He Accidentally Started America’s Biggest Seafood Business | Jonathan Stramaglia | DSH #1600

Speaker 1 Score the perfect gift at Dicks Sporting Goods. Start your wish list with top picks from Nike, Jordan, FP Movement, and more.

Speaker 1 Shop trending shoes, golf gear, water bottles, and more of this year's hottest gifts. Need it fast? Stop by your local store or use the Dicks app for quick pickup or delivery.

Speaker 1 Visit DicksportingGoods.com to shop this year's best holiday gifts at Dicks.

Speaker 3 Your earbud fell in a coffee cup. You need a taco, pick me up.

Speaker 3 When modern life gets rough, grab the time must taste your love. Paso, the old El Paso.

Speaker 5 It's always written in your story that you're going to do this.

Speaker 6 Unofficially, yeah. I mean, I'd be really foolish not to want to do help run an empire.
Everyone needs seafood and a good way, fast way to get it. Right.
And being Chicago, we're right next to O'Hare.

Speaker 6 It was a wham-bam real fast. One thing led to another.
And now, 51 years later, one of the biggest seafood operations in the country.

Speaker 5 Shout out to your grandfather for that.

Speaker 6 Oh, there's no one better in the business world on business, you know, other businesses as well. That he says, I don't care if we're going to make it work.

Speaker 6 He's one of those people that it's failing is not an option.

Speaker 5 Okay, guys, special episode today. We got a lot going on here.
We got Jonathan from Supreme Lobster. Thanks for hopping on, man.

Speaker 6 You brought quite a lot here. I didn't want to come empty-handed, that's for sure.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we got a 50-pound lobster here, right?

Speaker 6 Seven-pound lobster.

Speaker 5 Sorry, I keep getting that message.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Nova Scotia. 50-year-old.
50-year-old live lobster, yep.

Speaker 5 We got a this one.

Speaker 6 This is a 1 in 30 million orange lobster from Nova Scotia. Damn.
Came a long way. Yep.
And then this is somewhere between 1 and 30 million,

Speaker 6 half orange, half albino. This is 1 in 30 million to 100 million, somewhere in that range.
They don't know because they're so rare. Dang.

Speaker 5 Which one sells the best for you guys?

Speaker 6 The bright orange are used at China Club in Fountain Blue. Nice.
So

Speaker 6 they're big fans of that at their restaurant.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and you've been selling these for a while. It's a third generation business in the family, right?

Speaker 6 Correct. So 51 years in business this year, 1974, started out.

Speaker 6 My grandfather's still there. He only works half days, 12 hours.
He cut down. And my dad, of course, is there.
Uncle, cousins, family, and then myself as well.

Speaker 5 Well done, man. So it was always written in your story that you were going to do this?

Speaker 6 Unofficially, yeah. I mean, I'd be really foolish not to want to do, you know, help run an empire eventually.

Speaker 5 And being in Vegas, being in the desert, you know, having good access to seafood is needed.

Speaker 6 Correct. Yes.
And starting out in the 90s, at the time, it wasn't a law that you had to have a refrigerated truck. Really? So people would just throw ice on top of the fish and send it out.

Speaker 6 But like a day like this in the middle of July, where it's 110 in the shade. So we had refrigerated trucks from day one.
Wow. So that was a nice little like selling point as well.

Speaker 6 You know, and especially as like corporate got bigger and bigger in Vegas. Yeah.
There's like another checkpoint, you know, it was better. Nice.
You came in the Uber with all this? Yeah. So

Speaker 6 the guy is not probably going to be happy afterwards. And the women outside Ocean Prime.
So Ocean Prime, this is their grand seafood tower. Shout out to Chef Gino that set it up for us.

Speaker 6 They were looking at us like, what are you doing? I'm like, it's Vegas. We're just having a seafood tower.
It's the afternoon.

Speaker 5 Man, so you supply all this stuff here, too?

Speaker 6 Yeah. So this is their exclusive oysters of rose and garnette, which we do nationally for the whole country.
Nice. And then, you know, the shrimp, your classic lobster, cocktail, king crab,

Speaker 6 some jumbo lump crab meat on top.

Speaker 5 You sell it all, man.

Speaker 6 We do it all. A to z, fresh, frozen, caviar, shellfish, live.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you brought the big caviar here.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So, you want to have you done a bump on air yet?

Speaker 5 I'll try one. No, I haven't done one on air.

Speaker 6 So, this is a half pound of Duranki Kaluga caviar from Petrosian. If you've seen like a Petrosian bar inside the Bellagio, right when you walk in, like the huge right by the piano bar.

Speaker 6 And then this is a mother of pearl spoon, which is what you should, uh, what you should use.

Speaker 6 Wow. Okay, so you're gonna put it on your hand right here.
Okay.

Speaker 5 And then right here.

Speaker 2 $4 million.

Speaker 2 Two days. Play at Yamaba Resort and Casino at San Manuel or Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas for your chance to be a millionaire.
Club Soronto members can earn entries by playing through December 1st.

Speaker 2 Join us for a two-day finale where one person will win $1 million on November 30th. Then December 1st, 1,300 people will win their share of over $2.5 million.

Speaker 2 It's the biggest giveaway ever. Only at Yamaba, your California to Vegas connection.
Details at yamaba.com must be 21 to enter. Please gamble responsibly.

Speaker 7 This episode is brought to you by Diet Coke. You know that moment when you just need to hit pause and refresh?

Speaker 7 An ice-cold Diet Coke isn't just a break, it's your chance to catch your breath and savor a moment that's all about you. Always refreshing, still the same great taste.

Speaker 6 Diet Coke, make time for you time.

Speaker 6 There you go.

Speaker 5 Nice. Try that, bad boy.
Does he eat the whole thing? Yep.

Speaker 6 Throw it back.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 that's some of the best caviar in the world, if not the best caviar in the world.

Speaker 5 That's the best I've ever had. Yeah.

Speaker 6 The creators of Petrosian, I'm going to mess up the line, but have something great like the leather didn't make Hermes. The caviar didn't, the caviar pearls didn't make the caviar itself.

Speaker 6 It was like the service and dedication time, which is great. It's a hundred-year-old company.
They've been around forever. You go to all of Europe.

Speaker 6 This is like the primo of the primo, and that's why they're in Las Vegas. And we service them in Chicago as well.

Speaker 5 Yeah, because I've had caviar nowhere close to that quality. That was phenomenal.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the way they, the way, the way they source, where they source all that is like, you know, the top of the top. They only grab the best quality.

Speaker 5 I'm sure you guys have a similar philosophy too, right?

Speaker 6 Oh, of course. So like for us, and what differentiates us in Chicago, Midwest, in Vegas is like we only work direct.
There's no middlemen. We work right with the boats.

Speaker 6 Prefer like family businesses as well, which there's a lot in the seafood industry, which is great.

Speaker 6 The dry ice is drying up.

Speaker 6 But yeah, so we'll only work. And all of our buyers and some of our sales go out there everywhere.
So whether if it's Asia.

Speaker 6 uh East Coast, West Coast, Europe, they'll go out there and actually see the plants, make sure everything's what it should be.

Speaker 6 That's respect because once you get the middlemen involved i'm sure that seafood doesn't get as fresh right correct we want to get it as quick as possible as best price as possible as high as quality less hands touching it better quality so how long does it take to get from ocean to plate in vegas um

Speaker 6 anywhere from pulling out of the water depending on what you're talking about what item 12 to 24 hours damn that's fast so the perks of vegas you say it's in a desert you're nowhere you're near water obviously it's actually almost better because everything's

Speaker 6 instead of maybe possibly trucked. Some stuff is, you know, trucked into Chicago or from LA, things like that.
You're actually just flying straight to the airport right here. Right.

Speaker 6 So there's no, you know, it's actually quicker. East Coast, your five-hour flight and you're on.

Speaker 5 I know some fancy sushi spots out here that fly from Japan every day.

Speaker 6 Correct. Yeah.
So why, I mean, you can't really get any fresher unless you're like on the spot in Japan. Yeah.
Or on the East Coast. But I mean, it comes so fast.

Speaker 6 Everything's pretty much flown in daily about six days a week. And we're picking it up either late at night, first thing in the morning, and getting it out to you that same day.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you got a lot of big clients out here, right? Yeah.

Speaker 6 So we do MGM properties, Caesars, Stations, Boyd, Penn Gaming. Crazy.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Those are the biggest people out here.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So it all started in the 90s.
So we started in Chicago in 74. And my grandfather actually knew a guy in the East Coast, knew two other guys.
Hey, do you want to flip lobsters?

Speaker 6 Picked him up in the back of his Lincoln, drove around to his favorite restaurants, hey, do you want to buy some lobsters? Do you want to buy some lobsters? Sold them, sold out, did it a couple days.

Speaker 6 It worked, had something going. But on the third or fourth day, he had a bunch left over.
He didn't know what to do. So we ran to Walmart.

Speaker 6 This is in the mid-70s, early 70s, buys a kid's kiddie pool, like the plastic, you know, one-foot-high plastic tub we all had as infants, kind of.

Speaker 6 and put them all in there with just normal water, not thinking you need salt water, you need air. I've done that before.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so all his all his profits from the last couple of days were gonzo and the lobsters are doing the backstroke.

Speaker 6 So he learned hard real fast. But then after a couple more days, he realized like, I think we got something here.
You know, there's everyone needs seafood and a good way, fast way to get it. Right.

Speaker 6 And being Chicago, we're right next to O'Hare. It was a wham-bam real fast.
One thing led to another.

Speaker 6 And now one of the biggest, 51 years later, one of the biggest seafood operations in the country.

Speaker 5 Third biggest in the country, right?

Speaker 6 Yeah. Second, third biggest, first biggest.
It's always, every year it kind of differs.

Speaker 5 That's super embrazo. Shout out to your grandfather for that.

Speaker 6 Oh, there's no one, no one better in the business world on business, other, you know, other businesses as well.

Speaker 6 He says, I don't care whether you're going to make it work. He's one of those people that it's, it's, failing is not an option.

Speaker 5 That's so dope.

Speaker 6 You got kids yet? I have three, three under four. Fourth generation, man.
Yeah, so I have my two oldest boys come every Friday. They bring donuts.
Nice. And they know about half the staff already.

Speaker 6 They're pointing them out. And then we got a seafood cafe at home that they're already working That's so dope dude How'd you get in touch with Vegas Pauli C who is how I

Speaker 6 Slid into his DMs actually nice and I was like hey, you know, like let's come by the shop come check it out. Let's see you know show you what it's all about and he was just floored.

Speaker 5 He loved it. He's so great at documenting businesses.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he's great. He's a great guy true to himself, you know, just just a good humble guy that just wants to document really cool stuff.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Shout out to Pauli C, man.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Vegas Paul C.

Speaker 5 One of my favorite guests of all time.

Speaker 6 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 5 Let's talk crab legs because I used to go to Hot and Juicy a lot when I first moved here, and a pound was 80 bucks when I started. Now it's, I think, 160 for one pound of king crab meat.

Speaker 5 Why is it going up so much?

Speaker 6 So this all started with COVID. COVID happens.
U.S. shuts down their whole fishing season, shuts it down for year two.

Speaker 6 Year three, instead of somewhere in the midst of 20 million pounds, they say you can catch 2 million pounds.

Speaker 6 So USA king crab is what everyone wants. First choice in the litter.
Second choice is Russia. Okay, so everyone will switch to Russia.
Russia, Russia, Russia, king crab.

Speaker 6 Russia starts a war with Ukraine. Embargo, no more Russia crab.
So after that well dried out of Russian crab, that was, when an embargo happens, whatever's in America, that's it, no more, right?

Speaker 6 So the well runs dry. So now there's no Russian crab.
There's king crab for USA. There's maybe two million pounds for the country, which is not even 10% of what you need on an annual year.

Speaker 6 So now you go, the only game left in town is Norway, Norwegian. There's some Japanese crab out there as well, but they know what they have, right? So they're going to hold it.

Speaker 6 Supply and demand shoots up like crazy. And Norway can only do so much, right? They only, they're used to only doing more of like Europe and just a little bit to America.

Speaker 6 Well, now you're asking, everyone's asking for like 20 to 30 million pounds. They don't have it.
So supply and demand kicks in. and now it's just every week it's going up and up, literally every week.

Speaker 6 Crazy, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah. 160 a pound to eat it.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And if you're looking for like how Vegas Poly C told it in the video of baseball bats, which was like the ones the size of your arm that you get at a Mastros or Ocean Prime, things of that nature, berries,

Speaker 6 those are, you know,

Speaker 6 their cost is well over 100 bucks. Jeez.
So, yeah. So when you see it on the market, you think that, oh my God, they're charging an insane amount.
They're really not.

Speaker 6 That's what the true cost of that is now.

Speaker 5 Yeah, because they're making their 10, 20%.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they're putting their normal margin on, and we're putting our small normal margin on. It's just astronomical.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's crazy, though, because I'm sure when you first started selling it, how much a pound was it?

Speaker 6 Oh, I see pictures that it's $9.99 for the Jumbo Lump from back in the day. Holy $9.99

Speaker 6 in our retail store to the public in the retail store? In Chicago. Vegas is just wholesale.
In Chicago, we have a retail store open to the public. Got it.

Speaker 6 And it's for you want to see something for like reality TV for Christmas and New Year's week, the line will be out the door, hundreds and hundreds of people, and then you'll see the generations of like two, three generations, Italians, Hispanics, European, other Europeans come in, and they just, you know, the grandma, you see the mom, and now the kid, I need these clams, I need these shrimp, you know, especially all the Italians that do the seven fishes.

Speaker 6 What's up? So, seven fishes in Christmas is you have seven different fish, and it's calamari, clam, squid, eel, whiting,

Speaker 6 a couple other items, and that's like kind of like your what they do you know so that is a big deal you have your seven fish on Christmas it's a tradition I need to try that something delicious yeah so the store will have security for two weeks we'll have the black ropes out there and it'll be snowing inches in Chicago six inches seven inches on the ground and they'll be out there yeah and they know it's a tradition people come in that we you know they see myself they see my grandfather they're shaking hands oh my god it's our family tradition tagging us on you know on Instagram and stuff like that.

Speaker 6 It's cool.

Speaker 5 That's dope, dude. Yeah.
Let me move this. I don't know if the mic's picking us up.

Speaker 6 I could move it on the floor for now.

Speaker 6 If it's awesome.

Speaker 5 I don't think it's picking up, but I just want to be safe.

Speaker 6 Yeah. We'll edit this part out.

Speaker 5 I probably should have done that sooner.

Speaker 5 So you guys sell calamari too, squid?

Speaker 6 Yeah, so your number one skew per se is going to be like your Atlantic salmon, which you're going to see on every menu in America, no matter what the cuisine is.

Speaker 6 And then you're also calamari is almost on every menu from a steakhouse to Italian to American to, you know, Asian restaurants. Everyone's got calamari.
So that'll be on there.

Speaker 6 And of course, shrimp will be on there.

Speaker 5 Those are your big sellers?

Speaker 6 That's the top top three items. Yeah.

Speaker 5 What about sea bass?

Speaker 6 Chilean sea bass is a unique one. So yeah, that's going to be one of your top selling fish for sure.
And that's on every fancy restaurant in America, one of your most expensive. Fin fish on it.

Speaker 5 So good.

Speaker 6 good and do you know why it became really famous no so it used to be called patagonian toothfish no one bought it no one sold it no one caught it it was it's off chile like way south antar like closer to antarctica and it was just a bycatch when they were catching other fish no one wanted it's ugly they said it was blubbery not good fish they thought at the time a guy in the west coast went down there saw this fish when he was doing some research and he's like i think we got something here he tried it he's like this is amazing he started calling it chilian sea bass unofficially this is the 70s 80s when the regulations aren't what they are today

Speaker 6 and uh people it starts catching on right so it starts getting now to the 80s now in the 90s now if you remember jurassic park they're in the scene when um T-Rex gets a lamb or a baby cow and then he eats it and they're like, oh my God, right in front of him the first time you see T-Rex on camera.

Speaker 6 Then they're like, oh, we're hungry. Chef is going to prepare some Chilean sea bass.
And then he mentions it again when they played it.

Speaker 6 After that happens in 94, every restaurant wanted Chilean sea bass because Jurassic Park at the time, right? There was no bigger movie in the early mid-90s.

Speaker 5 They're still big right now.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they're still huge, right? But the very first one was, especially the first time anyone saw T-Rex on camera, that was like the first of its kind.

Speaker 6 So Chilean sea bass went nuts, nuts to the point where it almost went extinct, where they had a chef program and it said, like, take a pass on Chilean sea bass.

Speaker 6 And they tried to like slow it down because it was just out of control. They were running out of them.
Yeah. And so now, now it's regulated.
Now it's like a green listed, good MSC certified fish.

Speaker 6 But what they do actually, and people don't know, those, they go out in barges, like something you'd see that gets shipped to overseas, and they go out for like three to six months.

Speaker 6 They go out overseas, they catch them, cut the, you know, the heads off, clean them all up, and they deep freeze them. So, yeah, so they'll be out months at a time.

Speaker 6 They'll catch 100,000 pounds, 200,000 pounds, bring it all back in. And those animals are the big, the smallest you get is like a 20-pounder up to like a 200-pound fish.
Jeez, they're that big. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. They'll go get up, they'll and they'll live like up to like 57 years old.
Wow. Yeah, they're very like prehistoric type fish.
That is interesting.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's one of my favorite seafood dishes, man.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Miso, miso, like marinated sea bass.

Speaker 5 Or like one of those nice ones.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a good dish, yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Scallops are pretty expensive now, too, right?

Speaker 6 Scallops are another one now. You had

Speaker 6 three years ago, the quota for the for the world or for the country, for America, was 69 million pounds you can catch right now. This year, your quota is 19 million.

Speaker 5 Shout out to today's sponsor, Quince. As the weather cools, I'm swapping in the pieces that actually gets the job done that are warm, durable, and built to last.

Speaker 5 Quince delivers every time with wardrobe staples that'll carry you through the season. They have false staples that you'll actually want to wear, like the 100% Mongolian cashmere for just $60.

Speaker 5 They also got classic fit denim and real leather and wool outerwear that looks sharp and holds up. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans.

Speaker 5 Quince cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality at half the cost of similar brands. They've really become a go-to across the board.

Speaker 5 You guys know how I love linen and how I've talked about it on previous episodes. I picked up some linen pants and they feel incredible.
The quality is definitely noticeable compared to other brands.

Speaker 5 Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to quince.com/slash dsh for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.
They're also available in Canada, too.

Speaker 6 Whoa, so you know, 70%,

Speaker 6 you know, 300% less, you could say. And that is scallops, they're selecting certain areas.
They're not there. It's getting tighter and tighter.
And there's way less big scallops.

Speaker 6 So when you're at the steakhouse, you get three or four big scallops on your plate. Those are becoming crazy tight, tight, tight.
Are they running out? Are they not growing fast enough?

Speaker 6 You know, the government's lowering it way. you know, big time, obviously, to slow it down to try to make them grow back.

Speaker 6 But yeah, so scallops, you know, they're triple the price that they were two years ago.

Speaker 5 Damn, I wonder if more people are just eating seafood these days.

Speaker 6 I think they are. You know, with all the trends of healthy, healthy, healthy, that's all you're seeing on social media, right? Instagram, of, or all-natural, or don't eat this, don't do that.

Speaker 6 This will kill you. This will kill you.
Everything will kill you nowadays.

Speaker 6 I think that's, you know, more people are going to just a good seafood dish. Yeah.
Everyone's, it's a big health conscious nowadays.

Speaker 5 Which is good for you, right?

Speaker 6 Which is great for us. All-natural animal.
Yeah, it's just the natural raw animal.

Speaker 6 You can't can't get any healthier right it's a wild animal yeah well that's awesome man are you guys in like a bunch of retail stores too yeah so we do uh in the midwest we do in chicago you know uh all the albertsons and jewels oh nice um and then all the independent stuff like that we do national deals we have national shrimp program that we do across the country We'll also do restaurants nationwide, depending on like frozen and stuff like that.

Speaker 6 Or like I said, with Ocean Prime, who did this,

Speaker 6 we do their oysters the whole country.

Speaker 6 So we partnered with

Speaker 6 Cape Cod Shellfish, and we went out there, myself, my partner Carl, we went out there from Supreme with the head guys from Ocean Prime. Nice.

Speaker 6 And actually like went on the boats, selected certain areas. They picked out like exactly what they wanted, tasted 100 oysters.
We were there for like three straight days. Like, no, I don't want this.

Speaker 6 Let's go. Okay, let's go to this area.
Let's see, you know, Barnsable will work. Duxbury will work.
And they're just raking them up the old-fashioned way. And like, okay, yep, this is it.
This is it.

Speaker 6 Wow. Narrow

Speaker 5 for like doing all that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was, it was a lot of work on their end. And like, they wanted the real McCoy and like the real, which is awesome.

Speaker 5 Can you tell the difference with different oysters?

Speaker 6 100%. Taste-wise.
Yeah. Different regions from Cape Cod is going to be like super salty.
Salt bomb is what they say.

Speaker 6 Then if you go up to like Canada, like New Brunswick, PEI, they're going to be very just clean. And that's even colder waters.
The colder the water, the less salinity or less anything you get.

Speaker 6 And then you go south, like Virginia, you'll get like a more earthy flavor. Yeah.
And then West Coast is all minerals. Like West Coast, you get a lot of like coppery feel, things like that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I know there's always that debate with the East Coast versus West Coast, right?

Speaker 6 Jerry and Vegas is a big West Coast town. Yeah.
Definitely more West Coast than East Coast.

Speaker 6 They're both flown in at the same amount of time. So is one fresher than the other? No.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 they're caught and flown right in six days a week. So

Speaker 6 if you're in, now if you live in the state of Washington or something, sure, yeah, you're eating West Coast oysters, oysters, but in Vegas, but it's a lot of people from California, a lot of people from the West Coast come here, so they want, that's what they're accustomed to.

Speaker 5 I went to Carlsbad and went oyster plucking.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. You caught it straight out of the water.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God. So fresh.

Speaker 6 The difference of eating an oyster out of the ground or out of the water is so different than even the freshest oyster you ever ever eat. I can't even eat them anymore.

Speaker 5 It kind of ruined it for me, honestly, because it was so fresh. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And it's like just that good saltwater taste you get. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Like oysters are amazing.
They're really healthy, too, I think.

Speaker 6 super yeah a lot of protein natural aphrodisiac you go out for with you know with your lady friend and have a couple oysters you have a good night yes sir how'd you get on barstool sports's radar uh i actually did a hot dog review with them randomly uh

Speaker 6 probably

Speaker 6 i don't know five six years ago shout out barstool carl did a hot dog review with them as a total joke hit it off and then started talking to the guys and then um they you know moved headquarters to chicago so just you know started talking with them They're really, really good guys.

Speaker 6 Nice. So yes, they have a great relationship with a lot of them.
Hank and Jersey Jerry, who's one of a kind, a good friend of mine now. And Barstool Eddie and Chief.
That's dope.

Speaker 5 Yeah, a bunch of those guys. I grew up watching Barstool, man.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 I was a huge, huge barstool. Huge, yeah.
KFC's been on the pod. Oh, really? Nice.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 They inspired me to get into content, honestly. Because they're just so authentic and I like what they do.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And off-camera, they're the same guys as on-camera.
They're not playing a role. They're not playing a part.
They're great guys.

Speaker 6 Which is which is a really good quality to have right because a lot of people put on our show on camera most do right they have a persona they're they're stick or whatever but no they're they're great guys and they're just normal just like us just normal guys they just got you know kind of a reality life about them with yeah all their shows and barswell tv and stuff like that and they have that huge fox deal now oh yeah that's massive yeah shout out to them yeah i love dave's uh pizza reviews too oh yeah Legendary.

Speaker 5 I don't know if he's done any in Vegas yet, but.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 6 I don't know if he has, but he's done now, because of the Chicago headquarters, he's doing all the local spots and not just the, like, he's coming in the burbs, he's going like an hour south, two hours away, and he's hitting up like very local small-town places that are like, you know, if you live local around there, you're like, oh my god, this is awesome.

Speaker 6 So he's really doing his research now.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you're a deep dish guy.

Speaker 6 I will have, I enjoy it with when people are out of town, but I say it's like Thanksgiving dinner. You have like one or two pieces and you're stuffed for the next like two days.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 I love it at the time. Lumal Nati's is my favorite.

Speaker 5 I like it in moderation, yeah. Like, I'll have one a week, maybe, okay.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 that's often, oh, is it? Well, one a week is a lot of that's a lot of it's not like a daily, though.

Speaker 5 No, no, you can't have that daily, like a regular thin slice I could eat like

Speaker 5 every day, maybe every other day, for sure.

Speaker 6 But no, deep dish, what do you eat around here in Vegas and Deep Dish?

Speaker 5 Uh, Pizza Rock, I've tried. Um,

Speaker 5 what's the one I order? I order one a lot on Postmates, I forget the name, but Vegas has a couple good spots, right? Yeah, yeah, what's your go-to in Vegas?

Speaker 6 Uh,

Speaker 6 I don't know, I don't really have

Speaker 5 Evil Pie. Evil Pie.

Speaker 6 That's the one I've had. I've had Evil Pie before.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. I don't know.
Chicago is more of my go-to for all that. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I haven't had any good Chicago.

Speaker 6 Oh, when you come, I'll take you. Yeah.
I'll come. Pequads and Lou Malinatis are the top two to me that are your two tea dishes.
We'll have to

Speaker 5 make sure my days open.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 5 You were also on Bazaar Foods.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So that started with the guys from Millennia, who's massive massive Michelin star restaurants.

Speaker 6 And he was going to do a Chicago episode and he started asking all the Michelin restaurants, where are you getting your best, your most unique, your bizarre? Like, what are you sourcing? Yeah.

Speaker 6 And two or three places kept saying us. So his team reached out to us.
And yeah,

Speaker 6 we had a huge segment on his episode of Bizarre Foods. And we had a big display set up for him in the morning for breakfast because we started filming at like 6 a.m.

Speaker 6 And we're waiting for him, waiting for him. We're like, it's not coming in.
His whole production team's in. He's like, we're thinking, like, why wouldn't he want to come in? He walks in.

Speaker 6 He's like, hey, my name's Andrew. Start rolling.
And we're like, oh, my God. Oh, my God.
And so we started.

Speaker 6 And after the fact, he told us, I didn't want to waste any good conversation or any good stories that wasn't going to be on camera.

Speaker 6 And then afterwards, he stayed for like two hours and we just BS'd and stuff. But I thought that was really, really cool.
At the time, we were like, why isn't he coming in?

Speaker 6 But then afterwards, you respect and understand.

Speaker 6 you know, he didn't want to hear a really cool story. And then, oh, well, now it's ruined.
He wanted everything like really true, really real. Wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah. That is interesting.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 He's a really good guy.

Speaker 5 That is cool.

Speaker 6 what foods did you show on that show um we did um some belt fish ribbon fish uh moonfish all from hawaii we did phytoplankton which is a like a seaweed kelp kind of thing but it's microscopic yeah that they use the dust at i think it was like l20 or next at the time

Speaker 6 And then all like our different oysters, we did a live jade tiger abalone from New Zealand, I believe.

Speaker 6 I think we did Spanish persebes. Have you ever heard of those? So Spanish persebes are gooseneck barnacles.

Speaker 6 If you know, if you've ever heard of a barnacle that grows on like a rock or a pillar in the ground that kind of looks like your pinky. Yeah, I've seen that.
Okay, so this is done in Spain.

Speaker 6 Now think of the most rockiest cliff of your life, kind of like Lord of the Rings kind of thing when you'd see like the, you know, they'd film a giant cliff in Ireland or Spain or they film.

Speaker 6 Now those guys go out in like kind of like a canoe type or a single engine boat, go on this crazy rock cliff, like hook up and like collect all the barnacles holy crap yeah you got to youtube it it's one of the most insane things ever and like the guys die all the time the guy in the video is like yeah i lost my best friend last year like because these waves on the coast of spain are coming up massive waves and these guys are just like holding on getting splashed and now like getting all the barnacles wow but they're a huge delicacy huge

Speaker 6 you either eat them raw or you just lightly steam them with like lemon and that's it because they huge huge delicacy here when we bring them in for special events or special restaurants they're like well over a hundred dollars a pound holy crap yeah and they're you know each one weighs nothing because they're like you know this big have you tried it yeah yeah that's probably one of my most bizarre things i've had uh good very um

Speaker 6 almost like uh east coast oyster type feel like that just like a salty earthy kind of saltwater item yeah it was good interesting yeah we tried them raw just like the in the jade tiger abalone too they were all moving around and have you ever seen like the shells they're bright green and gold kind of like beautiful and took it out and that almost had the consistency of like an apple wow pretty cool yeah

Speaker 6 yeah we had those in for him i was just gonna ask what the weirdest thing you've eaten was but it sounds like this yeah yeah the spanish perseves is probably just because it's so such a hard thing to get and such a unique thing so was it moving around or was it uh the persebes no once they once they pluck them off they're kind of like you know not alive anymore so yeah but they're they were they pluck them off and then they send them right there yeah some people eat live seafood man.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. There's a spot in Vegas.
Sea salt. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, they eat them live over there.

Speaker 6 Yeah. They'll do like live squid and stuff like that too.
You'll see.

Speaker 5 Live baby eel I've seen.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 I'm not ready for that. Yeah, I don't know if I could do it.
I'll sell it.

Speaker 6 I don't know if I'm ready to eat it, though.

Speaker 5 Do you sell mainly live or mainly?

Speaker 6 The only thing, like day-to-day operation that's live is the lobsters.

Speaker 6 Everything else is going to be just fresh or frozen seafood. Lobsters is the main...
Well, shellfish, all the oysters and stuff and clams are technically still alive.

Speaker 6 And they can actually, you don't realize that like oysters and clams, they can live outside of water for like weeks at a time. Holy crap.

Speaker 5 So this oyster is alive right now?

Speaker 6 Well, now we shucked them.

Speaker 6 So as soon as you pop it open and cut the little muscle underneath, now it's done. Oh, got it.
So, but when they're fully closed, that was still alive.

Speaker 6 And if you keep it cool and damp, they'll stay alive forever.

Speaker 6 So like way back in the day of before refrigeration, they would go on the beach, dig a ginormous hole like 10 20 feet deep throw all the oysters in there for the winter and then slowly like take out what they need and there was a natural refrigerator just kept them cold and damp.

Speaker 5 That's nuts. So they're immortal.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 I know jellyfish are too some breeds of jellyfish. Really?

Speaker 6 Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
Yeah. Fascinating, right? Yeah, really bizarre when you think about it.
Like, how does that work?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But yeah, we have like in Las Vegas, in Chicago, we have huge fish tanks,

Speaker 6 lobster tanks, I should say.

Speaker 6 And it's almost like a rainfall system so that all the water blasts from the ground, from the ceiling, and then they'll be in big crates with holes, and all the water just keeps cycling.

Speaker 6 And that's a job in itself. Creating, my uncle actually does it in Chicago.
Does the water mimics

Speaker 6 salt water in the ocean? Wow. So you add a little good bacteria, you're adding, you know, sand, you're adding water.

Speaker 6 He's always checking like the levels of the salt, the salinity.

Speaker 6 You know, every day it's a, you know,

Speaker 6 crazy, unofficial science degree that he has yeah i love that man does that because i go to some asian uh grocery stores and they don't clean their tanks sure oh yeah disgusting yeah yeah you get the that moss and the green

Speaker 6 and it's overcrowded sometimes the whole tank is filled they can't even move yeah sure especially probably when they just got an order in and something like that they just dump them all yeah they don't care yeah we usually we we fly them in daily but then we have the tanks for obviously we have some left over some for the overnight routes and stuff like that we always got to have a little extra so they're in there just a couple hours usually that's nuts man.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I'd imagine your lifestyle is pretty interesting.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 it's a good lifestyle of, you know, working with the best chefs. And what's cool about us, too, is we work with grocery stores, mom and pop, breakfast diners that order just salmon or smoked salmon.

Speaker 6 And then we work with fancy steakhouses and then the Michelin star, three-star, you know, best restaurants in the world.

Speaker 5 Such a wide range.

Speaker 6 And we get to work with everyone. So that's what's kind of cool and differentiates us from the same quality as you're getting, you know, for all those facets.
They're getting all the same fish.

Speaker 5 That's impressive that you have the supply chain in order to cater to all those issues.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so we're we're pulling from just under 40 spots in the world, like on a daily basis. Yeah.
Yeah, probably like about 10 to 12 buyers between fresh and frozen.

Speaker 6 And then, you know, like I said before, that we're working directly with all these boats.

Speaker 6 Our scallops, for instance, when we did our scallop program, this is maybe 10, 12 years ago, we spent a full week in New Bedford, Rhode Island. And we went with every single scallop guy guy there was.

Speaker 6 And there's a lot of used car salesman techniques with scallops. And once a scallop's shocked, you know, they could soak them in water.

Speaker 6 And then there's a wet pack scallop or a dry pack scallop, an all-natural scallop. People don't realize.
And a scallop is almost like a sponge that could soak.

Speaker 6 So when you want the best of the best or the real of the real, you got to find that. I mean, we're going through, I don't know,

Speaker 6 seven to 900 gallons of scallops a week probably somewhere in that range.

Speaker 6 700 to 1,000 gallons a week.

Speaker 6 So we can't put out a bad product, right? Or if you get known for a bad scallop, you're not going to buy them again. So we got to have the best of the best.

Speaker 6 So we taste, I can eat scallops for like a couple months because we just tasted so many scallops and tried to find out who was the real McCoy. And we have great partners with now.

Speaker 6 So they're called Hudson Canyon scallops. All natural, just scallops, the only ingredient.

Speaker 5 Scallop scammers.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there is. There is.
Crazy. And, you know, seafood throughout the the years, there's, you know, a lot of, you know,

Speaker 6 stories that come out of this guy's doing this, dude's doing this.

Speaker 6 But now there's so many regulations and things like that. You have, you know, the FDA non-stop or the local government in that's always checking stuff, checking species, things like that.

Speaker 6 So that really cut it down, which is great.

Speaker 6 Probably good. Yeah.
You don't, you know, there's things, people mislabeling things. So that.
That cut all that down, which is really good.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
I know some people are against regulation, but I think for something like this, it's good.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you have to. Especially in today's day and age, you got to.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 What about lobster pricing? Because I remember when I was a kid, it was, it was much cheaper, right?

Speaker 6 Yeah. So lobsters are another one that are just tight.
And

Speaker 6 all the hard shell, a lot of them go to Asia. So they fly them.

Speaker 6 They want like the Canadian or Maine hard shells, and they'll pay a way bigger premium in like Japan and China than they would in the U.S.

Speaker 6 So, of course, those lobstermen are going to take whoever they could sell them to for the most money, obviously. They're in business.

Speaker 6 But just like everything else it's just getting tighter and tighter and like i don't think a lot of people realize seafood's the last of the hunted species there's nothing else that you really go out there and on a daily basis there's cow farms chicken farms you know pull uh pork farms you don't you know you can't just go hit a swordfish farm or you can't farm raise lobsters right because it takes seven years just to grow one pound damn so i mean this this bad boy like we said is uh he's about seven pounds so that's he's 50 years old yeah

Speaker 6 is this the biggest lobster you've ever seen uh these are about the biggest this they're graded as a six to eight pounder uh we can get like an eight to ten pounder yeah that's the that's you got to have two hands for those boys damn yeah this claws his claws the size of my hand i don't know if people can see this it's actually nuts yeah it's good eating yeah i must uh apparently the older ones don't taste as good though right is that true um people say that because if you're cooking them it's harder to cook yeah right because it's just so large and you got to cook the middle the same as the outside but if you give it to a good restaurant with a great chef they're gonna do these fine i mean one of the most famous is chef barry you've had him on yeah barry steakhouse shout out them we've known them forever great customer and great relationship they uh they use that big lobster for uh the lobster flambé oh really yeah they use like a four or five pound

Speaker 6 yeah that's like that's the one where barry comes out and he cooks in front of you and does the whole great show and that is like one of the best things you'll ever put in your mouth right oh yeah that shows good yeah and so it's just how you're cooking it if me or you are cooking it we're gonna destroy it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think is it the Australian lobster that doesn't have claws or

Speaker 5 there's one of them that doesn't have claws, it's just all tail.

Speaker 6 They might have like a spiny lobsters and stuff, have like tiny ones or like langostines and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 They'll have a tiny ones, Mott 32.

Speaker 6 Oh, okay, yeah, or they'll have sometimes if it has one claw left, they'll call them coles and just like one claw, okay, okay, kind of thing, yeah.

Speaker 6 Or sometimes if they just fell off within the natural thing, they'll just sell them like a little cheaper and stuff like that. Still a good lobster.
It just doesn't have a claw. They grow back, right?

Speaker 6 I don't know if they grow back. I know stone crab, stone crab grows back.
Like in Florida, stone crab season, and that's why it's like the most sustainable thing you can get. They pluck one claw off.

Speaker 6 They leave the other claw, throw it back, and they say in like three months it grows back. It's a full claw, which I don't know how that works.
That's the odds. I'd like to pluck one of our arms off.

Speaker 6 They grow them back.

Speaker 5 I love stone crabs, but it's so much work just for such little meat.

Speaker 6 Yeah. You know?

Speaker 5 Yeah. It tastes damn good.

Speaker 6 It's that and like a a little honey mustard sauce or that Dijon that you get dipped in is probably one of the best flavors you could possibly have.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Joe's in Vegas. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Hot spots fire. Yeah, they do a great job.

Speaker 5 You've probably traveled the world trying the best seafood in the world. Which spot stands out to you the most?

Speaker 6 Chicago and Las Vegas. Really? Right?

Speaker 6 We get it direct. I mean, how much pressure can you get? I mean, I've, my favorite seafood town, not counting Chicago and Vegas, is going to be Boston.
I love, you know, you can't go wrong.

Speaker 6 A lot of those big restaurants work directly with with some of the people that we buy from, right? They'll just say, hey, give me five pounds, give me 10 pounds.

Speaker 6 So you can't go wrong with that.

Speaker 5 Bro, I lived in Jersey. I used to fly to Boston just to eat a lobster roll and then fly home.

Speaker 6 It's that good. What's your favorite? Did you have anyone specific?

Speaker 5 I don't remember the spot because I didn't know Boston that well. Yeah.
But I like the warm one, not the cold one. Okay.
Yeah. And then some clam chowder.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 That would make the whole trip worth it.

Speaker 6 Yeah. My two favorites in Boston were legal, legal seafoods.
They have a bunch of locations now, but they have one on the harbor side that is like my go-to spot for the chowder and the roll or

Speaker 6 Union Oyster House, which is like that's the oldest restaurant in America, I think.

Speaker 5 Can you text me these later?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I will. Next time I'm there, I'm going there.
That's where we always go there. Union Oyster House is cool, too.
They got like upstairs, I think.

Speaker 6 You can go up when like two or three people sign the Declaration of Independence after the fact. Like a couple people didn't make it and they signed it.

Speaker 6 Now it's like a room that's like a part of a history. Wow.
You can go up there and check it out.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Boston's got a lot of history, man. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Love Boston.

Speaker 6 One of my favorite towns.

Speaker 5 It's one of my favorite towns for food and just for like chilling. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. It's one of the cleanest cities, too.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's damn cold, but if you go in the right town, it's beautiful.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we always go the national seafood shows there every year in March. They purposely, I think, plan it for St.
Patrick's Day week every year. So it's always a great time.
I want to go to that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's a good time. It's a million fishmongers all in one place.
So there's a couple drinks to be had. Yeah, I bet.

Speaker 5 You get a lot of business, something like that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we'll get a lot of, you know, you'll get the number one priority for us is trying to find new vendors to buy from, new sources and things like that.

Speaker 6 A lot of people, you know, we're trying to source what's new out there because there's always something, you know, new in the market or a new way of handling something.

Speaker 6 So we're always like learning on those trips or making connections. Connections, that's all it's about there.

Speaker 5 Does it change that fast, the market?

Speaker 6 Sometimes, or there'll be a new way of someone's bringing something in or

Speaker 6 one of the new ones is Barramundi. They're doing Barramundi in Arizona now.

Speaker 6 So you wouldn't think of that, but it's a like a massive state-of-the-art facility in

Speaker 6 And we found them in Boston, and now we're doing it. And, you know, it's hitting really great.
And they're huge, like eight to 10-pound fish. So, you're getting a huge fillet off of it.

Speaker 6 Really nice, you know, new, like, special type fish.

Speaker 5 Interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. I'd imagine you got to be on top of what's selling well, what's trending.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And that's what you learn from there.
You're talking to people, you're hearing also like big crab deals and stuff like that. And we're also an importer.

Speaker 6 So we have it's called Supreme Choice, and we'll do anywhere from 500 to 700 containers. Jeez.
So containers, 32,000 pounds. Yeah.
Holy crap.

Speaker 6 So yeah, we'll do probably 500 is a good estimate, but 500 to 600, depending on the year

Speaker 6 of overseas shrimp, fin fish, breaded shrimp. We do a huge breaded shrimp with a lot of the buffets and stuff, especially here.

Speaker 6 They all have, you know, breaded shrimp or just regular, your raw or cooked shrimp. Yeah, we'll do, so we have a whole importing team, logistics team.

Speaker 6 We actually, this year, every other year, they go out there and go see how everything's handled, make sure everything's the way it should be. That's cool.
Yeah, make sure it's all done right.

Speaker 5 Since you brought up buffets, I'm a big buffet guy. What's your favorite buffet in Vegas?

Speaker 6 I'm going to go with Wynn. That's mine too.
Yeah, I think you can't go wrong with it, right? Best seafood, for sure. Yeah, best seafood, best the presentation.

Speaker 6 I think it's just like mind-blowing how beautiful it is. It doesn't even feel like a buffet.
It feels like you're at a nice restaurant that you could like walk up and go eat what you want.

Speaker 6 That's the vibe I get.

Speaker 5 Well, it's Bacchanal second for me. Okay, yeah.
That's a pretty good one. Yeah, very good one.
The M has a decent one. Have you been to the Meta?

Speaker 6 No, I have not.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's not bad. But I love buffets, dude.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 Good buffet makes your day, is what I say.

Speaker 6 Yeah. The win as a whole, too.
All the restaurants inside and everything. I don't think you can beat it for the.

Speaker 5 I was just going to ask you what hotel is the best restaurants, in your opinion.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I would vote Wynn. The Wynn? Yeah.
Okay. SW Steakhouse, that new place, Pisces, that opened up.
I haven't tried it. It's right next to SW.
Okay.

Speaker 6 Down the stairs by that waterfall. And that's like an all-Mediterranean seafood restaurant.
Yeah. I just tried it like two weeks weeks ago.

Speaker 5 My favorite Asian spot is there, Wing Lay. Oh, yeah.
Delilah's pretty good.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's hard to beat it. Wingle is my wife's favorite.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's so good, dude. It's hard to beat the wind.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it is. You never have to leave.
Yeah. Between the mall, the pools,

Speaker 6 and all the different food options, the

Speaker 6 Spanish restaurant in there, too, is really good. Sinatra is really good.
Like, you never have to leave.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's a good one. I hear people say Aria.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Aria is great. I mean, Carbone, and now the new Carbone, did you hear about that opening up? So it's called Carbon Riviera, and it's going to be in in the Bellagio, I think right by Prime.

Speaker 6 So it's going to be on the water, and they're actually going to have a boat that goes in the water. No way.

Speaker 5 Yeah. You could eat on it?

Speaker 6 I don't know if you're going to do like a little tour or you could have drink. I don't know.

Speaker 6 They just announced it, like maybe a week or two ago. That's cool.
Yeah, so I'm sure they're probably like at least a year out because they're going to build it and everything.

Speaker 6 But it's going to be like a seafood carbon version.

Speaker 5 That's sick. That'll be really cool.
I'm excited about Venetian getting that Korean steakhouse.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah. I just heard about that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's going to be Kote. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 Have you been there in New York? No, no, no, I haven't.

Speaker 5 Yeah, check that out, man. Yeah.
Korean's so good. Well, dude, this has been fun.
Where can people watching this support you?

Speaker 6 Yeah, so Supreme Lobster and Seafood Company in Villa Park, Illinois, which is right outside of Chicago. We're in Las Vegas.

Speaker 6 In Chicago, we're open to the public. We have a retail store in 220 East North Avenue.
It's about a half hour from the heart of downtown. So come check us out.

Speaker 6 Supreme Lobster Chicago, Supreme Lobster Las Vegas on Instagram. And we're active, you know, three generations.
We're going for four generations now. and you know, couldn't be prouder.
I love it, man.

Speaker 5 Support this man, guys.

Speaker 5 Yeah, check out the site. See you guys next time.
Peace. Thank you.
I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe.
It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 4 You wanna sell those wheels? You wanna get a CarMax instant offer. So fast.
Wanna take a sec to think about it. Or like a month.
Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer.

Speaker 8 With OfferWatch.

Speaker 4 Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway.

Speaker 8 So, wanna drive? CarMax.

Speaker 5 Pickup not available everywhere.

Speaker 8 Restrictions and fee may apply. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft.

Speaker 8 But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back.

Speaker 8 Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Life Lock.
Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 8 Terms apply.