August 20, 2021 • 37 mins
From out of the kitchen and to hitting the pavement, Ben and David are joined by Chef Andrew Gruel. Andrew takes the guys sideline to sideline with his antics in the kitchen, in front of the camera, and in the ring with the mass media.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He treats
crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
pill poppers in the penthouse, to clearinghouse of hot takes,
break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
(00:24):
Maller starts right now that it does in the air
everywheres we loviate the weekend away, even on a Friday
Friday Friday, as we kick off the weekend festivities here
because four hours a night are not enough. Eight days
a week, eight days a week. Broadcasting live and in
(00:45):
stereo were available from the newly Voice My Voice, Sound
Good Mallard podcast studio Deep in the north Woods. Deep
in the north Woods. Of course, the Fifth Hour a
spinoff of the Overnight Show. And since I was away
from my host quite a bit this week because of
some moving, we'll have more on that on the Saturday podcast.
(01:06):
We have to make up for it on the weekend
here with the Fifth Hour. The show must go on,
as we like to say in the air, everywhere. The
vast power of podcasting, and you've obviously found the show.
We thank you for that. Man, that's cool that you've
downloaded it and remember sharing his caring. So if you
like the podcast and you know somebody that might like
(01:27):
it or hate it, for that matter, as long as
they listen, we get credit. That's all we care about,
just to direct them to the podcast. We are joined
again another weekend in a row. Here I was, there's
a two or three in a row now David Gascott
making gallon vancing across the wide open state of California,
(01:52):
at least for a short period of time. But I
have found my way home into the studio and uh,
and here I am. So we'll get more into it
in future podcast. But people said, well, when you're going
back to the studio, what's going on? And well, you know,
l a man, they keep shutting stuff down. I don't
have to worry about that. I I'm good on that.
I think this will be going on for years. I
don't have to worry about about going back in at
(02:16):
all at all. So uh, anyway, listen, this is not
about us. We'll get into all that stuff in future podcast.
But I'm excited, you know. I I like to dabble
in the kitchen as you know, I guess, and I
send you pictures of my creations with a few days
I eat occasionally when we eat, and I will send
you my mallard pie that I make rather painful to
look at. I don't know if you want to call
(02:37):
it dabble, you know, like dabble means like it's a
little tapped dressing. Listen. I have I have ripped off
many YouTube recipes, you know, mimicking other things. But I
I do like to cook, and my wife actually has
helped me. I when I was a bachelor. I got
married almost ten years ago, and before then I knew nothing.
(03:00):
My idea of cooking was a hungry man one pound,
one pound dinner, a TV dinner. I was very good
at making that. I could make the frozen pizza. I
knew that I could even heat up some frozen French
fries in the like you know, on the oven whatever.
I knew how to do that, but that was about it.
That was the extent of my cooking. So I'm very
very proud of myself, humble bragg, but I'm not anywhere
(03:21):
near the level of a professional professional chef. And we
have one eight and the guy's on TV as well, Uh,
he's owns a bunch of restaurants, a pizza restaurant, a
very popular seafood restaurant, and you've seen him on the
Food Network. He's been a judge on a number of
these cooking shows over the last almost a decade. I
(03:42):
guess he's been on. So I'm excited. So we should
without further Adoe, David, let's give it up now for
the chef. And his name is Andrew Gruel and he
joins us now in the fifth hour with Ben Maller
and David gascoont and Andrew, we welcome you in. And
so I guess we'll start with this. Was this always
(04:03):
your plan to to be a television cheffer? Is this
something that you stumbled into? Stumbled into it like I
do it with everything else in my life. So how
did how did it happen? I mean you were obviously
you're you're professional, You're doing it. And did did somebody
contact you? Did you? Did you end up in the
wrong place or the right place at the right time?
How did it happen? Uh? You know, I've always been
(04:25):
pretty outspoken about what I do and how I do it.
And I had opened a restaurant out in New Hampshire, Gosh,
in the early two thousand's, and there was a local
radio studio there. It probably broadcast to maybe hundred homes,
and I started a little a little radio show called
Cooking with Gruel, right, so a play on the old porridge.
(04:50):
And I loved just talking and getting to know people
through the radio. And then was simultaneously there was a
new PBS show called The Endless East that had come out,
and they were trying to highlight and promote restaurants that
were serving a lot of local, sustainable fair This was
once again kind of way before the farm to table stuff.
(05:10):
So given the fact that I had a little bit,
a little bit a skeach of media experienced by virtue
of the radio show, they threw me into this episode
and I got to shoot uh this TV show with PBS,
and then from there it was the bite Um. I
really enjoyed it. And then that far laid into a
few more opportunities and then ultimately caught the eye of
(05:31):
Food Network back when I started my food truck in
two thousand eleven. So that's the the short history, if
you will. Nice and so now as a radio guy, Andrew,
I love that you did a radio I guess you've
still done some up until now, also on the radio.
But how difficult is it because cooking is such a
visual thing and and you know, you're talking about your
(05:54):
senses and you can't obviously radio. We have the audio,
that's all we have. So how difficult is it to
train in late what you do and talk about the
restaurants on the radio? Great question. Incredibly difficult. And it's
not as simple as just posting a photo up on
Instagram that says it all right. There's a way you
(06:14):
have to describe the fact that the sauces are dripping
down your arm, and you've got to use chewy words
quite literally to get people to salivate. And we got
into a lot of technique, right, But then that also
borders into this boring curse of knowledge where it's like, okay,
that's great, turn the oven to three fifty blah blah blah.
I mean you almost have to describe the oven, right,
(06:34):
You've got to bring the listener into the oven, which
could be quite dangerous. Frankly, Yeah, yeah, no, no, no,
for sure, yeah absolutely, And but I went done right.
I mean anything in radio, when it's done right, people
obviously want to want to hear, But it was this
always when you were a kid, like a little Andrew
growing up, Little Andrew grow did you always imagine you'd
be in the kitchen cooking professionally or you know, is
(06:58):
this something that came a little bit later? No, well,
great question, and to thie topics together. So I used
to skip school when I was in second, third, fourth grade.
I don't recall it all kind of merges together to
stay home and watch these old school cooking shows. That
was like this weird addiction of mine, yon Kin Cook,
Julia Child, Jacques po pen Um. There was some mingti right,
(07:22):
he had started some of his PBS shows. There was
no Food Network back then. It was just those old
school dump and stir cooking shows where you're watching somebody
trust a chicken and rub all of these herbs all
over it. That as a kid, you have absolutely no
idea what any of it it is, but it's it's
mollo fluous, it's beautiful, it looks delicious. Um. And then
(07:43):
I would sneak into the kitchen and try and do
some of this. My mom and dad were at work.
I was really a latchkey child, and you know, they'd
come home and there was granola and chocolate wall to
wall and burnt grilled cheese all over the place, and
I was still pretending to be sick. So that's how
it started, and I fell in love with those shows,
which still to me, Um, you know, that's that's where
it all started. It's it's I will watch any of
(08:05):
those dumping stir cooking shows nowadays over any of the
kind of crazy American Ninja Warrior meets Chopped meets uh,
you know, Real World road Rules on Food Network. Yeah, no, no,
total I I you know, I went around the same age.
I think I'm a little older than you, but I
watched Julia Child. I don't remember the other ones. I
remember watching Julia Child and she had one of the
(08:26):
great quotes which I think is just perfect for for
what you do and just cooking in generously. She said
everything can have drama if done right, even a pancake.
And uh, it's just to me, that's the perfect quote there.
But you're right, the difference between those PBS cooking shows
like Julia Child the other ones you mentioned there and
(08:47):
today you got like, as you said, Ninja's the cooking Ninja,
and uh, you know, is there any end? What is
the next layer? Andrew is someone that's done television and
worked in that business. There, how far can we push
the envelope? Yeah, you know, and we of course see
a lot of the same formats being cut cop you know, rinse, wash, repeat,
(09:10):
whatever you want to call it, cut, copy paste, you know,
there's always a little bit of a tweak, but these
formats work right, and television is obviously a business. So
if you can kind of fit these formats into a budget,
tweak one thing and do it. That's why I think
we start to see a lot of the same format
TV shows and then they just keep getting amplified episode
by episode or series by series by adding like yeah,
(09:32):
an obstacle course, or the floor is made of lava
and you've got to cook a tureen. Um. But what
I'm what I'm loving right now across the media landscape,
if you will, is this digital world where people are
producing their own content across platforms like YouTube and all
these you know, kind of new digital avenues, and it's
very very uh personal, right, So you don't have to
(09:56):
bring in a big budget and you don't have to
get all these producers to sign off on it because
a lot of what we saw in food TV it
was incredibly produced, and where it merges with this reality
TV format in so much as like we're all competing
for this hundred thousand dollar prize. You know, I judged
a lot of those shows, and I'm not trying to
reveal any secrets that we don't know about, but a
(10:18):
lot of them are produced. I'm not saying fake, but
produced takes away that spark, that charisma, that love, the magic.
So now we're seeing that in these digital formats where
it's just food, but it's done so in this like
really really really uh um, you know, high focus on
the actual ingredients and the sizzle in the pan and
(10:40):
the fire, the smoke, the flame, all those visceral things
that make us d rules. So that's so cool, and
I love I love the fact that that world has
really been blown up, especially through the pandemic when everyone's
been sitting at home watching a lot of it. Be
sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller Show
weekdays at two a m. Eastern eleven pm Pacific on
Fox Sports Radio. And I heard radio app Yeah, and
(11:02):
and what you're talking about of course, and you know
this from working. Uh, you know the front lines there
on TV is the rule of drama, right, you always
have to create some kind of uh artificial drama competition, UM,
make it, try to make it unpredictable. But as you said,
a lot of it is is preticularly. I remember one
time Andrew I was driving I lived in Hollywood and
(11:22):
I was driving to work and it's one of the
early modern reality shows, and they were filming this couple
walking across the street and apparently didn't get the right angle.
I'm at the red light, right, I'm I'm there, And
they had to go back and do it again so
they get the right angle. Then the whole time I'm
watching this, I'm like, wait a minute, that's supposed to
be just people walking on the street. But the but
(11:45):
but so be it. And uh And as far as
you know your your business, you're you known, we know
you because you've done the television stuff. But you have
a bunch of restaurants right in Orange County. From what
I was reading online, as I understand it, like you're
very hand on your You're not just a TV guy
that's just on the side, right, Your main gig is
running and operating and overseeing restaurants. Is that accur Yeah?
(12:10):
So I I uh, I went independent, if you will.
Back in two thousand eleven, I started a food truck
called slap Fish Fish so fresh and it will slap you.
And and it was, you know, through and all my
money leveraged everything out on credit cards, went from one
to four food trucks, and then we rolled that into
our first brick and mortar about ten months later. Uh.
(12:30):
And then from there it was just kind of my
wife and I growing this. Now we've got we've got
twenty seven slot Fish locations and then we've got a
few other concepts. H all based still out of out
of southern California, Orange County, but the slot Fish has grown.
We took a shotgun approach, so we've got franchise locations
actually throughout the United States, from Florida, Georgia, the DMV area, Indiana, Albuquerque.
(12:53):
I mean, we really just it's like you closed your
eyes and through darts at a board and okay, we'll
open a slot fish there. Andrew, Andrew, I need to
break up this bromance real quick between you and just
just one of these moments, I I gotta be, I
gotta be perfectly transparent with you too, Andrew on this
because I have I have watched, I have seen, and
(13:16):
I have enjoyed the food porn that you display on
Twitter thoroughly. And when I told Ben that I wanted
to have you on our podcast, it was like it
was like a knife in the side of him. And
the reason why is because Ben typically fasts Monday through Friday.
This is true, not the whole week. So the fact
(13:37):
that I am showing him content of yours while he's
fasting just makes it that much more special. Um, well,
he's my he's my target audience. Then people say to me,
They're like, do you eat all this? You're promoting obesity,
And I said, no, I am true food porn. I'm
here to provide the you know, the intangible, drew worthy
(14:01):
food that people can't eat so they'll look at it instead.
So if you look at it from that perspective, I mean,
we should be working together. Oh no, no, Andrew, let
me tell you, Like I I I usually I was
very obese and I lost a lot of weight and
to keep it off, I don't eat a lot during
the week, So that's my But I love food. I mean,
if it was up to me, I would eat all
of that. And I mean, I'm looking, uh, the thing
(14:21):
you had pinned to the top of your your Twitter
page there that pizza. My holy crap. I feel like
I can taste it just in the photo there that
you you have of of the pie. My god. So
that's my yeah. But David does bust my balls all
the time because he knows. Unfortunately, I made the mistake, Andrew,
of telling him like when I don't eat the days
I don't eat, and then he sends me those days,
(14:43):
will send me like a lot of your stuff photos
of food, and it just drives me nuts. I'll tone
it down. I've got some amazing glasses of water they
photographed really well. Well, I'm glad you brought that up
in terms of toning it down, because Andrew, I have
a personal and professional question for you, and this goes
(15:07):
along the lines of what you're doing right now and
what you you do on social media. So walk me
through this. If you were to buy let's just say,
a a Tomahawks steak and you call and you call
it quote the original protein bar, would you let that
original protein bar marinate for a day or two, or
(15:28):
a year or two, and I'll wait for your answer. Well,
so I don't marinate meat. Um. I always just use
salt on meat. I do a dry brine, especially red meat, um,
but but even lamb and chicken for that matter. I
usually if I do marinate, it's only for an hour
before and then I do what I call like a
post marinader a post glaze. So the key is the
(15:50):
salting of the meat. Right, you can do that for
twenty four hours, because what's happening is is that you're
drawing the moisture out of the meat, which is actually amplifying.
It's almost as if you're putting a dry age on
fast forward plus your tenderizing, because then the osmosis the
salt will go back into the meat. So you get
this really succulent and beef your flavor of meat out
(16:12):
of that particular cut. Now does that mean that you'll
ever add pepper or there spices when you apply salt
or do you wait until after after you've done cooking
it meat? Personally, I don't, only because I find that
it gets a little bit bitter as it cooks, and
I like that fruity flavor of pepper. I know you
don't necessarily think fruity in terms of peppercorns, but freshly
ground peppercorns are somewhat sweet um and and you know,
(16:36):
and bitter and and uh spicy to the palate. And
you get all those beautiful aromas and those natural oils
out of the peppercorn right when you crack it fresh
at the end on top of the meat, and then
it just marinates and mixes in as the meats, you know,
kind of just sitting there hot and steamy, those beautiful
beef juices in the carmelization of the meat on the
(16:56):
exterior with the peppercorn perfection. So that sounds great. And
I don't know if you can encourage my friend Ben
here over to do this, But I had bought him
a Tomahawks steak a few days ago. Actually I bought
him a Tomahawks steak a year and a half ago,
and it's still in his freezer. I Andrew, I tried, Man, No, No,
it's it's like a time machine, Andrew. Like it'll come
(17:18):
out and then I'll defrost it and then it'll be
pretty good, like the way I could you understand, Andrew,
Like when it comes to meat, I am my My
brother loves to eat meat like kind of raw where
it's kind of like blood coming out of it. But
I'm the opposite. So for me, I feel like I
have an opportunity here Andrew too. When I take it out,
(17:38):
it won't be bad for my my taste, is what
I'm saying. I like stuff well done, that's fine, and look,
freezing isn't a bad thing. And I recommend too, is
is that don't even let it bought, just go right
onto the deep frost button in the microwave and then
that way you're cooking it and deep frosting the time
I can multitest. See that's you guys stock No, No,
(18:00):
that's from a professional table. I think that's a professional. Okay,
how many restaurants you said? They're all over the country, right,
so how many do you you own? Per se or
your name is on about thirty? That's a ton of restaurants.
That's a massive amount of restaurants. Does that? Does that
blow your mind when you think about that, that you
(18:22):
started something that has thirty you know, thirty something locations,
that's crazy. I still spend most of my time in
the dishpit or online, so I don't even think I've
taken the opportunity to step outside of that arena and
an assess where where we're at. So I don't want
it to go to my head. Let's not talk about it, Okay,
we will. How about this though, Andrew, since you're not
(18:42):
from from California, but it sounds like you're well traveled.
What do you take from from other parts of this
country or maybe even internationally and try to infuse into
your into your restaurants, into your style of cooking. That's
a great question. And that's been the coolest thing about
growing through franchising the way that we have that it's
(19:03):
forced us into really getting into each one of these
markets like Salt Lake City, Utah, or Indianapolis or um,
you know, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to learn what types
of flavors and sauces and different kind of nuanced bite
they use in those markets and then introduce them into
our food. So if you use, for example, Albuquerque, right
hash green chilies, everything has to have green chilies on it,
(19:27):
especially the hash green chili which has grown there in
Hash New Mexico, which is just this incredibly through the
er spicy or green chili that's somewhat smoky I mean,
it's unbelievable. So on all of our dishes, we offer
these roasted green chilies. We do a chowder fry, so
the natural cut fries smothered with scratch made clam chowder,
double smoke bacon, and then we add that roasted green
(19:48):
chili on top, and it's just unbelievable. Um. So that's
the fun part about being in all these different markets.
Have you taken your acts let's just say, down to
like sec territory or to a call venue for for tailgating?
Oh god, I would absolutely love too. It seems like
that there's a demographic there that loves loves my Twitter
and I'm missing out on that community. We do have
(20:10):
a location in Pooler, Georgia, and one in Hilton Head,
which is you know, down in the South Carolina area,
and one one in Orlando right outside of UCF, and uh,
you know, we we we should definitely take all of
that on on the road itself. I think we're ready.
I think, well, it's one of those things that Ben
and I had talked about. Ben was flirting with the
(20:31):
idea of doing like cooking with Ben during this whole
pandemic and having his his wife videotape him and put
it on YouTube. Um, we produce a lot of stuff
on our own for gambling purposes. So I say, like,
we should combine these sports and the cooking, like the
expertise from one side of the aisle to the other
and uh and take this act on the road. Man,
I think that would be quite enjoyable for everybody involved.
(20:55):
Down And I'm actually not just down, I'm double down. Nice.
See you can wait. Wait, we can get like circus
animals and I think that's been banned. I think they
banned no animals anymore. But we can like a dog
and pony show. We could do that right traveling? Yeah, yeah,
you know there's gonna be somebody encouraging us to cook
one of the animals, so we probably shouldn't do that. Yeah, Andrew,
(21:18):
how do you cook an elephant? What's the proper way
to cooking? I can tell you how to eat it
at a time you Andrew, what is your favorite time
of the day. I guess in terms of eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. Like,
what if if you had to pick something to live
off of, what would it be. I love breakfast meals,
but I typically eat them at night. Uh. I just
(21:39):
I've never been able to become a huge breakfast guy
because I'm up and I'm going. I got four kids, right,
a lot of coffee, just move, move, move, trying to
get the kids conditioned to eat more breakfast. Uh. But
I'm also a sandwich guy, right, so you know, I'll
have a sandwich for breakfast or a sandwich for dinner.
So it almost feels like lunches every meal of the day. Nice. Well,
I know that that Ben gets these shots, especially over
(22:03):
the last eighteen months, about it, like stay in your lane.
I know what social media you're You're a firecracker, like
you have your profession what you tweet about, but you
also also have other things outside of that. In this
political warlike state that we're in right now, do people
ever attack you and say, hey, Chef Andrews, stay in
(22:23):
the kitchen. Oh that's all I get, right, so much
stick to food. You know, um, as if, as if,
as if I'm not allowed to have opinions. And you
know what's hilarious about that is my response is always
the same. I've got to I've got to pull up
social media every Sunday morning and read everybody's crappy food blogs, right,
and but but but I'm not allowed to say anything
(22:45):
and I'm not allowed to have an opinion outside of
my own profession. Come on, right, If that's the case,
then I don't want to see anybody trying to make
a product in on you know, Thanksgiving that ends up
shooting out of somebody's turkey prior onto the roof of
the neighboring house. Too much of that. But but but Andrew,
I mean, I credit you because you're you know, you
have a lot on the line, the thirty restaurants and
(23:07):
all that. I do a radio show, and I do
a sports show, right, which you think is like the
most benign thing. We talked about sports, But people get
so upset. The tribalism is insane. And and how have
you been able to to avoid the Obviously you take
some online flak on social media, but have you been
able to avoid a lot of stuff outside of that
(23:28):
realm Um? Well, I'm never able to avoid it. They've
come hard for me on many occasions, um, only to
be disappointed that what they were coming after me for
wasn't the truth. You see. And that's the problem nowadays,
is that that truth is so ambiguous and facts don't
necessarily matter. And I know that's a cliche, but I'll
use one example. Right, I was talking about the labor
(23:49):
issues that we're having in the industry, and my my
perspective on it wasn't that people weren't working because they
were lazy. My perspective was that people were scared to
come back to work in many situ nations, and or
they didn't have the proper childcare. I mean, that's something
we deal with, is a working you know, working parents
for kids, is that we don't have school for the kids, right,
(24:09):
so we either bring the kids with us everywhere, and
a lot of my team members had to make decisions, well,
I'm gonna stay home and watch the kids versus going
to work making the money but then paying someone to
watch the kids. And it's the net zero. And I
didn't even get to watch my kids, right, so they
take the unemployment benefits. Nothing wrong with that. So I
brought that up and I kind of was just laying
out my ideas and I got completely attacked by just
(24:32):
this whole wing of Twitter that I wasn't even aware existed.
I mean, death threats, um pay your employees more. We're
gonna we're gonna unionize you, this and that, and there
was some blue checks and some elites who said, yeah,
i'd love your you to open your books and show
me what you actually pay your employees. Live to see
you pay your employees of living ways, I said, good,
let's do it. Open the books. We're paying our entry
(24:53):
level workers an hour. I pay more than most businesses.
I don't take much for myself, right Like, it's oh,
that's been the reason I started the business. And they
looked at it and they were like, oh, wow, you
actually pay way above a living widge. Okay, you're not
the guy we need to target, but still we don't
like you, right Like. The point being is is that
I'm supporting the same people that are coming after me.
(25:15):
But nobody wants to hear that because perhaps the way
in which I said it or the commentator in which
I spoke with wasn't up their liking, so they attacked me.
It's such a crazy world. Um, And my wife gets
mad at me, She's like, why do you even fight
back on it? I'm like, I fight back because I'm
passionate and I actually agree with some of their message too.
They're just being jerks about it and we can all
(25:35):
kind of find a meeting ground in the middle nuts nuts, Yeah, no,
it is. I mean we I was. We talked about
this a lot when the political stuff that's been going
over the last couple of years. But when I was
growing up, and again you were around my age, my
my mom was a liberal, my dad conservative, and at dinner,
(25:55):
like whatever the issues that they were, they would duke
it out and then they know, hug it out afterwards.
But with with social media, it's like, no, you you're
only on one team. You cannot there's no way that
you can have a belief that is against that. If
you think the other way, you're some kind of lunatic.
Like I don't know when this happened, Andrew, and I
don't know how to get back from that. But we're
(26:15):
in a pretty dark place right now when it comes
to the political conversation and the any ideas on how
we can get back to what it used to be Like, yeah, well,
so what I always say is food is the great unifier, right,
And one thing that I've noticed with my social channels
is that I bring together people of so many different
opinions and look at the end of the day. Social
(26:36):
media also amplifies this division. It's so funny, Like I
posted a picture of a file at the other day,
and I said, I could just post a picture of
a file at and no matter what, it's going to
start an argument. The first comment was, first of all,
that's a speak, right, It's like it's it's it's no
matter what it is, but it's fun when it's food. Um. So,
(26:56):
I've always been talking about how if I can use
food as a mean by which I can bring people
together so that they realize, hey, you know, maybe we're
not so different, or we can at least break bread
literally and figuratively and disagree but still enjoy food together. Uh.
You know. And if there's a way that that platform
can parlay into some more formalized content, then I'll try
(27:18):
and do so. But as you know, selfishly, I'm promoting
that food is the great unifiers. True. What's what's the
ultimate goal with you having all these restaurants across across
the United States? Like, what's the next chapter for you?
Are you looking down the road at all? Are you
looking just right now with what's in front of you? Yeah,
it's short term for me. Um, you know, I'd love
(27:39):
to continue growing the restaurants, and I would love to
be able to continue to create really good jobs where
people can be respected and paid well. As I mentioned,
where food can be just simple and what it's meant
to be and not overly intellectualized. A great space, you know.
I call it the quality of fine dining at the
cost and convenience of faster food. In all of our restaurants,
we support a lot of fishermen and sustainable producers, so
(28:01):
we feel like this is a great means by which
we can kind of loop in so many different elements
of society and different communities. But for me, I also
want to create a nonprofit where we where we have
restaurants and food trucks that give people second opportunities through food, um,
whether they're ex cons or you know, juvenile delinquents who
didn't necessarily have a foundation upon which they could learn
(28:23):
the basic principles of you know, you know, treating thy
neighbor well or just you know, sense of urgency. Some
of these real simple principles that are lost and I
think that you can find them in the kitchen. And
that's been something that's been paramount to us as business owners. Anyway,
and the people that we've brought through our systems who
have then gone on to do amazing things and to
just kind of take that a step further, and hey,
(28:46):
if there's politics in there somewhere along the way, you know,
so be it not really get canceled. Where do you
where do you sit in this whole sports world? Like
do you ever take do you ever take these trucks
to two venues? Like whether big or small? We've like
being here in California. One element that we have is
obviously the professional teams, but we have a boatload of
(29:06):
minor league teams. So all these all these minor league
teams for baseball or basketball or hockey or basketball will have, um,
you know, they'll have like their little vendors that will
come in and out. They have their beer gardens, things
of that nature, and they usually have some pretty awesome
lines of food that are are rolled on out. Like
do you ever do that for for college? Professional anything
(29:27):
like that? We need to do more of it. We
used to have it when they reopened the Ram Stadium
and it was they were sorry at the Coliseum when
the Rams were playing there and USC we had a
container on the concourse slat fish. Um, and that was
really cool. We loved that. Uh And we've tried to
get involved in different ways. We just need to keep
kind of pushing that angle. Yeah. And one of the
(29:50):
more controversial positions Andrew, that you took on social media
was the anti pineapple on this one. You took a
lot of low back on that pineapple. Now, I I
can go, I don't usually get pineapple my pizza, full disclosure,
but I have a friend that loves pineapple on pizza. So,
as a professional in the restaurant industry, what do you
(30:12):
say to the pro pineapple contingent that are listening to this? Well?
Number one, UM, order your own individual pie, because when
you say give it and give it to me half pineapple,
all you're doing is just urinating pineapple all over the
entire pizza, which is uh so first and foremost. Um.
Then Then what I would also say is that the
(30:34):
pro pineapple crowd, you know, they just kind of need to,
uh you know, question some of the decisions as they
make in life. It's that simple. Well, you said, there's
a was it pineapple drip? What is that? So my
pizza joint called Big Palm, uh not to be confused
with big perm or I guess big farmer. Now I um,
(30:56):
I say no pineapple allowed. Now you can bring your
own pineapple you want. I don't want to, you know,
I don't want to be too much of a tyrant.
But the way in which I have tried to compromise
with the pro pineapple pizza crowds by creating a hot
sauce fermenting pineapples and adding chilies to it. And it's
called our pineapple drip. So you get that wonderful flavor
of pineapple and the and the spice from a chili. Uh,
(31:19):
just in the form of a hot sauce on your pizza.
So it's it's my olive branch to the other side. Nice.
Now I this the pizza. I'm looking at a bunch
of photos again, the pizza photos here. So where I'm
in Soca? We're in Soca. Where is this place? Look?
I gotta go eat. I gotta go there at some
point here. Where's your So that isn't tusted Tustin, California? Okay,
(31:43):
all right, Like, uh, that's not you know. I grew
up in Irvine, so I know that. Yeah right next
to Irvine. Yeah, yeah, you know where those big flight
buildings are over by the uh not by the spectrum,
but they're the old airplane hangars, Yes, the old the
old Tusting Marine base over there. Yeah, exactly exactly. So
they redeveloped an area in there, and they put in
(32:04):
a bunch of offices and then they put in a
food hall right in the center. It's called the Mets Hall.
And we've got the pizza joint in there. We've got
a slap fish in there as well. Nice all right, Yeah,
I know, I'm very familiar with that. In fact, when
I was a kid, we used to go on the
the open house at the marine base and we used
to why I was back in the old days. We
could walk through the tanks and stuff like the plant.
They didn't care because it was whatever. But yeah, that's awesome.
(32:27):
I know. It's a great area too. It's wonderful down there. Yeah, definitely, Yeah, Andrew,
I am looking at all this stuff, I got to
imagine that, you know, the the restaurant environments are obviously
all different. Food trucks obviously are assembled indoor outdoor, different
type of dynamic. But do you ever see yourself venturing
(32:47):
into like any of these four and five star hotels
that are in like let's say Vegas, Beverly Hills, New York. Like,
do you feel like there's a chance for you with
the food that you do present, that you could be
a like a disruptor if you will, like you take
away from all like the fine dining elements and give
people something a little bit different of a flavor, no
pun intended. I would absolutely love to. I mean, obviously,
(33:11):
you know there's a certain breed of chef that they're
looking at to bring in their very high class and
uh um speaks properly. I don't do that, but maybe
maybe one day they'll downgrade and bring me in nice.
And as far as just with the COVID stuff, which
is still still bouncing around here a lot come back.
(33:32):
You see it on the news all the time. So
as a restaurant tour like, what is what's the future
of the restaurant business? I mean, you know, this COVID
things will be around for a while and with certain
parts of the country a lot of restrictions and whatnot.
What's the future of restaurant design? Your your your thirty
restaurants you said there, you know, how how are you
(33:53):
going to handle this? Going forwardhen you open new restaurants,
is this a factor Do you just say eventually we'll
get back to normal. Yeah, pick up and delivery is huge.
I think that that whole system, the delivery system, needs
to change within the restaurant industry. And it is of course,
the third party delivery apps right now take so much
off the check it's just not feasible or financially sustainable
(34:16):
for most of these restaurants to use um. But I
think that overall, look that two things have happened. One,
you've seen a lot of restaurants that didn't make it
through the first part of the pandemic that have been
lost and forgotten about. Now that left a ton of
real estate for people to come in and swoop up
for pennies on the dollar, and that happened immediately right
And now those restaurants are facing failure because so many
(34:38):
people get in thinking oh, it's so cheap, not recognizing
they're also signing onto the lease and that the financial
barriers are always going to be there. So you saw
restaurants go under not open back up. Now you saw
other independents go in and take their spaces, or you
saw a lot of these large multi unit chains come
in and take the spaces and now they're redesigning and
redeveloping them. I haven't seen it, and this is more anecdotal,
(35:01):
but I what I what I've heard through a lot
of larger franchisees is you're seeing massive franchise growth in
the sense of these bigger you know, your Applebees of
the world that are taking out a lot of these spaces.
So I think we're gonna see a bit of a
customization or or lack thereof, and more of a commercialization
of restaurants across the landscape. But these ghost kitchens, right,
(35:23):
that's going to be the future too, are these offsite
virtual concepts that we're ordering off of our apps. Businesses
are learning that I don't need to go into a
three thousand square foot space and pay all this overhead
and all these entry fees when I can just take
a little commercial space rented, develop a couple of concepts,
have two cooks, and then have a delivery driver come
(35:45):
pick it up. Um with no dining room. Right, that's
going to be huge, especially in cities. Now the question
becomes who delivers it and what company is ultimately trying
and aggregate all of that revenue right now. The door
dashes of the world are trying to do so, but
I think there's major opportunity for small players to come
in and disrupt that space. So, uh, those are a
few opinions about where it's going. But we can only
(36:07):
hope that we don't see the lockdowns and the shutdowns
that we saw in the beginning of the pandemic, because
if you look at the data, what you'll see is
that it wasn't the restaurants in the retail that we're
perpetuating the spread. We were inherently trained to create safe
and sanitary environments that could take on a lot of
this these regulations and manage them properly and model the
(36:29):
right types of behavior through the pandemic. So we could
kind of have the best of both worlds, right safety
consideration for others, while simultaneously also allowing our economy to
do what it does best. Um, so hopefully that's the
approach if there are going to be subsequent shutdowns. Yeah, absolutely, Andrew.
Thanking you very informative, big fan, and I am gonna
know that pizza place your big part in tested. I
(36:51):
will get there at some point, So thank you, Andrew.
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's an honor.
I appreciate it. Be sure to catch live editions of
The Ben Maller Show weekly sit two am Eastern eleven
pm Pacific, on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart
Radio app
If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He treats
crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
pill poppers in the penthouse, to clearinghouse of hot takes,
break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
(00:24):
Maller starts right now that it does in the air
everywheres we loviate the weekend away, even on a Friday
Friday Friday, as we kick off the weekend festivities here
because four hours a night are not enough. Eight days
a week, eight days a week. Broadcasting live and in
(00:45):
stereo were available from the newly Voice My Voice, Sound
Good Mallard podcast studio Deep in the north Woods. Deep
in the north Woods. Of course, the Fifth Hour a
spinoff of the Overnight Show. And since I was away
from my host quite a bit this week because of
some moving, we'll have more on that on the Saturday podcast.
(01:06):
We have to make up for it on the weekend
here with the Fifth Hour. The show must go on,
as we like to say in the air, everywhere. The
vast power of podcasting, and you've obviously found the show.
We thank you for that. Man, that's cool that you've
downloaded it and remember sharing his caring. So if you
like the podcast and you know somebody that might like
(01:27):
it or hate it, for that matter, as long as
they listen, we get credit. That's all we care about,
just to direct them to the podcast. We are joined
again another weekend in a row. Here I was, there's
a two or three in a row now David Gascott
making gallon vancing across the wide open state of California,
(01:52):
at least for a short period of time. But I
have found my way home into the studio and uh,
and here I am. So we'll get more into it
in future podcast. But people said, well, when you're going
back to the studio, what's going on? And well, you know,
l a man, they keep shutting stuff down. I don't
have to worry about that. I I'm good on that.
I think this will be going on for years. I
don't have to worry about about going back in at
(02:16):
all at all. So uh, anyway, listen, this is not
about us. We'll get into all that stuff in future podcast.
But I'm excited, you know. I I like to dabble
in the kitchen as you know, I guess, and I
send you pictures of my creations with a few days
I eat occasionally when we eat, and I will send
you my mallard pie that I make rather painful to
look at. I don't know if you want to call
(02:37):
it dabble, you know, like dabble means like it's a
little tapped dressing. Listen. I have I have ripped off
many YouTube recipes, you know, mimicking other things. But I
I do like to cook, and my wife actually has
helped me. I when I was a bachelor. I got
married almost ten years ago, and before then I knew nothing.
(03:00):
My idea of cooking was a hungry man one pound,
one pound dinner, a TV dinner. I was very good
at making that. I could make the frozen pizza. I
knew that I could even heat up some frozen French
fries in the like you know, on the oven whatever.
I knew how to do that, but that was about it.
That was the extent of my cooking. So I'm very
very proud of myself, humble bragg, but I'm not anywhere
(03:21):
near the level of a professional professional chef. And we
have one eight and the guy's on TV as well, Uh,
he's owns a bunch of restaurants, a pizza restaurant, a
very popular seafood restaurant, and you've seen him on the
Food Network. He's been a judge on a number of
these cooking shows over the last almost a decade. I
(03:42):
guess he's been on. So I'm excited. So we should
without further Adoe, David, let's give it up now for
the chef. And his name is Andrew Gruel and he
joins us now in the fifth hour with Ben Maller
and David gascoont and Andrew, we welcome you in. And
so I guess we'll start with this. Was this always
(04:03):
your plan to to be a television cheffer? Is this
something that you stumbled into? Stumbled into it like I
do it with everything else in my life. So how
did how did it happen? I mean you were obviously
you're you're professional, You're doing it. And did did somebody
contact you? Did you? Did you end up in the
wrong place or the right place at the right time?
How did it happen? Uh? You know, I've always been
(04:25):
pretty outspoken about what I do and how I do it.
And I had opened a restaurant out in New Hampshire, Gosh,
in the early two thousand's, and there was a local
radio studio there. It probably broadcast to maybe hundred homes,
and I started a little a little radio show called
Cooking with Gruel, right, so a play on the old porridge.
(04:50):
And I loved just talking and getting to know people
through the radio. And then was simultaneously there was a
new PBS show called The Endless East that had come out,
and they were trying to highlight and promote restaurants that
were serving a lot of local, sustainable fair This was
once again kind of way before the farm to table stuff.
(05:10):
So given the fact that I had a little bit,
a little bit a skeach of media experienced by virtue
of the radio show, they threw me into this episode
and I got to shoot uh this TV show with PBS,
and then from there it was the bite Um. I
really enjoyed it. And then that far laid into a
few more opportunities and then ultimately caught the eye of
(05:31):
Food Network back when I started my food truck in
two thousand eleven. So that's the the short history, if
you will. Nice and so now as a radio guy, Andrew,
I love that you did a radio I guess you've
still done some up until now, also on the radio.
But how difficult is it because cooking is such a
visual thing and and you know, you're talking about your
(05:54):
senses and you can't obviously radio. We have the audio,
that's all we have. So how difficult is it to
train in late what you do and talk about the
restaurants on the radio? Great question. Incredibly difficult. And it's
not as simple as just posting a photo up on
Instagram that says it all right. There's a way you
(06:14):
have to describe the fact that the sauces are dripping
down your arm, and you've got to use chewy words
quite literally to get people to salivate. And we got
into a lot of technique, right, But then that also
borders into this boring curse of knowledge where it's like, okay,
that's great, turn the oven to three fifty blah blah blah.
I mean you almost have to describe the oven, right,
(06:34):
You've got to bring the listener into the oven, which
could be quite dangerous. Frankly, Yeah, yeah, no, no, no,
for sure, yeah absolutely, And but I went done right.
I mean anything in radio, when it's done right, people
obviously want to want to hear, But it was this
always when you were a kid, like a little Andrew
growing up, Little Andrew grow did you always imagine you'd
be in the kitchen cooking professionally or you know, is
(06:58):
this something that came a little bit later? No, well,
great question, and to thie topics together. So I used
to skip school when I was in second, third, fourth grade.
I don't recall it all kind of merges together to
stay home and watch these old school cooking shows. That
was like this weird addiction of mine, yon Kin Cook,
Julia Child, Jacques po pen Um. There was some mingti right,
(07:22):
he had started some of his PBS shows. There was
no Food Network back then. It was just those old
school dump and stir cooking shows where you're watching somebody
trust a chicken and rub all of these herbs all
over it. That as a kid, you have absolutely no
idea what any of it it is, but it's it's
mollo fluous, it's beautiful, it looks delicious. Um. And then
(07:43):
I would sneak into the kitchen and try and do
some of this. My mom and dad were at work.
I was really a latchkey child, and you know, they'd
come home and there was granola and chocolate wall to
wall and burnt grilled cheese all over the place, and
I was still pretending to be sick. So that's how
it started, and I fell in love with those shows,
which still to me, Um, you know, that's that's where
it all started. It's it's I will watch any of
(08:05):
those dumping stir cooking shows nowadays over any of the
kind of crazy American Ninja Warrior meets Chopped meets uh,
you know, Real World road Rules on Food Network. Yeah, no, no,
total I I you know, I went around the same age.
I think I'm a little older than you, but I
watched Julia Child. I don't remember the other ones. I
remember watching Julia Child and she had one of the
(08:26):
great quotes which I think is just perfect for for
what you do and just cooking in generously. She said
everything can have drama if done right, even a pancake.
And uh, it's just to me, that's the perfect quote there.
But you're right, the difference between those PBS cooking shows
like Julia Child the other ones you mentioned there and
(08:47):
today you got like, as you said, Ninja's the cooking Ninja,
and uh, you know, is there any end? What is
the next layer? Andrew is someone that's done television and
worked in that business. There, how far can we push
the envelope? Yeah, you know, and we of course see
a lot of the same formats being cut cop you know, rinse, wash, repeat,
(09:10):
whatever you want to call it, cut, copy paste, you know,
there's always a little bit of a tweak, but these
formats work right, and television is obviously a business. So
if you can kind of fit these formats into a budget,
tweak one thing and do it. That's why I think
we start to see a lot of the same format
TV shows and then they just keep getting amplified episode
by episode or series by series by adding like yeah,
(09:32):
an obstacle course, or the floor is made of lava
and you've got to cook a tureen. Um. But what
I'm what I'm loving right now across the media landscape,
if you will, is this digital world where people are
producing their own content across platforms like YouTube and all
these you know, kind of new digital avenues, and it's
very very uh personal, right, So you don't have to
(09:56):
bring in a big budget and you don't have to
get all these producers to sign off on it because
a lot of what we saw in food TV it
was incredibly produced, and where it merges with this reality
TV format in so much as like we're all competing
for this hundred thousand dollar prize. You know, I judged
a lot of those shows, and I'm not trying to
reveal any secrets that we don't know about, but a
(10:18):
lot of them are produced. I'm not saying fake, but
produced takes away that spark, that charisma, that love, the magic.
So now we're seeing that in these digital formats where
it's just food, but it's done so in this like
really really really uh um, you know, high focus on
the actual ingredients and the sizzle in the pan and
(10:40):
the fire, the smoke, the flame, all those visceral things
that make us d rules. So that's so cool, and
I love I love the fact that that world has
really been blown up, especially through the pandemic when everyone's
been sitting at home watching a lot of it. Be
sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller Show
weekdays at two a m. Eastern eleven pm Pacific on
Fox Sports Radio. And I heard radio app Yeah, and
(11:02):
and what you're talking about of course, and you know
this from working. Uh, you know the front lines there
on TV is the rule of drama, right, you always
have to create some kind of uh artificial drama competition, UM,
make it, try to make it unpredictable. But as you said,
a lot of it is is preticularly. I remember one
time Andrew I was driving I lived in Hollywood and
(11:22):
I was driving to work and it's one of the
early modern reality shows, and they were filming this couple
walking across the street and apparently didn't get the right angle.
I'm at the red light, right, I'm I'm there, And
they had to go back and do it again so
they get the right angle. Then the whole time I'm
watching this, I'm like, wait a minute, that's supposed to
be just people walking on the street. But the but
(11:45):
but so be it. And uh And as far as
you know your your business, you're you known, we know
you because you've done the television stuff. But you have
a bunch of restaurants right in Orange County. From what
I was reading online, as I understand it, like you're
very hand on your You're not just a TV guy
that's just on the side, right, Your main gig is
running and operating and overseeing restaurants. Is that accur Yeah?
(12:10):
So I I uh, I went independent, if you will.
Back in two thousand eleven, I started a food truck
called slap Fish Fish so fresh and it will slap you.
And and it was, you know, through and all my
money leveraged everything out on credit cards, went from one
to four food trucks, and then we rolled that into
our first brick and mortar about ten months later. Uh.
(12:30):
And then from there it was just kind of my
wife and I growing this. Now we've got we've got
twenty seven slot Fish locations and then we've got a
few other concepts. H all based still out of out
of southern California, Orange County, but the slot Fish has grown.
We took a shotgun approach, so we've got franchise locations
actually throughout the United States, from Florida, Georgia, the DMV area, Indiana, Albuquerque.
(12:53):
I mean, we really just it's like you closed your
eyes and through darts at a board and okay, we'll
open a slot fish there. Andrew, Andrew, I need to
break up this bromance real quick between you and just
just one of these moments, I I gotta be, I
gotta be perfectly transparent with you too, Andrew on this
because I have I have watched, I have seen, and
(13:16):
I have enjoyed the food porn that you display on
Twitter thoroughly. And when I told Ben that I wanted
to have you on our podcast, it was like it
was like a knife in the side of him. And
the reason why is because Ben typically fasts Monday through Friday.
This is true, not the whole week. So the fact
(13:37):
that I am showing him content of yours while he's
fasting just makes it that much more special. Um, well,
he's my he's my target audience. Then people say to me,
They're like, do you eat all this? You're promoting obesity,
And I said, no, I am true food porn. I'm
here to provide the you know, the intangible, drew worthy
(14:01):
food that people can't eat so they'll look at it instead.
So if you look at it from that perspective, I mean,
we should be working together. Oh no, no, Andrew, let
me tell you, Like I I I usually I was
very obese and I lost a lot of weight and
to keep it off, I don't eat a lot during
the week, So that's my But I love food. I mean,
if it was up to me, I would eat all
of that. And I mean, I'm looking, uh, the thing
(14:21):
you had pinned to the top of your your Twitter
page there that pizza. My holy crap. I feel like
I can taste it just in the photo there that
you you have of of the pie. My god. So
that's my yeah. But David does bust my balls all
the time because he knows. Unfortunately, I made the mistake, Andrew,
of telling him like when I don't eat the days
I don't eat, and then he sends me those days,
(14:43):
will send me like a lot of your stuff photos
of food, and it just drives me nuts. I'll tone
it down. I've got some amazing glasses of water they
photographed really well. Well, I'm glad you brought that up
in terms of toning it down, because Andrew, I have
a personal and professional question for you, and this goes
(15:07):
along the lines of what you're doing right now and
what you you do on social media. So walk me
through this. If you were to buy let's just say,
a a Tomahawks steak and you call and you call
it quote the original protein bar, would you let that
original protein bar marinate for a day or two, or
(15:28):
a year or two, and I'll wait for your answer. Well,
so I don't marinate meat. Um. I always just use
salt on meat. I do a dry brine, especially red meat, um,
but but even lamb and chicken for that matter. I
usually if I do marinate, it's only for an hour
before and then I do what I call like a
post marinader a post glaze. So the key is the
(15:50):
salting of the meat. Right, you can do that for
twenty four hours, because what's happening is is that you're
drawing the moisture out of the meat, which is actually amplifying.
It's almost as if you're putting a dry age on
fast forward plus your tenderizing, because then the osmosis the
salt will go back into the meat. So you get
this really succulent and beef your flavor of meat out
(16:12):
of that particular cut. Now does that mean that you'll
ever add pepper or there spices when you apply salt
or do you wait until after after you've done cooking
it meat? Personally, I don't, only because I find that
it gets a little bit bitter as it cooks, and
I like that fruity flavor of pepper. I know you
don't necessarily think fruity in terms of peppercorns, but freshly
ground peppercorns are somewhat sweet um and and you know,
(16:36):
and bitter and and uh spicy to the palate. And
you get all those beautiful aromas and those natural oils
out of the peppercorn right when you crack it fresh
at the end on top of the meat, and then
it just marinates and mixes in as the meats, you know,
kind of just sitting there hot and steamy, those beautiful
beef juices in the carmelization of the meat on the
(16:56):
exterior with the peppercorn perfection. So that sounds great. And
I don't know if you can encourage my friend Ben
here over to do this, But I had bought him
a Tomahawks steak a few days ago. Actually I bought
him a Tomahawks steak a year and a half ago,
and it's still in his freezer. I Andrew, I tried, Man, No, No,
it's it's like a time machine, Andrew. Like it'll come
(17:18):
out and then I'll defrost it and then it'll be
pretty good, like the way I could you understand, Andrew,
Like when it comes to meat, I am my My
brother loves to eat meat like kind of raw where
it's kind of like blood coming out of it. But
I'm the opposite. So for me, I feel like I
have an opportunity here Andrew too. When I take it out,
(17:38):
it won't be bad for my my taste, is what
I'm saying. I like stuff well done, that's fine, and look,
freezing isn't a bad thing. And I recommend too, is
is that don't even let it bought, just go right
onto the deep frost button in the microwave and then
that way you're cooking it and deep frosting the time
I can multitest. See that's you guys stock No, No,
(18:00):
that's from a professional table. I think that's a professional. Okay,
how many restaurants you said? They're all over the country, right,
so how many do you you own? Per se or
your name is on about thirty? That's a ton of restaurants.
That's a massive amount of restaurants. Does that? Does that
blow your mind when you think about that, that you
(18:22):
started something that has thirty you know, thirty something locations,
that's crazy. I still spend most of my time in
the dishpit or online, so I don't even think I've
taken the opportunity to step outside of that arena and
an assess where where we're at. So I don't want
it to go to my head. Let's not talk about it, Okay,
we will. How about this though, Andrew, since you're not
(18:42):
from from California, but it sounds like you're well traveled.
What do you take from from other parts of this
country or maybe even internationally and try to infuse into
your into your restaurants, into your style of cooking. That's
a great question. And that's been the coolest thing about
growing through franchising the way that we have that it's
(19:03):
forced us into really getting into each one of these
markets like Salt Lake City, Utah, or Indianapolis or um,
you know, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to learn what types
of flavors and sauces and different kind of nuanced bite
they use in those markets and then introduce them into
our food. So if you use, for example, Albuquerque, right
hash green chilies, everything has to have green chilies on it,
(19:27):
especially the hash green chili which has grown there in
Hash New Mexico, which is just this incredibly through the
er spicy or green chili that's somewhat smoky I mean,
it's unbelievable. So on all of our dishes, we offer
these roasted green chilies. We do a chowder fry, so
the natural cut fries smothered with scratch made clam chowder,
double smoke bacon, and then we add that roasted green
(19:48):
chili on top, and it's just unbelievable. Um. So that's
the fun part about being in all these different markets.
Have you taken your acts let's just say, down to
like sec territory or to a call venue for for tailgating?
Oh god, I would absolutely love too. It seems like
that there's a demographic there that loves loves my Twitter
and I'm missing out on that community. We do have
(20:10):
a location in Pooler, Georgia, and one in Hilton Head,
which is you know, down in the South Carolina area,
and one one in Orlando right outside of UCF, and uh,
you know, we we we should definitely take all of
that on on the road itself. I think we're ready.
I think, well, it's one of those things that Ben
and I had talked about. Ben was flirting with the
(20:31):
idea of doing like cooking with Ben during this whole
pandemic and having his his wife videotape him and put
it on YouTube. Um, we produce a lot of stuff
on our own for gambling purposes. So I say, like,
we should combine these sports and the cooking, like the
expertise from one side of the aisle to the other
and uh and take this act on the road. Man,
I think that would be quite enjoyable for everybody involved.
(20:55):
Down And I'm actually not just down, I'm double down. Nice.
See you can wait. Wait, we can get like circus
animals and I think that's been banned. I think they
banned no animals anymore. But we can like a dog
and pony show. We could do that right traveling? Yeah, yeah,
you know there's gonna be somebody encouraging us to cook
one of the animals, so we probably shouldn't do that. Yeah, Andrew,
(21:18):
how do you cook an elephant? What's the proper way
to cooking? I can tell you how to eat it
at a time you Andrew, what is your favorite time
of the day. I guess in terms of eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. Like,
what if if you had to pick something to live
off of, what would it be. I love breakfast meals,
but I typically eat them at night. Uh. I just
(21:39):
I've never been able to become a huge breakfast guy
because I'm up and I'm going. I got four kids, right,
a lot of coffee, just move, move, move, trying to
get the kids conditioned to eat more breakfast. Uh. But
I'm also a sandwich guy, right, so you know, I'll
have a sandwich for breakfast or a sandwich for dinner.
So it almost feels like lunches every meal of the day. Nice. Well,
I know that that Ben gets these shots, especially over
(22:03):
the last eighteen months, about it, like stay in your lane.
I know what social media you're You're a firecracker, like
you have your profession what you tweet about, but you
also also have other things outside of that. In this
political warlike state that we're in right now, do people
ever attack you and say, hey, Chef Andrews, stay in
(22:23):
the kitchen. Oh that's all I get, right, so much
stick to food. You know, um, as if, as if,
as if I'm not allowed to have opinions. And you
know what's hilarious about that is my response is always
the same. I've got to I've got to pull up
social media every Sunday morning and read everybody's crappy food blogs, right,
and but but but I'm not allowed to say anything
(22:45):
and I'm not allowed to have an opinion outside of
my own profession. Come on, right, If that's the case,
then I don't want to see anybody trying to make
a product in on you know, Thanksgiving that ends up
shooting out of somebody's turkey prior onto the roof of
the neighboring house. Too much of that. But but but Andrew,
I mean, I credit you because you're you know, you
have a lot on the line, the thirty restaurants and
(23:07):
all that. I do a radio show, and I do
a sports show, right, which you think is like the
most benign thing. We talked about sports, But people get
so upset. The tribalism is insane. And and how have
you been able to to avoid the Obviously you take
some online flak on social media, but have you been
able to avoid a lot of stuff outside of that
(23:28):
realm Um? Well, I'm never able to avoid it. They've
come hard for me on many occasions, um, only to
be disappointed that what they were coming after me for
wasn't the truth. You see. And that's the problem nowadays,
is that that truth is so ambiguous and facts don't
necessarily matter. And I know that's a cliche, but I'll
use one example. Right, I was talking about the labor
(23:49):
issues that we're having in the industry, and my my
perspective on it wasn't that people weren't working because they
were lazy. My perspective was that people were scared to
come back to work in many situ nations, and or
they didn't have the proper childcare. I mean, that's something
we deal with, is a working you know, working parents
for kids, is that we don't have school for the kids, right,
(24:09):
so we either bring the kids with us everywhere, and
a lot of my team members had to make decisions, well,
I'm gonna stay home and watch the kids versus going
to work making the money but then paying someone to
watch the kids. And it's the net zero. And I
didn't even get to watch my kids, right, so they
take the unemployment benefits. Nothing wrong with that. So I
brought that up and I kind of was just laying
out my ideas and I got completely attacked by just
(24:32):
this whole wing of Twitter that I wasn't even aware existed.
I mean, death threats, um pay your employees more. We're
gonna we're gonna unionize you, this and that, and there
was some blue checks and some elites who said, yeah,
i'd love your you to open your books and show
me what you actually pay your employees. Live to see
you pay your employees of living ways, I said, good,
let's do it. Open the books. We're paying our entry
(24:53):
level workers an hour. I pay more than most businesses.
I don't take much for myself, right Like, it's oh,
that's been the reason I started the business. And they
looked at it and they were like, oh, wow, you
actually pay way above a living widge. Okay, you're not
the guy we need to target, but still we don't
like you, right Like. The point being is is that
I'm supporting the same people that are coming after me.
(25:15):
But nobody wants to hear that because perhaps the way
in which I said it or the commentator in which
I spoke with wasn't up their liking, so they attacked me.
It's such a crazy world. Um, And my wife gets
mad at me, She's like, why do you even fight
back on it? I'm like, I fight back because I'm
passionate and I actually agree with some of their message too.
They're just being jerks about it and we can all
(25:35):
kind of find a meeting ground in the middle nuts nuts, Yeah, no,
it is. I mean we I was. We talked about
this a lot when the political stuff that's been going
over the last couple of years. But when I was
growing up, and again you were around my age, my
my mom was a liberal, my dad conservative, and at dinner,
(25:55):
like whatever the issues that they were, they would duke
it out and then they know, hug it out afterwards.
But with with social media, it's like, no, you you're
only on one team. You cannot there's no way that
you can have a belief that is against that. If
you think the other way, you're some kind of lunatic.
Like I don't know when this happened, Andrew, and I
don't know how to get back from that. But we're
(26:15):
in a pretty dark place right now when it comes
to the political conversation and the any ideas on how
we can get back to what it used to be Like, yeah, well,
so what I always say is food is the great unifier, right,
And one thing that I've noticed with my social channels
is that I bring together people of so many different
opinions and look at the end of the day. Social
(26:36):
media also amplifies this division. It's so funny, Like I
posted a picture of a file at the other day,
and I said, I could just post a picture of
a file at and no matter what, it's going to
start an argument. The first comment was, first of all,
that's a speak, right, It's like it's it's it's no
matter what it is, but it's fun when it's food. Um. So,
(26:56):
I've always been talking about how if I can use
food as a mean by which I can bring people
together so that they realize, hey, you know, maybe we're
not so different, or we can at least break bread
literally and figuratively and disagree but still enjoy food together. Uh.
You know. And if there's a way that that platform
can parlay into some more formalized content, then I'll try
(27:18):
and do so. But as you know, selfishly, I'm promoting
that food is the great unifiers. True. What's what's the
ultimate goal with you having all these restaurants across across
the United States? Like, what's the next chapter for you?
Are you looking down the road at all? Are you
looking just right now with what's in front of you? Yeah,
it's short term for me. Um, you know, I'd love
(27:39):
to continue growing the restaurants, and I would love to
be able to continue to create really good jobs where
people can be respected and paid well. As I mentioned,
where food can be just simple and what it's meant
to be and not overly intellectualized. A great space, you know.
I call it the quality of fine dining at the
cost and convenience of faster food. In all of our restaurants,
we support a lot of fishermen and sustainable producers, so
(28:01):
we feel like this is a great means by which
we can kind of loop in so many different elements
of society and different communities. But for me, I also
want to create a nonprofit where we where we have
restaurants and food trucks that give people second opportunities through food, um,
whether they're ex cons or you know, juvenile delinquents who
didn't necessarily have a foundation upon which they could learn
(28:23):
the basic principles of you know, you know, treating thy
neighbor well or just you know, sense of urgency. Some
of these real simple principles that are lost and I
think that you can find them in the kitchen. And
that's been something that's been paramount to us as business owners. Anyway,
and the people that we've brought through our systems who
have then gone on to do amazing things and to
just kind of take that a step further, and hey,
(28:46):
if there's politics in there somewhere along the way, you know,
so be it not really get canceled. Where do you
where do you sit in this whole sports world? Like
do you ever take do you ever take these trucks
to two venues? Like whether big or small? We've like
being here in California. One element that we have is
obviously the professional teams, but we have a boatload of
(29:06):
minor league teams. So all these all these minor league
teams for baseball or basketball or hockey or basketball will have, um,
you know, they'll have like their little vendors that will
come in and out. They have their beer gardens, things
of that nature, and they usually have some pretty awesome
lines of food that are are rolled on out. Like
do you ever do that for for college? Professional anything
(29:27):
like that? We need to do more of it. We
used to have it when they reopened the Ram Stadium
and it was they were sorry at the Coliseum when
the Rams were playing there and USC we had a
container on the concourse slat fish. Um, and that was
really cool. We loved that. Uh And we've tried to
get involved in different ways. We just need to keep
kind of pushing that angle. Yeah. And one of the
(29:50):
more controversial positions Andrew, that you took on social media
was the anti pineapple on this one. You took a
lot of low back on that pineapple. Now, I I
can go, I don't usually get pineapple my pizza, full disclosure,
but I have a friend that loves pineapple on pizza. So,
as a professional in the restaurant industry, what do you
(30:12):
say to the pro pineapple contingent that are listening to this? Well?
Number one, UM, order your own individual pie, because when
you say give it and give it to me half pineapple,
all you're doing is just urinating pineapple all over the
entire pizza, which is uh so first and foremost. Um.
Then Then what I would also say is that the
(30:34):
pro pineapple crowd, you know, they just kind of need to,
uh you know, question some of the decisions as they
make in life. It's that simple. Well, you said, there's
a was it pineapple drip? What is that? So my
pizza joint called Big Palm, uh not to be confused
with big perm or I guess big farmer. Now I um,
(30:56):
I say no pineapple allowed. Now you can bring your
own pineapple you want. I don't want to, you know,
I don't want to be too much of a tyrant.
But the way in which I have tried to compromise
with the pro pineapple pizza crowds by creating a hot
sauce fermenting pineapples and adding chilies to it. And it's
called our pineapple drip. So you get that wonderful flavor
of pineapple and the and the spice from a chili. Uh,
(31:19):
just in the form of a hot sauce on your pizza.
So it's it's my olive branch to the other side. Nice.
Now I this the pizza. I'm looking at a bunch
of photos again, the pizza photos here. So where I'm
in Soca? We're in Soca. Where is this place? Look?
I gotta go eat. I gotta go there at some
point here. Where's your So that isn't tusted Tustin, California? Okay,
(31:43):
all right, Like, uh, that's not you know. I grew
up in Irvine, so I know that. Yeah right next
to Irvine. Yeah, yeah, you know where those big flight
buildings are over by the uh not by the spectrum,
but they're the old airplane hangars, Yes, the old the
old Tusting Marine base over there. Yeah, exactly exactly. So
they redeveloped an area in there, and they put in
(32:04):
a bunch of offices and then they put in a
food hall right in the center. It's called the Mets Hall.
And we've got the pizza joint in there. We've got
a slap fish in there as well. Nice all right, Yeah,
I know, I'm very familiar with that. In fact, when
I was a kid, we used to go on the
the open house at the marine base and we used
to why I was back in the old days. We
could walk through the tanks and stuff like the plant.
They didn't care because it was whatever. But yeah, that's awesome.
(32:27):
I know. It's a great area too. It's wonderful down there. Yeah, definitely, Yeah, Andrew,
I am looking at all this stuff, I got to
imagine that, you know, the the restaurant environments are obviously
all different. Food trucks obviously are assembled indoor outdoor, different
type of dynamic. But do you ever see yourself venturing
(32:47):
into like any of these four and five star hotels
that are in like let's say Vegas, Beverly Hills, New York. Like,
do you feel like there's a chance for you with
the food that you do present, that you could be
a like a disruptor if you will, like you take
away from all like the fine dining elements and give
people something a little bit different of a flavor, no
pun intended. I would absolutely love to. I mean, obviously,
(33:11):
you know there's a certain breed of chef that they're
looking at to bring in their very high class and
uh um speaks properly. I don't do that, but maybe
maybe one day they'll downgrade and bring me in nice.
And as far as just with the COVID stuff, which
is still still bouncing around here a lot come back.
(33:32):
You see it on the news all the time. So
as a restaurant tour like, what is what's the future
of the restaurant business? I mean, you know, this COVID
things will be around for a while and with certain
parts of the country a lot of restrictions and whatnot.
What's the future of restaurant design? Your your your thirty
restaurants you said there, you know, how how are you
(33:53):
going to handle this? Going forwardhen you open new restaurants,
is this a factor Do you just say eventually we'll
get back to normal. Yeah, pick up and delivery is huge.
I think that that whole system, the delivery system, needs
to change within the restaurant industry. And it is of course,
the third party delivery apps right now take so much
off the check it's just not feasible or financially sustainable
(34:16):
for most of these restaurants to use um. But I
think that overall, look that two things have happened. One,
you've seen a lot of restaurants that didn't make it
through the first part of the pandemic that have been
lost and forgotten about. Now that left a ton of
real estate for people to come in and swoop up
for pennies on the dollar, and that happened immediately right
And now those restaurants are facing failure because so many
(34:38):
people get in thinking oh, it's so cheap, not recognizing
they're also signing onto the lease and that the financial
barriers are always going to be there. So you saw
restaurants go under not open back up. Now you saw
other independents go in and take their spaces, or you
saw a lot of these large multi unit chains come
in and take the spaces and now they're redesigning and
redeveloping them. I haven't seen it, and this is more anecdotal,
(35:01):
but I what I what I've heard through a lot
of larger franchisees is you're seeing massive franchise growth in
the sense of these bigger you know, your Applebees of
the world that are taking out a lot of these spaces.
So I think we're gonna see a bit of a
customization or or lack thereof, and more of a commercialization
of restaurants across the landscape. But these ghost kitchens, right,
(35:23):
that's going to be the future too, are these offsite
virtual concepts that we're ordering off of our apps. Businesses
are learning that I don't need to go into a
three thousand square foot space and pay all this overhead
and all these entry fees when I can just take
a little commercial space rented, develop a couple of concepts,
have two cooks, and then have a delivery driver come
(35:45):
pick it up. Um with no dining room. Right, that's
going to be huge, especially in cities. Now the question
becomes who delivers it and what company is ultimately trying
and aggregate all of that revenue right now. The door
dashes of the world are trying to do so, but
I think there's major opportunity for small players to come
in and disrupt that space. So, uh, those are a
few opinions about where it's going. But we can only
(36:07):
hope that we don't see the lockdowns and the shutdowns
that we saw in the beginning of the pandemic, because
if you look at the data, what you'll see is
that it wasn't the restaurants in the retail that we're
perpetuating the spread. We were inherently trained to create safe
and sanitary environments that could take on a lot of
this these regulations and manage them properly and model the
(36:29):
right types of behavior through the pandemic. So we could
kind of have the best of both worlds, right safety
consideration for others, while simultaneously also allowing our economy to
do what it does best. Um, so hopefully that's the
approach if there are going to be subsequent shutdowns. Yeah, absolutely, Andrew.
Thanking you very informative, big fan, and I am gonna
know that pizza place your big part in tested. I
(36:51):
will get there at some point, So thank you, Andrew.
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's an honor.
I appreciate it. Be sure to catch live editions of
The Ben Maller Show weekly sit two am Eastern eleven
pm Pacific, on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart
Radio app
Host
Ben Maller
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