Mike Elefante- Mama Louisa's

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We have Michael Elefante, ower & chef of Mama Louisa's in-studio sharing more of his amazing story!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Amiss, the ancient rooms of a forgotten civilization, a mysterious temple.
Paul saints with an otherworldly energy. The guardian of this Taste,
Define Sanctuary moves forward, a figure shrouded in enigma, in power.
He doesn't just taste food, He summons forgotten flavors and

(00:26):
awakens dormant passions. Behold the Wizard of Food, Wesley Source
in the Tucson Tasty Show.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome to the Tucson Tasty Show, brought to you by SAKA.
The Southern Arizona Art and Cultural Alliance is dedicated to creating, preserving,
and advancing the arts. I'm your host, Wesley Source, and
welcome back to the Tucson Tasty Show. Thank you to
all of our amazing sponsors via Earl Premium Beef, your
Financial Guy, Cody Peck, Network Outdoors, Local First Arizona a

(00:57):
Legram Marketing, print and Mail. Don't forget to friend, follow, like, subscribe,
share and repeat. Today we have an amazing show lined
up for you. We have Michael Elafante, the executive chef
of Mama Luisa's, here in studio with us today.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
How you doing, Michael, I'm good man. How are you?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I'm good we're rocking it out in the new studio
having a.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Blast Space Force one.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
What did you call one? Yeah, the bridge of Patrick
Stewart's Enterprise. Maybe no, okay, but yeah, No, we're excited
to be on iHeart over on Canniste here. I'm making
the move and thank you for everybody for listening out there.
We've got a few things to talk about. Some housekeeping
really quick via Oral Premium Beef Tasty show Box and

(01:41):
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Beef snack, Yes, beef snacks are delicious.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I just want a whole box of them. We can
make that happen. I want a ninety nine dollars box
of beef sticks.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well ve premiumef dot Com. They'll bring them right out
to your restaurant or right out to your front door.
Actually your front door is probably a little bit closer
to them. Yeah, because they're a local ranch right here
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you're missing from all your grocery store beef. So I
mean you got to you gotta get gotta check it out.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Ye, And it's locals.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
The two San Tasty Show, Food Truck, Food Fights, Road
to Snoop Dogg's Arizona Bowl, Gin and Juice by Doctor
Dre and Snoop is going to be starting. The first
one is at Horror Bottle on November eighth, so this
next Friday, and then Black Rock Brewery on the fifteenth.
We start at six pm and we go until nine.
Everybody's welcome to come out. We have live music, we

(02:49):
have food trucks, we have vendors, and then the breweries
have actually extended their liquor license so that you can
have a beer and you can get the American ghurkin
and walk around and enjoy the food and the AONs
and everything else. It's gonna be great. We have we
have some really great notable people that are coming out.
Park Project Collective is going to be there and they're

(03:10):
going to be doing some terror readings or something going
to be fun.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
That always weirds me out, like I want to do
one but I'm also super scared.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well, we've got just the person for you. Lannie from
Unique Intuitions is actually one of the trophy sponsors, okay
for food truck food fights, and she's really nice, but
she's really honest about what they're what the cards you're
telling her, so she'll make you cry. It'll be great.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
First card death card sweet cool.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
That means you live a long life or something like that.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
I don't know where you die on the way home
from us driving a red light.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
You die turning left through an intersection. So all you
ever do is turn right right.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Just never turn left ever again.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
And then the other trophy sponsors are Laramta sellers and
Picture Rocks, Cooling, Heating and Plumbing. Thank you to those sponsors.
We've also got some other sponsors lined up. The print
sponsors actually Special Eats. I don't know if you know
Bill from Special Eats, but great, great guy. He was like,
how do I how do I help you out without

(04:12):
throwing the contest? And I was like, well, we need
a bunch of stuff printed if you do that, and
he was like great, So I put his logo on
everything and and there we go.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, I don't think I've ever actually met him, but
the concept of what he does is really really awesome. Yeah,
and there's that's that's a passion project, one hundred percent
for sure. That's super rad what he does.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, no, it's it's really cool. If you don't know
what Special Eats is, I think it's Special Eats dot
org produced King is going to uh fact check that
really quick. And uh, but the sandwiches are incredible. But
he takes individuals with mental impairments or some kind of
disability and he helps them learn skills to be able

(04:55):
to work in kitchens and other things. So definitely a
world wild And uh, you know Dante's Fires food Truck's
gonna be out there and they do grilled cheese. Yeah,
so we're gonna we're gonna see what's going It's.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Gonna be a that night at Hard Bottle.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yes, no, he's all of them.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Oh okay, yeah, I have to stop buying. Give everybody
a hard time.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yep, sounds great. We'll give you a microphone. Maybe we'll
give you a judging slip and you can do the judging.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
So the food trucks get to sell to the public,
So the the food trucks are selling completely to the
public in fact, to make it as even as possible,
because we don't want to have any gate keeping happening
at all, so we just want to level the playing
field as much as possible. We're doing a double blind
like we did with the barbecue competition. So we're gonna

(05:53):
have a runner go out and get the food, uh so,
and they're just going to order the food, pay for
the food, and then bring it back to the judges table,
where we're going to put it into another container or
have all the food trucks have the same containers so
that nobody knows. And then everything's going to be judged
on quality, consistency, and creativity. And then the judges will

(06:14):
then be able to go out and check out the
food trucks because then you know, you got to look
at the food truck cleanthliness, are being able to attract
customers all that stuff, and then and it's going to
be a lot of fun. But the food trucks won't
know that the judges have done anything until after the
judging is done, right, Yeah, that'd be fun. Well and yeah, well,

(06:35):
we were trying to have.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
To be on your game the whole time, you can
just phone it in and then when the judges come
and go, okay, time to step it up.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Or like there was one contesting meet the chefs that
was serving something to the public and then the judges
got something completely different. I didn't like that.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, I was like, how do we.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Prevent that from happening?

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yep, no, no, thank you.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
So that's and that's how we do it. So we're
going to do double blind and then after after the
first round, we'll have the judges, we'll go through and
whoever progresses the next next round of selection goes to
Blackrock Brewery as participants. All the food trucks are welcome

(07:20):
back though, so they get to come to every event
leading up to the Arizona Ble. The top twelve get
to participate at the Arizona Bowl tailgate and the food trucks.
It's it's all about the food trucks. We're building the
community around the food trucks. We're getting them resources, we're
connecting them into merit. Merits going to help us out

(07:43):
with that, and then from there we're else. We're going
to help get lower processing fees for every time they
swipe a card. And then we have insurance and all
kinds of stuff. So the whole is to to help
these food trucks out to be successful, right, set them
up for success, because we don't want to just Hey,

(08:05):
come out and feed fifteen thousand people and then we'll
see you next year, you know.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, no, no, that's rad.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
That's awesome, man, And yeah it should be a lot
of fun and that's yeah, literally a week from now
because it's Saturday, so it's it's gonna be a great,
great time. Come out and check it out. If you
want to get involved. If you want more information, go
to the tastyshow dot com. You can go to events.
If you're a food truck, go to Food Trucks sign
up to join. We're taking food truck entries until we

(08:32):
hit our max, and we have a pretty high number
for max. So we just want to get the community out,
in the community involved, get in it, get it so
right before we have a few minutes before we have
to go here into the break, but why don't we
jump into who you are?

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Me?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Me this executive chef of Mama Luiz's, Michael Elafonte, and
you're a friend of the tuc Santacy Show. You've been
learned quite a few times. And I appreciate you jumping
in on the first episode here.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
That's always a blast, man. I appreciate you extending the
olive branch. Is that the right term for it? I
feel like it felt right.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
It works for everybody that doesn't know, and I'm sure
everybody does know, But everybody that doesn't know, tell tell
us a little bit about Mama Louise's. Where are you at?
Where can we find you?

Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah, Mama Luisa's small startup that's been going on for
about sixty eight years now. We're on twenty anth and Craycroft.
We specialize in homemade pasta. We make about one hundred
and twenty hundred and forty pounds of pasta day from lainguini, fetuccini, mannicotti, lasagna,
you know, the whole shebang. Yeah, that's our big thing,

(09:46):
making as much from scratch as possible. And also, you know,
our commitment to customer service. That's, you know, a big
thing that's been ingrained in me. Is you know a
lot of places they you know, got a nice, fancy restaurant,
you know, good food, Customer service sucks. You know, that's
our number one thing is you know, we constantly do
training with our servers and kind of bringing that. Where

(10:09):
I used to work was the Ritz Carlton bringing that,
you know, that kind of customer service tier, anticipating needs,
you know, kind of paying attention to your guests checking in,
and I'm doing that whole thing being friendly. So it's
not just the food that you're there for. You're there
for you know, the service and everything.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Is right the environment. Yeah, and that's that's why we
go out to eat, to be in social environment, right,
so we can interact and without getting into too much.
But how did you get started with the culinary industry.
I mean, it's you didn't just wake up one day

(10:47):
and decide, hey, I'm going to be a chef. There
was there was a couple of key factors that really
helped us out with that.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
I was born into it for the most part, you know,
family life. Parents were restaurant tours, dad Grandpa's restaur on tour.
But I just you know, growing up as a kid,
you know, I saw my dad in the kitchen all
the time. I wanted to hang out with him, and
then we would watch cooking shows in the mornings and
that's kind of where it all started for me was
sitting you know, on the couch, you know, having breakfast

(11:13):
with my dad watching Great Chefs of the World, Great
Chefs on PBS. I wish they bring that show back
to that show so rad and then kind of blossomed
into Okay, well I'm gonna teaching stuff. So then we
went into eggs and omelets and then knife skills, and
then I was in the kitchen and just never left.
So it's kind of been born into me. And you know,

(11:35):
I don't have some like crazy story where I was,
you know, a drop out and got addicted to stuff
and then this was my you know thing that's not me.
I'm just I was born into it. I think.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Sure in the hospitality industry is good for you know,
the second chances, but you know, having having said that,
you know, being uh drawn to it because of your
family interaction is just as amazing.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah. Yeah, it's just you know, it's my way life.
Is the one thing I'm real good at cooking and
running a restaurant talking to people, So you.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Know, I don't know it works. I think you're pretty
good at knife fights. And we're going to talk about
knife fights too, because we have a whole hour here.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
To get into stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
But knife fights it's a completely different ball game.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, but that's my fun time.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
But it's it's kind of the same thing because you're
captain of the ship and a lot of people don't
realize how how much goes into running the kitchen and
operating those because it's a full business. It's not just hey,
I'm cooking. It's hey, I've got to make sure the
books are good. I've got to make sure that the
orders are good so that I have food to serve people.

(12:43):
I've got to make sure that I have people to
serve people, and you know, and so on and so forth,
and it's it's definitely, you know, kind of eye opening
to get to look behind the curtain. And that's the
whole goal of the Tucson and Tasty Show. Yeah, so
that people get introduced to you, so they know who's
in the kitchen. Well, I'm Wesley Sours, your host of
the Tucson Tasty Show. We'll be right back with Chef

(13:05):
Michael Special. Thanks to our sponsors that Sokka, Vira Premium Beef,
Your Financial Guy, Cody, PEC Network out Doors, Local First, Arizona,
a Llegra Marketing, Print and mail and as always, stay
tasty Tucson. Hey there, Tucson. Are you looking to spice
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(13:52):
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(14:15):
that's ve Premiumbeef dot Com. Welcome back to the Tucson
Tasty Show, brought to you by SOKA, the Southern Arizona
Art and Cultural Alliance dedicated to creating, preserving and advancing
the arts. I'm Wesley Source, your host. Welcome to the
Tucson Tasty Show. Today we have Michael Elefante of Mama

(14:39):
Luis's here in studio. How you doing.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
I'm good, dude, just hanging out, hanging, hanging.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Awesome. Well, thank you for being here in the studio.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
Do something some new accent for every coming into the episode.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
You do you? Michael, you're the executive chef and the
owner of Mama Luisa's over on Golf Links and Craycroft
and you've been there since nineteen fifty six, which is
which is amazing. And it's the house that Joe's Special built.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yep, that's it. That's the tagline.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
That's taglat Yeah, and tell us about Joe's Special and
then we're gonna get into a little bit more of
how how you got your start into the journey through
the culinary industry.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah. Absolutely so Joe Special. It's fantastic dish. It's very simple.
It's all about the ingredients and you know the preparation
of it. It's not and there's no crazy technical things
to it. It's just good ingredients done right every time.
So we start with our homemade linguini. It's an egg,
egg and flour pasta cook that off and then we

(15:58):
put that put that on the plate with hot pepper, seeds, garlic,
and oil. A special cheese that we get. It's from Wisconsin,
from the Happy Cows. Yeah, so we that's one of
the big things, is not all cheese is equal, especially
when it comes to melting. And so this certain cheese
we source it from Wisconsin because before you know, we'll

(16:20):
get California cheeses and all that. Like, it just doesn't
melt right. It melts like plastic. Hence California, you know,
it's what they're known for, right, and so it melts beautiful,
and then we top it with our age tomato sauce
or tomato sauce. We ate it for two days before
we go to use it. It's not a quick mari
and aero sauce. It's got a beef and pork stock

(16:41):
cooked into it too. You know, some of the fat
from it's in there, you know, spices, you know, onions, garlic,
you know, all kinds of delicious stuff cooked down for
six to seven hours every day. So it's it's not
just the timer thing. You know, when you cook red sauce,
it's a you know, it takes them out every day.
When we make a batch, we put it on a plate,
you know, when you think it's done, and then you

(17:02):
kind of hold the plate up and then depending on
how fast the water the leftover water runs out of it,
it's how long you got to cook it still, yep.
So at once it reaches that time, you know, it's
we you know, take it off the kettle. We cook
forty gallons every day, put in the fridge, you know,
cool it down, and it's got to sit in there
for two days before we go to use it. So

(17:23):
it's you know, it's very labor intensive process. You know,
a lot of places they just you know, they'll put
their sauce on in the morning. By the time you
get there, it's hot and it's cooked and it's bright,
cherry red, and it's just that's not how we do
it deep red sauce. It's it's delicious, man.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
It's actually one of my biggest pet peeves is when
I go into an Italian restaurant and I'm using air
quotes here for everybody that can't see me doing it,
but the and the sauce is from a can. You
can tell that it's from a can. It's bright red,
and they they churched it up a little bit, and
they're really, really, really excited about their spaghetti sauce. And

(18:03):
I'm like, well, you know, I have better cans of
spaghetti sauce than this one.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, there's a difference between
canned tomato sauce and canned tomatoes. Tomato sauce for can
is already pre done. It's just you know, PLoP it
and serve it.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
The tomatoes that we get, they come in a can,
but they are harvested only one time of the year,
so they're harvested out of California. The stand and Slast
family is the company that does ours. We've been buying
those tomatoes for forty, you know, fifty years. That's the
only tomatoes will ever use. You get all these other
companies that come in and hey, let's do a cutting

(18:44):
with with our tomatoes, and like, don't waste time, don't
waste my time. I don't I'm not switching my tomatoes.
I've been using these tomatoes forever. Like it's not gonna happen.
So I'm with you there. Yeah, and you know, so
you get people who are like, why don't you use
fresh tomatoes, and it's like, well, my tomato sauce would
change every time the seasons change and depending on you know,

(19:05):
you know weather in you know where it's at. So
you know, one part of the year, the tomato sauce
would be fantastic, you know, in December, January, February, March,
when it's not tomato season, it would be awful. So
you know, there's a big difference between can tomatoes and
you know, canned tomato sauce. Yeah, and so you know

(19:26):
it's getting a good brand. You know, also people buy
you know that what are red gold tomatoes or whatever
it is, and yeah, they're just not good tomatoes. There's
good canned tomatoes that are really delicious tomatoes.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
No.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
When we're making sauce at home, we cook it for
six seven hours and there's only a certain type of
spaghetti or tomato that we get and we usually have
to go to Roma Imports to get it because it's
the sand Marzano's. Yeah, yeah, but they're sweeter, they're not.
It's not it's lower acid and it's definitely you know,
once you find your tomatoes. That's it. Every other sauce

(20:04):
it doesn't taste right. And you know, because it's the
tomatoes and with the sauce, I mean that that is
the foundation of the plate.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yeah, it's concrete. You know that you can have beautiful pasta.
I mean you can even take box pasta and put
it on a fantastic tomato sauce and it's so much
better than you know, if somebody was to make homemade
pasta and put canned tomato sauce on it.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
So, yeah, why go through all the work of making
the homemade pasta if you're not gonna make the sauce.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
It doesn't make sense to me, doesn't It doesn't do
it for me.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
So anyway, so we get this amazing sauce and then
and then you put it together. And one of the
things that I noticed when when we're in the kitchen
with you you throw it under the broiler. You get
a nice and melted and even caramelizes a little bit.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Maybe get a little color on the cheese.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
And then and then it goes or and then it
goes out to the table.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, top of with some tomato sauce. It's a very
beautiful simple dish. There's beauty in simplicity, and I feel
like a lot of chefs don't take that into consideration.
You know, everybody wants to put microgreens on everything. They
want to, you know, do all this different stuff on it.
And you've got to also learn your basics, you know,

(21:28):
you've got to have a foundation to build all of
that stuff on. All these people want to come in
and they just want to be Picasso with a plate,
and it's like, yeah, we can all do that, man, Like,
can you take five ingredients and make it a beautiful dish?
You know, you don't need seventeen different things on there,
you know. So, you know, it's a big thing for
me is embracing that tradition of you know, the simplicity

(21:48):
in it and doing it really well. And then you know,
every once in a while you get to run specials
and get to be Picasso. But I think there's something
to be said about, you know, being able to make
things simple and delicious and appeal to the masses and
be around for sixty eight years doing that so right,
you know.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
So and then that has to that has to come
from a lot of the way that you were. You
were brought up obviously you were you grew up in
the restaurant and uh tell, I mean, what's with the omelets?
Every all the chefs are always that, it's always omelet,
and and I've got to ask, you know, what what
is with the omelet?

Speaker 3 (22:26):
So the omelet is it's technique. It's about that's that's
where you learn technique. You learn finesse. It's you know,
when you're cracking eggs and you you know you're scramble
them or whatever you're doing it, there's no finesse in
that right where the omelet is. There's different styles to it.
There's different it's kind of like a signature. You know,

(22:49):
each person has a different way of doing it. Where
when you make an omelet and you get to you know,
you get really good at it. You know, it's folds
very easily. You know that there's so many different ways
to not burn. You know, you don't want to brown
the egg. You know, you should never brown the egg
on anything, but an omelets. That's like a it's like
oh cool, here putting on a plate and you're like
the eggs are brown, they're overcooked, like they smell now.

(23:12):
So it's just it's it's a very two chefs. It's
kind of like that your signature, like how you know,
what's your finesse. You know, you know everybody can strong
arm something and decorate it, right, this is your cooking style.
This is your there's no covering it up. If you're
screwed up, your cooking style is not right. You know,
you're going too hard, you're going too softer. You know,

(23:34):
there's different things. So you know, the omelet is the
one thing where you see the chef as the chef
you don't. You know, there's not all the pretty produce
and things and sauces to cover it up. It's just
your pure technique. So that's that's that's the olmelet.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
And how many omelets have you made a lot?

Speaker 3 (23:54):
I haven't made a lot in the long time. My
family doesn't like omelets. But you know, growing up with
my dad, I it was every weekend, three or four
times during the week, you know, we were just making
stuff Denver omelets. You know, all these different styles of
of the cooking ways. There's ones where you you're constantly

(24:14):
stirring the pot, you know, the skillet, you're it's low,
you're stirring it. The whole time, so it gets like
little waves in it. Then there's ones where you just
kind of rock it back and forth and kind of
you know, there's there's so many different techniques to making
an omelet and learning the styles of them for what
you're trying to do or you know, present and all that.
Like again, it's the technique of it. There's different ways

(24:35):
to it. And so I mean there was times where
we were just cooking eggs and eggs and eggs and
eggs and you know, and it was like, Okay, Dad,
I don't want to do eggs anymore. I want to
do something else. Let me cook a cinnamon roll or something,
you know. But yeah, not so many omelets anymore, fair enough.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
And then you know, and then then then there's the
the pasta, right, I mean, the pasta is definitely in
art form ish. I mean to to a certain point.
If anybody's made tried to make homemade pasta at home,
well that's what homemade pasta is. But if anybody at

(25:14):
home has tried to make pasta before, they understand it's
not just throw the ingredients in and go. I mean,
there is definitely a technique and you have to let
them dry for a certain amount of time. You have
to you have to let the dough rest, you have
to you have to cut it a certain way. I mean,
there's there's a lot that goes into that. And do

(25:34):
you you use a.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Dye, right, yeah, So for a long time we used
you know, stainless steel cutter like you would have at home,
and we would run the sheets, run it through, and
hang it and dry it. That was very you know,
much more labor intensive, and that was very much more
technical and it would take eight, you know, hours a
day for one guy to make all the PASTA technology

(25:58):
is a hell of a thing, and so you know,
we went the route of how they do in Italy
bronze die extruder. Now, you know, you put the dough in,
you let it mix, you let it sit for about
you know, five six minutes in there to kind of
soften and rest, and then we extrude it and cut
it to length and you know it's it's pretty much
ready to cook then. But at home, if I'm going

(26:20):
to make it, you know, I'm rolling it out, you know,
with a wine bottle or rolling pin and cutting it
and all that stuff. But you know, for the restaurant,
when you got to make one hundred and twenty pounds
in an hour two hours, Like, let's go. You gotta
get on it. Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
What would be? And and I've seen it before? So
I mean I have a pasta extruder at home because
you know, when I when I'm doing pasta, I want
to go, yeah and sit down after a bit, because
otherwise it takes two or two hours, three hours to
really get through and make sure that everything's done right.

(26:57):
But is there a certain technique or mixture that you
would say is a good balance. I love the egg
noodles because there's so much stretch here, right.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
They just have more of a bite, right, They're tender,
but also have more of a bite, where flower and
water is more of a harder kind of al dente noodle.
You're gonna get way more audentate with water flower because
the water tends to evaporate when it's going through, like
your extruders or whatever you're doing, So the dough, the
dough itself gets more soft or more hard sorry, where

(27:31):
the flower and egg one is just more of a tender,
kind of a tastier bite than you know, flower and water.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
I know that there's a store bought one, and actually
it's it's one of my favorite, you know, when we're
not making spaghetti at home, the Billa pasta. I'm sure
you grab it as well, but it's all it is
is water and uh semolina flower.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, that almost all box pasta in the grocery stores
is going to be flower and water one. You know
the reason why it's so too so they dehydrated. Also
then you you know, it's lighter when it packs, so
then it's cheaper for shipping and all that, right, But
just in general, that's kind of the more traditional route
for those it's cheaper. You know, water is a lot
cheaper than eggs, and so you know it's you'll find

(28:17):
some that are you know, egg does and maybe in
like a specialty store and stuff like that, or like
in the refrigerated section because you can't really dehydrate them
all the way. You can't just are not really shelf stable.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
So I'm Wesley Sourci, your host of the Tucson Tasty Show.
We'll be right back. Thank you to our amazing sponsors, Sokka,
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(28:50):
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(29:12):
new journey. Welcome back to the Tucson Tasty Show. I'm
your host, Wesley's source. The Tucson Tasty Show is brought
to you by SOAKA, the Southern Arizona Art and Cultural
Alliance dedicated to creating, preserving and advancing the arts. We're
here in studio with Michael Ilafante and you talking about

(29:34):
possibly before we went into the break, and I wanted
to ask more about you know, you you started cooking
with your father and you cooked eggs. You were doing
the omelets because that that was a really great way
to you know, get into the techniques and teach you
how to do a lot of different things, right, Yeah,
so tell us a little bit more about how that

(29:54):
how you progress from there.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah, so you know after that, you know, after dozens
and dozens of eggs, and but you know, we got
into it and so then you know, we started getting
into other things. So then it was, you know, let's
teach apasta, let's teach a knife skills, you know, cut mushrooms.
I can't tell you how many boxes of mushrooms that
I sliced for the restaurant, you know, to tomatoes and

(30:19):
things like that. And then you know, Dad was about
he was big on, you know, developing the you know,
the basics. You had to you had to have the
technique before you did anything else. It was all about
learning skills and that before you went and played. And
so you know, it was you know, I remember going
and hanging out at the restaurant and you know, the

(30:39):
delivery would come in on a Friday night, and you know,
most kids on a Friday night are at home or
you know, hanging out with their friends. I was at
the restaurant bussing tables or washing dishes, and then Dad
would pull out, you know, four or five cases of
whole you know, button mushrooms, and he'd give me a
kind of a dull knife you know that you know,
wouldn't cut myself, but it would cut through the mushrooms.

(31:00):
And I'd have to process all the boxes, you know,
and that was you know, it's just repetition and getting
into it, and it wasn't fun, but you know, you
get real fast at one point because you want to
get done with it, and you know, it was those
kind of things, and then you know, my dad passed
away before I really got to anything else in that stage.

(31:21):
My dad passed away when I was I it was
twelve or thirteen ninety eight, and so then, you know,
at that point I pretty much knew I was going
to be in the kitchen. I just always spoke to me,
and I always enjoyed myself in there. It was my home.
So then my grandpa was still at the restaurant, and

(31:42):
you know, I kind of just leaned on to him
about it, and so then he kind of took it
from there. We went into the cooking. I'd share ideas
with him and read, you know, cookbooks, and he would
bring me some and I would, you know, look at him,
and you know, I want to do this. I want
to do that. He would teach me specials. He would
teach me things, and then it would be the base
of something and then you could kind of explore it out.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
You know.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
After that, you know, it was okay, here's this, this
is how you make Sultan boca, and then you could
do this with it. You could do this, you can
make this, you could change it, and so then it,
you know, it kind of blossomed into this beautiful thing.
And then as I got older, started cooking on the line,
you know, and missing my dad and stuff, it kind
of became my way of kind of still being with him.

(32:23):
I never got to cook with my dad, like actually
like in a dinner service rush. I. You know, I
was young. I was too young to be on the line.
So you know, once I got old enough to be
on the line and run it and do all that,
it was kind of my time with him, you know.
You know, when I'm by myself on that line and
it's enjoyable and you know, it's just kind of hanging out,
you know, being in that moment, you know, wishing Pops

(32:46):
was there, but you know, so it's it's just my
time to kind of be with him, and remember him
is in the kitchen, so that's you know, my enjoyment
out of it. So you know, it feels good.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Right and wow. Yeah, but you were in the kitchen
for a while and then you decided to what was
the next step for you?

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Once, once you got to the point where you knew
kind of how your your kitchen of Mama Luis's ran,
what'd you do next? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (33:20):
So yeah, I got to the point where I was
just tired of putting red sauce on everything. You know,
it was just, you know, an Italian American cuisine is
just heavy red sauce. It's red sauce, red sauce, red sauce,
red sauce. And I needed to learn more. I needed
to for my own plate, you know, I needed to
spread my wings and kind of see what else was
out there. And my sister had left and she was

(33:43):
working at the Four Seasons in Austin, and she met
this chef named Michael Press and he moved to Tucson
was part of the opening team that opened up the
Ritz Carlton Duve Mountain. He came in to dinner one
night and I was just kind of in a bad,
bad sort so I was just up, you know, it
was just irritated with what I was doing. I was like,
you know, nineteen twenty, you know, I was old and

(34:05):
now I was probably like twenty two at that point.
You know, I was just I was ready to do
something else. I needed to do something else. I was like,
you know, So I went out and I talked to
him and I said, you know, I don't care if
it's dish washing or whatever. I just want to do
something else. Right, I want to cook, but you know,
I'll take my foot in the door and then work
my way up from there. I knew I had the
work ethic, you know, that's was instilled for me from
a kid.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
It was there was no calling out, there was no
taking the day off. You know, your if you didn't
feel good, sucked up and went in. So h You know,
he came in a couple other times and I know,
kept asking, and he's like, well, we're doing a hiring fair,
you know, come and talk to the chef, you know,
the executive chef, and we'll see where it goes. So

(34:45):
he set me up an interview with him. I went
in and talked to him, and you know, I'll never,
you know, forget. One of the questions he asked me
is where do you see yourself in five years? And
I told him, I said, you know, here hopefully being
one of you write him inn and I said, you know,
I know it's going to take me a long time.
I said, but you show me once. That's all you
need to show me. You don't need to show me

(35:06):
more than once how to do something. So they hired me.
I started in garmige, had no idea what garbage was.
Come to find out it's the salad kitchen, and I'm
just cutting a ton of vegetables. But back to my
dad's technique. I've cut the hell a lot of vegetables
my whole life growing up. So I went in there.

(35:26):
You know, you know, I didn't know how to make
a dressing, and you know, so I'm I'm a cook two.
There was these cook threes in there, and so cook
threes like the low then two cook one and then
chef to party, you know those things. So I came
in as a cook too because I had restaurant experience.
I had that kind of balancing and managing and those
kind of things, but I didn't have the technical side
of that stuff. So I'm cutting all these vegetables, doing

(35:49):
all my stuff, and then it came time to like
do culinary school stuff and they were like, I need
you to make this herb vinaigrette, and I said, show
me how to do it. They were like, why is
a cook three you how to make a vinaigrette? And
I said, because you shouldn't show me once and I'll
make it from here on out. So they showed me
one time, boom, you know, don't break the dressing. You know,
use dijon as an emulsifier, make this dressing, put the

(36:12):
oil in. You're done, make it. And then I just
went off from there. So then every time, you know,
new things came up, you know, they learned or I'd
just show him one time and he can bang it out.
So then I kept going and going and going, and
then if there was something I needed and nobody was around,
I'd go to the bathroom and I go to my
phone and I pull up you have every recipe or
every direction in the world on how to do something right.

(36:33):
So I would pull it up on there and I'd
look up, Okay, how do you make what's you know,
rogan Josh? You know what is all these different things?
So that way, when I go back, I go, Okay,
this is how I make it. How do you make
it chef? And he was like, well, let me show you,
and then he showed me how to make it. And
I never made it. You know, it's kind of you know,
playing the game, right. So work my way up really fast.

(36:55):
So then I went to cook one. I would transfer
to banquet kitchen, cook one, running banquet, you know, seeing
off meets for three four hundred people for these big
time groups that are coming in. Then there was an
opening down at the Burger b Stro. So then I
go down to the Burger b Stro. I'm doing extentric
match play tournament. You know, we're cooking for you know,
weddings for you know, celebrities and stuff like that. Right,

(37:17):
and then the chef to Party thing comes up. I
get chef to party. So you can't so in the
Ritz Carlton, you can't get a promotion less than six months,
so you're not eligible for another one until six months
had passed. You have to be in that position. So
you know, I just kept working my way up and
working my way up, and then all these other people
that came in at the same time, were still, you know,

(37:38):
down below, and they're like, what's you know, what are
you doing? I was like, I don't leave. I stay here.
I'm working seventeen eighteen hours a day. Yeah, my kitchen's done.
I go to the next kitchen. What do you need?
Go to the next kitchen. What do you need?

Speaker 1 (37:48):
You know?

Speaker 3 (37:48):
I was just I was there. I wanted to learn.
I got paid to go to school, and that was
you know, that filled my cup so much. I mean,
being able to learn and grow in every single day
there was something new I learned for four years. I
mean I just I learned and learned and learned and
learned how to do all of that stuff. The technique
behind it, you know, the reasons why you do it,
the science behind it. Like that's the cool thing about it, too,

(38:11):
is food science is really rad as you get to
learn like what works together and what doesn't work, and
why they work and all of those things like why
when you proof stuff, why do you rest stuff? Like
all of those things are things that you learn. And
one of my mentors, he gave me a book and
it was one of the coolest books I've ever read.
And it's a very boring book, but it's super cool
and I recommend chefs to read it, you know, people

(38:32):
aspiring to be chefs. It's called What Einstein Told Is Chefs,
and it's the science behind it, like why things go
and why they work, why flavors work, why sweet and
salty work together. Like it's it's just a really cool, simple,
boring book.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
But it's great telling producer Tina to write that down, yeah,
so I can pull it out.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, it's a good book, you know, it's it takes
a little bit to read if you're not super into it,
but get through it and read it, and it literally
brought in you horizons and stuff.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Well, let's say, the science behind cooking is why I
love cooking so much. Alton Brown is one of my
favorite chefs because that always breaking down why and his
stupid sock puppets are amazing and educational. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Well, and I think, at least for me, it helps
me learn the process of it. I think it helps
people see why you do it. The why is too.
Why do you see your meat instead of just throwing
it at a pan when it's cold, right? You know? Why
do you wait for it to come up? It gives
you the reasoning behind it, so you're not just like, oh,
it's the same thing, you know what I mean, the

(39:38):
why of cooking is a big, big proponent of what
you need to know as a.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Chef, agreed Holy and then from there tell us a
little bit. I mean, we've got about two minutes forty
seconds left in the segment, but what happened after you
hit that that next level?

Speaker 3 (40:02):
So I got to a good spot and I was
looking to kind of join task Force, which is where
the RITZ sends you out to other places, and they
were getting ready to open a place in Italy, and
I was like, oh, Pasca, you know. And then I
got a call from my brother that was like, hey,
the restaurant's not doing so good. You know, the family
wants to go and open some you know, a different one.

(40:25):
We're probably going to close this one down on craik
Craft and I was like, not a chance, you know,
dump button right here, not a chance, you know. And
so I talked to my chef and I told him.
I was like, I can't let this go down, Like,
I can't let it happen. I was like, I gotta leave,
I gotta go, And he was like, what do you

(40:46):
mean and I was like, I got to go to
the family restaurant. I was like, my mom needs me.
I can't. You know, it's my mom's life, you know,
it's livelihood, it's a retirement. He said, I can't. I
can't let it go. That was probably one of the
hardest decisions I've ever made in my life. I went
from a four toh one k moving up into business,
you know, top one percent of the culinary world, to

(41:07):
going back to Red Sauce, you know what I mean.
And it was one of the hardest decisions I ever made.
But to this day, I don't regret it because I've
met some of the most amazing people in my life,
and I wouldn't have you know, I wouldn't have this
community of you guys. I wouldn't have this community of
Gary and the other chefs here in town that you know,

(41:30):
if I didn't, if I hadn't made that decision. So
you know, to this day, I still still think, you know,
the heavens that I went back to sling in Red Sauce.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Fair enough, and you revamped that entire kitchen from what
I saw.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
You know, when I got back old, okay, let's go back.
We went we took it from the new That was
that time to back to the original, you know. That
was the main thing, is getting back to the core
values of making stuff from scratch, you know, getting rid
of it these cake sized you know, the cheesecake menu
sized menu, you know the restaurant the other menus, like
seventeen pages, you know the menu. When I got back,

(42:07):
it took you a time, dude, it was like twelve
minutes to read the whole menu. Right, nobody's gonna read that.
Why do you have that many ingredients and why do
you have that many menu items? So, you know, we
took it back to Mama Luis's of nineteen fifties, nineteen seventies.
You know, it's the core of what's good. No dogs
on the menu and just slanging good food.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Awesome. Well, we'll be right back with more from Michael Elafonte.
Thank you to all of our amazing sponsors. I'm Wesley's source,
Stay Tasty, Tucson. Hello, this is Wesley's source with the
Tucson Tasty Show. With every Tasty bite from Dpremiumbeef dot Com,
you get premium beef flavor from the amazing ground beef

(42:50):
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at ve Premiumbeef dot Com. Again, that's ve Preemiumbeef dot Com.
Welcome back to the Tucson Tasty Show. I'm your host,

(43:11):
Wesley Source. The Tucson Tasty Show is brought to you
by Sokka, the Southern Arizona Art and Cultural Alliance dedicated
to creating, preserving and advancing the arts. And we're here
in studio with Michael Elafonte. How you doing.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
I'm doing good. I tell you, I bringing different one
every time. Man.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
And we're talking about your reintegration into Mama Luis's. I
saw a TV show recently about this. I swear like
you went from I hate that show. You know, I
have to bring it up.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
I show get it. I don't hate it. It gives
me PTSD. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
So, but yeah, so you were you were working at
the Ritz Carlton. You had all these opportunity, these everything else.
You have the family restaurant, your heart and soul. If
you will, I understand, I mean, I understand how that is.
I mean I grew up in a family business as well,
a small business not so small anymore, but regardless, I'm

(44:15):
not connected to it in any way. So you know,
they just used me for child labor, right, and then
I went out into the world and did what I did,
and that's you know, that's a huge part of who
we are. But you got back into the kitchen and
tell us a little bit about that transition, because that
had to have been kind of a shock to your

(44:36):
system entirely.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
Yeah, it was a big culture shock coming back. I
remember the first day I came back and I'm getting
my bearings of where everything's at. I mean, the kitchen
has changed a lot. There's a you know, I'm opening
refrigerators and I'm opening freezers, and I'm like, why is
there more freezers than refrigerators here? That's we prep a

(44:59):
lot of stuff and we just than the freezer. Why
are there more freezers refrigerators here? So it was like,
we're not going to do that. We're not just going
to make a ton of crap or buy a ton
of crap and put in the freezer and then defrost
and serve it. Like I didn't become a chef, nor
did my dad or anything to take stuff out of box.
You know, I don't think any chef wishes to take

(45:24):
stuff out of a box and put it on a plate.
You know, when you go to a barbecue and you
know it's a potluck, right, and everybody brings food, nobody goes, Man,
you take that out of a box better than that person,
you know what I mean? Like, that's not you should
open a restaurant because you can do that. No, that's
never happened in the course of life, right, It's always like, wow,
you make that so good, Like you should open a
restaurant based around that. And that's my vision on stuff

(45:48):
is like how it should be is like it should
be made it that's the whole point of it. You're
inviting people into your home basically, and you're making food
for him. You're not making box stuff for him, you
know you're not. It's just that it's not my thing.
You know. There are some things that we do take
out of a box that it is the core of
the restaurant that we've been serving for forty something years,
fifty years. Like, I'm not going to fight that fight.

(46:09):
That's just how it goes, you know what I mean.
But everything that I can, you know, it's it's it's
being made from scratch, you know. The things that we
don't they're just as ingrained in the restaurant as the
red and white checkerboard tablecloths, you know. I remember I
came back to the restaurant and I was like, heye,
these checkerboard tablecloths. And I was like, I'm gonna I'm

(46:30):
gonna change them, and I bought black tablecloths. It was
one of the worst decisions of my life. Yeah, oh man,
I got lit up on Yelp and trip Advisor and
like people were calling the restaurant and they're like, I've
been coming there for forty eight years and you got
rid of the checkerboard tablecloths. They're black. Now they're hideous.

(46:51):
I'm never coming back until you till you get rid
of them. So those those checker those black tablecloths were
on the tables for about the mine month and a
half and that's it. And there's still some photos, like
if you go and yelp, like in the deep archives
of it, like on the photos of the restaurant, you'll
see them on there. And then I look back down
and like, yes, why did you do that?

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Out of all the things that people can complain about, though,
who cares about the table?

Speaker 3 (47:17):
It's not the aesthetic, you know what I mean. It's
the it's the it's the Italian restaurant. You know, you
go to an Italian restaurant, you want checkerboard tablecloths, you
know what I mean. And that's just just how it is.
And so, you know, it was a learning process of
coming back, of learning what I could tweak, what I couldn't,

(47:38):
you know, And some of it was just learning that's
just not a fight that I want to fight with
some stuff. It is what it is. You have to
embrace the simpleness of it, right, And so you know,
I just I tiptoed that fine line. I started calling
mom my fishermen, you know, my first cards that I
got her. I got her business cards and that she

(48:00):
didn't know about. I got her new ones. You know.
The first time I got him and I put den
mother on him, and she was like, what does this mean?
I said, you're You're the one that still brings me back.
You're the one that you know, lets me know I'm
getting too far out. So then I called her the Fisherman,
and I was like, you know, I go out on
my thing. You know, I'd start going out doing my thing,
and she reels me back into, you know, to reality

(48:20):
of what the restaurant is. And so we learned to
tiptoe that balance, and I, you know, I think I'd
do it pretty well now. You know, I've been with
the restaurant, you know, ten years. I've been back, and
we've been through COVID, We've been through some just absolute
dark days of the restaurant. The first like three episodes
of The Bear is all I got into, and it

(48:42):
was that's what my life was like. I mean it
was me and my wife were watching it. Shout out
to my wife, Crystal, by the way, love you. We
were sitting on the couch and everybody was talking about
the bear, the bear, the bear of the Bear, the
bear Bear. And I was like, all right, let's watch it.
So I poured myself glass of whiskey, pour glass of wine.
We turned it on and instantly I'm like, oh shit, sorry.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
It'll be taken care of.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
That. The show gets me upset, man, because it's just
it takes me back.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
I can tell.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
It takes me back to those days, and you know,
from that didn't necessarily have a loan shark, but we
had a lot of loans and things that we had
to get paid back, and so there was times where
it was like, all right, we don't have a lot
of money. There's you know, maybe eight hundred dollars in
the bank account. What do I need to get through
this weekend? I got a big weekend coming. What can

(49:36):
I be out of to get through the weekend? You know,
what are the things I need to have? And that's
just how it was. I mean, I didn't have to
sell any LEVI Denhim jeans that I had. No, No,
I'm not a Denim Jens kind of person, so you know,
I didn't have those. But you know, I mean that's
what it was like. Man, it was it was rough.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Bro.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
There were days where I just was like, what the
hell did I get myself back into? And now, you know,
now life's easier, a lot easier.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
One of the coolest things to you know, take that
positive spin. Right, You've added to the menu, You've reduced
the menu back to what it should be, and then
you have some of the best stuff. Every time I
go into the restaurant, I tell you, I read through
the menu and then I ordered Joe Special. Yeah, but

(50:23):
you know I've done with the Veo Parmesan and and
other things as well. So I'm exploring, but dip in
your toes. And then Tina does the same thing where
she's like hey, al right, producer Tina, where she's like, hey,
I'm gonna try something new, and then she orders Guido
or the Guido Alfredo every time. That's and that's the
really cool addition to the menu that I really I love.

(50:44):
Uh you know, because you put the third generation menu
on there and tell us a little bit about what
Guido Q is and what guidol Fredo is.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Yeah. So Guido Q started during COVID. I was like
needed something to do. You know, the restaurant was dead.
We were doing like five six covers a day, you know,
doing to gos in that and you know, you're just
trying to figure out what to do. So I started
looking into barbecue. I was like, I'm gonna get good
at barbecue. You know, everybody found something. Some people were
making bread, some people were crocheting, but there was all

(51:13):
different kind of stuff and I was like, I'm going
to cook some meat and lo and behold. It was
one of the first things to like actually get back
to normal life.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
You know.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
It was barbecue competitions. Who would have thought, right.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
So.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
I did a bunch of research, started watching tons and
tons of YouTube videos and getting into it and cooking
meat and doing all this stuff. And then first tournament
came and we went. It was the Freedom r V
one here in Tucson, and we showed up, had no
real idea what we were doing. We just had a plan,
and I was like, I'm a chef. I'm a chef.
My way through this. All of my dishes bombed. They

(51:48):
they were delicious, but they weren't barbecue what they were
looking for. But my chicken, but it was chicken was
traditional barbecue. Wow. And we took second place.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
And when they called our name, I mean, we exploded up.
We were so excited that we had placed in this
thing and we took second place in chicken and so
I mean like we're jumping up and down, hugging each
other and all that. And so then we started doing
more competitions because we got bit by the buck. We're
doing more competitions, and then kind of COVID comes up

(52:20):
and it's getting easier, and I was like, let's do
a food truck. You know, let's see how the food
truck goes. You know, I don't want to open another restaurant.
I don't want to deal with that many employees, but
let's do a food truck. So food truck, we build
it and we start taking it out. One of the
dishes on there is the gold standard. I love a
yellow mustard barbecue sauce. We make ours a little different,

(52:44):
still true to the roots for the most part, but
it's you know, yellow mustard apple cider vinegar. We do
a gave as the sweetener instead of like brown sugar molasses,
and then we put chilter pene in there too instead
of cayenne, so there's a little bit of cayenne, but
there's still there's a lot of chilter pine in there too.
So then you know, we do the pulled pork. We
smoke it with maple wood on the trigger, and we

(53:05):
throw the black tuscan kale slaw on there. I like
kale my slaw instead of like cabbage and stuff like that.
It's a little heartier, it holds up better. And then
the crunchy onions on there on that. So then one
day we bring the truck back from an event and
I was like, I'm hungry. I need to eat something.
And I was like, I got this pork and the

(53:26):
boys had just made some alfredo, so I was like mixing,
you know. I was like, I'll have feted chinauf freida.
I'll put pork on that sounds good. So then I like,
I was like, where's the slaw at? So then I
threw the slaw on there, and I threw the crunchy
onions and then I was like, give me some more
gold sauce and I threw it on there, and it's
this kind of like last you know, last meal kind
of thing that I threw together, and I was like,
this is delicious. So I made another one and I

(53:48):
gave it to the employees and I was like, try this,
and so then they tried it and they were like
that's really good. Yeah, it's different because you have this
hot pasta, hot sauce, hot pork, and then you have
this like hepid kind of cold slot on there, and
and so it's a totally different contrast of you know,
different elements, right, sweet, savory, salty, hot and cold. It's

(54:10):
it's really weird.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
It's the only way I will eat kale. Yeah, I
just want to throw that out.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
But it's delicious and it works, and it's just a fundish.
And the third Gen menu just came about because when
I got back to the restaurant about four years in,
I got burnt out on red sauce again and I
was like, I need to do me again. I need
to get back to my exploring creativity roots like I
had at the Ritz. And so then the third Generation

(54:38):
menu came out and that was that was like the
fourth reiteration of it. But we put that on there
every time. I you know, I don't like a big menu,
so if we put something on there, I take something off. Yeah,
you know, just to keep it small, you know, just
a couple of things, a handful of things that I'm
playing with or working on that I enjoyed to eat.

(55:00):
And you can still get your Joe specially. You can
still get your veal palm, your pikada, your egg plant.
I love the egg plant, but you know, it gives
you something else to.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Try to absolutely, So we're got to talk about the
Bar and Restaurant Expo that's happening in March in Las Vegas.
Now you're taking the Tucson culture with you and you're
actually doing a huge presentation. Now, we only have about
a minute left on the clock, but can you tell

(55:29):
us a little bit about what you're doing with Barn Rescue.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yeah, so we're taking Tucson Knife Fight to the Barn
Restaurant Expo in Vegas. We're going to do a presentation
on Tuesday of the Barn Restaurant Expo from two to
two forty five, and we're gonna be talking about tuson
night fight. We're going to give everybody the opportunity to
make Tucson Knife Fight in their own city. So whether
it's San Antonio, Portland, or you know, New York or

(55:55):
wherever you're from and you come to this thing, we're
going to give you every single tool and layout that
we've developed throughout the time to make it in your
own city.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
That's awesome. I'm really excited to see you out there,
and we'll see you next time on the show. Thank
you very much for coming in.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
Thank you for having me. Bro. Yeah, you got beautiful
space here. Now, it's not that the other one wasn't beautiful.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
This is something different, right, Thank you so much for
joining us today on the Tucson Tasty Show. Thank you
to our sponsors and guests. That Chef Mike of Mama Luis's,
Via Earl Premium Beef, your financial guy, Cody PEC, Network Outdoors,
Local First Arizona A Lake Marketing, print and mail. Thanks

(56:38):
for tuning into the Tucson Tasty Show. Remember to savor
every delicious bite and keep those taste buds excited. We'll
see you soon. Stay Tasty, Tucson. Hello, this is Wesley
Source with the Tucson Tasty Show. With every tasty bite
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