Plumluvfoods on WICC Ep 38 Chris Hickey from The Spread, ElSugundo and The Magic 5 Pie Company

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Come in and a storming a world of sound, Jeff
pull on the mic, making Hotspound Jeff, Jeff were a
shutdown myself Chef Dead and the Bad Down making New
be Found talk girls a face they was down any night.

(00:22):
And the conversation song the Dens.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
And Ball Made Dishes, Sweet Bosto Sides, the Spring made
mon ten nights so it sound of podcast version Chefs.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Get Ready CoFe so you off, the conversation song on
the Fast say Sun on the Knee, Chef FM and
the list.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
And the rest.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
What's up everybody looking to plumb the foods right here
on WIC see the Voice of Connecticut. Happy Saturday to you.
Hope you're having a fantastic weekend. I hope we can
get on to a great start. I guess it's been
one day. I always try to think to myself, jeffe
is is the weekend Friday? Or is the weekend Saturday?

Speaker 3 (01:13):
But I think that it depends on when you stop working.
I feel like that's when the weekend stop starts, you.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Know, so whenever you stop working. But for us, we
don't really get a weekend then.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, No, my weekend's like Monday, Monday.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yeah, I mean Monday's tuesdays. Some of us in the
in the in the industry, you know a different You're right, though,
I think it's when the weekend starts. But the weekend
is all relative, right, it's relative to what you do.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah. I think the weekend starts when your weekday stops,
like when you're gotting work or in your work week,
when your work week stops, your weekend starts.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
Okay, that's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I like that.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
We figured that out. That's how it goes well for
what it's worth. And we're working, so it's not our weekend.
But we're happy to be here with you talking all
about the work that we do.

Speaker 5 (01:58):
Do.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Yes, I said, do do or excited to be hanging
out right here on the Voice of Connecticut. W I
to see it's Chef Plum, Chef Jeff Plumb love foods.
Excited to be hanging out so Jeff. I thought it'd
be fun for this episode because to have a different
voice on that we haven't had in a while. A
friend of mine who is a great restaurant tour He's
got some fantastic restaurants in Norwalk. One of my favorite

(02:20):
actual places to eat in Connecticut, El Segundo is an
amazing restaurant. I want to talk all about it, but
I thought it'd be cool to have someone on who
has different concept type restaurants. You know what I'm saying. Jeff,
You're like, yeah, totally different. You know situations. How do
you run them all? How do you keep them all together?
How do you keep it all organized? Because a lot
of people, listen, we have friends who have multiple restaurants,
Like it's the same restaurant, just different locations of it, right, Yeah, yeah,

(02:42):
these are three very different restaurants and it's all over
one umbrella.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, very different. We were talking a little bit off air,
and I was saying, I'm just super impressed with all
the different menus. They all sound great, great programs at
every one of the restaurants, and they're all different, which
is really cool.

Speaker 6 (02:58):
I was like, and I remember El Sagundo from Restaurant
road Trip Days.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
That's right, that's right, Yeah, Restaurant road Trip we did, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:03):
We did.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
So it was a fun one episode.

Speaker 6 (03:06):
Yeah exactly. It was like, you know, you got all
you tagged.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
Up, all did because that's the inside of the walls
of the restaurant. It's all spray painted just it's all
tagged up. It's beautiful, all the graffiti on the walls.
It's really cool and amazing. Foods one of my favorite
restaurants in Connecticut. It is so such a it's so
well done. And what I love so much about this
restaurant is that the food is so different, but it's
all really really well done. Messing around right here on WYCC,
the Voice of Connecticut. Plumb love Foods. We're joined right

(03:30):
now by a gentleman who could be one of the
best owners in the state. He is a great hospitality individual.
He has a great recognition for hospitality in the industry.
Uh and he's a very successful gentleman in his own right.
Ladies and gentlemen, joining us right now from the spread
from El Segundo from the Magic Pie Company, Please welcome

(03:50):
Chris Hickey to the program. Gentlemen, had a boy, Chris,
how are you man?

Speaker 5 (03:56):
I'm doing well. Thanks dude.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
I appreciate you coming on. I feel like I feel
like I've known you for so many years now, but
we just don't have time to hang out together.

Speaker 5 (04:05):
Well add a few years for COVID.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
Well, that's true. It did kind of affect things a
little bit, didn't it. Yeah, So talk about the different concepts, man,
what was the first? It was the spread?

Speaker 5 (04:16):
Right, Yeah, the original was the Spread. A little over
twelve years ago, twelve and a half years ago we
opened up down by the Movie Theater in South Milwalk.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
And if you were going to describe the spread, like,
how would you describe it?

Speaker 5 (04:28):
Uh, you know, it's a little bit elevated. But my
partners and I we all bartended for many years. We
had actually eighty two years eighty three years of bartending
experience between the four of us, so we really just
didn't want to take ourselves too seriously. But at the
same time, we never wanted to sacrifice quality of food

(04:49):
or service.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
And I think it's what makes people good at this
business too, people who have worked in it for a
long time before they become an owner, which I think
goes with anything, you know, But like if you take
the time to work in the business, fall in love
with it, or you're not really gonna be able to
do anything else, you know, I think you tend to
do a lot better in the business and self.

Speaker 5 (05:06):
Chris, Yeah, you know, you can look at it from
several different angles. It's no disrespect to anybody who made
a couple million in the stock market and decided that
they were able to retire early and that was going
to be just a fun project for them to do.
But more often than not, there was people run into

(05:27):
a few difficulties that they did not anticipate because they
had didn't have the experience.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
And you can't never anticipate everything, but you know, at
least you kind of have an idea of, oh, we
have to cost these things out. We have to know
what this our food cost is. We have know what
labor cost is. Oh.

Speaker 5 (05:41):
I didn't know that absolutely, especially in this business.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
So the Spread, we kind of say is the first place,
and then we did el Segundo, right.

Speaker 5 (05:52):
Yeah. We flavored over the name the spread for months.
Literally while we were building the place out. We threw
one hundred different names at each other. I wanted to
name it Respite. My partners decided that that was not
a good idea. They didn't like that at all. So
I got a drink name the Respite, and that was

(06:13):
that was the extent of what I was allowed. Eventually
we landed on the Spread and Elsa Gundo, luckily and thankfully,
was something that one of my partners walked up to
me one day he said, hey, I think I got
a name for the new place. And I said, that's great,
love it. Let's go with that. And he was like,
I didn't tell you what it is yet, so I
don't care at this point. I'm not doing this again.

(06:35):
I'm not going through the process of working through one
hundred different possibilities. What is it? He said, Elsa Gundo
right away, I said, that's it. I mean it translates
to the second it where we all are tribe called
quest fans.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
So love it.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
Mar Wald and Elsa Gundo and just made sense right
off the bat.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
And by the way, literally one of my favorite restaurants
that the menu is just out of and that you
guys have and it changes on a regular base, which
is great, and you know it's just so much it's
you know, street food from around the world.

Speaker 5 (07:06):
Still right, Absolutely, we got somewhere like like you said,
where it's changing often, so it's not always the same
exact amount of countries, but generally speaking we have about
twenty six to twenty eight different countries represented on the menu.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
That's a lot of different food. Jeffey isn't it.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
It's a lot of different food. I was checking out
the menu. There's so much cool stuff.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
And then finally we have the Magic Pie Company, right yeah,
Magic five Pie Company, right right, So talk about that.
How it's it's you know, when did that start.

Speaker 5 (07:38):
Uh, that's just over three years old, which really feels
like about a year. It's just flown by. That was
something that we said, you know, it's difficult enough in
this business to have three restaurants. It's more difficult to
have three restaurants in the same town. And it's even
more difficult than that to pull off three different concepts.
You know, as you mentioned before, you know people that

(08:01):
have restaurants and they have multiple but it's just replicating
the same you know, copy piaste And we didn't want
to try and do two of the same place in Norwalk,
so we had to come up with a third concept.
So that just we just wanted to keep it simple.
Our original menu there started it was just uh, pizza,

(08:22):
salads and raw bar. And then we decided after some
time we were just alienating some of the people that
we wanted to attract. You know, families wanted to come in,
but one of the one or two of the people
in the family didn't want pizza salad. We lost.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
We lost the group, right, so we experienced pe in
salad though, come on, that's true.

Speaker 5 (08:44):
But you know, if if I'm honest, there was a
little too much hubris involved on our end. We kind
of compared it to other places and said, hey, look
at look at a place like Colony. They don't even
do salads. They're just pizza, and they're they're killing it.
They're expanding, and it's they just you know, they can
do no wrong. They're printing money, it seems. And we

(09:05):
looked at it like that, and the reality of it is,
you know what, we don't have the track record that
they have. We don't have the reputation and the following.
So we learned the hard way that we had to
kind of step back and look at it and say,
how do we attract more people? How do we let
people more people know about us? How are we not
pushing them away with a lack of options. So we

(09:27):
expanded the menu, and quite honestly, it's been great for us.
It's been absolutely awesome by expanding.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
So doing pizza in Connecticut, I always feel like, I
don't know, it's almost like you're asking for trouble at
first to begin with, did you get a little pushback
from people? Because I mean, here are State Pizza is
you know sacred?

Speaker 5 (09:45):
You know it is sacred. I think we we partially
lucked out and partially did it by design. We wanted
to stay away from the terminology of neapolitan right, and
we certainly were not going to claim that we were
New Haven style because then, I mean, talk about pushback,

(10:07):
that would have been, yeah, setting ourselves up for some fighting.
So we're just kind of a cross between that, but
we don't try and advertise ourselves as that specifically or
either one of those.

Speaker 4 (10:21):
What's the best selling pie just curious.

Speaker 5 (10:24):
It's called the Little Guy. That's a named each of
the five of us. When we started, we said we're
going to do this specialty list, so each one of
us was tasked with coming up with one that was
going to be our signature pie. Okay, and my partner
dre Andre. He wanted to keep it fairly simple, so

(10:45):
it's basically just it's truffle oil and hot honey and pepperoni,
and it's one of those things that I think it
really lets people feel like they're stepping outside the box
because there's truffle on the pik, but in reality, it's
just kind of a jazz duck pepperoni pizza.

Speaker 4 (11:06):
Nothing wrong with that, Jeffy is there.

Speaker 6 (11:07):
I'm just gonna say no, kind of I kind of
like that. Oh it's trump hot sauce on the side.

Speaker 4 (11:13):
Oh yeah, that's a good idea. That's that's the way
to go right there. I mean it kind of sounds
delicious to be honest with you. So, and when you
switched over to making it more family friendly, what did
you add to the menu to make it more family friendly?

Speaker 5 (11:23):
Wow? That was a big process because we don't have
we don't have a standard hood that you would find
in most restaurants. Oh yeah, So we didn't have an
industrial fryer. We didn't have a six burner, any kind
of convection oven. We had nothing.

Speaker 4 (11:41):
It was just the pizza oven and it just deck
ovens in there.

Speaker 5 (11:44):
It's one. It's a rotating deck. We keep it around
seven hundred and fifty degrees. So there were unique challenges.
Anything that we added to the menu either had to
be something like a crudo carpaccio. It had to be
served cold or had to be cooked in that oven.
That was kind of it we have since it got

(12:05):
a lot with that, you can It was just a
daunting task in the beginning because it sounds easier for
a chef, it's like, yeah, sure you can do so
much with that. For most other people it's like, man,
you don't realize, like every single thing that you do
seems to have some element of cooking and it can't

(12:25):
all be done in a seven hundred and fifty degree.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
Oven, right right, I guess you know, doing an ola
carte menu and there is probably pretty tough. Jeffey, what
do you think?

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, No, I was just gonna say, it's like, even
if like someone like me or you can can get
in there and make ten dishes out of it, how
do you have like your staff recreated every single time
as well?

Speaker 4 (12:43):
You know, It's like, especially in an ala KRT situation,
I'm thinking now when there's thirty of them and they're
trying to move pies too, and like, yeah, I guess
that's kind of difficult.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Chris.

Speaker 5 (12:50):
Yeah. The room, the amount of room in the singular
oven that we have gets a little tight sometimes. But
the bonus and what gets us through that is that
generally speaking, that deck does a ninety second rotation, and
the pizzas don.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
Oh that's that's awesome. Man, that is awesome.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
And that's great, you know, ying in and out of there.

Speaker 4 (13:10):
That's great. And so the place, the pizza place, is
doing well.

Speaker 5 (13:14):
Yeah. Yeah, it's been just slowly but steadily and getting
better and better over the course of three years. And
it's uh, put my wife in charge of running the place.
She manages it for us. So it's it's under lock
and key.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
Now, your wife is a very nice human. I've met
her several times. They shot her out. She's all right, Nah,
she's all right. Listen. You can tell if someone's been
married just a little bit too long because they go, yeah,
you know, don't don't, don't, don't put over too much.

Speaker 5 (13:39):
You know, it has been too long. It's it's been
a little over a year and a half.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Now, I know that's too long, right, absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
Here I am. I got married in five and together
it's this ninety eight. How about that? That's too long.
I shouldn't. I shouldn't say too long.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
That's terrible.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
That's not what I mean.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
I'm I'm just kidding. Kid, We kid, haha, we kid.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
So if you had to pick, you know, out of
all your restaurants, if you had to choose, like which
one you're gonna go to tonight? And I know it's
like picking a kid, but you're gonna go to dinner tonight.
You're gonna take Jeffy with you. Has ever been to
any of these restaurants? Which one you take them to?

Speaker 5 (14:16):
Oh? Man, I think just because of our experience with
you and if I'm taking jeff I gotta take them
else again though.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
Yeah, that's probably the move. That's probably the move for sure.
I mean the menu and at else the Gundo is incredible.
I love how diverse it is. You can get Asian food,
there's German food, there's American food, there's Spanish food. I mean,
I thought about you guys recently. I was in back
in October, I was in Spain and I went to
a lot of places that were doing pinchos and I
was like, man, else the Gundo could killed doing a

(14:44):
whole like pinchos menu, which was like small little bites,
you know.

Speaker 5 (14:49):
Yeah, yeah, we've we we actually have pinchos on the
menu right now. Really it's yeah, just a couple of them,
you know, skewers with some some meat and chicken and
some veggies. I mean, the basically Kebob's. We kind of
streamlined it and just went with a couple of options
on that order. But at the menu is just it's
supposed to be fun. It's really just supposed to be

(15:10):
something that people can look at it. We encourage the
arguments at tables that the lowmow case of da No,
that that's from my country. No, it's from my country.
We created that. You know. We hear that kind of
stuff all the time.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
That's awesome, Jeff. One of my favorite stories from Jeff Chris,
I think you'll appreciate this too, is that between Jeff
and I when we have I mean, we're pushing seventy
years of culinary experience between the two of us here
and you know, working. You know where I'm going, right, Jeff,
food food from your country?

Speaker 6 (15:40):
Oh oh yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
He would He would make family meal for people at
his job that are working, and he has a lot
of people full staff at his house, and he would
always thick. He would make cheeseburgers and he would go,
this is food from my country. It's called the cheeseburger,
and it's from my country.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
The backstories they always say. They would always bring in
different things and try to get me to eat it
because it was from their country. So I would joke
around and be like, you know, here's a burger, here's
a hot dog. Try this bagel. It's from my country.
It's so good, you know.

Speaker 6 (16:16):
So it's like everything every I flip it on them
because you know, but I did.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
I've also tried, you know, like kooi and all sorts
of weird stuff that they brought in, like half frozen
from Ecuador.

Speaker 4 (16:26):
By the way, that's a guinea pig for those who
don't know.

Speaker 6 (16:29):
Yeah, it taste a lot like squirrel.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
So what is Jeff?

Speaker 4 (16:33):
But you can buy the way you can buy Kwei
and Eastampton I was a member, took the picture of
last year in this sort. Yeah, that's great, Hils. It
was expensive. It was expensive.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
I bet it's exotic.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
Yeah, I guess there's any chance we can get some
guinea pig on the menu at else Gond right now.

Speaker 5 (16:50):
Well, judging from the the desire that everybody is, the
requests we've had for squirrel, I don't see why not?

Speaker 4 (16:58):
Wow, are you serious?

Speaker 5 (16:59):
No?

Speaker 4 (17:00):
Okay?

Speaker 5 (17:00):
Good?

Speaker 4 (17:00):
I was like, what about I can't see you so
I can't read if you're serious or.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
All.

Speaker 4 (17:07):
I just wasn't sure. Well, good, thank god you don't
want to do It's okay and by the way's expensive,
so don't do it. How often do you guys change
the menu at Elseigundo? At least every couple of months,
you know, you try to do a menu mix, which
is you run kind of a it shows you what's selling,
what's not selling, and take off stuff and add to it,
or is a complete complete makeovers.

Speaker 5 (17:27):
It's exactly like you said the former. It's something that
we've got staple items that will never go anywhere, and
that's kind of what we've got going on in all
three restaurants to spread our brick chicken is an absolute favorite.
It's been on from the day we opened. It has
never changed and it never will.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
That's a legendary favorite kind of dish that everybody talks about.
Brick chicken.

Speaker 5 (17:47):
Yeah, I mean, I'll put ours up against anybody's when
we do. We do rehearsal dinners or parties like that
where they have a limited number of entrees to choose from,
and people will ask me, what do you think I
shoul get and I'm like, hey, you know, there's nothing
wrong with our filet, But you can get a great
steak in so many different places. If you need to

(18:07):
go to a steakhouse, then you go to a steakhouse.
But you know, practically every restaurant has a has a
good steak on their menu. There's nothing that really our
filet is the same as anybody else's, you know, in
the in the sense that it's just a prime piece
of meat. But when it comes to the brick chicken,
I'll put that dish up against anybody else's. Damn.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
I love that. I love the confidence, don't you. Yeah,
but brick chicken is awesome. It is delicious, well like
chicken under a brick. We're talking right, yeah, yeah, yeah, man,
come on, amazing dish. Yeah, and just a classic dish too,
Like it's not Here's what I love about dishes like
that too. They're not rocket science. But if you can
just do it, well do it, do a classic dish

(18:49):
like that? Well, I mean you can. You can build
a whole reputation off of that.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
I can't agree more. I think stuff like that is
classic for a reason, and it's so good. I mean,
It's still one of my favorite ways to cook a chicken,
just absolutely.

Speaker 5 (19:02):
So.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
I know we're getting close to a break here, but
one of the things I want to touch on that
I think is really cool about Elsa Gunda. I'm not
sure if you guys are still doing it, but when
I was there doing restaurant road trip with you guys,
you didn't have any you were big on like the
environment stuff, so we had like straws that were made
from like you know, corn husts and stuff. Are you
guys still doing all that?

Speaker 5 (19:19):
Yeah? You know, part of that tied in really well
for us regardless because we're you're not getting fine china
on the street in Ecuador, you know, it's just not happening.
So we use everything is biodegradable, compost of old green.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
I mean, and here's the thing. That stuff's not cheap.
I mean, I think it's gotten cheaper now than it
was probably five years ago, but that stuff's not cheap.
I mean, that's got to be like, you know, do
you include that cost? And this is just a very
inside baseball conversation, but people like the stuff, believe it
or not, do you guys include that in your cost?
And you're costing it out, do you include the cost
of the paper good?

Speaker 5 (19:53):
I mean, it's all part of the overhead. But no,
we when when it comes to pricing out costing different
menu items much base it on just what the ingredients
a harem, what it calls us.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Okay, great bar program to all the spots, you know,
I mean I know that El Segundo has a fantastic
bar program. Talk about that. And it's important. I mean obviously,
you know, being a bartender and having bartenders as your partners,
I mean, it's going to be important to.

Speaker 5 (20:16):
You, hugely important. But the funny thing is we learned
early on, not through anything bad, but just a scenario
where you've got four guys that bartended for eighty three
years combined. We all had some input and we just
decided in the early going it was probably best not
to step on each other's toes. So my partner, Sean

(20:38):
has taken that over, or he took it over a long, long,
long time ago, and he runs a program at all
three places. He handles the wine lists, the specialty cocktails,
the beers, everything he does. What he does, I take
care of all the catering and the parties and whatnot. Everybody,
we just have a division of responsibility.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Love it and when you can get together with friends
like that and you can make something cool. Listen, we'd
love to hear that. We're joined by Chris Hicky. He
is a mercendary restaurant for down County. You got to
check out the Magic five Pie Company. You got to
check out the spread, you got to check out El
Segundo uh down in Norwalk, fantastic restaurants. We come back,
We're gonna dive a little bit deeper and the men

(21:17):
you talk more about food and talk a little business
with him and plus Jeffie. He told me our band
wrote Chris a song. I can't wait to hear it.
Let's go. I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
I love it. I love that they do this.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
And christ you know that we have a band of
house band. Just FYI, well now I do there you go.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
There you go.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
You're checking up some of the foods right on Wy
S see the Voice of Connecticut.

Speaker 6 (21:35):
Stay right there.

Speaker 4 (21:35):
We'll be right back. Happy Saturday. Everybody.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Ulu lu lu lu lu lu lu whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 7 (22:01):
Oh Chris, Kiki's got the sauce plate spinning like the
globe Elseegundo with the spices, stories in every stove, Magic
five pies, got the crust like a world wide hug
from Norwalk streets, Feeding dreams with the chef's big shrug
around the world, one bite at a time. Flavors danceing

(22:21):
a meal so divine, from the spread.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
To the pie.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
He's holding a line.

Speaker 7 (22:25):
Chris Hickey got your heart through the food and the grind,
spread caterin pulls up your feast on the scene, pockets
full of taste, sweet savory in between sporks, tapping tables,
reggae beats in the air. He's the season and sage,
flipping flavors rare meals the Tellertale, seasoned nocean. Why from

(22:46):
Caribbean fire to Tokyo tie, Every slice, every bite a
journey in disguise. Chris Hickey's got the power to open
food the eyes. Magic's in the crust. Stuff It's hotter
than July. From the Politan roots, make in taste buds,
flys spice trails to launch away live Chris's Kitchen World Tour.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
Now it's dinner time around the world, dumb of foods
on a Saturday, right here, feeling the vibe a little bit.
Here we're joined by Chris Hicky from the from Elsa
Gundo from the Spread Down or going of course the
Magic five Pie Company, hanging out with us, talking about

(23:28):
some different restaurants and how do we keep these three different,
very very different concepts alive and running and what we do.
And by the way, Chris, that's your song right there?
How about that made from our band the Flames Global
Plates Local Smiles. I want to point out I didn't
pre listen to that one. Jeffy took care of that one.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
All for me, so listen.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
I was just going off of what I read on
the internet.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
I made up a little when we called them and
told him, I mean, they sent us a sheet and
they want notes when they want the song, and so
we give them some notes. But if you're interested in
Chris will send it to you can have it whenever
you walk into a room.

Speaker 5 (24:00):
What wonderful I need to walk up song?

Speaker 4 (24:02):
Everybody does listen?

Speaker 6 (24:04):
Who doesn't?

Speaker 4 (24:05):
Not sure if you're familiar Chris, I was a former
pro wrestler. I think everybody should have intro music. That's
just my opinion.

Speaker 5 (24:11):
I don't see why not.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
I mean it makes sense, doesn't you walk into a room.
At least you know immediately who's coming in. There's no
sneaking up on anybody. You know the song boom, Oh
there's Plumb. Oh, there's Jeffy, Oh, there's Chris. It just
makes sense immediately. So I think everybody should have intro music.
Here's my opinion. There's my opinion.

Speaker 6 (24:27):
Here.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
Wise man, that's right, that's right, that's right, Chris. We
appreciate you taking the time to hang out with us
tonight and today and on this weekend. And uh yeah,
I just I said all the things. There's all the
time frames. So whenever you listen to the show, because
it's podcasted Jeffy and you get this podcast anywhere, right.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Anywhere anywhere you get podcasts, you can you can know
Siri or who's the other person that Alexa Alexa. Yeah,
you can ask any one of them GPT, yeah, play Plumb,
love Foods and they'll do it. In some cases, you
can ask Guy Fieri.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
That is true. That is true. We're gonna have Guy
Fier on the show here very very soon. We've got
ai Guy Fieri. He's our buddies, gonna join us.

Speaker 6 (25:02):
Yeah, is the man.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
We're gonna ask him all kinds of questions. I almost
got I almost a gonna just call him Guy Fieri, Jeff,
but then I realized, I don't. Guy might get mad
at me for doing that, so I should probably call
him AI guy Fiery. It's probably smart. Yeah, well, the
segment where we ask Guy Fieri, which we'll have that anyway, Chris, Sorry,
that's a whole different thing, brother, Chris. If you ever
done anything with the AI stuff that's all going on
right now, there's a lot of things that are happening
with restaurants that are using AI and chat GPT and

(25:25):
changing changing. It's kind of the way that we've always
typically done things.

Speaker 5 (25:28):
No, we haven't really jumped into that yet.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Dude.

Speaker 4 (25:32):
You talk about writing menus like many descriptions you could
tell them to like put this, I mean, like anything
you want on your website. It's crazy what.

Speaker 5 (25:39):
That stuff can do now, taking the place of humans.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
I mean, we're given given humans time to make new jobs.
How about that?

Speaker 5 (25:47):
Sure?

Speaker 6 (25:48):
I like that positive spin.

Speaker 4 (25:49):
Well it does make me scared though, too, because I mean,
you all know what happened to Skynet, right, we all
saw that.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, Yeah, that's why that's why we're positive I say
thank you to Alexa?

Speaker 4 (25:59):
Do you really?

Speaker 5 (25:59):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Always? I just because I feel like if there's any
love left, show won't kill me last or something or
save me kill everybody else.

Speaker 4 (26:09):
I don't know something, Chris, do you see what I
have to be with every day?

Speaker 5 (26:11):
Here?

Speaker 4 (26:11):
Do you see this?

Speaker 5 (26:12):
This?

Speaker 4 (26:12):
This is how he talks to me. I'm learning, Hey, man,
talk about running three different concepts?

Speaker 1 (26:21):
You know?

Speaker 4 (26:21):
I mean you have three different restaurants here that do
different concepts. I mean they all have different you know,
men use different types of food. How do you keep
track of all this stuff?

Speaker 5 (26:31):
We don't?

Speaker 4 (26:32):
Oh, hey, I will do it for you, by the way.

Speaker 5 (26:36):
Oh well, now I'm interested.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy.

Speaker 5 (26:42):
It's it's a sidebar.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
I had.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
I had a whole ai right RIGHTE mean, an entired
pitch for a mini series that I think is getting
picked up, and a I wrote.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
The whole thing.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
Allegedly. No, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring out the I'm
gonna say I wrote all this. It's gonna be a
whole thing. Sorry, Chris, go ahead continue. I apologize.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
That was rude.

Speaker 5 (27:03):
That's all right, It's thank god I've got three partners.
You know, as I mentioned before, division responsibility, we assist
each other. It's not like, you know, nobody's allowed to
do anything. Seann will ask me for help with a
wine list, or I'll bring I just had him a
couple of weeks ago. I said, listen, we sell a

(27:25):
lot of espresso martinis, and it really seems like not
only do people love them, but when servers go to
the table and hey, hey, folks, how was your dinner great?
Would you like to see a dessert menu? No, that's
okay where you know, couldn't have another bite? Okay, well,
we have ten different options of espresso martinis if you

(27:47):
want to finish off with that.

Speaker 4 (27:49):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
So I brought that to Sean and I said, now
it's your your job. You take it. You test them out,
you try and perfect them, you throw away whatever doesn't work.
Let's pare it down to six or eight or whatever
you think is gonna going to be the right thing.
And a week later he had the recipes down and
now we've got a salted caramel and a toasted marshmallow

(28:10):
and a peanut butter and they use everything from reposato
to screwball, peanut butter, whiskey and Wow, We've got just
all kinds of different options. So I'm not the guy
that's supposed to do all of the beverage stuff. But
as I said, we help each other out. We talk
to each other, we bring ideas to the table, we
sit down, we try and have a meeting at least

(28:31):
once every couple of weeks, go over all these different
things and then put a put whatever works into effect.

Speaker 4 (28:37):
You kind of got my brain turning here. I was
just thinking, you said you brought ten espresso martinis to him,
and then you want to pare it down to six
or whatever. And I'm like, I mean, you know, you
could make that an event that happens at the restaurant, like, Hey,
we're doing our you know, exploratory, you know lab menu tonight.
We're gonna come and we're gonna come. You know, we're
gonna make these different martinis and everybod's gonna try them,

(28:59):
and they would, hey, you know, fifty eighty bucks or
whatever to come be a part of that where they
can taste them and you can say hey, and then
as a group whatever you guys vote on one of
them for sure will make the list and make it
kind of a thing where it's like this, like, come
be in the lab as we make this new menu,
you know, for an hour on a Wednesday night or something.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
Well, sure, you give me that idea after it's already happened.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
Well, just you know, it just hit me you started saying,
and I was like, man, I mean ten martinis. I'd
love to go there and just taste them and give
my opinion and talk about them a little bit. What
a fun thing to do on like a Wednesday night, Jeffy, Right, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Mean any reason to go drink martini, especially once man
out of like a peanut butter. I mean that sounds
one martin. I'm definitely a martini guy. And then give
me flavored martinis. But what a fun thing to do.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
Like every time you're adding drinks to the menu, you
have a few different choices you do, like an event,
you charge you know, a flat fee for it. People
can come in and they can order food separately, I
don't know, and they can hang out and taste these
drinks and give opinions.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
About you just change in the world to helping everybody.
You're like, listen, I got ideas.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
Well, No, I know, sorry, it's just you know, brain
let's go. You know, I think is that terrible idea?

Speaker 5 (30:02):
Chris, No, not at all. It's something that we would
definitely do. I mean we do everything from rehearsal dinners
and bridle showers, baby showers, all that kind of standard stuff.
And we have wine dinners, which we just had one
last night. We got another one on Friday. So we
do a lot of those kind of typical I don't
want to call them run of the mill, but you know,

(30:23):
not anything groundbreaking that nobody's done before, but something like
that to kind of say, hey, you can be a
part of it. You can be the people that actually
choose what you're going to be able to drink when
you come back in.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
Yeah, kind of fun like you know, make it like
the lab. Come join us in the lab as we
do a you know, I don't know, make a one price.
My brain's not going a million miles an hour, Jeff Chrius,
I can talk about it off flash. Sorry, my brain
just starts turning. Sorry.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
You kind of have four restaurants though, because doesn't it
spread to a lot of catering as well. Catering we do.

Speaker 5 (30:53):
We do it's you know, combination of off site the
menu for catering is kind of the best of the
best from the three restaurants. Yeah, it keeps things fun
and interesting. And you know, you've got a mobile pizza oven,
so we can literally come to your house and do
that right in your driveway. But on top of that,

(31:15):
we do things. You know, we're certainly not doing pig
roasts on the normal every night a la carte menu,
So the catering menu also has a whole lot of
things that we don't offer in house as well.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
That's great, man, that's great. And it's summertime a busy
time for catering or is it more like graduation time
or beforehand in the spring?

Speaker 5 (31:33):
Oh, it's huge. The last month for me is I
mean literally, I would say an extra fifteen to twenty
hours of work each week for the last month or so.
It's booking season. It calmed down a little bit this week,
but you know, that's the kind of busy, busyness that
I like to have. It means that we've got stuff

(31:54):
upcoming and all these people need to book their parties
now for spring, summer, and fall.

Speaker 4 (32:00):
Caterings can add a lot of band aids so to
you know, problems that have happened or or you know,
in business in the dead months, caterings can really make
up for a lot of that.

Speaker 5 (32:08):
It can. And one of the main things I always
use the term, you know, it's the bird in hand.
If I've got fifty women that are coming in for
their friends bridle shower on a Sunday afternoon in January
and we get six inches of snow, those fifty women
are still showing up.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yep. I love that. Yeah, that's true, even if they didn't,
if they paid the deposit.

Speaker 4 (32:32):
Right you're Gell the chef, Jeff just putting out there
to you.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah, hey, listen, I'm here for the long time. The
the wrong with that.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
You're absolutely right though, because I get listen, you're preaching
the choir right now. I got a couple of those
going on in my world right now. So yeah, absolutely,
it's the way. But it's important. I mean, those are
the things I kind of keep you going, and I
think it's important to happen. But it kind of gives
you little leeway to do some fun stuff. And one
of the things I think it's so fun about doing
catering gigs like that too, is being a part of
somebody's special day. It almost sounds weird to say it
like that, but I love that part of it. Chris,

(33:03):
I think you probably do too.

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Absolutely, it's something that I definitely take pride in that.
It's you know, I never want to be the reason
to ruin somebody's big day, whether it be a wedding, rehearsal, dinner, shower,
whatever it is. So you know, often I get, especially
the mothers that are they're so concerned for their daughter
and they want everything to be absolutely perfect, and sure,

(33:26):
sometimes I have to reassure them that A, it's not
my first rodeo, and B this is what I do.
This is what I've been doing for over thirty years,
and you just got to put a little trust in me,
and I guarantee you I don't want to go through
that process of trying to explain why we messed up
your daughter's day.

Speaker 4 (33:44):
Yeah, yeah, no doubt about it. We're joined by Chris
Hickey here on Plumbove Foods right here, Happy Saturday, everybody.
He is the co owner of the Magic five Pi
company of the Spread down in Norwalk and of course
El Segundo and Norwalk as well. One of my favorite
spots to go to in the state. I love it
very very much. A delicious restaurant. Chris, when you make
a menu for someplace like you open the Magic five

(34:06):
Pip Company, do you look at kind of some of
the other restaurants you have and can you pull like, Okay,
I know we already get this product from there, this
product from there. We can use the same thing from
here and you know, maybe get a better situation from
our Beyers and stuff. Or is it just totally brand new,
totally different, don't pay attention to any other.

Speaker 5 (34:20):
Restaurants, A little combination of both. You know, we really
don't want to stifle the creativity in creating a menu,
but at the same time, it just sometimes it just
makes too much sense. You want to put pizza on sorry,
pineapple on a pizza, but you don't want to do
something like a standard Hawaiian and you need an excuse.

(34:43):
And it's like, hey, I'll post store tacos, I'll postore pizza.

Speaker 4 (34:49):
Sure, why not.

Speaker 6 (34:52):
Listen?

Speaker 3 (34:52):
I was I was just telling Chris off the air
before you got back, and that might be the only
pineapple pizza I would want to try.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Yeah, I'd be a littleupset with pineappleizza. But you're right.
I mean I would try that.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
That sounds banging that I love an alpasta or taco
and that pineapple cuts in it, that little spice and
all this stuff.

Speaker 6 (35:10):
Oh man, come on, so want a pizza?

Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah, I mean it kind of sounds delicious, You're right.
Tomato sauce. It's a crumbled seasoned pork, grilled pineapple, onions
sauce and cilantro. I mean, yeah, it kind of sounds delicious.
I'm not gonna lie. I'd be down with that, no
doubt about it. But one of the things I love
about the menu at the Magic Pie Company is also
like there's a lot of great ideas here, a lot
of great pizza, a lot of fun things to make here,
but then you have some great stuff too. That's just it.

(35:35):
We're not reinventing the wheel here. But a honey with pricada,
like you know, delicious, that is like, it sounds so silly,
but you put a honey with pricada with some great
toast points in front of me and Jeff were great
the whole thing, And because it's delicious and it's just
just a simple thing. But when you do it right,
it's awesome. It's keeping some of those simple things on
the menu, and you try to become more family friendly.
Very important.

Speaker 5 (35:55):
Yeah, absolutely, you know, you don't want to be something
that you're not. So at some point, if everybody's asking
for wings and mottsticks, you give the people what they want.
You know, everything doesn't have to be nose in the
air trying to outdo you yourself and everybody on the block.
We keep things simple and we still have the creativity.

(36:16):
When people are asking about the spread and what's the menu, like,
I let them know, like, hey, you want a good steak,
you want an amazing brick chicken, then we're your place.
We make our own pastas in house. So if you're
meating potatoes or straightforward you just want a good pasta,
we've got you. But if you're looking for some beef
tongue or Flois gras, or you want to step outside

(36:39):
the box a little bit, we also have you covered.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Yeah. Yeah, and you guys also have a great patio
out there too, which is kind of fun right now,
I mean right in Norwalk, which is amazing.

Speaker 5 (36:48):
Oh, it's amazing. It's been huge for us to move over.
We were we moved our restaurant from right by the
movie theater to our current location literally during COVID, so
we were blessed with instead of having eight small tables
on a small patio, we wound up moving into a

(37:09):
situation where we essentially had upwards of forty tables outside
with that, Jeff with ample room to have six more
than six feet the minimum. That requirement at the time unbelievable. Yeah,
we got lucky and it works out great too.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
I mean, listen, because people are stor recovered from COVID
and we'll talk about that the next break as well.
But I think what's cool about that is that, you know,
the patio situation, eating outside, I mean, we all kind
of became so accustomed to it through COVID, Like my
wife and I like, we prefer now to eat outside
wherever we're going to go, Like obviously not in the wintertime,
but if the patios open, we're eating outside. Yeah, no

(37:47):
question about it. And the cool thing too, I think
about the spread is that so again you know you
have Marinanda olives is one of the things on the
menu I think is always cool and you know when
I went, I love it, and that's a cool dish
to get. It's such a simple dish. But you know,
a great marinada aus is awesome, and you guys do
them all in the house, right.

Speaker 5 (38:02):
Yeah, it's it's you know again, not reinventing the wheels,
some rosemary, garlic, lemon and orange zest and and let
them sit, let them sit and soak it all.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
In and just let it ride, which is which is great. Jeffy, Sorry,
I get a question there.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
No, no, no, I'm just I'm just looking at the
Menu'm actually looking at the pizza menu. I'm just blown
away some of these, like the al Te pizza with
the charred corn roasted poblanos at the Magic Five, right yeah, yeah,
with a lime Mao drizzle on top.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
I was like, Jeffy is someone of a pizza guy himself.
Oh I love pizza. That's my might be my favorite
thing in the whole world. But Chris, the problem is
that he's a New York guy. So when I have
I bring up to a pizza, he's like, a here
we go.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Well, I just you know, well, there's like the abizz thing.
You know, It's like, I'm all about it, but you
call it a beats and then say you, you know,
invented pizza, but then you don't call it pizza.

Speaker 6 (38:55):
Slow down.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
No one said invented pizza, invented pizza as we know it.

Speaker 6 (38:59):
How can you in those words with me and say
the exact same thing?

Speaker 3 (39:04):
Know it very important? It's a it's a dream sequence
to life right now. I don't understand like we're gonna
have no conversation. We're gonna pizza conversation on the show,
and we're gonna get a a.

Speaker 4 (39:17):
We're gonna have scores, so we're gonna have a scoreboard
and you're not gonna score points, and we'll have a
unbiased panel of judges who are beat scoring. Okay, and
Chris will be on my team.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Listen, this is a whole state of Connecticut on your team.

Speaker 6 (39:29):
And that's you know.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
It's like you make license plates and and and you
call pizza not pizza, but then you say it's.

Speaker 6 (39:37):
What you made is as we know it or whatever.
You blow my mind.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
I can't look at history, sir. Sorry, Chris. This is
a fight Jeff and I've been having for years. I
just have to, you know, I have to fight about it.
He gets very fired up. It's true, he gets very
fired up, Chris, And and then I don't like how
quiet you're being, Chris. I wish you would you would
back me up here a little bit. Maybe I'm mind.

Speaker 5 (39:57):
My wheels are spinning now about how we can turn
an event into this and and you know, charge people
fifty eighty bucks and have them come and they get
a say, and you.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
Know, I'll bring my best pizza guys in Connecticut. You
bring your best pizza guy in New York, if you
even know anybody, and we'll do a pizza pizza off.
How about that? Sure, let's go and we'll do it,
and we'll do it at the Magic Five. We'll do
it outside with the whole big thing. Will bring the
radio station, I'll have TV com we'll do all of it,
and we'll be all of us, all of us against you,

(40:27):
Jeffy List.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
I'm actually I'm willing to actually make the pizza myself.
I'm that confident you do make a fantastic pie. I'm
not gonna I'll bring the New York water.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
You can't all right, listen? Can we can we talk
to our guest? Now we're sitting to have a family
fight in front of in front of company.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Oh no, that's terrible.

Speaker 5 (40:45):
I know.

Speaker 4 (40:45):
I apologize, Chris, I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (40:47):
That's Jeffy. You're gonna make your own a beats.

Speaker 6 (40:49):
Right, I'm not gonna.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
You see he did there you see, try to put
it on. I see what he did. That that was good,
that was real. They really got to like what he did.
There's good. He did this basically from our friend Arnold.
Stop whining hearing.

Speaker 6 (41:06):
There we go.

Speaker 4 (41:06):
That's what he did for you. Thank you, Chris, I
appreciate that. Thank you very much. Hey, you guys have
a great crew. You have some people who built you
for a long time.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Man.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
Talk about some of the staff you've had, and do
the staff ever interchange you have like El Segundo staff,
Like somebody calls out the spread, like, hey, I need
you to go over here and work just you know,
the shifts over here tonight if you're available.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Do you ever do anything like that in a pinch?

Speaker 5 (41:30):
It's nice to have, especially the spread and Alsagundo or
you know, not even fifty yards away from each other. Yeah,
so being right next door, it's it's super convenient. And
if we have to, we've got guys that are rolling
to step up and hey, you need me to to
cook some brick chicken over at this place tonight instead
of out plasto of tacos over here. I got you.

(41:51):
You know, they're they're really good guys. They're there to
help the great The other great thing about it is
when we're going off site, it's these guys are always
willing to come and do a job at somebody's house
and pack up their knives and come along for the ride.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
Yeah, which is great. I'll tell you what, Like, if
you want to go work for a cool cool people,
go work for Chris because I'll tell you what. If
you want extra hours, not He's got tons of work
for you, so you can go work in these restaurants.
You know what I mean, which is if I worked,
if I was a young cook, I would one hundred
percent go because I'd like, Oh, who else needs help?
Where can I go tonight?

Speaker 5 (42:23):
Chris?

Speaker 4 (42:23):
Where can I go? Who needs me? And then just think,
you know, I think there's a lot of that these
days too, of some younger cooks coming out. How's staffing, Ben?
We've only got a few minutes before we go to break,
But how staffing? Benfew? Is it difficult?

Speaker 5 (42:33):
Uh? You know? Not to complain about it. But it's
just a roller coaster. I've got some guys. My head
guy at the Spread right now, we hired him about
ten years ago as a dishwasher. Wow, you know, start
it off, you're washing dishes and then it's hey, we're
going to stick a peeler in your hand, buddy, and
see what you got on the carrots and potatoes. And
he was able to peel pretty well. So then it

(42:56):
was like, we need you to be able to take
a basket and put it into a hot, steaming lava
temperature of oil. And if you can do that without
burning your forearm hair off, then we're gonna We're gonna
keep moving you up.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
And that's what he did.

Speaker 5 (43:12):
And now he's literally his name is on the menu.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
He's I love it.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
That's awesome. I love I love the growth that I
love the growth. That's incredible.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
We're joined by Chris Spread in Norwalk of El Segundo
and of course the Magic five Pie Company. We're talking
all about different businesses, different restaurants, staffing menus, the entire nine.
Give a little peek into the background life of some
of these amazing hospitality professionals that we have in the state,
and Chris is definitely one of those. You're checking out
some of the foods right on w i c C.
Stay right there, We'll be right back. M webla foods

(44:06):
right here on WICC, the Voice of Connecticut. It's your
boy Chef Plumb joined here as always a chef Jeffy
hanging out talking all about restaurant industry. One of the
fun things about this show, Jeffy, I think if you're
listening and you can listen live on the radio, of course,
you can listen to wherever you get your podcasts iHeart
app or wherever is you kind of get an insight
by real people who are really in the business, who

(44:27):
talk about kind of how this business goes. I think
it's kind of the one thing we do a little
bit different than everybody else.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Well, I think we'd definitely like to talk and get
the real stories and the real stories of real people
who are really working.

Speaker 4 (44:39):
Yeah, and just tell those stories and let people see
the insight. Kind of move that curtain back. You know,
we all have to go out to e to we
all have to go have cocktails, but talk about this
a little bit. We're joined by Chris Hickey, he's the
co owner of The Spread in Norwalk, of El Segundo
in Norwalk, and of course the Magic five PI company. Chris,
should I be saying South Norwalk like, Sona, Do we
still say that? Is a still a thing? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Still a thing?

Speaker 5 (45:00):
Two of them are in Sono, Magic five is in
Eastern Normal.

Speaker 4 (45:04):
Yeah, I just would. I was gonna say so no,
But I'm like, do we still say so? No?

Speaker 5 (45:07):
I just have.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
I don't know if it's the thing still say I
remember for a while that was like the thing we
everybody talk, you know.

Speaker 5 (45:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, they still call it that.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
The kids. The kids call it. That's right, the kids
these days they call it that.

Speaker 5 (45:19):
You know.

Speaker 4 (45:19):
It's interesting you bring up and say the kids, because
it makes me think about how much the industry is
changing a little bit.

Speaker 7 (45:24):
You know.

Speaker 4 (45:24):
I look back at, you know, when I was running
restaurants way back in the day, and you know, I mean,
a late night crowd was a thing. Having cocktails was
a thing, having a beer special and having all these
beers on tap and all this stuff. But it's changing
now a little bit. Man, the world is pivoting. Maybe
you don't see so many people out drinking as much
as you know, I know our generation for instance, we
would go drink to we didn't our names like, we

(45:45):
don't really do that anymore.

Speaker 5 (45:47):
No, there there's a shift. I mean, we still see
some of it. Each of our places is a little different.
We we pulld more of a late night crowd and
we have a late night menu and also good No,
but the spread our clientele has grown older with us,
with my partners and I, and we just don't have
that need to stay open until. I mean even the kitchen,

(46:10):
we pulled it back by an hour, half hour to
an hour, so it's we're not getting tables between ten
eleven o'clock again. You know, it just doesn't happen anymore.
So why am I keeping my kitchen around, especially on
the weekend. These guys are working Friday night, double Saturday,
double Sunday. Wow, So if I can let them out
an hour earlier on Friday and Saturday nights when we're

(46:32):
doing minimal business for tables, if anything between that ten
o'clock and eleven o'clock hour, it just makes more sense
all around.

Speaker 4 (46:41):
Yeah, it does make total sense. But it's interesting how
the shift happens though, because Jeff, you know what I'm
talking about, like, you know, our generation of people, like
that's what we would go do. It are going to
go out, We're going out, you know, that's what we do.
But now, you know, there's less of that now where
people kind of go out and you know, I think
that's why I think it all kind of started with
people making making craft cocktails.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
Is that weird?

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Like I'm not blaming anything. I think that's that was
the beginning of it. Like here's here's what I'm saying,
Like I'm not going to go out and drink like
I would go out and drink, you know back in
the day, not now. Friends, nine beers, ten beers, and
a couple of shots, like that's what. But you don't
see people go out and doing nine different cocktails anymore.
They're going to go out and have a couple and
you know, celebrate that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Well, yes, and no, I think there are people who
still drink, you know, not craft cocktails, who just go
and get rum and cokes and whatever. Is that still exists, Chris,
that still exists, I believe so yeah.

Speaker 6 (47:34):
But it's like I just think it's like different locations,
you know.

Speaker 4 (47:38):
I feel like I think it's more geographic.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah, Well, like my daughter's in college and Providence, and
like when those kids go out, they're still drinking, you
know what I mean, They're still like going out, they're
going to frat parties and they're still drinking. They're doing stuff.
I feel like there's an upho coming drinking people.

Speaker 4 (47:53):
But you're seeing more restaurants more and more all across
the country, even just having an actual mocktail menu going on, Chris,
you have some mocktails, right.

Speaker 5 (48:02):
We do again. My partner Sean, he just just came
up with a new one. It's going to be on
probably about a week and a half, two weeks as
soon as we get the printing done for our new menu,
going to be going to be a whole new section
on it. But that's it's something that has become very
elevated now. It's not just whatever juices you have in
the well mixed in a particular way. Now that there's

(48:24):
just all kinds of different things right right, you know,
it's a whole new ballgame now.

Speaker 4 (48:30):
People people expect more out of it, they want more
things with it. And you know those mocktails they take
time to make. Are you seeing that kind of increase
in sales and a menu mix of people ordering mocktails.

Speaker 5 (48:41):
We have, we we definitely have. I think, uh, there's
just so many different factors to it. It's it's partially
that people are even though the ubers are available, taxis
whatever always existed. But at the same time, it used
to be a situation where you got pulled over and
the cop would say, like, you know, just just take
it easy the rest of the way home, you know,

(49:02):
take it slow. It'sn't happening anymore. And I'm not saying
that that's that's justifiable or not. Obviously, we as an
industry need to always stay on top of not allowing
people to leave in that kind of a condition. But
the point being that people are more aware of it,
and they're they're looking in the mirror a little more.
It's it's not as loose as it once was. There's

(49:25):
another situation where you've got the legalization of marijuana and
edibles and all these different things, and that's something a
little bit I definitely do, especially with the younger crowd.
I think they're happier to take a take a couple
of milligrams of something and just have a mellow, different
kind of buzz instead of going and pounding, pounding drink

(49:47):
after drink and getting loaded in a restaurant and then
trying to figure out how to navigate their way home.

Speaker 4 (49:54):
Yeah, I'm just curious, and maybe Jeff you might know
this too, but Chris you might know. I mean, is
there a way or is it going to happen soon
when we start having THC cocktails.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
In a bar?

Speaker 5 (50:03):
Oh? There already are.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
Yeah, I mean that in New York State that they're
not allowed. We haven't legally, there's no consumption lounge yet
they haven't.

Speaker 6 (50:13):
They haven't.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
They haven't come off with consumption licenses yet. They're talking
about it. It's been in it's in the law that
they're going to but they haven't. But but here in Connecticut, Chris,
you said you've seen some.

Speaker 5 (50:24):
Yeah, there's different different cocktails now that they're both CBD
and THHC and state of Connecticut there you you have
to have to abide by all the regular laws. And
now there's a there's actually a tax on them. It's
one dollar per can tax in addition to what you

(50:44):
normally you're normally spending on to buy these things. But
they're usually I mean from what I've seen. I think
there are something like three percent to five three to
five milligrams or something with the intensity.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
I mean, that's not terrible. Though you think about somebody
who's that's what they're into. They could come have a
cocktail like that.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (51:04):
I mean, I just know that sometimes if Jeff and
I we do an event and then we go out
have drinks afterwards, you know he's not gonna have a
drink as much as I would. You might enjoy something
like that more than you would have being a regular cocktail.

Speaker 6 (51:14):
Uh, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 5 (51:15):
You know.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
I like the THC.

Speaker 4 (51:18):
I like the THHD just say that very mumbly.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
I like the THC.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
That's interesting is that something you guys have toyed with
it all, Chris about bringing into one of the restaurants.

Speaker 5 (51:28):
We we haven't we It's just something that I'm a
little afraid of the liability, okay much.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
It's not really a different than serve an alcohol.

Speaker 5 (51:37):
Though, I don't know. I just think that that mix
is just makes things a little foggier pun intended. I
just think that if you're you serve somebody for drinks
and then they decide to have move on and start
drinking the THHC. Then I just think it adds to
another gray area. It just made muddles muddies the waters

(51:59):
a little bit too much.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
That's fair, that's fair. I would be curious to know,
like what the insurance thing with that. I think we're
gonna have a lawyer on here very very soon, Jeffy,
and we should talk to him about that. That's an
interesting topic. I'm curious about that now. Chris brings um
a good point there, like what are the legalities with that?
Like I wonder how that works out? Yeah, because I
feel like somebody should jump on it soon because I
don't see a lot of people doing it around here.
Maybe somebody should jump on it.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
Well, that's I mean, listen, like Chris was saying, you
have to follow all these regulations and pay all these
different taxes and really get on top of it. And
there is as it's it's not federally legal anywhere yet
you know, the FED is not recognizing it. So as
a business owner, I can imagine it's a slippery slope
and you don't want to get caught with your pants
down making money and then all of a sudden gets

(52:40):
some sort of crazy tax or all of a sudden
them say you can't sell this anymore and you have
four k, you know, four palettes of whatever cocktail that
you're selling.

Speaker 4 (52:48):
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
It's a dangerous it's a dangerous business.

Speaker 4 (52:53):
Talking about taxes and how things are changing too. I mean,
and you know it's big in the news now, the
tariffs that are going on across everything, it seems like
these days, and we all know that mighty just get
to passed back to the consumer. Chris, are you worried
about that as far as the restaurant owner, as far
as maybe it comes to like you know, buying French
wine for a spread, or getting German beer or anything
like that, Like you see that affecting you at all?

Speaker 5 (53:15):
Absolutely? Absolutely. We saw it several years ago and now
we're seeing it again.

Speaker 7 (53:21):
You know.

Speaker 5 (53:21):
Right away we start getting the emails from our distributors
saying that there's the increases are coming, it's on its way,
and I know that they're I think they just made
an announcement that it was going to be paused for
ninety days, but I just don't see things coming back down.
Once the distributor says we have to charge thirty dollars

(53:45):
for a bottle of wine instead of used to it. Yeah,
it's like you get used to it and you change
your menu. And once they know they can receive that
thirty dollars instead of twenty five, terriffs go away. And
do you think they're dropping that price back down now?

Speaker 4 (54:01):
When they drop it down a little bit, it's a
sneaker rule. This is what I called the sneaker rule. Chris,
let me explain it to you. Right, So, when we
were all kids, buying sneakers was like fifty bucks, and
then all of a sudden, Nike airs came out and
they were one hundred and fifty dollars or whatever. We're like,
oh my god, how much for shoes? One hundred and
fifty dollars. That's insane, right, and everybody freaked out, but
they still bought them. When they finally dropped them down

(54:21):
to one hundred dollars, we're like, oh, thank god, that's
what they should be. One hundred dollars for these shoes
we all forgot. We pay fifty for it, and we
feel like they're doing this a favor, but I dropping
them down to one hundred, which is hilarious. It's a
sneaker rule, Jeffy, I like that. Remember don't you remember
sneakers how they were expensive and they weren't they brought
him back down.

Speaker 6 (54:38):
Yeah, yeah, I think that works with a lot of things.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
Honestly, I think I'm sure that's some sort of business
tactic that we're nutsmarting, right, Yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (54:43):
Mean, Chris, you don't talking about right, Yeah, unfortunately I do. Yeah,
it's a sneaker rule. So when you're prevaris are doing
it too, you're like, don't sneaker me. Don't you can't
sneaker me? You tell them like I remember when Jordan's
were one hundred and fifty dollars and you brought him
back down. Just blame them for everything. But no, I
feel bad for them too, because here's the thing. They're
getting taxed and have the charge less extra money too.

(55:04):
It's not just them. But you know, what do you
expecting them to do? Of course, you're going to pass
it on to the consumer. It doesn't just get absorbed
by the company, you know.

Speaker 5 (55:10):
Yeah. The the instances where they eat that is there
are a few.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
And far between, right, I mean, because the occasionally might
throw your bottle here and there. That's that's not going
to do anything. You know, it doesn't make up for
the difference, but it's hard to blame them. It's not
their fault.

Speaker 5 (55:26):
No, definitely not.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
So what do you do for it?

Speaker 4 (55:28):
I mean, you just had to raise your prices, right.

Speaker 5 (55:31):
Yeah, I mean there's really no other recourse. It's not
limited to that. I mean, it doesn't matter if it's
the price of eggs or or a bottle of wine
coming from France or Italy. It's same scenario. We have
to price out our menu based on what our own
costs are.

Speaker 4 (55:47):
Yeah, and it just gets crazy. It's going to get
worse and worse and worse. So you know, I think
we're going to see it kind of raising all over
the place. I think the idea here is to see
maybe more American products coming into it. But listen, when
I come to spread and now, when I have a
French wine, I want a French wine like I don't
want you know, I don't want some California sharden and not.
There's something wrong with that, but that's not my thing.

Speaker 5 (56:04):
You know, no certain instances, there's just no other choice.
Somebody wants a barollo, I can't give them an American barolo.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
That's not a thing that's not a thing exactly exactly.

Speaker 5 (56:17):
Yeah, there's certain things that you can I mean, how
much can you can you raise the price on something?
If eggs are up fifty percent, I can't charge fifty
percent more for an omelet during my brunch people, because
it's still an omelet exactly. And you know, people just
although seem to grasp that as much as we would
like them too. But that's not a new struggle for

(56:40):
the industry.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
By the way, Chris, we were telling my wife I'm
a top ten percent of intelligence in the country because
I took an online test and that's what it told me.

Speaker 5 (56:48):
So you blatantly lie to your wife.

Speaker 4 (56:50):
No, the internet doesn't lie. What are you talking about, Jesus?

Speaker 3 (56:53):
That was hard.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
You can't mean very that was aggressive. Listen, I took
a test on the internet and the internet doesn't lie.
We all know that, and it told me I was
in the top ten percent of intelligence in the country.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
That's that was really impressive. I was impressed. I was bleeing.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
This is the reaction I'm looking for, Chris, what Jeffy
just did. And you're leaving me hanging here.

Speaker 5 (57:12):
Well, if you're believing internet tests, why wouldn't you.

Speaker 4 (57:16):
It's the Internet, Internet doesn't lieten.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
Depends on what website you're on. All them like liars
dot com is probably a bad one.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
I don't think that's the real website. I'm sure it
is now, but you know, sorry, we just got a
little sidetracked there, Chris, I apologize, you know. I think
the interesting part about these tariffs and the price is
going up and things moving up, Like you said before,
people are gonna pay for because youve got to have
the stuff. I mean, like you said, we can't go
get an American barrollo. But is there going to be

(57:46):
a push towards more American stuff you think that doesn't
have those tariffs or I mean, listen, there's just especially
someone like you who has a you know, global street
food restaurant. My god, I can't imagine how it's going
to affect you so much.

Speaker 5 (57:57):
You know. Yeah, Luckily most of those ingredients are coming
from within the country, so I'm not super worried about that.
I think the thing with the wines in particular, I mean,
just to harp on that because it's such an easy
example to use. I think the scenario is that, yeah,
we might sell more American wines. But it's not going

(58:18):
to It's just going to be because people are like, hey,
screw that, I'm not paying you know, I know what
this should cost. I can buy it in the store.
I have it in my cellar. I know what that
costs me when I bought it a year ago. And
now not only are they upcharging it like the normal
restaurant does, but now you throw the tariff on top
of that, and it just becomes too egregious and people

(58:41):
aren't going.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
To do it any thoughts of putting on another line
on the receipt. You know, we have the tax, we
have the gratuity, even another line it just says, you know,
like like you know, twenty twenty five tariff, just so
people can see it.

Speaker 5 (58:57):
My personal opinion on that is that people are getting
a little tired of seeing whether it's a completely justified
scenario kitchen charge where it's like, hey, this is this
is to throw the guys in the kitchen a ball
right when it comes to it's like there's a tariff charge,
and a lot of places started started putting an egg

(59:20):
charge on. I've seen that, and I just think that
people just don't want to see they want to see
subtotal tax total and a blank line for a tip,
and that's it. They just won't want to keep seeing
all these different you know, they just feel like they're
death by a thousand cuts.

Speaker 4 (59:38):
I mean that's what it is. I mean, you're not
that's a great way to put it, death by a
thousand cuts. I mean you almost kind of have to
do it anyway, though, you know. I just was like,
if maybe if we start seeing it more often, maybe
more people would want to be like, Okay, come on,
we're kind of actually we can physically see it right here.
This is what this you know, are our normal one
hundred dollars bill that we're going to you know, we
would have is now one hundred and twenty or whatever,

(01:00:00):
you know, right, And I just just to be able
to see it. I don't know, I feel like it's
not a terrible idea, but I get what you're saying,
to death by a thousand cuts. I don't know how
to fix that, Jeffie. How do we fix it?

Speaker 6 (01:00:10):
Well, like you do what Chris just said, You give
them one price.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
Here's what it like.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
You just up the price that what has to be uped.
But you can't do the like, oh, I get annoyed
with that kind of stuff too. I don't I don't
want to hear your sob story.

Speaker 6 (01:00:23):
I just want to pay.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
I get it. Everything's more expensive.

Speaker 6 (01:00:26):
I'll just tell me it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Just ten dollars now, okay, great. You know cigarettes used
to be a dollar. Now they're twenty five. You know,
all the things that were great when I was a kid,
they're going to kill you and they're twenty five thousand
times more expensive. It's just like, you know, the world's
that's how it goes.

Speaker 4 (01:00:43):
We're going to legalize it, but we're gonna tax you
seven hundred thousand percent.

Speaker 6 (01:00:47):
Yeah, oh god, forget it. Marijuana. Go to the dispensary.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
It's like it's like it's ten I can't even imagine
being a kid when it's legal and they're like you're
all excited and you go in there and they're like, yeah,
it's your whole paycheck or one joint.

Speaker 5 (01:01:02):
The joint is two dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
The tax on that, yeah, exactly, it's right. Wow, it's yeah,
it's incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
So so you think it's just I mean just I mean,
people just have to know what's raised prices and maybe
use hopefully outlets like US and other things, and just
to let people know like this is, this is affecting
everybody in a terrible way, and we just.

Speaker 6 (01:01:23):
I mean work kind of gets it, you know, the one.

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):
I think the's a lot of people who don't get it, Jeff,
I really truly think there's a lot. I truly think
there's a lot of people in this country who think that, oh,
the company who's trying to sell the product, the wine
company who's trying to sell French wine, the mom and
pop winery will pay that extra money to send it here.
They really think that.

Speaker 6 (01:01:40):
Mmm, yeah, well I don't think they get it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:45):
Then, no, they don't. That's my point. So I think
we have to use outlets like US and other places
to like just constantly beat that out there, like listen, yeah,
this isn't the restaurant's choice. They have to do this
to survive.

Speaker 6 (01:01:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Well, I mean, I mean, listen, this happens all the
time to restaurants for all sorts of things, like the eggs.
That's not a tariff. Like you know, there's a bird floe,
a ton of people that don't have you know, chickens
had to be killed the same thing happens. You know, beef,
I think you know there was a mad cow disease,
scare anthrax things whatever. A bunch of years ago. Beef
was like a super expensive I mean it's honestly, beef

(01:02:18):
is expensive right now, you know. It's it's just how
it goes.

Speaker 6 (01:02:24):
You know, like organic chicken.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
You know, if you want to like serve organic chicken
or free range chicken compared to something else, it's like
you're going to pay through the nose for that kind
of stuff. It's like it's wild. It's it's at least
double the label, yeah, for what the other stuff is.
And that's that's just the bottom line. So it's like
if you're going to serve that and you have to
charge for it, I mean, you know, I mean, but

(01:02:46):
but here's the thing.

Speaker 5 (01:02:48):
You have a scenario where to stick with the eggs.
You've got like five companies, four or five companies that
provide in excess of sixty percent of the eggs to
the United States. They recorded absolute record shattering profits. I

(01:03:11):
mean we're talking like a three hundred and fifty percent
net profit in the in the last quarter of last
year and the first quarter of this year.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (01:03:22):
So when you want to talk about them. Ah, there
was a bird flow and they had to kill at that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):
That's that.

Speaker 5 (01:03:29):
It's just not realistic. They knew that they could raise
the prices and get away with it, so they did.
And I know you don't want to hear the you know,
you don't want to hear the bitching. Like you get it.
Things are more eventsive. You have to pay for it.
But that's that's one reality. And if you can explain
to me why when I've got Christmas parties coming in
in December and it's three dollars more, four dollars more

(01:03:53):
a pound for filet mignon, Why why is it more
expensive in December? Yeah, because they can get away with it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
Interesting. Interesting, Sorry Jeffrey, but I know you had something
else there, But I want to.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Because you want it, you know, I mean, it drives
up the price, you know, demand drives up the price.
It's like more people start coming around asking for file a.
There's only two fil a's per cow.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
And to be honest, like there's a better cut of meat.
For God's sake, stop ordering files.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Yeah, I still buy them all when I got a chance.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
It's delicious. There's a better cut of meat more flavorful anyway.
But yeah, if they can charge more, they're gonna charge more.
And I just don't know how to combat that, or
how to fight that, or how to get it. I
don't know. I think just knowledge is probably the best
thing we can do. Guys, I don't know. I don't
know how to fight that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:36):
Well. Knowledge. You're in the top ten percent, So.

Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
We talked about that. That's very true. You're right, I
think you. I appreciate you bringing that back up.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Yes, Plumb's gonna save us.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
I'm gonna save everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
You're gonna save us.

Speaker 6 (01:04:46):
That's gonna be our next song. I love to talk
to the flame.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
Get the flames to make us new song. There it
is just for you, Chris. So, what's the future man?
We got about three minutes here before we had to
break and get you out of here, brother, And we
do appreciate your time. You're such a great guy to
talk to, human being. You've always been so cool and
we do appreciate you. And of course, anytime, how are
we can support a phone call the way you know that?

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Love it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
What's in the future, man, We think another restaurant we're
thinking about, just trying to take these guys the next
level here, what's in the future.

Speaker 5 (01:05:12):
Yeah, it's right now. It's fine tuning. We were three
restaurants all in the same city. We're just trying to
make sure that we have all three of those operating
like well oiled machines at this point. I honestly, I
don't see us doing anything else. Never say never. But
I was talking to to my best friend who's also
a restaurant tour and I said, you know, I thought

(01:05:34):
you were going to go one direction with this conversation
and tell me that you were taking over another spot.
And he said, if I ever tell you again that
I am opening another spot on me.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
Straight in the whoa, there you go, there, you go ahead.

Speaker 5 (01:05:52):
And I said, yeah, I understand, I get it. It's uh,
it's always a roller coaster. If it isn't one thing,
it's another. If it's not, if it's not a shortage
of employees and qualified people to work, then it's a
terriff or something like that. You know, it's the industry.
The margins are razor thin to begin with. Yeah, and

(01:06:16):
then you throw bird flues and mad cow disease and
tariffs and whatnot on top of it, and it's just
it's rough. It's rough, and you know, I don't mean
to complain. It's just something that I think the average
person thinks, Oh, I go to that place, I see it.
It's jam packed on a Friday night, Like these guys
must be printing money. Well, if you're not packed on

(01:06:36):
a Friday night, you're probably at a business.

Speaker 4 (01:06:39):
Sneaker theory, that's what it is. Chris. We appreciate you, man.
You're an amazing restaurant towards Jeffie get does plugs out
there for you're doing it, brother, Just so you know,
you've got three restaurants and you're still and you've been
around a long time, you're still doing it, and we
appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Jeffie plugs a restaurant dot com, the spreadsno dot com,
Magicfivepico dot com. Also the same on aig. Go out there,
follow them, get out there. If you're in Norwalk, go
to the restaurants.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
They're totally worth it. I'm telling you else Gun is
one of my favorites. Chris, you are the man. Brother.
We appreciate the hell out of your brother.

Speaker 5 (01:07:12):
Now my pleasure. Thank you guys, appreciate it and best
luck in the future.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
Can't wait to see what happens next. And uh, you know,
like I said, if we can ever help, we're a
phone call away. If you ever need a sounding board,
we're here, brother. You can have it anytime you want it.

Speaker 5 (01:07:23):
Awesome, Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
You are the man.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Brother.

Speaker 4 (01:07:25):
You're checking out plumb Love Foods right here on WICC.
We're talking all about the business restaurants, moving that curtain back,
showing you some of those secrets of those things that
we can always talk about, how some of these things
that are happening in local government even affecting these restaurants
and affecting our hospitality industry as a whole, because trust me,
they are. We were joined by Chris Hickey. He's one
of our best friends in the entire world when it

(01:07:45):
comes to being in the hospitality industry. He owns to
Spread in so and No of course the Magic five
five Company and Elsa Gundo. Uh stay right there. We
ran back with Plumla Foods. Jeffy and I are gonna
put a bow on this and wrap it up. We'll
write back guys. Blubla Foods right here on w i C.

(01:08:32):
See the voice of Connecticut hanging out with you here
on a Saturday. Excited to be talking to you, always
excited on a Saturday. We love the fact that we're here.
This is a sill Little Food podcast has now become
a radio program on FM radio and of course talk
at some of the best that there is in Connecticut
and today is no different. Were joined by Chris Hickey
from The Spread in Norwalk, El Segundo and of course
the Magic Five Pie Company. Jeffrey. What a great human

(01:08:54):
being to have there, huh.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
Great guy, Great guys, Such a great conversation, so much fun,
dropping a have of knowledge. If you missed it, you
should definitely go back check it out wherever you find
your podcast. They're out there, it's gonna be. It was
a fun conversation and look forward to an info there.

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Yeah, we talked about pulling the Yeah, we talked about
pulling the curtain back there. And there's definitely a lot
of pulling the curtain back there. And I told Chris
as we got him out here the last break here,
I was like, listen, brother, I know that we were
all over the board here with that conversation, but that's
kind of what we do here, Like you know, I
mean when hospitality people talk. It's all over the board,
and and he was like, absolutely, that's why I've love
the show, so you appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
Yeah, we specialized in dumpster fires. That's kind of our thing.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):
I mean, I call it quite a dumpster fire. But
we were definitely all over the board there with them.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
All Right, we'll call it a trash can uh like
a like a like a small trash can fire, a.

Speaker 4 (01:09:41):
Small trash camp fire. All right, I appreciate that. I
appreciate that. And you can also follow them on Instagram too, right, Jeffy, Yeah,
you can follow.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Him on Instagram. El Segundo Sono at the Spread restaurant
and at Magic, the Numeral five Pie.

Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
Co Perfect, perfect and great restaurants of course, and the really, honestly,
I'm gonna tell you, El Segundo, if I'm in No
Rock is on my go to restaurants. It is fantastic.
Their menu is amazing, so much great food. It's street food,
so it's it's all in like disposable containers, but it's
all biodegradable. And the bar program is incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Yeah. And and and when when you say street food
from around the world, you're not joking.

Speaker 6 (01:10:17):
I mean I saw.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
I was looking at the menu and it has there's
like all Asian dishes from every part of Asia. There's
dishes from you know, four or five different Latin American
countries that you know, I mean, there's and it's even funnier.
It's like some it says Peru, and I was like,
isn't that from Spain? He said, you know, they argue

(01:10:40):
about that the table sometimes it's amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:10:43):
There's great food there and it's a great restaurant and
there's really something literally for everybody, and it's so I
don't know, non pretentious when you go there and hang
out and like the food is just incredible and like
I said, non pretentious.

Speaker 6 (01:10:54):
So yeah, I mean, and you still get a burger
or like a Christian sandwich.

Speaker 4 (01:10:58):
Oh yeah yeah. And their chickens they're different. Checking is
something they're known for too. They it's stacked up in
this container. It's really great. It's definitely worth checking out.
You haven't been there yet. This Elsa Gundo in nor
Rock is great and it spread. Also, their brick chicken
is phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
I've had it. Oh yeah, yeah. That menu actually looks
really great too, And and then the catering that they
do sounds like they played the hits from every place
in pizzas I mean smart. Yeah. And one of the
only pizza places that had a pineapple pizza on the
menu that attracted me right to it. I saw the
spice pork. I know, listen, I'm Italian. I hate pineapple

(01:11:33):
on pizza. I usually get angry when I even think
about fruit on pizza. I you know, work for someone
in their home and I kind of refuse to buy it,
and they've asked for it, and I'm trying to ask you. Yeah,
it happens, and I'm just like, oh, that's right, Oh Ben.
I forgot again.

Speaker 4 (01:11:50):
When I went in front of the entire state of
Connecticut to promote pizza being named the state food of Connecticut.
One of the things I pointed out in my lengthy speech,
which we should play here at some point. It's very funny.
I think you would laugh at it. No, yeah, you would,
come on, stop it. You would laugh at me. I
make funny jokes. But one of the jokes I make
is that how pizza gets bastardized and places like California

(01:12:13):
eat it with a knife and fork and put pineapple
on top. Of it and still trying to call it pizza.

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
Well, I mean, listen, you're allowed any of your delusions.

Speaker 4 (01:12:23):
All right, We're not gonna have this now. We're gonna
have our pizza friends on and have a conversation, and
we're gonna do it back and forth. It's me plumb
versus Jeviy pizza pizza.

Speaker 3 (01:12:32):
Let's go, let's throw it down pizza styles.

Speaker 4 (01:12:34):
And I want you to know I am not ever
gonna down like down, how you make pizza. You do
an amazing job. You're fantastic. You're an amazing pizza cook.
You make great pies. I'm never gonna say that. It's
not about you and me. It's about New York and Connecticut.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Well, it's just about the delusion.

Speaker 7 (01:12:51):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:12:52):
Here's the thing. Illusion wasn't important. I didn't say anything
that attacked you.

Speaker 6 (01:12:55):
I put you over.

Speaker 4 (01:12:56):
Just then you see the word delusion in which is
now attacking.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
No, no, no, hold on, hold on here, shon, let
me finish the delusion. Okay, it's a mass delusion. And
everyone and you say this, you say, no, this is
where pizza comes from.

Speaker 4 (01:13:12):
As we know it very important. As we know it's
very important.

Speaker 3 (01:13:16):
Why is that. That's like, no, that's it means pizza.

Speaker 4 (01:13:19):
Who we call and have delivered to our house, who
we pick takeout from that sort of thing, what we
expect we order to take out pizza. That's what I'm
talking about. Have you really never known this?

Speaker 5 (01:13:32):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
Yeah, I just don't think that's that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 4 (01:13:35):
Bro, It's fact. Frank Pepe was the first person to
deliver pizza. He would ride a bike through hat City,
by the way, with a pizza on his head and
deliver it to factory workers and brass workers.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
This sounds like a fabric. That is a fact.

Speaker 4 (01:13:53):
That that's not me making up changing history. That is
the truth.

Speaker 3 (01:13:57):
I mean, listen, it sounds like an old story that's
been passed from generation to generation. Of course, you know,
it's like of course Paul Revere, like that probably never happened,
you know, but like sure we tell everybody it, did
you know?

Speaker 6 (01:14:10):
Santa Claus?

Speaker 4 (01:14:11):
No, you stop it. That's not even the truth. This
is a real This is factual. This is the it's
in the Bible or something.

Speaker 6 (01:14:15):
I'm sure I am the historical lost.

Speaker 4 (01:14:23):
M now. I mean, it's like a piam shirts in there.
It's like a pretty Britannica shirts in there.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
The Britannic it probably does say something about New Haven pizza,
but they'll say it pizza, not beats. And that's what
that's my whole argument is. It's like it's not even pizza.
They call it something else.

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):
What do you call it? A flatbread with tomatoes and
romanoch beats?

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Beats?

Speaker 6 (01:14:43):
You spell it a pizza, but you call.

Speaker 4 (01:14:49):
I'm kind of with you, I'm you.

Speaker 6 (01:14:52):
You spell it a pizza, you call it a beats.

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):
You say it's the first delivery by in the whole world.
You now you're the state capital of pizza.

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
Well, I mean anybody else claim it? Did anybody else
claim it? New York didn't claim it. They weren't. They
were so not confident they didn't claim it. California in
claim the Detroit diden claim its Crogo didn't claim it?
Who did Connecticut? Because how often do you see across
the country places doing New Haven style pizza. We see
Chicago pizza. No one ever advertised doing Detroit stop pizza.
They ortiz you to Chicago, New York, Connecticut.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
They do Detroit style pizzas advertise a lot of places.

Speaker 4 (01:15:26):
One of my favorite restaurants in the state. Does Detroit
stop Pizza doesn't advertise that?

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
Listen, I think of pizza is an amazing style of pizza.

Speaker 6 (01:15:36):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
Yeah, so they love it. I love the char I
love the thinness of it. I mean, I style a
lot of my own pizza after some of the stuff
that I've eaten.

Speaker 4 (01:15:47):
But can we move on?

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
Okay, I digress.

Speaker 4 (01:15:51):
This is a whole of the show where we don't
have enough time to break into this. This is a
whole of the program.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
This is just that.

Speaker 5 (01:15:56):
This is.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
You opened up the can off act like pep you're
over here with the oh, we should play my speech.

Speaker 4 (01:16:04):
So here's the thing. I've taken you to Peppies, I've
taken you the places to get You've never once said, plum,
let me take you to get pizza here in New York.
And I'm not saying New York makes a bad pizza.
That's never anything I've said, but you've never said it
to me. Look, look you're confused. Now, look at you.

Speaker 6 (01:16:19):
You're like, Okay, you're right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
I'm thinking, I'm like, where have we been in New
York where I've wanted to take you for anywhere? Yeah,
because there's certain places you want to go.

Speaker 4 (01:16:27):
Well, we have time and certain times in our lives,
even recently, we could have gone and we didn't go.
Can we twitch to pic? Though, Let's switch a subject
because I've got something else I want to bring up.
Bring it up, what you should want to talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
Too, Let's talk about it. Shout out.

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):
Shout out to the Yukon women for winning the national championship,
the NCAA Championship eighty two to fifty nine. If that's
not a butt kicking on on? What is buddy Yukon?
What Yukon of women? Basketball?

Speaker 6 (01:16:54):
Bro oh basketball? We do Yukon women? And I was like,
Yukon women.

Speaker 4 (01:16:58):
Here in Connecticut we do pizza and do basketball, so
what we do?

Speaker 6 (01:17:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
Yeah, Yukon women are no joke. That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:17:05):
That's the champion NCAA Championship eighty two to fifty nine,
Isn't it kind of like why do you even come
to play the game at that point?

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
Eighty two to fifty nine is definitely a stomping, that's
a that's a but kicking. Yeah, that's but I bet
you Harry Thomas was there a good friend?

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
You might have been, Harry Thomas. We love Harry very much.
I'm actually working on reaching out to U kind of
trying to talk to their nutrition program there at Yukon,
So I want to find out how they help their
athletes because Yukon basketball is a very very big thing
here in Connecticut, the men's and women's people. To talk
to themivation, Yeah, really fun conversation. I'm working on doing that,
trying to grek that happen. But Yukon women shout to them,

(01:17:40):
you know, as a Connecticut person, and you know very.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
Well players notoriously over six foot tall, probably hungry, probably well.

Speaker 4 (01:17:49):
Well, yeah, and the women are massive athletes and some
of the best athletes in women's basketball.

Speaker 6 (01:17:55):
Company one wants to be called massive.

Speaker 4 (01:17:57):
No, you're probably right about that, but like great athletes
who are incredible, and you know, I think it's really
fun how we've watched how women's basketball. In my opinion,
years ago, it wasn't really a thing. It was almost
the butt of jokes. And now I mean last year,
the Yukon game in the championship was the most watched
basketball college basketball game in the planet.

Speaker 6 (01:18:18):
Yeah, no, I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
The level of competitiveness amongst women's basketball has gotten at
incredible it's like, really really great, and watching some of
the WNBA games have been fantastic recently, and I'm sure
college I haven't actually seen the Yukon games, but I
would love to check out.

Speaker 4 (01:18:34):
Oh man, it's fun to watch. They play hard, and
the Yukon women play very hard. So shout out to
them and congratulations to them for bringing that championship home
here to Connecticut eighty two to fifty nine. They sawed
the mud hole and walked the dry to South Carolina.
And by the way, South Caroline was right number one,
Yukon was number two. I don't know how that works
as Yukon. Every game Yukon won was like by thirty points.
It was crazy. I don't know how that works. Jeffie,

(01:18:56):
do you.

Speaker 6 (01:18:58):
Thirty?

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:18:59):
I don't know if you can just quit after a
certain point.

Speaker 4 (01:19:01):
But I think was there a thing in baseball when
we were kids, like if you're up by ten, like
you just call a game. Another team folds.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
In little league it's like that.

Speaker 6 (01:19:09):
Yeah, they're like, yeah, we don't want.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
You to beat them too bad.

Speaker 4 (01:19:12):
If you're up by ten, that's beaten pretty bad.

Speaker 6 (01:19:14):
That's in baseball. That's a beating.

Speaker 4 (01:19:16):
For sure, that's a beatdown, no doubt about it. But
I think it'd be fun to talk to Yukon and
talk to the nutrition program and see how they take
care of athletes and things. I think we should we
shouldry to make that happen here.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
I love that idea.

Speaker 4 (01:19:26):
Yeah, we have some sports radio friends who might be
able to help with that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:19:29):
I think I was just gonna say, yeah, I already
have a path I think to that.

Speaker 4 (01:19:33):
Yeah, but yeah, shot out to them, and it was
a big deal. I was at a volleyball tournament was happening,
and everyone was asking me because I was the only
person to match the log into the Wi Fi at
the tournament in Boston. That was in with my daughter,
and everyone's asking me what's going on because we were
following the game on my phone because we could see
the TVs that were they were too far away to see,
but we were watching it and it was it was great.
And you know, we do a lot of things great
here and one of them is basketball and the other

(01:19:55):
one is pizza here in Connecticut.

Speaker 3 (01:19:58):
True pizza is delicious here.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
Okay, I appreciate that. I appreciate that great hot dogs
we have great hot talks as well, no doubt about it. Hey,
So listen, we were talking about street food, uh with
our guest Chris Hickey from El Segundo, Uh, the Spread
in Norwalk and of course the Magic five PI company.
But El Sagundo is a street food restaurant, Jeffy, if
you're going to make a street food menu, right and

(01:20:22):
from all across the country, all across the world, Excuse me,
what is one of the countries you think here is
a go to for you? Like, you know what, we
need to have this on our menu. Maybe not a ditch,
but what country do you think something we need to
have this?

Speaker 3 (01:20:35):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:20:35):
Man, I mean a lot to choose from.

Speaker 3 (01:20:37):
There's so many great street foods, so it's like it's
really tough, uh for me, super tough. I don't know
off the top of my head. I immediately when you
said street food, for some reason, I thought parogi. Okay,
I love a parogi. I would probably, uh definitely want
to include that in my street food menu. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:20:56):
I mentioned earlier pinchos because from being in Spain and
seeing that, and there's so much pinchos in Spain, which
is small little bites. You walk to a bar you
order a drink and there's just a case full of
all these little, tiny, crazy bites of food, you know,
one or two bites. Maybe it's on a piece of
bread or baby, it's on a skewer in a small
little pot. I think that I would have a Pincho's menu.

(01:21:17):
I'm gonna do a Pincho's menu this summer for sure
at work. But like you know, small little bites, small
little fun things to have, Like, I think I would
go that route for sure. That there's no right or
wrong there.

Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
You know, no, definitely not, definitely not. I mean that's
the thing street food that kind of covers such a large,
like a large variety of foods. Like some of these
foods are made on the street. I mean from savices
to you know, noodles to curries. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no
doubt about it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:46):
And I mean I'm kind of down with all these things, man,
I think I think it's great, and I think there's
there's no wrong answer for sure for all of this.
But if I was gonna pick, I think a Pincho's
would be something I would work on very hard. I'm
probably a little Japanese on there as well.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
Yeah, one of my favorite cuisines. I can't think of
how they say, is a taki whatever. It's like the
like Japanese bar food. You know, it's all a little
bit it's like that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:12):
Like yeah, I don't think it was little sandwiches out
of like rice and rice paper with things inside of
it and they wrap them up.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
Uh yep, Yeah, there's there's a little thing like that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:21):
It's great food. I mean, it's great food. And you know,
it's funny because so much of this street food too,
can be so healthy, which I think is very interesting.
You know, it doesn't have to always be some crazy heavy,
you know, processed situation.

Speaker 6 (01:22:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:34):
No, it doesn't have to be fried either. You know,
there's a lot of there's a lot of really delicious
I mean, a lettuce cup could be a street food,
you know, sure, summer rolls street food, you know, just
a tiny bit of salad like like you were saying,
like like some sort of marinated chickpea thing or some olives.
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:22:50):
I get this great ditch when I leave the gym
from this restaurant called Sweet Mango, which is right by
my gym. It's a it's a you know, Asian restaurant
and it's basically this marinated chicken with peppers and onions,
and they give you like a hoists in some sort
of hoist in sauce on top. I can't read what
it says, but it's something to horst and sauce you
pour on top. But the idea is called lettuce cups,

(01:23:11):
and they give you a bunch of like iceberg lettuce.
The idea is you're supposed to put the chicken inside
the lettuce and eat it. But I just eat the chicken.
It's just delicious chicken. I just eat it with the
fork and it's delicious and it's healthy and protein and
it's great. So I think like if you're looking for
something like that, especially from a health food standpoint, especially
street food sort of thing, that's the way to go.

Speaker 3 (01:23:29):
Yeah, that sounds delicious. I love that idea.

Speaker 4 (01:23:31):
Yeah, it's it's it's a it's an interesting way to
I don't know, take like some kind of cuisine. And
and I guess my question is this, Jeffy, are our
food our snack foods as Americans? Is it more unhealthy
than food that's you know, more you know from other cuisines.

Speaker 3 (01:23:50):
Are our snack foods? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:23:52):
Do we do a bad job with that. I love
chicken wings. I mean, yeah, we define them. Yeah, I
mean we do deep frame.

Speaker 3 (01:24:03):
I mean, we have a bunch of like high brow,
low brow foods in America that are fantastic, and they're
not all fried. But we have a lot of fried
things that are I guess notoriously American. But America has
like a lot of melting pot and there's a lot
of like like ethnic ethnic foods that were created here

(01:24:23):
in the States that we're you know, from necessity of
you know, having a technique that came from another country
here and then using different ingredients and you know, different
dishes were born that way. So it's kind of hard
to say.

Speaker 4 (01:24:38):
Yeah, it's it's interesting because I think there's I found
in my like getting healthier situation. I found that a
little bit more of those sort of you know, I
don't know, different different countries food are better for me
as a snack or as a meal as opposed to
you know, some of the foods that you might get,
you know, you might be considered American type cuisine, which

(01:25:00):
and I love American food. American what is everything? But
I brought you a pint of my hot and sour
soup I'm obsessed with and it's delicious and it's so
good protein and vegetables and like there's nothing really bad
in it, you know, it's it's amazing. I mean, you
do put the fried little crunches, and if you do
that then that kind of messes it up. But you

(01:25:21):
don't even have to have that, Yeah, I mean you don't,
but I did.

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
They're delicious, and.

Speaker 4 (01:25:25):
He's like, yeah, I did do that, you know, I
did do that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:27):
That's what happens.

Speaker 4 (01:25:29):
So I don't know, Like I think if I was
making a street food type menu, that would be something
I would lean into. I would lean into the Japanese food.
I would lean into, you know, the Spanish type type food.
You know, my probably my thing, and you would go where.

Speaker 6 (01:25:44):
I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:25:44):
If we were doing like world like from I'm I
like super eclectic, so I would try to try to
do a little bit of everything from all over you
serve camel, new Camel. Uh that's a little tube eclectic
for me. But I might do uh, you know, I
might do some sort of people. I might do some dumplings.
I might do a bunch of different skewers.

Speaker 4 (01:26:06):
You love lamb. You do a lot of great stuff
of lamb. It's only a few lambs I've liked in
the world, and yours is very tasty, sir.

Speaker 6 (01:26:11):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
You know I might do something like, uh, you know,
in Trinida they make these things called doubles, which are
like these little like you know, lental pancake situations that
are delicious, these like little curried like little bites. I mean,
I probably want to try to get as many of
those things in as I could, you know, like kind
of like an also good now minda, that's right up
my alley.

Speaker 4 (01:26:31):
Yeah, that's wrape your out. You'll love it. We gotta
get you there for sure and check it out. And
by the way, I wish you'd put me up with
I always talk about how great your food is. You
never say once or anything I'd make great. I don't
think you ever have said anything I've made.

Speaker 3 (01:26:41):
Great that's not well.

Speaker 4 (01:26:42):
I was like, Jeff, this is delicious. You do a
great lamb. Jeff, you do a great go Jeff, you
do a great this you make amazing pizza. Never once
you said plumb, me know what you make great? X
Y and Z it's okay. It's okay. We're gonna work
on that. We're gonna work on that, all right.

Speaker 6 (01:26:54):
That's hurtful, you know what it is. Because you're hurt,
you only bring me a bite of whatever you make.

Speaker 4 (01:26:58):
Here we go see well means you once you savoring
and wanting more as we go forward. Thanks you guys
for hanging out.

Speaker 6 (01:27:04):
With us here.

Speaker 4 (01:27:04):
Plum Little Foods w c C. I'm Chef Blumber. That's
Chef Jeffie. We appreciate you, guys. Shots for our guest
Chris Hicky from the spread in Sono El Segundo and
the Magic five five Company. He's the man. Have you
ever done son No or in South Norwalk or in
any north Walk East Norwalk For the restaurant is go
check them out. Very much worth your time for sure.
For Chef Jeffy, I'm Chef Plum Friends. Remember food is

(01:27:24):
one of those important things we have in life. Everything
important life involves around food. We'll see you guys next
Saturday right here on wic see the Voice of Connecticut
and Pum Little Foods take care of friends,

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