Transcript:

Ben Smith (00:00:26):

Welcome everybody to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. My name is Ben Smith and I'm one of the co-hosts here on the show. Listeners, hope you're all doing well today. If you want to be a part of the show, you can email us at bensmith@guidancepointrs.com. You can find us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, just Search Retirement Success and Maine podcast. You can find some more additional content. With me is my co-host, the Bobby Flay, to my Anne Burrell. Curtis Worcester. How are you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester (00:00:54):

Alright. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Funny you bring up Bobby Flay. I got sucked into a beat Bobby Flay marathon the other day on tv. It was one of those late at nights and I'm hungry. But obviously, Ben, you and I, we love food. We love talking about food. We love eating food. So if you haven't figured it out already, the theme here is going to be a little food related, right? So Ben, when you and I, we think about the world of food, right? It's not just the ingredients or the dishes that make it special. It's the people behind them, the chefs, the restaurateurs, the innovators who bring culinary art to life. And obviously on this show we're talking about retirement. We often have time and freedom to explore new passions and what better passion than discovering the stories and talents of the legends and future legends of the culinary world. So today we're diving into how retirees can enrich their lives by seeking out these remarkable individuals, learning from their experiences and planning trips that revolve all around the incredible food they create.

Ben Smith (00:01:58):

Yeah, and our guest today is someone who knows this world really intimately. He's worked with some of the most influential names of the culinary scene and has seen firsthand how their passion and creativity has shaped the way we eat and think about food. From Dan Barber's dedication to sustainable farming, to Nancy Silverton's, mastery of artisanal Baking. These figures are not just chefs, they're artists and pioneers. So our guest, a two-time Emmy Award-winning producer. He's the mastermind behind the Iconic Food Network show. Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. He's a career spanning decades and has not only showcase America's most beloved eateries, but he is also played a pivotal role in transforming the way we experience food and television. He has a deep passion for culinary storytelling that's inspired countless food lovers to explore and savor the unique flavors found in every corner of the country. He has insights that today remind us that food is not just about sustenance, it's about adventure, discovery and the connections we make along the way. So we got the exclusive interview right after his launch of his new podcast, culinary Characters Unlocked, which consists of interviewing some amazing people from the world of cooking. Today we're thrilled to have David Page back with us to talk about the lessons we can learn from these culinary legends, how to discover them and their foods, and how to make these experiences as centerpiece of our retirement adventures. David, really appreciate you coming on the show today. Welcome to the Retirement Success and Maine podcast. Thanks for coming on. How are you doing?

David Page (00:03:24):

Thanks for having me back. I'm doing great.

Ben Smith (00:03:26):

Awesome.

David Page (00:03:27):

Haven't been to Maine in a while, but we used to vacation there when I was a kid. So give my best to your beaches that have no sand,

Ben Smith (00:03:37):

No sand, just rocks. Just rock. Just really uncomfortable. Jagged rocks. That's what

David Page (00:03:43):

We have. Yeah, but it's made up for by the ability to sit on a wharf and eat lobster till you fall in.

Ben Smith (00:03:52):

That's right. That's right. So, well, I got to ask you the question real quick. Butter or mayonnaise?

David Page (00:03:58):

Mayonnaise. I'm a main style, although a few people realize this. The original lobster roll was invented in Connecticut and it was warm butter, it wasn't Mayo.

Curtis Worcester (00:04:08):

Yep, yep. Butter. We might have to cut that out, but that's good information. It's good. Hold on. That's good info.

David Page (00:04:15):

I interviewed for my book a couple, and they had been New Englanders, but down East Magazine. Is it still published? Okay. Oh yeah, definitely. Years back, they were looking for the best lobster roll in America and they selected a place called Freshies in Park City, Utah, which yes, the husband and wife that owned it were originally from New England, but they were out there in the middle of the country doing it their way, and it was bizarre. I'm a big advocate of the main style lobster roll, very little mayonnaise. I don't even want the crunchy stuff in it, but it's essential in my view that the ratio of lobster to the crunch of the split top bun to the taste of the butter on the bun complimenting the lobster at Freshies, they don't use butter on the outside of the bun. They use mayo, which is, I mean, that's increasingly become popular for grilled cheese sandwich.

Curtis Worcester (00:05:17):

I was just going to say that.

David Page (00:05:19):

Yeah. What a lobster roll.

Curtis Worcester (00:05:20):

Yeah. Yep.

David Page (00:05:21):

I love that. Go with it. It's fine.

Ben Smith (00:05:25):

Well, David, I mean we're just kind of showcasing your expertise right out the gate, but I know from a bio perspective on our show, we want to obviously just hear a little bit about your background and obviously for those that maybe didn't catch our previous episode together that we did love to have you give us a little bit about your background of in the food and television intersection there.

David Page (00:05:49):

Sure. Look, I've been in some version of broadcasting since I was 14 years old and I'll be 70 in a few weeks, so it's been a while. Well started spinning records as a high school age disc jockey on WCAT in Orange, Massachusetts, the kitty cat with the 500 Walk Me Out. I went on from there, followed the news business across the country, worked in tv, got picked up by NBC News, got sent overseas, was lucky enough to cover some of the seminal events of the 20th century. I mean, I walked through the Berlin Wall the night it opened, came back to the States, was a show producer at NBC and then a BC Left News and got into the world of production where my big credit was creating Diners Drive-Ins and Dives at a desperation because nobody was buying anything from me, and the Food Network was interested in something about literally, I was on the phone with a food network executive and I was pitching stuff and she kept saying no.

(00:06:55):

And finally she said, don't you have anything else about diners? Because I had done a diner show for them through another production company quite a while back, and I said, oh, absolutely. I'm developing this show called Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. And she said, that's interesting, get us a write up on Monday. And I got off the phone and I had not been developing a show called Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. I had just pulled the name out air and as of that point, suddenly I was a food journalist and have been for quite a while now.

Curtis Worcester (00:07:23):

Oh, I love that. I love that. And I'm going to stop here before I go into my next, we really want to dive today, but I'm going to tell everybody to pause where we're at and if you really want to hear about the creation of that show, we talked about it at length in our previous episode with David, which was episode 59, so I'm going to pause there, everyone go listen to 59 if you haven't, but then come back, but then you're coming back. We're going to resume and we're going to pick right up and here we go. Right? So what we hear, Ben and I working with our clients and our listeners, right? Many retirees are eager to dive into the culinary world and uncover the hidden gems and rising stars in the food scene, right? If you were guiding someone, David, on this journey, where would they begin? What resources, strategies, tips, right? What do you recommend? It's simple. Where do we start? It's

David Page (00:08:11):

Simple today, thanks to Instagram where everybody posts pictures of their meal, but more to the point, thanks to a multitude of online resources devoted to culinary, the most prominent, probably being eater.com. If you're going to New York, obviously New York Magazine has tremendous food coverage in that area, but beyond that, wherever you are going to go get online, find the local newspaper, find the local magazine, find the local alternative weekly, although they're running Metamucil ads these days, so I'm not sure how alternative are and look at their food coverage and decide, or you can choose it by region or by type. Where do you want to go? Well, tell you what, I've heard a lot about Charleston, so how do I find out about Charleston? Well, there's Charleston Magazine, there's the local paper, there's coverage. You Google Charleston's best restaurants or Charleston's best food and a million entries will come up.

(00:09:24):

Now you have to be discerning. I'm not a big one for Yelp reviews. There's no credibility behind them. There's no assurance whatsoever that these aren't restaurants themselves trying to convince you they're wonderful. But if you're looking at some kind of publication, I mean that's an old print term, but some kind of resource that wants to inform you and entertain you about food, that's the best place to go. Look. In the old days, really the only thing you had was the road food guides put out by the Sterns. I recently interviewed Michael Stern for the podcast and they were breaking new ground, and that was where I would have gone to start with. But when we started diners, before the internet controlled the world, my researchers and producers would start by calling the food writers for various publications in an area we were looking to go to. And by the way, a A RP magazine sometimes will have culinary or food features, and by the way, a RP magazine, I mean their obvious target audience is getting younger and younger, but be that as it may, they have some good recommendations. Look, once you get to town, the number one recommendation I can give you is to differentiate between the famous tourist places,

(00:10:54):

Which doesn't make them bad and the places that locals go. The extreme example, my wife, daughter and I were in Hong Kong and I managed to convince the concierge at our very Western hotel that I honest to God wanted to eat food the way local residents eat food.

(00:11:15):

And he trusted me and instead of sending me to the 10 places, the concierge always gets a kick, I'm sorry, a tip. He sent me to an honest to God working man's joint, and we went downstairs and opened the door. It was this cavernous room filled with like picnic tables. They were gray, they weren't brown, but there were communal tables throughout this huge hall and nobody speaking English, and best I could tell we were the only out of towners there, and the food was remarkable. It was dim sum and it was circulated in the baskets you're used to from any Chinatown in New York. It was unbelievable. And at one point I was pointing at a basket and a guy behind me who hadn't said a word, he was either elderly or looked elderly. And what he said to me was, and I quote that not for you. Oh, so of course I had to try it and it was duck

(00:12:15):

And it was, I mean, duck foot has no flavor. It's a delivery system for whatever you flavor it with, which is frankly no different than grits or eggplant, but that's the experience you want. I mean, talk to your Uber driver, talk to your cab driver, talk to the bellman at your restaurant and say, don't send me where you send all the tourists. What are your favorite restaurants and why now, Charleston, I mentioned Charleston. That's an interesting experience because even the world famous tourist restaurants there will blow your mind for a reasonable price. Last time my wife and I were in Charleston, we went to Husk

(00:12:56):

Which is one of the great restaurants in America, had what may have been, I had a great meal, my wife's meal may have been the best she ever had, but the entrees were like 35 bucks. Yeah, that's great. Generally you go to everyone's into tasting menus and it's 370. Oh, screw that.

(00:13:14):

And maybe the best meal I had in Charleston was at this rundown shack at the end of a long pier that specialized in fried oysters. Unbelievable and cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap is a good thing when you're looking to eat, when you go to a place for the food as much as possible, you want to eat what's local. And by the way, there is a really fine way to do that in many, many places that a lot of people dismiss as below them or too touristy. And I disagree entirely, and that's a food tour on the podcast so far, I've interviewed a gentleman who does the Charleston Food tour and a woman who does a Milwaukee food tour, Milwaukee of all places. I called her because Eater declared Milwaukee the hot food city for 2024, and I lived in Chicago. I've been to Milwaukee. I never would've considered Milwaukee as a hotbed of culinary happenings, but speaking to the woman who runs food tours there, it sounds fantastic. And I don't mean to just talk about other countries obviously.

Ben Smith (00:14:28):

No, this is great

David Page (00:14:29):

Travel a lot of places, but when we went to Madrid a couple of years ago, well, we went to Spain and had food experiences in a number of places, but we took a tapas tour in Madrid, tapas

(00:14:44):

All appetizers, and I'm supposed to be some kind of a lay expert on food, so why do I need a food tour? Well, damnit, I learned so much. First of all, I enjoyed some terrific food. Secondly, I had a great evening with a bunch of like-minded people, including our guide who was fantastic. And third, I learned a ton about and I've spent a lot of time in Spain, I've worked in Spain a lot, and on this food tour I learned all sorts of things about the country culture and history that I previously did not know. There's no better way to get to know a place than a food tour. There's another option too, local cooking class. We took a cooking class in Spain. It was a half day, I wasn't going to leave with any kind of award, but I did learn how to make a couple of dishes that are just iconic to Spain, including a Spanish tortilla, which in Spain tortillas are not the bread product or the starch product that they are in Mexico. They are a dense omelet filled with among other things, potatoes and the way they're made, you kind of unstick them from a baking dish like it's a pie, it's

(00:15:59):

Over, it goes. And that was a great experience and the woman teaching the class was clearly someone's grandmother and I have almost functional Spanish as long as we're in the present tense and nothing is plu perfect or conditional. So I tried to speak to her briefly in Spanish while I became the teacher's pet and she was talking to me at a hundred miles and I heard about 2% of it, but I did get some terrific attention in class that day.

Ben Smith (00:16:27):

Perfect. So David, I want to obviously, so you've kind of given us a really lot of great tips around going places, experiencing again the food tours, asking for those local experts to point you in the right direction. Thinking about culinary characters locked here in your podcast, right? Is

(00:16:47):

Where you're saying, here's up and coming and established chefs and so I want to go experiencing them, right? Is I want to go like, Hey, I've listened to David your show and it just came out and I want to hear episode three and here's the chef. I want to go try there. That sounds really great. I want to go see and experience this. How would you go about planning this? We're trying to, if I'm going to go to Milwaukee for example, and here's this up and coming chef and I want to go experience to them, how would you go build that trip around? This is the focal point, but how I want to do a lot around eateries as well. Again, you said food tours is another thing, but want to hear about how you accomplish it?

David Page (00:17:26):

Well, the first thing I would do is, and I'm going to keep sending you to the internet,

Ben Smith (00:17:31):

That's fine.

David Page (00:17:32):

I would Google best food in Milwaukee and I would Google regional food and local food in both Wisconsin and Milwaukee and that would give me an understanding of what the regional dishes are that I should try. I mean, when you go somewhere you want to eat what is local, what is traditional, what came from ingredients, systemic or endemic I guess to that area. Dan Barber, who you were kind enough to mention who's really on the cutting edge of the evolution of what we would call at one point. Anyway, farm to table, Dan's point, his major point is flavor and his position is that the best flavor comes from things grown where they should be grown because the conditions nurture that and eaten there. So there's no degrading in travel. You're getting the best of the best in the place you ought to get it at the Democratic convention the other day, walls actually mentioned, what is it Za, a kind of savory pastry that you can get in. I think Nebraska, well, if you're going to Nebraska, you want that. If you're going to Iowa, you want a made right loose meat sandwich. Now, loose meat sandwiches got a brief moment of notoriety when they were mentioned repeatedly on the original Roseanne sitcom, but basically it's a sloppy Joe without the tomato sauce.

(00:19:11):

 

(00:19:11):

Loose ground beef served on a roll as if it were a full hamburger. That's popular there. If you come to my neck of the woods south jersey, what you have to have pork roll, which is a heavily processed pork product that when it's sliced, looks like bologna has all the salt on earth. A unique flavor. You may or may not choose to like it as part of your breakfast, bacon, egg and cheese, which here would be a pork roll, egg and cheese or up north would be called Taylor ham, egg and cheese. But that's local. That's what you want to eat, where you should eat it. Go to Philly, yeah, have a cheese steak. Although if you've done your research before you go to Philly, you will know that the cheese steak is not the iconic sandwich for locals. The roast pork is interesting, served with broccoli, Rob, that has been sauteed in garlic and sharp provolone cheese on great crusty Italian bread, which is very special in Philly. Now you don't have, look, my friend was visiting the other day from Michigan. I live 90 miles from Philly. We looked at each other at 11:00 AM and said, cheese steak. Cheese steak. So we went to Philly and we had a cheese steak, so I'm not anti cheese steak, but I'm telling you the one you really want. You want the roast pork,

Ben Smith (00:20:33):

So Well that's awesome David, and I want to ask a follow-up question to that. So instead of just

David Page (00:20:39):

Going, I'm sorry, no follow ups allowed at this neighborhood.

Ben Smith (00:20:43):

Obviously food is a big thing in this covid world where we're now traveling even more and there's been pent up demand for travel. Think about festivals. We're not just, Hey, I want to go to experiencing the flavors of that location, but there might be a festival that's celebrating themes, there might be a celebration of culture, there might be a celebration of an area, geography, it might be lots of different themes that are happening. What are maybe some festivals or events that you could point to that might be on people's maps to go experience here? Obviously we're in 2024,

David Page (00:21:19):

Taste of Chicago. Okay, it's everything now. There's the Chicago stuff there, there's Chicago hotdog with that great green relish, Italian beef, that sort of thing. But also as you'll find at many if not most festivals, an assortment of foods from other countries and cultures and that's a wonderful way to be able to walk around and get a taste of stuff that you may never have experienced before. I mean there's a Mexican dish that has become the happen in food at the moment. It's called bia. Have you had it?

Ben Smith (00:21:55):

No.

David Page (00:21:55):

Okay. Most of the Mexican food we know in America was the food of the Norte. The folks in the northern part of Mexico who in the mid 18 hundreds one day found themselves living in the southern part of the United States

(00:22:11):

Cause of the Mexican-American war. It was their foodways that evolved on this side of the new border that evolved into was turned into what we came to know as Mexican food. Well over the intervening years and certainly in the last 50 we have started to integrate foods from other parts of Mexico into more broadly into American cuisine like mole, which really came from Puebla. It wasn't a food of the Norte and it's now pretty widespread and wonderful. And BIA is a dish that also began in central Mexico. It's a spicy stew that was made with goat over time and long after the food of the North had become the Food of America. BIA evolved in Mexico and moved from central Mexico all the way down to Tijuana where it was modified and made with beef and served as BIA tacos, which are, you take the tortilla, you dip it in the sauce that the meat was cooked in, then you crisp that tortilla up on a grill, a griddle or alanche, you put more of the juice, which is referred to as consummate on the tortilla.

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You fill it with Bia and you can add Cota cheese if you want, which makes it case with bia. Then you fold it, you flip it, it gets crispy on both sides. You serve it with a cup of the cooking juice, which as I said is called consummate, and you dip this incredible crunchy taco into the consummate. It'll blow your mind and it's growing by leaps and bounds and frankly, when I wrote my book two or three years ago, whenever it was, I had to go to Philadelphia to taste media. Now just a few years later, there are a number of places here on the Jersey shore that are making damn fine beauty. I'm waiting to see what's next for Mexico because Mexico, like any country is not a monolithic national cuisine. Cuisines are regional cuisines are based on what was available, where you lived, what grew, where you live, and then they're also representative of social conditions. I mean, there's so much wild boar served in Tuscany because traditionally tuscans have been very poor, and if you were going to eat, you were going to have to hunt and the thing you could hunt, the prevalent meat there running around wasn't beef. It was wild boar. Hence, you have a regional cuisine heavily skewed toward wild boar and as a nation we're I think increasing our understanding of those regionalities and they're very exciting to pursue. That's incredible.

Curtis Worcester (00:25:07):

Yeah. I just need to pause because it's a good thing we're doing this on a Friday afternoon because I'm getting immensely more hungry the first, sorry about that. It's fine. It's all good. It's a me problem at the moment, so I want to keep going here. David, something Ben teased a little bit, so naturally the culinary world, it's filled with the big names, right? The household name chefs that we all see, right? We talked about Bobby Fla, we talked about anyone. There's also a growing scene of emerging talents who are redefining the future of food for people who want to maybe try to stay ahead of that curve and discover these future icons in food maybe before they become household names. How would you go about doing that? How can we tap into this exciting new world of culinary stars?

David Page (00:25:56):

Well, I'm going to send you back to step one, which is local publication. The first person to discover Fred and Stanley's House of Macaroni is going to be the local paper down the street from that House of Macaroni and can then follow the write-ups. Again, I'm going to send you back to the web when you're going to go to a town Google great independent restaurants in that town, but there's a wonderful incubator, Google James Beard Awards,

(00:26:27):

The James Beard Awards nurture developing talent because they award, they give awards on a regional basis. Yes, there is the outstanding chef in the whole country. There is the outstanding pastry chef in the whole country. Yes, there is the outstanding restaurant in the whole country, all three of which were won, for example, by Nancy Silverton as she ascended to become one of the great American chefs of the 20th and 21st centuries. But the James Beard Awards are a wonderful place to find restaurants that you haven't heard about before, especially the regional places and not just the winners. I'm editing a podcast interview right now with a great chef named Paul Smith from 10 10 Bridge in Charleston, West Virginia. In 2024, he became the first West Virginian working in West Virginia to win a James Beard Award. He was awarded Best Chef in the southeast, which means he beat out Atlanta and Charleston and Savannah.

(00:27:34):

Well, last year he was a finalist. He didn't win. I got to tell you, you want to find a place well worth eating at that hasn't yet been overrun by everyone responding to an award go to last year's James Beard list or the one from before that. Secondly, there's an extraordinary James Beard category called American Classics where the award is given and there is more than one given every year here on Long Beach Island in New Jersey at the tip of this island, I lived on the island for 20 years. Now we live across the bay, but there's a diner called Mustache Bill. It's a phenomenal diner. It has a James Beard American Classics Award. There's a barbecue joint in Taylor, Texas called Louie Miller's that has a James Beard American Classics Award. Now, what these are is restaurants that a make terrific food. It may not be the kind of food or the quote level of food you'll get at most Michelin or James Beard Award winners likely there's no white tablecloth, but these restaurants are selected for a combination of their food and their importance, history and impact on their local community.

(00:28:49):

That's cool. Those restaurants will knock you on your ass. They're incredible. They're phenomenal, and let's face it, so much is the story. It's a wonderful, wonderful experience. I mean, Jerry Tam, who lives in Butte, Montana, runs the Pekin Nogi it, the Pekin Noodle Parlor, which is the oldest family owned Chinese restaurant in America. It's more than a hundred years old. They don't have the Opium Den anymore. They don't have the brothel anymore, but they remain a Chinese restaurant, and their specialty is the dish that first introduced Americans to Chinese American cooking, and that led to the massive explosion of Chinese American food across the country. That dish is chopped sui, which has long been decried by foodie purists as well. That's not authentic. Define authentic. There is one school of thought that this was an evolution here of a dish that had been made in China using nras ful that was modified here because most Americans were not going to eat.

(00:29:59):

The other story is it was invented entirely from whole cloth here when Chinese restaurants began for Chinese gold miners who came to California for the gold rush. When those restaurateurs decided to expand and attract non-Chinese patrons, they came up with this. Now, either way, I tend to the first story, it just makes more sense to me that this was an evolution. Nonetheless, Jerry Tam still serves a multiple series of varieties of chopped sui and cma, the sibling that is served over those crunchy noodles, and he's James Beard, America's classic winner in Butte, Montana. And well visit, visit

Ben Smith (00:30:48):

As you're just describing that, David, my wife and I are watching the Bear right now. So you kind of, which

David Page (00:30:54):

Season? Which season?

Ben Smith (00:30:56):

We're like in episode two of season three, so we're

David Page (00:30:59):

Okay. Season three is a piece of crap.

Ben Smith (00:31:01):

Yeah, that's what I've heard.

David Page (00:31:03):

Season one was phenomenal. Season two was phenomenal. Season three is a series of endless music videos with no plot.

Ben Smith (00:31:15):

That was the montage episode one that we were like,

David Page (00:31:17):

What is this? I fear season four will be the same because they were shot in one production sequence. They were shot back to back. Now that restaurant, the one it's based on,

(00:31:28):

Was perhaps my favorite in Chicago. It's a place called Mr. Beef. When I lived in Chicago from 83 to 85, I worked for NBC News and the NBC Bureau at the time was just down the street from Mr. Beef, and on various days, noon would come and somebody in the bureau would stand up over our warren of cubicles and announce Mr. Beef, and the entire bureau would just walk down Orleans and we'd get to Mr. Beef and we'd order, I actually was an outlier. Most would order Italian beef. I usually ordered a Polish sausage, and then you'd eat them outside on pigeon shit covered picnic tables, and it was one of the great experiences of my life. Now, the concept of turning Mr Beef into a

(00:32:15):

 

(00:32:15):

Star restaurant is a little unrealistic, but so much of what they've shown in season one and two, and look, when I watch a drama about the news business, I get it. It's not the news business. I know it's the news business on steroids. I'm perfectly comfortable with the amount of steroids they have put in the scripts regarding what really happens in a restaurant.

Ben Smith (00:32:39):

Yeah, talking about stress,

David Page (00:32:42):

Oh, it's a high plus. Understand something. Everyone thinks they can own a restaurant because they have a stove. It ain't like that. First of all, it is a physically demanding job. Secondly, it's the, pardon me, the easiest way to go bankrupt on the face of the earth. It is difficult. And look, let's be clear, until the Me Too movement, working in a kitchen could be truly horrible. These have traditionally been misogynistic, abusive, sometimes physically violent places. I mean, this all grew out of the French brigade system, which was based on the military, and this was top down. The

(00:33:23):

Advice from below was never welcomed. So this has been getting better on the bear. You see them trying very hard to do it right. I will tell you that it was in Chicago before the Me Too movement that I was a guest of Grant Hacketts. The chef at Alinea, which is at one point was named the greatest restaurant in the world, has three Michelin stars is extraordinary. Unlike most tasting menu restaurants, there's extremely expensive. It is good and worth it in my view. Now, he bought my meal. We were talking about doing a show together, but based on the price of the meal for two, I still had a tip. I mean, he didn't say I had to, but I still wanted to tip the server. So that cost me $800. But the point I was going to make, I obviously tip, but at the least it would've been fine. He took us into the kitchen and it was the quietest, most respectful, most orderly kitchen I've ever been in my life. And if the bear wishes to try to emulate that, that's fine by me.

Ben Smith (00:34:28):

Well, and obviously the bear kind of has a lot of corollaries and parallels here, and I know what we obviously want to talk about is some of what you're experiencing in your podcast show. And I know obviously from, we just kind of talked about finding the next stars, but I want to just ask about the transformation of chefs is going from maybe what they're experiencing, even in the bear of, obviously they go away and they train underneath somebody, they apprentice and they learn technique, but kind of going from here's somebody that is in the beginning of their career to a legendary status. There's a progression there. So love to hear about how you view this in terms of the legendary status, chef technique, ability to innovate. What makes the best the best, what makes them, is it just because, is it in the moment where you say like, here, here's the James Beard Award winner, and somebody's recognizing, obviously a culmination to that point of where they're in their food journey. But part of this is we all have careers and we're all getting hopefully better and better as we continue to work at our craft. How is that viewed, I guess, from the chef perspective, and how do you kind of find those people and maybe follow their careers as they're working to innovate over their lifetimes?

David Page (00:35:52):

Well, look, everybody needs a mentor. You can be a great instinctive, and by the way, all great chefs are instinctive. You either have it or you don't. Okay. I remember we were interviewing Bobby Miller, the second generation at the time. His son now owns a place Bobby has passed away, but he was the second generation owner of Louis Miller's barbecue in Taylor, Texas. Louis was Bobby's dad, and in the middle of the interview, this was for diners, he was talking to Guy in the middle of the interview, he reaches around and without even really looking, he's moving briskets to different parts of the smoker. And we said to him, had to do that. He said, I know there is a thing, and I've been making TV and other kinds of journalism and restaurant kitchens for decades now. I don't have it. I love to cook

(00:36:40):

When I'm at home. If I invite you over for a steak, let's say there's four of us. Well, I'll buy five steaks. One of them I'm going to cut into make sure it's right. I don't have that chef feel for knowing when medium rare is medium rare chefs do, nonetheless, raw talent will only take you so far. I mean, several times a season. Andy Reed has to take Patrick Mahomes, the immensely talented Patrick Mahomes and to his office and say, you're screwing up your mechanics, dude, let's go back to ground zero. Or as I used to tell news producers whose backs were raised by my wanting to edit their script to make changes, I would point out to them, dude, even Hemingway had an editor. So as much as anything, yes, you have to have a certain level of intrinsic ability, but you learn from, I mean, Nancy Silverton for example, as good a chef, as you'll find in the last a hundred years in America, Reddit's, Wolfgang Puck, under whom she worked for quite a while, for any, as she put it, any success I've had now, she's had incredible success. And clearly it wasn't just Wolfgang,

(00:37:54):

But it's learning from others. I just interviewed Paul Smith in West Virginia. Was it Paul? Yeah. And Paul worked at 11 Madison Park in New York City. Wow. Which you say, wow, it's a Michelin three star restaurant that has disappointed the living hell out of me. That's a $2,000 meal I didn't think was worth it. I was taken to a $2,000 meal with my wife at GI of Wine in Vegas, which only has two Michelin stars, and I thought it was a fabulous meal. I ate at a Linea. I thought it was a fabulous meal. Love Madison Park. In my opinion. No. It was too calculated. Yes, I was all excited. The chefs, when the server said, would you like a tour of the kitchen? And then I realized it was a pre-planned thing and there's a system for it, and you're brought in here and walked around there, and then you're fed a plate of something. It wasn't from the love of food or the passion. Or when a chef comes out and sees a diner who clearly enjoys what's going on and says, Hey, you know what you're doing? You want to see my kitchen? That's good. That's cool.

(00:39:01):

Years ago when Wiley Defra had WD 50 open, I took my wife and daughter there for dinner. We knew a front of the house guy there. He was the son of a really good friend of mine, and thanks to him, he got Wiley to come out and say hi to us and then take us into the kitchen. Well, that was terrific. It really impacted my daughter. That was the sharing the emotions, the passion, the desire to please that is required to be a great chef. I mean, yes, you need technique. Yes, you need to apprentice presumably in a number of places to learn what the hell you're doing, but you got to have passion and you got to want to make people happy. Those are the two most important elements in becoming a successful chef or restaurateur.

Curtis Worcester (00:39:50):

I love that. So David, you said something at the beginning of your answer to Ben that segues perfectly into my next question, and it was referring to you grilling us steaks. So you can tell I'm still hungry here, so I didn't say, by the way, you're right, you did not. You said you were going to make steaks. You are correct, and you're going to do five because you're going to cut into one. So my question for you, obviously not everyone has the same opportunities to travel to experience these kind of fine culinary experiences firsthand. So for those of us who maybe want to bring that essence, the flavors, the work of these renowned chefs into their own homes, what do you suggest? Right? Are there specific cookbooks, classes, resources where I can start learning techniques of these culinary masters and allowing people to kind of recreate these types of experiences in their own kitchen?

David Page (00:40:43):

It's called YouTube.

Curtis Worcester (00:40:44):

Love

David Page (00:40:44):

It. Everybody and his brother, I love it. Including I'm going to have one of those brain meltdowns that people shouldn't have. Jacques Pepin, I forgot his name for a minute. Jacques Pepin is all over my Facebook feed making meals like teaching you how to make this dish. And they're all relatively simple. They're dishes you can make at home, and it's more than Jacque Pepin. It's everybody and his brother is shooting instructional videos. But don't go nuts. The idea when I go out to a restaurant, the joke is I order something I can't get at home. Well, I will often order a steak because my access to the quality of beef that a good restaurant has, my access pales in comparison. They can get prime beef, often dry aged prime beef. That is far better than anything I can get, usually even at a butcher, although you need to have a butcher. Number two, they can cook that steak at 1600 degrees. My oven ain't going to go up above five 50 if I'm lucky, right?

(00:41:47):

 

(00:41:47):

So the two things that you desperately want to create a steakhouse steak are unavailable to you. Beyond that, now we're into technique. Chefs tend to use a lot more salt and a lot more butter than you use at home. It's just a fact. And if you say to them, no butter, please, they'll say yes and then screw you. It's like, I don't believe that the orange coffee pot in a New York diner is really decaf, okay? They're not going to waste their time making decaf. They'll just give you whatever the hell they have and call it decaf and you'll survive short of a peanut allergy. But what you can do is you can start cooking basic simple food. Well, okay, now, I'm not saying you should never have frozen convenience foods in your freezer. I am tonight probably going to make this frozen product. I had a diabetes scare about a year ago, changed how I eat, lost 90 pounds.

Ben Smith (00:42:44):

Oh my congratulations.

David Page (00:42:46):

Thank you. And thank you both. So my numbers are great now, but I am pretty careful about carbs. And there's a brand of carb healthy food that one of the dishes they make is sort of like chicken cordone blue. It's chicken stuffed with cheese rolled up, and then there's a piece of bacon around it. It's not precooked, it's raw.

(00:43:11):

I make that from time to time. It's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with putting that in my oven. Yes, it is more processed than I would like, and I shouldn't eat it that often, but that's sure better when I'm in a rush than going to McDonald's. And by the way, you can go to McDonald's from time to time to die. But what I don't want you doing is buying one of those damn meal kits where the work involved is twice the work of just making something good and simple from scratch. You have to open a package with pepper in it. You can't just get a teaspoon of pepper. And by the way, you don't have to use a teaspoon. See this? This is a great teaspoon. Where's my, okay,

(00:43:51):

Take this. You put it in the pepper. Or God forbid you do what I do. And foodies will tell you, you shouldn't do this. You should grind your pepper fresh. Oh, screw you. If you can tell the difference, knock yourself out. I keep a container of pre-mixed. I mean, I mix it myself. Here's a box of kosher salt. Here's a box of pepper. I keep that mix next to the stove so I can just throw my hands in and throw it, okay? And use a little more than you thought you should use. And there's this whole argument, should you put pepper on a steak before or after you cook it because the pepper will, that's crap. Just season your food. Now, having said that, make that food. Well buy the best steak you can afford if you're going to make steak out of it. And if that means having less steak or having steak less often to serve as a steak, something that you cook up and cut into at the table.

(00:44:44):

What I want you to do with it, I want you to use reverse Sr. I mean, if you have a sous V machine, that's great. I want you to sous V it, but reverse Sr is corman's sous V. The idea with sous V, you put a protein, well, you could put vegetables, but you put a protein in a sealed bag, you put it in water that is maintained at a specific temperature, thus the food never gets beyond that temperature. Thus you cannot overcook your steak. Secondly, because it started in this gentle way, you don't burn the outside of it when you normally make steak and you throw it in a pan to sear it. And by the way, searing does not keep the juices in. That's an old wive's tale or an old husband's tale. But when you cook that way, the outside edges of your steak turn gray, because even though you're wanting a rare or medium rare steak, the contact with the heat on the outside makes the outside well done.

(00:45:43):

Whatever you do. Now, CVID does not become well done. It hits 130, or if you set it for 1 35 or 1 25, I mean, those are the three numbers in my mind you should choose from. But when you cut into a sous V steak, it's pink from coast to coast. Now, what you do if you don't have a sous V machine is you reverse sear. You take that steak, you put it in a metal pan, and you put that, you season it, you put it in the oven, 200, 2 25, 2 50. Personally, I use two 70. That still gives me perfectly rare steak all across. And then when it's done, you throw it briefly in the hottest pan you can create. I usually take the pan from the oven, put it on the burner, turn the burner as high as I can get it. And if you want to throw some butter or olive oil in, fine, if not fine, and I throw the steak in there to create the mayard reaction, which is what happens when the sugar that is naturally in the meat caramelizes by contact with heat.

(00:46:44):

That's what creates a crust. So minute or two on this side, minute or two on that side, it's done. It's ready. That is the simplest way to make steak. You want chicken. Here's what you do. You turn your oven up to 500. I know people say three 50, they say four and a quarter. I love 500. You take that roasting chicken, you take it out of the bag, don't wash it. Years ago, the suggestion was you wash it. All that does is splash the salmonella. That's on poultry all over your kitchen and all over you. Here's what you do. You take that chicken, you know that salt and pepper mix I got over here? Rub a bunch of that on the chicken all over. Then if you want to go nuts, take some chopped garlic. One of those jars that a chef will tell you you should never use, just like they'll tell you, you should fresh grind your pepper. Pour some of that on the skin, especially the liquid that is basically a garlic sauce add over and it likes to caramelize. You put the pan in the pan, you pour a little stock because we're amateurs, and if we screw this up, we will dry the chicken out. Well, not if it's sitting in some stock. So this is a five minute process. You put a chicken in the pot, you season it, you put some stock in, you put it in the oven for 30 or 40 minutes. That's dinner. That is simpler than one of those FTA meal kit.

Ben Smith (00:48:08):

Yeah, yeah, sure. If

David Page (00:48:09):

You speak Yiddish, and you know what FTA means.

Ben Smith (00:48:15):

Well, David, I know one of the things that obviously you're talking about is again, that home experience. And we're on our hundredth episode. We have talked a lot of themes about retirees and connection, and I think one of the things that we've talked about a lot is as we're aging, is this need to continue to reconnect with people is we need to continue to invest in our network. We need to continue to invest in our family and our friends. And in one way, obviously the perfect gateway is food, as you just described. Here's what we can do in our own homes very simply and have a great meal and share connections with the people that we like and we love more people

David Page (00:48:59):

You haven't yet met like that next time. Yeah, exactly. The next to for three years. And you wave over the fence and that's it. Walk next door and say, Hey, I'm making short ribs tonight. Come on

Ben Smith (00:49:07):

Over. Yeah,

David Page (00:49:09):

Look, there is no greater social experience than sharing a meal.

Ben Smith (00:49:13):

So that's what I wanted to ask you about was, alright, so using food as a social experience, you just gave us one way of, Hey, I'm making ribs. Come on over. Let's share some food together. Let's have a glass of wine or two, but let's kind of figure out what we have in common and talk about this and shared experiences, obviously just this is something just from your own experience, David, love to hear other ways that we can use food to create connections with people. And again, well,

David Page (00:49:50):

If you already have a niche universe, your church, your synagogue, your interest club, your book club, your knitting club, plan a food night, say to these people, Hey, next time, let's do this over. It doesn't have to be a full meal. It can just be appetizers. Nancy Silverton was telling me how she developed a fascination with mozzarella. She had a house in Italy, still does. And one day she, on the spur of the moment, called one of the most famous chefs in history, Jonathan Waxman, who she kind of knew, but they really weren't tight, who also had a house in Italy like 45 minutes away. And she said, Hey, you want to come to lunch? And he said, sure. And then she said to herself, what the hell am I going to make Jonathan Waxman? And she said, no pressure. Yeah, I followed my own advice, which is, don't show off.

(00:50:41):

If you're concerned about making the perfect meal for someone, keep it basic. I went to my refrigerator, she said, and realized that I had some great mozzarella that I had picked up at a local Cascio local store. And rather than try to impress him with my chops, I built an entire meal around mozzarella. It was mozzarella and all of the other things that went with it. I'm not sure exactly what the menu was, but it could have been olives, it could have been great Tuscan bread, it could have been pepper, whatever it was, presumably some Lummi. He said to her, this was one of the best lunches I've ever had. The food didn't get in the way.

(00:51:22):

It doesn't have to be the end all and be all food's, good food's, food. And by the way, don't be afraid to experiment. If I invite you to eat at my house, there's a good chance you're going to get something I've never made before. So we're all taking a risk together. I love that. But there's also, look, when you see a food related experience, go to it. Is there a food club written up in your local paper? If you still have a local paper join, are there food-based events? You'll often get a pitch for a charity event or a food truck rodeo go, everyone else going shares your interest. You may stumble into somebody and make a new friend. Any opportunity to go share the goodness of the food world should be taken. But let me back up one second to eating at home. Look, I'm in your target age group. Okay, well, good food doesn't have to be expensive. If you're cooking at a home, you don't have to get that steak we were discussing.

(00:52:29):

You can get a much cheaper cut like hanger steak or flank steak or short ribs. You just have to know what to do with them. And what you basically do with them is low and slow for hours. Any piece of meat that is not the best, is not the most tender, is not cut with a butter knife, braise it somehow, which simply means cover it in a liquid and let it cook very slowly at a very low heat for a very long time. When I make short ribs, I take a stock pot, I throw in some oil, I throw in a bunch of onions because that's a wonderful base for anything I throw in salt, pepper, and garlic. I throw the ribs in and saute them with the vegetables briefly just to get a little, my yard reaction going. And then I throw in three cans of crushed tomatoes and as much boxed or stock as necessary to cover the ribs. I turn the heat down as low as it will go, and I come back in four hours. Now, that's a bit of a joke. When I've got something cooking, I'll stop by every half hour and stir it just to make sure. But basically you had 10 minutes of prep and you have four hours of doing nothing, and then you have a great meal.

(00:53:45):

You don't have to spend a ton of money. In fact, some of the best food is the food of poverty. Not a lot of people are going to love this dish I happen to. But the Scottish dish called haggis,

(00:53:57):

Which was a pig's bladder filled with fat, oatmeal, spices, and oval, because A, it was the cheapest combination of leftover ingredients you could find. And B, it provided the highest number of calories per bite for people with no money who had to get fired up and go out and plow the fields. And every culture has a version of that dish. I'm Eastern European, descendant Jewish. We have kishka, stuffed derma, the same thing over the centuries and the millennia. Learning how to add flavor and appropriate texture to whatever was available resulted in some of the finest dishes ever made go for those.

Curtis Worcester (00:54:46):

Yeah, that's incredible. I really appreciate that and I appreciate speaking for Ben and myself. We both appreciate you coming on again, David, to join us. I do have one wrap up question for you. Look, it's no secret just from this conversation, but certainly putting our previous episode and this episode that you've had an incredible journey in the world of food, right? And you're still going, right? I'm sure there's more chapters ahead. We teased one a little bit ago, so I want to turn it over. Can you share with us what's coming up next or what may have just come out in your culinary horizon? Can you just talk about that project and what we should be looking out for?

David Page (00:55:26):

Absolutely. The podcast, which debuted August 27th, is me in what I like to think of as post dinner time conversation with phenomenal people from the world of food. I mean, picture yourself in Rome, let's say one of my favorite restaurants there, a place called Lilo's off the Piazza, Gio Romano. There you go. Almost forgot it. You've had a great meal there. If it's Lilo's, I probably had the chicken and it was down the street from the NBC Bureau in Rome, which is why it's one of my favorites. And the dinner is over. We have espresso on the table. We'll have a grappa, maybe two, maybe three, maybe nine. And we're just going to shoot the bull about anything and everything on earth because these people, I've gotten to talk to fabulous folks in the world of food for years, but usually on a specific topic, if it was Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, it was Tell me about the story of this restaurant and what dishes we're going to make for the book.

(00:56:30):

It was, tell me about your making of this particular American food way. But there's so much more to chefs and restaurateurs and others in the industry. These are smart, passionate people with opinions about everything and the opportunity to talk to them about their lives and how they got where they are and what motivated them and what makes them happy and why they do what they do. That's what this podcast is about. And the folks I'm talking, I've mentioned Nancy Silverton, Dan Barber, I spoke with Drew Newport, who the New York Times referred to as possibly the last old school restaurateur standing in the United States with Robert De Niro. He opened the Tribeca Grill and Nobu in New York. He's opened a total of 40 ARD restaurants over the years, and he's got plenty to say about the phoniness of many French restaurants. The wannabes who call themselves restaurateurs, but don't really, Abbott, they just think it's cool to open a restaurant flip side. I said, what do you think of celebrity chefs? He said, most of them earned it. He said, some didn't. But most of them now, he said it's different. And I certainly agree with this. The chefs that got into the biz to be famous or to be on television,

(00:57:54):

 

(00:57:54):

Not coming to this from a real desire to cook, or even more importantly, a real desire to please people. Well, Drew's got a pretty positive opinion of most of the folks who, and his view on what's happening to American food is interesting. He's a big fan of Yelp because it lets you see pictures of food. He's not necessarily a fan of the reviews that are posted. You don't know if they're real or not. But he said, look, in my day, the best you could do was walk to the restaurant and

(00:58:30):

 

(00:58:30):

Hope they had a menu in the window before deciding if this is a place you should take a date to. It's a lot easier today. And I talked to just some, well, a nonstop list of phenomenal people, the Michelin Star winners, the James Beard winners, and especially I have a soft spot for the independent, for the folks who run their own restaurants their way. There's a wonderful woman, Carol Lawrence runs the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire, and she has several other branches. But you know that diner, because every election season, it's the one all the politicians go to.

Ben Smith (00:59:12):

Oh, yeah.

David Page (00:59:12):

But it's also the one that when they're in town, Adam Sandler goes to,

(00:59:17):

And Amy Poer and Sarah Silverman. This place is so deep in the heart of that community and she's been running it for years with the help of her father. Initially he was in the restaurant business and they're just what a classic diner should be. It's really beautiful. I talked to a couple, Greg and Carrie Aman, who run the AAA family restaurant in West Lafayette, Indiana, just down the street from Purdue University. They've had that place for 30 years and their commitment to their locals and to the fact that families, people coming in today first came in as children brought by their parents. This means so much to them and they make great food. They're terrific people. That's the kind of experience, it's the kind of person I very much enjoy chatting with.

Ben Smith (01:00:15):

Yeah. Well David, I know I speak for Curtis and I together here is we're really excited to check out the project. You're such a wonderful storyteller. Thank you. And I'm sure obviously the podcast is such a great medium for stories. It is not a factual back and forth. It serves best when you can sit back and listen and imagine and kind of be part of that conversation. And I know that the world building that you're doing with your show is going to be really rich. So we're really excited to check it out. We will hit subscribe again. We want all of our audience to go and go to Culinary Characters unlocked right now and we want them to go hit

David Page (01:00:59):

Subscribe or you can get this on any of the major podcast platforms. Go to Apple, go to YouTube, go to Pod being, wherever you get your podcasts, you can get this. It's culinary characters unlocked.

Ben Smith (01:01:12):

Perfect. Yes, so we'll have links in our show notes as well,

David Page (01:01:16):

So

Ben Smith (01:01:16):

Folks can go and we'll point 'em right to those places and they can follow along too. But David, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today. Again, we're really excited about your next project. Food is so integral to all of our stories and our cultures, and again, be able to express that love together was a lot of fun today. Thank you so much for coming on our show

David Page (01:01:41):

And thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Ben Smith (01:01:43):

Alright, take care. Thanks Dave. So David, page two times, right? If you're going to have a food expert, right, you're going to have creator of Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, come on our show Talking Food. I don't know that we're going to find a better expert that's been tasting us, local, international,

Curtis Worcester (01:02:04):

Everything,

Ben Smith (01:02:05):

Everything. So we are very blessed to have him on our show and have him come back and it's just a privilege to be able to say, Hey, we were able to have that conversation with him and I know I hope we'll have him back again. He has so much to offer and we're both, I think really looking forward to that podcast that he's just came out with

(01:02:27):

 

(01:02:27):

Just recently here. Again, culinary characters unlocked, so looking to check that out. Obviously we covered a lot from travel Adventures to discovering flavors at home and social experiences with food. Again, every time we want to just discover a little bit more of those layers and I think he did a really great job going through that. Today. We are going to have obviously the links. Obviously David's has a book. He's got his new podcast show, which we're going to, we're going to have links on our show notes as we always do. But it's a cool little triple digit day for us. Today's the day. Today's the day we've been talking about forever. It's episode 100, so we're centennial at this point, so it's pretty fun. So you can find all that information by going blog dot guidance point llc.com/ 101 0 0.

Curtis Worcester (01:03:25):

We made it go there. We made it, we made

Ben Smith (01:03:27):

It, we made it. Which by the way, we just looking at the other day, a few lists came out and we were the top 15 best podcasts in the state of Maine. So if you do that search best podcast, state of Maine, we are on a list there. Top Wealth Management podcasts. I think we're a third there. So yeah, you just got to get better with age. That's just like all of our audience, all of you. You guys are just getting better every day. So you can check that out. Go to the show notes. We really are thankful for you to be on this journey with us. Please keep tuning in with us. We're thankful to have you here, and we'll catch next time.