#545: Marco Canora — The Art of Food, Eating, Nutrition, and Life

Marco Canora — The Art of Food, Eating, Nutrition, and Life | Brought to you by Vuori http://vuoriclothing.com/Tim comfortable and durable performance apparel, Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement. More on all three below. After years working with and training under Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio at Gramercy Tavern and Craft, Chef Marco Canora (@marcocanora https://www.instagram.com/marcocanora/) opened Hearth https://www.restauranthearth.com/ in the East Village in 2003, before the neighborhood was a culinary destination. In 2014, Marco kicked off America’s embrace of bone broth with Brodo https://www.brodo.com/, serving bone broth in coffee cups out of a side window at Hearth. Over the years, Brodo has been recognized consistently as a bone broth pioneer in outlets such as The New York Times, Time, and Good Morning America. Visit Brodo.com https://www.brodo.com/ to order some bone broth for yourself, or visit one of their several locations in New York City. Marco’s first cookbook, Salt to Taste: The Key to Confident, Delicious Cooking https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Taste-Confident-Delicious-Cooking/dp/1594867801/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 was nominated for a James Beard Award. He is also the author of A Good Food Day https://www.amazon.com/Good-Food-Day-Reboot-Health/dp/0385344910/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 and Brodo: a Bone Broth Cookbook https://www.amazon.com/Brodo-Broth-Cookbook-Marco-Canora/dp/0553459503/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Marco has been profiled in The New York Times, Serious Eats, and Food & Wine. He was a finalist on The Next Iron Chef, a judge on Chopped and Top Chef, and he has appeared on Today, The Chew, Good Morning America, Martha Stewart, and Nightline. In May 2017, Marco won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: New York City. He lives, cooks, and gardens with his wife and two children in Yonkers, NY. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Vuori clothing http://vuoriclothing.com/Tim! Vuori http://vuoriclothing.com/Tim is a new and fresh perspective on performance apparel, perfect if you are sick and tired of traditional, old workout gear. Everything is designed for maximum comfort and versatility so that you look and feel as good in everyday life as you do working out. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at VuoriClothing.com/Tim http://vuoriclothing.com/Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase http://vuoriclothing.com/Tim, but you’ll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns. * This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim! Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. And now, my dear listeners—that’s you—can get $250 off the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim. Simply go to EightSleep.com/Tim http://eightsleep.com/Tim or use code TIM. * For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello friends, just a quick preface, there is a delicious section of the interview that we moved to the very end of the episode about how Marco taught me and my girlfriend how to make the perfect gnocchi. So if you want to learn the secrets behind making delicious, world-class, and very simple gnocchi, be sure to listen to the whole thing.

• 0:21Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My god, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle to sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But now, I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, but most user-friendly solution on the market.

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  I polled all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep, enhancing sleep, and Eight Sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So, I used it, and here we are. Add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit, or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time, she doesn't need cooling, she loves the heat, and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now, for me, and for many people, the result: Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster,

• 1:49Tim Ferriss?

  reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery, so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And now, my dear listeners, that's you guys, you can get $250 off of the Pod Pro Cover. That's a lot. Simply go to Go to eightsleep.com/tim or use code TIM. That's eight all spelled out, E I G H T, sleep.com/tim or use coupon code TIM, T I M. Eightsleep.com/tim for $250 off your Pod Pro cover.

• 2:33Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Vuori Clothing, spelled V U O R I, Vuori. I've been wearing Vuori at least one item per day for the last few months and you can use it for everything. It's performance apparel, but it can be used for working out. It can be used for going out to dinner, at least in my case. I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read something that one of my employees said. She is an athlete. She is quite technical, although she would never say that. I asked her if she had ever used or heard of Vuori and this was her response. "I do love their stuff. Been using them for about a year.

• 3:15Tim Ferriss?

  I think I found them at REI first for my partner, T-shirts that are super soft but somehow last as he's hard on stuff. And then I got into the super soft cotton yoga pants and jogger sweatpants. I live in them and they too have lasted. They're stylish enough, I can wear them out and about. The material is just super soft and durable. I just got their Clementine running shorts for summer and love them. The brand seems pretty popular, constantly sold out. In closing, and I'm abbreviating here, but in closing, with the exception of when I need technical outdoor gear, they're the only brand I've bought in the last year or so for yoga, running, loungewear that lasts and that I think look good also. I like the discreet logo." So that gives you some idea. That was not intended for the sponsor read. That was just her response via text.

• 3:59Tim Ferriss?

  Vuori, again spelled V U O R I, is designed for maximum comfort and versatility. You can wear it running, you can wear their stuff training, doing yoga, lounging, weekend errands, or in my case, again, going out to dinner. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Their clothing is so comfortable and looks so good and it's non-offensive.

• 4:20Tim Ferriss?

  You don't have a huge brand logo on your face. You'll just want to be in them all the time. And my girlfriend and I have been wearing them for the last few months. They're men's core short, K O R E. The most comfortable lined athletic short is your one short for every sport. I've been using it for kettlebell swings, for runs, you name it. The banks short. This is their go to land to see short is the ultimate in versatility. It's made from recycled plastic bottles. And what I'm wearing right now, which if I had to pick one to recommend to folks out there, or at least to men out there, is the Ponto Performance Pant. And you'll find these at the link I'm going to give you guys. You can check out what I'm talking about, but I'm wearing them right now. They're thin performance sweatpants, but that doesn't do them justice. So you got to check it out.

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  P O N T O Ponto Performance Pant. For you ladies, the women's performance jogger is the softest jogger you'll ever own. Vuori isn't just an investment in your clothing. It's an investment in your happiness. And for you, my dear listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase. So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. It's super popular. A lot of my friends have now noticed are wearing this and so am I. vuoriclothing.com/Tim. That's V U O R I Clothing.com/Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you'll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns. So check it out.

• 5:48Tim Ferriss?

  vuoriclothing.com/Tim. That's V U O R I Clothing.com/Tim. And discover the versatility of Vuori Clothing.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  No, it is an inappropriate time.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 6:22Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys. Oh, my God. What am I, 12? My voice is cracking, people. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. That is how excited I am today to bring to you my guest for this conversation, Chef Marco Canora. Let me get into this. After years working with and training under Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio, you may know those names at Gramercy Tavern and Craft. Chef Marco Canora, old friend of mine. On Instagram, you can find him at Marco Canora. Opened Hearth, that's H-E-A-R-T-H, in the East Village in 2003, before the neighborhood was a culinary destination. In 2014, Marco helped kick off America's embrace of bone broth with Brodo, B-R-O-D-O, serving bone broth in coffee cups out of a side window at Hearth.

• 7:06Tim Ferriss?

  Over the years, Brodo has been recognized consistently as a bone broth pioneer in outlets such as The New York Times, Time, and Good Morning America. You can visit brodo.com to try some of their famous bone broth for yourself. I've had many gallons of it of every possible variety, or visit one of their several locations in New York City. Marco's first cookbook, Salt Taste, subtitle, The Key to Confident Delicious Cooking, was nominated for a James Beard Award. That's like the Oscars of the cooking and culinary world. He is also the author of A Good Food Day and Brodo, subtitle, A Bone Broth Cookbook. Marco has been profiled in The New York Times, Serious Eats, and Food and Wine. He was a finalist on The Next Iron Chef, a judge on Chopped and Top Chef, and he has

• 7:48Tim Ferriss?

  appeared on Today, The Chew, Good Morning America, Martha Stewart, and Nightline. In May 2017, Marco won the James Beard Award for Best Chef, New York City. He lives, cooks, and gardens with his wife and two children in Yonkers, New York. You can find him, as I mentioned, on Instagram, at Marco Canora, online, restauranthearth.com, and brodo.com. I will warn people in advance. I know that this is family programming. We will likely have a font of obscenities from both of us in this conversation, so just strap in and be prepared for that. Marco, welcome to the show, my friend.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Tim, it's so great to be here. I am absolutely thrilled to be a part of this amazing cast that you've done. You know, a little nervous, but more excited than nervous.

• 8:36Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you sexy son of a bitch. Let's just get right into it. I had an opportunity to go and look back at some of our early interactions as documented in The Four Hour Chef, because we had a lot of adventures and misadventures related to all things in that book. And one of the first conversations, or I should say, the beginning of one of the very first conversations we had, went like this. "It's really assy, right? Grassy?" I asked. "No, assy," Marco repeated loudly over the bustle of the bar. So could you provide some context for what we were talking about? And if you can't remember, I can certainly refresh the memory.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  I can't remember the producer of the bottle of wine that we were referring to. At Hearth Restaurant, there's what we call the Kitchen Pass. So you could like sit right on our kitchen and watch everything going on. And it's very loud and the restaurant was full. So there was a lot of noise and I poured you a sip of a red wine. I don't remember the grape variety, maybe you do.

• 9:44Tim Ferriss?

  It was a Cabernet Franc, Cab Franc.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Oh, okay, a Cab Franc. And we were, you know, we were just talking about the wine and I was smelling it and tasting it, as were you. And, you know, it's one of my favorite wine descriptors, because there's this barnyard, horses' ass kind of thing in some wines that I really love. So, yeah, I used assy. And your eyebrows went up. And I don't know if you've ever heard that as a wine descriptor before.

• 10:13Tim Ferriss?

  I had not. And so the, the, the, the, the sentence that I put in the book was, "This excited me for three reasons." Now, you're gonna have to correct my French. I'm not gonna get this right, but the Chenon, which is a Bernard Baudry, 2010, Laur Valley, was the best Cabernet Franc I'd ever had. I'd found a wine descriptor I could understand, and I'm very fond of ass in general. Now, my writing style may have changed a little bit since. But suffice to say, in this conversation, I just want to say this upfront for folks, we're not going to be talking just about cooking. We're going to be talking about living. We're going to be talking about senses. We're going to be talking About eating and for most of you out there, regardless of how trendy fasting is, and I'm a big fan of fasting.

• 10:58Tim Ferriss?

  You can't do it forever and you likely eat at least a few times a day or a few times a week. So we're going to be covering a lot of texture around sort of the art of living and nourishment. And that can take a lot of form. So I just want to say that because part of the reason I enjoy spending so much time with you is that I feel like a lot of the philosophies and principles that you have formed to kind of guide your life overlap a lot with some of mine. And that's in part because I've adopted quite a few of yours. So I'm going to jump to a section right after this introduction to Hearth and the Four Hour Chef.

• 11:39Tim Ferriss?

  In the professional section, there is, there is the domestic, the wild, the scientist, and then the professional. And this section is called the mantra, the mantra. And here it goes. Quote, "Cooking is not hard. Cooking is not hard." End quote. Marco repeated this five times during our evening together. Quote, "I feel like I've pulled the wool over everyone's eyes as a successful chef in New York City. Anyone could do this." End quote. "Come on," I said, as I pointed to my vegetable salad, which was ethereal and juicy. Not an adjective I use for salads in parenthetical, easily one of the best salads in my life. He laughed and waved a hand dismissively. "People say, oh my God, this is amazing. Just dress it while the vegetables are warm. It all soaks in. Pour the oil on after the red wine vinegar and add salt and pepper. Anyone could do this."

• 12:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oil after the vinegar? Why? Marco explained, "If you put on the oil first, it deflects the vinegar into the bottom of the dish where it pools." So this is as best as I could recall it, and I'm sure I passed this by you. An example of simplicity, but like powerful simplicity. And we're going to get to more crazy stories and hilarious stories because I have to bring our friend Jay-Z. Not the media and hip hop icon, but Jeffrey Zurofsky, easily mixed up. He goes by the initials. So he'll have to make an appearance at some point since he was my coach. He introduced us and he was very much a brother in arms for the.

• 13:09Tim Ferriss?

  Potential suicide mission that was the four hour chef. You never went to culinary school. Is that right?

• 13:16Speaker 03

  I did not. That is correct.

• 13:18Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Now, I've heard you. Well, I've read rather. You say in interviews like, yeah, I'm not that impressed by culinary school grads. I'd rather take someone who's done a year of staging or something along those lines. Could you elaborate on that?

• 13:35Speaker 03

  You know, cooking is such a trade and like to think that you can get good at butchering a salmon by taking a semester of fish butchery courses is just kind of absurd. I mean, of course, there's like basic techniques that you could learn, but it's like playing a musical instrument, being adept in a kitchen and being efficient with a knife and, and being able to fillet or butcher meat or fish or cut vegetables. It's an act of engaging with your senses. So in my opinion, it's just one of those things that can't be taught. And it's through repetition you get great. And, you know, my first job at Dean and DeLuca in New York City in the early nineties, I

• 14:16Speaker 03

  made soup for them at their big shop on Broadway and Prince. And they would go through, you know, 50 gallons of soup a day. I had to cut all the vegetables for that soup. You know how I got my knife skills from cutting those vegetables every day for a couple of years? I mean, it's incredible. So I don't want to put down places like the Culinary Institute of America. I mean, they do great work and I think the kids that come out of there are prepared and they have a good foundation. But ultimately, I just think it's a better proposition to get paid for school. And that's what going to work young is.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  You work really hard and you might not make a ton of money, but you're getting paid for the knowledge that you're acquiring. And that just seems like a better ROI to me than going in debt for a hundred grand and coming out and then starting that process.

• 15:13Tim Ferriss?

  What does it mean to stage? People may not recognize that term.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  I'm not sure you could even do that anymore in the current world. I mean, certainly not in New York and probably this country at large. I mean, maybe in Europe, it still goes on, but it's this idea of, okay, I don't have a lot of experience. You're a great restaurant. I'm super into cooking and I want to devote my life to it. So I want a stag at your restaurant. I'm going to go there and I'm going to watch at first and then little by little, maybe I'll help with menial tasks and then maybe that will grow. But it's basically allow me to be present in your kitchen so I could learn and maybe you'll allow me to help too for free.

• 15:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So the apprenticing of a sort, right? The S T A G E. I'm imagining that's French. So that's basically a sort of a lost practice at this point. How did you first get into cooking? Like, when did you know this is what I want to do?

• 16:17Speaker 03

  It was from growing up in a household with a mom who cared about cooking and was a great cook. And we had a garden in upstate New York. One of my earliest memories is my mom picking zucchini flowers out of the garden and then dipping them in a simple pastella, which is just a flour and water batter and pan frying them in olive oil and then putting a little bit of salt on them and eating them while they're hot. So it was like from the earth to the pan, to the plate, to my mouth in a matter of an hour and a half. That shit resonated with me. It's still with me today.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  So the very quick and simple answer is from growing up in a home with a mom who cared and knew how to cook and believed in the power of cooking.

• 17:08Tim Ferriss?

  So for those you've worked with, what would they say your superpowers are? What are you good at?

• 17:16Speaker 03

  I'm good at Being demanding without being an asshole about it. Everybody wants to respect a chef or a leader who's demanding and holds you accountable. And I think the tricky part for anybody trying to drive a kitchen or drive any project is to be disciplined and to be demanding, but to be able to do it in a way that garners support instead of the opposite of support, which is I've worked for some really demanding guys and I respected the fact that they wanted it to be great, but they were total assholes about it and it didn't motivate me to want to be part of their success.

• 18:01Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  And I think a nugget of what has helped me through my career is I've been able to find that balance of being a total obsessive perfectionist, demanding, hard knocks guy, but at the same time balance that out with making sure they understand it's from a good place and from a kind place and for the common good of being really proud of the hard work that we're doing.

• 18:31Tim Ferriss?

  How do you do that? You don't have to name names, but yeah, how might the language look? And it's like every day you're going to have a chance to

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:42Tim Ferriss?

  Correct.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Well, that's what, yeah, that's what I wanted to say, you know, Tim, it's not so much about language, it's about actions. And that's the beauty of work and that's the beauty of kitchens, in my opinion, is that happens through being alongside and showing everybody that there's not really a hierarchy and that you're willing to do whatever it takes and you're willing to bend over backwards to support and help people achieve things and have successes on their stations. And there's been many, many kitchens and times and days that I were run, I was running

• 19:24Speaker 03

  the kitchen and a cook would have a really bad night and they would go down and it would not be pretty and I probably

• 19:32Tim Ferriss?

  Go down, you mean like go down in flames?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, go down in flames and you know, it's high pressure and I'm sure at the time I like freaked out and screamed probably too much, but the thing that I made sure I did was that at the end of the night, we would talk about it and the next day I would show up early so that when that person showed up, I was right there with that person. We would go over the prep list and we together would make sure that we wouldn't have a night like that again. It's not good for anybody. I was invested in their success and I think that that's one nugget of what I would say to answer your question.

• 20:12Tim Ferriss?

  What were or are some of the most common reasons for someone crumbling under pressure? Right? When they have a bad night and they just collapse psychologically or otherwise? What are the most common reasons for that?

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Mostly it's their inability to control their thinking. This notion of getting flustered. You come in at one and you prep as hard as you can to be ready at six and then you're like, okay, I got through the first part of the day and then the tickets start rolling in, come seven, seven thirty, like it really shit starts happening and I think people lose their composure and they get flustered and then it's just like a landslide and then you just go down and that's the most common thing, I think, in my opinion. Obviously, sometimes people just aren't ready and they aren't, they don't have the skills required, but more often it's a mind game, I think.

• 21:08Tim Ferriss?

  So it's just panic, basically, like they panic and then they lose the ability to execute on the skills they actually do have.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. It's an exercise in focus.

• 21:22Tim Ferriss?

  So what, maybe you could tell me a story from your experience. There has, let's say you're a line cook, so you're not top dog and you're in a situation where, oh shit, you know?

• 21:34Tim Ferriss?

  Sarah, Tony called in sick last minute. This is a Tuesday night. It's not supposed to be big. We've got like 50 menus up at the same time. Ah, fuck. And like, everybody ordered the roast chicken or whatever, right?

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:49Tim Ferriss?

  And you're like, this is gonna be a fucking 12 car pileup. And

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:54Tim Ferriss?

  And things start going sideways. Can you tell a story of pulling out of a tailspin? Or like what you do in a situation like that when in your own head, right? Like what your self-talk is when that stuff is starting to unfold?

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know what's wild, Tim, is that scenario that you paint? It's kind of like an every single night scenario when you're running like a busy restaurant in New York City. So it's not like an outlying, it's not like an outlier of a situation.

• 22:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Because every night in a really busy restaurant, I mean, I'll speak to my experience in New York City. You get punched in the face every single night because like you serve 220. People want to eat between 7:30 and 8:45. And or nine, and that happens every single night. So it's not much of an outlying experience, but I'll tell you. You know, you've heard the word mise en place, right?

• 22:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  So to win the battle. More than half of it is, is to make sure you're listed out early. You get in and you win the prep half of the game. The world of cooks and kitchens are two halves of the game. There's the first half.

• 23:06Tim Ferriss?

  I was just gonna say for people who don't, so mise en place or mise is, correct me if I'm wrong, is basically having everything prepped and in its proper place. So that you can execute when it comes time to actually cook. Is that accurate?

• 23:21Speaker 03

  Correct. Yeah, every, every bit of everything that you need needs to be in the right place. And that's not just the food ingredients, but it's like the pots and the pans and the plates and the spoons. It's the tools in addition to all the foodstuffs. It's like a holistic picture of everything. I mean, one could even say your cup of water that you need is part of your mise en place.

• 23:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I interrupt you though. You were saying the first half of the game. Is

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's two halves in the in the restaurant world. There's two halves of the game. There's the prep half that you have to get ready for when the curtain goes up and then then guests start coming through the door and that's the beginning of the second half. And inevitably, because people have their habits and you can't change it. I've been wishing that people would eat at six o'clock for like 15 years of my life, but they don't. So, yeah, and the second half is service and inevitably you get pummeled in the middle and you need to be able to get to the other side of that and not get overwhelmed by the stacking up of tickets. It might sound basic and you'll probably squeeze some more detail out of me, but it's just

• 24:30Speaker 03

  there's no better time than in the shits to step back and take this approach of one ticket at a time.

• 24:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Because like you will get to the other side of it. I kind of always love those moments. You go into this state of focus and it really does become, I don't want to overdramatize it, but it really does become a sort of a dance. You're in your head and you're just doing this stuff and you're putting up this beautiful food. It always resonated with me. I love it and you got to get into into the zone, you know?

• 25:06Tim Ferriss?

  What type of mentorship or

• 25:12Tim Ferriss?

  boss have you most flourished under? It doesn't have to be a specific name. It could certainly. But one thing I certainly wonder about, and this may be a whole separate topic, but if the kind of demanding

• 25:30Tim Ferriss?

  sort of chef culture can exist today in in some form, right? It just seems like there must be so many landmines. And I'm not saying, look, there's also a lot of bad behavior all over the place. So we don't have to get into that. But it makes me think of like, for instance, Jeffrey, our friend. Jeffrey Zarovsky told me a story. I don't think he would mind me telling it where he was working for some French chef and very demanding guy, but very gifted, very good at teaching. And Jeffrey was always in the way, right? He was like, he was, he just like could not figure out where to put himself where he wasn't fucking everything up. So this guy would say to him, he'd go,

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Jeffrey, you are like my dick, always between my legs.

• 26:18Tim Ferriss?

  And I thought that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. Like, you can't, you can't really do, they probably can't really do that now. Not saying you should, but it is pretty funny.

• 26:30Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm curious though, for you personally, because different people thrive under different styles. Like, what type of styles have you thrived under, would you say?

• 26:42Speaker 03

  It's interesting, in my case, Tim, because I spent most of my career as kind of like chef in charge, if you will. Like, there was very few years at Gramercy Tavern where I was under people. And Tom Colicchio, who's a mentor of mine, he was very hands off. He gave me all the space I needed and carte blanche to do kind of whatever I want. And the way he infused himself was very, very in the shadows. It wasn't aggressive. So like, I think for me, like, I respond best to people that show me confidence and faith. I did as well as I did at Gramercy Tavern because the hires up there

• 27:27Speaker 03

  allowed me the room to like grow and shine.

• 27:33Tim Ferriss?

  In the process of doing some homework for this conversation, which I always enjoy doing with friends, because it'd be super creepy and weird if I was like, hey, I spent like five hours, you know, doing internet research on you. But I have the excuse when we have these conversations. So I read that when you were starting out, now, I don't know if starting out is quite the right way to put it, but you made a list of, say, five restaurants in New York City that you wanted to work for or at. And you kind of started knocking on doors with a suit and the whole nine yards. And that you ended up at Gramercy Tavern. So how did you end up not only at Gramercy Tavern? So I want to hear the story of like selection. How did you choose those restaurants? And, and then?

• 28:19Tim Ferriss?

  This can wait until later, but separately, once you landed there, how did you have free rein? Why would anyone give you free rein in such a situation? So there you go.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  I started as a line cook on Gramercy Tavern with no free rein, but I got to a sous chef position in like a year. You know, the first year I had to like, kind of prove my merit. And I was very nervous because I hadn't worked in any great kitchens, but I was very determined and it took me a year to get to that place where I got some freedom.

• 28:52Tim Ferriss?

  Is that fast?

• 28:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:55Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So how did you, we're going to come back to the restaurant selection, but let's focus on this for a second. Now, I will accept hard work, but the fact of the matter is a lot of people work hard. A lot of people put in a lot of time. That can't be the only explanation. Why were you able to do that within a year? How did you approach it differently? Or what did you do that other people didn't do?

• 29:21Speaker 03

  It was like every waking hour was, I was thinking about it. And I tell cooks this today. It's like, part of your success is not only during the hours you walk through this door. I was obsessed and I was determined to not fail. And that drove me to read and think and make lists outside of the restaurant. So that when I walked into the restaurant, I had not only a list of what to do, but I had it plotted on a timeline. So that I would be really efficient with the four or five hours I had leading up into showtime.

• 30:03Tim Ferriss?

  Got to see, you know, you never showed up and then figured out what you were going to do. You showed up with like a schedule.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  A timeline schedule and like, yeah. And it's like, you know,

• 30:14Speaker 03

  Downstairs is where you prep and where the walk-in boxes are and upstairs where the kitchen is. And like, I would watch cooks go up and down the stairs because they forgot this and that and the other thing. And I was like, poor time management, buddy. Like, you're failing, you're failing because like you're not doing your work pre and you're going up and down the stairs all fucking day. That's why you're always not ready at six o'clock. This attention to detail around not only the list of things, but also plotted on a timeline really served me well.

• 30:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you know, I feel like that going up and down the stairs all fucking day is like a great metaphor for people to use. And like I rewrote it down for myself. I'm like, you know, thinking to myself, like, where am I running up and down the stairs all day? Am I going between like six tabs constantly all the fucking time? Like, if so, why am I doing that? You know, like, what am I doing? Am I like opening and closing my laptop 17 times a day? If so, like, what, what's happening there? It's a very good question. You said lists, you said you read. Does reading mean, and I imagine a part of it is getting familiar, obviously with the menu for that evening so that you have everything that you need. Any other types of reading when you say reading?

• 31:34Speaker 03

  It was just immersing myself in food culture and like food magazines at the time. And I mean, this is kind of before the crazy digital world we live in today. So it was like, I was so in love with the dining scene, the restaurant scene, the food scene, plating food, seasonal ingredients. It was just like deeply embedded in my soul. It was singularly focused. I was singularly focused and to this day, I kind of commiserate with my wife. You know, I'm the opposite of a Renaissance man. I have been embedded in the world of restaurants and food and cooking for my entirety of my adult life.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  And it hasn't really afforded me the ability to dive into other, especially deeply dive into other pursuits. And, and that's fine with me. I'm not begrudging it. It's just, I think one of the keys to success in the world of restaurants and cooking and chefing is this all-in type attitude.

• 32:44Tim Ferriss?

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• 33:29Tim Ferriss?

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• 34:12Tim Ferriss?

  by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 34:27Tim Ferriss?

  One thing that's always impressed me about you, and honestly, there's part of me that's really envious of this, covet sounds too weird, but I do have this kind of pang of envy when we're texting or talking, because god, you know, it's got to be coming up on 10 years, if not just past 10 years now that we've first met, which is fucking bonkers to think about. Yeah, it is. It's more than 10, for sure. And when I ask you what you're up to, what you're excited about. Very often, I mean, there are other things, of course, but very often you're like, yeah,

• 35:09Tim Ferriss?

  I'm super stoked about like, yeah, the cooking this and I'm doing this and like have this garden and like you are

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:16Tim Ferriss?

  as excited as I have ever seen you about good food and making good food when you're home, right? I mean, it's so refreshing to see in a sense because what I am used to very often is like someone who is, this includes many people who are successful in whatever given field is like they have their thing they do for work. And when they are not working, the last thing they would ever want to do is more of what they consider their work, right? But that's not you. That's, that definitely does not seem to be you.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  You know, in my later years, it's like I'm on this mission to spread the gospel of cooking. I think that it's one of the most valuable things one can teach themselves. And I do more cooking at home today than I do in the restaurant. And yeah, the wonderful thing about food and cooking and the reason why it could become all encompassing gets that act that we all do. So it's like, my daughters need to eat every day. I need to eat every day. Everyone needs to eat. Well, not every day. We all, some people have fasting practices, but you get the idea. And it's like, it's ever changing and it's constantly dynamic and it just never ceases to feed

• 36:37Speaker 03

  my soul. It never does.

• 36:39Tim Ferriss?

  It's incredible. So bookmark, coming back to bookmark, I promised I would cover this with people. And I want to know, selecting those five or so restaurants where you put on your god, god knows what, I would love to see a photo of that suit back in the day. So you put, put on your suit and you go, you go to knock on some doors and smile.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Just for the record, I also had hair to my ass. I didn't know what to do with it because I was like, what am I going to do with my hair? Like going into these interviews? So my girlfriend at the time convinced me that the best approach would just do a single braid down the back of my head. So I was like in a suit with a single braid like to the back of my, you know, to, to my waist.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  So yeah, it was quite something. And the list was formed in my apartment in San Francisco, because I was living in San Francisco at the time. And my girlfriend had gotten accepted to NYU Film School. So we all, we both decided to come back together. I was like in my late twenties and I was like, okay, well, up until now, cooking, I loved it and I was good at it, but it was never, I never thought seriously about what a career would look like. So that was a big moment, like moving back to New York and deciding that this was going to be my career. And you know, the list was really, at the time, Gourmet Magazine did restaurant reviews, and I had

• 38:05Speaker 03

  a stack of them because I subscribed to it. So basically, I looked at the restaurant reviews over the last like nine months and took notes, looked at the New York Times reviews, took some notes. And then, you know, based on my own, what I was excited about that drove the list. So I wanted it to be kind of Italian-ish. I wasn't super interested in the old school French restaurants. I was interested in kind of fresher vegetable type. So Diane Forley had a restaurant called Verbena, and she got a lot of play for working with botanicals and vegetables. And that was her big shtick. And I was really turned on by that. Lydia Vastianic

• 38:49Speaker 03

  had her fancy Italian restaurant, The Lydia, and that spoke to me and I was excited about that. And then Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio partnered and Danny just did Union Square and Tom had an Italian bent. So that kind of appealed to me. So yeah, I kind of got to the city with this list and hit the streets, old school style, with my resume and my suit and my, my single braid to my ass.

• 39:17Tim Ferriss?

  What was your pitch?

• 39:18Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, it was tough. It was tough because I didn't have a whole lot to go on. Like I had worked at a few restaurants here and there. I had a business degree from Pace University, and I worked in a handful of restaurants that nobody ever heard of. My pitch was, I'm ready to commit to this as my life, and I want to find the right place that I could really learn and really dive into. And the pitch was this idea of selling these folks on the level of commitment I would have if they were to hire me.

• 39:55Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, that's super interesting, right? Because I'm imagining you're going through these reviews, right? In Gourmet Magazine. And, you know, at the time, this is probably 2010, 2011. And I know COVID may have affected things, but you know, I wrote, and just saying this to provide some context for folks, right? All right.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 40:18Tim Ferriss?

  So in the Four Hour Chef, you know, wrote all about my first real inebriated five and a half hour orgy of gastronomic delights. And at the end of that section, I said, by the end of the evening, I concluded what many others had. Hearth is the most underrated restaurant in all of New York City. This is saying a lot in a city of 24,000 restaurants. So there are, no matter how you slice it, we could debate the number, but there are a lot of restaurants in New York City. And you have just picked a couple of the hottest restaurants. You can't be the only person knocking on doors, right? And so I'm thinking to myself, well, wait a second now.

• 41:02Tim Ferriss?

  You know, you're going to sort of, if we're thinking of it almost like college admissions, you're going to like Harvard, Yale, Princeton. You're like, hey, let me in. Okay. The percentage of the time they say yes has got to be pretty low because it's not like they're going to have 70 people working as line cooks.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:20Tim Ferriss?

  And so if I were in their shoes and you offered that, I would have to, I would think I would have to have a high degree of confidence that you could at least handle the work that I would be throwing at you. So, but I understand the commitment was kind of first and foremost, right? This is the commitment that I plan to give if you were to hire me. What else was there to the pitch that would help them say yes?

• 41:47Speaker 03

  The beauty about that world at that time is you come in and you do what they call a trail. So it's very easy.

• 41:53Tim Ferriss?

  A trail? T R A I L?

• 41:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, a trail. So they say, you know, and this happened pretty much everywhere. They were kind of like, well, you know, your resume is not that impressive. And why don't you come in and suit up and just hang out and watch? And that's common practice. I mean, not so much today. You come in and you spend a full day in the kitchen, you suit up, the cooks and the sous chefs and the chefs, they get a sense of like your vibe and your energy and your ability to just kind of navigate a kitchen, you know? It's kind of like when you said Jeffrey Zurofsky was always in the way of the chef, right? Like, part of what you need to do on your trail is you need to be adept to the movements of a kitchen and show them that you're not like a deer in headlights, not knowing where to fucking stand.

• 42:41Tim Ferriss?

  So what, now are you just like playing tag where you're like avoiding anyone touching you? Or do you have responsibilities? Are you just sort of the ghost? They're like, we don't want to hear you. We don't want to see you, like be a ninja?

• 42:55Speaker 03

  That's the thing. Like, you need to have a good EQ and you need to go in there and you need to figure out when it's okay to poke and try to work and can I lend a hand? Or when it's time to be quiet and be in the corner? And so a lot of it is nuanced and you need to be able to read the situations because maybe the first two hours of the prep day is very different than the first hour of when the shit hits the fan, right? So you need to have sense about you and that that helps kind of guide whether they're going to make a decision to hire you or not, right? So I've had trails who are like absolutely useless and they didn't know where to stand. They didn't know when it was the right time

• 43:37Speaker 03

  to help or not help. And at the end of that, the cooks are, who was that freakazoid? Please don't hire him. Or the cooks and the sous chefs are like, wow, that guy was really helpful, or that girl was really helpful and he really helped out. So that's what it's about during a trail. And I did, I did well during my trail because I was offered a job.

• 44:00Tim Ferriss?

  And they don't give you, do they give you any direction beforehand? Or they're just like, hey, come trail, wink, wink. And the understanding is like, I want to see if you can figure out when and how to help?

• 44:11Speaker 03

  It's kind of like unsaid, but like there's a little, of course, there's a little bit of guidance. Like they gotta show you where the chef whites are and change in there and like we'll start your day here. So there's some guide rails for sure. But generally, I mean, I know my approach is to say less because it's a better test.

• 44:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, say less to the person who asks you for a trail.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, like when a trail comes into our kitchen, it's kind of like, I try to not set up too much of a framework because I think it speaks to their level of

• 44:46Tim Ferriss?

  Adaptability.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, adaptability and ability and to follow cues, if you will.

• 44:55Speaker 03

  As I think about my future, Tim, and the fact that I'm in my early 50s and through my 60s, it's like, I really, I really want to figure out a way to teach people to cook. Because I believe in the power of cooking so much and it's the thing that I know how to do best. And like, I love the process of teaching. I love what it does for somebody when they learn how to cook. There's implications to being a good cook that wide implications. So like to one's own health and to one's ability to connect with the people under their roof or the people they love.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  And there's just so much to be gained from devoting some time and energy into learning how to cook. And I want that to be kind of my next phase mission in life.

• 45:46Tim Ferriss?

  I endorse that. I endorse that wholeheartedly. And you think a lot about nutrition. I mean, this is, I think in part how Jeffrey initially connected us is because of kind of four hour body, slow carb diet and, and so on. I see a bullet here in front of me in my prep notes that I want to ask you about. And we're going to move all over the place, obviously, but that is the way my brain functions or dysfunctions, malfunctions. Recent 45 day CGM, that's continuous glucose monitor experience. Why did you decide to use a continuous glucose monitor? And what did you learn from that experience?

• 46:27Speaker 03

  Why? Because I am kind of a bit obsessed over like the physiology of my own body. And what are the things that drive that physiology, whether it be sleep, or cold plunging, or fasting, or diet? And having the ability to test and learn around my dietary choices was so intriguing to me. And once it was available, and I knew it was out there, I reached out to Frank Littman, who's a doctor, a friend and a doctor that I go to see in New York. And he figured out a way to get a CGM on my arm. So I did it just sheer, out of sheer curiosity,

• 47:11Speaker 03

  and a desire to just kind of, you know, it's so cliche to say this, but just kind of optimize my diet a bit, you know, and, and understanding blood sugar, I totally buy into keeping blood sugar levels steady, I think, is hugely critical to all kinds of health.

• 47:32Tim Ferriss?

  So what did you learn? What were the biggest takeaways?

• 47:35Speaker 03

  I'll tell you the craziest, biggest takeaway that I feel like should be on that billboard, you might ask me about, you know, it won't, but take a walk after you eat. It is astonishing. How can it be that I've never heard that in my whole life? That should be like taught in first grade, because the effect of it is insane. And, and I saw it firsthand. And I think that the folks at Levels are seeing it more and more and more, because this message is getting out as they accumulate data. But the power of a 14 minute walk to reduce the spike of your blood sugar,

• 48:18Speaker 03

  regardless of what you eat, is extraordinary.

• 48:22Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, no kidding. And so you used Levels in this experiment?

• 48:25Speaker 03

  I did.

• 48:26Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. That's incredible. Why 14 minutes?

• 48:30Tim Ferriss?

  Is that the length of your favorite Guns N' Roses A-side?

• 48:35Speaker 03

  No, I'm just, I did I say 14 or 15? I just like a short, a short, you know, just a little walk.

• 48:40Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  You know, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, maybe five minutes. I didn't really test the length of the walk. It was nothing severe.

• 48:48Tim Ferriss?

  So it's not, it's not exercise. It's not like going to the gym or doing pushups. It's just going for a walk around the block a few times.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Yes, totally chill, walk around the block and I couldn't believe it. It's amazing to me. So highly, highly recommend that. It should be taught everywhere because it's incredibly effective.

• 49:09Tim Ferriss?

  That's wild, man. You know, I haven't thought, you just prompted something to come to my mind, which I haven't thought of in a few decades and I'm going to apologize to anyone who hears this and understands what I'm saying. So I'm going to probably butcher it because my tones are off these days, but there's a, there's a, I want to say, well, maybe it's not so much a proverb. It's a expression in Mandarin Chinese, which is something like "饭后百步走，能活到九十九", which is if you walk 100 steps after you eat, you will live to be 99. That's literally the expression.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 49:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And it's just like, huh, turns out a few thousand years of trial and error.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  How did you come across, how did you find that expression?

• 49:57Tim Ferriss?

  I was, I mean, I was living in China and I, this is a long time ago. I mean, this is 1996. So this is back when Beijing was like people's liberation, green army jackets in the winter, these green jackets and bicycles. So Beijing is a different city now. And I was there for six months at two universities and

• 50:22Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, that was kind of the last time I studied Chinese was around that time. But you just saying that prompted that to pop up in my brain, which is wild. So

• 50:33Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, there's a lot, there's a lot there for sure. I mean, that was my experience and many others. And it's just, I find it fascinating and sitting here in 2021 and I've been kind of embedding myself in trying to learn about, you know, nutrition and health and we have some mutual friends and people we follow and, uh, and it's just amazing to me that I've never come across that.

• 50:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. How wild. Any other insights that you gleaned from your

• 51:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. The other big one was to combine the macronutrients. If you just eat a complex carb or a simple carb by itself, as opposed to eating it alongside fat and protein. So this idea of like a well-rounded plate, that made a huge difference as well. One night in particular, it was a fun game too, having this thing on my arm, by the way. So one night I went and I had a business dinner at Hearth. I approached it with this idea of like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna like eat everything and I'm gonna eat a lot of it, right? So I went kind of nuts and I just ate all the things like garlic breads and wine and cocktails and desserts. I probably consumed 3,000 calories, right?

• 51:49Speaker 03

  And I was like, I want to see if I could make my levels like blow up, you know, my levels app blow up. And the astounding thing was because it was a lot of fiber and a lot of protein and a lot of fat. In addition to all the bad simple carbs and sugars and wines and all that, I didn't spike that high. And I think it's because having fiber and having fat and having protein alongside

• 52:17Speaker 03

  These bad players of simple carbs and sugar helps mitigate that spike.

• 52:22Tim Ferriss?

  Huh. Did you exercise earlier in the day by any chance? Do you know?

• 52:27Speaker 03

  I'm a exercise first thing kind of guy.

• 52:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 52:31Speaker 03

  Although my lifestyle is active because I live in in New York, I'm always on my feet and I'm walking a lot. That must play into things as well.

• 52:40Tim Ferriss?

  Fascinating. Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  It was. I love. I loved having that thing on my arm. I kind of want to do it again. There's so much cool testing and learning you can do.

• 52:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you can do some cool stuff. I'm gonna do another CGM experiment soon because the last time I did a continuous glucose monitor experiment was in 2008 or nine for the four hour body with the version one Dexcom, which you had to implant in your abdomen, which I had to. I had to basically get off the back of a truck, meaning like through gray area means because it was only intended for type one diabetics and you couldn't get it otherwise. And there was an external

• 53:26Tim Ferriss?

  screen slash device that you would hang on your belt like a beeper. There was no iPhone. And it was very much, you know, gen, gen one. And it's, it'll be much more interesting to do now with the vastly improved technology. And I'm so curious to see my takeaways because the tools are just so much better and I have more tools, right? Because I have the Oura ring, which I wear for sleep. I have Eight Sleep, which I use to cool my bed typically. And I noticed something just in this last week and I was like, wow, that's really wild. I still need to replicate it, but.

• 54:08Tim Ferriss?

  A, I've noticed, and I knew this already, but that the most obvious takeaway from the Oura ring is if you drink certain types of booze, past a certain point, your sleep is just garbage. It's like so clear, especially deep sleep. However, what I noticed when looking at my recovery and sleep scores on the Oura, as an experiment recently, you know, I had two large glasses of wine, rosé in this case, and that is usually enough to completely destroy my sleep. But what I decided to do was to decrease the temperature of my bed more than usual, to turn down the temperature, because one of the symptoms

• 54:51Tim Ferriss?

  of drinking too much alcohol is my resting body temperature goes up at night. Yep. So I did that, for those who have an eight sleep, I went from like a negative three in the beginning to a negative four, and that would usually kind of ascend up to waking. So I lowered it, let's just call it 33%, and, or an additional kind of 33%. And what I found was, I woke up feeling much more refreshed, and my numbers on the Oura ring looked totally different. So I need to replicate it, but it's super interesting as a hypothesis to be like, okay, if I suppress some of the symptoms of alcohol consumption,

• 55:35Tim Ferriss?

  some of the symptoms would include lower heart rate variability, right? So normally, I'd be like 33 to 40, I guess it's milliseconds, MS is the sort of increment, not sure actually what the unit is, but, so the 33 to 40 on the Oura ring, if I drink, it drops down to like low to mid twenties. So that would be one symptom. Another symptom would be the higher temperature, higher resting heart rate. And it's hard to know if all of these symptoms happen simultaneously, or if some of those phenomena cause the others. So for instance, does the elevated temperature then result in the lower heart rate variability? At the

• 56:19Tim Ferriss?

  very least, I mean, it's kind of an interesting idea, because I don't drink a lot these days, because I feel it much more as I've grown older, but I enjoy it. I'm not gonna lie, I know it's very out of vogue, and it's like, you know, the, all the hip kids are like, I just do ketamine. I'm like, well, I don't know. And you know, maybe a time and a place, but I still like my wine with friends, you know, I don't want to be a truffle pig snorting ketamine at the dinner table. So the idea that you have these tools and if you're able to form a hypothesis and then try to replicate it, which is super important, right? Because it's easy to fool yourself is super exciting. And like the take a walk after you eat, right? Because I could look at, okay, because I have

• 57:04Tim Ferriss?

  noticed that like if I'm gonna drink, if I give my body four or five hours to metabolize before I go to bed, my sleep is much improved, right? So if I'm gonna have three glasses of wine, if I have it at an early dinner at 5:30.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:20Tim Ferriss?

  I am going to be much better off, all my markers than if I have it at an eight o'clock dinner. So then there's a question of like, well, what happens if I still have the eight o'clock dinner, but then I go for, let's say I make it, could be a 10 minute walk, but it could be like a 30 minute walk, right?

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:37Tim Ferriss?

  See how that affects things. And it's, it's super tricky because like you're sort of an amateur, obviously, we're all amateur if we're doing it this way, scientists in a sense, and there are a million variables, but you can start to play with these things, you know?

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Absolutely. One of the other things I noticed that I found intriguing was this idea of metabolizing alcohol. And every time I drank, I would see a blood sugar spike that would come at like 3:30 in the morning.

• 58:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  You hear about the fact that it takes a while for your liver to metabolize liquor. And the reason why you wake up, you spoke about overheating and stuff, but like, it's also because that's when your liver is finally metabolizes it and you have a blood sugar spike.

• 58:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  And it happens like five hours later.

• 58:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  All kinds of cool stuff around that Levels app or any CGM app. And yeah, I'm dying to do it again. And you know, funny, I know that you're into sauna. I actually bought a viral sauna after I saw yours in Austin. I had to figure out a way to not stop my sauna. So I had a, I had a huge wool felt thing that I would put over my, my sensor. And then I would wrap it with like string so that would protect the sensor because it doesn't like 208 degrees.

• 58:59Tim Ferriss?

  So you put like a Russian banya?

• 59:03Tim Ferriss?

  Wool hat on your arm.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  That's exactly what it was. Yeah. And then I wrapped it.

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

  That's pretty gangster. You looked like some kind of, I don't know.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, badass.

• 59:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, badass like warrior from Last of the Mohicans or something. That's amazing. Great book, by the way, I've recently read, but very dated for those people who are sensitive to such things, but beautifully written. Let's jump into some nutrition stuff and this is going to be a segue into talking about Brodo, which I want to ask you about. So one thing we chatted about in your kitchen when we were bullshitting over tea and waiting for the oven to heat up.

• 59:45Tim Ferriss?

  Was, I think you actually brought it up, this book Metabolical and a quote, which it's not what's in the food. It's what's been done to the food. And I think the example you gave was some snack food made out of chickpeas. And I would love for you to sort of replay or just speak to that because it highlights something that's super, super important that I also need to think more about, honestly, which is that the ingredient panels and nutrition facts panels are just not enough. If you're trying to assess the health value of your food.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:00:23Tim Ferriss?

  So could you speak to that? And maybe you could just use an example.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  This has been on my mind for a while, especially since I've been trying to like build and grow the broth business. Because the more I learned about the consumer packaged goods space, the more this came obvious. And chickpeas are a good example because through the years I've spoken to a lot of people trying to commercialize a packaged food product. And the perfect metaphor is hummus because you could read an ingredient panel and it could say organic chickpeas and organic lemon juice and organic whatever, whatever. And it has all the buttons and the nutritional facts panels, you know, has what it has, but.

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  There's no way of a consumer to know whether the person who made that hummus boiled beans or just got powdered chickpea and added water. You know, so like, there's no transparency around process in so much of the foods that we consume. Another easy one is seed oils, right? It's like, the process you have to put rape seed through to get the oil out. It's like they're washing it with like chemicals, hexane. And then they're like putting it through a high heat process that oxidizes the fats. And like what comes out the other end is an oil that has residue of chemicals and that has been oxidized by the heat. Where do you know that as a consumer?

• 1:01:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  If you're in the aisle, reading the back label of the organic canola oil or the organic chickpea that has all the right buttons and all the right marketing on it. That's what's been driving me for six years. I want to get a traditionally made broth out to the masses and like, that's really hard to do. Like the food system we live in today, there's a lot of room for improvement and it's going to be a long, hard battle, but it's like, I'm not afraid of long, hard anything. So it's like, I'm really willing to go, I'm willing to go after it. To put it in a little bullet, it's like, there is no transparency around the process.

• 1:02:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  And that's a big problem as we navigate the food world.

• 1:02:39Tim Ferriss?

  To build on that, you know, there are cases where you can sort of deduce that A does not equal A in quotation marks in the sense that if you buy hummus from the farmer's market with a certain set of ingredients and then you go to the, the sort of hipster grocery store and you find.

• 1:02:59Tim Ferriss?

  Chickpea crisps that are completely different texture, completely different form factor are shelf stable for 175 years. Not to say that's true for all crisps. I'm just making up a kind of arbitrary example. You can safely assume that something has been done to the ingredients that was not done at the farmer's market. And it's just unclear what has been done, but there has been some level of manipulation for it to take a different form. That's just how it has to be. Now, in notes here, I wasn't aware of this, but apparently there's a NOVA classification. Do you want to describe what this is? The NOVA classification system developed by researchers at University of Sao Paulo?

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, and I'd like to believe that this is the future for us as well, because like, I think consumers, we're getting smarter and smarter and we're caring more and more about the things that really drive health and that, I mean, I think it's unquestionable that the choices we make daily about what we eat and drink is the biggest driver of health. I'd like to believe there will be a time where the big food companies will have to be more transparent around the process. And the NOVA system is, is happening in South America and it basically sets four categories of like ultra-processed, processed, I can't remember the other two names, but basically it

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  provides a framework to define what foods are ultra-processed as opposed to processed, as opposed to like culinary ingredients that are minimally processed.

• 1:04:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it looks like, so to summarize, that the NOVA classification system, which is developed in Brazil by researchers, separates out food into four groups based on the level of processing. So the first level is unprocessed. The second is processed culinary ingredients.

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  Do you say culinary or coolinary? What do you say?

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  I say culinary.

• 1:05:03Tim Ferriss?

  God damn it. All right. So processed culinary ingredients, the third is processed, and then the fourth is ultra-processed, right? And

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Tim Ferriss?

  This is so important and there are, you know, a lot of questions that

• 1:05:23Tim Ferriss?

  Unfortunately, seem to add a lot of complexity to the lives of end consumers, right? Because they're like, good God, can't I just know that a fucking banana is a banana? For God's sake, you know?

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 1:05:36Tim Ferriss?

  But there are certain questions that I think are worth asking, right? Like, how processed, if you had to put it, I don't actually, I'm not totally clear on unprocessed and then processed culinary ingredients versus processed. Maybe you can tell me what the difference is between processed culinary ingredients and processed. I don't know. Do you have any idea what that means?

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  Culinary ingredients are things that you would find in a kitchen pantry as opposed to a food scientist pantry in a food manufacturing plant. When I cook at home, like, I don't have a pantry full of emulsifiers or stabilizers. This notion of culinary ingredients is the things that you would imagine. Spices and herbs and dried tomato and

• 1:06:18Tim Ferriss?

  Flour.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  Things like that.

• 1:06:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Okay.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  There's a lot of ambiguity around a word like processed, right?

• 1:06:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Because everything is somewhat processed. And like, I think that's what Nova's trying to

• 1:06:30Tim Ferriss?

  Codify.

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  That a bit.

• 1:06:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, to define it. Right. Well, it's just like,

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Tim Ferriss?

  People say, our food is all natural. It's like, okay.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:39Tim Ferriss?

  Let's take a look at what that means.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Right. And I'm by no means an expert in the Nova system. I wanted to bring it up because I believe it's where we're going in the space. And I believe it's needed. And I haven't really vetted or done a lot of reading around Nova, but I just, I like it conceptually because it's a huge gap.

• 1:07:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the, the processing question is a huge blind spot.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Tim Ferriss?

  For people. Another blind spot, which we don't have to dwell on, but it's something I think about a lot, is thinking about what you eat.

• 1:07:17Tim Ferriss?

  Eight, if that makes any sense. So people say you are what you eat. And it's like, well, you gotta go a step further. Like the food, yeah, like your food that you are eating. What nourished that, right? Because if it's some, if you're like, hey, I'm eating fish. And that is so much healthier than beef. You gotta double click on that and take a look. Because if it's some like really disgusting industrial level farming operation where they're just dumping food and antibiotics and so on into the water. They've basically taken the worst practices of terrestrial agriculture and just poured it into the water. So you have,

• 1:07:58Tim Ferriss?

  you have to look a lot. And then if you compare that to just say, grass fed, grass finished beef, putting aside environmental concerns for the moment, because I think, you know, both can be degrading. But if we're just looking at individual health, those are very different from, say, industrial level cattle farming versus different source of salmon, right? And by the way, this isn't just limited to animals. It's also true of plant matter. So.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, fertilizers and like how much, yeah, the nutrient density of the soil that the vegetables were grown in.

• 1:08:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, are we dealing with like a few inches of topsoil with like tons of fertilizer poured on top of it? Or are we talking about something else? So it's, I happen to be fascinated by this stuff. So I don't mind digging into it. But it's really unfortunate that it's so, it's so complex in part because there's so many incentives to hide this kind of shit. You know what I mean?

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:08:57Tim Ferriss?

  There's so many incentives because if a company can get you something bigger, faster, cheaper, and leave the details off of the packaging, of course, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to take that. Let's talk about Brotto. So you, unlike many restaurants, you were open throughout the entire.

• 1:09:19Tim Ferriss?

  Pandemic is my understanding and I didn't know that until we just recently spent time together. I was kind of afraid to ask honestly because of so many horror stories that I've heard and love you, love the restaurant and I'm ashamed of that. So I'm sorry that I

• 1:09:36Tim Ferriss?

  didn't ask, but I was just like, oh God, like I can only imagine how hard it must be. And I was afraid to ask, but the fact of the matter is you kept the Brodo window open, you sold frozen foods, you also, I don't want to say liquidated, maybe you did, but you, you realized that you had all of this valuable inventory of wine and so sold wine and you were able to kind of figure it out. So I think that's, it's just incredible and inspiring. I don't know if you'd like to add anything to that. I just wanted to sort of preface the discussion of Brodo with that, that is sort of a great metaphor in a way also that that window ended up being like the portal and the lifeline.

• 1:10:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's what allowed us to stay open because we were mandated by the city that if you serve, if you were a sit down restaurant, you couldn't stay open if you wanted, you had to close. And that's what Hearth was. And it was the fact that I had a Brodo window, selling these hot cups of broth out of a little window. It was like a little lifeline that allowed the entire restaurant to kind of stay open. COVID, as hard as it was, Tim, it was an incredible 16, 18, I mean, we're still in it, but it was an incredible time for the restaurant and the team. The small group of us that came together to keep that place alive. It was like, everybody thought outside of the box. Everybody did things and learned things that they didn't know before.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  And the fact that like, we all came together and did all of these fun, creative things to stay relevant and to find some revenue. We all thrived on it. As hard as it was, it was like, it really engaged us all in a way that we hadn't been after, you know, because the restaurant's 17 years old. So it was like a really nice swift kick in the ass that got us thinking in a way that we wouldn't have because as you know, something that's 16 years old, you're like, kind of, you're in the groove, you know? And then COVID came and turned everything upside down and it was kind of thrilling.

• 1:11:43Tim Ferriss?

  Well, long and hard. You're not afraid of long and hard.

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, yeah, you're, you're like surfing. You're very accustomed to kind of surfing, paddling out and surfing hundred foot waves, uh,

• 1:11:54Tim Ferriss?

  uh, which is just wild. And why don't we take a step back and I would love for you to tell the story of how Brodo came to be. And

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:12:06Tim Ferriss?

  You know, Brodo's turned into one of those things I look forward to when I visit New York City. And I remember some very early, super early taste tests where I had like,

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  just FYI, like you're one of the first people I called when I kind of realized that the launch of the Brodo window out of the side door of Hearth, I got a sense after about two months that I was kind of on to something.

• 1:12:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  And I poked at you. I don't know, seeking advice or something. And, and, and I think you said something to the effect of like, well, Marco, it's more about you needing to ask yourself what you want, which I thought was great advice, but like, you've kind of been part of this since the beginning. You know, you were at our first shop in the West Village. I hosted you and that's when I gave you the full broth tasting of that whole world of hot beverages around broth. So yeah, yeah, you've been, you've been right there alongside me and I really appreciate that.

• 1:13:13Tim Ferriss?

  It's been fun to see its evolution. I mean, I think that on one level, the experiment with the window is a beautiful case study of low risk entrepreneurial experimentation. It's not like you found another retail shop. It's not like you put all of your, pushed all your chips in on broth. You're like, hey, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're like, you know, what can we do with these amazing ingredients that we already have? I understand broth. We have this location, open a window, see how it does. And you're like, you know, if we cover our costs or maybe make a little bit of money, we're in great shape. So the downside risk is super low.

• 1:13:57Tim Ferriss?

  And you got to test it, right? You got to test it and uh

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:14:01Tim Ferriss?

  And then develop it and kind of start with the basics, but with really, really good ingredients. Again, like for people listening, I think of the gnocchi.

• 1:14:09Speaker 03

  There's

• 1:14:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yes. Okay. Flour and potato. Okay. Anybody can go out and get flour and potato, but many different types of flour.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Process.

• 1:14:17Tim Ferriss?

  Many different types of potatoes, many different types of preparation. And then when we did the taste test in the West Village, I still remember that because you know, I love bone broth. And even I got to a point where I was like, maybe I need to slow down on today's intake of bone broth. Cause I had like a gallon of bone broth and it was amazing. I couldn't stop myself. But what were the flavors that we tested that day? Do you remember? We had tomka. That was one.

• 1:14:47Speaker 03

  I forced the entire menu down your gullet. So the top five are the deeply rooted, which is fresh turmeric and ginger inside of, you know, we have four different broths. So I probably gave you these combos in a variety of different base broths. But definitely you got the deeply rooted, you got the spicy nona, which is uh some calabrian chili and roasted garlic puree buzzed in the tom yum, which is coconut and lime and chili and a little bit of curry powder. You definitely got that. You got my favorite one, which is the oishi oishi, which you know better than I do what that means, but it's tasty, right?

• 1:15:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  Oishi oishi.

• 1:15:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Oishi, oishi. Yeah.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  Oishi.

• 1:15:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  And that is a little bit of shiitake tea and grass fed butter and garlic buzzed into broth. You had them all. I probably made you at the time, what I called the flu fighter. Because like I'm, I'm a bit obsessed with mortar and pestles. And the flu fighter is basically fresh ginger, fresh turmeric, peppercorns, some fresh oregano, all pounded to a paste. And then I add a little grass fed butter, pounded into the butter. And then you take that mixture and you bur mix it into really hot broth. Also some chili in there for heat and a big squeeze of lemon. But anyway, it's it's an incredibly restorative beverage, that flu fighter.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  And just broth in general is just the thing about Brodo for me, Tim, is it's the perfect distillation of the simplicity that I've been seeking my whole life. And I felt like Brodo is the perfect thing to try to bring to the masses because it really, in a way, is like the simplicity I've been grasping for throughout my whole career.

• 1:16:41Tim Ferriss?

  So to that point, and I'm excited about this, obviously, I got a preview when we were making the gnocchi, or before we started making the gnocchi. Let's have a more coffee. I got to see a preview because you can't serve the world through a window in New York City. So what is the latest and greatest? I know this is a sort of a big, big step. So what's what is going on with Brodo?

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  Well, you know, Brodo is what they call right now, much to the chagrin of many people I get in front of as I try to raise money. But we're an omnichannel business. So we have shops that I really love and I'm really proud of. Covid kind of pressed pause on the shops for a bit. But I do believe that we could have a shop for every 50 Starbucks in the world because broth as a hot beverage is incredible. There's a lot to it and I would put it up against coffee any day of the week. So I'm very excited at pursuing shops. That's one piece of our business. And then the other part of the business, which I think what you're alluding to is our new, our new product launch that we're really excited about, which is

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  we finally figured out a way to get these shop drinks, i.e. the deeply rooted, the spicy Nona, the Tuscan Sun. Tom Yum, et cetera, into a single-serve format, full strength, in frozen. You're going to be able to get eight ounces of these combo drinks that we've been serving in New York City on the shelves of 456 Whole Foods. And it's been a beast to get into Whole Foods and get the manufacturing and, and, and, and. I won't bore people with that stuff unless you want more. Anyway, we finally, after six years, are getting these combo broth beverages out into

• 1:18:38Speaker 03

  the world in a real way, and we're super stoked.

• 1:18:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I saw the, I saw the packaging, which is gorgeous. And what can people find on brodo.com currently? Right? So if they're more inclined to go to a website, what are their options on brodo.com?

• 1:18:57Speaker 03

  Well, at the moment of this recording, we have 22-ounce tubs of four base broths. And we have a grass-fed beef broth, we have a chicken broth, we have a vegan shiitake and seaweed broth, and then we have my favorite, which is what I call hearth broth, and that's made with turkey, beef, and chicken. It's like a combo broth. So up until now, that's what we've been, we've been selling those four SKUs on brodo.com. But hopefully by the time this drops to the world, we've been working on our website, and we're going to have the new format, which is the eight-ounce single-serve available in these super flavorful combo drinks.

• 1:19:42Tim Ferriss?

  And when you get the single-serve, how many single- serves are in a case or a box?

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  Box. Yeah, we do eight to a box, but in grocery, you'll be able to buy them individually.

• 1:19:54Tim Ferriss?

  Nice.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Tim Ferriss?

  Let me ask a couple of those closing questions and see where we go. I'll start with one that I know you've heard before, which is the billboard question.

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  So. Yeah.

• 1:20:10Tim Ferriss?

  If you could put anything on a billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a quote, comment, question, image, anything out to billions of people, what might that be?

• 1:20:22Speaker 03

  I think it would be cook your own food. I think our obsession with convenience and our belief that we could outsource something as important as cooking has been one of the main drivers in the ill health of this country.

• 1:20:36Tim Ferriss?

  Cook your own food.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:20:39Tim Ferriss?

  Dig it. Next question, which is most or frequently given books. So what books have you gifted often to other people besides your own?

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  You know, at work, every year I kind of give my line cooks and my management team books as gifts around the holidays. So, you know, This is Water by David Foster Wallace is one I commonly give because it's just, it's so short and, and the message is so perfect in my opinion. So I've given that a lot. And then for cookbooks, I gotta say the Marcela Hazan Essentials is just, I adore that woman. I adore her simple approach. It is like she's the OG of like Italian grandma cooking. So those are, those are the two books.

• 1:21:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Marcela Hazan. I remember roasted chicken. I think she has, I mean, she has got a lot, obviously, but.

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, a ton.

• 1:21:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, I remember just being so impressed with her roasted chicken.

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  Especially for young, young cooks that come through my kitchen. It's just like, I always ask them, I'm like, do you have this book? And if they say no, then I get them that book.

• 1:21:53Tim Ferriss?

  Favorite failures. Any favorite failures come to mind? Things that set you up for later success or that you, you wouldn't trade in?

• 1:22:01Speaker 03

  Favorite is a tough way to frame it, but like the, the failure of my, when I opened Hearth in 2003, I had a partner, a business partner, and at year 10, that thing got dissolved. So I would say that first business partnership failure.

• 1:22:19Speaker 03

  I don't know if I would call it a favorite thing. It wasn't, it wasn't a fun process, but it was a very valuable one.

• 1:22:26Tim Ferriss?

  What did you take away from that? What did you learn from that?

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  Just to do a little bit more inquiry and vetting around common, we were so caught up in the romantic vision and dream of what it would mean to open our own restaurant that we forgot to like step back and do some work around defining things that we should have. And it got in the way and it ended poorly, but now I know better. So what more can you ask for from learning?

• 1:23:00Tim Ferriss?

  When you said define things, certain things that weren't defined, are there certain things that you would encourage people to define that you didn't that they could consider if they're looking at a potential partnership?

• 1:23:12Speaker 03

  One of the pet peeves I had, like a minor thing, but I think I'll, I'll mention it just for the hell of it is my partner was obsessed with riesling wine and I was obsessed with simple Italian cooking. And so my food and his wine didn't really go well together because he was like obsessed with riesling and I wanted assy Chianti's on the menu. And it sounds minor, right? But that's the thing to learn about these kinds of partnerships, whether it's romantic partnerships or business partnerships. Don't underestimate those little minor nags because over time they become big things.

• 1:23:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's super, super important. Well, Mr. Marco, I think we are coming to the close, but it's

• 1:23:57Speaker 03

  We're not going to talk about our sauna.

• 1:23:59Tim Ferriss?

  We could talk about sauna. We could talk.

• 1:24:01Speaker 03

  I'm kidding.

• 1:24:01Tim Ferriss?

  We could. What have you learned about your, your, your sauna experiments? What have you, what is your best practices now and why? Cause you go, you, you are a hard charger when it comes to saunas. I mean, I do sauna as well. I just did one yesterday. I'm impressed by how much of a hard charger you are.

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  I'm super obsessed with sauna lately. I love this idea of pushing the boundaries of what you think you're capable of and hot and cold is a great way to do that. And I think it just builds mental capacity to deal with hardship. And I feel like being resilient is something that I love. The idea that I could do something that helps me practice resilience. And maybe some people get that through exercise or whatever, but the fact that I could sit in my sauna at 210 degrees for 20 minutes is like something that I get excited about.

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  And then plunging into 48 degree water after that and sitting in that water for four minutes. It's just a good mindfuck of a game and like I've been obsessed with it lately. And you know, what do I get out of it other than the mental exercise of overcoming the cold and the hot? I don't know this because I don't have an aura ring, but

• 1:25:26Speaker 03

  it really helps my sleep and it really helps me calm down at the end of like a stressful day.

• 1:25:32Tim Ferriss?

  What time do you usually do the hot cold?

• 1:25:35Speaker 03

  I usually do it after an early dinner.

• 1:25:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. Too late and it's tough. Too late and it's tough, but exactly on the earlier side. I usually do it before dinner, but I'm I've tossed my cookies from too much heat before, but so number one, for everyone listening, we're not giving medical advice. These are two wackadoodle guys talking about what they do. So get proper medical clearance before you do any extremes in hot or cold. However, I will note just for people who can't put it in context. Those are hot and cold temperatures. Also, I have a cold plunge about 100 feet from where I'm sitting. Which is just a

• 1:26:16Speaker 03

  How cold does it get?

• 1:26:18Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not really sure. I mean, it's a chest freezer full of water and ice that is unplugged.

• 1:26:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's unplugged at the moment. My guess is that it's it's mid

• 1:26:26Speaker 03

  High 30s.

• 1:26:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, high 30s, low 40s. And I will say to anyone wondering, at least in my experience and the experience of many friends on the cold side, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, Marco, but there isn't a sort of linear incremental perception to cold. In other words, it's not like going from 65 to 55 is the same as going from 55 to 45. Once you get into the 40s, it is a different game. It is so like the perception of cold is so different.

• 1:27:06Tim Ferriss?

  And just be aware of that before you get in. It is chilly and I'm a fan. I'm also a fan of fan of both. And I know that you like pushing, you like pushing the edges and you know, you like preserving the essence, right? I mean, I think that from my exposure to you, like one thing you're not a fan of is faddish new ingredients or the quest for kind of magic bullet, P T Barnum components of food, but you are all about experimentation with whole food ingredients. I mean, that's, I mean, I see you conducting experiments constantly, right?

• 1:27:48Tim Ferriss?

  It's not as though you're saying like, hey, this is the way spaghetti is made. This is the only way spaghetti should ever be made. You're constantly running experiments, but it's with the integrity of whole food. As like the base of your elements that you are allowing yourself to work with, which I admire because I think the conceit that we would possibly understand everything that is going on multifactorially when you eat foods in combinations is just at this point, given our technology and ability to assess these things, pretty ridiculous.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, we need some humility around that for sure. I mean, it's like, there's so much we don't know in that space. Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Tim. We're learning every day and we all have to acknowledge that there's a lot left to learn, right? And one of the reasons why I love Peter Attia is because he really, that's like a fundamental. Point that he launches off of is this idea of I might believe this today, but I might not believe it next week. We all need to get comfortable with that.

• 1:28:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure. It makes me think of this story, coming back to that like Chinese proverb, right? And how much, and who knows, very easily could just be coincidence. And maybe it's just some bored Chinese guy came up with a saying that rhymed really nicely, but it does coincide very well with your experience as validated through the latest and greatest continuous glucose monitor, a few thousand years separated. That's interesting. At least it raises questions. Like, is that just chance? Or have humans figured out a lot by trial and error? And in fact, even our primate predecessors figured out, because we're not the only animals who

• 1:29:32Tim Ferriss?

  use, say, plants as medicine. And I was reading this book recently called Medicine Quest by an ethnobotanist named Mark Plotkin. And I'm hoping to excerpt some of it on the blog, because there are a few chapters that are really just incredible. He tells this story of a number of, supposedly it would be ethnobotanists, who were, they might have actually been at a research institution. They weren't doing this for commercial development. But there was some type of concoction that a, you know, medicine man, in this case, some type of healer, which is much more than psychedelics and psychotropics, which bothers me when the assumption

• 1:30:15Tim Ferriss?

  is like, all these people do is dose people with hallucinogens. And they're basically pharmacists who use the, in this case, the jungle to treat ailments of all different types, including fungal infections, parasites, et cetera. And if I remember correctly, these researchers were able to observe with glucose measurements, that this concoction, which included three plants, reliably lowered blood glucose in type 2 diabetics. And they'd never seen these plants, never ID'd this type of concoction. And they asked this medicine man, which plants he used.

• 1:30:58Tim Ferriss?

  And he said, no problem. You're welcome to take them back and analyze them. He gave them these three plants. They took them back. They looked for what could be active molecules, ran all sorts of tests on these three plants. Negative, negative, negative, nothing. All three together, negative. And they went back because they discarded one step and they forgot they discarded one step. And they're like, we need to watch you prepare this. Or they said, your concoction doesn't work. And he goes, what do you mean, my concoction doesn't work? You measured the results in patients taking it. How do you conclude it doesn't work? And they go, well, we tested them all separately. We need to watch you make it again. And so they're watching him make it. He's doing what he's doing with the three

• 1:31:41Tim Ferriss?

  plants. And then at the very end, he drops a crab in. And they're like, what was that? And he's like, it's the crab. And they go, what? And they go, we asked you what was in your concoction? He goes, no, you didn't. You asked me which plants were in my concoction?

• 1:31:59Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:32:00Tim Ferriss?

  And for some bizarre reason, right? It's like

• 1:32:04Speaker 03

  It's plant, plant, plant.

• 1:32:06Tim Ferriss?

  crab. And all of it together, somehow, that was figured out to have this effect. Now, putting aside, this is not randomized controlled trials. I understand that. Could a huge part of it be placebo effect? Maybe. Could it be contextual based on the culture? Yes. But there's so many phenomena that we cannot explain at this point in time. It's just the pinnacle of hubris to think that we have a full understanding of food. When we've demonstrated throughout our history, including recent history, how piss poor we are at deconstructing these things. So that's, I'll get off my soapbox. But I really

• 1:32:47Speaker 03

  Dude, I couldn't, thank you for saying that because I couldn't have said it better myself. And it's like, it's so at the core. It's really at the core of my belief system too. And I look backwards to help guide my nutritional path forward because I believe that as well. The best trial is looking through the history of man, not The current state of research science in this world.

• 1:33:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Speaker 03

  Because it's, it's like a mess.

• 1:33:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And you can, and you can look at both, but make sure to look at both. I mean, it's, uh, there's another story. I think this was actually told to me. If you don't mind, I'm now like on a roll just because I get so.

• 1:33:24Speaker 03

  I love, I mean, I love.

• 1:33:25Tim Ferriss?

  I get so spun up about this stuff. There's, yes, there's a lot of superstition and bullshit. And there's a lot of nonsense and dross that humankind has accumulated. Yes. And right now, like the scientific method is the best way we have consistently of asking questions of nature and trying to sort answers out without fooling ourselves. I mean, I fund a lot of science, so I believe that. But sometimes.

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  But a lot of that funding is bogus. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Tim, because you're on a thing. But it's like, it's worth noting that it's important to follow the money of the funding. And one of the things I respect and admire about you and the things that you fund and Peter Attia and the way he goes through world and life around research is you have to ask those really hard questions. You read the studies, but you don't, it's hard to follow and analyze and understand who did the studies and where the money's coming from. And, you know, it's a big red flag a lot of times.

• 1:34:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so a hundred percent agree with that. And for-profit companies will establish foundations and institutes and all sorts of weird stuff to hide sources of funding for sponsored research or studies. Yes, there's a lot of bad behavior, right? You'll have people fund 20 studies and 18 of them will say this stuff is terrible for you. Two will say it's good for you. They'll be like, great, we'll take those two. Thanks very much. There's a lot of bad behavior. You should always look at the conflicts of interest sections and so on. With all of those warts, science and the scientific method is still very important. However, we assume we know more than we do. This is true of humans for as long as we've called ourselves humans.

• 1:35:09Tim Ferriss?

  And one story that I remember a friend told me, who did a lot of work in, uh, I believe it was South America, but it may, may have been Africa. And he said, you know, we went with this NGO to help this local group and they had really low yield, well, like moderate yield on a crop and they always put it way up on the hillside. And we asked them why they put it way up on the hillside. I'm paraphrasing this, but it's something like this. And they said, well, that's because that's the way our grandparents did it. And then why did they do it that way? Well, that's the way their grandparents did it. And so these bright eyed, bushy tailed 20 and 30 somethings in this NGO are like, oh, well, we have some news for you.

• 1:35:51Tim Ferriss?

  You'd have much better yield if you did it like down in the valley and did it this way and that way, based on modern agriculture and what we know about A, B, C, D, and E. And like, let us show you how this is done. You know, these villagers were like, fantastic, we'll try it. And so they put them all down in the valley. First sort of winter storm, so it must've been, yeah, more central, maybe, probably not Africa, or it was at altitude, I think. And there was this frost that came through and like wiped out everything in the valley. And they're like, yep, turns out you shouldn't plant shit there. So, you know, don't, don't assume the past is the path forward, but I think it is safe

• 1:36:31Tim Ferriss?

  to assume that hidden amongst the false positives and false negatives, there's also a lot of signal in the past. And that's been made clear in my adventures and conversations with you. That's been made also super clear in reading about and experiencing firsthand, a lot of the traditions in Italy, which is, it's a great cuisine to study because there is complexity or there are nuances, right? But you're not dealing with dishes, at least in the central and south, that have 27 ingredients, generally. You're able to actually look at the variables and it's so much fun.

• 1:37:16Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we could go for hours. I'm getting all spun up, so I'm going to try to land this plane. So Marco, people can go and should go to brodo.com, B-R-O-D-O.com. I recommend everyone try it. They can find the restaurant at restaurant hearth.com. Certainly in New York City, if you're in NYC, give a visit. They can find you on Instagram at Marco Canora. That's M-A-R-C-O-C-A-N-O-R-A. Is there anything else you would like to say? Any closing comments, requests of the audience, anything at all that you'd like to add before we wrap this up? Well,

• 1:37:53Speaker 03

  Two things and I'll be quick because we've been going on and on, but um, one is I want to just thank you for the incredible work that you do. And I found you many years ago, and I've been following you ever since. And you're incredibly generous and, and so thoughtful in your work. I am one of many who really, really appreciates it. So I want to say thank you to you.

• 1:38:15Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you.

• 1:38:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then, no, again, I just, I just want to put a point on the cooking thing. It's like, cooking is, is an incredible process that engages all of your senses, that gives you a high reward from health to flavor, to community, to connectivity, to other people. It's really a path to so many of the things that I think we need to be better human. So I just want to encourage anybody who's fearful of cooking, or is like, I don't know if I want to do it or not. Please, please do it and you will grow to love it and it will reward you forever.

• 1:38:55Tim Ferriss?

  Here, here, brother. You know, as you're saying that, I'm like, I need to go thaw out some venison, go to the farmer's stand, get some food. I'm going to cook dinner. I'm going to cook, I'm going to cook dinner on Sunday night. I'm so fired up. It's fucking great, man. Uh, Marco, you're a mensch. I look forward to spending more time together. It's so nice to see you. And

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  You too.

• 1:39:18Tim Ferriss?

  And everybody.

• 1:39:19Speaker 03

  I can't wait to visit you up in wherever the hell you are.

• 1:39:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Wherever I will be, wherever I am, for sure. Can't wait. And keep going, man. Keep going. And I recommend everybody check out, again, brodo.com, B R O D O dot com. Check it out. Do a taste test. You'll thank me later. And to everybody listening, we'll have show notes, links to everything, as per usual, at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you for tuning in.

• 1:39:54Tim Ferriss?

  And now we bring to you the affair of the oven that wasn't on, other mysteries, and how to make delicious gnocchi. Enjoy. Let's talk about the affair of the oven that wasn't on.

• 1:40:09Speaker 03

  You're jumping ahead. I love it.

• 1:40:11Tim Ferriss?

  I'm jumping ahead. I'm jumping back. We're gonna go all over the place.

• 1:40:14Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 1:40:16Tim Ferriss?

  I sent you a voice memo not too, too long. I mean, this is a few months ago. And it was a question about gnocchi, G-N-O-C-C-H-I, for people who don't know the spelling. And we should probably describe what gnocchi are for people who don't know. But the reason I sent you a voice memo is I was trying to think up a birthday gift for my girlfriend. My girlfriend is half Italian, and she and her mom have been trying to recreate this family recipe for gnocchi for a decade, or something like this, maybe more. And there was always something missing, or something they weren't getting right,

• 1:41:00Tim Ferriss?

  because the gnocchi would just not turn out. And so I asked you if you might know how to make gnocchi. And if so, if you would be open to, now I said it, I mean, I wasn't quite that stupid about it, but I asked you if you might be open to teaching my girlfriend and her mom via Zoom, how to make gnocchi properly. And I really wish I had that voice memo, your response to put into this podcast. It was great, but it was basically like, da, da, da, da, da. Yes, I have made 10,000-plus rounds of gnocchi, and it's been featured in these following outlets, and actually quite famous for the gnocchi.

• 1:41:44Tim Ferriss?

  And so, yes, I do know how to make gnocchi. And then you very graciously offered to teach. And so I think the gnocchi... Is a great jumping off point because it offers some fertile ground for, I think, a pretty hilarious story. And it also shows how simplicity and elegance can be the byproduct of trial and error, if that makes any sense.

• 1:42:12Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:42:13Tim Ferriss?

  So before we get into the stories and the, the affair of the oven that was not on, what are gnocchi? Just so people know what we're talking about.

• 1:42:23Speaker 03

  It's a potato dumpling. It's like a version of pasta, if you will, but it's made with potato. And some people use egg. I don't. What I'm really proud of about my approach is there's only two ingredients and that is potato and flour.

• 1:42:37Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So just so we don't kind of bury the punchline here.

• 1:42:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:43Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the keys? Either the keys to making gnocchi? That are delicious and fluffy and amazing, like the ones that, that we made and by we, we, I mean 90% you, but we participated. Or what are the common mistakes? If you could just kind of walk us through maybe a few of the things that make great gnocchi great and why so many gnocchi are not great.

• 1:43:09Speaker 03

  Gnocchi has a bad reputation of being super heavy. So you eat them and they end up being gummy and they just, they're like lead in your belly. And that's the biggest complaint I hear most about a lot of gnocchi out in the world. So getting them to be very light and airy is something anybody making gnocchi should try to get to. And then the flavor of the potato should come through and that means not adding too much stuff to it. I mean, I think a lot of, a lot of home chefs and, and even professional chefs, they always try to infuse other things and like sweet potato gnocchi or butternut squash gnocchi. And it's again, back to this simplicity idea. It's no. Nioki are made with potato. Sorry. I think keeping it simple and keeping it light is

• 1:43:54Speaker 03

  the goal. And you know, some of the pitfalls is people add a lot of egg and I don't think egg is necessary. I mean, as an amateur, you might want to add egg because it'll protect you a bit and keep it together. But you're making a dough and that dough should not be overworked because you're using flour. You got to think of it like a pie crust or a biscuit crust and you don't want to work the gluten too much or else they become what I said, which is sticky and dense.

• 1:44:22Tim Ferriss?

  So there are a few things that hopped out at me and there are many things that are kind of counterintuitive, right? So one of the first was, don't get your sort of hipster $10 a potato potatoes that are as fresh as possible. That is a mistake, right? And so I, in fact, you kind of want the opposite.

• 1:44:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:44:47Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love to hear you speak to why that's the case.

• 1:44:49Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:44:50Tim Ferriss?

  And then the, I want to clarify, and please fact check me, one thing that you said, which was related to, I think I would imagine a common error, which is people are kneading with their hands, kneading with a K, the flour into the potato, but by doing so, you're kind of creating this elastic, gummy, glutinous response, right? And instead, what I saw you do, and we did some of this too, is to use a pie scraper to kind of chop the flour into the potato, right? Which is, is very counterintuitive for someone who has not

• 1:45:31Tim Ferriss?

  made gnocchi before. So first, what types of potatoes are the ideal potatoes to use? And why?

• 1:45:38Speaker 03

  I like a classic Idaho potato because there's a high starch content and you can cook the water out of them and then. There's less moisture. So then you end up with a dough that has less flour and then ultimately a dough that ends up being lighter on the palate.

• 1:45:53Tim Ferriss?

  And should they be, you like older potatoes?

• 1:45:56Speaker 03

  I often point to fresh peas. I don't know if you've ever gotten fresh peas that are in a pod. The thing about peas is you want to pick them and you want to keep ice on them so that they keep their sugar because that's a sweet pea. But when a pea loses its sugar, the pea goes to starch. And that process happens with a lot of vegetables. And with an Idaho potato, you don't want a fresh potato because it's holding on to the sugar and it's the starch that's going to help you create a lighter dough. We used to literally buy cases of potatoes and put them in the cellar and let them, I mean, we kind of aged the potatoes, if you will, because we found

• 1:46:39Speaker 03

  that a potato that's kind of aged, that almost is starting to sprout and ends up being less water and less sugar and more starch. And that always lent itself to a better gnocchi. And just, you know, I know you always reference things in the show notes. I was on the Dave Chang Show and we talked, you know, we talked about gnocchi quite a bit on that show because he was at Kraft when I was doing all of these things. Two old dogs talking about kitchen stories, but we went on and on about the gnocchi on that podcast. If anybody wants to hear more about the origins.

• 1:47:14Tim Ferriss?

  And you came to this, it sounds like largely through, through trial and error. And part of what impressed me, right, is the detail in the simplicity, if that makes any sense. So for instance, if you're, if you're trying to, in the process of cutting the potatoes, evaporate as much moisture as possible, cutting them lengthwise in a particular way so that you have the maximum amount of surface area exposed, right? Where, where the, the inclination for anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time in the kitchen would be like, all right, let me just take the potato, cut it kind of right down the middle, the way you would think of cutting a tomato down the middle, where you just have the kind of ends of the cigars, so to speak.

• 1:47:59Tim Ferriss?

  Exposed to air, but that's not going to actually accomplish the job. So even though technically both are easy, right? You're making one cut, like the direction matters a lot to the outcome.

• 1:48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:13Tim Ferriss?

  I love the, the simplicity, but the thought behind the simplicity. There's a lot that goes into it.

• 1:48:21Tim Ferriss?

  When my girlfriend and I were in New York City, before we move on to other questions, because I mentioned in somewhat cryptic phrasing, the, the affair of the oven that was not turned on, I wanted to make it sound like a Sherlock Holmes novel or something.

• 1:48:39Tim Ferriss?

  I got to see what a delivery of bad news slash discipline looks like without yelling and screaming, which I thought was very fascinating. And I'm just going to kind of bookend this story and then I'll let you tell it. So the only part that I heard that I then asked you about was you said, pretty calmly, you said, I heard you say around the corner to a bunch of staff, you're like, this isn't going to be fun for anyone.

• 1:49:11Tim Ferriss?

  So, so we met up, I want to say the plan, it was either 10 or 11 a.m. And why don't you tell the story of kind of what, what, what the plan was and then what happened?

• 1:49:26Speaker 03

  So, you know,

• 1:49:29Speaker 03

  first I gotta say, I was really thrilled when you reached out to me and were like, do you know how to make gnocchi? And, and would you do this? I love teaching and to get a ping from you and ask that question, I was overjoyed and fully invested in this notion of teaching your girlfriend and your girlfriend's mom how to make gnocchi. It made my day to get that text. You know, it took us a while to schedule it and plan it, but it's like, oh, you're going to be in New York this weekend, so. I had it all planned out and I thought really hard about it. And you, you know, if you remember, we had a lot of back and forth leading up to it because we were doing this via Zoom and her mom was going to be far away, so she needed to know what equipment to have. Yep.

• 1:50:14Speaker 03

  So it was like, you know, you need a potato ricer and you need a bench scraper. And as I was alluding to earlier, it's like, it's all in the mise en place, right? Yeah. So we did a fair amount of work around what's required. You guys showed up and I had everything laid out and we had our little food mill to pass the potatoes. It was like a little mini cooking class on a Saturday morning. I had aprons and towels and here's some tea and it was so fun. And I was so excited. It was plotted out because we opened for brunch at Hearth. So the kitchen is a functioning kitchen, so we, we only had a certain window to do this like hour

• 1:50:58Speaker 03

  lesson. And furthermore, everything we were doing was happening in parallel. So it's like,

• 1:51:07Speaker 03

  I don't want to say it was pressure, but this idea of somebody else is going to do what we're doing too, kind of added on to the need for, we had to run in parallel. But that's all cool. And like the potatoes take an hour and 10 minutes to cook in the oven that I have in my basement because we do it every day. So I knew how long and, and so you showed up on time and I had put the potatoes in. That's the only thing you have to time is the cooking of the potato, the forming of the dough and the rolling, and then the cooking of the gnocchi. That's pretty easy and pretty fast, but like the big thing is the hour and 10 minutes. So it was great. You showed up and we had our niceties and we had some coffee and our hugs and

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  all that stuff. And then it was like, okay, here's your apron and we got all the tech figured out and everybody's on and it's go time. And I go downstairs and I open the oven and the oven was not on.

• 1:52:06Speaker 03

  And the fucking, and the potatoes were rock hard and, and, and, and the oven was cold. And I swear I had a mental breakdown. Because I didn't quite register and fathom the fact that that was an hour and 10 minutes lost and we have to start over. And yeah, there was a lot of moving parts because the mom now that's all messed up. I don't know what your day is like and our brunch service starts. So yeah, that was where the, this is not going to be fun for anybody because now I'm going to be teaching, I wasn't going to not teach you how to make gnocchi. So now I'm going to be like taking up a big part of the pass during brunch. So those that

• 1:52:51Speaker 03

  were responsible for brunch had to basically work in a corner of a kitchen. And that's what I meant by like, this will not be fun.

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

  And yet it all came together and

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  It did.

• 1:53:05Tim Ferriss?

  You are

• 1:53:06Speaker 03

  It was fun.

• 1:53:06Tim Ferriss?

  It was fun and you are an incredible teacher and the gnocchi were spectacular. And if I remember correctly, sage and butter and

• 1:53:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, and Parmesan.

• 1:53:20Tim Ferriss?

  Parmesan.

• 1:53:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, Reggiano Parmesan and salt and pepper and that's it.

• 1:53:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, so good. So, so good. And we went to Italy, my girlfriend and I, for the first time. It was, it all

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, Umbria, right?

• 1:53:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's right. We went all over. We were in Rome, then went to Umbria, then went to through a couple of smaller places like Gubio. I wanted to go to Gubio because there's this story of Saint Francis of Assisi brokering a truce with this huge wolf story. I'm fascinated by and supposedly it was thought a myth because how could it not be? And then there was a huge wolf skeleton discovered right next to a church at some point in history, not within the last hundred years. And then that was put within the church. There's this whole story and I found

• 1:54:10Speaker 03

  How cool.

• 1:54:11Tim Ferriss?

  I found the whole thing really interesting and it turned out that Gubio was going to be on the way to Our next spot. And so we stopped relatively so. And then we went to Pompeii and then drove down and spent time on the coast and went to a few spots there. And we had gnocchi a few times and they were good. They were really, really good. They were not as good as the ones that we made in your kitchen, in my opinion. And I gotta say, man, that is saying a lot because as, as a friend of mine put it, who's Italian, he said, you know, in Italy, he's like, it's all gonna be good. You just have to find the excellent restaurants. Like, it's gonna be really hard to find a terrible restaurant. Your, your job is just to find

• 1:54:55Tim Ferriss?

  the excellent spots. And we, we did find some excellent spots and took a cooking class with his grandma who was hilarious. It was, it was all outstanding. But those gnocchi that we made in that kitchen that day, despite the circumstances, were just, were just incredible. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the

• 1:55:38Tim Ferriss?

  coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

• 1:56:22Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My god, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But now, I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, but most user-friendly solution on the market.

• 1:57:06Tim Ferriss?

  I polled all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep, enhancing sleep, and Eight Sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So, I used it, and here we are. Add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat. And we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now, for me, and for many people, the result: Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster,

• 1:57:50Tim Ferriss?

  reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And now, my dear listeners, that's you guys, you can get $250 off of the Pod Pro Cover. That's a lot. Simply go to eightsleep.com/tim or use code TIM. That's eight, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com/tim or use coupon code TIM. T-I-M. Eightsleep.com/tim for $250 off your Pod Pro Cover.

• 1:58:30Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Viori Clothing, spelled V U O R I, Viori. I've been wearing Viori at least one item per day for the last few months, and you can use it for everything. It's performance apparel, but it can be used for working out. It can be used for going out to dinner, at least in my case. I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read something that one of my employees said. She is an athlete. She is quite technical, although she would never say that. I asked her if she had ever used or heard of Viori, and this was her response. "I do love their stuff. Been using them for about a year. I think I found them at REI.

• 1:59:14Tim Ferriss?

  First for my partner, t-shirts that are super soft that somehow last as he's hard on stuff. And then I got into the super soft cotton yoga pants and jogger sweatpants. I live in them, and they too have lasted. They're stylish enough, I can wear them out and about. The material is just super soft and durable. I just got their clementine running shorts for summer and loved them. The brand seems pretty popular, constantly sold out. In closing, and I'm abbreviating here, but in closing, with the exception of when I need technical outdoor gear, they're the only brand I've bought in the last year or so for yoga, running, loungewear that lasts and that I think look good also. I like the discreet logo." So that gives you some idea. That was not intended for the sponsor read. That was just her response via text.

• 1:59:56Tim Ferriss?

  Vuori, again spelled V U O R I, is designed for maximum comfort and versatility. You can wear it running. You can wear their stuff training, doing yoga, lounging, weekend errands, or in my case, again, going out to dinner. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Their clothing is so comfortable and looks so good. And it's not offensive. You don't have a huge brand logo on your face. You'll just want to be in them all the time. And my girlfriend and I have been wearing them for the last few months. Their men's KORE short, K O R E, the most comfortable lined athletic short, is your one short for every sport. I've been using it for kettlebell swings, for runs, you name it. The banks short, this is their go to land to sea short is the ultimate.

• 2:00:40Tim Ferriss?

  Versatility, it's made from recycled plastic bottles. And what I'm wearing right now, which I had to pick one to recommend to folks out there, or at least to men out there, is the Ponto Performance Pants. And you'll find these at the link I'm going to give you guys. You can check out what I'm talking about, but I'm wearing them right now. They're thin, performance sweatpants, but that doesn't do them justice. So you gotta check it out. P-O-N-T-O, Ponto Performance Pants. For you ladies, the women's performance jogger is the softest jogger you'll ever own. Vuori isn't just an investment in your clothing, it's an investment in your happiness. And for you, my dear listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase. So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. It's super popular.

• 2:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of my friends have now noticed are wearing this. And so am I. vuoriclothing.com/tim. That's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com/tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you'll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns. So check it out. vuoriclothing.com/tim. That's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com/tim. And discover the versatility of Vuori Clothing.