yeah, I don't know,
I don't know. I guess there's there was an ethical movement.
In addition, I think they they well, what I find
fascinating is they tried to make it an environmental piece
by saying, well, some of this can run off in
the storm water and end up in the ocean, and
it's going to hurt kind of the marine biodiversity of
(16:13):
the environment. But wouldn't you think it would actually be
worse in wineries because it's going right into the soil,
and then that soil is going to get infected.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And then people are going to be drinking drinking wine.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The next glass of wine you have, enjoy a nice
little flat when you taste the wine, right like when
people taste one like cherry, taste a little cherry, a
little bit of a raid some rosente side.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Got killed the name.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It's earthy.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I think I've absolutely killed the name of it. Moving
on to another restaurant's story. Did you know that Ben
Stiller has launched a natural soda brand?
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I did not until you told me, and I have
not heard that name in so long.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Well in relation to food. I have because every single
time I hear the name, I think about how he
can get the beans above the frank I met her laugh.
There we go one. We should have a dang right there.
Every time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
That was a good one.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, So he launched his awn natural soda brand. It
actually looks pretty good. I mean I want to try it.
And good for him for jumping on the Maha movement.
I think that that's really important.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
But do you think he's just doing it because it's
hot right now, or do you think he really believes
in this stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
You know, that's an interesting question because people ask me
that when you see restaurants that are green washing or
coming out and talking about sustainability when they were never
for that. Well, so what I mean, that's good if
people are if that's the trendy thing and it moves
the industry in the right direction, I'm all for that.
Whether you're doing it for your own vanity or you're
doing it for the right reasons. If it's the right
thing for our health and it's the right thing for
(17:38):
the food service industry, then more power to him.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Good for Ben Stiller well, especially.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
In a world in which people have politicized food in Maha,
so that it's if you're for any of the Maha thesis,
which is, you know, eating better, getting rid of the
seed oils, getting rid of the artificial ingredients, the food dies,
et cetera, suddenly like you're you're not just Maha, You're
Isn't that ridiculous? And what we saw recently when they
(18:03):
talked and made the announcement about the potential for talent
All to be causing autism and kids, and I don't
want to go too deep on that subject, but the
insanity of people.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
First of all, the amount of people pregnant women, especially
jumping on social media and throwing back a ton of
tilan all one that was very odd, but like too
tailan all isn't good for your liver, like regardless, like
even like the pregnancy alone, which that's just strange. Why
would you do that? You know, you don't know the
(18:34):
side effects of it, but like it's bad for your liver,
So why would you just like randomly start popping thailand all.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Wait, so are you saying it's bad that I snorted
talent all between the ages of eighteen and twenty.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Two and that worries me a little bit, if it
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
My mom definitely had a lot of time in all
uh when she was probably pregnant with me. I wrote
to her afterwards. I asked her, I said, Mom, did
you have any talent all when you were pregnant with me?
And she goes only when I was hungover. That's horrible,
I know it is.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
My mother would never do that, by the way.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, so a quick, a quick little tip though on
the soda piece, because somebody asked me the other day.
They're like, what are some everyday hacks, if you will,
or tips and tricks that we can utilize in order
to eat healthier or to give our food our kids
better foods. It's so easy sometimes to just grab the
soda to you know, pop open the can of sprite
or diet coke or whatever it is. And don't get
me wrong, Hey, I love my diet coke from time.
(19:26):
Why do you give me that line?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I'm laughing because him and I both love diet coke. Yeah,
give me a fountain diet coke and it's all.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
A fountain dieting diet coke is great. And I think
that that's what this is about, is it's like you
don't have to you don't have to let perfect ruin good.
Like you're flying on a plane, You're gonna throw back
a little diet coke, No big.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Deal, diet. That's where I drink Most of my diet
coke is on an airplane, which is hilarious. But I
have a tip on a quick healthy soda. Shoot, yeah,
anybody wants to try just a little club soda, Okay,
a little splash of a Gabe and a lime and
you have like a little healthy sprite.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
What if it's not little, what if it's big?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I mean, it'll still be healthier because it's just clip
sod up.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Well, you just kept saying little, and you were staring
at me. I Well, and actually, and I was gonna
say the same thing. Is is that I was trying
to explain to some people on X the other day
about simple syrup. Right, simple syrup is just one part sugar,
and you can get a good sugar or even use
brown sugar to one part water. You boil it or
you just simmer it so that it actually dilutes or
it dissolves into the liquid, and then you've got this
(20:27):
natural organic syrup depending on the sugar that you're using.
And you know, like we're not saying in some cases
we are saying remove sugars, but or some people are.
But if you're gonna have a little bit of sugar
or honey, you do that, do some natural flavors, muddle
some fresh fruit in there and sparkling water and bingo.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Or you can try monk fruit. Oh is that zero
zero col? What did you call me a little monk fruit?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Monk fruit? I don't like I don't know if I
like munk fruit et Stevia too.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I don't like stevia. It's I can't have anything with
stevia disgusting.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Lauren's been. She's one of like I could put a
packet of stevia in four hundred gallons of water and
then she would stick a straw in there and be like, oh, put.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
The ski on here, my ninety year old man, When.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You yell at me, you sound like a nine year
old man. Well on that note, all right, So here's
a little piece for our next segment, which we can
we call WTF. Okay, so WTF What the Fork? Get it?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
What the Fork?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
And we took that from the California Restaurant Associations with
the Fork campaign, so I got to give them credit.
But I love the WTF What the Fork? And we
see these stories every single week where I think to myself,
what the Fork give us this week's.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Story, Lauren, Oh boy, all right, So this one is
going to be about the taco bell fifty K. So
people have to eat on miles four and eight. I
believe they have to down like a oh my gosh,
a crunch wrap supreme or what have you. I don't
know what.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, so you have this, this library of Taco Bell,
I cons the Chiloopa, the crunch Wrap Supreme, the Mexican pizza.
Is that still being sold? I think it came back.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
It came back. Yeah, But like you guys, they have
to there's ten stops along this race and they have
to down Taco Bell. Could you imagine pooping your pants?
I would definitely poop my pants.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Well, pooping your pants is already a problem when it
comes to distance running, as it is any anybody who's
run distances, they know about the bubble guts or the
runners the runner stomach, which is always hilarious when you
Laurena and I ran a half marathon together, and I'm
glad there was about seven hundred Porta Johns along the way,
(22:41):
a little extra coffee in the morning. But in any case,
like Taco Bell and distance, canny.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Can I just read you some of the race rules?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Shoot?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Okay, so et a menu item from at least nine
of the ten Taco Bell stops. By the fourth stop,
all entrance must have consumed at least one chilup A
Supreme or one crunch Wrap Supreme.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
What what is the purpose behind it, so obviously it's
a Taco Bell marketing thing, and then people want to
go extreme on the sports with the Taco Bell, but
those are just not inherently connected Taco Bell. There was
a story that went around five or ten years ago
about Taco Bell's meat not being real meat, and Lowe
and I dove deep into that story to get the
(23:23):
real detail on the recipe of the meat. So I
think we should throw that out there as well as
part of this. You're not eating one hundred percent meat,
It's not fifty to fifty. I think that the urban
legend that it was fifty percent plastic to fifty percent meat.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
It's not that it was like eighty eight percent meat
and then twelve percent at fillers.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Right, So it's eighty eight percent meat, which who knows
where that meat is coming from. It it's not American meat.
I can tell you that right now, most fast food
restaurants and that large scale, they're buying Brazilian meat. That's
why we had the issue with the deforestation in Brazil
twenty years ago, because McDonald's was ripping the forest apart
so that they could more cows for their meat. So
(24:01):
those that meat in addition do you know that ground
beef in America, you could have like beef that's been
ground from Brazil, beef that's been ground from Costa Rica,
beef that's been ground from Lake Titty Kaka, you can
Citty Kacca. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
But is that so even if you buy like, you know,
grass fed, grass finished beef, you would still be getting
beef from all over.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well in theory you could actually, yes, that is true.
If you buy grass finished beef, it could be from
an American steer or it could be Australian.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
That's very weird. But I also have to get back
to the Taco bell thing because there's another challenge on here.
It says Baja Blast Challenge drink and aggregate of two
leaders of Baja Blast during the run without vomiting.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
What's the point of doing it? You're killing yourself. I mean,
this is so extreme we have This is like we
have a buddy, boyd Myers, and he is an extreme athlete,
he's an extreme person, and he did one day he
woke up, you ready for this? He woke up and
he said, I'm going to run a marath on today
and I'm going to drink one Core's Light for every
mile I run. So he ran. He ran twenty six
(25:07):
miles and drank twenty six beers. The funniest thing about
Boyd does he actually ended up drinking five beers before
he even hit the road. I don't know whether he
needed to loosen up a little bit, so he ended
up drinking thirty beers over twenty six miles.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
But like, how does your liver not fail?
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Well? And he did it in and I want to
say worked. He did it in like four hours or
four and a half hours. I remember he did it
twice and I was following along on his second one,
and his first mile was like five point fifty. His
second mile was in the sixes.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
He ultimately worked up to the elevens or twelves, but
he never went any slower than that. He drank thirty beers.
So shout out to Boyd on that one. Boyd, So
What the Fork? That's our What the Fork story of
the week. If you see anybody at Taco Bell, just
know they may have just run a fifty k and
they're probably wearing a big old diaper.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
You're gonna give us a little quick cooking tip.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
We're gonna sharpen skills to sharpen your skills for anybody
who's listening. Uh So this week's cooking tip, I wanted
to talk about the cold seer.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
What is that you've seen?
Speaker 1 (26:14):
You've you've heard of the reverse here if you've followed
me for years, because I've I've actually got reverse here
tattooed across my chest. Uh that's how serious I am
about the reverse here. But the cold sere is actually
something that I've picked up, and it's really a stovetop
reverse sier, but it is a cold sier. So you
take your meat, okay, and you put it in a
cold pan and then you slowly turn the heat up.
(26:36):
You're thinking to yourself, this goes against everything that I know,
well it does, but the idea behind it is twofold.
You're not seizing the meat up immediately through the seer,
so you're allowing the meat to slowly heat up, which
allows the enzymes to basically remain effective to slowly break
the meat down number one. But number two, by slowly
releasing the moisture in the pan, you're going to get
(26:59):
a better seer at the end. So there's still a
reverse seer process here, but you don't get that gray
ring amount around your meat. When you sear meat, what
you're doing is is that you're releasing the moisture in
order to get mallard browning, which is that deep golden
brown on the xterior of the meat that tastes so good.
But in the in the process of doing that, you're
also drying the meat out, So that's kind of the
(27:20):
counterpoint to this. With the cold sere, you don't dry
the meat out as much on the exterior. You slowly
bring it up to heat, and then once you bring
it up to heat, about fifty percent of the way
through the cook process, as it's slowly searing, you remove
the meat from the pan and you pat it completely dry.
Then you blast the heat of the pan up and
you put the steak back in the pan, and you
(27:42):
get your dark brown at the end of the cooking process.
And you can do this directly in your pan, no
oven needed, no smoker, you know, no convection style cooking,
which is typically characteristic of the reverse seer, and you
get that beautiful seer at the end, and when you
cut into the meat, what you'll know notice is that
you've got that beautiful browned exterior on the outside and
(28:03):
it doesn't have the gray gradient through then it's just
an even nice rosy red from edge to edge. I
always talk about that beautiful color from edge to edge.
So that's the cold sere and it works particularly well
on things like chicken, where you can actually put the
skin side down in the pan, start in a cold pan,
and then slowly let it come up to heat and
(28:24):
render the exterior of the chicken skin and it gets
a beautiful, crispy, crusty exterior and the chicken is moist
and succulent all the way through.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I feel like the reverse seer is a lie. Now,
how is it a lie?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
This is a derivative of the reverse seer. And when
I said the word moist, you actually looked like you
were going to throw up.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Oh gay, I love that tip, great tip, honey.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
All right. So one of the things Lauren and I
talk about all the time are the things that we
think need to die in the food industry. And we
call this like eighty six it.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
So yeah, food trends that need to go away forever.
I will tell you mine what. I love cottage cheese
as it is, but suddenly cottage cheese is now being
turned into bagels in ice cream. If you're gonna eat
a bagel, just eat a freaking bagel. Why why do
you need to create a bagel with cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
That's a really good point. It's like we all glamor
onto a single product and then try and work that
product into every single item that we eat.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Lives everything.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I've seen it recently with like toothpaste, right, cottage cheese toothpaste.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
No, I haven't seen that, but it's almost like remember
the trend a couple of years ago. It's like cauliflowers
like everything, cauliflower crust, cauliflower rice. Suddenly they find one
item and they try to turn it into everything.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
It's true because cauliflower crust, cauliflower rice. And then suddenly
you've got mma who's like, well, we've got cauliflower ears. See,
I mean they took it so far.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, they took it way too far.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We don't want But then again, I don't think that
you want cottage cheese ears.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That would look weird. That would be you'd need to
go to a dermatologist.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Isn't it ironic that people eat cat cheese to get
rid of the cottage cheese in their legs.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Is that how it works?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I don't know, although I will say this too, I
think that the cottage cheese trend is hilarious because you
have like a younger generation that's now like eating cottage
cheese and everything.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
The funniest part is there's certain brands of cottage cheese
that are being sold out, like they're off the shelves.
They're flying off the shelves because people are trying to
get this certain type of cottage cheese. I'm like, when
did cottage cheese become so popular?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
I saw Lauren the other day crossbody block an eighty
five year old lady to get the last pint container
of cottage cheese, and it was it was that it
was the first time in years of us being married
that I actually questioned whether she was the woman that
I that I'm married.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Okay, that is not true. I don't even buy cottage
cheese very rarely.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And why was that eighty five year old lady laid
out on the floor of the egg and cottage cheese asle.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Was this the dream of yours.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Might have been? I have been taking some of that
weird Walmart brand melatonin, so yours's cottag cheese. I'm gonna
tell you what mine is. Mine is hot Cheetos on
every thing. So about five years ago, everyone started with
a hot cheeto trend, right, it was hot cheetos onto Michellattas.
It was like hot cheeto studded mac and cheese, hot
Cheeto burritos, hot Cheeto. I think even Chipotle.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Is it still a trend though?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yes, I just saw it the other day about the
hot cheeto mac and cheese, and then like it it's
still happening all over the place. Oh, the hot cheeto
Bloody Mary's. That's what I saw the other day. It's like, guys,
it's done, okay, Like stop with it. It was never
good to begin with it.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Excuse me. Then I must have started the first trend
because in junior high our bean and cheese burritos were amazing,
right at lunch, at lunch, and we would stuff them
with hot Cheetos.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Did you have hot cheetos at school in the Venaians?
That brings me to a bigger point.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Serious if you don't start, okay, listen, I go way
back with hot cheetos. I had my first hot cheeto
when I was like seven, So.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I think they're getting a little emotional here. We might
need to take take us take a break. I might
be the first husband to get shived by a hot cheeto.
You relax, Well, no, actually I can't. You're getting very
serious about this. This is what happens. So just so
everybody knows. When we were coming up here today, I
was we have a sink hole in our backyard that
came out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yes, you guys, So this is very funny and it's
very true story. So we're outside in the backyard and
our four year old says, mom, there's a big hole,
and Andrew comes inside goes, Lauren, did you dig up
a hole? I literally go by this, but I go yes,
But I thought he was referring to our planner box.
I took out one of the plants. Was driving me crazy,
and he goes, no in the grass, I go, why
(32:32):
would I dig a hole in the grass And it's
like a five foot deep Well I took.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I took a broomstick and I stuck it in a
hole and it just kept going and going, and it
was like a five foot broomstick. So I'm like, that
whole hole goes down pretty deep. And so then I
pulled back the layers a little bit, and the hole
just kept expanding. So now suddenly I'm online googling, and
by the way, don't google sinkhole. You don't want to
know what's going to show up. But we are now
(32:58):
like freaking out about this sinkhole that suddenly it's going
to be a Remember the movie Poltergeist when the tree
goes crazy and all that. That's how far my brain went. Well,
in any case, fire department comes over this morning, because
how did you notice call the fire department besides the
fact that we know the fire department well our neighbor.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I didn't want to be dramatic. I was like, is
this a big issue? But then I googled and it
actually said to call the fire department, so I called. Luckily,
one of our neighbors is a fireman, a local fireman,
so he's like, yeah, yeah, we'll come tomorrow morning. So
this is very funny.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So fire department rolls up right and like now they're
into this trying to figure out what the whole is.
So they're pulling it back and they're peeling it back.
But end of the story here is that the family
that we bought the house from They were preppers, right,
like they were doomsday preppers, and they had six kids.
Seven kids.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Well at the time they had six. Now they have like.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Ten, Okay, so at the time they had six kids.
In any case, they were doomsday preppers. They buried underground
like a multi like thousand two thousand. We don't know
exactly the capacity gallon fresh water tank in the event
that there was, you know, a nuclear fallout or a
civil war and there was no water, and they it's
buried under the ground and it had been it's been leaking,
(34:09):
which we haven't figured out yet because now I need
to go get like an excavator to pull out a
five hundred thousand pound tank of water that's under the
foundation of our house.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Like, we can't make this up. And it was so
funny when they're digging, we can see the edge of
the tank and it's like the top almost corroded or
something top corroded.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And I'm thinking, I'm like, oh my god, we're going
to find a big chest with like millions of dollars
in there. Maybe an Onus Wagner rookie card, maybe there
is who knows, No, there's nothing.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
There's a freaking water tank on our house.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I think I saw a tooth by the outside. That's
about it.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That scary.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
It wasn't my tooth. But they back to the original
point of the story is that Lauren likes to dig
holes and they're always four foot by six foot. I
don't know why.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
That is not true. First of all, First of all,
I do not like to dig holes.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Well, that's a great movie. Holes love that one.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
That is a good movie.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That is a good movie. So in any case, that
was our drama for the day. But we've got it resolves.
If anybody needs any fresh water with just a little
bit of mudd and it swing on by our house.
Are you know this is plenty? Yeah, this is going
to connect to the beach Huntington Beach, California. Come by
free cups of water.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Also, I would love to hear anyone else like what
your thoughts are on, Like what items you would want
to see eighty six? Yeah, give us your trends you
want to see.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Go, give us your eighty six suggestions. What do you
want to see? Go? What are some of the WTF
stories that are happening in your lives? Obviously you can
follow us on x at chef Cruel at Lauren Gruel
and then Instagram is the same. Well I'm at Andrew Girl.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
And I'm Lauren Underscore Lauren under No.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
One's going to be able to figure that out, but
you know, you know where you can find us, and
then just message us or drop a comment on any
of these posts about what you want to see eighty
six from restaurants or just trends. Trends, y yeah, kill
the trend alrighty well, that's it. That's uh, that's going
to be a wrap today, but we're gonna be touching
(36:00):
on some really exciting stuff that's happening in the next
week in regards to food system, restaurants, food service, and
who knows, maybe Laura will dig a new hole.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Bye guys,
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