Curtis Duffy (chef and restaurateur)

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert.

I'm Dan Shepard.

I'm joined by Monica Padman and Aaron Michael Weekly.

Hello.

Today's guest is Curtis Duffy.

Any foodie in the world will recognize Curtis's name immediately.

He's a Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur

known for the Chicago-based restaurants Ever and Grace.

He has a new memoir out that is

hair raising.

He has really lived a lot.

Oh my God, did he go through it all?

The book is called Fireproof Memoir of a Chef.

Was it you that was just making fun of how I say a memoir?

Yes, it was.

Yeah.

What do you, because sometimes they say memoir.

That is what you know.

I want to say memoir.

Yeah.

And I correct myself to memoir.

Yeah, which is correct.

That's correct?

Yeah, memoir.

How would you say it now?

Memoir, memoir, yeah, it's a memoir.

Yeah, maybe it's a Michigan thing, we just don't know how to talk.

Please enjoy Curtis Duffy.

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You have two sleeves.

You guys are matching.

Oh, wait till you hear about his book.

I think we have very

time.

Yeah.

J2C.

Yeah.

No way.

Is he a J2C?

July 2nd.

Oh, no shit.

1975.

Wow.

July 2nd, Cancer.

Yeah, you're July 2nd?

January 2nd, Capricorn.

My very best friend is July 2nd.

Cancer.

So in junior high, we came up with J2C, very exclusive club.

No one can be in it.

Now we have matching tattoos.

But irony that you always make fun of me for astrology, and you have it tattooed on you.

I do.

It means nothing to me other than the letters and the fact that Aaron has them too.

But yeah, when I read your birthday, I was ecstatic.

Wow, that's very rare.

It's a rare club.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

That was J2C.

I know a lot of people with July 2nd birthdays.

You do.

Which is bizarre to me.

Maybe six or seven of them.

Huh.

Weird.

July 2nd, July 3rd, and July 4th.

And would you always just do a full birthday party in the 4th of July like Aaron did?

I try never to celebrate birthdays.

I'm turning 50 this year.

Yeah, yeah, I just did it.

How'd it go?

That's okay.

It's all right, right?

It's all right.

Just the numbers.

I feel better than I did when I was in my early 40s.

Same for me.

Physically, I think I'm doing my best.

Mentally, in a better place professionally.

Some people are like, where would you go back in time?

I'm perfectly fine.

So you start in Ohio,

and mom and dad are very young.

You had 18 when they have you?

Somewhere around that age.

I don't know the exact date my father was, but pretty young.

How much older is your brother than you?

Just one year.

He's January.

Second, J2C?

No, he's a little bit later, but in January.

What if he just looked at me and said, brother?

Brother?

Triplets?

Mom lost.

But yeah, what was the scene that your brother arrived into and the scene that you arrived into?

I remembered most of my time in Colorado, but as a child in Ohio, I would imagine it was terrible.

Yeah, your biological mother and your father, Bear, were already in a violent, messy situation when you arrived.

Yeah, I was six months old when they separated.

But your dad initially caught your mom with another guy.

Physical altercation ensues, and then he leaves with your older brother and goes to Colorado.

And leaves you.

And leaves me.

Yeah, six months old.

And how long did that last?

From what my aunt has told me, some of the stories not long after I arrived on my stepmom's doorstep.

For me, that was my mother.

That's all I knew from six months on to current state.

So, yeah, six months old.

And your biological mom just showed up at this woman's house, Jan?

Yeah, Jan.

And she was 15?

She was 15, still in high school.

And dad's 19 or 20 or something?

Yeah, somewhere around that time.

But they're together.

A couple years.

They're together.

So she's dropping you off to him ostensibly.

Yeah, the words were something like you have my ex-husband or my husband.

You might as well have all of my children.

And my brother was already there, but then dropping me off as well.

Wow.

Yes.

Trying to deal with that at 15 years old would be just mind-blowing.

She's a kid.

Just trying to be a kid.

Yeah.

She probably loved being in high school.

When she got to be in class and not dealing with two little kids, she was probably like, oh my God, I hope the school day goes on.

I know.

You know, I remember having conversations with my mom later in life saying how much she'd never got to be a part of that growing up to experience those things as you do as a child like going through prom experiencing graduation because it was all of a sudden here we have two children in our life that were not hers yeah and felt incredibly responsible to take care of us all of a sudden yeah and what kind of guy was your dad he would give his shirt off his back to you in a second but he was incredibly intense angry gentle.

He was all over the place.

Mercurial.

Yeah, he was just a lover of fast cars and motorcycles.

And he was a huge biker.

I mean, mean, it's just a ball of energy full-time all the time.

And violent as hell.

Anything would piss him off.

So you had to walk on eggshells.

That's what it felt like a lot, just constantly wondering what the hell is going to set him off all the time.

And when he went to Colorado, it was some attempt to be normal.

He joined the army.

And so in some ways, it seems like he was...

declaring he wanted to have some kind of a stable, better existence than he had.

Yeah.

A big part of what he was searching through life was just trying to be stable and have that family structure.

I think he went through a lot of bad times as a child himself.

So what you know is what you pass on into.

His dad, your grandfather, wasn't too dissimilar to him.

Correct.

And that's what he's learned.

So I think he probably craved that a lot was to try to have a loving family, but obviously didn't know how to do it.

Yeah, I was a little shocked when I learned of his kind of relationship with parting because he reeks of an addict, but he wasn't very addict-y, huh?

He wasn't a constant drinker.

I remember as a kid having that smell of marijuana in the house, but it was only when his buddies were over.

And it was one of the smells that I love to this day.

I don't smoke weed, but I can tell you, I love the smell of it.

And I want to smoke weed.

I want to enjoy it.

Yeah.

I don't enjoy it, but I love the smell.

So Jan, though, she really kind of rose to the occasion.

She stepped in and was a mom.

She stepped in and really never let the foot off the gas.

There's notes that I've read from her in the past that said she really thought that these two kids could be hers.

That's how much she loved us at such a very young age.

But she's violent too.

To some degree.

Absolutely.

You're just beating the shit out of the kids was totally fine and normal.

It was back then.

To varying degrees.

You were on the wrong side even in 84.

Yeah.

I felt it was in a way that she was trying to show that she was able to do it as well.

I never felt it from like a intentional place.

An anger.

Yeah.

When we screwed up, we knew.

I mean, come on, you're a kid.

You know, you're getting your ass beat one way or another.

But the strap they hit you with is like hanging on the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

That's like a real declaration.

Like, this is how we parent.

We're not hiding it.

No, you see that over there?

If you don't act straight, that shit's coming real quick.

What would have been then your dad's father-in-law or your stepgrandpa, Jan's dad?

He owned a retreading tire place.

Correct.

And he took your dad in.

I would have guessed it seems like it's all going to kind of work for a minute.

Some of my favorite times as a child was being at that retread tire shop.

Maybe it was the tire smell, and maybe it was just watching these guys work incredibly hard.

Yeah.

I don't know what I loved about it, but I loved being there.

The tires would produce these little warm rubber pieces.

And if you caught them in time, you picked them off the ground.

You can roll them into balls.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everybody would collect those things, and then they would have a rubber ball fight at the end of the day.

All the employees would be throwing them at each other.

Oh, I love it.

That was a blast.

Do you think any part of the appeal of that place was that your dad had to be somewhat in check of himself because he was at work?

Was he more consistent and more predictable while he was there?

Yeah, I think you'd get away with a lot more there because he was in front of peers or he was the guy who was running the shop.

So he was the boss there.

Certainly not going to backhand one of us in front of all of them.

Did it make you really close with your brother?

Growing up, yeah.

We were pretty close until we got about 12, 13 years old.

And then we kind of just separated.

What age do you start skateboarding?

Right around that time, 12, 13.

Sixth grade for me is when it's time to skateboard.

Right there's the time we moved back to Ohio and yeah, started skateboarding.

My brother stayed in Colorado with my grandmother, which was my dad's mom.

That's probably why we separated.

He wanted away from your dad, yeah?

Yeah, at that point, he never really got along with Jan, my mom.

There was something there.

I don't know what it was.

At five, my dad and mom set us down and said that Jan is really not your real mother.

She's out there somewhere.

I didn't know that.

We didn't know that until then.

And I think around that point is when they were just always butting heads, always fighting my mom and my brother.

And if it was an opportunity for him to stay away from them, he stayed with my grandma.

Yeah, grandpa sells the tire shop and you guys moved to Ohio.

And it's a pretty radical adjustment, right?

Yeah, that we moved into a two-bedroom apartment.

And that's where it was like, all right, you're going to live in the closet.

In your parents' closet.

In my parents' closet.

That was my house.

No bed.

That was my room.

No.

Oh, my God.

That was the floor.

And shortly after, my brother had moved back to Ohio because my grandmother had passed away.

The hit just keep on coming.

So it wasn't long before my brother and sister shared that second bedroom, my mom and dad, and myself now in the closet on the floor.

And you talk about actually loving that closet and loving the escape.

It was an escape.

You know, it wasn't that big of a space.

I don't know if you kind of relate it to a dog enjoying the doghouse.

They love that cozy.

Probably for me, it was the same feeling.

I was able to throw some posters on the ceiling, and it was a daydreaming moment.

I can escape everything else that was happening and just go in there and think about a lot of stuff.

A hide, I would suggest.

Yeah, probably hide.

Yeah, your imagination works over time when you're in areas like that.

Yeah.

I can relate to being the middle child.

So my brother's five years older than me.

So he was at like apex adolescent insanity.

And my little sister was still a baby, like a toddler.

So one of them always needed a lot of attention.

Right.

And yeah, I just kind of went and hid and was happy to be out of it all.

Yeah, Yeah, kind of unseen.

That's why kids make forts and stuff.

They're trying to create a little world they can control.

Yeah.

Interesting thought.

Okay, so another place that you kind of found comforting was Home Ech.

Place to feel loved and I wasn't excited to be there, but I was thankful to be there.

Oh, so I imagine you're getting validated there because you're kind of good at all the stuff.

Your teacher is impressed with the pillow you made.

and impressed with this and that.

I'm sure you were in deep need of that.

Were you getting a lot of affirmation at home?

I can't.

No.

and you know, with Ruth Snyder, she was the teacher there.

That's where it came from.

I was able to cook some things and one, have a nourishing meal that felt great for me because it wasn't like we were eating great at home.

What were you eating?

Chef Boy RD, TV dinners, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, Swanson's

really shitty.

Aluminum tins,

Salisbury steak.

Boy, Swanson's good for them.

Salisbury steak.

It didn't take shit to be a leader in that space back then.

It just had to be like digestible.

It's true.

Yeah.

France came in after like stouffers.

I loved it.

The microwave had just come out when we were kids.

Yeah, these moments, you were still putting Swanson's in the oven.

Yeah, yeah, the aluminum foil ones.

The aluminum foil ones.

I think the main ingredient was salt.

No matter if you got like a steak or whatever, you looked in the back, it was going to be awesome.

It was sodium.

Isn't it funny, though, when you walk by those aisles?

I have so many memories tied to those items.

And like, I crave it.

Oh, me too.

They were my favorite item.

Yeah.

You just grab one every once in a while just to throw back and put yourself in check.

Yeah, we did another show called Flightless Bird and it was about learning about America, basically.

And so we did a frozen foods episode and I was just throwing so much in the cart.

And I was like, oh, we have to get the sweetest food boss.

Oh, we have to get the salary steak.

And then we made it all.

And yeah, it's so bad.

I have so many memories.

You know what?

I still crave like crazy.

And I swear it's good.

When you look at the back of the can, you just can't go forward.

But Dinty Moore beef stew.

Do you ever fuck with the Dinty Moore beef stew?

I remember that.

That's a powerful can of soup, right?

I remember that.

I remember.

Wow.

Damn.

Aaron and I, we would splurge when we got paid and would get six cans of Dinty Moore.

Did you cook it or did you just eat it up?

Did you dump it in a saucepan, warm it up, and then white bread with butter

dipping?

Man, the struggles are real.

Do you see this thing that, um, who's our guy, Rob?

Michael?

Voltagio?

Voltagio,

sure where he does these things where he takes a stab at these things he liked as a kid these kind of shitty meals he does some of these famous dishes that are i haven't seen that episode or any of those yet spaghettios okay

he's trying to make it like professional level like the high-end version of

camber helper like a deep number of you tackled the pop-tart at your restaurant oh yeah a lot of that's been done yeah some of those nostalgic pastries people will bring back My staff, they used to make every Saturday for family meal, we would do no-baked cookies.

And I lived on those damn things in junior, high, and high school.

They were 25 cents.

They were peanut butter.

There were no chocolate in them.

It became such a thing for me.

I had to search out a recipe and then adjust the recipe how I liked it.

And then I would give it to my staff and see if they can make it.

Oh.

And did it deliver?

And they were always wrong.

Almost 90% of the time, they're wrong.

You don't have to bake them.

You have to do a certain thing with the sugar.

You got to bring it to a temperature and cook it for a...

a certain amount of time.

Let's see how good you can follow directions.

And they're always fucked up.

They're not good.

Bail for it.

I wonder if that's similar to my mother all growing up.

Still, my favorite dessert she would make is called Chocno Bakes.

That's what they were called in my family.

And it's chocolatey.

It's got oatmeal in it.

Those are phenomenal.

What a treat.

Most of the time they have chocolate in them.

The ones that I remember had no chocolate.

Cocoa powder.

Cocoa powder.

Yeah, cocoa powder, peanut butter, oats, sugar, oats.

My mom still makes these every Christmas.

They're so good.

I bet she gets them right, too.

Yeah.

By my account, she's like your staff.

Unlike my staff staff who are professionals.

How were you doing in high school?

How are you handling all of the chaos at home?

How are you compartmentalizing?

What's it doing to you socially?

Certainly don't want to have a friend over for a sleepover.

No, you know, when I was 14 is when I really stepped into the restaurant.

Not a professional kitchen, of course, but it was a diner in my small town that I was living in.

A big boys?

Similar, yeah.

I did work at a Frishy's Big Boy.

We had Elias Brothers and I worked there up in Michigan.

Yes, same concept.

Oh, real quick, did you eat the food off the plates of the tables you cleared?

Oh, no.

Oh,

wow.

I did.

Oh, God, no.

It started slow.

And my best friend, J2C, he also worked there at a different time.

One time, years later, we were talking about it.

I'm like, do you ever eat the food?

He goes, yeah, you know, it started with someone leave half of a grilled cheese untouched.

So, yeah, I'd eat that.

Or they'd make the milkshake and they'd give you the steel container that they mixed it.

So if someone didn't touch that, I'd have that.

Okay.

But that grew into, I would just grab a big boy, bite directly into the previous bite.

Like, that's what it just unraveled to that.

But they were paying $2.35 an hour and you only got half off on the meal.

So I brought even

I'm going to eat for free.

Yeah, I had to do that.

Okay, sorry.

So you got a job at a diner.

Washing dishes and I was able to cook what would have been my family meal, my staff meal.

I was able to have a meal a night there working.

Plus you'd pay me $15 cash every night.

So I thought I was like the richest guy in the world.

Free meal, $15 cash in my pocket, 14 years old was loving life.

And I wanted to work.

I wanted to make money.

I was poor as shit.

So I was smart enough that I started putting that money away.

And over time, it built up enough to where when I was 16, I was able to buy a car.

Then I could get a job further away.

And then that spiraled into working in another restaurant, not in my hometown, but further away because I could drive.

And that just all expanded into better opportunities for me.

And I already knew at that point, I want something greater than what I could possibly have here.

Living in that closet couldn't be the end of the world for me.

There's got to be something else out there.

So through high school, I didn't have a lot of time at home.

I was always get up, go to school, go directly from school to work.

And I work five, six nights a week.

At that point, my parents were already on shaky ground.

And if I wasn't home, I didn't have to deal with any of the shit.

Yeah.

Yes.

I would get home at 11, 12 o'clock at night, do some homework, go to bed, hit repeat.

But I was loving it so much that exhaustion didn't even factor in my brain.

Yeah.

Again, you're like Jan probably loving high school.

Yeah.

You're just happy to be away from me.

Exactly.

So where are you you at when you get the phone call so i just got home from school what college were you going to oh state which is in columbus columbus yeah at the time my girlfriend was a senior in high school so she had just got out of school and i was on the second floor she came by and honked her horn.

I looked out the window and she's like, hey, something's going on with your family.

Your sister got picked up about an hour ago from school from the cops.

And I'm like, what?

What's going on?

She told me that something happened when your dad kidnapped your mom or something.

And I'm like, what the hell?

What?

And ironically, my father kept messaging me that morning or trying to get a hold of me saying, come and see me today at the house.

I was so involved with school, so involved with work, and trying to deal with my parents.

I was stuck in the middle a lot.

And I didn't want to be manipulating to my mom and telling my dad and telling my mom one thing because of my dad saying, hey, go tell her this.

Yeah.

I hated those moments.

And that happened quite a lot.

So I just decided I'm not going to go to the house today and just talk to you later the week.

20 minutes later or so, knock on the door from one of the local police departments and asked me to come with him out to my dad's house, which was about 20 minutes away from where I was living.

In the house that he had inherited when your grandfather went to jail.

Correct.

And so what happens when you arrive?

So ironically, I'm sitting in the back of a cruiser, completely innocent for the first time,

driving out there, and I'm just trying to process what is going on.

The cop was telling me, you know, your father took your mother at gunpoint, kidnapped her in the car, and is now holding her hostage.

What?

Out of your house.

And I'm like, trying to process this for what felt like an eternity drive to where we were going.

We couldn't get there fast enough.

Turn on the siren, step on it.

Let's go.

So we finally got there.

They took me to a house next door.

It was in the middle of the country.

So next door was down the street, a half mile or so, to what they called a safe house.

And there was my my brother my sister My uncle who was also a police officer at the time but a terrible dude and terrible man.

Yeah beat you unconscious while they were out of town

all the time just a piece of shit of a man.

Thank God he had a badge.

Yeah

It justified everything in his mind.

So yeah, we stayed there as the standoff continued for 10 plus hours, I think it was.

So it went in through the middle of the afternoon until well into the night, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night.

So she wasn't living there with him?

No, at this point, she had moved out.

She had got her own place.

And one of the conversations I had with her was like, I need to live on my own.

I need to experience all these things I didn't get to experience when I was younger.

One of them was, how do I survive on my own, living on my own, having my own apartment, having my own bills, fending for myself and making it through life by myself?

She had already moved out six months prior to that.

So I was in and out of the house a little bit with my father staying there, but he eventually would come home to a place where we had everybody living there to now nobody except for him.

So I think it was very difficult for him to grasp that feeling of no one wanting to be there.

Nobody wanted to be around him.

Yeah.

At this point, he's off the rocker a little bit, trying to stay on the meds of antidepressants.

And that was a whole roller coaster as well.

Some nights I would decide to stay there instead of staying at my house closer to school.

And I would come home to unconscious, couldn't even wake him up, just out of it, out of it.

No alcohol involved, no drugs involved, other than just the stuff he was taking.

I don't know if it was overtaking it or if he decided to stop taking it at that time, but brought down with depression.

And yeah,

yeah, just didn't want to move, just didn't want to do anything.

So he shot Jan, yeah, and then he shot himself.

Oh boy,

did Jan like everyone's dead?

And you're 19, 19, yeah.

This is.

And in a unique and cruel twist, for whatever reason, the police who hated his father ask him to identify the body and they're showing him a stack of pictures.

And they're showing both of them killed, dead.

And he's like, yeah, that's them.

The guy just continues to show him pictures, shows them the autopsy.

Yeah.

All autopsy pictures, not just a picture of the face or anything.

God, you've met the worst people on earth.

Yeah.

I mean, really?

An abundance of terrible fucking people.

It was so bizarre.

Oh, man.

Sorry.

Yeah, because a few days later, they asked me to come and grab all of their personal belongings, the bed sheets that they were laying on, anything they used for evidence, come and get the clothes, the jackets, all their personal belongings.

And then as I sat down and grabbed all that stuff, they sat me in that room and just started dropping pictures, Polaroids.

of my parents and one or two's enough.

Yeah, I get it, guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's so twisted.

Well, when you see the pattern pattern of erratic decisions, we're moving to Colorado.

We're moving back.

We're going to be a cop.

We're going to join the army.

These are all from the outside.

They seem like attempts to fix what's going on mentally.

Running from something.

Yes, hoping that this big reset will somehow change him.

Yeah, you're right.

What's clear in the book?

You still have a lot of love for your dad, though.

I do.

It is bizarre because I did go through a long, long time of hatred.

towards him.

He's disrupted, interrupted, fucked up my life to some degree, our lives, lives, our family, the whole thing.

There was a lot of hatred, stuff I had to work through personally to overcome that.

But I try to see who he is.

I try to understand the position and the things that he went through, where his mind was at that age.

I mean, I'm well older than he was at that time.

He's 40 years old.

Wow.

So I've outlived him.

My mom never saw 40.

Yeah.

Did you ever reconnect with your biological mom?

You know, speaking of Frisch's big boy,

my brother, when I was working one day, he's like, hey, I got a friend outside who wants to meet you.

He's dying to meet you.

I'm like, all right, cool.

I think I'm 16 or 17.

I go outside.

Hey, this is your mom.

Sue is her name.

And I'm just in complete shot.

I'm thinking I'm going to meet one of his buddies.

Yes.

And I'm here.

This lady is standing and she tries to hand me $50.

I'm like, what the hell am I going to do with that?

I don't need your money.

I didn't take it.

$50 doesn't capture the last 17 years.

So I never really reconnected with her.

My brother has a relationship with her to this day.

I just chose not to.

Meeting her, it hurt me because I didn't want to upset my mother.

I felt disloyal.

I told her right away.

I had to tell her it was killing me.

I was so worried about breaking her heart.

I didn't put myself in that position.

I was forced into that position.

To this day, I probably would have never met her.

Yeah, and it's weird because if you don't see her, you can kind of compartmentalize it like she doesn't really exist maybe.

But seeing her, you have to face this person dropped you off at six months old, made a choice.

Your life is tough, and part of it's because she put you in that situation.

And never look back.

Well, yeah, as far as the compartmentalization, there's layers to it.

It's like, A, it's best to just ignore she even exists.

And then if she does exist, it's actually a lot easier if she doesn't want to meet you.

Yeah.

It's very complicated if, wait, she's gone.

Now, no, she isn't gone.

And I don't know if I can handle that.

She actually wants to have a relationship with me.

Yeah.

That's kind of overwhelming.

It is.

There's a lot of things that I want to know from her medically, you know, the lineage of her father and all the things that maybe could affect me and my family, but not so much that I want to have that relationship because I fear if I reach out, it's going to open a can of worms.

You're not in the market for that.

I'm not.

I'm good.

My life is great.

What do you major in at Ohio State?

It was a culinary degree in applied science.

It was a three-year program for culinary.

You knew from that first restaurant job you got, this is what I want to do.

Yeah, once I got into high school and I started working like in a professional kitchen, this is all I want to do.

When do you decide to go from, for lack of better terminology, like a pedestrian cook to, oh, I actually want to be an artist.

My last two years of high school was in a vocational school or a tech school.

Luckily, they had a culinary program there.

So I spent the last two years of high school in that culinary program.

And I met a lady named Kathy Zay, who was the teacher and the instructor there.

She was very well connected to a lot of the professional chefs in the Columbus area.

And she would take students every year, once a year, to a place called Mirfield Village Golf Club.

It was owned by Jack Nicholas.

It held one of the PGA stops of the tour.

And I went out there consecutively for two years.

And that's where I really wanted to work.

So she was able to connect me with the chef.

And I just went there to work that week.

But then I started going there on the weekends to work for free because I just wanted to be there.

What was he doing that was so intriguing?

Because I think it's important for context.

Anyone that's 25 years old right now, they've grown up in an era where there were many, many cooking shows on.

There are Instagram accounts where you follow this.

There's knowledge of Jose Andre's teachers in Spain.

Like, you could really know everything.

Celebrity chef culture.

Yes.

Pre-Bourdain's book.

But for you and I...

I don't know.

What would you see in a magazine, like a travel magazine?

How would you even be exposed to this kind of far end of cooking?

For me, it was the environment that was there, being able to go there and the houses around the golf courses.

This one has an elevator and this one has eight rooms and it's just a massive eye-opening moment for me that I wanted to be a part of.

And the only way to be a part of it is if I was working there.

Yes.

Not only that, the chef, John Souza, was so great with the young cooks and was a very educational and a great hands-on teacher.

So any opportunity I got, I went there to work for free or whatever.

They didn't hire me, just let me spend my time that I wasn't working somewhere else here.

So he agreed to take me on as an apprentice as I went into college.

I spent a total about six years there.

Everybody would leave at night and I would stay there and I would start creating.

I would leave at three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning where everybody else is out drinking and partying.

I'm still in the kitchen working for free, doing my thing, trying to create, just trying to learn and learn and learn.

That's where I put the blinders on and just was like total focus.

And would you ever be experimenting and discover something and then pitch the chef?

Yeah.

As a young cook, that's the greatest thing is like to try to have something on the menu.

It's like seeing your name in the credits of a movie when you're an actor.

It's the greatest thing for a young cook because most of the time there was always like, no, it's the chef's restaurants, his ideas, it's his everything.

Yes.

In 2000,

you're now 25.

You are working at Charlie Trotter in Chicago?

That was the draw to come to Illinois.

The internet was around a little bit at that time, so it wasn't a lot of communication through there.

It was just like sending resumes, sending a cover letter, just trying to get in the door.

And finally, they called and said I could come there and do what we call a stash, which is basically work for a short amount of time for free.

It's a way to interview you, if you will.

How standardized are the cultures in these higher end restaurants?

So like the golf course that you were coming from, what was the culture in there versus what it was like at Charlie Trotter?

I'm presuming some of these are more dictator.

Yeah, there is a brigade system that you follow by.

You have chef, you have the executive chef, chef de cuisine, sous chef.

There's a banquet chef in there somewhere, depending on how large the operation is, pastry chef, and then what we call chef departes, which are all the cooks.

So the hierarchy there is very interesting and something that's pretty standard across most high-end restaurants.

But culturally, huge difference.

Going from Mirfield, which was more laid back, although there's a lot of great standards there.

And culturally, there was a great time in place.

But when I got to Charlie Trotters, it was completely different.

Just really intense work environment.

A lot of panic and yelling.

not so much yelling it was just very demanding physically mentally like you had to be on point all the time charlie was relentless for putting you in positions of uncomfortableness because of the perfectionism yeah and you think he wanted everybody in that restaurant to be great i imagine myself in some of these kitchens at least that i hear about and i'm like that would be too much for me punch them for me i think it was welcoming to some degree i guess you admired the people that's the key right you probably did admire this chef Yes, you're right.

And want their skills enough to tolerate it all.

Yeah, and I think even dating back to John Susan, also a good friend of mine who was the banquet chef, Regan Koi Visto, I admired these chefs so much that they could have told me to jump off a building.

I probably would have done it.

Right.

You wanted what they had.

Yeah, and that was the structure I was craving.

It was right at the time my parents passed away.

And now I'm like, all of a sudden, this malleable teenager that needs structure.

I need it, but I don't have it.

So I could have went any direction in life I wanted to had I not had these structural pillars in my life.

You know, Regan was a huge asset for me.

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you end up in 2003 as the pastry chef at trio correct yes again i'm stupid i know nothing about this but i would imagine a pastry chef is solely going to be a pastry i just think if someone is cooking dessert that feels like a specialty unto itself that that would be the end goal for some people right?

For most people in the pastry world, it is a completely different discipline, and that is exactly what they do.

They are set on pastry, and this is what I do.

I don't really screw around with the savory world.

Like, I want pastry, sweet worlds, my thing.

I need shit to rise perfectly.

Yeah, that's all I want to think about.

Restaurant trio back in 2003,

it was a different mindset.

Like, sweet and savory could intermix.

So, I never really looked at myself as a pastry chef.

I spent a lot of time in the pastry department in every job that I was at because I felt like it was important to be well-rounded.

And when the opportunity came, when Grant had said, Hey, you want to take over the pastry position, I jumped at it because I felt like I had base knowledge of it.

And it was a way for me to express some creativity.

Because the pastry chef, I'm imagining, is a little more empowered to create.

100%.

They're basically the chef of the whole sweet side.

The head chef's going to leave them to that kind of thing.

Yeah.

But I I felt so obligated as a younger cook to understand that side of it because the language barrier talking to a pastry chef and someone who doesn't understand the pastry world can get blurred really quickly.

But if you can have that conversation about pastries as a savory cook, how much greater could you be?

You can now conceptualize together.

Yeah, it's like at other businesses when you should have worked every single piece of it, even when you're at the top, so you can then speak to the colour.

You understand it, yeah.

You understand where everybody's at.

And so you're two years there, and then in 2005, you go to Aline.

Alinea.

Alinea.

And Rob, that's where you ate.

Yeah, a couple times.

How long had Alinea been a prominent restaurant in Chicago at the time?

We actually opened Alinea.

So Grant Acketts, who's the chef at Trio, where I was the pastry chef, we closed Trio.

with the idea that Grant is now going to open Alinia.

And he asked me to be one of the chefs that would help help him open it.

So then we spent the next year and a half in an office creating what would be Alinia.

We were working in one of the investors' home to create dishes.

For a year and a half.

These are not a solid year and a half.

Yeah.

Dishes.

You should watch the chef's table.

It's incredible.

I watch several different videos of what happens at your restaurant ever.

It's mind-boggling.

You take this samatchi, you cut it up, then you freeze it in little blocks, then you put it on a meat slicer to make it crazy thin.

And then you let that curl up and you put that in liquid nitrogen.

Liquid nitrogen.

And now it's this little curly tail.

And then it's going to basically thaw at the perfect time that it's on the plate.

Yes,

it's science and art.

Yeah, it's a little bit of everything.

I only remember this from interviewing Jose, but a lot of that was pioneered in Spain there.

Well, the liquid nitrogen aspect was certainly pioneered there.

The science side of cooking was really implemented there in El Buli in Spain there.

And then a lot of the great restaurants in Spain now still practice that modern gastronomy.

So how are you guys becoming adept and educated on it?

Back in the day, it was just about the internet.

Everybody was on the race to post new and creative and interesting things to be the first one to kind of say we did it.

That was a huge race back then.

That was early 2000s.

And, you know, at that time, Spain was so far ahead.

Everybody's eyes were on what they were doing over there and just trying to not really compete, but stay up to speed with everything.

Not be embarrassed by what they're doing.

Yeah, because they were so far ahead and they are always forward thinking.

Even in their architecture, they're so far ahead.

I'm imagining there was a huge reward for you with Alenia, just having been a part of creating the whole thing.

Did you have a sense of pride in ownership overall?

100%.

They're celebrating their 20 years right now.

Grant's traveling a couple cities to celebrate the 20 years.

I think it's a milestone.

It's incredible because restaurants of that nature, they don't stick around that long.

Most restaurants don't stick around 20 years.

Certainly one that's super progressive and forward-thinking like that.

After Alenia, you go four years later to Avenues in the Peninsula Hotel, and there you're a head chef.

So, this is your first time on your own.

Yeah.

And was it hard to leave Alenia?

Did you feel the loyalty you felt towards Jan?

Was it hard for you to break out and finally do your own thing and not be with anyone?

Well, funny story is if we back up to me leaving Charlie Trotters, I interviewed with Grant at Trio and Grant didn't want to hire me because he's like, you need to do your own damn thing.

I'm getting ready to do my own thing.

He's like, you need to go find your own kitchen and kind of like have your own voice.

I didn't feel like I was ready for it.

So I convinced him somehow to hire me.

And that's where we made that connection.

We started working together.

So when it was my time to leave Alinia, for me, it was, you know, you're in the shadows, you're doing other people's food, which is great because it's still a huge learning thing.

But at some point, if you know you have that entrepreneurial spirit and you know you want to do your own thing, you have a voice, you can't stand in those shadows.

So I left and spent some time just figuring out what I wanted to do.

And then avenues came available for me to, I don't know, want to say audition, but I cooked for certain people in the hotel.

And it was a restaurant that was already very successful with the chef that was there.

And they needed to carry on what was going on in that.

restaurant space.

So they allowed a chef to come in there and have really their own voice.

The restaurant didn't have an identity.

So, you know, they would just hire the right chef to run it for as long as they would want to run it.

It just needed to be great food.

It didn't need to have a personality.

Right.

It wasn't like, oh, it needs to be a steakhouse.

It needs to be an Italian place.

They're like, it's a chef-driven restaurant.

What did you make for your audition?

Do you remember?

I don't remember.

That's a great question.

Chocolate no bakes.

Yeah.

Chocolate no bakes for everyone.

But I think mostly with my resume and my time in Alinia and just who I was in the city, I already started to develop a name a little bit, and it was an easy easy sell for the hotel.

And so the year after you took that job, you earned two Michelin stars.

Correct.

All right, so help me understand.

I'll see like Michelin Star restaurant.

And then I noticed you got like three stars.

How does this Michelin star thing work?

Yeah.

I didn't realize there's multiple.

I just thought either you get one or you don't.

It's an earned accolade every single year.

So it is not yours to keep.

And it's theirs to take away whenever they decide you're not holding the standard properly.

It is not a permanent thing.

Oh, I didn't know that either.

So, you could be a one Michelin star restaurant for a couple of years and then be a zero Michelin star restaurant?

Absolutely.

Lose it.

Oh, God.

Are you allowed to say previous Michelin star?

No.

I would still wonder.

There is plenty of restaurants out there that have lost it.

And how's it earned?

They just drop in at some point and they're.

So, yeah, they shop you throughout the year, unannounced.

They could be buried in a sixth top.

They could be buried in a large party.

They could be a single diner, two tongue.

They could be really

anywhere, male, female.

I think you and I would be.

Old, young.

How dare you?

I just like to do that.

We like things so much.

I don't think we'd be discerning enough.

Oh.

I know personally, we would have given out like 50 of them by now.

Like, we had a sticky toffee pudding at a pretty medium-level hotel.

And we're like, this is the best thing ever.

Literally, we're like, we got to plan a trip back there just to get that sticky trip.

We would have given them two or three for that.

Oh, yeah.

Eight.

Eight Michelin Stars coming down.

Eight?

How does it work?

What's the max you can get?

Three is the highest.

And that's so rare, yeah?

Worldwide, there's less than 150.

so you can imagine at the time when we received the third michelin star we were one of 12 in the country oh wow that's amazing

what's the celebration like when that's announced because it's got to be huge very good for your business it does make the restaurant busier certainly it changes clientele immediately from people not just locally but now they're flying in from all over the place just to eat at your restaurant because there's diehard michelin fans that just travel the world eat at restaurants that's all they do

i know we were maybe going to do a podcast.

We lightly suggested

where we would go to all the Michelin star restaurants and record while we ate it.

But mesophonia, people don't like the sounds of eating while people ate it.

Well, we just kind of casually mentioned it.

Didn't we get a bunch of emails, Rob?

Yeah, we got like four or five emails.

I'm like, I think maybe we should maybe

stay there for a few years before opening Grace.

As a young cook, I didn't get in the business to earn accolades.

It was not even a thought to be a chef and to win awards.

For me, it was about feeding people, making them happy, creating memories.

And this was a way for me to make a living.

And I get to be creative and do what I love to do.

So that's the reason why I started cooking.

Michelin was not in the U.S.

until recently.

We're less than 20 years since Michelin's been in the U.S.

It's always been in Europe.

And they're still expanding from different countries still.

You know, I think they saw a huge potential in North America, started in New York, then the California, Vegas, and then Chicago, I think, was the fourth city.

So as young cooks, as young chefs, you always look at three Michelin stars as like the pinnacle of some chef's career.

That's the highest accolade you can get.

Yeah, where do you go from there?

Where do you go from there?

When we received two stars, blown away.

Like, what could we do immediately start thinking like, with what I'm surrounded with and the tools that I have and the people that I have and everything here, I have control over it, but I don't have control over it.

It's not mine.

It's in a hotel and there's guidelines, and there's certain things that you got to play by.

There's certain rules.

What if I didn't have any of that?

What does that look like?

Now, all of a sudden, it's like I could possibly obtain that third star on my own because I have full control over everything at that point.

Yeah, so that's where the mind went.

That's where I started searching for investors and starting to build what I thought would be my restaurant.

Okay, so now here's where I get really confused because

you start Grace in 2012,

2013, the Rob Reports named you the best restaurant in the world.

You earned three Michelin stars four years in a row.

Oh, my God.

What?

Closed in 2017.

I'm like, I'm reading this.

And I'm like, wait,

why did you close?

Because you can only go down from there.

I can't like imagine anything in the world.

What we've now discovered is it's perfect.

Let's shut it down.

Like, what is that?

That is called a shitty business deal.

Oh, okay.

That's where it came from.

You were in an arrangement that didn't work for you.

Yeah.

When you're young and hungry and you want your own thing, you just go.

And we did.

And we signed an agreement that wasn't looked over through a professional lawyer to say, don't sign that.

Y'all are you fucking crazy.

But we signed it because we were hungry and we knew this guy was going to give us money to build this restaurant.

And this guy was so bullheaded that in 2016, if you had gone to him and said, look, you're going to have either nothing or you're going to give me my fair share.

He said, great, I'll take nothing.

If you would have been part of that story or behind the scenes, that's exactly what I said.

What happened was, so we had gone into a place where we knew we were going to leave, but we were trying to buy the restaurant from him.

All of a sudden, we find out we're not really owners.

We're just employees of this guy's restaurant.

He is not a restaurateur.

He's never been.

He's a guy who does real estate on the super, super low-end, bottom-feeder, slumlordy type stuff.

Slumlord to the max, right?

So we start to see all these red flags as we're building it.

We should have paid attention to the red flags.

We just said, ah, that'll never be us.

And we just move forward.

But if I can defend you for one second, you have a crazy skill.

You're a crazy artist.

You cannot be expected to also be the savviest man.

To expect that out of one person is kind of ludicrous.

I know.

But the idea is you're supposed to surround yourself with great people, right?

It takes time.

It takes time to build a route up.

So we build the restaurant and we get to a place where it's paid back.

and then some and then some and then some.

We're at a place where we're supposed to be making now money from this restaurant with a ton of sweat equity into it.

Three stars four years in a row.

Yeah, yeah.

We earned everything we set out to do.

The restaurant was busier than could ever possibly think of.

I mean, we had, you know, wait lists for months and months at a time.

It was everything that we wanted it to be.

So

we get to a place where it's like, look, this is not working out.

If I leave, the restaurant closes.

This guy was like, no.

Okay, then walk.

So I walked.

But when I walked, I didn't announce it to the public because we were also still negotiating, trying to buy this restaurant from him, which he was never going to sell to us.

He was just putting a carrot and a carrot and a carrot to buy more time, make more money.

So he was never going to sell it.

And the buyback number was so atrocious, you would just fall off your seat.

No, we're not buying it for $10 million.

It took us a million and a half to build it.

Yeah, yeah.

What are you talking about?

I left, and I left for like four months but i was still managing everything from the outside i wasn't physically there but i was having zoom with my chef de guisine who was creating dishes from me at home and going no put this here change that make sure the puree is this and then taste it how does it taste and we were just doing things like that it was so bizarre and this was all behind this guy's back because i wanted the restaurant to succeed because i had your name it's your child everything yeah yeah and restaurants of that caliber just don't close for no reason reason.

That was the pinnacle.

And it was running like a damn Olympian.

It was an amazing thing.

It was just carrot after carrot after carrot.

And I'm like, all right, we're done.

So my business partner and I, we were in California here riding motorcycles with Keanu Reeves and a few other buddies.

Just the Archer folks through Joshua Tree.

And yeah, with Arch Motorcycles.

Exactly.

It was an amazing time.

And we both looked at each other and said, this is the day.

We already already drafted the story of the New York Times.

So Monday morning, New York Times dropped.

Grace announces Chef leaving.

The restaurant never reopens.

Wow.

But this was a conversation I had with this guy.

I said, You don't understand.

The moment I announce it to the public, it's done.

They're not coming here because you.

Yeah, exactly.

They're coming here because of my name and what I do.

And I'm like the fucking goose laying the golden egg.

Yes.

And you're just willing to throw it all away.

So short-sighted.

He was just ready to burn it down.

So he did.

Yeah, he thought he was being a shrewd businessman.

And he has 100% of nothing.

Ego.

Exactly.

Ego.

I'm delighted there was a good explanation because

I would have really been scratching my head.

That's why I'm sad, though, because I want to go there.

Go to Ever.

I will.

Yeah, we have a better restaurant now called Ever.

Yeah, yeah.

Had any other restaurant gotten three stars four years in a row?

There's restaurants that have been three stars for 30, 40 years.

A lot of great French restaurants.

But here in the U.S.?

In the U.S., no, but the ones that had three stars were consecutive.

Eleni has three stars since Day One, they're 20 years now.

French Laundry.

Maybe they're 15 years deep, however long Michelin has been in the U.S.

French Laundry, they've all held those accolades since they achieved them.

Boy, I bet it's a blessing and a curse.

So much stress to maintain to know you have to keep getting it.

Wow.

That's a lot.

I think you get to a point where it's like, what did we do to obtain the three stars?

What are we doing every day?

The mentality has to switch to just be better every day on every little thing.

Small details is what pushes the whole operation forward.

And that's always been kind of my mentality anyways.

It's like, we don't have to be great at everything, but we have to be great at something every single day, even a little bit.

And that little bit will push us in that direction.

And if we got the three stars doing what we were doing, we don't need to change much, just continue doing great things.

In ways, it's harder to maintain something that's great than it is to make something that's great.

The fire burns out.

There's more distraction at the top, right?

There's a lot greater opportunities coming your way.

There's more restaurant deals.

Maybe there's TV.

Maybe there's books.

Maybe there's other things that pull you out of the kitchen.

And And that's something I'm experiencing with all the last five years is I don't get to spend as much time in the kitchen as I really, really want to.

That's my heart and soul is being in the kitchen.

But I have all these other things that also need me to help grow the business and to expand and create other opportunities for my younger cooks that work for me.

That's my responsibility now.

This is a topic I can never get tired of.

And I think it's very rare.

that people in life accomplish the exact thing they are set out to.

And I just think the mindset of trying trying to get something versus trying not to lose something, trying not to lose something is just a very tricky and dangerous headspace

mentally.

And everyone roots for an underdog, but nobody roots for a top dog.

So you go from being like, oh, this guy is so great.

Have you ever heard of him?

To like, oh, well, let's see how good it is.

It starts shifting.

And that's

much more fun to say like, do you hear about this great new chef at X, Y, or Z versus, yeah, he's been doing this for 15 years.

I hope it's still as good as it was.

It's like a whole different

thing.

The expectations are constant, at least in our business, at our level.

Yeah, I was like, I'm watching you cook in some of these videos for so many reasons.

I'm like, oh yeah, I could never do any of this.

Like, first of all, you're so meticulous.

Yeah.

And I am not meticulous.

Well, you are with like mechanics.

Kenny, who you know, when we work on stuff together, he's furious.

My shit runs, but I didn't label all the hoses the way he did.

You know, like I want to be on the road.

Whereas he's like very anal meticulous.

You know, some people are built that way and some aren't.

My dad was that way on all of the parts in the garage.

He knew if we screwed with one tool in his toolbox.

Well, he'd position his drumstick, make sure he's like, exactly right.

Exactly right.

Yeah.

Like, don't even look at it.

It's like you can clean it, but he's the guy that says, go clean my motorcycle, but don't fucking touch it.

Of course not.

Thank you.

But yeah, you're just very meticulous and it's very tedious.

Oh, yeah.

The kind of food you're making.

It is.

And does that bleed over into your whole life?

Is your wife like, oh, my God, hon.

It doesn't matter how the bed's fucking made.

Just throw the sheet up.

No.

I mean, my kitchen at home is pretty meticulous.

It's a church.

You're not that way across the whole spectrum.

No, I wish I was.

It does require a level of perfectionism at that level of, I can't even call it cooking.

That level of being a chef is so detailed.

Like you said, the shaving of the thing.

The main instrument I'm seeing is tweezers more than knives.

It's crazy.

It's so awesome.

A lot of it is the team, too.

I'll set a standard, obviously, with how I do things, but their job is to really exceed those standards.

So the camaraderie between all of them and the fun playfulness of trying to be better against each other is what also takes it to the next level, which makes my game a little bit better every day, too.

Okay, so you win the James Beard in 2016, and then you start Ever in 2020, and you've won two Michelin stars 2021, 2022, 2023.

One thing I really liked about your kitchen and knowing your backstory, I'm not surprised, but your kitchen's dead quiet.

Yeah, that's like a big rule for you.

For me, it is.

Yeah, I love silence.

I love quietness.

Is that novel to have it that quiet?

Normally, like you said earlier, it's like screaming and yelling and fire and people yawning at each other and overtalking each other.

For me, it needs to be that way because it demands a certain amount of attention to detail.

Not a certain amount, a tremendous amount.

So, if I can take away all the distractions, such as the noise, the white noise, particularly.

Do you guys blend in a like room off the kitchen?

Yeah, blending stops.

So, like, once the front doors open, there's no more blender use.

Actually, there's no prepping at all once the front doors open up.

But the sound for me is nonverbal communication, especially during service time.

Everybody knows what they're supposed to do.

They know the next step.

They can look at somebody and know exactly what's going to happen next.

How are the employees flirting and stuff?

They're not.

How are you going to fuck?

You can talk.

Yeah.

That's fun.

Okay.

I see where you're going.

You know, it's not so overt.

Yeah.

Well, you really got to have a good non-verbal game, I guess.

Yeah, maybe so.

We just had a sex expert on teach us about a look.

Yeah, the triangle look or something.

The triangle in front of the look.

She hit Monica with it.

She was probably

tried that on my wife.

Is there a dish that you're the most proud of?

It could even be at home.

I've been a guy who's always said, I don't want to be known for something.

I don't want to be known for a particular dish.

I don't want to be the guy that's serving the same dish 20 years from now.

How interesting.

I force myself not to repeat dishes because I think that's the easy way of cooking is just fall back on something, you know, is a really solid dish.

And then you start to execute it every day and fine-tune it, fine-tune it, fine-tune it.

And there's something great about that, too.

There's a lot of chefs out there that do that, and there's something magical about that as well.

It's just really trying to perfect that dish.

But I think it takes away the creative side, and and you hit that comfort mode, complacency mode.

That's why I fear a lot of times with a tasting style menu with our cooks, it becomes a very mundane moment where it's like, all right, well, tonight, Dex, you're going to do 60 homache dishes, and then tomorrow you're going to do 60 more.

And then fast forward three months, you're still doing 60 a night.

If you hit a mode where it's like you're just going through the motion,

yeah, and it's just it's not exciting for them anymore, but you really have to think about it.

Like, that's the first time the guest is going to see that dish.

Yeah, exactly.

So, it needs to be the same way tonight as it was four months ago.

Well, that's the part I'd imagine if I were a regular customer of yours, I'd be pissed at you.

Like, if Emily changes their cheeseburger,

fuck you.

Yeah, we're saying, you know, there's something about that, too.

Do you have to hear the complaints of people?

Like, you take away their favorite.

We have a crab dish, an Alaskan king crab dish.

It's a very beautiful dish.

It was kind of in the moment for a Valentine's Day dinner at Avenue.

So we're dating back 15 plus years.

And then I took that dish and just started refining it into a place where it is today.

But it is a crab dish.

It's Alaskan king crab.

It has different elements of citrus, cucumber.

But the way it sits is in a stemless martini glass without the stem.

So it's a V-tapered glass.

And we build everything inside along the side so you can see through it.

And we create this sugar tweel on top of it.

So it's a clear glass pane that sits on top.

So it separates everything almost kind of like a lid to it.

And then we're able to build very gently on top of that lid.

So from the side view, it looks like all these elements on top are floating.

Oh, wow.

And it's become one of these dishes that people just like, is the

crab dish on the menu?

No.

Because we can't get good crab right now, so we take it off.

But you might put it back on.

Yeah, every once in a while we'll make a debut again.

Yeah.

You will call us before that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

It's a very fun, interactive dish, and people love it.

It's simple, it's clean, it's sweet, savory, salty.

He's got a little bit of spice from Togurashi's.

Oh, kind of hits everything on their palate.

Yeah, you said your kink is having customers who come in who say, I don't like peas or I don't like this.

And it's like, okay, well, let me see if you're going to like these.

Yeah, because you don't have a choice.

You're forced to eat what we serve.

And sorry, you don't like bees, but today you're like, ironically, you love peas.

Yeah.

Turns out you do like peas.

I love that experience.

I've only been to a few of these restaurants, French Laundry being the most famous of those.

And their most famous dish is diamonds and pearls or something.

Yeah, oysters and pearls.

Oysters and pearls.

And I'm like, I hate all those things.

I hate everything that's on that.

And it came, and I was immediately furious that was the only one I was going to get to have.

Oh,

that's incredible.

I hate these things.

And like, I would eat six of those.

I went to San Sebastian with some friends a couple years ago.

And my friend's a big food guy.

So we went to all these Michelin restaurants there because they have so many.

And by the end of that trip, I was like, I can't eat food again.

Like, I'm done eating food food for two or three months.

It was so intense and rich because they're experiences.

You're not there to just eat food.

You're there to take in the environment and

putting on a show.

How many days could you go to Disneyland in a row?

Or how many days could you see Taylor Swift in a row?

It's like a completely different amusement park.

But it was such a cool experience.

Yeah, San Sebastian's got the highest population of Michelin-star restaurants.

We've been there many times and phenomenal restaurants there.

Do you find that you generally get on with other chefs?

Yeah.

Third level, absolutely.

I just had a great meal last night at Vespertine here in Culver City.

Jordan used to be a chef with us at Alinea.

So it's so nice to see these young guys that work beside or underneath you go on to do amazing things.

His restaurant, Vespertine, he also has Destroyer, which is right across the street.

Great experience.

Wow.

Incredibly forward-thinking food and looks at food and art a different way.

How do you think your sous chefs and the people under you, how would they describe you?

Intense, very demanding,

fair, psychotic.

Okay.

A little bit.

That's fair.

I think it's fair.

I think you have to be a little crazy to want something great.

And it only comes from a place that I want greatness for them too.

I want them to leave any of my establishments that they're working for me and know that they got the best knowledge from me or from anybody else that was working there.

I want them to go on and do great things.

That's all I want.

That's where I'm at in my career.

You know, it's not so much about me anymore.

It's about creating either restaurants with the guys that work for me or creating opportunities for them because I think that's more satisfying for me right now.

I cannot help but see the parallel between fine dining and art to some degree.

Sure.

A good deal of art's driven by the story of the artists.

It's definitely part of the appeal.

Are you sometimes seeing a very popular chef and then you eat at the restaurant and you're like, this is bullshit.

He's just an interesting dude or she's an interesting.

Yeah.

Does that exist in this new world of tons of famous chefs?

Absolutely.

There's plenty of chefs out there that are more interesting than the food that they're serving or the restaurants that they operate.

Yeah.

How does The Bear, the show, tie into all this?

A lot of people will say that The Bear was storied after my life.

Inspired by.

It is not.

I'm there to say it for the 12th, thousandth time.

At least they never said that to me, so I can't own it.

I think there's a lot of similarities.

The irony that the guy's name is Bear and he's a chef.

Maybe that's how a lot of people make that connection with my father and me.

And so the Chicago and the Chicago.

Yeah.

There's a lot of pieces.

If you really wanted to go down that road of connecting the dots, sure, there's some dots that you can connect.

Were you consulted when they were formulating the show?

I consulted with them a lot.

I did a lot of their food for some of the seasons.

The forks season.

Shot in the restaurant.

They spent a couple of weeks with us in the restaurant, both restaurants.

It's been an incredible experience.

I mean, everybody working there has been top-notch from the actors all the way to the cameramen and people setting up.

They're all incredible people.

In the very beginning, I spent a lot of time just teaching people how to canal.

Oh, I've tried to do it.

I can't do it.

There's a certain touch to certain things that if it's not done right, it comes off like bullshit.

Yeah, exactly.

Him excluded, what's the best cooking by an actor you've seen?

There's also not that many.

There's a good amount.

Bradley Cooper and that.

Oh, yeah, that's actually a good one.

Yeah, bradley cooper and that

he's like really into cooking well let's hear from the pro yeah

I think Bradley Cooper was a great one was it burn right yeah burn yeah I love and kitchen confidential did you read that book I did yeah I did too I loved it but I'm an addict so I like any yeah

but he was the first guy who can sugarcoat anything and I love that he was very blunt and that time for me was like yeah that is exactly what is happening in our world right now that's what I've been surrounded by The drugs and the alcohol and the promiscuous shit that goes on behind the scenes when all the lights are off.

Yeah, very appealing.

My favorite.

My favorite.

Yeah, yeah.

I guess my last question is, what motivated you to write the book?

I love it.

By the way, it's very kitchen confidential.

Like it reads as like you're going to read a book about the Hell's Angels.

Like it's not a lofty French cooking.

It's my kind of book immediately.

What prompted you to write it?

2016, we released a documentary called For Grace.

It was a documentary about building the restaurant, building grace, for grace.

And that's kind of where I let my guard down for the first time in my world with my parents.

Not a lot of people, even close people around me, didn't really know the story of my parents.

I was super embarrassed by it.

I was embarrassed that my father did that to the family.

And I think at that time, I was also looking at it like he was a coward.

I didn't really process a lot of it at that point.

They caught me in a very vulnerable time filming that documentary.

They spent hours and hours with me every single day for months on end.

And it was at the end of a workday.

We got back to the house and the cameras were still going and we just started talking about my parents somehow got onto the subject.

I told them the whole story of what happened and they got all that on camera.

Yeah.

And then they left.

And then I realized the next day they had drove to Ohio to get actual footage from the TV studio because they're like, we have a story now.

Yeah.

So that was released in 2016 on Netflix.

Spent a few years on there.

Did you feel a

lightning of your spirit having that finally out and realizing people didn't look at you as a piece of shit, but rather a strong survivor?

Did any of that happen?

You know, it reached people that I never thought it would reach before.

We saw an influx in the restaurant of just teachers coming through because of Ruth Snyder and how much she was a huge part of my life and how she helped me navigate through a lot of things.

And the teacher side of it was just huge.

And any teacher who would come through the restaurant would give a free meal to and just take care of them because it was so special.

It was pretty amazing to watch that moment.

But that documentary, it just skimmed the surface of who I was and where I really come from.

I decided one day that I just wanted to

let it all out.

I needed to just get it the hell off my chest, everything that I could remember and get it on paper.

And, you know, I asked my good friend Jeremy if he would be interested in writing the book for me because he had already written a few other books that were published, and I know he's an incredible writer.

And he said, Absolutely.

And I said, Okay, I got one thing for you.

And he's like, I got one thing for you.

And I said, Okay, what?

And he says, It has to be brutally honest.

I'm like, dude, that's exactly what I said.

That's exactly what I want.

I said, it has to be brutally honest.

It can't be sugarcoated.

I don't want a fluff piece.

I need it to be real.

I need a platform that I can emotionally let out my stories so I can be done with it.

So it was very, very, very therapeutic for me to get these demons off my chest and onto the paper.

Did you feel reluctant to have children knowing sometimes these things are past?

You said like your dad had a bad dad and I feel like that would scare me.

You're right.

It does.

It did.

I was worried about having that continuization of that type of behavior.

I was scared to have kids in the beginning, but I couldn't even imagine doing what was done to me to anyone around me, any person, especially my two daughters or my two stepchildren.

I couldn't even imagine like laying a finger.

I mean, I get emotional yelling at them when I have to yell at them.

And that's maybe once a year.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm like the biggest sissy.

Well, that's kind of nice then.

Then you broke that cycle.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's very important that I was able to do that.

Well, the book is aptly named Fireproof.

Memoir of a chef.

I think it's great, man.

You guys knocked it out of the park.

It's so interesting.

Thank you.

It's a page turner.

Curtis, this has been a delight.

I really hope I get to eat.

I'm dying.

We're going to exploit this relationship

in Chicago.

Yeah, well, I'd love to have you guys come to the restaurant when you get there next.

Yeah, yeah.

Love to have you.

Oh, yeah.

After watching those videos, I'm like, oh, I got a trial.

This is fucking smoke pouring out of things and steam.

Yeah.

It'll be fun.

It's incredible.

Well, congrats on a great book.

Thank you.

The many awards.

And I'm glad that you found your way through it all in such an amazing way.

It's been great.

All right.

Take care.

Stay tuned for more Armchair expert

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Hi there, this is Hermium Permium.

If you like that, you're going to love the fact checker.

Ms.

Monica.

You have, let me turn.

powder yeah powder rub it in a little bit right here just rub it in yeah when i hit my face with the brush it exploded i had put too much on sure that'll keep it

that'll happen

we've heard these stories of david crusso

i've heard these incredible stories for people but people have worked on set with him do you know what i'm talking about not really He was on one of these CSIs or one of these procedurals.

You know, and he famously wore sunglasses.

Yes.

I mean, I know of him.

I know the lore.

You know the lore and like we all know the fun stuff.

But I definitely worked with some reputable people that had either been actors who come from the show or

also crew members.

And the one I found to be, I just hope it's true, which is so incredible, is that, well, I heard he would rewrite his side of the scene, but not the other side.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So, like, the actor, the day player rarely, the stuff didn't even make sense anymore.

That's tough.

And then he would self-edit, and I guess he had the glasses on, and he would, like, let's say his line was like, no,

no, the results just came back in, and they're the negative.

He would not like one part of it, and then he'd go, results in negative.

And he'd go, boom, and he'd look down one of the cameras and go, boom.

Oh.

It's telling them that's the take.

So he was kind of self-directing and editing, and he would just hit chunks.

Oh, this is what I heard.

Look, he knew his biz.

He knew his show.

I'm so sad I didn't ever get to just be on set and watch it all.

Yeah, that sounds fun.

You can't argue with the results.

It was a huge hit and everyone loved it.

It's too bad he missed meta AI glasses because he could have been like, he could have done a lot of things.

Directing the whole show.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, and he could just touch one side and that would mean something.

And then the other side would mean something.

Yeah, he could probably edit real time.

You'd just be cutting right now.

Yeah, I would.

I'd just be holding it and like, just like you didn't even notice, right?

I just didn't notice it.

No, I would know.

You must admit, I know exactly when you're editing in your head because I'm going to catch you every time.

You catch me every other time.

Okay.

Well, because I'm also paying attention to the guests pretty hard.

But if I were to only watch you, I would know exactly when you were editing.

In this case, if it's just us two, let's practice.

We'll practice, okay?

So throughout this film.

Oh, I watched this great doc about the turning point of the...

It's happening.

Yes, yes, yes.

No, it's not.

I knew you were trying to trick me and so i didn't do it i didn't edit

you use your ear as the clicker to edit

uh um you had a story you were going to tell me that you didn't tell me on the last fact yes this is a gross fact check okay

because we have two gross

to talk about you sent me a uh article that topo chico a brand we love Oh, I sent that to you.

Yeah, you did.

Okay, great.

Because today I was like, I got to bring that up to you.

Yeah.

Trusted brand.

We love topo chicken.

Yeah, we love it.

Yeah.

Still do.

I don't care what they say.

Same.

I do too.

But there, I guess, was a recall, and we've been drinking it.

And I had a tummy bug.

Oh, you went there.

Yeah, of course I did.

Like, oh, I probably.

And guess who else I'm worried had some?

Ooh.

Brad Pitt.

I should ask him if he said an ass.

We maybe gave him a tummy bug.

It's kind of cute.

It's kind of cool.

By the way, that would be a plant for you in your sickness where you made him sick.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

This is where we find out you're Moonchild's any you're poisoning us.

I haven't done it.

I haven't crossed the line.

But that was a,

you would call that a happy accident

if he had Hannes.

Like, he can't really make it home.

So I have to help him home.

Yeah.

And

how would you help him home?

Well, I get him in my car.

Okay, he can't drive.

He's baggy with the bag.

His Hannes is so bad he can't drive.

Yeah.

Ideally, it's coming out both ends.

Yeah.

Anyway, I still have, I have Hanas, so.

You still have it?

Yeah, it was gone for a day, but it's back.

It's interesting.

I saw that recall.

I sent it to you, and I have since drank Topo Chico.

Rob, did we get ours from Costco?

Because I want to say Costco was in that article.

No, Lazy Acres.

I've been drinking like two or three the last two months.

And no Hanus?

No, I've been fine.

Okay, we should just be checking in with Rob, I guess.

No, because it could be

like some are rancid.

I doubt every single one is.

We're drinking from the same package.

Yeah, but it could be each bottle.

I'm still going to drink it.

Isn't that wild?

Wow.

I am too.

I don't know.

I guess you guys want me to take you home.

That's what it seems like.

Drive away.

I can't imagine turning over the wheel.

That's more crazy to me than, although we've driven in the car where you you drive, and I like it.

You've let me drive.

Yeah, yeah, I like it.

But I like it because I decide I like it.

You know what I'm saying?

It's unnatural for me.

And I decide to enjoy the notion that we might get in an accident.

No.

Well, that's what I do.

I just go, well, that'll be fun.

We'll survive in these accidents around.

No, not at all.

Okay.

I'm just such a control freak.

I hate not having control of the car.

Yeah.

I mean, look, let's just say this.

I think my story is I avoid several accidents a month that I tell myself your average person wouldn't have found their way out of that.

Yeah.

So I didn't even have to be a bad driver.

I just go like, will they be able to get out of this weird situation where there's an oncoming car, but you have to quickly go, it's okay to drive on the grass at this point because that's less bad than a head-on.

It's so funny because the reason you are avoiding accidents is because of the way you drive.

That's part of it.

You drive wildly.

So then there's almost accidents and then you get out of it.

I noticed that.

Be careful though, because be careful what you're saying, because I got a really cryptic

email.

I shouldn't even say this, but

it's been in my head since he sent it.

What happened?

Someone on our business manager team sent a random email to me and saying like, hey, we're renewing all your insurance on your cars.

They will go through your social media.

Oh.

And I'm like, oh, he's telling me, I have like one video of Aaron and I not even going that fast.

We're on Los Felos Boulevard.

We go first through third gear in the, in the Z-Wagon.

Are they going to go through the podcast?

Can they do that?

I don't know, but I was like, oh my God, wait, I've only like I've had one accident in 30 years of living in LA.

I feel like I'm a pretty good bet.

Yeah.

I got zero tickets for the last, I got no speeding ticket.

Like my record is nice.

Yeah.

And he sent me this and I was like, but look, he's telling me the truth.

Yeah.

No, it's good.

He's telling you,

but it really made made me mad.

At him?

I felt like I was in trouble.

He's telling you so you can clean up some stuff on there.

I know, but I don't know why.

It's funny.

I keep thinking about reading the email and it makes me angry.

And then I'm like, why?

What is, why am I angry about this?

I know why.

Cause

it feels like a teacher called me.

What?

Like, don't have.

No, you got caught.

You feel like you got caught and you don't like it.

And no one likes it.

Yeah, maybe it's like, I want to have all things be true you think i'm well i am a very safe driver a very good record and i want you to ignore my fun i'm having on top gear and on my instagram but it's not his fault no i know it he no he's a blessing yeah but i'm mad at him oh no i felt like he was shaming me about my instagram oh my god this is wild none of it makes sense but i'm just being honest with you that i keep thinking about and then i go why are you thinking about this over and over again like what's actually been triggered and i still haven't figured that out But something deep has been activated.

Well, I do think, I think you feel you got caught.

You feel judged.

And my shame of having had the accident.

I think I'm still dealing with the shame of having that accident.

That was a long time ago.

I know.

It was like four years ago.

But he brought it up in the email.

No, we did.

That was kind of like, that was three years ago.

Okay.

Maybe he's trying to help you get over.

He's trying to help you get over your identity marker of being a good driver.

trying to help me have good rates, which is what

I'm there to do.

And I'm very appreciative of it.

And I'm mad at him.

And I don't know why, because I know he doesn't deserve it.

I love him.

And we even have cars in common.

Like when I get a new car, he's the only one there that's excited.

He's like, oh, that's a cool year.

Oh, man.

And then he sent me this email.

Shame me.

He's going to come off your team now.

No, no, no, no, no.

He's looking out for me, but it's funny how much it's bothered me.

You know, like when you read a comment and it sticks around way too long in your head.

Yeah, this this is wild it is although that's funny because i also have a comment that is in my head that i can't get out yeah that also doesn't make much sense of why it's like bothering me so much yeah

um we're

i just think people are like really there's certain areas where we're so fragile we're sensitive

we are we're really sensitive and i do think the common thread maybe in both is judgment like i feel judged by this comment yeah yeah and I think you feel judged by yours yeah then I'm like reckless and irresponsible even though Jacob is only trying to protect you we couldn't be clear about that we're dead clear on his his intentions and and and the goodwill he wishes for me and he's doing the right thing yeah and still I didn't I felt like I got slapped on the wrist Zach sometimes it's a we all do make mistakes

but you don't think it's a mistake this is me getting in an accident was a mistake.

Okay, no, an accident.

That's not, he's telling you, don't talk about doing illegal stuff.

That's what he's saying.

And literally, we just did it on the fact check, like tomorrow's fact check, you and Aaron talk about doing some illegal stuff.

Well, we wanted to.

No, but then you raced that guy.

Oh, that was all in the speed limit.

I was thinking about Jacob when that was happening and I was really mad that that was in my mind.

Well, it needs to be.

I've been having fun in cars since I was 16.

That's the name of the game.

Why don't you do this then?

Just come to terms with the fact that your insurance is going to be astronomical.

You're right.

That's the solution.

And I've been working towards that, but it's hard.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

All right.

I want to talk about pin worms.

Okay, great.

What's your favorite topic?

Would you want to nurse a boy back to health who is suffering from pinworms?

Okay.

I think I'll draw the line there.

That's where it ends.

If people don't know about pinworms, they're tiny bugs in your butthole.

They'd be better, they'd be more accurately called shitworms.

We were just discussing them in the house a couple days ago.

They're in your butt.

They're in your poop.

They come out your butt into your poop.

Itchy.

Yeah,

they make your butt itch a lot.

And then when you do, there are

insects in the duty.

I find it so horrific.

And when the kids were little, your kids, they got it a couple of times.

So we all had to take the medicine.

It's a preschool.

Yeah.

I think it's a preschool thing.

It's like every few months there's a pin worm outbreak.

All these kids are eating their butts and their fingers.

Oh my God.

It's so horrible.

But you just drink this like chalky powder basically and it's kind of done.

So we've done that a few times in the past.

And I thought those days were over.

Oh.

You haven't heard this?

No.

They're back in our rotation.

Someone in our circle has pinworms.

She said I could say who.

She said I could talk about it.

Oh, who?

But I feel unethical.

Oh.

Anna.

Oh, okay.

Where has she been?

Exactly.

Preschool?

For me, it would be like the Tapuchico.

I know she's infected.

I'll still hang with her.

Yeah, that's what it is.

But also, every 10 minutes or so, I think about them.

They don't bother me like they bother you.

I know.

I wonder.

I don't think I've ever had them, even though my family's had them and I've drank that liquid.

Yeah.

I don't have any memory of a scratchy.

Well, Aaron and I were laughing about it, because when we were talking about pin worms, we were like, if the symptoms scratchy anus, how on earth would either of us think there's something new going on?

What if you?

And also, if that's the outcome, like, yeah, that's standard.

You have a scratchy anus.

Never.

What if you have?

Your anus is never itchy?

I mean, no.

What a gift.

What does it mean?

Mine is like moist?

No, I think clean, I would imagine.

Oh, you're itching because it's dirty?

No, because I'm cleaning like crazy.

In fact, Eric and I just had a sidebar about, we don't think people are being honest who have bidet toilets.

Oh, I don't have one.

Right.

And we're not saying people are not honest about owning one or not owning one, but when they own one and they can spray the water on their butthole, do they not use their finger to clean their butthole?

Which is a polarizing topic.

It is.

And Eric and I are like, you clean, you use your finger to clean your butthole in the shower.

I don't.

How are you cleaning your butthole?

I'm so nervous about your butthole.

If you're not cleaning it in a bidet or you're not cleaning it in the shower.

Of course I'm cleaning it, but I'm not sticking my finger up my butt.

No, no one's asking you to put your finger in your butt.

What do you mean?

Cleaning your anus.

Oh, the outside.

Yes, of course.

With your fingers.

With soap and fingers, but all of that.

You know, when people go like, no, I use soap as if that's a great thing.

Oh, great.

So now your soap has your asshole on it and then you're rubbing your soap on your face.

You're self-cleaning and you don't use your butt soap for your face.

It's not more sanitary.

When people think they're saying that is like a virtue that they use their bar of soap, I'm like, great, then you have shit on your bar of soap.

No, you don't.

Ew, why are you, you have so much shit everywhere?

The water cleans the shit off.

You wipe with your fingers.

You need friction.

Why is your butthole like so high up or something?

Like, I feel like the water is mostly cleaning it.

And then you use

the water that trickles

rolls past your anus is cleaning it.

You already said it.

You use a bar of soap in your fingers.

Right.

But mainly the bar of soap is the main

instrument.

And then once it's clean, then I put it on my finger.

I use soap on my hands and just do like a little extra.

Yeah, your hands on your butthole in the shower.

Yes, everyone and everyone should.

But I thought you meant up your butt.

And the bidet is up your butt, right?

No, it's cleaning the outside of your anus.

Oh, okay.

Unless you're somehow dilating your butthole and letting it all spray up there, which it would be the dream.

That would be the dream.

Yeah.

And I have some success in that realm.

But at any rate, it's really funny.

People are like, oh, gross, you use your finger with the bidet.

And it's like, I don't get it.

You use your finger in the shower and then you wash your hand after.

What are we talking about?

This is pageantry.

I have a question about the bidet.

So are you wiping first with paper with your tissue?

You're not?

Of course not.

Why?

Because why would you want to take dry paper and smear in dry poop and just rub it into your skin and then add water?

No, you spray the water.

The debris is freed.

Then you go in with the finger and really clean.

Then more rinsing, then toilet paper for drying.

And there's not, there's nothing.

I'm telling you this.

There's nothing on the toilet paper.

When I wipe my fanny.

Yeah, same.

No.

Yes.

If you're not using water.

Are you saying there's not poop on your toilet paper?

No, no, sorry.

By the time I'm done.

With what?

Wiping.

By the time I'm done wiping, there's no poop.

Oh, my God.

Of course.

But with the bidet, if you do the rinse first and a cleanse with your finger, when you wipe, it's spotless.

Okay, that's fine.

And then you're just looking at like virgin clean toilet paper.

Okay, but you're, you are making a hannis.

Like, so you have like poop particles on your butt after you've pooped.

Yeah.

And then you're putting water on that poop immediately.

Spraying it, and then it falls down into the toilet drips yeah

and then it's still gonna be on there a little bit no it's not you get in there you clean with your finger so you're getting poop on your hands for sure right no because i've sprayed the the bris now i'm cleansing with my finger my anus and then i'm grabbing tissue and and drying all off and then i wash my hands and i'm spotless and i've not wiped my butt 300 times till it's bleeding as i do when i'm not on a bidet oh my God.

Anyways.

Okay, well, anyway, my butt doesn't itch.

Okay.

And yours does.

Occasionally.

And Aaron's more.

What if you guys are the ones that have had pinworms this whole time and just itch?

You would like that, wouldn't you?

No, I don't.

I don't.

I draw the line of pin worms.

I don't like bugs.

No, I'm saying you would like if we were guilty of spreading that.

Oh, yeah.

Well, it just makes the most sense, really.

I couldn't even have pin worms.

They'd drown because I'm flushing that area with with water.

They work, and that's not how they work.

Apparently, they're they don't like light,

and

that's it.

And that chalky substance.

Well, I wonder if you could put a LED light bulb in your butt, but they go up.

So, Kristen knows a lot about pin worms.

Yeah, she's spoken in the press a lot about, I applaud her willingness because she'll talk about her own pin worms a lot freely.

Oh my god, yeah, she was educating

Anna about the pin worms, and she said the way to find them is you have your kid bend over,

spread their butt out, and then in the dark, and then all of a sudden you turn on the light super quickly, and then you have to like get it, get it.

Get it.

Yeah, use some sort of thing to get out.

She keeps calling it the mother.

That sounds like the SCOBY or whatever.

I know.

It sounds like from apple cider vinegar because it does have a mother.

yeah or uh kombucha yeah i don't know about the retrieval and everything we've i i don't know if she's embellishing but we generally give them the drink and that's all no she uses like some sort of thing to get the mother out according to her oh wow and then okay i told you this

that's the mother

wait that's just dude that's from dude

that is a pin worm though that is

disgusting anyway i just really there's so many gross things in the world topo chico no don't say it's please don't say it's gross pin worm no no no don't exclude topo chico all right well i want that's those were the my main things do you want to make it cute again and talk about aaron and delta and you riding your motorcycles I mean,

just we had what a time we had.

We went out on the electric motorcycles and we really, really explored.

We got into Griffith Park.

We got onto some closed roads

just watching my little one negotiate mountain turns with cliffs on the side with total confidence.

Yeah.

It's just so fun.

We had so much fun.

That's great.

Yeah.

We'd make the best husbands, like if we had a little girl.

Sure.

It's a great little team.

That's cute.

Yeah.

Now, would you rather have pin worms forever?

Okay.

And as you said, you don't actually think you've had them.

Or great insurance.

Neither do I.

But apparently it's really like itchy.

Yeah.

And really bad.

Are you scoping his ana in her butt every five seconds?

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

She said it.

She thought she had cancer.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

That's why this happened.

She was looking really upset.

Yeah.

And then she said, I have to talk to someone about this.

I'm really worried.

My butt is so itchy.

Oh, wow.

And then Carly said, oh, you have pinworms.

I guess I don't.

I don't think I've had it then.

Exactly.

The way she was saying it, it felt extreme.

Yeah.

And Carly said, oh, you have pinworms.

And she was like.

Are you sure?

Like, I'm worried it's something serious.

And she was like, I think I really, I feel like, I woke up today and I was like, I definitely have cancer.

I need to talk to an adult about this.

And then she took the medicine and it's been fine ever since.

Okay, would you rather have pin worms

or penis worms?

How do penis worms work?

I guess let's just say they work the same.

They're worms coming out of my breath.

They're not real, are they?

Then definitely my butt.

Yeah, that's a good answer.

Well, like or like crabs.

Crabs?

Yeah, isn't that?

Isn't that the same thing?

That's a venereal disease.

Yeah, that's itchy, but it's your...

I've never had it.

Shockingly.

Yeah.

I'm going to be honest.

It's shocking how little diseases I got.

I deserved a lot more.

Yeah.

I have a very close friend who got them when we were in our 20s, and it was insane.

He showed me his mom's pubis.

It was just like, it was like a cotrillion mosquito bites.

It looked insane.

It looked terrible.

You weren't afraid of getting close.

Well, he'd already shaved his pubic hair and applied the cream and everything but it was it was it was major are crabs scabies or no they're separate i think they're separate but scabies is also a thing and that's got the worst name ever i have a scabies story but i don't know i don't think i'm allowed to share it it's not me so i don't think i can yeah but you know someone that had scabies yes and

my father's girlfriend had scabies.

Maybe he gave them to her.

I don't know.

He's passed.

Maybe we should put that on him.

Okay.

But I know there was a scabies outbreak in my father's bedroom when I lived with him.

And I remember being nervous that I knew scabies were in the house.

Yes.

See?

It is nerve-wracking.

I knew scabies were in the house.

You could have

scabies out of that.

I know.

But it's an onomatopoeia.

Like, they sound exactly like, I think, what they are.

Anyway, would you rather have scabies slash crabs or pinworms?

Pinworm, for sure.

Okay.

Well, with no, there's no medicine.

The thing with pinworm is you drink this thing, they all live inside your body, and you shit out a bunch of dead pinworms, and it's over.

Scabies and crabbies and dinghies and chomchomps.

Stop.

They all, I think, can live on your sheets and in your carpet.

So do the pinworms, though.

They're in your carpet.

That's why you have to bleach it all.

I don't even have carpet, but continue.

Anyway, wait, the would you rather is there's no medicine.

So these are permanent conditions.

Oh, pinworms.

For sure.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I know.

Say.

Yeah.

Okay.

I hope we get a scabies medication sponsor because obviously we are against scabies.

And pinworms.

And pin worms.

Pinworm medication.

Yeah.

And I think we're bringing awareness to pinworms, which is good.

If you have

suspiciously itchy anus.

Well, that's what Anna said.

She said, I do, people need to be talking about

SIA in the medical world.

Spreading information about suspiciously itchy anus.

The patient is

SIA.

That's like maybe on season two of the pit.

Oh, do a whole

whole thing.

All right.

Well, that was disgusting.

That was.

It was unnecessary.

Can you, without saying which ones,

say the number of STIs you've had for awareness?

I think one.

Oh, wow.

That's not a lot at all.

Yeah.

Was it AIDS?

You go without saying which one, and then you're like, which one?

Is it gonorrhea?

Was it?

I'll tell you that if I was your age, it wouldn't have been an issue because there's a vaccine.

HPV.

HPV.

Human PAP.

Although HPV is a case of that.

I'm not even sure

I had it.

It's too messy of a story, but I got a call from a girlfriend.

She had it.

And then I,

I don't know.

Did you, what'd you do?

I don't remember.

Did you get checked?

Yeah, yeah, I got checked.

A ton of people have HPV.

It's very common.

Oh, they say like 80% of of the sexually active public has it.

And then, and then it even went further, which is they started having cases where there was no sexual activity.

So, like, oh, this is being spread without sexual activity.

Yeah, HPV is like comical.

But there's a vaccine.

Yes, you had it, right?

I had the vaccine.

And Kristen had it.

Did you have it, Rob?

I think so, yeah.

Okay.

Kristen had it?

Had the vaccine.

Really?

Yeah.

That's the five-year gap.

Like that

came out when, you know, that was the crucial gap.

I got the vaccine early, it was really early, almost in a sense of like, is it too early?

Uh-huh.

Is it tested it up?

But I got it.

Yeah, I wonder if these people that are anti-vaccine still get the HPV vaccine.

Because there's a lot of times where the rubber meets the, we all are contradictions.

I don't think this is unique to vaxers, but certainly there's ones that they must make exceptions for.

Like, yeah, I don't want fucking HPV.

I'll get that.

But they're like not getting measles.

Oh, I guess because they think, they think it's it's not an issue.

Yeah, it's such a lower percentage.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I think if you can get that vaccine, let's do it, y'all.

I want everyone.

I don't want shingles.

I don't want, I don't want, I don't want anything.

I don't either.

Another onomatopoeia.

Shingles.

Shingles, yeah.

Okay, let's do some facts.

Let's do some facts.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

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Facts for Curtis.

Facts for Curtis.

What a life story.

Yes.

To bring up to speed, Aaron, his father killed his mother and then killed himself.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

That seems very

when we were growing up.

Yes, yeah.

And he's our age.

Okay, there you have it.

I can't wait to get to that Michelin star in Chicago.

This song bitch got three

stars stars three years in a row or something crazy.

No, he's like the most, one of the most decorated American chefs.

And

they say

Bear's a little bit based on the bear.

Okay.

But he says no, but he says no, but I believe that.

I don't believe that.

Yeah, I don't neither.

I don't believe it.

First fact, we don't believe it.

I'm going to inform you guys a little bit.

Okay.

So one of my facts is

current restaurants with three Michelin stars.

Okay.

In 2025.

I'm going to do in the U.S.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Atelier Cren,

that's in San Francisco.

Triggering.

You can't be triggering.

We can't use that word, but go ahead.

Atelier, what was it called?

You can use it for a three Michelin star restaurant.

Okay.

Atelier Cren, San Francisco.

Known for its contemporary American cuisine and innovative tasting menus.

Now, French laundry.

Lovely.

Yonteville, California.

Haven't been.

I've been.

It is a worthwhile experience.

Is it wine country?

It's in wine country.

It's so good.

And you eat for like three hours and your

so full, but you keep going.

Yeah, that's how most of these restaurants are.

It's like tasting menus.

You go, you don't pick what you're eating, and you're there for hours and hours and hours.

Okay.

11 Madison Park, New York City.

That's a big one.

There's like a book on, I think the chef or somebody wrote a book about that restaurant.

Masa, also in New York.

That's Japanese.

La Bernaden, New York, very, very

trusted brand.

Very trusted brand.

Yes.

The Inn at Little Washington.

That's in Washington, Virginia.

Oh.

Historic Inn.

American cuisine.

That sounds like our alley, up our alley.

I like that.

Got a nice porridge.

I immediately would like to do that.

I don't think you're going to be getting porridge.

I think there's a really robust and hearty stew.

Right.

And a real nice thick piece of bread.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Hearty.

Okay.

You guys go and you report back what was on the menu.

Warm mug of hot cocoa.

Okay.

Smith, that's S-M-Y-T-H,

Chicago.

Alinia,

ding, ding, ding, Chicago.

Ooh.

I'm going to say Young Sik.

That's a Korean restaurant, New York City.

Or it might be Jung Sik.

Probably Young.

Yeah, I think so.

And then we have Single Thread, Healdsburg, California.

What's your favorite restaurant, Aaron, of all time?

That's hard.

Are we talking real good food?

Like, I don't know.

It's just your favorite.

Just my favorite.

It doesn't have to be best food.

Yeah.

I mean, I think Lafayette Coney Island is my favorite.

I mean, really?

That's a great idea.

I was almost going to guess that for you.

And that might be mine, too.

I understand.

I was a little disappointed they shut down for a second time recently.

They have so many rats.

These rats are just...

It's their favorite restaurant.

Yeah, they love that restaurant.

And the poor restaurant next door has to make pleas that

the rats aren't there.

They're like, you can still come here.

And everyone's like, I'm not going anywhere near that.

Some of these videos.

Some of these videos of the rats are kind of interesting.

The rats are like, looks like they're mixing the cone sauce.

Like, they're in the action.

Oh, my godatouille.

And they are not shy.

Like, one jumped like on a table, right on someone's table, and then they went into the trash can.

There's videos of that.

They're like coming in and and out of the trash can.

Yeah, they're just,

I mean,

what are they going to do?

I mean, so they're open now?

I, I,

by the way, I don't care.

I don't either.

It doesn't please me.

I mean, I hate

why I said I hate it is because

they were closed last time I was like.

attempting to go in.

Yeah.

And I was like, fuck.

You know it'd be great if they just had like a

liability waiver you signed.

Yeah.

It's like I don't deal with the fuck that there's rats and like, stop even trying to kill them.

Let's just deal with the rats.

You just got to wear like leather boots when you go.

You know, it's it's always been going on, it's just the city is getting a little too hoity-toity for uh for their own bed.

Now, all of a sudden, like, you can't have a bunch of rats running around.

Oh, now there's people down here.

Yeah,

the only thing is the droppings kind of

look like

coney sauce, yeah.

Oh,

you wouldn't be able to tell and they do spread a lot of disease they do they do they're cute it'd be great if you went to grab because you get a little train you've ordered a few it'd be great if you like went to grab your cone and the rat had it and you went like a tug of war with the rat or you ate it like lady in the tramp with the rat

you became great friends with the rats

oh

all right well that's

three michelin stars for the united states currently okay so that's not a long list.

No.

I think, you know, I don't think Michigan at all has a Michelin restaurant.

No.

Maybe they have a one-star.

Not even.

Not even.

We'll save that for the next five years.

Clean up that infestation they might get up.

Sure.

Now, it's good you're here.

Really good you're here because

J2C comes up because Curtis is a J2C.

No doubt.

Yeah.

July 2nd.

He's July 2nd.

Yeah.

Shit.

That's coming.

And he had an internal sweetness that was very J2C.

This J2C.

Wait, Aaron,

you're July, yeah.

Yeah.

He's going to be 50 in five seconds.

Oh, yeah.

50.

How do you feel?

You're not kicking a stretch.

I'm 50 years old.

Wait, you're going to be 50 in next month?

Yeah.

Wait, so you, then you are exactly Curtis's age.

You guys were born on big skin.

Oh, he's going to be 50.

Yeah.

Oh, how about that?

So we're both exactly six months younger than dad here.

Yeah.

Yes.

He could be Curtis's dad, too.

I wanted to be.

Oh, my gosh.

How do you feel?

What are you going to do?

Well, I'm

going to take a little ride down to Nashville, Tennessee, and celebrate with my fellow J2C.

Nice, nice.

Maybe I'll make you a steak in the woods.

Yeah, well,

you sure didn't get one from me.

That's my fault.

I was down in Mexico throwing up violently.

That's

rights itself.

Love it.

Maybe some donuts in the Corvette, some boat rides.

I mean, come on.

Yeah.

That's right.

If you're lucky.

You could turn 150.

once we have those drugs.

Well, that's coming soon.

I'm most excited about the

dog drugs that are coming.

I know you

probably aren't as into it.

What is it?

They're going to keep dogs alive now.

Really?

Yeah, for a long time.

That's my nightmare.

That is your nightmare.

I literally was just thinking this morning, like,

what's going to happen when they go away to school and I'm trying to be in Nashville?

And Kristen's in New York City.

Those dogs are already in the middle of the house.

I might probably have those

alive.

And they're still going to be alive.

Do you think they are in nine years?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Whiskey is unfortunately quite young.

He is

aging in reverse.

He's like seven.

That's an old dog.

He's going to go till 18 or 19 because he's so tiny and angry.

Yeah, he might.

Yeah, so while I'll be 150, you'll still have Franken with you.

Maybe I won't take the medicine if they're going to go the distance.

Wow.

Okay.

So there's a drug that's going to keep them alive for how much longer?

Not forever, but

it's

a lifespan.

Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like that they're going to have it

start seeing it on the market next year.

That would be just like Americans to have

a pill for our dogs to keep them alive forever, and then we're dying.

Yeah, exactly.

Because I think when you're in the rest of the world and you see, like we had, I don't want to shame anyone because actually we met her and she was a lovely woman, but we were delivering food two days ago.

There's a dog restaurant.

We went to a dog restaurant so the dog could get delivery food.

It was called the pestaurant.

Or wait, pet, wait, not pasta.

Yeah, petsterant.

Petstaurant.

Petstaurant.

It's raw.

Petstaurant.

Yeah, when we got it, we were like, could this possibly be it?

Well, it would have to be a restaurant for pets because no one would eat at a restaurant called Pet Starant.

No, not me.

And sure enough, it was a huge smorgasbord for this dog.

It was a humongous bag of, I thought it was ice cream when I went in and grabbed it because it was like, it was really cold, the bag.

And I go, is this?

And there was like a dozen containers.

Yeah.

I go, is this ice cream?

For the dog?

A DM doggy blizzard?

They're like, no, it's not ice cream, but it's, it is food.

And I was like, like,

weird.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, but if you're like in a country and you're starving and you hear that dogs in America have food delivery, like whatever they're in the mood for,

it's pretty wild.

But now that our dogs are going to live longer than us.

Oh, yeah.

Take that with a grain of salt of where I get my fence from.

Yeah.

Your feed.

That might have been a dream.

That's your algorithm different than mine.

Okay.

Now, because of the birthdays, I wanted to look up most popular birthdays.

We do this once in a while.

We do, but I, and I think it's not always the same.

It's always end August, right?

September 9th.

September 9th is the most common birthday, according to AI.

Makes so much sense.

When the coitus takes place.

Yeah,

you're at Christmas.

Yeah.

And you're like, we want a family next Christmas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

Daifu.

Yeah, we got September 9th, September 19th, September 12th, September 17th, September 10th, July 7th,

September 20th, September 15th, basically all of September.

Oh, to your

point.

I know the most August.

I'm shocked.

Well, that's okay.

Now it says, what is the most common birth month?

Despite the fact that September is so heavily represented in the top 10 most common birthdays, there are actually more births reported in August.

Oh, thank you.

All but one August birthday made the list of 100 most common birthdays, the exception being August 3rd, which lands 116.

If you do the math, the conception time for August babies lines up with the approach of cooler weather and the holidays, maybe making cuddling up extra appealing.

Oh.

This is from happiestbaby.com.

Oh, February 29th.

My daughter has your daughter has the least common birthday.

Not surprisingly, but that's fun.

Yeah.

Leapers or leaplings.

That took some special planning to get her.

Yeah, when did you get horny?

Mom, our day romantic.

The last snowstorm of

May.

Well, that makes sense.

Spring weather, spring fever.

Spring fling.

I always get very, I get romantic.

I get the most romantic around fall.

Yeah.

New year.

Falls cozy.

Beginning of school is romantic.

It's a new class, class, new people.

Clothes.

Clothes.

New opportunity.

You're feeling kind of good in one of your outfits.

Yeah.

Least popular birthdays, February 29th, December 25th.

January 1st, December 24th, July 4th,

January 2nd.

Oh, thank God.

I really felt like mine was the top 10.

There you go.

You mean bottom?

Well, top 10 least.

Least.

Yep.

Number one none.

Bottom 10.

Number one one none.

Now, no baked cookies.

He told an interesting story that he used to eat no-baked cookies.

And then in his kitchen, he would give a recipe to his staff and see if they could follow directions and make it.

And they never could.

But according to...

Exactly.

According to this, this is not his recipe.

Right.

He's probably, you know, I think this was made famous on the oatmeal.

What's the most trusted brand in oatmeal?

I use Boston.

Quaker oats.

Quaker oats.

Quaker oats.

Try some chochno bakes this year for Christmas time.

It's on the box.

Be conservative about your treats.

Mostly eat protein and baked potatoes and pray a lot.

On that rare occasion you deserve a treat, make it a choctno bake with Quaker oats.

God, I can taste those.

One bite will do.

Pass it around.

Two bites will get the devil knocking at your back door.

It's too much sweets.

Too indulgent.

Oh my God.

Again.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm going to read the recipe.

Two cups white sugar, a half cup butter of margarine, a half cup milk, three tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, one pinch salt, three cups quick cooking oats, a half cup peanut butter, one teaspoon vanilla extract.

And then you do have to like do some stuff.

You have to bring stuff to a a boil.

Yeah, it's a mud.

And then you, my mom would spread it out on a McDonald's tray that she stole from McDonald's, and then it would harden in the fridge.

Yeah.

In the McDonald's tray.

Smart.

That's very savvy instead of getting a baking sheet.

Use it.

Just steal it from McDonald's.

Yeah.

When you're a single mom, you're allowed to do a lot of fun.

Yeah.

Good for her.

Did you guys have McDonald's trays at home?

I think.

But it's hard to get out of there holding that.

Not if you run.

I got the car running.

send your kids out to the car to get it running, put it and drive, pull the e-brake.

Wow.

Don't come flying out with three trays.

We used to steal salt and pepper shakers as well.

Yeah, that makes more sense to me.

That can just go right in a purse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I used to steal cups a lot.

Cups.

Glasses from bars and stuff.

You've always had a drink it as like a souvenir.

Sure.

It was more about.

There's nothing wrong with that.

There was a brewery in Athens called Terrapin,

and it was a thing to like steal those classes.

We had so many.

And they were like nice.

Pint glass.

Yes.

Yeah.

Probably put them on a business.

And probably use plastic.

The whole college put them and kept them.

Yes.

Put them out and kept them in.

Okay.

Now

we also refer to you, both of you, eating the food off of big boys' plates, which we've discussed.

I was explaining to Curtis the progression of how it starts with, oh, there's a full half of a Slim Jim where they're untouched.

Sure.

Yeah, I'll eat that.

Of course.

Yeah, of course.

And then by the end, I'm just biting directly into whole bite marks.

Just stop caring.

So then, you know, you guys answered the, then that's the answer to the question.

Spit.

Spit is the one that you don't care about.

I care about it.

Obviously, I care about it, but not as much as I cared about having some good food.

Well, it was a cost-benefit

spit.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm sorry, but I think that's evidence to the question.

Hair, spit.

What's the other one?

Skin.

Skin.

Nails.

And then we added nails.

We added nails.

I want to remove nails because everyone just gets so hung up on the nail thing.

Yeah, yeah.

But I just like it as a model of human nature, which is like everyone always moves the line.

It's like if you're no affair starts with sex, it starts with like a hug or some hand-holding, and then that's it.

Not according to my sexy show.

Okay, they go straight out

right in.

Or your drug use.

You know, it starts one and you got a rule, and then you go just 5% beyond it, and you just inch yourself closer until you're eating direct like half-eaten French fries.

Sure, the licking the plate, the last sip of a Diet Coke.

It is true.

That is disgusting.

Last sip.

sip.

Yeah.

Would you rather last sip

or

yeah, last sip of a diet cook's rough because it's already melted ice.

Backwater.

Yeah, yeah, it's terrible.

You didn't drink that.

You're hungry.

I didn't need to.

I think you could manage free soda.

Thank God.

Yeah.

You would definitely have AIDS by now.

Sure, sure.

Definitely, according to ER.

That's it for Curtis.

Okay, well, I loved him.

I thought he was very sweet.

He was.

He was.

And he has really overcome so much.

I was very

moved by his story.

Me too.

All right.

Love you.

Love you.

Love you.

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