June 19, 2024 • 53 mins
Chef Isaac and Amanda Toups' New Orleans restaurant, Toups' Meatery, reflects the Cajun heritage of Isaac's family. Locally sourced beef, pork, duck and venison and Gulf seafood dishes are served in generous portions. Signatures include double cut pork chop, lamb neck, boudin, cracklins, wagyu beef burger, couvillion (his grandmother's fish stew), marinated crab claws and spicy fried oysters. The Toups' Family Meals program addresses local food insecurity by preparing meals for families in need.
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The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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We make no recommendations or endorsements forradio show programs, services, or
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Radio. Welcome to the Connected TableLive where your hosts, Melanie Young and
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David Ransome you're insatiably curious culinary couple. We enjoy traveling the world to bring
you the dynamic people who work frontand center and behind the scenes in wine,
food, spirits, and hospitality aroundthe world. We love sharing their
stories with you and hope you're inspiredto go and support their restaurants, read
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their books, and drink their wines. We are in our backyard today,
New Orleans, Louisiana. Since movinghere, we decided to dedicate a certain
percentage of our shows to supporting theNew Orleans community, and we are really
excited to have practically neighbors on ourshow today, Isaac and Amanda Toops from
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Toops Metery in mid City, NewOrleans. It is a fabulous restaurant,
particularly if you love nose to tailcooking, and they're going to share their
story. What's interesting about them isso Isaac Toops comes from a large Louisiana
family, which he'll talk about datingback many generations, and their meals are
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so important and there's a lot ofhunting and fishing, and Amanda is his
partner and wife and co conspirator inopening Troops Metery, which was twenty twelve.
They are also a couple like manyin the restaurant community, that wear
their hearts on their sleep. Andthis summer twenty twenty four, they have
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relaunched a very important program called FamilyMeals, which they're going to talk about.
But basically it's in response to thefact that the Louisiana government landry refuse
federal funding that was going to providefor all these meals to feed families in
need during the summer months. Sothe Troops launched, well, they've relaunched
Family Meals, which you'll talk abouthow it's all started, and they're going
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to be feeding families throughout the summer, and we hope if you're listening,
you'll consider supporting that because we donot want anyone to be food and secure
in one of the greatest food citiesin the United States of America. And
with that, Amanda Tops, IsaacTops, welcome to the Connected Table.
Thanks for having us. Yeah,glad to be here. Well, we've
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had you guys on our radar forsome time now, we haven't, I'll
be honest with you, we've weWe actually went there about a month ago
for dinner and we had a fabulousduring jazz Fest when of course everybody wants
to go to every town and wehad a great time. But for years
before that, I'd driven by sadlybecause Melanie at one point decided to give
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up meat and it was just afteryou guys opened, So we've been I've
been wanting to go to I've beenwanting to give up wanting to go to
Tubs for years and and I justdidn't want to go it alone. So
finally when she found out that youhad this fabulous cuvian on your menu,
we went. So I do wanton your score that Toops is an all
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It's an all occasion place that hasmany wonderful things on the menu, including
one of the best Koovians, whichyou'll explain I've ever tasted. Let's start
where we always do with this show, with family and where you grew up.
Each of you, Amanda, Isaac, tell us about growing up in
your respective families. I know thatIsaac, you grew up in Rayne,
Louisiana. Amanda, I'm not surewhere you grew up, so tell us,
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but yeah, I said, Igrew up in rain Louisiana, and
I had the wonderful upbringing of havingthe great duality of casions, my mother
being a prairie Cajun and my fatherbeing a coastal Cagun. So while my
father was born and raised in Tiberdal, Louisiana, and my mother was raised
in Oakdale, two different coins ofthe Cajun side, which not a lot
of people get. So on themother's side, we would have the pig
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ROAs, the right fishes, theNative American influences, and things of that
nature. On my father's side,we had the crawfish, the shrimp,
the fish, the crabs, theoysters. I mean, we would go
fishing. My dadd would clean thosefish he would deep prime and he's a
dentist. And you know, soeverybody in my family cooks. I grew
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up with a rich history of youknow, eating meals, things. I
grew up with things that I thoughtwere normal for everybody else in the country,
which I grew up later realizing itwas not. Not everybody has fish
fries and crawfish balls and pig roast, and you know, not everybody goes
hunting, and not everybody and everybody'sfamily cooks, you know, like,
what does your mama cooked, Well, my mama doesn't cook. What what
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is your father cook? My fatherjust said, well, what do you
eat? So, you know,I grew up in uh Cajun Wonderland.
You know, I could literally goto my backyard and catch wild crawfish,
so you know, and that andthat's not normal, but for me it
was. It was it was regularlybringing up and then I was job hopping
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after my brief college sent and thenuh you know that fell into cooking,
and then moved from New Orleans andthe rest is history. Man. Well,
I grew up right outside New Orleans, and so I've always considered New
Orleans to be my home. Igrew up on the North Shore, but
just as soon as I could drive, I said, I'm getting the hell
out of here. So uh,and that's what I did. So I
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I went away to college and lastyet and that's where Isaac I met twenty
five years ago. And then butNew Orleans has always been home, and
so whenever he started cooking, Isaid, I'm ready to go home.
Like I'm laughy, it's great,but like, I'm ready to go home.
And we moved back back here.But growing up, my mother is
an incredible baker, incredible, probablyone of the better ones in the country.
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She could definitely be professional. Andfood was very important in our family
as well, but it was nothinglike what I've discovered when I moved out
to the Cajun country. The passionfor food there is wholly different than what
I grew up with on the NorthShort, so and exciting, and it
made me fall in love with foodeven more. I was always into art,
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music and that kind of stuff,and I still am. But meeting
Isaac and his family and falling inlove with the Cajun people really gave me
a better understanding of what it meansto truly love food because they truly live
to eat. It really is that. It's not an exaggeration that the Cajun
people truly lived to eat. Ourkids are the same. We are eating
breakfast and we're talking about what we'regonna what we're gonna do for lunch,
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and we're at lunchop about what we'regoing to do for dinner. So food
really is our entire life. Sowhat y'all met in college? Then?
What were we all studying? Ithink was studying skipping class and I was
I was studying I took that course. I was studying art. Yeah,
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I was studying art. So Ihad a minoring beer. Yeah, we're
about to we met. We weretwenty almost twenty one. We're about to
be married twenty one years in September. Congratulations. I went to Newcombe down
the road in New Orleans. Somy connections to New Orleans started when I
was ten and we came down.My mom went to Newcomb Law, my
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family went to Newcomb now too Lane, and my dad came down for his
fortieth birthday for what was one ofthe great dining experiences of my ten year
old life. And he ate fortyoysters, raw oysters, and I was
hooked ever since, and it justtook a while to get back down here.
We've been back a couple of falsestarts, but it's good to be
back. And I can agree thatyou think, and you know, eating
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and drinking is just part of theculture here, and music and music and
art. It's just so amazing.You know. It's interesting. You were
saying, you have breakfast and youtalk about what you're gonna have for lunch,
and you have lunch and you talkabout what you're gonna have for dinner.
We kind of do that at ourhouse too. It's like, oh,
we just had lunch, what arewe going to do for dinner?
Totally Yeah, yeah, So ourkids are so lucky they get to h
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They literally we took our baby who'sgoing to be ten in August last night
for her s cargo that she likedto eat. So, you know,
it's a little bit of a differentupbring than what I had. Yeah,
yeah, I don't think I hadescargo till I was my first trip to
Paris. But I get to saythat first trip to Louisianna, I had
my first crab, meat, bullshrimp, raw oysters. On the half.
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We hated all the great restaurants withall their famous dishes, and I
never looked back. I never McDonald'sare a fast food ever again. So
you what you You opened in twentytwelve, So that's in restaurants speak,
old but new, you know whatI mean? Uh? What was the
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emphatus? Like? Yeah? Whatwas the what made you decide to go
ahead and open a restaurant? Andwhat were y'all doing? Well? First
of all, Isaac, you workedwith Emerald for like ten years, So
is that what you were doing beforeyou opened Toops Metery? And what did
Emerald teach you as a mentor?Uh? You know when I came to
New Orlands and was literally just likegoing handing out resumes. And I went
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to Delmonico and handed my my resumeto the chef. He's like, hey,
I got a position, but it'sonly for fried cook And I'm like,
yay. I was the happiest flycook at Emeralds Domonico you'd ever seen
the rest of the cooks didn't knowwhat to do with me. I was
so excited just to be cooking forEmerald Gatsi. And you know, at
first I'm just a little fry cookfor and then I moved up to the
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pantry and Shepherd Wan would come inand you know, he scared scared me
to death. He was he wasa commander to catch me. We wasn't
the guy you saw on TV,uh, but he was you know,
learned my name very slowly, climbedup through the ranks, and later on
we you know, we got toform a real good working relationship. And
so I spent uh the next tenyears working for the the Emeralds for corporation,
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uh mostly Domonico's Coming Emeralds, somein Emeralds Miami during the hurricane,
and uh, you know it wastime to flop flow the coop for about
ten years. And then we didsome uh some private chef or some chef
chefing for some restaurant tours and itdidn't work out so well. We kind
of got screwed over. And thenme and Amanda looked at ourselves and went,
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you know, let's open up ourown restaurant. We were tired of
getting screwed over by other people andwe wanted to screw over ourselves. Uh.
So that was again Fatus to openup Twop's metery. And you get
this wonderful feeling of you know,Joey and fear when you go, Now,
I can cook whatever I want.Oh God in heaven, what's that
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you configure that out? I like, I think I want to cook some
caging food. Well, okay,we'll also want to do some some non
caging things. Well, what doyou call that? Le fils of Metay.
That's silly, And I still thinkit's silly, but it's it's it's
us, it's you know, Idon't think myself very seriously, but we
take the food very seriously. Wetake out pastures. I also like to
say, because I don't think it'sout from the press enough, not that
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Scheffer will need press from us,but he is one of the most decent
human beings on the planet. Andhe's and he's not only obviously a great
chef, but he's a great humanbeing. And he caught a lot of
flack and the press during Katrina fornot coming back fast enough. But I
tell everybody who asked, we nevermissed a paycheck. I think was a
young sea Steff. He was oneof the youngest in the whole company at
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that time, and and we nevermissed a paycheck. And he told all
of us, if you're willing towork. I will pay you. You
just got to go where the restaurantsare open. And so we went to
Orlando and then he personally wrote hispersonal check out of a personal check and
account to move us back home beforeThanksgiving. So and stood right in front
of us at our company Christmas partyand just was like tearful like that we
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had so many of us had stuckby him because it really was like we,
as you all know, restaurants againstthe world. At that point,
Katrina was devastating to our city.But Chepheral really is a stand up dude
and knew my name even when Isaacwas a young Lionel. He would ask
about me. It's like he reallyis that guy. And so Isaac is
really that type of Cheff too.Whenever you're in our restaurant, and I
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take those principles as well. Whenyou're in our restaurant, you work for
us, you are a family member, period, so that you know family
meal, being called family meal,and really treating our employees the way that
shepherd Will treated Isaac is really importantto us as a philosophy, as business
people, but also just as beinggood people. That's so important because the
restaurant industry, as we all know, has taken a lot of scrutiny and
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flack about being sweatshops for people inthe kitchen and the imbalance between the front
of the house in the back ofthe house, and you know, you
name it. It's gotten there andto the point where the James Bear Foundation
had to revise its awards and alot of things had to happen. A
lot of changes are still underway.And then you know, you, I
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think it's great that you gave ashout out to Elmoll for doing that,
because he did take a lot offlak. Katrina was devastating for the city.
And then you know, flash forward, you have COVID nineteen, which
decimated this poor city's been hit somany times and yet always rises back from
the ashes. That's when you guysstarted the Family Meal program. So let's
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talk about how that came about duringCOVID nineteen. Well, it's really simple,
because Taden people and New Orleans peopleand people in hospitality. What do
we do when we get scared?We start cooking. So I mean I
do it even at home. I'mupset about something, we just start cooking.
It's just you know, it's thesame thing with the the death in
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the family or you know, oras a marriage. When it's good times
a bad times, our response isalways food. So Isaac is very adamant
that we share family mail, whichis the meal that the staff eats between
lunch and dinner services. And it'sa good time for if you got any
grievances or everything's great, and checkon your mom u we know whatever,
everyone's good and just laugh, cutup, tell some some inappropriate jokes that
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you wouldn't say during service, andkeep it moving right. It's it's a
it's a time for communalness in therestaurant. So when we had to shut
down in March, we only closedfor one day and then we we we
just put our heads down. Weignorant. Soups are ignorant. We just
we just never say die. Wesaid we're not We're not closing. We'll
just go to takeout. We'll figureit out. And Isaac said to our
line cooks that we had to layoff. We kept our management, thankfully,
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but we had to lay off ourline cooks and we had to lay
off our service. But we keptour oldest dishwasher, mister Ray, who
we loved and the door, andhe said, come back every day for
family milt so we can check inon each other, because we didn't know
we needed to be a part atthat point, and they did. And
then so we made the fifteen youknow, family meals that first day,
and then the second day they cameback with their roommates because their roommates have
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been laid off to The dinner wasthirty and then it's snowball. And at
first we were just going to feedthe service industry, and then within five
days I had moms reaching out tome saying, you don't have to feed
me if you'll feed my kids.And we were like, hell no,
we're gonna feed you too. Sowe had. I get emotional still thinking
about it, because I don't knowwhat it means to not be able to
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feed my children. I've never beenin that position, but I've spoken to
hundreds and hundreds of moms in thiscity, the fairest, the best food
city in this whole country, whodo know what that means. And I
think that's despicable that that would behappening in New Orleans, Louisiana. And
so we had an incredible retired Saintsplayer reach out to us on the back
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end during COVID, and he said, I see what you're doing. You
guys are gonna need money to keepit going. And I was like,
I don't want your money, man, and he was like, no,
you're gonna need money. You haveto keep doing this, and so he
spent us two thousand dollars and I'mlike, holy shit, I guess he's
right because we were at five hundredpeople a day wrapping around the block.
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We were feeding and in the beginningof COVID, and we were doing it
just because our friends who owned restaurantswere kicking down the stuff out of their
walking. So Isaac Whill was joking, was like, it's like an episode
of Top Scheff. Every day,whatever he had, whatever it was,
donated. That's what we made forfamily meal, just to keep people going.
So once he gave me the ideaof start crowdsworking and fundraising, that's
what I did. And right asCOVID happened, I was scouring my brain
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like it's just you know, howdo we keep how do we survive?
We have to survive this. SoI reached out to Jose Andres's Will Central
Kitchen back in March and they said, I said, look, this is
a crisis. This this is it'sdevastating in New Orleans because, as y'all
know, we were the second hotspot in the whole country outside of New
York City and so and restaurants weretaboos. So I said, this is
a crisis. The hospitality industry isbeing decimated. These people are hungry.
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And they said, well, we'renot in New Orleans yet, and so
I said, okay, and thenthink of anything else about it. And
then I kept fundraising crowdsourcing. Itwould be five dollars year. We had
people that had never met us whowould send us a check for one hundred
dollars, that had never met us, from out of town. It was
so emotional every day, and Iwas talking to all these people in need
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every day. And by the endof April, I was like I was
talking to ecause I don't think wecan. I don't know that we're gonna
be able to afford to keep doingthis and try and open up the back
the restaurant back again. And thatthe last day of April we were talking
about I got a call up onWorld's Central Kitchen and they said, we're
coming to New Orleans. You're goingto be our first restaurant we on board
in the whole state, and wewere so they were incredible, and they
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paid us and they said, wethink we're only going to be that the
two weeks, and I said,I'll take it. Whatever you're going to
pay the cook for two weeks,I'm going to feed these other people for
that additional two weeks. So wewound up cooking for a World Central Kitchen
for seven months, and over thecourse of eighteen months, we were able
to put one hundred thousand filed outinto the community. And so via Family
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Meal and the Wilson Kitten and thecharity they were asking us to cook for.
We were cooking for blind veterans,we were cooking for the elderly,
we were cooking for anybody that neededit, so families, kids, homeless
children, anything, anybody that neededit. We made it happen. And
so when we shut down Family Mailafter eighteen months, Isaac and I and
our dad we just said, wedid that. That was special. We
did it, and we never thoughtwe'd see it again. And then and
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here we are now we're back upand running. It's a pretty amazing story.
Yeah, So the impetus for thiswas that the federal funding was not
accepted. You know, politics aside. You know, there is federal funding
for particularly in the summer months whenschool kids, many school kids who come
from insecure food and secure families,their main meal is their school meal,
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and so when the kids are notin school, they don't have that access.
So the not having the federal fundingmeant there was a big lap.
So you're doing it and you're fundraisingagain, and I know that you've got
some great press in New Orleans andwe posted it to let people know outside
of New Orleans. And you're you'reraising the money because you're self funded and
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you need to raise. How canpeople donate if they want to support,
Well, it's really simple. Toothstandleymil. Dot coms are our web page
and it's tooth Standemil at Venmo andcash app and PayPal is great and people
have been dropping off checks to therestaurant, which is wonderful. All of
it helps, it really does.We just put our We delivered yesterday our
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sixteen thousand meal to food and Securechildren yesterday. We started June fourth and
it's June nineteenth, So in fifteendays in Summer's a long hot time down
here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a long summer.
I do want to back up becauseI want, I want everyone to be
clear that both sides of the aisleshame the legislature after they refuse the fund
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over and over again. It wasn'tjust one side or the other. They
both were shaming the legislature and theydid wind up accepting the fund. But
I got even more pissed off whenI read the legislation because I want to
I want to give full the fullpicture of why we're here and why we're
doing it. So children who arefood insecure received breakfast and lunch at school.
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That's five days a week, fourweeks a four weeks a month.
That's forty meals. And this legislationthat they kept turning down provided the moms
with forty dollars a month who haveplaced forty meals, and I don't know
about two but I haven't said myselfa whole meal and a dollar in a
long time. They don't even havea dollar value any of the dollars anymore.
Forty meals, forty dollars for fortymeals, Oh god, forty dollars.
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That's okay, can't even spend thatgoing to the grocery or on snap
budget. I mean, you know, yeah, you have to get a
value meal at McDonald's for for Imean I pulled through this months ago,
had I did have to pull througha drive through and grab the kids something,
and it was windy, and forthree value meals it was like forty
bucks. So there's no way thatmom can feed and especially something anything that's
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not just trash for a dollar ameal. It's just unceivable that that would
be turned down. You know,it's interesting it's restaurant Week here in New
Orleans, and then there's a programCulinary, which is to help generate business
for restaurants during the slower summer monthswhen it's still a great time to visit
New Orleans. Everybody, we supportit. It's a shame that there wasn't
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a way to tie that in sothat there could be a you know,
hindsight, uh donate tie in theremaybe maybe for Culinary later in the month,
that that would have been a greattie in. Logically, as someone
who comes from fundraising in the area, maybe there's something to think about with
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the powers that be doing the culinaryprogram. Yeah. They they've they've been
very supportive. Good Okay, Ijust want to make sure because it is
you know, it takes a village, a family. Speaking of family,
Yeah, I really dad. Speakingof family, you were inspired by your
family meals to create the menu atTwopsman. Let's talk about the menu because,
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as we said, you know,you've got a really successful restaurant,
Isaac, you were on top chef, you were a contestant, you've been
that gave you incredible The power oftelevision must have helped the restaurant a lot
during the difficult times and the busytimes, because there is a feast and
famine part of the restaurant world inevery city, but New Orleans has its
(22:36):
fair share of that. Because thetourism dies out a bit in the summer
and then it gears back up andthen it's crazy that goes. You know,
you never know what's going on.How let's talk about the menu and
some of the signature. Diihes towet people's appetite. Yeah, you know,
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we opened up toops meter and youknow, I come from fine dining
and I was I was over findingdining. You know, I appreciated all
the detailed of food. I didn'twant to be a greasy spoon. I
wanted to be something casual with youknow, with high end ingredients. You
know, Pagara on your flip flopsis one of our our tags. You
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know, we would like to sayyou can walk in in your shorts and
your t shirt, sit down,have suagra, groancou champaigne. I love
charcuterie and I love smoking and tearing. I love all the old school methods
of charcuterie. But uh, youknow, having your own place, you
(23:37):
can really put your own stamp ona menu, and sometimes that, you
know, can be very scary.So finding you know, bringing the gap
between like Cajun food classic like Budaand Kracklin, and then also having brains
lamb neck and Kouli on the dish. Bringing the gap between old world Cajun
(23:59):
and new agent. Well what isnew Cajun? You know, I've been
fighting with that term ever since Iadopted it, and you know, it's
no matter what ingredient comes my way, and we try to go as local
as possible. That's that's one ofthe great goals of the metery. We
use only go seafood. Our pigsour local, our cows are local,
our rabbits, everything that we use. As much as we can, we
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go local. And so anytime Icome up come into a new ingredient,
I go, Okay, well,how would a Cajun man approach this?
You know, I don't have tothink that because it just naturally comes out.
Well, I'm definitely gonna aggress thisseason with regard like, oh,
I think we need the highest spirit. And so some of these dishes come
out of things I've had in thepast, and some of the things you
(24:44):
I approached with a new idea.Uh So the metery is sometimes if you
if you pay attention some things,it's not very Cajun. And you know
what, no one cares. Theylike They like it, My customers like
it, and I like it.So let's see when we were there,
David, what did you have?Well, I had the double cut pork
chump, which which I went onyour Facebook page, guys and found out
(25:08):
that you had posted last year onFacebook your original menu when you first opened
the restaurant. And there are acouple of dishes that you've literally never taken
off the menu since, and thatdouble cup pork chump is one of them
and it was just delicious. Andthen our friend Brad got the turkey neck
right. Yes, I never seenturkey neck a lamb neck. I never
seen lamb. It was huge.It's it's a whole neck. I mean,
(25:33):
I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was lucky to see fresh
fish be Usually it was the shapeof a stick. So you know,
my first fresh fish was New Orleans. You know the it is. It
is a meat centric menu with somedishes that many people have not considered trying
(25:55):
and should try because it is nostelling. You can eat every part. You
also have a terrific Venizon loin.I think one of the people at our
dinner. We had like eight peopleor ten people when we went during jazz
Fest, and it was wonderful.I ordered as I said, I do
tend to go for fish, andI happened to love couvion. Now I
want you to explain what it isfor our listeners who don't know. And
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we actually have listeners who are inEurope, so when you think about it,
explain it to them in those termswhat it is. And it was
your grandmother's recipe also, right wasmy grandmother Tooch to recipe, and the
number one thing she'd like to dowas go fishing. There's a beautiful pisture
of her in the land to whereI grew up, with big pond in
(26:41):
the back, and her favorite thingto do was go out and catch fish.
And then she would clean that abig catfish or red fish or whatever
she thought that day, and shewould take it back and she would scale
it and then cook it hole ina big in a big magnum like pot
with a coovion base. Now puvionis of a cousin to gumboat. So
(27:02):
it starts off with a blonde rootwhich equal parts butter and flour, and
you cook that down from a whiteroot to a blonde root, turning it
just kind of one shade of blondebut not dark. And then in that
goes tomato paste and you caramelize it, almost burn that tomato paste, and
that's what's going to give it thatgood brick root color, and that's what
(27:23):
we call it brick root. Thenyou go in with fish stock or shrimp
stock, and as that comes upin the restaurant, we put fish,
oysters, crawlfish, and whatever whateverthe daily catch is into it. Well,
my grandmother would just put the wholefish and as soon as that fish
released, she would we would eatthat over big bowls of rice. And
(27:45):
that was just one of the bettermemories I had of my Childhood's on there.
So it's a wonderful dish. It'snice and rich, it's all.
It's all the flavors of the seafood. It's got mine invention, crab bat
rice, which is crab road milldown and mixed with butter, a lethel,
pepper and lemon. You'd have oldCajun lue Cajun and one dish.
(28:06):
Hmm. It is fabulous. Wewere talking about what we were wondering what
crab fat rice was. Thank youfor explaining that it is quite fact.
Actually crab road the crab fact sellsbetter marketing technique. There you go,
who knew? Who knew? Doyou ever do anything? So we were
just at the folk Who's Door.We saw Emirald He was one of the
(28:26):
juriss and it was in the morelConvention Center. Very prestigious. Everyone listening.
I mean the fact that New Orleanswas picked to be the host city
for the book Who's Door America's competitionis a massive honor, and we're proud
to say a US team one.But Emerald picked the ingredients, guys,
and uh. So these are teamscompeting from North and South America and they
(28:48):
had to cook with wild boar,alligator, uh, crab meat, uh,
assorted seafood, and grits. Andit was interesting because a lot of
these chefs couldn't get these products wherethey lived due to trade reasons, accessibility.
So the Canadians, while boar isactually illegal in Canada, we learned
(29:08):
from the Canadian team, So it'sinteresting. Yeah, yeah, so you
know, the US team actually hadan advantage in many ways because they had
access to the product, but itwas interesting that they picked those things.
Do you ever do anything with alligator? I have, I have to some
alligator, But my whole argument tothe alligator, and sometimes if you can't
(29:30):
get it wild, then I don'twant the farmers stuff. The farm raised
stuff doesn't have the slavery, doesn'thave the care, war, doesn't have
the you know, the the smallpinessif you will, of the wild,
and getting wild can be insersistent andsometimes very illegal. So it's not always
a product that I can get myhands on. So while I have to.
(29:51):
I've actually done raised alligator tail inthe style of fo me on now
that we're messing it, uh,and it comes out very delicious, but
always kid it. So i havedone things with alligator, but I'm not
going to use these farm raised stuff. That's just kind of one of my
things. Interesting. So your otherproducts, and they're they're all hunted.
(30:11):
They're all local and locally hunted,whether it's the duck or the the lamb
pig. Everything is sourced, whichis great. You know, there's a
whole debate about farm raise versus wildand we're really glad and want to underscore
that because it really makes a hugedifference in the flavor of the food.
(30:32):
Well, our products come from farms, they some of our farm eries.
I just means we can't legally sellsomething like if you know cousin Boudreau came
to the restaurant with his gator.We couldn't sell his gator. We could
eat it, we could cook it, we couldn't sell it. It's got
to be from legal places. Sointeresting that just what he meant by the
alligatory. Yeah. Interesting. Soeven though even though so some artificial wild
(30:55):
caught or long like thought and someof our crabs. You know, you
can't just go shoot a wild pigand certain your restaurant. There are rules
and regulations put in place for verygood reasons. Yeah, you don't want
anybody sick. You don't know ifHunter even refrigerated the meat correctly. So
theseebs come from professional distributors making surethere are checks and balances the place and
(31:17):
of the sort of food and drugadministration it sees with that, so you
gotta be safe. But it alsotastes good, yes, you do.
Food safety is key, It's reallyreally key. What are some other things?
You know what? I also liked, just because I always do end
up getting something green wherever I goto. I actually like to see what
(31:38):
restaurants are doing with greed, becauseagain, I grew up in a town
where it was just a toss saladand I was just lucky if I had
anything fresh not frozen on it.You did a great shaved broccoli Caesar.
I actually don't even like broccoli,but I do like your shaved broccoli Caesar.
It made the broccoli palatable to me, and it was delicious, and
everybody was eating off my plate.It was really That's one of my old
(32:02):
we're actually passing them around the tableeveryone else. It good. So what
some of my old school recipes?Oh yeah, old school? So what
is the new school that it's looksone of my old that's one of my
old school recipes that I uh,I came about with after making a table
(32:23):
uh Caesar's table side at Del Monico'sback in the day. But what happened
is if you get a big party, you get sixty sixty seventy people,
you can't make table size Caesars forall of them. So I took all
those ingredients and made the same typeof dressing in the food processor, and
I just kept I just realized that, well, all caesar dressing is is
(32:44):
garlic and anchovies with some olive oiland some egggilk and a couple other things.
Well, I just kept adding moreanchovy, and I kept adding more
garlic to it, and that's whatyou get to the restaurant today. It's
a really powerful garlic and anchovy dressing. There's not much to it, and
it's delicious because of all the garlics. I love anchovies, love anchovies,
(33:05):
and I love caesar salad. Soit was just a big hit for the
entire table. Guys, Yeah,we were all reaching. Well, so
summer airloinm tomatoes in that same dress. It's solicious. There's nothing like the
heirloom tomat We're going to be sadwhen that season ends because we just love
the start. Every year it is, tomato season is always too short.
Yeah, like local corn seasons.How often do you change the menu and
(33:29):
add seasonal dishes. We try todo it quarterly when when the weather changes.
And you know, I don't alwayschange it when the calendar says,
oh it's summer, we change iton the calendar. Well, no,
if summer's not over yet, it'sstill hot. I wait to the act
the vegetables. It's all with thevessels. When the vegetables start changing,
(33:50):
that's when we change the menu.So it's not going to always be on
the calendar date. So I liketo wait with the tomatoes aren't right,
I'm not serving it. It's notspringtime yet, you know where it's not
summertime. If if the peppers aren'tready to go, we're not going to
put them on the menu and thingslike that. If the coin good,
I ain't serving it. So whathappened is also like you said before that
(34:12):
double cut pork chop. It's notchanging. So if I took that off
the menu, we'd have a riotat the restaurant. So we get locked
in the place with a lot ofour ingredients that people will have come to
love. So taking the lamb neckoffice not an option. Taking the pork
choff office not an option. Takingthe crack ones office is an option.
So we don't really change a wholelot these days because we're going to lock
(34:32):
in the place. So our seasonaldishes will change and our setup will change,
but a lot of the proteins staythe same because that's what people want.
And you've got to listen to yourcustomers. For sure. It's a
good, bad problem to have.We've tried. We took the venison off
and people were like, what thehell, guys for a while, and
it's sold. It's sold that theywanted the benison. So we brought the
(34:53):
venison back and we just leave italone. We'll take what Isaac will do
and my staff will do, andthe kitchen is they'll change the that up.
So the lamb neck will always bethe lambneck, and it'll always be
an anchoby RedWine braid. Eventually,and then Isaacle go all right, well
we're doing right now. We're doingpork and beans underneath it, and it's
delictious. Someone loves it. Sometimeswe do. We've done rice, We've
(35:13):
done Risota, We've done things likethat. Under the proteins will change.
But he's right the as far asthe pork chopping Drty Rice goes, we
cannot change it. We cannot.So it's the same thing with our burger
too. We're so well known forthat burger that that changing it is just
not an option at all. Well, Dave has been craving a burger.
We're on the menu again. It'stoopsmetery dot com everybody, and there's a
(35:34):
boot. There's a chef's launch Buddhaburger and beer for thirty dollars and I
think his stomach's grumbling. We haveto head over after the show. Yeah,
the tubes he's been craving and it'sa wago beef pickled, squashed shaddar,
bacon Creoleiley. I mean, justreally amazing. You know food Remember
Food Arts magazine. They used tohave a Rest in Peace, one of
(35:58):
my favorite magazines. They use tosay, can't take it off the menu,
or the customers will revolt and thenthey used to interview the ships,
try to put it on the menu, and the customers revolted. So you
were damned either way, trying somethingnew that they didn't want, and if
you took one thing off, peoplegot upset. And you know, it's
interesting, particularly in a lot ofcities, but I think particularly in New
Orleans, a lot of restaurants hereare known for very signature dishes, like
(36:24):
can you imagine if you suddenly tookX Rdeaux off the brunch menu at Brendon's
or you know the palms who flayat Gallatoys. I mean, there's certain
things you go and you must havethe Oysters Rockefeller, you know, here
or there, So you can't justpull something off that everybody is planning a
(36:44):
trip around to go visit, youknow, the restaurant, and they're expecting
to try a specific dish, right, Well, we get to be creative
with doing specials on the weekends andstuff, so we get around other ways.
But you're completely right, Yeah,I mean, I we travel a
lot, and I think this isone of the cities where a specific dish
(37:07):
is just very closely identified with thatrestaurant and you go there and say,
I gotta have this, you know, uh for sure, for sure?
What are some of the what arethe dishes that are you know that are
your best sellers? Probably the numberone best seller right now is actually a
cocktail. Pretty pretty pretty impressive,but up there, and the best sellers
(37:30):
are always going to be the cracklings, though they're some of the best benefit
else to be fried in the order. Our boot as spectacular. Our burgers
always, I don't care what Iput on the lunchman, you burger is
always going to be the number oneseller for lunch very turn turning to the
burger time at lunch at any givenpoint and at night you've already said it.
(37:52):
The pork shop, the Venison,the lamb neck, and the coopy
on those are our biggest hits.We got really good Marinay to crab claws.
They're very good, very good.Yeah yeah, brand and the crab
and the crab claws kind of highlightsomething that even even though it's a Cajun
(38:13):
products, the dressing is anything butCagun. It's it's kind of a combination
of some of my pickle inventions,grilled tickle, pineapple which is cost with
fish, sauce, sugar, andcane vinegar. So it's kind of a
collaboration. It's got a little Asianelement into it. And you know,
you won't catch a lot of thesegrilled tickle pineapple that's not Cajun. Uh
But I'm doing it and I loveit and it works for with the crabs.
(38:37):
So sometimes, you know, Idropped my Cajun senses and bringing other
ingredients that unnecessarily Cajun but work withthe Cajun food. Well, that's a
that's a it's almost like a Caribbeaninfluence more than anything. The pineapple which
we had that dish and we againeverybody was like grabbing at them because they
wanted them so much. And youdo serve a branch. Brunch is really
(39:00):
like apic here and New Orleans.I many people do brunch and with the
capital d it is a big dealhere, a really good brush and uh
so tell us a little bit aboutwhat some of the hits are there.
Well, brunch is actually killer atthe metery. We we got the bottles
of mimosa flowing and and a bunchof great brunch cocktails, espresso martinis and
(39:22):
things like that. But uh forfor the brunch menu, we sell a
ton of Our isak does a reallyfun play on at Benedict and it's uh
fried golf fish with a hot softHolland Days under our breeze, quorky greens
and a poast egg that we sella ton of. We obviously sell a
(39:43):
ton of. We do a waggysteak with with a crispy potatoes and and
Holland Days and a couple of eggson top and uh and then we are
are smoked. Are smoked. Golfshrimp and grits are big hits. So
and of course Zoughi's burger time atUH at brunch as well. But we
do a pretty hedonistic brunch, asyou can imagine, because everything at the
(40:04):
meter is pretty hedonistic. It isthat. Yeah, And our message to
anyone planning a trip to New Onesdo not take that six am Sunday flight
home. Just don't do it.You'll regret it. No, No,
everybody I know. So we we'vebeen. You know, we were at
the Bocu's door. We went tothe Wine Spectator Grand Tour. A couple
of events have come down here yay, and everybody's like I'm like, so
(40:24):
what are you doing after that?Oh, we we're on that six am
flight back to New York on Sunday. Don't do it, you'll regret it.
Stay over maybe maybe six am Monday. And first of all, it's
better to flat on Monday because alot of places are closed and you got
to have an epic brunch and agrand finale in New Orleans and Sunday is
(40:45):
just some great digning in this city. So, uh, you mentioned Thattday
bunch too. Yeah, so youdo brunch both week it's a weekend brunch.
Are you open on Mondays? Areyou open on Mondays? We're opening
three hundred and sixty three days ayear, closed with Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
Well that's good to know. Yeah, that's good to know because it
(41:06):
is hard to find places on Mondayin New Orleans. You mentioned the cocktail
program, and we do want togive a shout out about the wine list
because when we when we went,we were there with uh people, well
were we write about wine also,and we had an importer wine importer with
us, and you know he alwayslikes to yeah, and so he we
(41:28):
ended up ordering he brought you know, we brought wine because he always likes
to bring his wine. We endedup ordering off the list because it's such
a reasonable and and very well thoughtout list. So we want to give
a shout out to you about that, and you know that I did know
that, and you are very involvedin working with your wine director on that
list, right yeah, yeah,yeah, Well, mostly just the drinking
(41:52):
of the list these days, butthe US incredible Molly our gm is really
uh really got her come up anduh and the wine business. And I've
just been able to kind of beher mentor the family Brian Burkey of Wino
with my mentor and uh, he'sgot one of the best wine brains in
the whole world. Have you everkind to talk to him? Well,
(42:12):
she was there that night and andwe just had a great time and ordered
a number of wines. It's youknow, it's so nice to see wine
lists that when you leave, youknow that are well thought out and not
the usual plant that you see insome cities. That's all I'm going to
say. And it's not overly offthe top price and it's just so nice
to see that. Well exactly,yeah, you know, because that's important
(42:37):
to us, and and you know, we we were glad to see a
lot of light reds on the menu, because we think this is a great
city for light chilled reds right now, and even the whites are off the
chart. Yeah, year, we'redrinking a lot of childreds here when we're
uncorking and cooking here at home.So, speaking of what does a family
(42:57):
mill like at the tups family withyour kids, But like I said,
I mean there's still kids. Theylike to eat, you know, they'll
want to eat kid things, butthey've got pretty pretty refined palettes at the
same time. So I do alot of the if we're cooking at home,
I do a lot of it isaicalcook on Sundays. As you can
imagine, you cook all week andit's not really what you want to do
as soon as you get home.So I do a lot of cooking.
(43:21):
But and I do I always I'llsource my proteins from the restaurant and then
and the vegetables too because they're comingoff the farm truck if I can,
and then my kids will we'll eatwhatever I cook. So essentially I do
a lot of easy, quick thingsbecause, especially doing during the school year,
it's important to be able to geta home cooked meal out as fast
(43:42):
as possible. But we do alot of a lot of seafood at the
house, a whole lot a lotof shrimp. One of my favorite things
I cooked for the kids is I'llget like we call him, shrimp Ricky,
is I just can bind shrimp fromthe same guy for twenty five years
and he was at Delmonico. He'sa character and everybody in the in the
restaurant business knows Shrimp Ricky. Andso I'll get my staff to uh to
(44:02):
give me maybe three dozen, threedozen head on Gulf shrimp that came in
that day. And what I'll dois I'll take a seat tray and I'll
slice all of our citruses we havefrom the restaurant, so the grapefruit,
lemons, limes, oranges, Iput those on the bottom of the sea
tray, and I take my shrimpand we leave the heads on, of
course, because that's where all theflavor is. And if I have them,
feel it and leave the head on, and I will toss them an
(44:25):
avocado oil and a lepo and saltand pepper, a little cayenne garlic,
and I toss them it and Ilay them on top of the the citruses,
and then I'll slice up a littlefresh scent off I've got it,
and I just pop them in theoven for fifteen minutes but about all it
takes. And then when it comesout, they're beautiful. And then what
(44:45):
you have essentially is the sauce,so the juices from the from the shrimp,
and the and the avocado oil andall the juices from the citrus.
I'll then crush the heads of theshrimp. You get all the juices from
that, and then that's the saucefor you can take the heads off of
the kids now and then that's thesauce you used to pour over. I'll
serve it to them of a whiterice and a little pizza, French bread
(45:07):
and some fresh fruit, and weregood to go. We may have to
try that here. That's we're goingto find out where they live and just
come over for dinner. Dam I'mgetting hungry or hungry. And the more
he gets up, yeah, isaacsright, it's so easy. It's a deceptively
simple dish. The first time Iever made it, he goes, I
think this is the best thing you'veever made for me, And I was
like, dang, I did ittwenty minutes. It's great. Yeah,
(45:30):
because when you cooking all day,the last year would be is cooking all
night, you know, you wantto like just relax. So I think
that's great. Is there a obviously, the being at the restaurant is three
sixty five a day, three hundredand sixty five days a year open takes
a lot of your time. Isthere a hidden gem or place that you
like to go that maybe nobody knowsabout anywhere in Greater New Ones or it
(45:52):
could be the North Shore elsewhere that'sworth worth checking out because everybody always be
lines it to like whoever's getting themost press right or whoever's on Brabo TV
or whoever. And it's all great, But there's always those little bitty gems
that nobody knows about anything that youwant to give a shout out to.
Yeah, a little new place calledPorgies. It's a wonderful little seafood shop
(46:16):
where they do a lot of bycashfresh oysters and shrimp and they do lunch
there. It's a great place togo eat some shucked oysters. Not a
lot of places will have murder pointsand bright sides and the new long line
oysters there's only a couple of placesin town, and sometimes get the dress
up nice. Well, this isjust a little corner shop on North Carrollton
(46:38):
and Banks. I think ye,North Carrollton and Banville's right there. There
used to be an old sequeen shopand it's still a seeping shop and you
still get your fish. You alsohave a killer lunch and they'd have off
cuts. They have you can goget up fish cheeks, you can get
collars, you can get oyster shrimpand crawl fisher in season. They got
great ball craft and it's a placeyou sit at the counter, get a
(47:00):
beer. Uh, you just dosome talking with the fishmongers and just super
relaxing. I'll sometimes go with mychef coat, eat a couple of oceanes,
grab a beer, and then goback to the restaurants. Just one
of the little hidden gyms. Definitelyworth checking out. You'll find Isaac hiding
out there at least a couple oftimes a week. Yeah, I know
(47:21):
exactly where he's at likely far soYeah, he's so talented. Marcus the
stuff for you, and I justlook at the location as a guy he's
hiding and have with Marcus having abeer. I know exactly where he is.
It's tough to hide there when you'resix foot one and two hundred and
fifty pounds. Yeah, and peopleknow you because you've been you know,
(47:42):
you've been on TV, you've beenhere and there. Yeah, people know.
Yeah, you're kind of a localcelebrity. Well it's good to know.
I think we've driven by there quitea bit because again we're we're up
in Lakeview and we drive past thatwhole area back and forth a lot when
we go do all of our shopping. So thanks for that tip. That's
a good tip. Yeah, they'reso talented. Well, we are all
about supporting and and having it.We have adventurous palettes and we people like
(48:07):
to know. You know, peoplealways go what you know? Tom?
I love that Thomas Keller was like, what's your favorite restaurant New Orleans?
I'm like, you are you reallyasking me that? You know? It's
like what not to because you haveso many that you love depending on what
you're in the mood for, right, totally. Yeah, the Big Knife
last night, and like you wherewere you the State Knife? Ye eat
(48:30):
there pretty frequently. Yeah, thestake Knife right down the road. Yeah,
Yeah, I like the fake knife. I like it. I'm a
fan. Yeah, that's like.You know, there's a lot of these
restaurants that have just been around.They don't necessarily have a PR machine,
they just they're there, and alot were multi generationally owned. And in
(48:51):
this area there's a lot of Sicilianinspired restaurants. We were on the call
with with some people who represent winesof Sicily. I'm like, why aren't
you guys coming to New Orleans ifany there's a tight connection here, you
know. They're like, no,you know that everybody goes to New York
or Dallas or Texas. We weyou and us. We want to get
more major food and wine programs andevents here in New Orleans and pay more
(49:13):
attention here because everybody keeps going toTextas. We don't see a lot of
Sicilian lines in New Orleans. Unfortunately, we just don't see them. We're
got to make that change happen,right, You got to be the force
for change, like you're doing withFamily we Neils. We know you have
a fundraiser even though this is anevergreen show, so people may be listening
to it next year. We aredoing the show in June twenty twenty four
(49:35):
and you've got a fundraiser coming upat the Broadside that looks a lot of
fun and you know, again toopsfamily meals. Hopefully you'll get all the
funding you need to keep it goingthis summer, but even more importantly,
hopingly this will be a short termsituation and that the food and security issue
here and elsewhere will be addressed throughthe importance of funding. Right Well,
(50:00):
I hope so, because our goalis to get out sixty thousand meals over
the course of the summer. Whatwe've done is taken on five hundred and
thirty three children children and two hundredfamilies in Orleans Parish, and so we're
getting out deliveries on Tuesdays and Fridaysof close to thirty five hundred meals each
time in under ninety minutes. Yesterdaywe got that many out for delivery.
(50:22):
We are a well oiled machine,but it takes funding and it cost us
about fifteen grand a week to doit. That doesn't that sounds like a
lot of money, but it isn't. Whenever you're putting out you know,
over six thousand meals if you thinkabout it. So we have funding key
and so on June thirtieth. Asmany of you know, Isaac and I
were King and Queen of Crewdivoo thisyear. We're very blessed. We love
the Creudivooians and Brian, who ownsthe Broadside, is a member of Crudivoo
(50:45):
and offered us his events space atthe Broadside for free to do a fundraiser
because it just really is now aboutfun. We've got the delivery drivers,
we have the routes, we knowthe kids, we know what they need,
we know what they're They're also gratefulto the delivery drivers. Helf like
how appreciates that these families are thatthat we're able to feed them through through
(51:07):
the help of our fellow man andwoman, and that again is just funding.
So we got really lucky with theBroadside and we are so excited that
the Lost by You Ramblers are goingto be headlining the event. Uh and
the Creole string Beans, our localsuper fun to watch fans, is going
to be also playing. We're gonnahave a huge auction with a ton of
(51:29):
booze and a ton of wine.It's going to be a really really heavy
wine auction. So if you guysare there, yeah, we will be
there. You will be promoting.Thank you. Yeah yeah. Alb on
Kuman has donated a six pack ofsome of the really nice stuff. We've
got champagne magnums. We've got evenif you're into the big California bombs,
(51:52):
we've got some opus ones that aregoing to be auctioned office and it's sponsored
by It's sponsored by liquor company andit's great local guy John Ethan, he
owns hard Hied Contu with Strawberry Whiskey. They're sponsoring it. So they they
stepped in and paid the band andso that we can really take all the
(52:12):
fun from ticket sales and the auctionitems to feed the kids, because that's
what we're gonna do. They hookerball, we kids been. I got
a bag and bar and steal thatmon do well, we'll be there and
we'll be supporting it. Family meals. So Amanda, Isaac Toops, you
guys are awesome. Toops Meter everybodycheck it out. Support your local restaurants,
but also get down to New Orleans. It's not just about Mardi Gras
(52:37):
and jazz Fest. It's the yearround amazing and we chose to move here
for that reason. You've been listeningto the Connected Table Live with Melanie Young
and David Ransom. We are broadcastingfrom New Orleans. We're dedicating a percentage
of our shows to the city wehave chosen to live in, while we
continue to travel the world to sharestories of amazing people making a difference in
(52:57):
this industry, and our messages alwaysstay insatiably curious. Thank you guys,
thank you, thank you.
The topics and opinions expressed in thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
and their guests and not those ofW FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates.
We make no recommendations or endorsements forradio show programs, services, or
products mentioned on air or on ourweb. No liability explicitor implied shall be
extended to W four CY Radio orit's employees are affiliates. Any questions or
comments should be directed to those showhosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY
(00:21):
Radio. Welcome to the Connected TableLive where your hosts, Melanie Young and
(00:46):
David Ransome you're insatiably curious culinary couple. We enjoy traveling the world to bring
you the dynamic people who work frontand center and behind the scenes in wine,
food, spirits, and hospitality aroundthe world. We love sharing their
stories with you and hope you're inspiredto go and support their restaurants, read
(01:10):
their books, and drink their wines. We are in our backyard today,
New Orleans, Louisiana. Since movinghere, we decided to dedicate a certain
percentage of our shows to supporting theNew Orleans community, and we are really
excited to have practically neighbors on ourshow today, Isaac and Amanda Toops from
(01:34):
Toops Metery in mid City, NewOrleans. It is a fabulous restaurant,
particularly if you love nose to tailcooking, and they're going to share their
story. What's interesting about them isso Isaac Toops comes from a large Louisiana
family, which he'll talk about datingback many generations, and their meals are
(01:57):
so important and there's a lot ofhunting and fishing, and Amanda is his
partner and wife and co conspirator inopening Troops Metery, which was twenty twelve.
They are also a couple like manyin the restaurant community, that wear
their hearts on their sleep. Andthis summer twenty twenty four, they have
(02:20):
relaunched a very important program called FamilyMeals, which they're going to talk about.
But basically it's in response to thefact that the Louisiana government landry refuse
federal funding that was going to providefor all these meals to feed families in
need during the summer months. Sothe Troops launched, well, they've relaunched
Family Meals, which you'll talk abouthow it's all started, and they're going
(02:42):
to be feeding families throughout the summer, and we hope if you're listening,
you'll consider supporting that because we donot want anyone to be food and secure
in one of the greatest food citiesin the United States of America. And
with that, Amanda Tops, IsaacTops, welcome to the Connected Table.
Thanks for having us. Yeah,glad to be here. Well, we've
(03:04):
had you guys on our radar forsome time now, we haven't, I'll
be honest with you, we've weWe actually went there about a month ago
for dinner and we had a fabulousduring jazz Fest when of course everybody wants
to go to every town and wehad a great time. But for years
before that, I'd driven by sadlybecause Melanie at one point decided to give
(03:24):
up meat and it was just afteryou guys opened, So we've been I've
been wanting to go to I've beenwanting to give up wanting to go to
Tubs for years and and I justdidn't want to go it alone. So
finally when she found out that youhad this fabulous cuvian on your menu,
we went. So I do wanton your score that Toops is an all
(03:46):
It's an all occasion place that hasmany wonderful things on the menu, including
one of the best Koovians, whichyou'll explain I've ever tasted. Let's start
where we always do with this show, with family and where you grew up.
Each of you, Amanda, Isaac, tell us about growing up in
your respective families. I know thatIsaac, you grew up in Rayne,
Louisiana. Amanda, I'm not surewhere you grew up, so tell us,
(04:11):
but yeah, I said, Igrew up in rain Louisiana, and
I had the wonderful upbringing of havingthe great duality of casions, my mother
being a prairie Cajun and my fatherbeing a coastal Cagun. So while my
father was born and raised in Tiberdal, Louisiana, and my mother was raised
in Oakdale, two different coins ofthe Cajun side, which not a lot
of people get. So on themother's side, we would have the pig
(04:34):
ROAs, the right fishes, theNative American influences, and things of that
nature. On my father's side,we had the crawfish, the shrimp,
the fish, the crabs, theoysters. I mean, we would go
fishing. My dadd would clean thosefish he would deep prime and he's a
dentist. And you know, soeverybody in my family cooks. I grew
(04:56):
up with a rich history of youknow, eating meals, things. I
grew up with things that I thoughtwere normal for everybody else in the country,
which I grew up later realizing itwas not. Not everybody has fish
fries and crawfish balls and pig roast, and you know, not everybody goes
hunting, and not everybody and everybody'sfamily cooks, you know, like,
what does your mama cooked, Well, my mama doesn't cook. What what
(05:17):
is your father cook? My fatherjust said, well, what do you
eat? So, you know,I grew up in uh Cajun Wonderland.
You know, I could literally goto my backyard and catch wild crawfish,
so you know, and that andthat's not normal, but for me it
was. It was it was regularlybringing up and then I was job hopping
(05:38):
after my brief college sent and thenuh you know that fell into cooking,
and then moved from New Orleans andthe rest is history. Man. Well,
I grew up right outside New Orleans, and so I've always considered New
Orleans to be my home. Igrew up on the North Shore, but
just as soon as I could drive, I said, I'm getting the hell
out of here. So uh,and that's what I did. So I
(06:00):
I went away to college and lastyet and that's where Isaac I met twenty
five years ago. And then butNew Orleans has always been home, and
so whenever he started cooking, Isaid, I'm ready to go home.
Like I'm laughy, it's great,but like, I'm ready to go home.
And we moved back back here.But growing up, my mother is
an incredible baker, incredible, probablyone of the better ones in the country.
(06:21):
She could definitely be professional. Andfood was very important in our family
as well, but it was nothinglike what I've discovered when I moved out
to the Cajun country. The passionfor food there is wholly different than what
I grew up with on the NorthShort, so and exciting, and it
made me fall in love with foodeven more. I was always into art,
(06:43):
music and that kind of stuff,and I still am. But meeting
Isaac and his family and falling inlove with the Cajun people really gave me
a better understanding of what it meansto truly love food because they truly live
to eat. It really is that. It's not an exaggeration that the Cajun
people truly lived to eat. Ourkids are the same. We are eating
breakfast and we're talking about what we'regonna what we're gonna do for lunch,
(07:04):
and we're at lunchop about what we'regoing to do for dinner. So food
really is our entire life. Sowhat y'all met in college? Then?
What were we all studying? Ithink was studying skipping class and I was
I was studying I took that course. I was studying art. Yeah,
(07:27):
I was studying art. So Ihad a minoring beer. Yeah, we're
about to we met. We weretwenty almost twenty one. We're about to
be married twenty one years in September. Congratulations. I went to Newcombe down
the road in New Orleans. Somy connections to New Orleans started when I
was ten and we came down.My mom went to Newcomb Law, my
(07:49):
family went to Newcomb now too Lane, and my dad came down for his
fortieth birthday for what was one ofthe great dining experiences of my ten year
old life. And he ate fortyoysters, raw oysters, and I was
hooked ever since, and it justtook a while to get back down here.
We've been back a couple of falsestarts, but it's good to be
back. And I can agree thatyou think, and you know, eating
(08:11):
and drinking is just part of theculture here, and music and music and
art. It's just so amazing.You know. It's interesting. You were
saying, you have breakfast and youtalk about what you're gonna have for lunch,
and you have lunch and you talkabout what you're gonna have for dinner.
We kind of do that at ourhouse too. It's like, oh,
we just had lunch, what arewe going to do for dinner?
Totally Yeah, yeah, So ourkids are so lucky they get to h
(08:33):
They literally we took our baby who'sgoing to be ten in August last night
for her s cargo that she likedto eat. So, you know,
it's a little bit of a differentupbring than what I had. Yeah,
yeah, I don't think I hadescargo till I was my first trip to
Paris. But I get to saythat first trip to Louisianna, I had
my first crab, meat, bullshrimp, raw oysters. On the half.
(08:54):
We hated all the great restaurants withall their famous dishes, and I
never looked back. I never McDonald'sare a fast food ever again. So
you what you You opened in twentytwelve, So that's in restaurants speak,
old but new, you know whatI mean? Uh? What was the
(09:16):
emphatus? Like? Yeah? Whatwas the what made you decide to go
ahead and open a restaurant? Andwhat were y'all doing? Well? First
of all, Isaac, you workedwith Emerald for like ten years, So
is that what you were doing beforeyou opened Toops Metery? And what did
Emerald teach you as a mentor?Uh? You know when I came to
New Orlands and was literally just likegoing handing out resumes. And I went
(09:39):
to Delmonico and handed my my resumeto the chef. He's like, hey,
I got a position, but it'sonly for fried cook And I'm like,
yay. I was the happiest flycook at Emeralds Domonico you'd ever seen
the rest of the cooks didn't knowwhat to do with me. I was
so excited just to be cooking forEmerald Gatsi. And you know, at
first I'm just a little fry cookfor and then I moved up to the
(10:00):
pantry and Shepherd Wan would come inand you know, he scared scared me
to death. He was he wasa commander to catch me. We wasn't
the guy you saw on TV,uh, but he was you know,
learned my name very slowly, climbedup through the ranks, and later on
we you know, we got toform a real good working relationship. And
so I spent uh the next tenyears working for the the Emeralds for corporation,
(10:24):
uh mostly Domonico's Coming Emeralds, somein Emeralds Miami during the hurricane,
and uh, you know it wastime to flop flow the coop for about
ten years. And then we didsome uh some private chef or some chef
chefing for some restaurant tours and itdidn't work out so well. We kind
of got screwed over. And thenme and Amanda looked at ourselves and went,
(10:46):
you know, let's open up ourown restaurant. We were tired of
getting screwed over by other people andwe wanted to screw over ourselves. Uh.
So that was again Fatus to openup Twop's metery. And you get
this wonderful feeling of you know,Joey and fear when you go, Now,
I can cook whatever I want.Oh God in heaven, what's that
(11:07):
you configure that out? I like, I think I want to cook some
caging food. Well, okay,we'll also want to do some some non
caging things. Well, what doyou call that? Le fils of Metay.
That's silly, And I still thinkit's silly, but it's it's it's
us, it's you know, Idon't think myself very seriously, but we
take the food very seriously. Wetake out pastures. I also like to
say, because I don't think it'sout from the press enough, not that
(11:28):
Scheffer will need press from us,but he is one of the most decent
human beings on the planet. Andhe's and he's not only obviously a great
chef, but he's a great humanbeing. And he caught a lot of
flack and the press during Katrina fornot coming back fast enough. But I
tell everybody who asked, we nevermissed a paycheck. I think was a
young sea Steff. He was oneof the youngest in the whole company at
(11:48):
that time, and and we nevermissed a paycheck. And he told all
of us, if you're willing towork. I will pay you. You
just got to go where the restaurantsare open. And so we went to
Orlando and then he personally wrote hispersonal check out of a personal check and
account to move us back home beforeThanksgiving. So and stood right in front
of us at our company Christmas partyand just was like tearful like that we
(12:09):
had so many of us had stuckby him because it really was like we,
as you all know, restaurants againstthe world. At that point,
Katrina was devastating to our city.But Chepheral really is a stand up dude
and knew my name even when Isaacwas a young Lionel. He would ask
about me. It's like he reallyis that guy. And so Isaac is
really that type of Cheff too.Whenever you're in our restaurant, and I
(12:30):
take those principles as well. Whenyou're in our restaurant, you work for
us, you are a family member, period, so that you know family
meal, being called family meal,and really treating our employees the way that
shepherd Will treated Isaac is really importantto us as a philosophy, as business
people, but also just as beinggood people. That's so important because the
restaurant industry, as we all know, has taken a lot of scrutiny and
(12:52):
flack about being sweatshops for people inthe kitchen and the imbalance between the front
of the house in the back ofthe house, and you know, you
name it. It's gotten there andto the point where the James Bear Foundation
had to revise its awards and alot of things had to happen. A
lot of changes are still underway.And then you know, you, I
(13:16):
think it's great that you gave ashout out to Elmoll for doing that,
because he did take a lot offlak. Katrina was devastating for the city.
And then you know, flash forward, you have COVID nineteen, which
decimated this poor city's been hit somany times and yet always rises back from
the ashes. That's when you guysstarted the Family Meal program. So let's
(13:37):
talk about how that came about duringCOVID nineteen. Well, it's really simple,
because Taden people and New Orleans peopleand people in hospitality. What do
we do when we get scared?We start cooking. So I mean I
do it even at home. I'mupset about something, we just start cooking.
It's just you know, it's thesame thing with the the death in
(13:58):
the family or you know, oras a marriage. When it's good times
a bad times, our response isalways food. So Isaac is very adamant
that we share family mail, whichis the meal that the staff eats between
lunch and dinner services. And it'sa good time for if you got any
grievances or everything's great, and checkon your mom u we know whatever,
everyone's good and just laugh, cutup, tell some some inappropriate jokes that
(14:22):
you wouldn't say during service, andkeep it moving right. It's it's a
it's a time for communalness in therestaurant. So when we had to shut
down in March, we only closedfor one day and then we we we
just put our heads down. Weignorant. Soups are ignorant. We just
we just never say die. Wesaid we're not We're not closing. We'll
just go to takeout. We'll figureit out. And Isaac said to our
line cooks that we had to layoff. We kept our management, thankfully,
(14:46):
but we had to lay off ourline cooks and we had to lay
off our service. But we keptour oldest dishwasher, mister Ray, who
we loved and the door, andhe said, come back every day for
family milt so we can check inon each other, because we didn't know
we needed to be a part atthat point, and they did. And
then so we made the fifteen youknow, family meals that first day,
and then the second day they cameback with their roommates because their roommates have
(15:07):
been laid off to The dinner wasthirty and then it's snowball. And at
first we were just going to feedthe service industry, and then within five
days I had moms reaching out tome saying, you don't have to feed
me if you'll feed my kids.And we were like, hell no,
we're gonna feed you too. Sowe had. I get emotional still thinking
about it, because I don't knowwhat it means to not be able to
(15:28):
feed my children. I've never beenin that position, but I've spoken to
hundreds and hundreds of moms in thiscity, the fairest, the best food
city in this whole country, whodo know what that means. And I
think that's despicable that that would behappening in New Orleans, Louisiana. And
so we had an incredible retired Saintsplayer reach out to us on the back
(15:50):
end during COVID, and he said, I see what you're doing. You
guys are gonna need money to keepit going. And I was like,
I don't want your money, man, and he was like, no,
you're gonna need money. You haveto keep doing this, and so he
spent us two thousand dollars and I'mlike, holy shit, I guess he's
right because we were at five hundredpeople a day wrapping around the block.
(16:10):
We were feeding and in the beginningof COVID, and we were doing it
just because our friends who owned restaurantswere kicking down the stuff out of their
walking. So Isaac Whill was joking, was like, it's like an episode
of Top Scheff. Every day,whatever he had, whatever it was,
donated. That's what we made forfamily meal, just to keep people going.
So once he gave me the ideaof start crowdsworking and fundraising, that's
what I did. And right asCOVID happened, I was scouring my brain
(16:33):
like it's just you know, howdo we keep how do we survive?
We have to survive this. SoI reached out to Jose Andres's Will Central
Kitchen back in March and they said, I said, look, this is
a crisis. This this is it'sdevastating in New Orleans because, as y'all
know, we were the second hotspot in the whole country outside of New
York City and so and restaurants weretaboos. So I said, this is
a crisis. The hospitality industry isbeing decimated. These people are hungry.
(16:57):
And they said, well, we'renot in New Orleans yet, and so
I said, okay, and thenthink of anything else about it. And
then I kept fundraising crowdsourcing. Itwould be five dollars year. We had
people that had never met us whowould send us a check for one hundred
dollars, that had never met us, from out of town. It was
so emotional every day, and Iwas talking to all these people in need
(17:17):
every day. And by the endof April, I was like I was
talking to ecause I don't think wecan. I don't know that we're gonna
be able to afford to keep doingthis and try and open up the back
the restaurant back again. And thatthe last day of April we were talking
about I got a call up onWorld's Central Kitchen and they said, we're
coming to New Orleans. You're goingto be our first restaurant we on board
in the whole state, and wewere so they were incredible, and they
(17:42):
paid us and they said, wethink we're only going to be that the
two weeks, and I said,I'll take it. Whatever you're going to
pay the cook for two weeks,I'm going to feed these other people for
that additional two weeks. So wewound up cooking for a World Central Kitchen
for seven months, and over thecourse of eighteen months, we were able
to put one hundred thousand filed outinto the community. And so via Family
(18:03):
Meal and the Wilson Kitten and thecharity they were asking us to cook for.
We were cooking for blind veterans,we were cooking for the elderly,
we were cooking for anybody that neededit, so families, kids, homeless
children, anything, anybody that neededit. We made it happen. And
so when we shut down Family Mailafter eighteen months, Isaac and I and
our dad we just said, wedid that. That was special. We
did it, and we never thoughtwe'd see it again. And then and
(18:26):
here we are now we're back upand running. It's a pretty amazing story.
Yeah, So the impetus for thiswas that the federal funding was not
accepted. You know, politics aside. You know, there is federal funding
for particularly in the summer months whenschool kids, many school kids who come
from insecure food and secure families,their main meal is their school meal,
(18:49):
and so when the kids are notin school, they don't have that access.
So the not having the federal fundingmeant there was a big lap.
So you're doing it and you're fundraisingagain, and I know that you've got
some great press in New Orleans andwe posted it to let people know outside
of New Orleans. And you're you'reraising the money because you're self funded and
(19:10):
you need to raise. How canpeople donate if they want to support,
Well, it's really simple. Toothstandleymil. Dot coms are our web page
and it's tooth Standemil at Venmo andcash app and PayPal is great and people
have been dropping off checks to therestaurant, which is wonderful. All of
it helps, it really does.We just put our We delivered yesterday our
(19:32):
sixteen thousand meal to food and Securechildren yesterday. We started June fourth and
it's June nineteenth, So in fifteendays in Summer's a long hot time down
here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a long summer.
I do want to back up becauseI want, I want everyone to be
clear that both sides of the aisleshame the legislature after they refuse the fund
(19:53):
over and over again. It wasn'tjust one side or the other. They
both were shaming the legislature and theydid wind up accepting the fund. But
I got even more pissed off whenI read the legislation because I want to
I want to give full the fullpicture of why we're here and why we're
doing it. So children who arefood insecure received breakfast and lunch at school.
(20:15):
That's five days a week, fourweeks a four weeks a month.
That's forty meals. And this legislationthat they kept turning down provided the moms
with forty dollars a month who haveplaced forty meals, and I don't know
about two but I haven't said myselfa whole meal and a dollar in a
long time. They don't even havea dollar value any of the dollars anymore.
Forty meals, forty dollars for fortymeals, Oh god, forty dollars.
(20:38):
That's okay, can't even spend thatgoing to the grocery or on snap
budget. I mean, you know, yeah, you have to get a
value meal at McDonald's for for Imean I pulled through this months ago,
had I did have to pull througha drive through and grab the kids something,
and it was windy, and forthree value meals it was like forty
bucks. So there's no way thatmom can feed and especially something anything that's
(21:03):
not just trash for a dollar ameal. It's just unceivable that that would
be turned down. You know,it's interesting it's restaurant Week here in New
Orleans, and then there's a programCulinary, which is to help generate business
for restaurants during the slower summer monthswhen it's still a great time to visit
New Orleans. Everybody, we supportit. It's a shame that there wasn't
(21:26):
a way to tie that in sothat there could be a you know,
hindsight, uh donate tie in theremaybe maybe for Culinary later in the month,
that that would have been a greattie in. Logically, as someone
who comes from fundraising in the area, maybe there's something to think about with
(21:48):
the powers that be doing the culinaryprogram. Yeah. They they've they've been
very supportive. Good Okay, Ijust want to make sure because it is
you know, it takes a village, a family. Speaking of family,
Yeah, I really dad. Speakingof family, you were inspired by your
family meals to create the menu atTwopsman. Let's talk about the menu because,
(22:14):
as we said, you know,you've got a really successful restaurant,
Isaac, you were on top chef, you were a contestant, you've been
that gave you incredible The power oftelevision must have helped the restaurant a lot
during the difficult times and the busytimes, because there is a feast and
famine part of the restaurant world inevery city, but New Orleans has its
(22:36):
fair share of that. Because thetourism dies out a bit in the summer
and then it gears back up andthen it's crazy that goes. You know,
you never know what's going on.How let's talk about the menu and
some of the signature. Diihes towet people's appetite. Yeah, you know,
(22:57):
we opened up toops meter and youknow, I come from fine dining
and I was I was over findingdining. You know, I appreciated all
the detailed of food. I didn'twant to be a greasy spoon. I
wanted to be something casual with youknow, with high end ingredients. You
know, Pagara on your flip flopsis one of our our tags. You
(23:17):
know, we would like to sayyou can walk in in your shorts and
your t shirt, sit down,have suagra, groancou champaigne. I love
charcuterie and I love smoking and tearing. I love all the old school methods
of charcuterie. But uh, youknow, having your own place, you
(23:37):
can really put your own stamp ona menu, and sometimes that, you
know, can be very scary.So finding you know, bringing the gap
between like Cajun food classic like Budaand Kracklin, and then also having brains
lamb neck and Kouli on the dish. Bringing the gap between old world Cajun
(23:59):
and new agent. Well what isnew Cajun? You know, I've been
fighting with that term ever since Iadopted it, and you know, it's
no matter what ingredient comes my way, and we try to go as local
as possible. That's that's one ofthe great goals of the metery. We
use only go seafood. Our pigsour local, our cows are local,
our rabbits, everything that we use. As much as we can, we
(24:22):
go local. And so anytime Icome up come into a new ingredient,
I go, Okay, well,how would a Cajun man approach this?
You know, I don't have tothink that because it just naturally comes out.
Well, I'm definitely gonna aggress thisseason with regard like, oh,
I think we need the highest spirit. And so some of these dishes come
out of things I've had in thepast, and some of the things you
(24:44):
I approached with a new idea.Uh So the metery is sometimes if you
if you pay attention some things,it's not very Cajun. And you know
what, no one cares. Theylike They like it, My customers like
it, and I like it.So let's see when we were there,
David, what did you have?Well, I had the double cut pork
chump, which which I went onyour Facebook page, guys and found out
(25:08):
that you had posted last year onFacebook your original menu when you first opened
the restaurant. And there are acouple of dishes that you've literally never taken
off the menu since, and thatdouble cup pork chump is one of them
and it was just delicious. Andthen our friend Brad got the turkey neck
right. Yes, I never seenturkey neck a lamb neck. I never
seen lamb. It was huge.It's it's a whole neck. I mean,
(25:33):
I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was lucky to see fresh
fish be Usually it was the shapeof a stick. So you know,
my first fresh fish was New Orleans. You know the it is. It
is a meat centric menu with somedishes that many people have not considered trying
(25:55):
and should try because it is nostelling. You can eat every part. You
also have a terrific Venizon loin.I think one of the people at our
dinner. We had like eight peopleor ten people when we went during jazz
Fest, and it was wonderful.I ordered as I said, I do
tend to go for fish, andI happened to love couvion. Now I
want you to explain what it isfor our listeners who don't know. And
(26:18):
we actually have listeners who are inEurope, so when you think about it,
explain it to them in those termswhat it is. And it was
your grandmother's recipe also, right wasmy grandmother Tooch to recipe, and the
number one thing she'd like to dowas go fishing. There's a beautiful pisture
of her in the land to whereI grew up, with big pond in
(26:41):
the back, and her favorite thingto do was go out and catch fish.
And then she would clean that abig catfish or red fish or whatever
she thought that day, and shewould take it back and she would scale
it and then cook it hole ina big in a big magnum like pot
with a coovion base. Now puvionis of a cousin to gumboat. So
(27:02):
it starts off with a blonde rootwhich equal parts butter and flour, and
you cook that down from a whiteroot to a blonde root, turning it
just kind of one shade of blondebut not dark. And then in that
goes tomato paste and you caramelize it, almost burn that tomato paste, and
that's what's going to give it thatgood brick root color, and that's what
(27:23):
we call it brick root. Thenyou go in with fish stock or shrimp
stock, and as that comes upin the restaurant, we put fish,
oysters, crawlfish, and whatever whateverthe daily catch is into it. Well,
my grandmother would just put the wholefish and as soon as that fish
released, she would we would eatthat over big bowls of rice. And
(27:45):
that was just one of the bettermemories I had of my Childhood's on there.
So it's a wonderful dish. It'snice and rich, it's all.
It's all the flavors of the seafood. It's got mine invention, crab bat
rice, which is crab road milldown and mixed with butter, a lethel,
pepper and lemon. You'd have oldCajun lue Cajun and one dish.
(28:06):
Hmm. It is fabulous. Wewere talking about what we were wondering what
crab fat rice was. Thank youfor explaining that it is quite fact.
Actually crab road the crab fact sellsbetter marketing technique. There you go,
who knew? Who knew? Doyou ever do anything? So we were
just at the folk Who's Door.We saw Emirald He was one of the
(28:26):
juriss and it was in the morelConvention Center. Very prestigious. Everyone listening.
I mean the fact that New Orleanswas picked to be the host city
for the book Who's Door America's competitionis a massive honor, and we're proud
to say a US team one.But Emerald picked the ingredients, guys,
and uh. So these are teamscompeting from North and South America and they
(28:48):
had to cook with wild boar,alligator, uh, crab meat, uh,
assorted seafood, and grits. Andit was interesting because a lot of
these chefs couldn't get these products wherethey lived due to trade reasons, accessibility.
So the Canadians, while boar isactually illegal in Canada, we learned
(29:08):
from the Canadian team, So it'sinteresting. Yeah, yeah, so you
know, the US team actually hadan advantage in many ways because they had
access to the product, but itwas interesting that they picked those things.
Do you ever do anything with alligator? I have, I have to some
alligator, But my whole argument tothe alligator, and sometimes if you can't
(29:30):
get it wild, then I don'twant the farmers stuff. The farm raised
stuff doesn't have the slavery, doesn'thave the care, war, doesn't have
the you know, the the smallpinessif you will, of the wild,
and getting wild can be insersistent andsometimes very illegal. So it's not always
a product that I can get myhands on. So while I have to.
(29:51):
I've actually done raised alligator tail inthe style of fo me on now
that we're messing it, uh,and it comes out very delicious, but
always kid it. So i havedone things with alligator, but I'm not
going to use these farm raised stuff. That's just kind of one of my
things. Interesting. So your otherproducts, and they're they're all hunted.
(30:11):
They're all local and locally hunted,whether it's the duck or the the lamb
pig. Everything is sourced, whichis great. You know, there's a
whole debate about farm raise versus wildand we're really glad and want to underscore
that because it really makes a hugedifference in the flavor of the food.
(30:32):
Well, our products come from farms, they some of our farm eries.
I just means we can't legally sellsomething like if you know cousin Boudreau came
to the restaurant with his gator.We couldn't sell his gator. We could
eat it, we could cook it, we couldn't sell it. It's got
to be from legal places. Sointeresting that just what he meant by the
alligatory. Yeah. Interesting. Soeven though even though so some artificial wild
(30:55):
caught or long like thought and someof our crabs. You know, you
can't just go shoot a wild pigand certain your restaurant. There are rules
and regulations put in place for verygood reasons. Yeah, you don't want
anybody sick. You don't know ifHunter even refrigerated the meat correctly. So
theseebs come from professional distributors making surethere are checks and balances the place and
(31:17):
of the sort of food and drugadministration it sees with that, so you
gotta be safe. But it alsotastes good, yes, you do.
Food safety is key, It's reallyreally key. What are some other things?
You know what? I also liked, just because I always do end
up getting something green wherever I goto. I actually like to see what
(31:38):
restaurants are doing with greed, becauseagain, I grew up in a town
where it was just a toss saladand I was just lucky if I had
anything fresh not frozen on it.You did a great shaved broccoli Caesar.
I actually don't even like broccoli,but I do like your shaved broccoli Caesar.
It made the broccoli palatable to me, and it was delicious, and
everybody was eating off my plate.It was really That's one of my old
(32:02):
we're actually passing them around the tableeveryone else. It good. So what
some of my old school recipes?Oh yeah, old school? So what
is the new school that it's looksone of my old that's one of my
old school recipes that I uh,I came about with after making a table
(32:23):
uh Caesar's table side at Del Monico'sback in the day. But what happened
is if you get a big party, you get sixty sixty seventy people,
you can't make table size Caesars forall of them. So I took all
those ingredients and made the same typeof dressing in the food processor, and
I just kept I just realized that, well, all caesar dressing is is
(32:44):
garlic and anchovies with some olive oiland some egggilk and a couple other things.
Well, I just kept adding moreanchovy, and I kept adding more
garlic to it, and that's whatyou get to the restaurant today. It's
a really powerful garlic and anchovy dressing. There's not much to it, and
it's delicious because of all the garlics. I love anchovies, love anchovies,
(33:05):
and I love caesar salad. Soit was just a big hit for the
entire table. Guys, Yeah,we were all reaching. Well, so
summer airloinm tomatoes in that same dress. It's solicious. There's nothing like the
heirloom tomat We're going to be sadwhen that season ends because we just love
the start. Every year it is, tomato season is always too short.
Yeah, like local corn seasons.How often do you change the menu and
(33:29):
add seasonal dishes. We try todo it quarterly when when the weather changes.
And you know, I don't alwayschange it when the calendar says,
oh it's summer, we change iton the calendar. Well, no,
if summer's not over yet, it'sstill hot. I wait to the act
the vegetables. It's all with thevessels. When the vegetables start changing,
(33:50):
that's when we change the menu.So it's not going to always be on
the calendar date. So I liketo wait with the tomatoes aren't right,
I'm not serving it. It's notspringtime yet, you know where it's not
summertime. If if the peppers aren'tready to go, we're not going to
put them on the menu and thingslike that. If the coin good,
I ain't serving it. So whathappened is also like you said before that
(34:12):
double cut pork chop. It's notchanging. So if I took that off
the menu, we'd have a riotat the restaurant. So we get locked
in the place with a lot ofour ingredients that people will have come to
love. So taking the lamb neckoffice not an option. Taking the pork
choff office not an option. Takingthe crack ones office is an option.
So we don't really change a wholelot these days because we're going to lock
(34:32):
in the place. So our seasonaldishes will change and our setup will change,
but a lot of the proteins staythe same because that's what people want.
And you've got to listen to yourcustomers. For sure. It's a
good, bad problem to have.We've tried. We took the venison off
and people were like, what thehell, guys for a while, and
it's sold. It's sold that theywanted the benison. So we brought the
(34:53):
venison back and we just leave italone. We'll take what Isaac will do
and my staff will do, andthe kitchen is they'll change the that up.
So the lamb neck will always bethe lambneck, and it'll always be
an anchoby RedWine braid. Eventually,and then Isaacle go all right, well
we're doing right now. We're doingpork and beans underneath it, and it's
delictious. Someone loves it. Sometimeswe do. We've done rice, We've
(35:13):
done Risota, We've done things likethat. Under the proteins will change.
But he's right the as far asthe pork chopping Drty Rice goes, we
cannot change it. We cannot.So it's the same thing with our burger
too. We're so well known forthat burger that that changing it is just
not an option at all. Well, Dave has been craving a burger.
We're on the menu again. It'stoopsmetery dot com everybody, and there's a
(35:34):
boot. There's a chef's launch Buddhaburger and beer for thirty dollars and I
think his stomach's grumbling. We haveto head over after the show. Yeah,
the tubes he's been craving and it'sa wago beef pickled, squashed shaddar,
bacon Creoleiley. I mean, justreally amazing. You know food Remember
Food Arts magazine. They used tohave a Rest in Peace, one of
(35:58):
my favorite magazines. They use tosay, can't take it off the menu,
or the customers will revolt and thenthey used to interview the ships,
try to put it on the menu, and the customers revolted. So you
were damned either way, trying somethingnew that they didn't want, and if
you took one thing off, peoplegot upset. And you know, it's
interesting, particularly in a lot ofcities, but I think particularly in New
Orleans, a lot of restaurants hereare known for very signature dishes, like
(36:24):
can you imagine if you suddenly tookX Rdeaux off the brunch menu at Brendon's
or you know the palms who flayat Gallatoys. I mean, there's certain
things you go and you must havethe Oysters Rockefeller, you know, here
or there, So you can't justpull something off that everybody is planning a
(36:44):
trip around to go visit, youknow, the restaurant, and they're expecting
to try a specific dish, right, Well, we get to be creative
with doing specials on the weekends andstuff, so we get around other ways.
But you're completely right, Yeah,I mean, I we travel a
lot, and I think this isone of the cities where a specific dish
(37:07):
is just very closely identified with thatrestaurant and you go there and say,
I gotta have this, you know, uh for sure, for sure?
What are some of the what arethe dishes that are you know that are
your best sellers? Probably the numberone best seller right now is actually a
cocktail. Pretty pretty pretty impressive,but up there, and the best sellers
(37:30):
are always going to be the cracklings, though they're some of the best benefit
else to be fried in the order. Our boot as spectacular. Our burgers
always, I don't care what Iput on the lunchman, you burger is
always going to be the number oneseller for lunch very turn turning to the
burger time at lunch at any givenpoint and at night you've already said it.
(37:52):
The pork shop, the Venison,the lamb neck, and the coopy
on those are our biggest hits.We got really good Marinay to crab claws.
They're very good, very good.Yeah yeah, brand and the crab
and the crab claws kind of highlightsomething that even even though it's a Cajun
(38:13):
products, the dressing is anything butCagun. It's it's kind of a combination
of some of my pickle inventions,grilled tickle, pineapple which is cost with
fish, sauce, sugar, andcane vinegar. So it's kind of a
collaboration. It's got a little Asianelement into it. And you know,
you won't catch a lot of thesegrilled tickle pineapple that's not Cajun. Uh
But I'm doing it and I loveit and it works for with the crabs.
(38:37):
So sometimes, you know, Idropped my Cajun senses and bringing other
ingredients that unnecessarily Cajun but work withthe Cajun food. Well, that's a
that's a it's almost like a Caribbeaninfluence more than anything. The pineapple which
we had that dish and we againeverybody was like grabbing at them because they
wanted them so much. And youdo serve a branch. Brunch is really
(39:00):
like apic here and New Orleans.I many people do brunch and with the
capital d it is a big dealhere, a really good brush and uh
so tell us a little bit aboutwhat some of the hits are there.
Well, brunch is actually killer atthe metery. We we got the bottles
of mimosa flowing and and a bunchof great brunch cocktails, espresso martinis and
(39:22):
things like that. But uh forfor the brunch menu, we sell a
ton of Our isak does a reallyfun play on at Benedict and it's uh
fried golf fish with a hot softHolland Days under our breeze, quorky greens
and a poast egg that we sella ton of. We obviously sell a
(39:43):
ton of. We do a waggysteak with with a crispy potatoes and and
Holland Days and a couple of eggson top and uh and then we are
are smoked. Are smoked. Golfshrimp and grits are big hits. So
and of course Zoughi's burger time atUH at brunch as well. But we
do a pretty hedonistic brunch, asyou can imagine, because everything at the
(40:04):
meter is pretty hedonistic. It isthat. Yeah, And our message to
anyone planning a trip to New Onesdo not take that six am Sunday flight
home. Just don't do it.You'll regret it. No, No,
everybody I know. So we we'vebeen. You know, we were at
the Bocu's door. We went tothe Wine Spectator Grand Tour. A couple
of events have come down here yay, and everybody's like I'm like, so
(40:24):
what are you doing after that?Oh, we we're on that six am
flight back to New York on Sunday. Don't do it, you'll regret it.
Stay over maybe maybe six am Monday. And first of all, it's
better to flat on Monday because alot of places are closed and you got
to have an epic brunch and agrand finale in New Orleans and Sunday is
(40:45):
just some great digning in this city. So, uh, you mentioned Thattday
bunch too. Yeah, so youdo brunch both week it's a weekend brunch.
Are you open on Mondays? Areyou open on Mondays? We're opening
three hundred and sixty three days ayear, closed with Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
Well that's good to know. Yeah, that's good to know because it
(41:06):
is hard to find places on Mondayin New Orleans. You mentioned the cocktail
program, and we do want togive a shout out about the wine list
because when we when we went,we were there with uh people, well
were we write about wine also,and we had an importer wine importer with
us, and you know he alwayslikes to yeah, and so he we
(41:28):
ended up ordering he brought you know, we brought wine because he always likes
to bring his wine. We endedup ordering off the list because it's such
a reasonable and and very well thoughtout list. So we want to give
a shout out to you about that, and you know that I did know
that, and you are very involvedin working with your wine director on that
list, right yeah, yeah,yeah, Well, mostly just the drinking
(41:52):
of the list these days, butthe US incredible Molly our gm is really
uh really got her come up anduh and the wine business. And I've
just been able to kind of beher mentor the family Brian Burkey of Wino
with my mentor and uh, he'sgot one of the best wine brains in
the whole world. Have you everkind to talk to him? Well,
(42:12):
she was there that night and andwe just had a great time and ordered
a number of wines. It's youknow, it's so nice to see wine
lists that when you leave, youknow that are well thought out and not
the usual plant that you see insome cities. That's all I'm going to
say. And it's not overly offthe top price and it's just so nice
to see that. Well exactly,yeah, you know, because that's important
(42:37):
to us, and and you know, we we were glad to see a
lot of light reds on the menu, because we think this is a great
city for light chilled reds right now, and even the whites are off the
chart. Yeah, year, we'redrinking a lot of childreds here when we're
uncorking and cooking here at home.So, speaking of what does a family
(42:57):
mill like at the tups family withyour kids, But like I said,
I mean there's still kids. Theylike to eat, you know, they'll
want to eat kid things, butthey've got pretty pretty refined palettes at the
same time. So I do alot of the if we're cooking at home,
I do a lot of it isaicalcook on Sundays. As you can
imagine, you cook all week andit's not really what you want to do
as soon as you get home.So I do a lot of cooking.
(43:21):
But and I do I always I'llsource my proteins from the restaurant and then
and the vegetables too because they're comingoff the farm truck if I can,
and then my kids will we'll eatwhatever I cook. So essentially I do
a lot of easy, quick thingsbecause, especially doing during the school year,
it's important to be able to geta home cooked meal out as fast
(43:42):
as possible. But we do alot of a lot of seafood at the
house, a whole lot a lotof shrimp. One of my favorite things
I cooked for the kids is I'llget like we call him, shrimp Ricky,
is I just can bind shrimp fromthe same guy for twenty five years
and he was at Delmonico. He'sa character and everybody in the in the
restaurant business knows Shrimp Ricky. Andso I'll get my staff to uh to
(44:02):
give me maybe three dozen, threedozen head on Gulf shrimp that came in
that day. And what I'll dois I'll take a seat tray and I'll
slice all of our citruses we havefrom the restaurant, so the grapefruit,
lemons, limes, oranges, Iput those on the bottom of the sea
tray, and I take my shrimpand we leave the heads on, of
course, because that's where all theflavor is. And if I have them,
feel it and leave the head on, and I will toss them an
(44:25):
avocado oil and a lepo and saltand pepper, a little cayenne garlic,
and I toss them it and Ilay them on top of the the citruses,
and then I'll slice up a littlefresh scent off I've got it,
and I just pop them in theoven for fifteen minutes but about all it
takes. And then when it comesout, they're beautiful. And then what
(44:45):
you have essentially is the sauce,so the juices from the from the shrimp,
and the and the avocado oil andall the juices from the citrus.
I'll then crush the heads of theshrimp. You get all the juices from
that, and then that's the saucefor you can take the heads off of
the kids now and then that's thesauce you used to pour over. I'll
serve it to them of a whiterice and a little pizza, French bread
(45:07):
and some fresh fruit, and weregood to go. We may have to
try that here. That's we're goingto find out where they live and just
come over for dinner. Dam I'mgetting hungry or hungry. And the more
he gets up, yeah, isaacsright, it's so easy. It's a deceptively
simple dish. The first time Iever made it, he goes, I
think this is the best thing you'veever made for me, And I was
like, dang, I did ittwenty minutes. It's great. Yeah,
(45:30):
because when you cooking all day,the last year would be is cooking all
night, you know, you wantto like just relax. So I think
that's great. Is there a obviously, the being at the restaurant is three
sixty five a day, three hundredand sixty five days a year open takes
a lot of your time. Isthere a hidden gem or place that you
like to go that maybe nobody knowsabout anywhere in Greater New Ones or it
(45:52):
could be the North Shore elsewhere that'sworth worth checking out because everybody always be
lines it to like whoever's getting themost press right or whoever's on Brabo TV
or whoever. And it's all great, But there's always those little bitty gems
that nobody knows about anything that youwant to give a shout out to.
Yeah, a little new place calledPorgies. It's a wonderful little seafood shop
(46:16):
where they do a lot of bycashfresh oysters and shrimp and they do lunch
there. It's a great place togo eat some shucked oysters. Not a
lot of places will have murder pointsand bright sides and the new long line
oysters there's only a couple of placesin town, and sometimes get the dress
up nice. Well, this isjust a little corner shop on North Carrollton
(46:38):
and Banks. I think ye,North Carrollton and Banville's right there. There
used to be an old sequeen shopand it's still a seeping shop and you
still get your fish. You alsohave a killer lunch and they'd have off
cuts. They have you can goget up fish cheeks, you can get
collars, you can get oyster shrimpand crawl fisher in season. They got
great ball craft and it's a placeyou sit at the counter, get a
(47:00):
beer. Uh, you just dosome talking with the fishmongers and just super
relaxing. I'll sometimes go with mychef coat, eat a couple of oceanes,
grab a beer, and then goback to the restaurants. Just one
of the little hidden gyms. Definitelyworth checking out. You'll find Isaac hiding
out there at least a couple oftimes a week. Yeah, I know
(47:21):
exactly where he's at likely far soYeah, he's so talented. Marcus the
stuff for you, and I justlook at the location as a guy he's
hiding and have with Marcus having abeer. I know exactly where he is.
It's tough to hide there when you'resix foot one and two hundred and
fifty pounds. Yeah, and peopleknow you because you've been you know,
(47:42):
you've been on TV, you've beenhere and there. Yeah, people know.
Yeah, you're kind of a localcelebrity. Well it's good to know.
I think we've driven by there quitea bit because again we're we're up
in Lakeview and we drive past thatwhole area back and forth a lot when
we go do all of our shopping. So thanks for that tip. That's
a good tip. Yeah, they'reso talented. Well, we are all
about supporting and and having it.We have adventurous palettes and we people like
(48:07):
to know. You know, peoplealways go what you know? Tom?
I love that Thomas Keller was like, what's your favorite restaurant New Orleans?
I'm like, you are you reallyasking me that? You know? It's
like what not to because you haveso many that you love depending on what
you're in the mood for, right, totally. Yeah, the Big Knife
last night, and like you wherewere you the State Knife? Ye eat
(48:30):
there pretty frequently. Yeah, thestake Knife right down the road. Yeah,
Yeah, I like the fake knife. I like it. I'm a
fan. Yeah, that's like.You know, there's a lot of these
restaurants that have just been around.They don't necessarily have a PR machine,
they just they're there, and alot were multi generationally owned. And in
(48:51):
this area there's a lot of Sicilianinspired restaurants. We were on the call
with with some people who represent winesof Sicily. I'm like, why aren't
you guys coming to New Orleans ifany there's a tight connection here, you
know. They're like, no,you know that everybody goes to New York
or Dallas or Texas. We weyou and us. We want to get
more major food and wine programs andevents here in New Orleans and pay more
(49:13):
attention here because everybody keeps going toTextas. We don't see a lot of
Sicilian lines in New Orleans. Unfortunately, we just don't see them. We're
got to make that change happen,right, You got to be the force
for change, like you're doing withFamily we Neils. We know you have
a fundraiser even though this is anevergreen show, so people may be listening
to it next year. We aredoing the show in June twenty twenty four
(49:35):
and you've got a fundraiser coming upat the Broadside that looks a lot of
fun and you know, again toopsfamily meals. Hopefully you'll get all the
funding you need to keep it goingthis summer, but even more importantly,
hopingly this will be a short termsituation and that the food and security issue
here and elsewhere will be addressed throughthe importance of funding. Right Well,
(50:00):
I hope so, because our goalis to get out sixty thousand meals over
the course of the summer. Whatwe've done is taken on five hundred and
thirty three children children and two hundredfamilies in Orleans Parish, and so we're
getting out deliveries on Tuesdays and Fridaysof close to thirty five hundred meals each
time in under ninety minutes. Yesterdaywe got that many out for delivery.
(50:22):
We are a well oiled machine,but it takes funding and it cost us
about fifteen grand a week to doit. That doesn't that sounds like a
lot of money, but it isn't. Whenever you're putting out you know,
over six thousand meals if you thinkabout it. So we have funding key
and so on June thirtieth. Asmany of you know, Isaac and I
were King and Queen of Crewdivoo thisyear. We're very blessed. We love
the Creudivooians and Brian, who ownsthe Broadside, is a member of Crudivoo
(50:45):
and offered us his events space atthe Broadside for free to do a fundraiser
because it just really is now aboutfun. We've got the delivery drivers,
we have the routes, we knowthe kids, we know what they need,
we know what they're They're also gratefulto the delivery drivers. Helf like
how appreciates that these families are thatthat we're able to feed them through through
(51:07):
the help of our fellow man andwoman, and that again is just funding.
So we got really lucky with theBroadside and we are so excited that
the Lost by You Ramblers are goingto be headlining the event. Uh and
the Creole string Beans, our localsuper fun to watch fans, is going
to be also playing. We're gonnahave a huge auction with a ton of
(51:29):
booze and a ton of wine.It's going to be a really really heavy
wine auction. So if you guysare there, yeah, we will be
there. You will be promoting.Thank you. Yeah yeah. Alb on
Kuman has donated a six pack ofsome of the really nice stuff. We've
got champagne magnums. We've got evenif you're into the big California bombs,
(51:52):
we've got some opus ones that aregoing to be auctioned office and it's sponsored
by It's sponsored by liquor company andit's great local guy John Ethan, he
owns hard Hied Contu with Strawberry Whiskey. They're sponsoring it. So they they
stepped in and paid the band andso that we can really take all the
(52:12):
fun from ticket sales and the auctionitems to feed the kids, because that's
what we're gonna do. They hookerball, we kids been. I got
a bag and bar and steal thatmon do well, we'll be there and
we'll be supporting it. Family meals. So Amanda, Isaac Toops, you
guys are awesome. Toops Meter everybodycheck it out. Support your local restaurants,
but also get down to New Orleans. It's not just about Mardi Gras
(52:37):
and jazz Fest. It's the yearround amazing and we chose to move here
for that reason. You've been listeningto the Connected Table Live with Melanie Young
and David Ransom. We are broadcastingfrom New Orleans. We're dedicating a percentage
of our shows to the city wehave chosen to live in, while we
continue to travel the world to sharestories of amazing people making a difference in
(52:57):
this industry, and our messages alwaysstay insatiably curious. Thank you guys,
thank you, thank you.
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