Why does food taste so much better at restaurants? Because it’s seasoned with the tears of underpaid line cooks. Tears? I thought it was sweat. It’s tears. This is “A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich.” Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, “A Hotdog Is a Sandwich,” the show where we break down the world’s biggest food debates. I’m your host Josh Scherer. And I’m your host Nicole Enayati. And Nicole, today, we have a very special guest. We got chef number one “New York Times” bestselling author, ooh, that sounds good, and sworn enemy of all fast food restaurants everywhere. Joshua Weissman, welcome to the show, man. Hi, Joshua. Oh, thank you for having me. It’s such a pleasure. Josh and I go way back, so happy to see him again, happy to meet Nicole. Yeah. We were just talking about how I’m gonna soon miss Nicole as much as I miss Josh, you know. It’s natural, yeah. Probably more. Yeah, we don’t always have to compete with each other, but I love that we do. Yeah. It keeps things fresh in our relationship. I think it’s healthy. I think it’s healthy, and I think it’s natural. All right, so Josh, you have a long restaurant background. You didn’t go to culinary school. You started cooking when you were really young. You worked in some of the best restaurant groups in Austin. You worked at the Uchi Group? Yeah, Hai Hospitality at Uchiko in Austin. Hell, yeah, man, so you have a deep restaurant background. Nicole, you briefly worked in restaurants. I think I was a line cook for about two weeks and then I said F it. I said F it. I worked only one official restaurant shift, and I was paid under the table. It was during a triple-booked friends-and-family opening of Terrine on Beverly from Chef Kris Morningstar. Ah. He took me under his wing, and I was working- Listen to me. at his catering company before it opened. And then I had decided to go into media full-time, and I was literally at the end of my nine-to-five, and I get a call from him freaking out going, “I need someone to hop on garde manger, stat. Get your ass down here,” and I was like, “Dude, I don’t work for you.” Oh, my God. And instead, I just drove from my, you know, media job to work garde manger and basically dress salads as fast as I could for about seven hours. So that is my restaurant experience. But I also used to write about restaurants. And so today, we all have a unique perspective on the question, why does food actually taste better in restaurants? Because there’s a lot of home cooks who have this pervasive idea that it is an excess of fat, and salt, and possibly MSG that they couldn’t possibly fathom. And I think sometimes people use that as, like, an excuse for their food not tasting as good as it could. I think it’s part of the equation. Sure. Yeah, I think learning how to season your food is something that all of us learn by trial and error. And I think a lot of home cooks just kinda throw caution to the wind, and put some iodized salt in it, and call it a day. You know what I mean? No, fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough. Josh, what do you think? I mean, you know, I definitely think having extra of everything is always gonna be a good thing, right, extra salt, extra fat, extra spices. Ultimately, I think, look, let’s be real. I mean, we’re talking about professionals versus amateurs. Professionals are built to do things to the highest level of perfection. And whether it’s a fine-dining restaurant or just a nice restaurant, and when I say nice, I don’t mean like fancy. I just mean like, you know, good line cooks, properly trained staff, people who know what the they’re doing. Oh, sorry, there I go. You gotta hit the Mormon button. We’re 30 seconds in. 30 seconds, and I’ve already dropped my first F-bomb. New record, new record, for us. I wanna clarify for everybody listening today that I was told not to say any swear words. So I’m gonna do my very best, but I think everybody here who knows me, this is gonna be one of the greatest challenges of my life. You got this, you got this. We started swearing on the podcast, and then we started getting reviews that were like- Oh, my God. “I’m an 11-year-old child, and I’m not allowed to listen to this anymore in the car,” and so we felt bad, so we stopped, and now you’ve- “Mythical Kitchen” is for kids. And now you, Josh, have killed that 11-year-old’s dreams. I get the same thing. Before I go into this, I’ll make this really fast, but I get that all the time where I’ll get a DM from someone’s mom, and they’ll be like, “I really just wanna watch this with my son, Ricky, but I can’t get over the fact that you’re trying to talk about macaroni and cheese, and you keep saying the F-word. Why can’t you just talk about macaroni and cheese and call it a day, Josh?” And I’m like, “Look, I can’t help myself, all right? I’m sorry. I’m sorry I worked in restaurants. It is what it is.” Is her son Ricky Bobby? I guess. Yeah. She is Ricky Bobby. Okay, so to answer the question, though, yeah, obviously, fat, salt, all those different things, but really, it comes down to, I think generally speaking, a really high attention to detail across the board from technique- Sure. to seasoning, to, you know, like when somebody sears a steak, for example, and they flip that steak, if there’s some amount of color on it, most likely they’re gonna go, “That’s good. That’s a good-looking steak,” but in a restaurant, if there’s not edge-to-edge crust, browning from the center all the way to the outside, that’s a refire, dude. That ain’t no steak. That’s a refire. That’s not going on anyone’s plate. And so that, ultimately, is what it comes down to. Everything on your plate is optimized. But a lot of time when people cook at home, they just wanna hammer it out, put it in their mouth, and call it a day. And I think that’s the real biggest, biggest difference. But I can digress on that a lot. Yeah, the answer is it’s everything, right? It’s literally the sum. Yeah. It’s gestalty, and it’s the- It’s the nth degree. sum of all its parts. Yeah. It’s like those people who are like, okay, no, I have two analogies that I can make. I’m gonna make the first one. Okay. Then, we’re gonna try out the second one. The first one is people who are like, “If I was that tall, I could be in the NBA.” And it’s like, no. No. Like, one, there’s plenty of not very tall people in the NBA, dudes that are 5’10” to 6’1″ that have had lovely careers. Steph Curry. Steph Curry, he’s a 6’1″ man. But even the seven-footers now they have to be able to do everything. Victor Wembanyama is going between the legs, step back three. No one in the history can do that. You would not have been in the NBA if you were tall. And the second one, this is a weirder analogy. It’s mostly women who say, “I could just sell feet pics on the Internet.” And it’s like, no. No, that’s me. No, no, the people who actually, yes, no, the people who actually make money doing that are marketing geniuses. Like, they understand every single part of the equation. And to me that’s chefs, right? People are like, “If I just added that amount of salt and butter to my food, it would be great.” It’s like, “No, because you’re not doing those things.” Like, Josh, you had this excellent video that was 100 food hacks you learned as a restaurant chef. And, like, one of them is tempering your proteins, right? Sure. Something that you showed, like, back to back, you get a better sear, even though the center of that protein doesn’t come up to room temp like a lot of weird recipes insist that it does. But if you are able to raise that surface temp, say, five, six degrees, then that is gonna be less of a shock to your pan. Less steam is created, and you’re gonna get a better sear. It’s that decision plus 100 more of those good decisions on one plate that all add up to good things happening in your mouth. I agree. Yeah, I love that you compared it to feet pics, too. That’s awesome. Yeah. Listen, everything is a skill, and I think a lot of people discount that. Selling feet pics is a skill? Yes, oh, my God, yes. I feel like, let me tell- Making money selling pics is a skill. I feel like you could just, like, angle your camera in the right way and then just- Oh, what’s your distribution strategy, Nicole? Which platforms are you going to use? Don’t worry about it. Are you gonna do like- I googled so many. Are you gonna do, like, what, are you’re going on FeetFinder? Are you gonna do like content-sharing initiatives with other creators? I’m not doing anything. Because they collab just like YouTubers collab. Don’t look at my feet on the Internet. You know. Please, for the love of God. What I’m learning is that Josh should be a manager for feet pic models. Thank you, if you have any clients out there who need representation, I do have, like, a 4.93 wikiFeet rating, which is excessively high. Mine is 4.6. Mine’s lower than yours. Josh, what’s your wikiFeet rating? Is this a real thing? Yes. Yeah, wait, do you not know this? Maggie, can you look up Joshua Weissman’s wikiFeet rating? I’m sure he has one. It’s blocked on our own computers. Am I on wikiFeet? There’s no way. I don’t have any photos of my bare feet available. Are you sure? How? I’m pretty sure. I think my rating is only high because I’ve taken so many, not deliberate, but, like, so this’ll happen when I’m cooking at home. I get great natural light if I do a top-down photo at this one particular spot. So I’ll hold a finished dish that I’ve made, and then I take a top-down photo, and then my toes are always peeking out in the background. So it’ll be like, “Here’s a tarte Tatin I made,” And then my little toesies are in there. I remember- Oh, snap. When Josh calls me- I just realized. It’s a pic, what’s up? No, no, go ahead, go ahead. Oh. Whenever Josh calls me, it’s a picture of him with his feet out and with colored pencils inside. Oh. Remember that? Yeah, no, we did, I don’t know. Why did that happen? I don’t know. I was holding five colored pencils in between all my toes, and you took a picture of it. I know, every time you call me- And now it’s your caller ID. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. That’s unhinged. Thank you so much. Unhinged. All I’m saying is- Highly offended. I have a 4.15? Joshua. Josh. Oh, no, Josh, I’m so sorry. Josh. You have a 4.15 rating. Weissman, you have a 4.15. Wait, how am I on wikiFeet? I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you. The fans probably put it up somewhere. Annalise, what are the photos like? Can you just come show me the photos real quick? So what we’re saying is the amount- Josh doesn’t care about it. He just wants to see my feet. Lemme see. Yeah, I think it’s more a low rating because you don’t have enough photos out there. Uh-huh, uh-huh. So take more photos. Got it, got it, got it. Get some good lighting in there, get a bounce board maybe, and you can raise that up. I gotta work on my wikiFeet rating, okay, heard, heard, heard. Listen, there is statistical evidence to say that there is a lot more fat and salt. We’re back, baby. Yeah, yeah. A lot more fat and salt in restaurant food. There’s a study. “LA Times” published a report about it that the average restaurant meal, they surveyed 3,500 meals. The average restaurant meal contains 150% of the recommended daily value of sodium. So if you multiply that- Oh, shoot. by three you’re at 450%. That’s a lot. But again, when you are learning how to cook, like Chef Kris Morningstar dude, who was very classically trained, French trained, worked at the Patina Group, Michelin-Star pedigree, all that, he taught me the phrase, like, season to the edge, right? Like, season to the point- Sure. Yeah. where if you taste it, and you go one grain of salt, it’d be too salty, you know? And so I was talking to my- Oh, that’s so funny. Yeah? I was taught the exact same thing in a restaurant that I worked in, and they had a technique. Granted, I don’t use this technique anymore because I just, I know my palate. But when I was first learning how to season, I had a chef that used that as an example where he would say, you know, “Keep seasoning your sauce, season it to the edge.” And the way that you can tell quite literally is by dipping a spoon in your, you know, let’s just say it’s, I don’t know, any kinda sauce. You dip your spoon in it. You get, like, a quarter of a teaspoon. Taste it, and it’s good, and if you add one grain of salt to it, or two grains of salt to it, and it is now over seasoned, then it is where it needs to be. I love that It’s so meticulous. And I understand people who have salt sensitivities out there. I also am generally dubious of the, you know, health implications of excess salt. I happen to think- Interesting. that’s a little bit more correlation than causation, but also follow your doctor’s recommendations, whatever. But there was one time when my fiance’s boss, shout-out, Bill O’Dowd, if you’re listening to this podcast, he loves chili more than anything in the world. I also love chili. Chili as in, like? Like, a bowl of Texas chili. Texas chili. Chili con carne. And I made it for him for his birthday. And I went all out, you know, hand-diced the chuck to the appropriate amount, rendered it, effectively made, like, a tarka with, like, the beef fat and the spices. I went all out on this chili, and as it was finished, Julia tasted it and went, like, “Oh, that’s good.” And I went, “Yeah, give me a couple minutes.” And I basically sat there and went teaspoon of vinegar, you know, half teaspoon of salt, stir, dry, vinegar, salt. And she was going crazy ’cause she’s like, “It’s done. It’s good,” and I’m like, “No, there’s so much beef fat in it that I know it can handle a ton of acid and a ton of salt. And those three things are gonna sort of coalesce. They’re gonna harmonize with each other. And I’m waiting to get to the breaking point,” and I did. And also it’s gonna mellow over, like, a half hour. But to your point, that’s, like, how a chef seasons, right? Yes. You’re seasoning every single step, and then at the end you are fine-tuning. I don’t know what to say to the people, though, who go, “I don’t want that much salt in my diet,” because for me, I’m like, “Well, you should be sweating it out with an hour of CrossFit every morning. What are you not doing?” But that’s a lifestyle. It’s fascinating. You described it really a great way, which is, you know, taking it to the breaking point and fine-tuning at the end. I mean, I’ve done sauces and dressings, and you know, I had, like, this tom kha gai-inspired prawn dish that I was doing, and the broth, it was a really small amount of broth that went onto the plate. You know, it’s fine dining. So it’s like, you know, maybe two ounces of sauce- Sure. not even, like, one ounce of sauce, so this sauce needs to quite literally be absolutely perfect ’cause all they get is an ounce, and typically, whenever the prep cooks would make it, it would be, like, I don’t know, 15 to 20 minutes of them sitting there just seasoning it perfectly with vinegar- Damn. palm sugar, and fish sauce. Yes. Vinegar, palm sugar, fish sauce, and trying to get that sugar level to the right place, get the acidity to the right place, and then get the salt to the right place. And the way that I knew that it was there is when you would take a spoonful, and your mouth would just instantaneously water- Mm. Profusely. Mm. Yeah, that’s where it is. So this might be a case where the things that make restaurants good, one, it’s the technique, it’s the expertise, it’s the years- Sure. and years and years of training. But two, listen, there is going to be a lotta salt. Salt and fat are great ways to harmonize with other ingredients, right? Absolutely. With herbaceousness, with spice, with acid but us three, like, I’m sure we all cook a fair amount at home, especially for our partners. We’ve all made some sort of content on that. Yeah. And we all cook somewhat healthily, you know. At home, yeah. At home. You have to. How do you make that food? Because I will see a video of, say, I was watching, it was Best Bet pizzeria, a new pizzeria in LA I haven’t tried yet, but they finish a pizza, and then they just take olive oil, and they just go, sh, glug, glug, glug over the top. Mm-hmm. And I’m like, “Damn, that’s a pizza,” and you know, my fitness ass is like, “That’s just an additional 420 calories of olive oil.” In olive oil? Olive oil, there’s like 240 calories. And again, I don’t count calories, but I am mindful of what I eat. You’re aware of what’s being done. Especially because, when we’re cooking on camera, we’re eating- Sure. you know, the most intense food in the world. Sure. And so what can you do to sort of negate that excess amount of salt and fat at home to still make your food taste as good as restaurant food? Spices, that’s my answer. Bam, bam, pow. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I yelled that. I mean, spices are a great way to diversify the flavor. But, like, honestly, I’m gonna have to drop some hard truths. Drop ’em. The reality is you can add as many of your favorite spices in the world from all over the globe. Source it from Mumbai for all I care. It doesn’t matter. Wherever your spices come from does not matter if you do not have enough salt to amplify the flavor to be detected by the human palate. Boom, boom, boom. So nobody wants to sit down and spoon feed themself a tablespoon of their favorite curry spice because, to be honest, it’s not gonna be that good on its own. You need the fat, you need the salt, you need the acid. That’s what makes the dish. The reason why these dishes are famous and popular, the people that are making these foods from those regions, they are not thinking about the sodium content, the sugar content. They are making it the way that it was intended to be made to be delicious for their families, for their friends, for their customers. I have to ask. Do either of you get offended whenever you make, you know, a beautiful dish for, like, dinner, and then salt and pepper is on the table? Do you guys have salt and pepper on your kitchen tables? Oh, yeah. You do? You get offended? I get offended. I don’t put salt, we don’t have, I don’t have salt and pepper shakers in any of my- Me either. No, neither do I. Do you do have salt and pepper shakers? Absolutely not. I grew up in a salt-and-pepper-shaker-on-my-table home. I’m sure we all grew up in salt-and-pepper-shaker homes, right? Yes, well I did, and then now that I’m, like, an adult, and, like, I’m married, and I make meals for my family all the time, it’s like, “Don’t you dare put any salt on that. It’s seasoned well.” Yeah. You never get offended? Oh, yeah, no, no, it happens all the time. Julia’s mom, shout-out to Susan. I know she listens. Hi, Susan. We went to Petit Trois, a French bistro, and she, and they, listen, I’ve had seasoning issues there. They make good food, but I have had seasoning issues. Me too, I have, too. And she straight, like, asked for salt, and the server was, like, mortified. And then, like, so I’m, like, looking in the back, and I see the chef, like, arguing, and so, yeah, but this happens occasionally to me. I don’t take it personally. I mean, I don’t love it. It hurts me inside. I don’t love it. I try not to show it. But yeah, me too. I don’t even have a salt shaker. I have a salt well that I use. Yeah, Julia has to get up and leave the table and go the salt well- Yeah. get a little Diamond Crystal Kosher and sprinkle it on. That’s what David does. And I’m like, “Put the salt down.” What’s even worse is if they don’t taste it, and then they ask for it before they even taste it. And I’m like, whenever they do that, my first thought is like, “Listen, sweetheart, I know you’re used to unseasoned food, but you’re in the wrong house for that. Just sit down and shut up. It’s gonna be great.” So ridiculous. I’m glad none of us have any weird complexes about cooking for our partners. Not even a little bit, no. It sounds like we’re all super well adjusted, though. Yeah, super. Conversely, on the rare occasion that Julia cooks for me when I’m, like, coming home late from work, or I have to go to the gym late or something, I won’t use salt. I will just grab two to three bottles of hot sauce. Oh, my God. And then whatever she has cooked just gets flooded in hot sauce, and I muddle it into a nice soup like a chowder. Oh, my God. And then that’s enough seasoning for me. It’s just a fail safe. Wow. It doesn’t matter what is on the table, there will be three bottles of hot sauce. It’s sriracha, which is gonna be very expensive in, like, a month, Tapatio, and some random, like, rogue one that we found, three hot sauce bottles, no matter what we’re eating, doesn’t matter if it’s eggs. It doesn’t matter if it’s ghormeh sabzi. It doesn’t matter if it’s sushi. There is always three hot sauce bottles. It’s my husband. It’s not me. And I’m like, “Can you taste the food you’re eating?” I’m like, “Let’s do an experiment.” And I literally round up, like, round up the hot sauce. I’m like, “Eat that without hot sauce.” And he’s like, “Mm-mm,” so I just put ’em back. Bro. Does he ever, like, at least try it first without the hot sauce? No, he just puts it on. He piles it on- Goes straight for it. without even trying it. I respect that. I wanna run through some other hypotheses of- Yes. what actually makes restaurant food better than home-cooked food. Go for it. So one of my things, and again, this is from a very privileged position as somebody who’s pretty damn good at cooking. Mm-hmm. I’ve started using the adjective post-restaurant to describe myself. Ugh. I’ll get invited, I know- Pew, Josh. I’m post restaurant. I’m post restaurant. So every new restaurant, they’re doing rustic Italian, and I don’t wanna pay $22 for your spag bowl or for, you know, whatever you- You’re post-restaurant? I’m post-restaurant. Most restaurants- Ugh. The only restaurants I want to go to are restaurants that can do something that I can’t. That’s- And- I get that. There are a couple ways that you can get there. One is through expertise. So for instance, one cuisine that I’ve tried to cook a lot of, and I’ve tried to study a lot of the techniques, shout-out to Nik Sharma, who wrote some great books about it, is Indian cuisine, where to me, that is a cuisine that you can learn, but when you grow up, and it’s endemic to you, the techniques, everybody, there was a big wave of restaurants that was like, “We do Thai flavors with French technique.” French technique to me is not the end-all-be-all of technical cookery. Of course. I find a lot of Indian technical cookery to be just freaking beautiful, and you have to know a lot of it. So Indian food, something that a restaurant can significantly make better than I can. And then, number two is specialized equipment. What do you mean? Kabob. Oh, yeah. You go to Mini Kabob, right, a great Armenian restaurant in Los Angeles. They are using grape vines. They’re using dried grape vines on their grill, Nicole. And that’s something that I can’t do. No. So those are, like, really big reasons for me to go to a restaurant and things that make the food taste a lot better than I could ever do at home with my stupid little gas grill. You know? No, I totally know what you mean. I think we need to get Josh a tandoor- Dude, I- and really get cranking. 100%. You live in an apartment, right? Yeah, but like there’s no specific no tandoor rules in the HOA agreement. Yeah. You know? I bet the HOA doesn’t even know what it is- That’s what I’m saying. to be honest. Oh, my gosh. And then I’ll say that it’s racism if they don’t let me get a tandoor. Just buy a house. Buy a house in, like, what, 85 years? Yeah. And then you can build a tandoor in your house. But no, like, a tandoor is a perfect, so if you cook nan at home, right, and you- It’s never the same. You just throw it on, like, an electric griddle or you have a flat top, it is not the same of taking that nan on a hook and throwing it against or slapping it with your hand against the clay of a tandoor- Yeah. Where you get, Josh, you talk about the perfect sear on a steak all the way around. Oh, yeah. The perfect freaking caramelization on the nan- It’s nuts. from being stuck to the clay, ah. I have one outside. God, I’m coming over. I used it. It’s great. No way. Although it’s pillow first. So the flatbread would go on the pillow, and then you use the pillow- Yeah. That’s right. to slap it against the wall, and then the hook is what gets it off- That’s right, that’s right. and catches it before it falls into the bottom. Yeah, I mean, I use mine more frequently than I thought I would, and genuinely, like, honestly, if you just pull a fresh, any flatbread, it could be nan, but, like, if you pull fresh nan out of there and immediately hit it with a little bit of ghee and garlic and eat it right then and there, like seconds after it came out, it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Nothing better. There’s no, I’m trying so hard to say this without cursing right now. You got this. I believe in you. I don’t even know what to say. Find those SAT words, you know? Did you see my brain working? You can probably hear it through the microphone. Yes, yes. I’m sweating not to say that word. Oh, my gosh, it’s really, it is really, it’s an otherworldly experience, though. There’s nothing better than that, truly. And it makes great proteins. Outside of, you know, tandoori chicken, you can still do all sorts of different things. I’ve just taken cubed up steak, and you know, did a quick dry-age, maybe like a, I think I did a, some sort of, like, rice-salt dry-age on a steak and then cubed it up, put it on one of the tandoor rods, put it in there. It was one of the best steaks I’ve ever had. Mm. It was insane. Damn, what are the, like, restaurant experiences that y’all seek out these days? Well, I went to Alinea, and it, like, was really awesome. “My name’s Nicole. I went to Alinea.” That was really cool. “I ate a balloon.” Like, as a food person, I, like, checked it off my list. Yeah. And I’m like, “That was really cool.” I could never do that at home. I understand how they did it, and I respect how they did it, but there’s no way in hell I could do, like, 1% of what they did. And that level of fine dining is a combination of everything. It’s equipment that you would never have. It’s expertise that you would never have. It’s ingredients that you would never have. It’s time that you would never have, and then it’s seasoning. Best 30th birthday ever. Right? You have to have, like, an insane amount of context on technique in order to start playing with food like that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you have to know, you have to already have been a full master of many cuisines because, if you don’t have that baseline structure, good luck being artistic like that. Mm-hmm. Good luck. But yeah, man, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve had, like, am Earth-shattering restaurant experience. Don’t get me wrong. I do have, you know, my go-to restaurants that I love that I think are amazing, but one that I would sit down and be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s, like, the best meal I’ve had in X amount of years,” that’s tough. I mean, I don’t know. It doesn’t have- In New York, I mean- to be fine dining either. It doesn’t have- It doesn’t have to be fine dining, you know Of course not. Course not. It can be, you know, any, it can be a taco truck, anything, sushi. Right. Yeah, yeah. I have to think on that. I don’t know if I have one this year that I’ve really just been totally blown away by. He’s post-restaurant. Are you post restaurant now? He’s post-restaurant just like me. Wait, nobody, I don’t really know. What is that exactly? Post-restaurant? Explain to the man what post restaurant is. To be post restaurant, Josh, is to have gone completely clear of mind and to have realized that 99% of restaurants are not worth the money whatsoever. It’s like when somebody finally streampocalypses themself, and they’re like, “I have nine streaming services, and I watch zero of them ’cause it’s all bad. I’m gonna delete them all and just watch YouTube chefs,” which I support everybody doing. But no, I’ve gone through my own sort of phase on that. But it made me realize and hone in the foods that other places can do better than I can, which, like, one of my favorite restaurant experiences in the world is in Austin, Texas, Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ. Oh, yeah, you told me about this. It is the most- Solid. beautiful handmade flour tortillas and then some of the top beef rib and brisket that I’ve ever had up that with the best of the best in Austin, and then of course, they have, like, all their homemade salsas, so you’re just plying these tortillas that I could never make as good at home with brisket and beef rib that, again, I don’t have the capabilities, or time, or expertise to do- Mm-hmm. and then salsas that are dating back generations that are just delicious. Oh, wow. Wrapping it up, slurping it down. That sounds so good. So those are the experiences that I find myself chasing these days because some people are right. You go to a Chili’s, a Cheesecake Factory. That is absolutely food that you, you can make the chicken fettuccine bow tie Cajun pasta at Cheesecake Factory at home if you have the will to throw that much butter- Fair. into a dish. And I agree with those people. However, when you say stuff like restaurants are only good because of fat and salt, you’re then, like, negating the beautiful expertise and traditions that people have been working for for so long. That was beautiful. And you’re negating the marketing capabilities of these women with the feet. Sure, are the feet beautiful? Yes, but it’s the distribution methods. David has this, like, David’s toes, so he has, like, his big toe, and then his little toe goes over his big toe, and he was born that way. It crosses over? Wow, that’s great information. Yeah, and then you know what he says? He can make a lot of money. He says, “Oh, this is, like, the feet of royalty.” And I’m like, “You’re disgusting.” Josh, I wanna ask you a question. What are the couple tips that you have for home cooks that could get their food to be more like restaurant food? That’s a good question. It doesn’t start with feet, unfortunately. I know you guys- Oh. Oh, God. We’re out. I know. I know. We’re out. All right, guys, really great podcast. Thank you so much. Show me them tootsies before you go out, Josh. Get me outta here. And I’m gonna end this with as many F-bombs as this show is ever had. Here we go. No, so anyway. Yeah, I mean, ways that people can make their food closer to restaurant quality. Honestly, and this is gonna sound dead horse that’s getting beaten, to be specific. You know, the way that I just stated that probably not ideal. It sounded like dead horse. Dead horses are typically silent. Hey. Hang on, wait, rewind, rewind. I’m beating a dead horse with this one, which is ultimately, you can kind of distill everything down into technique. And if you want your food to even be remotely or even just a step closer to restaurant quality or a restaurant that you love, then sit back and find something that you really enjoy making, whatever it is. Let’s just make it simple, Let’s call it a burger, right? Mastering a great burger is not that hard. Then, break it down and get really, really good at the technique from top to bottom, how you smash the patty. How hard do you smash it? What are you smashing it on? Is it a cast iron, or is it a plancha? What is the plancha made out of? Is it carbon steel? What is it? How thin is it? How thick is it? How well does it retain heat? What type of salt are you using? How much are you seasoning it? How much cheese do you put, what kind of cheese, what kind of buns? I could go on and on about this for hours. But the point is dive deep onto one thing and see what it’s like when you dive deep on technique and watch how it changes what you make. And I guarantee you that, once you’ve figured that one thing out, it’ll be a domino effect on everything else you make. Damn, that’s beautiful. That was awesome. Nicole, what you got? I don’t know. I just got chills by what he said. Hold on, give me, like, three seconds to compose myself. Like, I guess what I’m trying to say is, like, you need that, like, epiphany moment, I think. Yeah. I’ve noticed a big difference between people who don’t cook at all and, like, despise cooking. And then there’s this other party that, like, almost like it too much. I, like, take a step back, and I’m like, “Yo, chill. Like, you’re a normal person. You don’t have to do all this, right?” And what I’ve realized is the difference is that one of them had an epiphany moment when they were cooking or when they were eating that made them realize that they had the ability and the capability to do those things. And they dove deep on one thing, and it just became this really cool element. And we’re the only animal on the planet that cooks our food. So everyone has the capability in their own DNA to make something great, but if you never have that moment that realizes, that empowers you to do so, then you never will, so you gotta have that one. And I think that’s how people will probably get it. You know, I don’t know. I’m sound a little soapboxy here today. No, man, I mean, I- I love it. Literally- It’s incredible. we host a podcast. This is the human equivalent of an eternal soapbox, and we have a great deal of shame about it. But also, I mean, it’s for communicating messages like that that I couldn’t agree with more. Agree. Buy this man’s book. God, he’s a walking box of knowledge. Hey, it’s out there, you know. It’s right back there. I’ll tell you what. Thank you, Josh, big plug. “Sporked” has the scoop on the best Halloween candies to buy this year. They sure do. Head to sporked.com to see all their Halloween candy rankings. Where does Almond Joy fit in? Find out over at sporked.com. All right, Nicole and Josh, we’ve heard what you and I have to say. Now it’s time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe. Well, it’s time for a segment we call- “Opinions Are Like Casseroles.” That’s vaguely what the music sounds like, right? I think I’m, what’s it, atonal, tone deaf? You’re definitely atonal. Can’t do it. But anyways- Time to start kicking in that budget for the music. Let’s go. Listen, listen. I got the best feet in the game. One man can’t have it all. Dude, that’s a whole new revenue stream for you. I know, man. Yo, that’s my insurance policy if I ever get fired from this place. I’m just saying. Good for you. Thank you. So what we’ve done, we have queued up a bunch of our fans to give their hot takes about restaurants. Mm-hmm. Josh, we’re gonna go ahead and read them off. You get first crack at taking on their hot take. That’s right. Nicole, you want me to read the first one? I’ll do the first one. You do the first one. Okay, Dad Bod God says, “Chain restaurants are better than local ones for the reason of consistency. You can go anywhere and get the same meal. Do I like that? No. Am I wrong? No. How do you feel, Mr. Weissman?” Oh, okay, right, reminder, no curse words. That’s just dead wrong. I would argue that chain restaurants have more inconsistency than local restaurants because they’re spread out by significantly more locations, more managers, which means the information that is required to execute a proper product has now been diffused by a multitude of more people, which means more inconsistency. Mm-hmm. Matter of fact, that is exactly why my older series “But Better” exists, well, one of the reasons- Really? not the only reason, to prove how inconsistent they are. One of my favorite things is that I’ll post a video and beat the poopy, there we go. Yeah, I’m doing good. I’m doing good, guys. Poopy. Beat the poopy. Can I say poopy? I guess that would work. You could say it, like, 15 times if you want. That was great. Awesome, you know, out of, like, let’s say a McDonald’s, I don’t know, burger, right, and then everyone will be like, “Well, typically, it doesn’t taste like that, Josh, ’cause like, you know, the McDonald’s near me is a whole lot better. You know, you probably just had a bad one.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool, so you’re saying Mr. Multi-Billion Dollar Corporation can’t have consistency? Bro, if they can’t, ain’t nobody gonna have it.” So anyway, that’s my digression on that. Yeah, especially with the franchise model, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I’ve gone to McDonald’s in Europe, and they tend to be more consistent, and 7-Elevens in Japan are another great example- Sure. where everybody raves about how good the food is. I totally understand that. America, though, thanks to Ray Kroc and unfettered capitalism, we just spread all that so thin. People are underpaid. They tend to not care when you are a mega-billion-dollar corporation- Sure. that’s underpaying them, so I’ve found, even at mid-level chain restaurants, Applebee’s, I’ve gotten a steak at Applebee’s that was supposed to be, like, a sirloin, and it was just, like, this mangled, grisly mystery cut. Hmm. And I was like, “I wish that was true,” and that’s supposed to be the benefit of a chain restaurant, that it’s consistent, but they’re just not. You can get an inconsistent meal anywhere, but at least if it’s a mom-and-pop that’s run well, I think you can get people to care a little bit more about the quality of your food. ‘Kay, I agree with you guys, but there’s one caveat when you go to the airport. I will only eat at a chain restaurant in an airport. I will not eat any random, like, I don’t know, like a random restaurant. I will eat, I will eat Panda Express at, like, 8:00 in the morning. Panda’s a good example. I will eat Panda Express 10:00 at night. I will eat at any time. Now that you say that, I actually think, out of all the chain restaurants in the world, I think Panda Express might be the most consistent in history. Yes. Yes. So- Which is weird. Sorry, go ahead. I learned this from my sister because my sister’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve gotten food poisoning so many times whenever I eat at, like, small mom-and-pop restaurants at airports, or whatever, or, like, small little places.” And I’m like, “You’re right.” So I agree with you, unless I’m in an airport. Shout-out to Panda Express, man. They just do good work. I love Panda Express in airports, specifically. And they’re actually cooking in woks, too, which is, like, you know, they’re cooking relatively fresher than a lot of fancy restaurants. They’re low-key killing it. Yeah. Low key. All right, so we got @Austin Leeco. “I want every restaurant’s music playlist to be 100% employee made. Have everyone, kitchen, front of house, bar, any other service position, work together to make a Spotify blend and play it on shuffle.” Oh, absolutely not. Oh, my God. No way, no way, dude. There’s gonna be someone named Ricky that’s, like, a busser, and he’s gonna wanna play something crazy. He’s gonna wanna play something that’s, like, got all the wrong things in it- Norwegian black metal that is gonna make somebody uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. Do what? He’s gonna play Norwegian black metal. Bussers love Norwegian black metal. It’s a fact. Hate American prog metal. That’s true, or it’s gonna be, like, really weird independent SoundCloud rappers that, like, make weird noises like, “Ay, ah,” you know, in the middle of the beat, and you’re like, “What’s going on here?” Wow, Is that Sexy Red- You gotta have a vibe, bro. on the podcast? That’s crazy. Sexy Red, what color is your- Ski. Do you want me to answer this right now? Yeah, Nicole, you have the floor. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. No, music, let tell you, the Chipotle music creator, whatever his name is- Mm-hmm. he did good work. I think every restaurant, at a certain point, like, whenever you reach that, like, point where you are franchising and stuff like that if you’re a chain, you should have a designated playlist, and it should be that designated playlist forever. I- Also, like, sorry to interrupt you, Josh. No, go, go, go. But the other thing is also branding, right? Like, they gotta have brand consistency. So if it’s a legit, like, if it’s not just, like, some walk-in-and-eat-and-get-out, but like most restaurants have a brand identity, and they gotta have the right music that fits the vibe and yeah. I agree. Vespertine for instance, I believe, two-Michelin-Star restaurant from Chef Jordan Kahn, they made all of their servers wear goat-skin slippers so as to not make a sound when they walk around. And I think it was mangling all their feet. Kind of ended up being a bit of a situation. But they got this experimental indie ambient noise band from Austin to write them a soundtrack just to play in the restaurant. So I think it does come to the brand. Some of my favorite restaurant music experiences are, like, Anajak Thai, Justin Pichetrungsi. Yeah. ’90s hip-hop head. You go in there, there’s Wu-Tang blasting, and you’re eating grilled razor clam tostadas- Sure. outside in an alley. Music, to me, can add to the ambiance. And I love that they wanna democratically source that. I just think you’d end up with a strange, it’d be like democratically sourcing a menu, being like, “Everyone, busser, you get to put a dish on the menu tonight.” It’s like, “Well, let’s have some consistency.” I think the person that wants that has no idea and is not actually thinking about what the end product would be like when they’re in a restaurant. I think they would walk into a restaurant that was like that, and they’d be like, “This is awful.” That was a terrible idea. Well, meanwhile that restaurant is literally going under because of them. All right, our next opinion, Existential Dread Barbie says, “Too many restaurants have a spin on the Caesar salad, and most of them are awful. Why are there tomatoes?” Hmm. Oh, great take, great take. Caesar salad is a very simple thing. You make your anchovy dressing. You put it on roamaine lettuce. You can add croutons if you like, although I would definitely recommend it with a little bit of extra parm on top. Call it a day. It is what it is. It’s like whenever someone, one of my least favorite things of all time. It’s like when someone puts arugula, all right, again, no cursing. I’m reminding myself. When someone puts arugula on a burger, I’m sorry if either of you guys do this and enjoy it, but respectfully- I stand by it. No. I’m so sorry. No. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Nicole, but you just can’t do that. Or maybe like broccoli on a pizza, you know. It’s just like- I love broccoli on pizza. I love that. I love broccoli on pizza. Oh, oh. It’s so good. I’m out. Nice knowing ya. No, come back, come back. Arugula on a burger, for me, is gonna be like how our parents would just, like, put cottage cheese on it. They’d be like, “Yeah, you eat this with cottage cheese, and that’s a breakfast.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, like, a moment in time that I’m stuck in because, like, 2011, 2012, the big fancy burger movement- Farmer, Farmer, Father’s Office? Father’s office was the spot. Farmer’s office. But, like, for me, arugula on a burger, I don’t even like it. I don’t like the taste of it. It’s flat. It’s dense. It’s, like, a little bit bitter and peppery, which I like. I love it. I love it. But it to me still, like, signifies a time in my life where I paid, at the time, like 12, $13 for a burger, which was a lot. And you get, like, an $8 beer that was like, “This is a smoked double chocolate stout IPA that has 9%,” you know, and you’re there and pay with your fake ID at a freaking gastro pub. So to me, that’s a moment in time, and I refuse to apologize. How do you think- Wait, Nicole, why don’t you like, or why do you like arugula on a burger? I genuinely am curious. Like, what do you like about it? Because it’s yummy. No, I’m truly curious. I just like, okay, so there’s this place called Father’s Office that does a really delicious burger, and it’s, like, on, what kind of bread is it on, Josh, like French? It’s on a French roll. It’s on, like, a bolillo, like an oblong- It’s on, like, a bolillo. It has blue cheese, bacon, onion, jam, and arugula on it. And it’s a perfectly delicious, yummy burger. There’s another cheese. It’s like Taleggio. Is it Taleggio? It’s like Taleggio blue. It’s not blue cheese? Oh, it’s both. It’s both. It’s so good. The burger is, at points, it was invented in 1999 and literally is responsible for kicking off this big, beautiful, buxom, bodacious burger trend. Yeah. So there’d be no umami burger, you know, no Jean Georges burger, none of this without Chef Sang Yoon at Father’s Office. Yeah. And you can still go back today, and it holds up in its own way. The burgers, they’re char-grilled, and they’re super thick, and they will be, like, to the point of tartar. Yeah, they’re raw. Often. They’re, like, straight-up raw. No ketchup. Which you know, they’re house ground, so it’s food safe. And they have signs that say no ketchup, and it’s dark. It’s dim. The seats are uncomfortable, and I love it. I love it. I love arugula on a burger. Do I like it more than a California style In-N-Out burger? Mm. Different experiences. Different experience, yeah, I agree. Also broccoli on pizza’s so good. Have you- Yeah, dude, that just sucks. Dude, you suck. What are talking about you? Have you ever had a vegetable pizza before in your existence of living? Of course, but broccoli is just, like, a weird one, dude. It’s not that weird. Like, that’s a fart in my mouth I’m not expecting. You gotta pay extra for that. Caesar salad, we should go on to another sentence, but no, no, I wanna talk about Caesar salad. Talk about Caesar salad. Talk about Caesar salad. Caesar salad. You? Me? You. Me. Yeah, a Caesar salad is one of those things. If I see tomatoes in it, I’m like “Ew, this is”- Yeah. I literally wanna tweeze them out ’cause they’re so disgusting. Yeah, tomato, bacon, hard boiled egg, anything you add to it- No, it’s disgusting. detracts from it. The the hard-boiled egg I’ve had, like, in a deconstructed, like, Caesar, and it was, like, okay. Deconstructed. Caesar salads are barely constructed. You don’t need to, that’s like deconstructing a sand castle. You’re just kicking it down. I had it at Tom Colicchio’s restaurant in Vegas, and it was just fine, but there’s nothing better than an ice-cold Caesar salad with a homemade anchovy dressing- Yeah. and those beautiful shaves of parm, and a really nice, crispy, crunchy crouton. It’s, like, the perfect salad. The way that you can play, this is like Josh was talking about learning fundamentals so then you can play within the rules- Sure. of what makes something good. Sure. There’s ways to play with the Caesar salad within the rules, like making a Parmesan frico is a great way to- Grilling it. add the crunch, you know. Yeah, I mean lightly grill that, you know, Caesar. I don’t know if I love grilled lettuce all that much, but one of the best Caesar salads, you go to, like, Jon & Vinny’s. Yeah. They do one of my favorite things. Instead of croutons, it’s toasted breadcrumbs that are very, very heavily seasoned. Yeah. And the lettuce is kept- Yes. in really whole, big pieces. There’s a little bit of Calabrian chili in the dressing, and everything in that still has the flavor profile of a Caesar, still eats like a Caesar salad. Sure. But everything’s just optimized and crunched up, and I love that. Sure. That’s the way you play. Salt. One last opinion. Salt. Salt. No, for real, salt. Do you season your, and this is another technique that I learned working in, well, actually you were talking about dressing salads for garde manger. Yeah. I wonder if they taught you this ’cause they should have. A great salad dresser on garde manger, before they add any dressing, they’re gonna add a pretty generous handful of, ideally, Maldon or finishing salt, which adds crunch. But also when you add the dressing, it’s gonna kind of mix with the dressing- So like a- salt the greens a little bit because, if you think about it, you season a dressing perfectly with salt. You taste it. It’s nice and salty. But guess what. You now added an ingredient that’s full of water, which is now gonna- Sure. diffuse that now perfectly salted dressing, and it’s gonna become immediately undersalted. So you have to add more salt directly to the veg. Mm-hmm. Yep. I was taught that in culinary school when we had garde manger in culinary school. Yeah, yeah, we did a, it was like a shaved Brussel thing with, like, a caramelized shallot vinegarette or something. But yeah, it was, like, especially cabbage, too. You have to, yeah. Like, definitely salt that, but not too early, or else it bleeds, but then you salt it right before, toss it. Sure, sure. Bingo, bango. This is a great opinion. This is a great opinion. Last opinion. Last one, last one. “If you go to a restaurant and see a big, sweaty dude wearing a bandana outside smoking a cigarette and talking on a flip phone, that’s about to be the best food you’ve ever had. Nothing will come close to the pure, pure joy you experience.” That’s @Philomoocs, big, sweaty dude, bandana, cigarette, flip phone. They have to be sweaty. Yeah. For sure, for sure. I couldn’t agree more. I think that’s super true and chain-smoking cigarettes, and ideally, he should have at least three to four cigarette butts next to him that have already been totally demolished. And on top of that, he should be yelling- Yeah. on the phone for no reason. Yeah. And he could be talking about something completely normal like, “Hey, did you remember to take the dog out?” He’d be like, “Did you even remember to take the dog out? You know, that’s good. Mm-hmm, yeah, it’s that pressure-cooker situation, you know, that you really need. If this is a woman, I know it’s gonna be the best meal, actually. Ah, yes. If it’s a woman with a bandana like this, apron, flip phone, yelling at the top of her lungs, chain-smoking cigarettes, I know that’s gonna be a good meal. Yeah, and classic Americana-style tattoos. You could tell- Yeah, yeah, yeah. in high school she was a greaser and into rockabilly. Yeah, she like, what’s that thing where you go on the roller skates and you punch people? Roller derby, a roller derby player. Roller derby. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alternate- And then there’s a line cook. There’s a line cook that comes out the door, and then sees that she’s out there, and immediately turns around and goes back inside. Yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yep, yeah. I will say, if you see anybody in this particular position, and this spans many different cultures, ethnicities, and countries, and continents, but if they are squatting with both feet firmly on the ground, heels raised, butt almost at the same level as their heels, if they are squatting in that position while smoking a cigarette outside looking absolutely miserable, that, to me, is going to be the best. It could be Ukrainian, it could be Vietnamese, it could be Brazilian, Chile. Anybody in that position, they have cooked some great food in life. Milk crate. Milk crate, baby. No, the milk crate, yeah. Milk crate, milk crate. Uh-huh, and they’re squatting next to milk crate. There it is. There’s a milk crate to sit in, but no, they’re sitting in the squat ’cause they’re comfy and they’ve been- Yeah, yeah. God dang, well, I’m all riled up. That’s where the flavor is. On that note, thank y’all for listening to “A Hotdog Is a Sandwich.” We got new audio-only episodes every Wednesday and a video version here on YouTube every Sunday. And if you wanna be featured on “Opinions Are Like Casseroles,” you can hit us up at 833-DOG-POD1. The number again is 833-DOG-POD1. Extremely drawn out, Nicole, thank you. And you can purchase Joshua Weissman’s new book, Joshua Weissman “Texture Over Taste,” right now. Josh, you got anything else you wanna plug? No, this is great. I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you for having me on. This was a great chat, one of the better chats I’ve had. I appreciate- Oh, Josh. the love and appreciation for great food and proper execution and not BSing. It’s good stuff. Love you guys. Can’t BS BSers. Can’t BS a BSer. BSer. No, likewise, man, this is super fun. Mad respect for everything that you’ve been doing and catch you soon. Yeah, see you guys soon. I’ll be in LA. Let’s get together. Hell, yeah. Bye, guys.