How to Get Into ANY Restaurant, Why Michelin Stars Are Nonsense & Building a Billion Dollar Business

YERRR – the guys sat down with Mario Carbone to chop it up about the hustle behind building a restaurant empire. From old-school red sauce joints to celeb-packed hotspots, Mario breaks down the flavors, the business, and the pressure of keeping it all fresh. He talks about Michelin stars, wild celebrity dining stories, and why good hospitality is the real secret sauce. All that and more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 00:00 Intro 00:37 Getting a reservation at Carbone? Greasing the right people 8:07 Quick Tip, Restaurants’ intel + Maitre Ds 13:18 Michelin Star Experiences 17:42 How much do waiters make at Carbone? 21:58 Politics in dining, Michelin Stars + Finding a good restaurant 26:25 The staff is banging each other 27:38 Can Michelin star be bought? Paying influencers 30:21 Sorry Justin Bieber! Scummiest PR move 33:01 Starting out + Power of the Review 41:51 Worst tipper? Tip 20% 46:31 Racial busboy harmony 48:51 Mexicans are the best 53:29 Sandwich Shop to Carbone + Getting a backer 1:00:34 Throwing a critic out + Respecting a negative review 1:04:51 Aiming for the old school + Torrisi’s super power 1:08:30 Relationships with celebs + Banned celebs 1:12:39 Rap mentioning Carbone 1:23:49 Rules to sending food back 1:24:46 Better Italian food in NYC than Italy 1:28:13 Getting people to leave + Not being kid friendly 1:32:22 Outside Dining, Maintaining Quality + Entrepreneurial 1:37:30 Too difficult to replicate, The Spicy Rig + Iconic dish 1:43:02 Biggest bomb + Secret menu 1:46:48 Pet peeves + Giant menus 1:54:21 Moving to Italy + New dining trends now 2:00:58 Pinnacle for a Chef + Rewarding talent 2:04:08 Best places in New York? 2:11:42 Judge an Italian restaurant? Underrated pork chops 2:14:44 Charging for Wine + Impressing a date 2:17:43 F1 Weekend in Miami 2:20:15 What’s next? + Performance + Obama protocol 2:25:24 Getting your flowers from the Older generation 2:27:18 Navigating Egos 2:30:14 Why is New York the greatest city in the world? 2:31:41 Next generation coming through + Tariffs impacting 2:34:44 Being proud of heritage + Assimilation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:12Speaker 03

  What's up, guys? Today, we are joined by one of the most famous chefs in history. His restaurants have been frequented by everyone from half-white rappers to half-white presidents. His spot, Carbone, is harder to get into than a menopausal mothership. Jeff, I don't blame you, okay? We all get excited when a brown box gets delivered. Anyway, today, he is going to tell us the number-one trick to get into any restaurant in the world, why Michelin stars are nonsense, and how to bet on yourself and build a business even in a recession. Give it up for New York City's own Mario Carbone.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm very excited for this. There's so many questions that I have to ask you. I want to learn about it all. But first of all, I want to know how, how does someone get a reservation at Carbone?

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Someone, are we asking for you?

• 2:03Speaker 03

  No, I just wanna know someone. I just wanna know someone, not even me. How does just a regular guy who doesn't have a podcast?

• 2:10Speaker 04

  It's a democratic society. I mean, it's a policy that's just one month out.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  You're just gonna lie to the people. You're gonna lie to the people immediately at the beginning of the podcast. The most explosive restaurant. Imagine this, you have 200 seats to fill for a night to make your money. Yeah.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  You're gonna let just any, like, you can't, you can't leave it to chance, like, that these two people are gonna come in, they're gonna fill those seats, and they're gonna spend good money tonight. So like, of course, we keep information on everybody, like, who's coming in, who are our regulars, take care of those people, what's their spend, so that I know these 200 people tonight are coming in, not just a random set of people, because that's drastically gonna change what we do tonight as a business.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  So it's almost never random?

• 2:50Speaker 04

  It's not never, like, we-

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Like, when was the last time you had a walk-up?

• 2:54Speaker 04

  It happens, but at Carbone, it's rare, because it's so, it's in such demand, I mean, so we do put out reservations. Generally, what we do is we put out the sort of, the shoulders, right? We put out early-

• 3:04Speaker 03

  5:00 PM, 10:00 PM?

• 3:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, because we have the internal demand to fill it with, with regulars.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Okay, can somebody, can somebody, like, grease, uh, a host?

• 3:17Speaker 04

  You can get into, I mean, it's not about necessarily greasing a host.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 3:21Speaker 04

  Um, I would say-

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Like, you came in here, you greased me, right? You gave me Cuban cigars. These are real Cuban cigars, supposedly, real-

• 3:29Speaker 04

  I got a connection at the airport.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  You got, at the airport? Are we snitching or are we doing this? Duty free! So, hold on, so these are real Cubans, well, well, once we get a little lighter in here, we'll probably light these, oh, you're not gonna smoke, right?

• 3:41Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Will you have one?

• 3:42Speaker 04

  I got too much asthma.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  And then we need a little ashtray, too. Okay, so you come in here, you grease me, I don't even know what this greasing gets, right?

• 3:49Speaker 04

  You wanna, you wanna grease a kitchen? How about you, you already wanna grease my kitchen one night?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 04

  You would take the 5 o'clock, 5:30 reservation.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Bring in two cases of beer. Go straight back into the kitchen, drop it in the pass. Be like, hey, it's for you guys tonight, chefs. From me, Schultz, reservation at two, five o'clock. Wow. See, now we're talking.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  Now we're talking, now we're talking.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  That costs you thirty bucks.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  And then what, and what happens after that?

• 4:12Speaker 04

  They're gonna be like, then one of the chefs will be like, yo, someone just dropped two cases of beer, like, who's that? I don't know, let's go find out. Look it up, like, oh, Andrew Schulz, two, two top at five o'clock. Has he been here before? No, first time. Wow, you did, did the right thing. Send them out a little something from us. And then all of a sudden, your name starts to populate in our system. Then maybe you order a nice bottle of wine. Treat the staff nicely. Now, all of a sudden, the next time you call to make a reservation, you give us your phone number, immediately your name is gonna pop up and be like, Andrew Schulz.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Wow. Oh, so there's a database that rewards the type of customer you are?

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Well, it's, it's, it's more that we keep

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Information on everybody.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Tons of notes on everybody. And it could go from allergies, the table they like, the table they don't like, uh, preferential amount of time when they wanna dine, et cetera, et cetera. So we keep notes on everybody because that's, that's the, that's the crux of the business. Who's coming in tonight? Right? That's everything. We can't just open the door to random.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Does that go for every nice exclusive restaurant? Is this like a? Yeah, everyone keeps notes, and they all do it their own way. But everyone keeps notes on their customers. And, and there's, you know, there's softwares for this that, that help you track all this information. How many times have they been there? When was the last time they were there? But the beer move, that would work in most places. The beer move works in, in, in most places. It works, it works great.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  I really appreciate it. Guys, this is Ricky, everybody.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  Ricky. Ricky, the face. Looking shocked. Hey.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Ricky, the face.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  I'm delivering drinks all day. Anything you guys need, all right?

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's get something cooking, man.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  You're an Aperol spritz guy. I like a spritz, I'm not gonna lie.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  Aperol spritz, on the way.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  I need a nice mocktail.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  He's shaking it right now for you.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Ah. So we have, I'm gonna have a spritz as well, Rick?

• 5:48Speaker 05

  Two spritzes, absolutely.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  All right, let's go. A spritz would be great.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  Two spritzes.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Thank you. Spritzes all around. That's a smart move, guys. Go all the way around.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Okay, oh, this is, they make a little vagina out of it. This is cool.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  A little V-cut.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Okay, so.

• 6:02Speaker 06

  We call it, we call it V-cut.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Oh, this is the normal thing?

• 6:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, I thought this is like some crazy.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  cigar cutter that we got here.

• 6:09Speaker 06

  Helps a nut canoe a little, you know?

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Okay, so, so there is a way, so back in the day, I would think you just tip well and all of a sudden then maybe you can get to something.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  It helps, I mean.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  What's well, though? Like 100%, 200%? What's well?

• 6:22Speaker 04

  I mean, 100% of the bill.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  That's insanity, right?

• 6:24Speaker 04

  It's insanity. It happens.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  You're talking tariffs now?

• 6:29Speaker 04

  We've got, we've got one guy who comes in every now and again and will spend a great deal of money and regardless of what the bill is, leaves 100% tip.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  So Rogan, I guess. Every time I go out to eat with Rogan, he tips 100%.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  Every single time, which I tell him every single time is insane, but I want the, you know, the waiters and the staff at the restaurant to make some money. I never even considered the idea of walking into the kitchen with alcohol when the restaurant already has alcohol and then hand, how do I even get into the kitchen?

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Well, the kitchen, the kitchen's not getting the restaurant's alcohol. So, at the end of the night, they're gonna have your two cases of beer to crack open after a long service. They're hot, they're sweaty, it's been a long night.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  But the kitchen still has agency, meaning they can send out some dishes, send out a little extra.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  They're guaranteed you're gonna get a little something.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  So when I had my, uh, my daughter, somebody told me, they were like, listen, you gotta take care of the staff at the hospital. If you go out and get food, get pizza for everybody. You go out and get bagels, get bagels for everybody. And they did nothing different tonight.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  But it seemed like, maybe we did. I, I'm not even sure. Actually, I think they delayed the pregnancy as much as they possibly could to keep on getting free food. My wife was in labor for 24 hours. If I got them like, uh, some Snickers or whatever, maybe we would have had that baby instead.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, why wait?

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Right? I'm incentivizing them.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Well, this is a traditional, I mean, if you're at a sushi bar, that's a classic move. It's like, hey, you get a round of beers for all the sushi chefs. That's a classic move.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, so.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  First thing you do when you sit in a nice sushi bar? Buy a round of beers for all the chefs.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  This is one of the reasons, one of the reasons we're so excited to sit down with you is learning restaurant etiquette from the inside. I feel like it is. So, and I want to get into your history. I want to get into how you built this thing and how you put those other two guys that don't do much on your back. You know what I mean? I really want.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  What are those guys' names?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Zazaznik or something like that in Tor- what is it, Torino or something? Yeah, Toronto, Toronto and Zazaznik.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  He's down the block.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, great guys, great guys. Lucky, no.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  No, no, but in all seriousness, understanding, understanding this kind of stuff offers crazy value to the average consumer. So, so you're bringing a couple cases of beer. Now, what happens if a waiter goes, why are you going into the kitchen like with two cases of beer?

• 8:48Speaker 04

  No, no, commonplace, or you give it to the waiter and say, hey, I brought a couple cases of beer for the, for the kitchen.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Does the type of beer matter?

• 8:54Speaker 04

  I mean chefs drink, you know, simple, cold, easy drink in, it doesn't matter.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Throw them back and blow on there.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, don't bring them any like weird, hazy IPAs, like they don't want that.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:04Mark Gagnon?

  From what I think the chefs are, Corona.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 08

  Take out there.

• 9:08Mark Gagnon?

  A Modelo for the boys. A little Modelo, you know?

• 9:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, not mad at a Modelo.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Okay, there's a good question. Actually, no, no, I want to stay on these, I want to stay on these hacks. Okay.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  All right, I got another one for you.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  You order a nice, so this is a front of the house, you're gonna get some appreciation. You order, you order a bottle of champagne. Whether you're talking to the waiter or the sommelier, you order the bottle of champagne and right before they leave, you kind of grab them, give them a little whisper and say, I don't want the, I don't want the champagne flutes, bring me wine glasses. A real wine drinker never, ever drink champagne out of champagne flutes.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Wow. This is bars, keep going.

• 9:48Mark Gagnon?

  Wait, why?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  And the second you tell them, I want, if you, if you say AP glasses, which is all purpose, or you're saying, bring me wine glasses for the champagne, that immediately says, you know what the fuck you're talking about.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  And that helps, I didn't know it helped.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  It's better for the champagne, that the whole like, no one, no one likes drinking out of these skinny little things. It's actually not great for the champagne.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  You want a real wine glass for your champagne.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  No one ever does that.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  So the second you tell them that, that immediately puts them on that you know what you're talking about. And you get a little more respect.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  You get immediate, you're gonna get immediate respect.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  And I know, honestly, and it makes sense that it is this way, but I never considered that it was similar to like the nightclub in that the more that you spend, the more data you're giving the restaurant and the more they're gonna prioritize you in the future. I never even considered it.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  It's all, it's all digital. So as soon as, you know, once you call for the second time, immediately the person that's, that's on my team, that's picking up the phone or looking at the email, you has side by side your, your information. You're at the back of your baseball card. Here's, here's what you do. Here's who you are. Here are your likes, dislikes. Here's what you spent. Here's, et cetera, et cetera. Not that it's always about spending. We just wanna curate a room so that it's not random.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  So what we're trying to figure out is what the cheapest way to get currency in the restaurant is. So bringing the beers.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Great one.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  To staff.

• 11:09Speaker 06

  This is already assuming you got the res. I'm curious, when you walk up to the door, there's a maître d', which I have a long lasting beef with maîtres d's in New York City.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  You wanna get into it?

• 11:19Speaker 06

  I'm curious. I just get frustrated sometimes, you know, because you get this girl, she graduated college like a year and a half ago.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Got a lot of power.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  She holds power over this entire restaurant, every person that comes in. Is there anything you can do or say to a maître d' that might kinda tilt the, the scales in your favor?

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Thank you, sir.

• 11:33Speaker 06

  Saying, oh, my mom's in town and she's having a birthday. Anything that would kinda...

• 11:37Speaker 04

  I mean, those are, those, they're gonna, they're gonna see through those.

• 11:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, walk up reservations, because at that point, you're at their mercy.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Thank you so much, Ricky.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  I think. Try to kill them with kindness. You'll take anything. Listen, I'll take, I'll take your worst two seats. I'll take the bar stools. I'll take whatever you got.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  So instead of trying to big shot.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Humbling yourself.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Because they, that's all they've got, right? All they've got is this, this little bit of power that they've been given at this front desk, to your point. I would, I would go with, listen, I'll take whatever it is. Give me your worst two seats. I'll be happy tonight. I'll be in and out quick.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  That's...

• 12:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 12:12Speaker 06

  I got a thing at eight o'clock.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  They have to worry about what's been plotted for the night, right? Like, so at Carbone, it's a two and a half, it's about a two and a half hour meal. So we're plotting these reservations, right? It's a very tricky little dance that we are assuming the 5:30 reservation is gonna be done at eight o'clock, right? But it may not happen that way. So the fact that if they've got an extra table, they might give it to you if you're like, I'm gonna be in and out quick.

• 12:36Speaker 06

  Does how you dress for the walk up make any difference?

• 12:39Speaker 04

  It depends on the restaurant.

• 12:40Mark Gagnon?

  If you look like this.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  Look, I'll trim that a little bit.

• 12:43Mark Gagnon?

  I would trim that a little.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  I think it depends on the restaurant a little bit. But really, I would say kill them with kindness. Try to get in and out quick. I'll take any, I'll take any seat you got.

• 12:53Mark Gagnon?

  What about the friendly handshake with a little cash in it?

• 12:56Speaker 04

  I mean, that's as old as time.

• 12:57Mark Gagnon?

  But does that work?

• 12:59Speaker 04

  I, I think it works. I'm not advocating for it because my, my team is very well paid, but I, I mean, I'm sure.

• 13:04Speaker 06

  Would that, would that be offensive, obviously not in your establishments, but another restaurant? Like if you were to be like, hey, this is a little 20 bucks. You think a major dude would be like?

• 13:10Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, like it could be beneath.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  Who the fuck am I, like, or you? You're trying to pay me 20 bucks to get you a table?

• 13:14Speaker 04

  If you, if it turns out you're like talking to the general manager and not just like, you know, a well-paid general manager and you try to give him a 20 spot? He's gonna be like, what are you, what are you doing here?

• 13:25Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  What's going on here?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Bro, I tried to pull the I know the owner thing once at, uh.

• 13:29Speaker 06

  Carbone?

• 13:30Speaker 03

  No.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  That's this week. No. At, uh, Emilio's, uh, Emilio Bolano's, whatever. And, uh, I'm talking to this big guy out front. I'm like, yeah, you know, Emilio told me to come by and cause, you know, just a table for two, whatever like that. And he's like, uh, oh, did he? And I was like, yeah. And he said, what time did he tell you to come? And I'm like, all right, around like 7:30, whatever like that. And I'm like, I'm a little bit early. He goes, okay, cool. All right. Yeah. Well, we'll figure it out. And I'm like, okay, I walk away and, uh.

• 13:57Mark Gagnon?

  Thank you.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Next person that walks up to him goes, uh, Emilio.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  No, I'm not, I'm not thinking he's gonna be sitting outside of his restaurant on a bar stool. Like deciding who gets in and who doesn't.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  There's two of them. There's a junior.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Well, there's the kid and then there's the dad. A hundred percent. Anyhow.

• 14:24Mark Gagnon?

  I mean, that's so funny. Should have been like, hey, I'm a comedian. I was just fucking with you.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  I knew it was you.

• 14:31Speaker 08

  Okay. So you got a lot of good restaurants under your, your umbrella. Andrew and I argue a lot of times. He's become this like real foodie type. And, uh.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  That was really derogatory.

• 14:39Speaker 08

  It was, and I meant it in a derogatory way. Very pretentious about it.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 08

  What I love, I was just saying this, I went to Terese's, it was the best restaurant experience I've had in the city because it didn't, it was elevated, but it didn't feel pretentious. A lot of times I'll go to Michelin star places and I end up being underwhelmed. Not a lot of times, a few times. How do you feel about that? Is that like a general, hey, Michelin star, you know this is going to be a solid restaurant experience or not?

• 15:03Speaker 04

  There's a lot to unpack with Michelin. Um, there's a lot.

• 15:06Speaker 08

  Lot to unroll.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  There's a, there's a.

• 15:08Speaker 08

  Get it?

• 15:09Speaker 04

  I see, I see what you're doing.

• 15:11Speaker 08

  It's a tire.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Michelin started as a subsidy for the tire company. Now it's no longer, so now it's a, it's a business. So I think you gotta take that with a grain of salt. They're in their own business of selling books. Michelin's tricky for a lot of reasons. If you're, if you're to the restaurant, the, the kind of restaurant you're talking about, they're, they're going for that accolade. There's this sort of assumption that you have to do it in a really tight way, a really, you know, library style, hush environment, very sort of the chef is right, he wants you to eat this from the left to the right sort of environment. Because they're, they're coveting these, these stars.

• 15:51Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  I don't know if that's a good business model. Uh, I, we, we are the opposite, right?

• 15:57Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  I think that, I think that chefs, well-trained, high-level chefs fall in one of two categories and we're firmly on one side than the other. There's two categories, not that there's anything wrong with the two categories, but there's two firm categories. One category is the chef that spends all their training, all their work, their life, their life's journey to make something that you've never had before.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  That's a very dangerous proposition.

• 16:20Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  But if you have whatever this thing is and you don't like it, the chef can at least fall back on the ego and say, you don't get it.

• 16:31Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  You didn't get what I was.

• 16:32Speaker 08

  This is the pretentiousness.

• 16:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. You didn't get it.

• 16:34Speaker 08

  Infuriates me because it's like, no, I get what tastes good and what doesn't, dude. I get it.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  And I preach to my team and my chefs, we're on the other side of that. We are. Equally dangerous, we are trying to make for you the thing that you've had thousands of times before. And I want to make one of the best ones you've ever had, but you know exactly what it's like. So I can't be like, oh, he didn't get that meatball.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  You're competing with their grandma.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, like you know what a meatball is, right? You may not know what that chef was trying to go for, but like if you didn't like it, it's probably not good.

• 17:04Speaker 08

  Yeah, you don't have that fallback.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  But if I, if I, if I win, I've got a customer for life. I've got someone that's coming multiple times a week. If that chef wins, you may go once a year, you may actually never go back again, even if it's great.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  I never go back to those places, even if it's the really abstract ones, it's a fun, cool experience. But it's like, I recently went to a, a place is called, it's a Chicago chef. He had throat cancer or something like that. Alenia, Alenia just did a pop up in Brooklyn.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  And my wife and I went and the food was great and we got into a nice argument, which was uncomfortable for all the other people during our seating.

• 17:40Speaker 08

  That's fun though, that's love.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  That's a communal table, y'all honest. No, no, no, no. Not only a communal table, you change tables like four or five times. So they had to deal with that fight four or five times. And it was new people sitting next to us every different time. So you wouldn't let it go. No, not letting this go. Just because you put the dessert all over the table, I'm gonna let the fucking fight go? No.

• 18:00Speaker 06

  Everyone in the restaurant loves that, okay? Going to dinner with my wife, seeing a couple arguing, I'm like, yes, that's theater. It's just fun to listen, you're like at dinner and a show.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Bro, it was, I mean, because the lad, the end of the dessert, they're like, it's all deconstructed or whatever, you know? And they're like.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  And that's three Michelin star. That's the highest award. At one point, he was the highest rated American restaurant we had.

• 18:22Speaker 08

  I literally pay you to construct the food. I know, I never paid anybody to take some shit apart from me, I can do that. Believe me, I can do that, I could take apart a lasagna.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  But I will say the food was good, but you would hate it, you definitely would hate it.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  It's important that they exist, it's just not my mind, I'm in a business, we're at the corner of art and commerce. Like, I'm in a business model, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with preaching the art and teaching the art of business.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  That's a, that is also a craft and we need to keep the lights on and we keep, need to keep people paid.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you know how much money, sorry, you know how much money your waitstaff makes?

• 18:58Speaker 04

  I mean, depending on the restaurant, a substantial amount.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Like what does a waiter at Carbone in Miami make? Like on average.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Uh, over a hundred and fifty thousand a year?

• 19:07Speaker 03

  So if they're guaranteed a hundred and fifty thousand a year. And that's what's on the books. That's not even like people throwing them a little shit on the side.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, but there's very little cash these days. Everything's cards. You know, no one carries cash anymore. No one.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  So I always wondered, like, does some of your staff that was in like cash tip positions get upset about that? Like the people that are doing valet, these like, how do they manage that? Their whole life was cash tips.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  I guess valet is still, I'm trying to think of where, when I carry cash at this point. Valet is one of the few ones that you still want to have that. Yeah. But the waitstaff, it's all, it's all in, all in credit cards, which is good because it actually used to be really dangerous because you have, these restaurants have all this cash. At the end of the week, some employees got to take like, like comical bags of cash. It might as well have a dollar sign on it to a bank that is waiting to get robbed.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Because you were putting it all in the bank.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, like all of it.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  You were giving it to Ricky the Face to go put under.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  He's on the mattress. He's on the mattress since Covid.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Yo, it is a crazy thing because like restaurants in the city, any like small mom pop business in the city that dealt with cash was given like, if you want to be generous, 50% of it to the government. And that business completely changed now that everything goes digital. So you got to adjust to shit.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 20:28Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, for that same reason.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Wait, wasn't Carbone only cash initially?

• 20:31Speaker 04

  No, never.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  Just with me?

• 20:34Speaker 04

  That was strictly your policy.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  It was me policy because the card kept bouncing.

• 20:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, because we didn't take that card you had.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, what was that?

• 20:42Speaker 04

  I think that was a.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Capital One.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  It was a diner's card.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Uncle Rush card.

• 20:48Mark Gagnon?

  He's like, I take gift cards?

• 20:51Mark Gagnon?

  When I go to like some of my favorite like bars or lounges, I bring cash just so I can tip with the cash because I know for that particular reason, they appreciate that way more than if you just put all the tips on the credit card receipt.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  That makes sense.

• 21:03Speaker 08

  Also, guys, this weekend, I'm going to be in the best comedy clubs in the country. No disrespect to any other club, but Comedy Orcs, the best clubs in the country. I know we sold out two shows. We still got tickets left. There's some tickets. For the Sunday show, the other two are going quickly, so hurry up and buy those. May 9th and 10th, Virginia Beach, I'm letting y'all know I might have to reschedule. I will know for sure very soon, but I think I might be in India working on some things that you guys should keep an eye out for. June 19th through 21st, I'm gonna be in Salt Lake City. Guys, those dates and a bunch more at akashsingh.com. Thank y'all so much for coming out to these shows. We did nine in Tampa Bay, that was amazing. I love y'all. Peace.

• 21:37Speaker 06

  What's up people? World's fastest ad read Bangor, Maine, Portland, Maine, Charleston, South Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, and Stroudsburg, PA, a bunch of other cities, all on my website, markagnonlive.com. Come see me on the road and we're gonna hang out after the show. We could say what's up. We're not really gonna hang out.

• 21:51Speaker 08

  Say what's up with your mouth.

• 21:52Speaker 06

  No, just take a picture and come to the show.

• 21:54Speaker 08

  But not with words, like more like a whoa.

• 21:56Speaker 06

  And we could talk about, just only talking and have fun.

• 21:59Speaker 08

  Hard to talk with Mark's dick in your mouth.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  See you guys at the show.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Guys, this is incredibly important, maybe the most important thing that I tell you on this episode. Our dear brother, okay? This is family, okay? This is not like casual work acquaintance, this is literal family. Derek Poston, you saw him open up on the live tour, you saw him open up on Infamous, absolutely hysterical, and he's putting out his first piece, his first comedy piece, with the great Don't Tell Comedy brand. You've definitely seen Don't Tell Comedy specials all over the internet, all over TikTok, all over Instagram. This piece, How to End Racism, is absolutely hilarious and is on YouTube right now. Derek Poston, How to End Racism, Don't Tell Comedy. You go look it up right now, okay?

• 22:43Speaker 03

  You could finish the episode, you come back to the episode, you do whatever you want, but you make sure you watch that, you leave some comments, you share with friends, we support family over here. Derek is flagrant family. So get after it, go watch it, let's run these fucking numbers up, create another superstar out there. He's absolutely hilarious. Leave a bunch of comments, share it. Show the love, show that flagrant family love. Right now to our boy Derek Poston. We're very proud of you Derek. Love you Derek. Now let's get back to the show.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  I'm curious, back to the Michelin thing, like the politics of the Michelin. Like I have a friend that has a restaurant in Brooklyn, plays Bar Madonna, it's awesome. But he talks to me about like getting on like the list. Like you want to be on the the best bars list. Like there's all this politics you have to play, not only having a great experience with your consumers, but playing the game of the restaurant. So as far as getting a Michelin star or playing in that world, how important is it to be in the good graces of the critics? Being on blogs, things like that to promote the the brand of the restaurant?

• 23:38Speaker 04

  If you're going for that, if that's a goal of yours, then it's important. Michelin can't possibly be what they say they are or what they have been. So like Michelin in the past, started in France, you know, 50s and 60s. There would be an anonymous inspector that would come every year and check on your restaurant and grade it basically. For that to still happen today in the number of restaurants and numbers of cities that Michelin is in is virtually impossible, right? There's there's no way they're checking on on these restaurants. So it's my belief that it's simply an aggregate.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  They're just they're just aggregating where they need to sell books and what the reviews of the rest of the world are of these places and figuring out who to give stars to. I think there's a handful of people that are actually going to some of these restaurants, like the top couple brass of Michelin are going to the important ones, but there's no way they're going to all of them. So it's really just some sort of aggregate system they're using to give out these stars. It's no longer like, like the movie Ratatouille kind of like projects this. Like that's a Michelin inspector basically, right? At least at the New York Times, which is which is for me the most important review in New York, right? The New York Times critic says, you know who it is. It's a it's a single person's opinion, whether you like it or not, it's a real person. It's not some sort of computer generated aggregate.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  And take this for a grain of salt. We only have one Michelin star. They took a couple away from me a couple of years ago. It is what it is, but like, you know, I could easily be seen as someone who's just kind of grumpy about it. But I just think as a system, and it's not something that we necessarily covet, but as a system, I just don't think they're being honest with who they are as a criteria.

• 25:22Speaker 06

  So you're saying there's other motives here at play. There's a financial motive.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  They used to be a subsidy of this tire company, right? And the whole idea was that they created this map of restaurants so that you and your car on your Michelin tires would drive from restaurant to restaurant. And it was a fun way to promote it. It became really big and then it became, it spawned into its own business. So you have to look at it and say, this is its own business. It has to make its own dollars. So as a business, there's just no way, given what they do in revenue and book sales, that they could pay enough people to go to all these restaurants. So if that's the case, then how are they coming up with it?

• 25:57Speaker 06

  Fugazi. So then in that case...

• 25:58Speaker 04

  It's a fugazi.

• 25:59Speaker 06

  What's more important? Like if you're going to a city and you want to know what the good restaurants are?

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, how do you know?

• 26:04Speaker 06

  And you don't use a Michelin star. Is there another review system? Is there an app? Is there a website? Like, how else can I be informed about the best restaurant in the city?

• 26:11Speaker 04

  I mean, social media is gonna tell you. I mean, if you punch in best restaurant, pick your city, you're gonna get 10 at least.

• 26:18Speaker 06

  But it's a paid for... Infatuation? Have you heard of that one?

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, infatuation. I mean, they don't speak kindly to me in Miami, but they do in New York. Two totally different groups of people in the same publication, but they're definitely gonna pop up. You're gonna get CNN Traveler. You're gonna get all these things that are gonna pop up. But the biggest thing that's changed in the restaurant business is that the power of these critics has been basically completely taken away and put in the customers' hands. Everyone has it now. Everyone's an editor in chief of their own thing, right? No matter how big their Facebook is or their Instagram page, they're gonna tell you all about their meal. And if you follow them, you're gonna go, they're the critic.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  People always say a lot of times comics like compare ourselves to boxers for some reason. I don't know why and whoever does that has never boxed at all. But I always say the closest comparison for comedians is chefs.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  My chef friend says it's the closest comparison.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  And just in terms of like speaking to them, it's a couple of different things. One, the kind of natural people pleasers, like we're doing this thing, we're creating this thing for other people to consume. And hopefully they like it and we're kind of waiting for them to tell us that they like it for hours also. And just like, you know, degenerates, you know, just like really kind of bad people at our core.

• 27:30Speaker 04

  Dredge of society.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Dredge of society, somehow managed to make money doing this like weird thing.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  It's a circus.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  It is a circus, 100%. You're in these restaurants and you're managing the staff. They're all fucking each other. How do you stop that?

• 27:48Speaker 04

  I don't know anything about that.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  I worked in restaurants for years.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Listen, I think.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  What do you do? How do you?

• 27:55Speaker 04

  The team going out after work and having drinks and letting some steam off of a long night is totally normal. And we're not going to get in the way of that. I think, you know, certainly we have rules that like management and hourly staff can't co-mingle, right? Like that's just, that's just rule number one. And as soon as that happens, like there's a, there's a, you know, zero tolerance there. But the staff, I mean, they become family. I mean, I have the same team in Carbone, the original Carbone, since basically day one, no one's left. It's all the same team.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  Starting with Ricky.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 28:30Mark Gagnon?

  Really?

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  How do you know Ricky?

• 28:32Speaker 04

  Ricky was a day one, day one guy who answered an ad for captains, the head waiters are captains for a captain position. And loved him immediately and he grew into being the face, I call him the face because everyone knows him. Everyone knows him as Ricky of Carbone.

• 28:50Mark Gagnon?

  That's great. Before we get too far away, two things, do you think a Michelin star can be bought?

• 28:58Speaker 04

  I think you gotta play the game a little bit. If that's something you're going after, if that's a really important metric for your restaurant and for success and for getting people in there, then you have to play a game to a certain degree. And that being, buying it could manifest itself in the things you buy for the restaurant, all of the extra money you spend towards the things that you think you need to get that star. I don't think you can pay Michelin for a star.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Cities pay Michelin, which is commonplace. Cities pay it to bring them to that city, to create a Michelin whatever. Which makes sense. But that's just like the... Michelin guide? Yeah, the Michelin guide. So the Michelin guide is paid for? It's paid for by the cities to bring them there. Which makes sense if you're a tourist in Miami, Michelin guide.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  No, it makes perfect sense. I thought Michelin guide was the achievement right before Michelin star. Because sometimes the way people speak about it, they're like, oh, it's not Michelin star, but it's guide.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  You can be included in the book without having a star, where they're like, sort of recommend you, especially if you're at a lower price point. If you're at a really low price point, usually you're not even up for a star. This is really just kind of the world of find adding, more or less.

• 30:14Mark Gagnon?

  And then the second question, because you said now the power's in the customer's hands. But I feel like restaurants are just paying influencers, hey, here's some money, come here, eat for free, do a review on us. So it's like, I don't trust a lot of the TikTok because they'll do it on the same restaurants over and over. And I'm like, I'm a little suspect about this.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  That's a great point. That is marketing these days. I mean, it's not that much different than paying some agency to tell you how great this restaurant is.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Bro, it's more effective.

• 30:44Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, so then how do we find a real good restaurant?

• 30:46Speaker 03

  No, no, I understand, understand. But like, when Kendall Jenner wears a bag, all of a sudden, all these girls want to wear the bag. When they eat at this restaurant, all of a sudden, all these girls want to go check it out. So to Alex's point, if some of them are being paid to go to restaurants... How can we trust them as an influencer? Because the whole game is to assume that they really truly are inspired by this restaurant and they love the cuisine.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  I mean, they're selling, if you're a big influencer, you're selling all sorts of products, right? I mean, like.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  Oh, they're getting.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  Huge amounts of money.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  And they're getting money to even go to restaurants?

• 31:22Speaker 04

  I mean, we don't pay anyone to go to restaurants, but I'm sure that that's a business, right? That's gotta be a line item in advertising somewhere that in this local town, so and so's a huge influencer.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 04

  They're definitely gonna move the needle. They're definitely gonna move the needle.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  I thought, I thought you guys were making great headlines the opposite way. So instead of who comes to the restaurant.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  It was who gets kicked out of or gets rejected. Every time a famous person would get rejected at Carbone, it was like.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  That can't happen that often.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Dude, but you heard about it often.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  It happened every now and again, and sometimes it was a mistake.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Who is it? But it was like Justin Bieber tries to get.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  That was a mistake, Justin.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  That was a mistake.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Milk that mistake.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  Unintentional.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  But is it?

• 32:04Speaker 04

  I would not have kicked Justin out.

• 32:05Speaker 08

  A serendipitous mistake or whatever the word is like, you're like, oh, this is a mistake, but it only makes us.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  I didn't want to deal with that press. I didn't, I didn't, it didn't look good. It wasn't like, it didn't, to me, it didn't look good. Like, that's not hospitable. We tried to take care of it. It was just like a last minute thing. That, that scenario was just like a super last minute, trying to make a reservation. And they were already showing up, but we just didn't have the table at that moment.

• 32:26Speaker 08

  But to Andrew's point, there's a human psychology. When you read, this person couldn't get into this restaurant. It must be insane. So could you see a world, I'm not saying you did it, could you see a world where somebody might reject that person and then leak it to the press?

• 32:39Speaker 04

  I think it's too risky. I can't, I can't see somebody trying that.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  What's the scummiest thing you see a restaurant do for PR?

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Scummiest thing to do for PR?

• 32:53Speaker 04

  There's only so many things that you can really do. I mean, I'm trying to think of like creative, scummy things.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  You're planting paparazzi.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  So making the calls of the PR agency.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Someone's there and you call like a Page Six type guy and all of a sudden they get blown up.

• 33:14Speaker 08

  I've heard some clothing like wardrobe people will do that where they'll like go to some company. Hey, you have this designer clothes, pay me, I'll make sure he wears it. And then when he wears it, I'll call the paparazzi and say, hey, Justin Bieber's at this restaurant.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  That's a thing. That's a thing.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  And how do you make sure your staff doesn't do that and then get hit?

• 33:32Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, our staff, that's something we talk about more than probably most is sort of anonymity. Like, one, of course, we say nothing, but also like we, we are, we're the, we're the protective layer of a celebrity or an athlete or someone that's in the restaurant. Because you don't know who might be like secretly filming them or who might just come up and try to get like an autograph or a selfie like, so my team is that last line of defense to make sure that they have a really private moment.

• 34:01Speaker 08

  Do they have a special seating area, a special entrance, all of that?

• 34:04Speaker 04

  It depends on the restaurant. Some places just have like, there's nowhere else to go. It depends on how much notice we have, but like, most places there's like.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Wow. Okay, take me through early days.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Was there a point in Carbone where you were like, we're not going to make it, we're going to close?

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Well, early days was just a couple hundred feet away from here was Original Terese.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  This is on Mulberry, right?

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's the first, that's the very first restaurant, Mulberry and Prince.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, if we're going to go early days, let's go really far back.

• 34:30Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  You go work at Balude, right?

• 34:33Speaker 04

  I worked at Balude before, my first like real New York chef was Bobo.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Right? Yeah, so you start with Patali, then you go to Italy if I'm not mistaken. You come back and you work for Daniel Balude. And you're working at Daniel?

• 34:46Speaker 04

  I went, I went to Danielle to try to get a job. Well, the story of Danielle was, I really wanted to work there. My dad was turning 50 years old and I said, pops, I'm going to, I saved up some money, I'm going to take you to a nice restaurant tonight. And me and my dad went to Danielle. I know that Danielle kind of works the dining room. He walks around the whole dining room. And I really wanted to meet him. I wanted to get a rest. So I had my resume in my jacket pocket. And he comes over, he introduces himself, he talks for a second, and he asked me what I did. I said, listen, I'm a cook in New York, but I'd love to work here. And I gave my resume right on the dining room floor. And he told me, listen, you know, I don't know if we have anything, but here, call my assistant tomorrow. And I called this assistant like every day for like a month until finally she was like, just show up on Saturday.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Saturday I show up, no one knows I'm supposed to be there, no one has any idea I'm there. I get there, they're like, "Who are you?" They give me like, they just throw a uniform at me and they're just like, "Go find something to do." So I like, I find one cook, I do one thing all day, I dice leaks. Um, I did that really bad for a while and they kept yelling at me and I finally did it okay. I dice leaks all day, no one says anything to me, the day ends and everyone's going home and I'm like, alright. So I throw my uniform in the bin and I'm like, I guess no one's gonna talk to me today. The next day I show up, I find the guy, I get the leaks again and I do it again. No one really talks to me. This goes on for like three or four days. And then the executive chef at the time, a terrifying man named Alex Lee, uh, one night during dinner service kinda looks over and he's like, and he like points at me and I'm like, "Me?" He's like, "Yeah." He goes, "Come here."

• 36:13Speaker 04

  I walk up to the pass and he's like, "Uh, who the fuck are you?" And I'm like, "My name's Mark, I've been here for five days, no one's talked to me, I've been cutting leaks for four days. Uh, I just need a job." And he's like, "There's, there's no work here for you, there's no jobs here, I'm totally full." He's like, "Go, go, go to one of the other restaurants in the company tomorrow and see if there's a job there." So I spent a week at Danielle without really anyone talking to me. I wound up getting a job at one of the other restaurants and I worked there for-

• 36:37Speaker 03

  Which one?

• 36:38Speaker 04

  Uh, Cafe Balud.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Balud, okay.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  So it was, at that time, it was, uh, I was like 22, me, uh, David Chang, owns Momofuku.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  That's what I was about to say, this is a really, and then also Theresa, right?

• 36:48Speaker 04

  My partner Rich. We were like, in a row like this.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  So think about this, within Balud, it's called Cafe Balud, where was it?

• 36:55Speaker 04

  Uh, 76th and Madison.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Okay, so within Cafe Balud, three of like the foremost restaurateurs in New York City would sprout.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, 22, 23 years old each.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  So you know Momofuku?

• 37:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  It's fire.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  And, uh, wow, this is just like so crazy. So you, I'm doing a little research on you and like, you thought that you would open something with David?

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Originally, we were gonna do something together with Dave.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  With Rich as well?

• 37:22Speaker 04

  No, just me and him. But Rich was my roommate. So we would like, after work, we would spend like before, like before we'd crash, we'd spend time like talking about ideas, talking about like how we were gonna get, how we were gonna get started, what his place was gonna be like, what my place was gonna be like. And then in 2008, there was a financial crisis and like all money dries up. All investors dry up, everyone's done. And but we were ready, it was like, this is our time. So instead of trying these separate ideas individually, we were like, the only way, if we wanna be our own boss like next year, the only way we're gonna do this is if we do it together.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  And we pooled our resources, our money, and we took a space a couple hundred feet away, that was like 450 square foot jean shop. And it was a Mulberry and Prince, but we just, we thought that that was it. We thought that was the energy, that was the spot. And that was what it needed to be.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Terese, what was it called?

• 38:21Speaker 04

  Terese Italian Specialties.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, Terese Italian Specialties. So he got his name first.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  Eagle maniac, this guy, right? It's unbelievable.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  Foosball, two out of three.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Really?

• 38:35Speaker 03

  That's awesome. Okay, so.

• 38:37Speaker 08

  That's the most diplomatic way to do it.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Wait, really?

• 38:40Speaker 04

  How else would you do it?

• 38:41Speaker 08

  Rock, paper, scissors, but that's too much to chance.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Not to Italian kids, you put foosball.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  So Rich gets his name. Is it successful?

• 38:49Speaker 04

  At first, at first, it was mixed. We opened it as a sandwich shop, that did well. But our goal was to open it at night and do like, like kind of a serious dinner. It was one set menu on a chalkboard. And when we, when we started opening at night, no one really came. And if they did come, they were like, oh, I heard you sell sandwiches. And we're like, yeah, but in the daytime, like, yeah, but there's nobody here making a sandwich. We're like, no, that's not the thing. That's not what we're doing. We're doing this menu thing. That took a while.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  They got a point with that one, bro. You want the money or not?

• 39:27Speaker 04

  I see what you're saying, but I'm gonna die on my morals here. It took a while for people to figure out what was going on there.

• 39:36Speaker 08

  And what do you think it was?

• 39:37Speaker 04

  Eventually, we got a great review from New York Magazine. And that started, you know, a bit of a line outside, people waiting for reservations. The shit that we had never seen before, almost overnight.

• 39:48Speaker 08

  Were you just waiting on the reservation? Were you calling them, trying to get them down? Because I think you know, this could change fortunes, anybody reviewing us. How do you get them to review you?

• 39:56Speaker 04

  We had, you don't, right? You don't. And at first, when they came the first time, they were all alone in the dining room. We knew them. And so we cooked for them, we talked to them, we were friendly. They left, they came back next week, and I was like, Rich, man, they must really like it. They're here again. And he's like, yeah, cool, you know, whatever. Third time they come, and I'm like, oh.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  They're making sure.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Oh. They're writing a review on this restaurant.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  So do you spice it up on that last one?

• 40:24Speaker 04

  I mean, we gave it all we had, but it wasn't, I mean, we threw everything we had at it, but it wasn't much at the time. We only had this one little menu.

• 40:29Speaker 08

  Yeah, no sandwiches.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  We had no sandwiches, just enough money to kind of make a chalkboard.

• 40:36Speaker 08

  Were you both in the kitchen at that time?

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's only five employees total, you know, there's like me, him, a dishwasher, one waitress, I mean, that's everybody, right? So we were open, we were open six days a week. On the seventh day, we were closed, we would.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Doing prep and everything.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  He and I would go in, lock the door, we'd go in, we'd crank, we'd crank the radio, and we would prep all day, just to get ready. So we were working seven days, but we were the only employees. But we were living the dream.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  There's an interesting thing with restaurants specifically about the review. And this has changed in almost every other form of media. The review is really important with TV shows, or not even TV shows, but like movies, anything, comedy, that you had to leave the house for, right? Because you gotta get a babysitter, you gotta get dressed, you gotta get a Uber, there's like a lot of things you have to do, right? Once everything went streaming, the review doesn't really matter.

• 41:26Speaker 08

  Are you sweating?

• 41:28Speaker 04

  Reviews when the special comes out?

• 41:29Speaker 03

  No, no, because all you gotta do is turn it on. And people make their own reviews.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying about, about, about social media as well.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  But what, but what specifically for restaurants is you're not ordering a delivery. I gotta go. So if I'm gonna commit that, I have one date night a week with my wife. If I'm gonna commit Tuesday night to someplace. My wife has already vetted 10 different websites and made sure it's a thing that she really wants to do because that's our one night out a week. Right? So the review does still hold, whether the review is from an influencer, some social media, from Yelp. The review does still hold a lot of weight within the restaurant community. It's, we still need that like word of mouth. We still need someone to validate the experience before we go. Whereas just like turning on a special is, I don't need you to tell me if it's good or not. I give it 10 minutes. Ah, it sucks. I'm done. Oh, I really like it. I'll keep watching it. So it's interesting to see that one single review flipped.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  I mean, I used to hear that back in like the seventies and eighties, if you got a great New York Times review. That the owners would literally tear it out of the newspaper, walk into the bank and get a loan.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  Be like, here.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 42:34Speaker 05

  That's all you need.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  That, the old, old New York Times critics used to tell me that.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  So were they drunk off that power?

• 42:41Speaker 04

  I mean, that was the, that was the top. I mean, there was no Michelin in America back then. Rick, I need something a little stronger.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, chef.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  What, a little?

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Like a little dirty martini.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Ooh, wait a minute.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  Gin or vodka?

• 42:52Speaker 04

  Vodka.

• 42:53Speaker 05

  Right away.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  I'll do that as well.

• 42:55Speaker 05

  Two.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  This guy just brought you a spritzy dick. Well, I'm gonna have that too.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  Well, you can't, acting glass can make me nervous. That's why I brought it. What a mess you bring it, you know what I mean? Two vodka martini, right away.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Hey, in all of your experience, who's the worst tipper? Oh, this is a good question.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Everyone tips wonderfully.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  Everyone tips equally.

• 43:13Speaker 05

  You're not gonna get him.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  Come on. Who's the biggest scumbag that walked in there?

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Everyone who walks in the door, we thank them very, very much.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Let me ask you a question.

• 43:23Speaker 05

  Everyone's great.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  When you were letting Epstein dine at your section specifically, was he a big tipper?

• 43:28Speaker 05

  I don't know nothing. I don't know nothing. No, I wasn't there that night. I was off.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  If I were to ask you to settle a debate between Alex, Alex and me, your life depends on your answer here. Alex and I walk into a restaurant. Who do you think is gonna tip better? You don't know anything about us, you're just looking at us.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  You know what, we just deliver the best service. As long as you're happy at the end of the day, that's all I'm asking. We don't think about things like that.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  You're not gonna get him.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  Not at all.

• 43:54Speaker 06

  He's looking at you a lot.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  You don't, you don't go, oh, we gotta cut.

• 43:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what I'm just saying.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  Martinis?

• 44:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, P Martin.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  What do you call, do you call them Canadians?

• 44:09Speaker 05

  P Martin is on the way.

• 44:10Speaker 06

  Nah, make it four, make it four.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  Four, you got it.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  See how demanding they are?

• 44:15Speaker 06

  Italians count, you can't, they can't even help the Italian, bro. He said three, three, like, I just, I love it.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Okay, so, alright, so the review changes everything, but it's still a small restaurant, like, hi, it, you're not getting... Can you answer that question? Wait, who tips the worst? Oh, yeah, who does tip the worst? Indians or black people?

• 44:36Speaker 04

  That's not fair. But he does have an answer. It's Chinese.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  No, but they Chinese tip, right?

• 44:40Speaker 06

  Or diner boy in New York City.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  I'm a diner boy, I'm a diner boy. I was talking, I didn't wanna talk. My dad told me, my dad told me, you didn't need to tip when you sat at the bar.

• 44:53Speaker 06

  See, and I overcompensate, I overtip because of the...

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Because, that's a, that's a great scene in My Blue Heaven.

• 44:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  With Steve Martin goes over, over tipping. Fantastic movie.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  But wait a minute, yeah, is there a version where over tipping makes you look a little funny?

• 45:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Never at all?

• 45:11Speaker 04

  No.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  But do you think if you saw him overtip or him overtip, they would be overcompensating for cultural scarcity? If I overtip, I'm generous. If they overtip, they're trying to make up for what their people have done to the restaurant industry for decades.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  Simply taking care of the staff. I actually think this is, yeah, I'm not even...

• 45:29Speaker 06

  Pushback.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  This guy's been around Ricky for a while.

• 45:32Speaker 06

  Also, 20% is fine, right?

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, 20% is generous.

• 45:35Speaker 06

  15%?

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Wait, 20% generous, 15 I can't do. Were you unhappy with your service? Oh my god, no, I thought it was great. I mean, yes, yeah, yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 08

  So yeah, what should you tip?

• 45:45Speaker 04

  20%.

• 45:46Speaker 08

  20%. 5% is good, you're good at 20.

• 45:49Speaker 04

  20 is right. 25 starting. Yeah, I would only go under 20 if I was unhappy with my service.

• 45:54Speaker 08

  Okay, that's fair, that's typical what I do.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  But if you are unhappy.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  He's always unhappy.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's always unhappy.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  This guy never happy.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Nah, I'm sorry. You might want to start staying home.

• 46:06Speaker 08

  No, I started tipping better when I started making money. When I didn't have money, I would look for any excuse that you gave me bad service, so I could go 15. Yeah, I didn't like his attitude and I didn't like his vibe.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  15 is so hard to calculate, what are you doing, you getting your phone out?

• 46:18Speaker 08

  I'm Indian.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  You know what it is, my dad told me, double the tax. Back in the day, doubling the tax.

• 46:23Speaker 08

  Now I have 16, you gotta go a little lower than that.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  He doubles and it takes a little off.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  I'm 41, back in the day, doubling the tax was a fine tip. 20% is like a newer thing.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  When we were younger, 15 used to be.

• 46:36Speaker 08

  15 used to be, yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 04

  That used to be the good spot. But now you're tipping for all sorts of things that don't warrant any sort of tips. What are we talking about?

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Like what?

• 46:42Speaker 04

  I mean, if you're just, you're going to the coffee shop, you're getting a cup of coffee, all of a sudden the screen spins around.

• 46:46Speaker 08

  He makes me tip.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Bro, I got a water at a.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  15, 20 or 25.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  I got a water at a cafe today, just a water. I brought the water, she made me.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  Spin that screen around.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  She made me beeping.

• 46:55Speaker 08

  Son, self-checkout.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  And then the thing said 20%. And I'm like, what did you do in this whole process?

• 47:02Speaker 04

  The screen's gonna prompt you to a couple of questions.

• 47:04Speaker 08

  Buddy, self-checkout at the airport. They ask if you want to leave a tip, no one is here.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  I'm still confused myself, check out at the airport, because people are working those.

• 47:12Speaker 08

  Just making sure you don't steal.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  They understand that you're gonna have trouble with this, and there's people that are helping you check out, which is no longer the whole purpose of this experience.

• 47:20Speaker 08

  It bothers me so much, if they don't help me check out and I have issues, I just walk out with the water. And I know I'm brown, and I do it anyway.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  You justify stealing.

• 47:26Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah, I do it anyway.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  It's a $20 water, I get it.

• 47:29Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's $9.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  We gotta get these migrants out to country.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  For real, for real, it's a good point.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  And leave the water on the way out.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Hey, can I ask you, this is a restaurant, deep cut.

• 47:39Speaker 08

  I've been to.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  What are you gonna do when they ship out the migrants?

• 47:41Speaker 03

  No, no, for real, no, no. But, no, this is, I've noticed some restaurants, okay? They, it's almost if they made a decision to not have Latino busboys, and they go Indian.

• 47:57Speaker 08

  Bangladeshi, I think.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  Or Bangladeshi, I'm gonna say it, and then we'll bleep it out, so that you're safe, but not your ass.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  There are no Latinos that work there. It's... Bangladeshi, you think it is? But they're looking at you. Is that like a strategic move?

• 48:13Speaker 04

  So the strategy that's implemented there is if you have like one main guy who's like the head porter, right? He's doing the hiring. There's constantly infighting amongst communities. If you start blending communities, there's gonna be all sorts of stupid drama that's gonna happen between... Because they're fighting with each other. And it's best to sort of hire one community of people.

• 48:40Speaker 06

  That's fascinating.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  America tried to do that way a long time ago.

• 48:43Speaker 06

  No, no, that's different. What you're talking about is different.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  No, what was I talking about?

• 48:46Speaker 06

  That's slavery.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  Oh, it wasn't hiring.

• 48:49Speaker 06

  You can't do that. They weren't paid.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  What about Matt Turner? What about Matt Turner?

• 49:01Speaker 06

  That was the problem. If we got a bunch of different ones, there'd be no infighting.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  That is... So it's delegation of responsibility. I never thought about it like that. If your head guy is from this community, he's gonna hire...

• 49:10Speaker 04

  They're gonna hire all his people. And it's a happy... It's just a happier house, right? Everyone gets along. It's all one community. The staff meals all the same, right? You don't have to deal with like Mexicans making pork for the Muslims and they're fighting about it. Like, it's just a happier house.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  Is that how it works with like nursing too? Like when you see like some areas are specifically Filipino, some areas specifically Caribbean. Like I know that happens with nannying. Like if you tap into like the Caribbean nanny community, they're gonna recommend the other people that are often like part of their church.

• 49:41Speaker 04

  Makes sense.

• 49:42Speaker 06

  I always assumed it was word of mouth though for that. That's what I always assumed it was. Like you'd just be like, "Yeah, I have someone that can fill in." "I know someone that can pop in."

• 49:49Speaker 03

  But it's all good. They're gonna stay within their own squad.

• 49:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, of course. People they know.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:53Mark Gagnon?

  Why does it seem like in New York, the best chefs of Italian, the best chefs of Thai, and every other cuisine are all Mexican?

• 50:02Speaker 03

  It's teeny tiny.

• 50:02Mark Gagnon?

  Every kitchen I go to, it looks like it's all Hispanics back in the day.

• 50:08Speaker 03

  Oh, you're getting a little twist?

• 50:12Speaker 06

  He's calling you a funook.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  I think he called me a funook.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, so wait, you were saying?

• 50:19Mark Gagnon?

  No, just why are all the chefs?

• 50:20Speaker 03

  What he's trying to say is why are Mexicans the best?

• 50:22Speaker 04

  Incredible chefs, I mean, Mexican cuisine is arguably the most complex food there is, period.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Talk that shit.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Period. Starting with like the Aztecs into the Spanish, into the regional Mexican cuisine.

• 50:36Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, thank you.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  It's incredibly difficult.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  So if they can cook mole, they can cook whatever else the fuck you want.

• 50:42Mark Gagnon?

  So then why?

• 50:43Speaker 04

  And they would work hard. No one asked them about them, period. Pyramids.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  He knows. He knows.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  No one questioned them.

• 50:50Mark Gagnon?

  So with all like the immigration that's going on now, is that affecting the restaurant business at all?

• 50:56Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm sure it is. It doesn't affect ours.

• 50:58Mark Gagnon?

  Okay.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  I mean, we just don't allow like illegal immigrants to work in the restaurants, right? I mean, you have to have proper paperwork, you know, we don't fuck with that. Like, it's not worth bringing the house down.

• 51:10Mark Gagnon?

  Why are you laughing?

• 51:11Speaker 04

  It's not. You have to. I've got 5,000 employees.

• 51:14Mark Gagnon?

  So then how do you get, how do other restaurants get around that? Cause I see, it looks like.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  You go to Roosevelt Avenue and you get paperwork made.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  Oh, so you can get fake paperwork?

• 51:24Speaker 04

  I hear.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Now let's get back to the show.

• 51:29Speaker 06

  So how do we go from the restaurant being the, a sandwich shop in the daytime, getting a little bit of traction with New York Mag, to then becoming a staple in the neighborhood?

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, sorry, how many?

• 51:36Speaker 03

  Cause it's not even that restaurant that becomes Carbone.

• 51:38Speaker 06

  That's what I'm saying. Terese, how much longer?

• 51:40Speaker 03

  So you and Terese are there, these two Italian guys that understand art, you understand food, right? At what point do you're like, we need a Jew to pay for shit?

• 51:50Speaker 04

  Well, we were pretty frugal early on, but we knew that.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Why did you bring that up?

• 51:56Speaker 04

  We knew we needed help. We were just two chefs who were trying to figure out the rest of it.

• 52:00Speaker 06

  How many tables is that first restaurant? Sorry, I'm gonna ask it.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Six, like six tiny little tables.

• 52:04Mark Gagnon?

  Oh wow.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  And when we got somebody that was like noteworthy coming in, it was, it was heavy because the room's this big, you know? Like, Stad would bring Hove in, he'd sit in the corner and you're like, oh shit. This is nuts.

• 52:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  So early days were kind of crazy when we were getting momentum because that was the room. That was everything. But when we met Jeff, Jeff was one of the kind of early customers. We knew him. He was like, we had like similar friends in the same business. And he came in and he quickly kind of identified like that we had a chance of like being something much bigger than we are right now. And he thought he could, you know, he could bring the rest of it to the table, which we would have learned, like I believe it would have learned, but it would have taken a while. It expedites the process. Yeah, for sure.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Okay, so you go, you both are together and you decide to open up another restaurant. Because he won the first game, you get to get your name. The location is phenomenal.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  Like absolutely phenomenal. Pure luck, coincidence, incredibly expensive, like for everybody who doesn't know, it's in, what would you, it's Greenwich Village, like a few blocks from the cellar.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  Harder Greenwich Village, Thompson, between Bleeker and Houston.

• 53:15Speaker 03

  It's, you're blocks away from Soho, blocks away from the East. It's phenomenal.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  It was, it was an Italian restaurant.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Rocco's, right?

• 53:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, Rocco from the 20s.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  I think it was a Genovese family, kind of like stalwart restaurant. There's like, there were a couple of questionable doors in there that were for them, back courtyards and shit. And it finally kind of fell in disrepair and we found out about it through the guy who owns the space knew Jeff somehow and we wind up getting it. You know, it was, it was at the time crazy expensive. Now it's a great deal, but at the time it was crazy expensive for us.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  What was the rent?

• 53:50Speaker 04

  It was like 18,000 a month in 2012, 2013.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  Keep in mind, this is a first floor retail space with like three windows facing the street.

• 54:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, max.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  So the majority of it is behind.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  Cavernous.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, 18 grand is an absolutely absurd, no offense here, but like, what are we talking about, square footage? This is like.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  I mean, we were paying top dollar back then.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  How many square feet is a space?

• 54:16Speaker 04

  I have no idea.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  It's 85 seats.

• 54:19Speaker 03

  80, 85. It's smaller than this, this whole studio that we have here. And, okay, so you guys started, there's big overhead, but you have somebody that's willing to invest in you guys. At what point, is it immediate success? Is there a review? Are there, is there people of, you know, fame that are coming?

• 54:35Speaker 04

  When we first opened, there was a big push of. Who do you think you are? Sentiment from sort of the community at large? Because we had gone from these kind of lovable guys, charging a small amount of money in New York, to tuxedos, you know, expensive dishes, tableside. You know, there was a sentiment of like, "Don't you know Emilino's down the block? What are you doing? What are you trying to do here?" You know, there was that, especially from the older generation. So we had to kind of push through that. So you had immediate, almost rejection? We had a bit of rejection from like, the food community, not necessarily the patrons, but the journalists, certainly the ones that had been around a while

• 55:20Speaker 04

  and seen a lot of shit. And you were their darlings. Because we were acting older. Yeah. We had guys like him in tuxedos. We would put fake ads in newspapers and like Craigslist to hire old-school waiters, because I didn't want kids. I wanted old, so we created a fake steakhouse for them to respond to, because those are the style of restaurants that they want to take jobs in. Ah. And so I got old-school guys to come in and respond to those ads. And then I told them what we were doing, and put them in tuxedos, play the old music, do the old vibe. You know, because in 2013, everything was this big. All the food was this big. The trend was 20-course tasting menus.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  And we were going completely against that trend. And to do that in our 30-years-old didn't make any sense to anyone for a minute. Yeah. And it took a little bit of time. And then we got, to the New York Times Review, we got an incredible New York Times Review. Before that, it was the price point that they were frustrated by? It was that we made such a big leap that it caught people off guard. They're like, "Who are you guys to charge this much money?" The same person that was applauding me Yes. a couple of months ago, down the block in that little place, was like, "Wait a minute." What'd you just do?

• 56:39Speaker 08

  Was it hard for you to deal with, or do you just not care?

• 56:40Speaker 04

  I didn't understand it.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  Bro, this is human nature. It's like, when you're on the way up, you remind everybody of what their dreams are.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 56:47Speaker 03

  And then when you believe maybe you get to the top, you remind them of what they might never achieve. And it's very hard for humans to support you in that endeavor. And, um, yeah, you see this happen in like every single industry. You see this happen with athletes. You see, it's like, this guy's the next Jordan. And then he starts playing really well, and he ain't Jordan.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  I thought you said he's the next Jordan!

• 57:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  Right? Okay, so you guys are living your dream, and all of a sudden you get turned on by the community that had really kind of, I don't want to say inflated your egos, but really like pumped.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  They helped get us the confidence to try this.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  So was it heartbreaking? Because you must believe their reviews of your other restaurant. Because you're like, wow, finally someone recognizes our talent. Then you see the criticism, and you're like, well shit, do I have to believe that as well? Those are the same people I believed when they were complimenting me.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  It's very sensitive reviews, right? I mean, you put yourself out there, you make this thing. So whenever a review doesn't go your way, it's impossible to not take it personally.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  No, I share.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  It's impossible.

• 57:44Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  So to know that we were putting ourselves out there in that way, and to have that be the initial response. Again, we were getting traction on the ground. People were enjoying themselves. The vibe in the restaurant was good. I was just worried a little bit at like the community at large. Um, and it took a kind of a flag being planted by the New York Times to say, no, this is accredited. This belongs in that conversation.

• 58:09Speaker 03

  So New York Times comes in and thwarts all the other criticism?

• 58:12Speaker 04

  They're, they basically wait to be the last one. So, and a big review like that, the New York Times will take that position. And they'll wait for New York Magazine and The Post and all the other publications to weigh in. And then they'll go last.

• 58:27Speaker 08

  And then initially, are those other guys saying, who the fuck are they?

• 58:30Speaker 04

  Those were a mixed bag.

• 58:31Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  They were all over the place.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Do you remember those people? Have you like hung out with them since, seen them since? Have they tried to cozy up to you now that you're successful?

• 58:39Speaker 04

  Well, I famously threw one out, and that was a thing.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  What happened?

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Because no one's ever really thrown a critic out.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  Wait, what happened?

• 58:46Speaker 04

  I wasn't, again, young and a little spicy at the time. But the critic at the time for New York Magazine had come in and he wrote a really poor review. And I just didn't like the way he went about it. And I was also young and sensitive. And I didn't like the review. I didn't like the way he went about it.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  What do you mean, you didn't like the way he went about it?

• 59:07Speaker 04

  He brought, I remember he brought in like other chefs to sit with him. And I didn't think that was cool.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, it seems like.

• 59:13Speaker 04

  To review it.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  And I thought he had an agenda. I thought he didn't like it from before he even sat down.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  So he was trying to justify it.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  He never gave us a chance. So he wrote this pretty terrible review. And then we had a little bar down the block. And he tried to go to that bar a couple of weeks later. And he's supposed to be anonymous, but I know who he is. And he shows up and we threw him out. And that became a whole thing because like no one's ever done that. And in hindsight, probably I wouldn't have done it again, but that's how I felt at the time.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  I wonder if the people that review or react to things. I wonder if they understand like the lack of respect for their, we're appreciative when their opinions are complimentary. But like, the lack of respect comes from the fact that like, a lot of them have never put something out in the world to be criticized.

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, man in the arena.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  It's, yeah, it's a Teddy Roosevelt thing. Yeah. And it's like, it is a different thing. When you, when you create something and you put work into it and then you place it out in the world to be criticized or, you know, loved, doesn't matter. There is a vulnerability to that. So like even the people I don't even like and I don't even like their stuff. I still admire that they have the courage to put it out. And I wonder if critics, if they did that initially in their own life. If they had submitted something for public hazing or public scrutiny or support. If they would have a different energy towards their criticisms.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  We should get one of them on here.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  That'd be cool. I mean that. I wonder if they ever think about that.

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  I appreciate the ones that do real homework, that come with real, like, either they've been in the business a really long time, but you can tell that the way they go about it, the way that they research it, whether they like it or not, it comes from a real place of understanding. And at that point, you can't, you can't, you can only say so much.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  But the ones that have their opinions made up beforehand, dude, have you ever gotten a negative review that you respected?

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, I have.

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  Like what? And what does that look like?

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  You know, there's a couple of critics, there's one named Ryan Sutton, who is a really, really bright journalist, who knows his shit inside and out. And sometimes he's written really beautiful reviews for us, and sometimes he hasn't. And if I look back at the ones that he was more critical of, they are some of the things that, they're some of the projects that I think needed more work than others. I think he was probably right about them.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Respect. That simple. I had a guy, I had a guy criticize a joke that, or he criticized writing as lazy, and then he referenced a joke that he didn't get. So in his criticism, he missed the cleverness of the joke. But he had such confidence to criticize me, that he showcased the joke as evidence for laziness, while the joke went over his head. And I'm like, I don't even know what to do in that. You know what I mean? What do you do with that? I mean, like, how do you compartmentalize that? At this point, I'm just like, yeah, I have to give more, I have to give more energy to the people that really praise and really appreciate,

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  and like, are more aligned with like, what I think the creative vision is.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  Comics are dope because, just like chefs, they get instant gratification. You tell a joke and you know.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  You know right away.

• 1:02:34Speaker 04

  Like, I deliver the plate and it's gone. Did you like it or not? You ate it or no? Like, it's instant gratification, which is just beautiful, right? And like, it disappears. You make something, it's a disappearing art. It goes on a plate and it's consumed and it's gone.

• 1:02:49Speaker 06

  I'm curious, when you create Carbone and you go for like these, you know, old school, you know, servers, captains, faces, all these guys, where does that vision come from? Are you trying to replicate something that, you know, you went to as a kid? Or were you just trying to deviate from the trend that was happening presently? Like, where did that conviction happen?

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  Carbone was a very intentional sort of celebration. It's an Italian-American restaurant, right? So it immediately doesn't exist in the country of Italy. It's born and raised in America, like I am. So if you start to look at it, and you're telling a story. And for me, restaurants are most closely, so most closely similar to theater. You build a stage, you're telling a story, you're in costume, you're trying to make this believable play that starts at the exact same time every day, with the same cast, in same uniform, for a different audience. It's theater. And you're trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to create something that's transportive. I want to take you somewhere.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  And in Carbone's, in Carbone's perspective, it's first-generation Italian-Americans. So I say, it's Michael, it's not Vito, right? It's, it's, it's Michael. He struggles with Italian, right, in the movie, right? He can speak it a little bit, but it's not his native tongue. He's born in New York, right? This is a thing that's born in New York. It's really not recognized. It's not understood by Italians. It's our thing. So, so when did that take place? If you think about The Godfather movie, the first reference is Louis' Italian-American restaurant where he kills Salazzo. That's the 40s and 50s. So that's where I wanted to set the restaurant to that period. So then I start thinking about, okay, if it's, if it's 1950 New York, what's the music? What's the uniform? What's the menu look like? What's the server look like?

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  What's, what is, what is this? Because I want you, the customer, to walk into it.

• 1:04:40Speaker 06

  And teleport to a different place.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  And be in my play.

• 1:04:42Speaker 08

  I always appreciate thoughtfulness. Whether I, whatever, if I know you were being very thoughtful in what you did, I just really appreciate that. And I love that. And my question, kind of piggyback on what Marcus said, you had a vision, Rich had a vision. Y'all were gonna do separate things, but then you came together.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 08

  Did you take from each of yourselves who create Carbon, Tracy, whatever it was?

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  He's crazy talented. He's a better chef than I am, right? We're both chefs, but he's Better foosball player. He's a better fucking foosball player. Super talented, militant about how he goes about things. I'm much more, I live in the, I live in the margins, right? I tell these sort of stories. They don't necessarily, there's a, there's a, there's a perfection to the imperfection for me. Well, he's more like a Swiss watch. He's been trained by the best chefs in the world. He's incredible. So I've taken a little bit from him and I think he's taken a little bit from me of how we go about making something. And, and that's proven really, really, really special for us.

• 1:05:46Speaker 04

  And how the end result gets there. Because I think without either one of us, it's a really different product. But, but we approach it really differently and I didn't, you know, if there's like a chef competition, like he wipes the floor with me.

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  Do you have to say that because your restaurant is so much more successful?

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  We love you, Rich.

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  Love you, Rich.

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  Rich, we love you. We can get a reservation at eight, not 5:30. Not 10:00 PM and not at the bar. And not at that new seating that you put in front of the kitchen.

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  No, no. Okay, so obviously Carbon, it becomes super successful. How much do, how much is the game nurturing relationships with famous people because of what they bring to the success of the restaurant? I.e. Jay-Z coming into the restaurant. Justin Bieber getting rejected, humiliated outside of it. But how much is it like you nurturing those relationships?

• 1:06:49Speaker 04

  I always say that it's really flattering when they, when they come because they can call anybody, right? Like there's no door that's not going to take Jay, right? So the fact that he came tonight means that he's like, he's selected that, he's chosen to go there. So I think it's really flattering when, when we do get these sort of big celebrities and athletes. And as far as taking care of them, I think the most important thing is Making sure that you do everything you can as a restaurant, as a team to protect their privacy. You know, they're not there to be on display. You want to try to make an environment that's really nurturing for that and make sure that they're protected. The team knows that. Their anonymity is everything to me. And I think if you do that, then they respect it, put out a good product, make something they want to come back for.

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  And, you know, hopefully they'll be part of the regulars.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  How does the public find out that all these celebs are going there? If you're...

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  I think that's word of mouth.

• 1:07:40Speaker 08

  Everyone's got a phone, too.

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  I think it's like, yo, Jay-Z was at the restaurant while we were there.

• 1:07:45Speaker 06

  Have you ever had to throw a patron out because they didn't know how to act around a famous person?

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  I don't think we've ever thrown anybody out. I think we've definitely like gotten in the way of photos. Hey, I'm sorry, but Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so's having dinner. Please respect that. I don't think we've ever thrown anybody out.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Anybody that's banned?

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  We have a few banned.

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  Who's banned?

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  To get... One of the only ways to get banned in this company...

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  You think he's a rat? You think he's a fucking rat?

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  One of the only ways to get banned in the company is to treat the staff poorly.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  So who treats them the worst?

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  If you're a dick to the staff...

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  Give us some shit. Rich would tell us. Rich would totally tell us. So would Zelazny.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Snitch is gonna stick...

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  So would Zelensky. Who's the guy that...

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Zelensky is the guy that...

• 1:08:35Speaker 08

  Ukrainian?

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  No. Uh, no, Zelaznik.

• 1:08:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  Yes. So they would tell us, give us a little dirt. Who's a piece of shit to the staff? Who should we know about?

• 1:08:45Speaker 08

  That person deserves to be outed.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  They deserve to be outed. Jeff Bezos.

• 1:08:49Speaker 08

  No, Bezos is a good guy.

• 1:08:50Speaker 03

  I heard that he offered to put you in the spaceship with all the girls.

• 1:08:54Speaker 08

  Is that true? Yo, I would get so claustrophobic in the spaceship.

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. I had to do... I did the Today Show last week from a...

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  That's your concern?

• 1:09:03Speaker 04

  From a cruise ship.

• 1:09:04Speaker 08

  I'm bonding with you. I'm severely claustrophobic.

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  Yo, I can't get into this thing.

• 1:09:07Speaker 08

  If I was ever trapped in an elevator with any of them for 30 seconds, they would never respect me as a man.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  He does, seriously.

• 1:09:12Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah. Fuck that dude.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Okay, so you're not gonna give us any shit? You're not gonna give us any...

• 1:09:17Speaker 06

  Wait, but why would someone get banned? They're a dick to the staff?

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  If you like...

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  Treat the staff poorly, you cuss at them, you get drunk, you yell at them, God forbid you put your hands on them. Like, you got, you got, you know, you're never, yeah, you're never coming back. And we have, you know, we have door guys and we have security around. I mean, the restaurants are too busy and too high profile to not, um, but so the fastest way to never come back here is to mistreat the staff.

• 1:09:43Speaker 08

  And that's part of, I assume this, I was thinking the service at your restaurant is really good and I really appreciate, I'm a southern boy, so like manners mean a lot. Is that part of your 50s aesthetic, like every waiter going out of their way to do such a, it seems like there's like a show involved.

• 1:09:55Speaker 04

  I mean, I'd like to know they go out of the way because they, you know, that's their home too, right? Like you're disrespecting their home, this is where they make their money, this is their family too. The staff doesn't really turn over, they're really close as, they're a really close knit group.

• 1:10:07Speaker 08

  Do you train them to do any like, like it's kind of a show when I went to Carbone, it was like a.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  There's a certain amount of like, there's a cadence to how I want, like, and, and, and we do kind of put it in the book too. A cadence to how we talk to tables and how we take an order, but there's a way that we do it. Like Ricky's voice is basically in this book as like how we take an order. Because they're captains, they're not there to take orders, right? They're there to, they're there to guide your experience, yeah, they're there to guide your experience.

• 1:10:39Speaker 06

  When was the first time Carbone was mentioned in a rap song?

• 1:10:43Speaker 04

  First rap song, I think was Drake.

• 1:10:48Speaker 06

  Oh, that was the first one?

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  I think Drake was the first one to do it. I, I think so.

• 1:10:54Speaker 06

  And did that blow your mind? Like, how do you find out about it?

• 1:10:56Speaker 08

  That's a great question.

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, people just started texting it to me. We didn't know it was happening, of course, and, um, it's crazy, yeah, it's crazy. Like I'll be working out in the gym and like some song will come on, they'll mention Carbone, it's absolutely bananas.

• 1:11:09Speaker 06

  Did he hit you up before?

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no one's told me before, I mean, it's been, it's happened a couple of times. It was just like the cover of someone's album, someone that's on Roc Nation, like they just took a, they just took an iPhone photo in front of Carbone and it was the cover of their album.

• 1:11:23Speaker 06

  Did you talk to him since? Like, did you hit Drake up like, yo, thank you for the, thank you for the shout out?

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  I've never, I've never thanked him for it.

• 1:11:30Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:11:30Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:11:30Speaker 08

  Oh, hey, real quick, can we send our flowers, take a break from this episode, we gotta send our flowers to Volk. Alexander Volkanovski, 46 years old.

• 1:11:39Speaker 04

  Alexander the great.

• 1:11:40Speaker 06

  Forty-six?

• 1:11:40Speaker 08

  You mean forty-six?

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  Thirty-six.

• 1:11:43Speaker 06

  Why are you aging him like that? That's fucked up.

• 1:11:44Speaker 08

  I thought he was forty-six, he had a whole rugby career.

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  That's actually decent logic.

• 1:11:49Speaker 08

  Yeah, I thought I heard 46 and I was like, oh, that makes sense. You are better than me. Yeah, it's really embarrassing. It's really embarrassing.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  But no, for real, shout out to Volk, man. That was an unbelievable fight because that guy, Diego Lopez.

• 1:12:00Speaker 08

  Well, that's impressive now that I know he's not 46, but it was still really impressive. It's still really impressive.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  Nah, he's a beast, man.

• 1:12:06Speaker 08

  Yo, that guy Lopez was scary as shit.

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  Also coming off of, I think, three straight losses and two of them are knockout losses. Like, you're, you're out completely.

• 1:12:14Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  And to come back after that was awesome to get clipped during the fight and literally be blind in one eye.

• 1:12:20Speaker 08

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  I mean, I don't know if you guys watched the fight, but it was phenomenal.

• 1:12:24Speaker 08

  It was fantastic.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Like, he was just.

• 1:12:25Speaker 08

  He was like unbelievable.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Doesn't stop moving the entire fight, constantly making Lopez. And Lopez, give credit to, you know, him too. Like, he just kept coming forward.

• 1:12:34Speaker 08

  Dog, his chin is nuts.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  That motherfucker is a beast. He's gonna be around for a while. It's, uh, yeah, it was just awesome to see.

• 1:12:41Speaker 08

  But he has very much a casual, I'm watching this fight and I'm like, dude, I don't know how Volk, I don't know how our boy wins this. Cause Diego Lopez is big and he seems like he hits fucking crazy hard. And even though the, the reach difference apparently wasn't that big, uh, that wasn't that much, he looks so much bigger.

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  That's it. Volk is small, but he's got a 72 inch reach.

• 1:13:00Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  So your, your reach is usually kind of your height.

• 1:13:03Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Speaker 03

  So he's a guy, Volk is probably five, five, something like that, like.

• 1:13:09Speaker 08

  70, I think it's 70 inches and that's a guy of 5'10" normally.

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  He has a six foot reach.

• 1:13:13Speaker 08

  Wow.

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  Like, that's insane.

• 1:13:15Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  So a lot of these guys, he has that advantage and I think that's why he's able to like, did you see him pepper in him with jazz?

• 1:13:21Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  So you're, you're standing at distance with this guy who's much smaller than you and you're like, there's no way he's in punching distance and then boom, boom, catches you. But there are these moments, and this is the thing that's like about fighting, especially MMA, you, you got basically nothing on your hands. So whoever connects, the other person goes down. And there were these exchanges where they would both sit down, bite the mouthpiece. I don't know if you saw it, like Volk would come in with a one or slip and then come over the top with a two and then he'd add three more punches to it.

• 1:13:50Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Speaker 03

  And in that exchange, they're both throwing.

• 1:13:53Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  And it's not like they have their eyes closed, but you're really just throwing.

• 1:13:57Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  You're not even, you're, you're assuming the other guy's gonna throw and you're like, I hope I land first.

• 1:14:02Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Speaker 03

  And we got to watch that for five rounds.

• 1:14:04Speaker 08

  Yeah, it was a great thing.

• 1:14:05Speaker 03

  It's an insane thing to witness. Anyway, I'm just so happy for him. Even if he wants to retire right now, he doesn't have to. He has so many more, but like.

• 1:14:12Speaker 08

  He's a legend. I mean, what an accomplishment. You did it. Insane. You know, also to do it in Miami, same place where Izzy came back and took out Praneta. I mean, they're part of the same camp. Like, there's a lot of cool, there's a lot of cool vibes there. Yeah, man shouts. So, we love you, Volk. Yeah.

• 1:14:28Speaker 06

  Miss you.

• 1:14:29Speaker 08

  Never bet against Volk, that's what I said. Yeah. He did say that. He did call that. Last episode. He did call that. Never said against.

• 1:14:34Speaker 06

  That's what I said. Volk wins by decision.

• 1:14:35Speaker 08

  Yeah. Oh, wow. You were absolutely right. Fourth round?

• 1:14:37Speaker 06

  Don't check it, but.

• 1:14:38Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:14:39Speaker 06

  Decision in the first round, that's what I said.

• 1:14:41Speaker 08

  I thought he said second. Anyway, what else we got? We got NBA playoffs. Yeah, this is your time to shine. I hope the Mavs lose. Oh, Luca came back. It was crazy. Luca coming back to Dallas his first game. Oh, did you watch it? Uh, no, I couldn't watch it. I'm too sad. I'm too, I'm broken. I'm broken. Like, I'm like, I saw the video that they played after. You trade a fucking guy and then play him a, and he doesn't want to leave? Luca starts crying before the game, watching the video. This guy did not want to leave Dallas. It's the most obvious thing in the world. The only thing that made me happy is my friend went to the game and sent me, I have it on my phone, I could probably pull it up, but the "Fire Nico" chant in the arena. Crazy. Nico's the GM of the Mavericks. Yeah. Fire Nico. So fucking loud.

• 1:15:21Speaker 08

  And I'm glad at least, and I think he knows anyway, but I'm glad Luca got to see it. Like, nobody's, he got a crazy ovation. People are cheering for the Lakers. That's cool. There's still a lot of people cheering for the Mavs, like, no matter what, but apparently they're gonna lose like $100 million in revenue, they think. Wow. From this trade. And how is that? Ticket pricing? People aren't, well, they raised ticket prices twice since the trade, which is insane. Season ticket prices. People aren't renewing. Uh, I think people aren't buying as much merch now. Who's, I mean, I love Kyrie, but you're not, you're not that inclined to buy Kyrie jerseys. Also, he's injured. And he's injured. AD, you're probably not, even though he's actually good, he is always hurt, and you're always gonna look at him as the guy who they traded Luca for, so they're never gonna really. Oh, wow. So, it's just the fucking stupidest trade I've ever seen in my life. And then Luca went off for 45 on like 60% shooting. Like, he just went nuts.

• 1:16:07Speaker 08

  And I'm really, uh, this is the first time in my life I'm like rooting for the Lakers. If they won, I'd be so happy for them. Poor Akash. Yeah, yeah. You had some good wins early in your life. I'm not even worried about you. Yeah, since age 10, it's been pretty rough. All right, so who do we, who do we think wins? Like, what do you, what's happening right here in the NBA playoff picture? The West is super tight. It's like the Lakers and Wolves, I think, are the 6-3 matchup. But can anybody beat the Celtics?

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  My understanding is that just from speaking to people around the league, it's like, and this is fucked up to even put out there, but the conversation is essentially if everybody's healthy on the Celtics, they're winning it. So they're almost hoping, and this is fucked up.

• 1:16:50Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  But they're hoping for an injury.

• 1:16:52Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  Because that's the only way it happens. That sucks. That sucks. But that's, that's how dominant they believe it is. Oh shit, did the Warriors not make it in?

• 1:17:01Speaker 08

  No, they won their play.

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  They did win their play.

• 1:17:03Speaker 08

  Yeah. So they're seventh, I think. That's inaccurate. They, they barely beat the Wolves. It was a comeback. They won by like five in the end. Steph, dude, you know what? I watched Steph in the Olympics the first time I rooted for him. Everything I say about Golden State fans, I've taken back. It's the most fun thing in the world.

• 1:17:20Speaker 03

  It's incredible.

• 1:17:20Speaker 08

  It's so fun getting to root for Steph. And I was like, oh, I love this guy. I take back every negative thing I've ever said about him. He's awesome.

• 1:17:26Speaker 03

  Because your team was in the Western Conference, it was harder.

• 1:17:30Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hated him.

• 1:17:31Speaker 03

  The fact that like we are Knicks fans, you can kind of root, I won't say root for West Coast teams, but like you're not really tripping off them that much until you reach the finals. The Knicks never reached the finals. So I'm not really that worried.

• 1:17:43Speaker 08

  Also, if you're a big LeBron fan, that's the guy that was always in the way. That team was always in the way. So LeBron has eight rings if it's not for Steph and, and the Warriors. But I was like, if him and Jimmy Butler went to the finals, that'd be the greatest fucking thing. And I think they'd give the Celtics a hard time.

• 1:17:58Speaker 03

  This is the thing. Jimmy is a different player in the playoffs. Like.

• 1:18:02Speaker 08

  He went off last night in the play-in.

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  Admittedly so.

• 1:18:05Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  Like, I think I told you this. Like, he straight up told me, I was like, how many guys can actually step it up to another level in the playoffs? And he was like, there's five. And he named them. And I was like, what's the difference? He's like, yeah, during the regular season, it is what it is. And then the playoffs is like, we, we start to really lock in. And there's like five guys that can lock in. One of those guys, he said, was Joel Embiid, which I didn't even consider. And I was like, really? He goes, oh, he goes, that man is not to be played with.

• 1:18:28Speaker 08

  Wow.

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  And I, I. I don't know, like I've seen him be effective, but maybe because he's kind of slow and plodding. I guess I didn't.

• 1:18:35Speaker 08

  Yeah, I don't see that.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  View him in that way, but Jimmy's not one to bullshit about that. You know, he's seen KD, he's like, yeah, KD is crazy. Like, anyway. But Jimmy's the type of guy that's gonna win you a playoff game by himself.

• 1:18:47Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  So one of those games, he will win you by himself.

• 1:18:51Speaker 08

  I mean, he took them to the, the Heat to the finals by himself.

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  By himself. So now you get some Steph action. Let's say Draymond steps it up. I'm not saying he's gonna be scoring, but there's a different level of intensity that Draymond's gonna bring to the game in the playoffs.

• 1:19:03Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04Speaker 03

  I, I think it's very hard to count the Warriors out.

• 1:19:06Speaker 08

  And that'd be an awesome story.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Imagine.

• 1:19:08Speaker 08

  Lakers and Warriors would both be so fun.

• 1:19:10Speaker 03

  Yo, the NBA is fine this year if the Western Conference Finals, what can it, can it even look like that in the, in the?

• 1:19:16Speaker 08

  I think.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  Can it even go Lakers or are they gonna play each other before that?

• 1:19:19Speaker 08

  I think they can, because I think the Lakers are the three seed, so they play the winner of the two, seven. Oh, yeah, they play the, yeah, they play in the second round. Right?

• 1:19:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Speaker 04

  Hmm, ah, whatever. It's fine.

• 1:19:32Speaker 08

  I think though, I don't, I don't know why I don't believe in the Rockets. Maybe I just haven't watched enough this year, especially post-trade. But I don't, I think that's a very winnable series for Golden State, I think.

• 1:19:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, I think Golden State, I think, I'll tell you one thing, I think the Rockets are scared shitless.

• 1:19:45Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, this is because it's all new to them?

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  I mean, not that, it's like you know who you're going up against. And you know these motherfuckers can hoop, especially in the playoffs.

• 1:19:52Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  So it don't matter what happened during the regular season, because you got half-assed played in the regular season.

• 1:19:56Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  So you let them, not you, but like somehow they inch into the playoffs. And now the season starts over.

• 1:20:05Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  And that's the other thing that like, say what you want about the Lakers, like there were times during the season where LeBron at 40 is just carrying the team.

• 1:20:11Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  That's gonna happen for the next few weeks. You'll get fucking used to it.

• 1:20:15Speaker 08

  Yeah, he took a few nights off so he could carry the team.

• 1:20:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:18Speaker 08

  And now you got Luca too, and Luca can carry a team.

• 1:20:20Speaker 03

  And, and that's the reason why the Lakers, now defensively, I don't know what happens, and obviously in the playoffs, like you need to lock in.

• 1:20:25Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  But. Has LeBron been on a team, and I'm sure the answer is yes, but has LeBron been on a team where there was another ball handler that could also do the things he can do? Score from three, get a bucket whenever he wants, and get other people involved? Has he played with another-

• 1:20:42Speaker 08

  Kyrie, but I don't know about the getting other people involved.

• 1:20:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, Kyrie is a really good example, and then look how well that went.

• 1:20:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:49Mark Gagnon?

  Maybe D Wade a little bit on the Heat.

• 1:20:51Speaker 03

  And look how well that went. It's like, it's almost like, I mean, this is so stupid to say, like, obviously LeBron plays really well when another top five player in the league is on his team, but like, specifically like AD, he's not taking the ball up, putting himself in position and scoring.

• 1:21:04Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Speaker 03

  He kind of needs you to set him up a little bit. Luca's like, you either get out the way and I get a bucket, or you set a screen and I'm on some bum and I get a bucket.

• 1:21:11Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:21:11Speaker 03

  And LeBron is the exact same.

• 1:21:13Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  So, I'm like, I haven't even given a fuck during the regular season.

• 1:21:17Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:21:17Speaker 03

  But I'm kind of into this.

• 1:21:18Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's gonna be brutal for me to watch, but yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 06

  What about the East? What happens in the East?

• 1:21:22Speaker 03

  Ain't nobody giving a fuck.

• 1:21:23Mark Gagnon?

  Knicks, all the way.

• 1:21:24Speaker 08

  It's the Knicks, obviously. Alex has been to so many games this year, I trust his judgment. How many games you been to again? Forty, forty-one? Shut up.

• 1:21:32Speaker 08

  One? Do you been to one? Shut up. Okay, I was just curious. I was just checking.

• 1:21:35Speaker 03

  Anyway, listen, if you're gonna gamble, you're gonna put all your money on the Knicks, as you should. Steak is the leader in global betting and US social casinos. Bet all top sports and political events. Use the promo code flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now, let's get back to the show. What are the rules to sending food back?

• 1:21:51Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:53Speaker 04

  I think if you order something that has a specific in it, it's cooked to this temperature, I want it without pistachios, you know, I think, and, and it didn't, it didn't happen that way. You order an expensive steak, you want it rare, and it comes out well done, like, send that shit back. Like, that, like, that's, that, that should be sent back. That was completely mismanaged.

• 1:22:14Speaker 03

  What about a hair?

• 1:22:16Speaker 04

  I would send it back, but, I mean, like, that's, that's, that's disgusting. Should be sent back, it should be taken off the bill, it should be made right.

• 1:22:21Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:22:22Mark Gagnon?

  I kind of just, if it's not on the food, I'll just pluck it to the side.

• 1:22:25Speaker 06

  It depends how long it is. The length of the hair makes a huge difference.

• 1:22:28Speaker 03

  You're saying if it's like a full, like, your length hair?

• 1:22:31Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, if it's a whole strand, like-

• 1:22:33Speaker 03

  If I found out you got women cooking?

• 1:22:36Speaker 08

  Maybe get a little pubes.

• 1:22:37Speaker 04

  Let me find out.

• 1:22:38Speaker 03

  Dude, what is this, Therese? Rich, we love you. Okay, um, is the Italian food in New York City better than the Italian food in Italy?

• 1:22:49Speaker 04

  It's completely different. They don't even, they don't look anything alike.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  Can you get better Italian food in New York than you can in Italy? Oh, wow. This is, this is my take, but I'm really glad that you are supportive of this and you believe this.

• 1:23:03Speaker 04

  I think, I think the highest level Italian food in New York beats the highest level in Italy. All day.

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  Wow. Now, my, my, my take is that the mom and pop Italian in Italy is gonna beat the mom and pop Italian on average in New York.

• 1:23:15Speaker 04

  Accurate. I agree with that.

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  But the highest level, and I would go, not just Italian, I'd go the highest level, whatever food in New York, is gonna beat any other country. He's trying to get him swimming with the fishes right now. The only thing I would say is like, Japan is like such a, like, uh, there's such an outlier, you can't even count them. Oh, see, okay, see. It's AI, they're AI, they're AI. It's Asian intelligence. So it happens. Thoughts on that?

• 1:23:39Speaker 04

  I think, I don't think that that's totally inaccurate. I think New York is the greatest food city in the world and at the highest level, it is often better than the best in that country because it has to be.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  Wait, why does it have to be?

• 1:23:52Speaker 04

  To survive.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because there's so much competition.

• 1:23:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're in New York. If you're gonna have the best Indian restaurant in New York, it better be one of the best restaurants in the world.

• 1:24:00Speaker 08

  Jersey kinda beats out.

• 1:24:02Speaker 03

  But he likes the mom and pop Indian shit.

• 1:24:04Speaker 04

  What is Jersey beating?

• 1:24:05Speaker 03

  Look at his face. He's disgusting. I love that. He's fighting food.

• 1:24:09Speaker 08

  He's a queen.

• 1:24:09Speaker 03

  Look at that fucking.

• 1:24:11Speaker 08

  Working overtime.

• 1:24:13Speaker 03

  Working overtime, dude.

• 1:24:15Speaker 08

  Olive oil and pasta theme.

• 1:24:21Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, go, go into that.

• 1:24:22Speaker 08

  Indian food. The best Indian food is in Edison. They see Galaxy, you and I go one time, you're gonna fucking party, dude.

• 1:24:27Speaker 03

  He likes it with like, stewed with a foot, like, it's a different type of.

• 1:24:32Speaker 08

  It does taste authentic, but it's also better.

• 1:24:36Speaker 04

  Next time you're gonna bring us some.

• 1:24:39Speaker 08

  Indian food don't carry well, but if you want to come to Jersey.

• 1:24:42Speaker 04

  No, Indian food carries great.

• 1:24:42Mark Gagnon?

  It's amazing what you're talking about.

• 1:24:44Speaker 04

  The single biggest delivery food in the world is one of the worst. Pizza carries like shit. It's the biggest delivery food in the world.

• 1:24:50Speaker 08

  Dosa. Have you ever had Dosa carry out? It doesn't hit the same.

• 1:24:54Mark Gagnon?

  A curry in a bag.

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  Curry in a bag is...

• 1:24:56Speaker 08

  Butter chicken and all that's fine, but yeah, we can get that too.

• 1:24:58Speaker 04

  It's just getting better.

• 1:25:01Speaker 08

  Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah. But not veg food, which a lot of Indian food is, it's better there. We'll go there.

• 1:25:07Mark Gagnon?

  Keep bullying him on this because he's about to rock.

• 1:25:09Speaker 04

  We're not gonna go, but I would do takeout.

• 1:25:13Speaker 04

  It's not gonna be as good, but I'll take it. We'll do it. We'll do it. Let me get a Carbone takeout. But that's just not happening. Oh, why's that? I mean, we're too... It's not as good? We're too busy.

• 1:25:25Mark Gagnon?

  They're gonna take out the food.

• 1:25:26Speaker 04

  I don't need your takeout dollars. Nathan Galaxy. Nathan Galaxy don't need your takeout dollars.

• 1:25:33Mark Gagnon?

  Carbone does not need takeout dollars. I did get a Carbone takeout during the pandemic.

• 1:25:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. We kept the lights on with that one. We got shut down by the cops.

• 1:25:40Mark Gagnon?

  First time a black person ate a Carbone was a celebrity.

• 1:25:45Speaker 04

  Dude, how have you accomplished that? It's so refreshing. Lots of black people in Carbone.

• 1:25:50Mark Gagnon?

  That's not a celebrity.

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  It's not my fault you're not famous.

• 1:25:58Speaker 04

  Yo, step it up. I'm just saying, he doesn't deny it.

• 1:26:01Mark Gagnon?

  Step it up. I'm just saying, okay?

• 1:26:03Speaker 04

  Be a hedge fund manager or something.

• 1:26:06Mark Gagnon?

  I know you now, so we go.

• 1:26:07Speaker 03

  Okay, here, this is an important, this is a very important question. How do you communicate to somebody at a table that it's time to leave? Because you have another reservation without telling them it's time to leave?

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  You start taking things off the table. So slowly, one item at a time, you start taking things off the table.

• 1:26:30Speaker 08

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:26:31Speaker 04

  So the first, the first thing is you start taking things off the table. You've dropped the bill, right? That's the first move. Drop the bill. If they, if they, if the bill's on the table and they haven't paid it yet, then you're gonna slowly start taking things off the table until they realize, potentially, subliminally, oh, we probably should go. They're removing things. They may not. The next round would be like to offer them an after-dinner drink somewhere else in the restaurant, at the bar, another location.

• 1:26:58Mark Gagnon?

  So that's the emergency. That's like...

• 1:27:00Speaker 04

  Could I, can I buy you guys a drink at the bar? I need you off this table.

• 1:27:04Speaker 03

  If you have to go there, you offer, that's, that's, that's class. I'm gonna pay you to leave.

• 1:27:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Cause you're guessing, right? You're guessing the amount of time people are gonna stay and you've built this book off of that.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Speaker 04

  So if they're staying far too long, then it's gonna start screwing up the next round.

• 1:27:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why it's, it's so, just to go back to that earlier question, saying to someone, I have to leave in 45 minutes. Is very valuable to a restaurant.

• 1:27:29Speaker 04

  Incredibly valuable.

• 1:27:29Speaker 03

  It's, it's funny, like, I would do that, especially now that we have a kid. Like, if we just pop into someplace and we're just like, hey, it's two and a half. I would, I'll start it out being like, we have 40 minutes with this baby before it's time. And you'd be surprised.

• 1:27:44Speaker 04

  Your chances, your chances are gonna go through the roof.

• 1:27:47Speaker 03

  Because in that early, like, before, when is the rush? Maybe like 7 o'clock?

• 1:27:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, starts, starts around 7.

• 1:27:53Speaker 03

  So if you're in that, like, 6 o'clock range, they're scared that you could push back, I imagine, the 7s.

• 1:27:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can't, even if that table's available, it's not really.

• 1:28:00Speaker 03

  Because it's 7.

• 1:28:00Speaker 04

  It's about to get sat.

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

  But you could potentially get in and get out.

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:04Speaker 04

  And the restaurant just won a whole nother seating.

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  It's pretty money.

• 1:28:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:07Speaker 06

  Do people bring their kids to Carbone?

• 1:28:09Speaker 04

  Very rarely.

• 1:28:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't feel like a kid. But like a 5 o'clock seating?

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  We frown on that.

• 1:28:14Speaker 06

  He's trying to bring his kid.

• 1:28:18Speaker 03

  So there's restaurants, there's different, okay.

• 1:28:20Speaker 06

  What's more Italian American than bringing their kid to a restaurant?

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  Well, actually, it's, what's more Italian? I don't know. Italian American might have different. I, I'm curious, how do you communicate to people that it's not kid-friendly without saying it directly? I've seen some.

• 1:28:34Speaker 04

  Well, I think it's actually part of our reservation protocol, like, you make a reservation, the email confirmation probably says at some of the restaurants that, like, children under a certain age.

• 1:28:44Speaker 03

  So there's.

• 1:28:44Speaker 04

  Along with like shorts and sandals and shit like that.

• 1:28:47Speaker 03

  There's, yeah, some restaurants just won't have baby chairs, that's a great way of doing it.

• 1:28:54Speaker 04

  I mean, if you're like a brunch restaurant, then that's obviously a kid-friendly environment.

• 1:28:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  If you're going for like a really nice dinner. Popping out the place for an infant. How do you talk to someone that shows up in sandals? That's why we built it into, that's why we have like a backup and says, hey, listen, it's actually on your reservation. It says, you know, like proper attire.

• 1:29:14Mark Gagnon?

  Martin's really asking questions for himself.

• 1:29:17Speaker 04

  In Miami, you'll wind up sitting outside.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:29:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Speaker 03

  Oh, that's interesting. This is how you enforce the sandal requirement. There's another way of enforcing it, which my dad taught me, not about restaurants, but it was like the way that the people that work there are dressed defines how the people that attend dress. So if you have everybody that works there in tuxedos, it's hard to show up in shorts. But if everybody that works there is in shorts, and the people that show are gonna be in shorts.

• 1:29:47Speaker 04

  Can I call out somebody that refuses to wear pants?

• 1:29:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:29:51Speaker 04

  Noriega.

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  Nori wears shorts everywhere. Fucking refuses to put pants on.

• 1:29:55Speaker 04

  I don't have the old pants.

• 1:29:58Speaker 03

  Go grab me the Drink Champs heavyweight championship belt that's out there.

• 1:30:02Speaker 04

  Who's to wear pants? Like, not to the restaurant, in life.

• 1:30:06Speaker 03

  Because he's on the run eating.

• 1:30:11Speaker 04

  Carbone Noriega.

• 1:30:12Speaker 03

  You can't be, you can't be on the run if you're not in shorts.

• 1:30:15Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, you enforce the shorts rule even in Miami?

• 1:30:19Speaker 04

  You, you sit outside if you're in shorts.

• 1:30:21Mark Gagnon?

  Question based on that. Do you miss the outside dining at your New York location?

• 1:30:26Speaker 04

  Not at all. Not at all. I mean, listen, it was revenue for us. It was good revenue for us, but for the city, it had to go. It had to go.

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  Why?

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  Because there was no rules around it. These restaurants don't really have extra money to do it, right? But they need to capitalize on it. So they're building up these shanty towns in front of their restaurants.

• 1:30:48Speaker 04

  It's a horrendous look for the city. Then it breeds.

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  Thank you, Ricky.

• 1:30:52Speaker 04

  It breeds.

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  Appreciate you. What's going on here? So this is, I just did Drink Champs and I got the belt.

• 1:30:58Speaker 04

  Did you win something or you just get a?

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  No, I just put it on. He's like, nobody's ever done this all the episodes we've ever had. He goes, I want you to take this with you.

• 1:31:05Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, that's fire.

• 1:31:07Speaker 03

  So this is the Drink Champs heavyweight belt. But you know, listen, this can be with you right here. This is nice. Aw, dude. Come on.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:31:16Speaker 04

  Nice, nice piece.

• 1:31:17Speaker 08

  Here's a question. You got carbons all over the world now, or at least the country. I'm pretty sure the world.

• 1:31:22Speaker 03

  Oh, well.

• 1:31:22Speaker 08

  Yeah, how do you, how do you maintain quality, consistency?

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  It's the, it's the number one thing that I spend the most of my time on and the most difficult thing, I think, is consistency. Trying to build protocols and like, you know, WhatsApp chats and video zooming and, and digital recipes and all sorts of like, processes so that the chefs can communicate all over the world because they're all making virtually the same thing. We're spending more money and more time every year to try to get better at it. It's really hard. It's really the hardest thing. It's harder than, everyone assumes it's staffing, which is hard. But once you get, once you get good people, I think they stay because they, they want to be part of a good team and they want to make good money, right?

• 1:32:10Speaker 04

  It's, it's the consistency that is number one by far for me and the thing that, that will keep me up most of the night.

• 1:32:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, consistency is, I think, or inconsistency is the one thing that would make me stop going to a restaurant.

• 1:32:23Speaker 08

  Like, how many chances are you gonna give a restaurant? How many?

• 1:32:25Speaker 03

  One.

• 1:32:25Speaker 08

  One.

• 1:32:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Speaker 08

  One!

• 1:32:27Speaker 03

  And if it fucks up, I hesitate the next time.

• 1:32:30Speaker 08

  Why?

• 1:32:30Speaker 03

  Because there's, think about, there's like, especially when you're in New York City, there's hundreds of restaurants you haven't even tried yet. So if I keep going to the same restaurant, I'm making a choice to not go to all those other ones. And if you fuck up the meal that I'm expecting and excited to have one time, the next time I'm about to go, I'm like, shit, I might get fucked up again.

• 1:32:47Speaker 04

  It's not only the meal.

• 1:32:48Speaker 08

  Not only did I lose that customer, how many people did he tell?

• 1:32:50Speaker 06

  Oh, shit. And it's not just the meal, it's the service, it's the music, it's the table you get.

• 1:32:55Speaker 03

  Okay, okay, so you can't have the chef there seven days a week?

• 1:32:57Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  Is your A chef as good as your B chef?

• 1:33:02Speaker 04

  No, otherwise you'd be the A chef.

• 1:33:03Speaker 03

  So then how do you maintain consistency? Or maybe a better question is, what days is your A shift there?

• 1:33:10Speaker 04

  It's tough with Carbone because we're blessed to kind of have the same business almost every night. Usually what you do is you put your B chef on your B nights, right?

• 1:33:17Speaker 03

  Which is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?

• 1:33:18Speaker 04

  Sunday, maybe, depending on, depending on the location.

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  I feel like New York Sunday is a big.

• 1:33:22Speaker 04

  Sunday can be big, it depends. If you're uptown or you're midtown, the weekends are quiet.

• 1:33:27Speaker 03

  Because.

• 1:33:27Speaker 04

  Midtown's Monday to Friday.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:29Speaker 04

  Saturday, Sunday, quiet. Usually Sunday closed.

• 1:33:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33Speaker 04

  Midtown, quiet, downtown, you have a good Sunday, so you're looking at Monday, Tuesday. Best, the best nights for us in the company are Wednesday, Thursday, usually.

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  Ooh, because what, the weekends?

• 1:33:42Speaker 04

  Thursday, Thursday's like the biggest night of the week for sales.

• 1:33:46Speaker 03

  Wow. Why is that?

• 1:33:48Speaker 04

  I don't know. It's always, it's been like that for a while now. Thursday, I mean, yeah, you get a Friday. Saturday is that kind of like bridge and tunnel thing, that's a real thing.

• 1:33:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:57Speaker 04

  And it's a lower check average, it's more customers, they eat for less period of time. They spend less money, they spend less time there, so we do more reservations. It takes more customers to do the same number of revenue.

• 1:34:10Speaker 08

  They have to leave because they gotta go to Desi Galaxy.

• 1:34:12Speaker 04

  They gotta go back to the kids, the nanny, whatever.

• 1:34:15Speaker 06

  That's interesting. How do you preserve the brand? So not only is the restaurant and all the particulars of actually dealing with the day to day, but the, the brand of Carbone, like this global entity, how do you make sure that doesn't get diluted as you spread into more markets?

• 1:34:31Speaker 04

  It's a great question. I think you have to, one, be okay with a certain amount of dilution, right? You have to understand that it's no longer as potent as it was when there was one.

• 1:34:40Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:34:40Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:34:41Speaker 04

  There, you have to make peace with that.

• 1:34:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Speaker 04

  You're now on an entrepreneurial journey. And it's no longer about, I'm, I'm the chef of this one restaurant, I'm here every night, I'm gonna cook for you. Which is a beautiful thing, but when you've made that choice to, to take on a more entrepreneurial venture, you have to make peace with that to a certain degree. And now that we're growing further and further beyond that one location, it becomes consistency, you know? Can somebody on the other side of the world tonight have a very similar pasta than they will in New York? That's the, that, for me, that's all the brand, that's the brand right there, right? I can, I can, I can set the playlist, I can make the uniforms the same, I can do all of those moves.

• 1:35:26Speaker 04

  But what's gonna happen when the waiter delivers that plate of food?

• 1:35:30Speaker 03

  Is there ever a moment where you're like, this dish is too difficult to replicate the same way? Okay.

• 1:35:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Speaker 03

  And then in that circumstance, do you just reduce the level of difficulty of the dish?

• 1:35:40Speaker 04

  And what dish?

• 1:35:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I think we've done that a lot over the last few years, is trying to make things that are, I call them big bullseye, you know, like they have a big bullseye. They're, they're, they're much more easily replicable, for whatever reason, than a dish that takes a lot of in-the-moment talent. Like, the ticket comes in, I ordered this thing, and it takes a great deal of talent to make this from scratch, versus something that is predetermined to be in a big strike zone. And I have a pretty good confidence that it's gonna land somewhere here, and it's gonna be pretty tasty. Can you give us examples of big bullseye and maybe even small bullseye?

• 1:36:25Speaker 04

  Like rigatoni vodka, which, which I sell, you know, probably the most of of all the restaurants, right?

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  You call it rigatoni vodka, that's what you call your dish?

• 1:36:32Speaker 04

  Rigatoni alla vodka?

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  That everybody calls the spicy rig?

• 1:36:35Speaker 04

  Spicy, what spicy, what do we?

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  You don't know that that's what everybody calls it, the spicy rig?

• 1:36:39Speaker 04

  The spicy rig?

• 1:36:42Speaker 03

  You don't know this about you?

• 1:36:43Speaker 04

  The spicy? You don't know this about you? Tell me about it.

• 1:36:47Speaker 03

  It's like I'm finding out Hulk Hogan doesn't know about ripping his shirt off. You don't know it's called the spicy rig?

• 1:36:54Speaker 04

  With a "the"?

• 1:36:55Speaker 03

  It's so profound, it's called the spicy rig.

• 1:36:59Speaker 04

  Go to Carbone, get the spicy rig.

• 1:37:00Speaker 03

  Get the spicy rig, yeah. You're not aware that that's how people speak about it?

• 1:37:05Speaker 04

  Uh, I didn't really think that it was like it had a title like that. He's doing market research. My mind is prone. There's a prefix, there's a "the"?

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  You get this, okay. I would like to enter this discussion.

• 1:37:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:37:17Speaker 03

  I'm sure you're aware of like, the dish from different restaurants. I name a restaurant, you know exactly what it is.

• 1:37:22Speaker 04

  What's the dish?

• 1:37:23Speaker 03

  Polar bar.

• 1:37:24Speaker 04

  The burger?

• 1:37:26Speaker 03

  That's interesting, you went with burger.

• 1:37:27Speaker 04

  We're gonna go with the pastrami?

• 1:37:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:31Speaker 04

  I mean, I, I feel like it's iconic for that burger.

• 1:37:34Speaker 03

  I think the specialty burgers they do are better than the burger that's on the menu. Okay. But it doesn't matter, but the pastrami sandwich, maybe, okay. For you guys, spicy rig. Yep. I also think there's another thing for you guys, which is like, it's experiential. I think the polo bar is in that version too. A hundred percent. You're walking into a world. It's immersive. As you described it earlier, like the play is, I think that's, I haven't heard it described that way, but I think that's perfect. Yeah. Because you're getting experience the second, you're not, it's actually like, all the heavily lifting isn't on the food. The lifting has done the second you walk in.

• 1:38:11Speaker 04

  Imagine, imagine you can be Henry Hill walking in the back of Copa.

• 1:38:14Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:38:16Speaker 04

  If I can deliver that.

• 1:38:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, yeah.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  But that's a perfect shot, right?

• 1:38:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:21Speaker 04

  That's a perfect shot that Scorsese set up to have all that shit happening.

• 1:38:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:25Speaker 04

  That I have to have running for six hours, right?

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:28Speaker 04

  I have to have a six hour Fellini movie happening at all times. Where there's a guy lighting something on fire, there's a hot girl in the corner, there's something, there's an athlete over there, and then, then you walk in.

• 1:38:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:38:39Speaker 04

  And you're having that Henry Hill moment.

• 1:38:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:38:42Speaker 04

  I've gotta have that going for six hours.

• 1:38:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great. Okay, so, so, Teri, okay, so, uh, Terese, for example, what would you go with? What is the, the dish? What is the thing that speaks to you? Or just stands out?

• 1:38:56Speaker 04

  The dish there for me is, um, there's a couple. There's the Jamaican.

• 1:39:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:02Speaker 04

  The Jamaican beef patty capatelli, which we've been doing since the original.

• 1:39:07Speaker 04

  Because when we, when we built Terese.

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  Rich, did you see he just took credit for your dish?

• 1:39:11Speaker 04

  When he, when he.

• 1:39:13Speaker 03

  That's a big we.

• 1:39:16Speaker 04

  That restaurant.

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  Pomodoro, the tortellini.

• 1:39:18Speaker 04

  The tortellini is probably the one.

• 1:39:20Speaker 03

  The tortellini is crazy too.

• 1:39:23Speaker 04

  We wanted to make Italian food that was, we called it New Yorkese.

• 1:39:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:27Speaker 04

  Right? It was like, because there isn't really Italian food in Italy. It's, there's regional Italian food, and they don't fuck with the other regions, right? Like, Tuscany doesn't care about Sicily, right? There's no like.

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  They just became Italy. Before that, they're these individual.

• 1:39:39Speaker 04

  They've been Italy way less years than we've been America.

• 1:39:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  And. So we were like, what if we make our own region of Italian food that is New York

• 1:39:48Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 1:39:49Speaker 04

  So we pulled from the Jewish, the Jewish Lower East Side, we pulled from Jamaican beef patties being in pizzerias randomly. We pulled from all the German, the German low key, you know, we pulled from all of that, that was New York to make this food. That was our New York food.

• 1:40:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:05Speaker 04

  You know, we, we believe that we were doing the most Italian thing possible by not making Italian food.

• 1:40:12Speaker 03

  So what do you think the dish is for, um, for, for Carbone?

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  Brigatoni.

• 1:40:19Speaker 03

  It's the spicy rig, right?

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  And that's the one that you think is the most.

• 1:40:23Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, it's this, yeah, okay, so what I think is it's spicy rig and then the Caesar. And then I think the, not the sleeper, but the, the one that actually knocks your socks off is the veal parm. So it's like the spicy rig, everybody knows about, it's like obviously synonymous with the brand, but not everybody gets the veal parm. And then when you get it, it's like, why the fuck did anybody tell me about this one? Cause I don't think I got veal parm until maybe a few times that I went there. But also the, it's the experience with the Caesar salad. That's really fun, like having them make it in front of you, that goes back to the theater.

• 1:41:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:02Speaker 06

  Have you ever introduced a dish to any of the restaurants that didn't work?

• 1:41:05Speaker 04

  All the time.

• 1:41:06Speaker 06

  Like what's an example?

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  Give me the biggest bomb. We're comedians, we love bomb stories.

• 1:41:10Speaker 04

  Bombs are more like, no one orders it, right? Like less they order and they don't like it, more like you put all this effort into something and zero.

• 1:41:22Speaker 04

  And for, for chefs, usually it's like really chefy shit, right? Like you wanna, you wanna get, you wanna get away from the mainstream ingredients because something's in season or some things, you know, some farmer dropped something off and you're really excited about it. And you, and particularly at Carbone, because you're being bulldozed with the number one menu, right?

• 1:41:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  Everyone's now ordering through social media and like the thing you have to order to be there, right? It's so hard to sell them something else at this point. Because they need the verification of being there.

• 1:41:55Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's like Burger Crusher's machine story. So I came for.

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  I'm like, no, no, no, this thing's a, sure, get the rigatoni, but I promise you, this is great.

• 1:42:02Speaker 08

  So do you try, because you always hear something like the specials are, oh, these are older ingredients that the chef is trying to get rid of or whatever. Is sometimes the special, this dish that the chef really wants to add to the menu, maybe? And it's in the way we would try a joke at an open mic, is that what it is? Or a special is just something that you generally shouldn't mess with?

• 1:42:21Speaker 04

  No, I think specials this day and age are something that they're actually trying to work on. And it's new. I rather reprint the menu and not verbal a special. And so that when Ricky verbals things at your table, that's part of a script, like kind of a script. Because there, I want there to be a back and forth between you and the waiter. I don't want to just drop menus and then you come back and you tell me what you ordered. There's no, there's nothing, there's nothing there for me.

• 1:42:48Speaker 08

  And I think.

• 1:42:48Speaker 04

  I want a conversation.

• 1:42:49Speaker 08

  Yeah, you want the.

• 1:42:50Speaker 04

  So I force these things. I force conversational moments during the order taking. Like meatballs are not on the menu at Carbone. That's an intentional thing because as soon as you order pasta, that's a trigger for the waiter to say, you want meatballs?

• 1:43:06Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:43:06Speaker 04

  You want to put some meatballs on the table?

• 1:43:08Speaker 08

  The service feels better for me because we're having a conversation.

• 1:43:10Speaker 04

  Where you're having a dialogue, there's a back and forth happening. And you're now, all of a sudden, you're now trusting this person. You're putting the rest of your experience in their hands. Later on, you're not even gonna know, but hey, just choose some desserts for me, right? You trust them. They're captaining your experience. And it's kind of a script that we like, we laid out in the book. Cause I wanted to moralize like the language of Carbone. Cause that's how we take an order there.

• 1:43:37Speaker 06

  Are there any other secret menu items? Like you have the meatballs, obviously, they're kind of off menu, but anything else that someone could order?

• 1:43:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's, I mean, there's all sorts of like little, we call them pocket moves, right? Like things that you can do. Well, I hate when the waiter has to ask the chef. Like when the waiter says that, oh, let me ask the chef.

• 1:43:55Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:43:55Speaker 04

  I really don't like that. I hate it in my restaurants. So I try to make sure that the waiter, the waiters, the captains, they know all the things that are possible. So that when they're at a table and they're talking to you and you're like, yeah, no, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't want the prosciutto. I don't, I don't eat pork. Oh, I can do, I can do roasted peppers with the mozzarella for you. That's not on the menu, but he knows, he's like, go ask the chef. Smart. I know what I can do for you. I can do this, right? Viola Park, yeah, I'm not in the mood for Viola Park tonight. You want to do a little Milanese? We'll put, we'll put arugula salad, some tomatoes on a little. Yeah, let's do that. Great. We'll do Milanese. That, these are real waiters. These are lifelong waiters. These are not transient people that are on their way to, they're not on their way to another thing. This is, this is how they feed their family, right?

• 1:44:40Speaker 04

  So like, give them all the tools to take care of this table and let us cook. You know, that's, that's, that's the model.

• 1:44:48Speaker 03

  What are your other pet peeves for restaurants?

• 1:44:51Speaker 04

  Um, my, my, my own?

• 1:44:54Speaker 03

  Not your own restaurants, but just pet peeves in general, like you go to a place.

• 1:44:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59Speaker 03

  What do you hate and you try to avoid?

• 1:45:00Speaker 04

  I'm really sensitive to lighting and music in restaurants at this point. Um, if the lighting is really harsh or the music is just, just off, too loud, off theme, abrasive, I'm not feeling it. I'm immediately put in a weird, a weird like place. I'm not, I'm not comfortable, I'm not cozy. I want warm lighting. I want whatever the music is, I want it to be the vibe of what I think this place is. Um, and then those are my two biggest ones because that, I think that sets the tone. You know, how do I, how do I put people in their position to just kind of succumb to my thing tonight? And if you're, if you're not feeling it, you're uncomfortable, you're immediately, you're, you're in a, you're in a defensive place and I don't, I don't want that.

• 1:45:43Speaker 04

  I want you to, I want you to give in. I want you to be part of my movie. I want you to be an extra in this thing. And to give in, you have to be totally comfortable and but, but you, you've mentally bought into this thing. As soon as that guy walks up to your, to your table with giant menus, you, you're giving in. You're, you're, this is, it's in your head.

• 1:46:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the menus being huge.

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  Is a thing.

• 1:46:03Speaker 03

  Cartoonishly huge is a thing. What purpose does it serve?

• 1:46:07Speaker 04

  It felt like to me, at the time when we did it, again, we were going against...

• 1:46:13Speaker 03

  To people that don't know, can you just with your hands show how big a menu is from Carbo?

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  I mean, it's probably, you know...

• 1:46:22Speaker 03

  He's not exaggerating.

• 1:46:24Speaker 04

  Two, three feet by three.

• 1:46:25Speaker 03

  It's a small flat-screen TV.

• 1:46:27Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. It's gigantic. At the time, we were going against the micro-tasting menu. Hmm, that was like a little index card. You're here all night. It's the chef's way. There's no substitutions.

• 1:46:38Speaker 03

  No autonomy, no agency.

• 1:46:40Speaker 04

  You mean, you matter nothing.

• 1:46:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:42Speaker 04

  You matter nothing.

• 1:46:44Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:46:45Speaker 04

  And here, you know, I remember writing in Italian, like, have it, kind of have it your way. Like, it says appia c'era, like, the way you want it. If you don't see anything on this menu, tell me what you want.

• 1:46:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:57Speaker 04

  We wanted to be a yes restaurant, because that's, to me, that's what Italian restaurants are. Like, Italian restaurants by nature, especially in Italy, is a night off for mom and dad. It's because you eat so well at home.

• 1:47:10Speaker 03

  That's, wow. This is so fascinating. I never even considered that.

• 1:47:13Speaker 04

  You eat so well at home, that to go out, it's a night off for them.

• 1:47:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:19Speaker 04

  So you're just using this restaurant as a conduit to eat well, hopefully.

• 1:47:24Speaker 03

  I never considered that. In a eat-in culture like Italy, it is not surprising that both parents know how to cook extremely well.

• 1:47:33Speaker 04

  Extremely well.

• 1:47:34Speaker 03

  In America, maybe one is proficient at cooking. In my family, neither. We ordered in every single night, growing up in New York City, and we had the luxury to do that. But like, it was only like, most family, maybe one knows how to do it. In Italy, both probably. If not them, close relatives, grandparents are ready to rock. So to choose to go out, of course, the mom-and-pop restaurants are gonna have high-level cuisine, because at home, you're competing with some serious shit.

• 1:48:02Speaker 04

  You'll see legit grandmas.

• 1:48:03Speaker 03

  Wow, I never considered that. So a night off, so the only reason you would go out, it's not to have better food. We would go out to have better food, because my parents were proficient.

• 1:48:11Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:48:12Speaker 03

  You're going out to have a break from cooking and cleaning.

• 1:48:17Speaker 04

  And you're hoping it's as good as what's at home. Exactly, you're hoping, but bare minimum what you can do is not bust my balls. Yeah.

• 1:48:24Speaker 08

  And that's why probably experience is longer.

• 1:48:25Speaker 04

  I know what I'm talking about. I'm a customer that's highly edgy. I know what I want. This is. Give me this. I never considered the competition, the greatest competition for restaurants in Italy is not other restaurants. It's how you cook in your own house. That's why by and large, super fine dining in Italy is not great. You know, in my opinion, because they're competing with phenomenal base food. Of their mom and their grandma. And so they're trying to make this thing that's nouvelle, this new take on it. When the base product is fucking fantastic. And anytime that I've gone to one of those places and my wife and I have gone to Italy. You're like, why did I? It's not, it's not it, dude. It's.

• 1:49:05Speaker 08

  You need to find a nono somewhere.

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, or just go to that mom and pop restaurant that people talk about.

• 1:49:09Speaker 08

  Yeah, I've been, yeah, I own Florence. We had legit grandmas cooking the food and it was like, this is fantastic. Go watch it right now.

• 1:49:15Speaker 04

  I was 20 and I just moved to Italy and I moved to the middle of nowhere. Where? Northwestern Tuscany, Italy, Italian, English wasn't even really spoken. Modena? Uh, no, this is like north of Pisa. In like near, you're trying to like choose a town that maybe you've heard of that's near, like near Lucca. It's middle of nowhere. And I moved there to live with a family that ran, just like exactly the kind of restaurant you hope to run into when you're on vacation. The most amazing mom and pop restaurant, the family lived above the restaurant. The restaurant was on the ground floor. Their apartment was above it. I lived with the family in the extra room. How'd you find these guys? Did you seek them out specifically? Mario Vitale helped me, helped me set it up. Wow. So you're working at Bobo. And I said.

• 1:49:59Speaker 04

  You talk to Mario, you ask him, say, I really want to learn. I said, I'm from New York. I only know this food. I want to learn the origin of this whole thing. I need to train in Italy. I need to learn this. Can you help me set up? He connected me to an author who lived in Rome, who knew this family. And I lived with them for like almost two years. He saw talent in you early though, Mario? Um, I think he saw. Inaptitude for work. I don't know if I had talent back then. I know I wanted, I know I had a very high threshold for work. He's so ambition. Yeah. Okay. And what was that experience like with the mom and pop? Crazy, like life changing. Like, there's only one phone number for the whole building. So even, even if you're upstairs, like, watching the soccer match, you have to answer the phone as if it's a reservation.

• 1:50:43Speaker 04

  Right? It's your day off and you're upstairs and you're like, like, you have to take a reservation. Like, it's as mom and pop as it gets. And that was like, that total. How was your Italian at the time and how much better did it get? It was not good at all. But I, I had a, you know, this is before, like, technology in your pocket. This is 2000. Um, I had a little book in my, like, a little translator in my back pocket, a little thesaurus. And I would learn what I needed for the day. And by the time I was done, I, you know, I spoke the language.

• 1:51:13Speaker 06

  What did they think of you? I was like an Italian American.

• 1:51:16Speaker 04

  They thought I was like, they thought I was crazy, like a crazy American who works too much. Like, exactly what you would think a European thinks of an American. Why do you work so hard? Can't you just take the afternoon off? Um, it's not all about the paycheck. Like, you need to, like, you, they instill, like, the, the beauty of the process, you know? And, and a lot of it was, you know, going to the field to find the thing or visiting the farmer, like, exactly what you would think the quintessential food experience would be in Tuscany. I, I got to live that. Um, you know, a certain mushroom would come in and the chef would be like, hey, go up that road right there. You see those bushes over there? Like, yeah, he's like, there's an herb that grows over there.

• 1:52:01Speaker 04

  Pick a bunch of it and bring it over. It goes for this mushroom.

• 1:52:04Speaker 06

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:52:05Speaker 04

  You know, like shit like that that would happen to me. That's just like, as a kid from Queens, is like, as life changing as it gets. The Italian food that I knew was the Italian food I make today. Like, Italian, real Italian, greasy Italian American food. That was like, wow, this is the, this is where it comes from. This is, this is Vito Corleone.

• 1:52:21Speaker 06

  Oh, that's.

• 1:52:21Mark Gagnon?

  How do you feel about, uh, pop-up restaurants with, like, their curated, um, like, night that's a story to the night, uh, you know?

• 1:52:31Mark Gagnon?

  They have like the tables, the, what's it called, the tables that we all share?

• 1:52:34Speaker 04

  Uh, communal tables.

• 1:52:35Mark Gagnon?

  Communitables, like, how do you feel about those? Cause I feel like those are becoming way more popular. And then they try to infuse like Nigerian and Italian, like crazy mixes that you wouldn't necessarily see. But do you think it's more of a gimmick or is it like?

• 1:52:49Speaker 04

  It depends on who's doing it, but like, I think if it's great, it's great, right? Like, um, if you believe it, if you're about it, if you've put the work into it, like, why can't that be your transport of experience? It doesn't have to be mine. Mine's mine. If that's yours, then, then great, I'm all for it and I want to experience it.

• 1:53:06Speaker 03

  Okay, so you're in Italy, you're learning about the connectivity between, you know,

• 1:53:12Speaker 04

  The land, the people, yeah.

• 1:53:14Speaker 03

  And I'm sure they're teaching you some, uh, what's that saying? Dolce farniente?

• 1:53:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:19Speaker 03

  Is that it?

• 1:53:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, la dolce farniente.

• 1:53:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:21Speaker 04

  The sweetness of nothing.

• 1:53:22Speaker 03

  The sweetness of nothing.

• 1:53:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:24Speaker 03

  And you're this ambitious American. Is there any point in time where you're there that you get caught up in their appreciation of life? And you're able to kind of relax? Does some of your ambitions subside?

• 1:53:38Speaker 04

  I think I, I learned a great appreciation for how they live. I think at, at 20 years old, as someone who wanted to like tackle the world,

• 1:53:48Speaker 04

  probably not. I think I, I was just as bullish coming back to the States after that trip about wanting to, to, to be this chef entrepreneur who conquers New York more than ever. I don't think I've, I didn't really thought, I mean, I loved my like afternoons playing soccer and the old like getting four hours off between lunch and dinner. But I knew that that wasn't my life. I knew that I was coming back to Manhattan to be in the jungle and to conquer it.

• 1:54:16Speaker 03

  I, I lived in Barcelona while I was in college from 2021. And, uh, but I had a similar experience and there was this moment where I was like, Wow, this is really enjoyable, like hanging out with my friends, playing basketball together, going out, living on 10 euros a day. Five euros of the 10 was spent to get into a bar. And I got a free drink with the entrance. Like, I saw this version of a life for me, and it kind of scared me. I was like, wow, this is too comfortable. I could enjoy this, and I could do this. But there's this other part of me that was compelled to go do something, quote unquote, "great," as if that's not great. That's also great. It is interesting that, like, despite learning all those things, you still felt like the pull.

• 1:54:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:58Speaker 03

  I think that's an American cultural trait, that we don't communicate to each other enough. Europeans seem to know about us. But I almost think that it's expected of us, and we're unaware of it. We're an ambitious people, man.

• 1:55:14Speaker 04

  Laughable at times.

• 1:55:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, like, to eat, to experience that, like, cooking at the highest level, let's call that the highest level for... I mean, I imagine you really respected the cuisine.

• 1:55:26Speaker 04

  It was incredible.

• 1:55:27Speaker 03

  So, and it's a different type of it, but you still felt like that eagerness, that urge.

• 1:55:33Speaker 04

  Because for me, it was like, I knew that that was just part of my journey to get to this end goal of make it in New York. That was the only goal for me.

• 1:55:43Speaker 03

  Is that the pinnacle for... Like, what is the pinnacle for a chef?

• 1:55:45Speaker 04

  As a New York kid, training in Manhattan, my ultimate goal, which I far exceeded, which is incredible, was just like, make a name for myself in New York City, which seemed impossible. But I was gonna give it my best shot. The best chefs in the world, the best restaurants in the world, there's so many of them, there's so much noise, there's so much talent. Can I make a name for myself in this city that I've always called home? So to get that recognition from, like, The New York Times, from the biggest publications of New York, from your colleagues, from your peers, was... I couldn't have thought of anything higher. And now we're like, we've expanded far beyond New York. But for me, that was always the goal.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  What is felt better? Achieving that for yourself, or giving back to charity and letting Rich have an opportunity to do it?

• 1:56:40Speaker 04

  Love you, Rich.

• 1:56:43Speaker 06

  I'm curious about that.

• 1:56:44Speaker 03

  Rich, we love you.

• 1:56:45Speaker 04

  Love you, Rich.

• 1:56:46Speaker 03

  We love you, Rich.

• 1:56:47Speaker 06

  Remind me the name of the restaurant you and Rich worked at. Cafe?

• 1:56:50Speaker 04

  No, no. No, with the original one or the one that they built together?

• 1:56:53Speaker 06

  That you all met.

• 1:56:54Speaker 05

  Cafe Balut.

• 1:56:54Speaker 06

  Cafe Balut. So in the way Cafe Balut curated you, Rich, David, has Carbone curated any new restaurateurs that have gone off and made a name for themselves?

• 1:57:04Speaker 04

  There's a great chef named Luciana who's in Miami. She was originally from Miami. She opened Carbone with us in New York, who's opened a handful of restaurants in Miami, who's been really successful. But by and large, I'm really proud that most of the great talent in the company

• 1:57:20Speaker 06

  Has stayed.

• 1:57:20Speaker 04

  Has risen within the company. So the people that run this company, like the top 10 people in this company, have been there since almost the beginning. They're partners in the company. They have ownership in it. And they've been there forever. So I'm really proud that they haven't had to leave. And we've grown fast enough to where even their ambitions were met within the walls of the company.

• 1:57:51Speaker 03

  This with the twist right here?

• 1:57:54Speaker 03

  It's really good.

• 1:57:57Speaker 06

  Have you been over served?

• 1:57:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. I've never had a martini with a twist.

• 1:58:00Speaker 06

  Do you have any more, like, restaurant tips that you gave, like with the champagne, with the wine glass? Or maybe even?

• 1:58:08Speaker 03

  How can we seem classy?

• 1:58:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:10Speaker 05

  I heard my name.

• 1:58:11Speaker 03

  Ricky, this is not dirty, the one with the twist. So what's in it? Just tell me, break that down for me. I've never had a martini with a twist.

• 1:58:18Speaker 05

  Martini with a twist, nice. He just is a little stir. Makes a nice little vermouth, and he gives you a little nice spritz with a lemon twist. Simple. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

• 1:58:34Speaker 04

  Are you married?

• 1:58:35Speaker 05

  Yes, I am married.

• 1:58:36Speaker 04

  Oh, really? You see the ring, dude.

• 1:58:37Speaker 03

  For how long?

• 1:58:38Speaker 04

  Oh, I didn't see it.

• 1:58:39Speaker 05

  10 years.

• 1:58:39Speaker 03

  Wow, what's his name?

• 1:58:43Speaker 05

  Let me check, let me go check.

• 1:58:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:58:46Speaker 05

  Anybody else see something else?

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  A little something, yes please. A little something, we need a little something.

• 1:58:53Speaker 04

  Make me some Garibaldi's.

• 1:58:54Speaker 05

  Garibaldi's, right away chef.

• 1:58:55Speaker 04

  Giuseppe Garibaldi. The patron saint of the Italian Americans.

• 1:58:58Speaker 08

  So, yo, I think you guys-

• 1:58:59Speaker 04

  Don't tell Sinatra.

• 1:59:02Speaker 08

  You guys had a question, let me ask one real quick. If you're a tourist coming to New York, let's say you try to go to Carbone, you can't, Sidell's, Tracy, you can't. Where else can you go, if you're like, yo, this is what I would tell any tourist, this is the best places to eat in New York, to experience the city?

• 1:59:15Speaker 04

  I would send them to Katz's.

• 1:59:16Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Good call.

• 1:59:18Speaker 04

  It's very hard to find a restaurant that embodies New York quite like Katz's.

• 1:59:23Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:59:23Speaker 04

  I would send them to Katz's, maybe Peter Luger's.

• 1:59:25Speaker 03

  My dad's 84 years old, and his family would go to Katz's.

• 1:59:29Speaker 04

  I mean, it's, and it's still fucking great.

• 1:59:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33Speaker 04

  Like, complain all you want for what it costs, it's incredible.

• 1:59:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:37Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:59:38Speaker 04

  It's one of the few old school places that are still around, that are putting out product as good as they have since day one, it's incredible.

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  Well, let's go through it, best pizza in New York City. Let's break some hearts right now.

• 1:59:53Speaker 04

  So, I'm gonna put Luca Lee up there-

• 1:59:56Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:59:56Speaker 04

  Because Mark's my cousin.

• 1:59:57Speaker 03

  That's your cousin?

• 1:59:58Speaker 04

  Basically.

• 1:59:59Speaker 03

  He's been shot so many times. I didn't realize that he's been shot so many times.

• 2:00:04Speaker 04

  Him in 50, yeah.

• 2:00:05Speaker 03

  We were hanging out at, do you know, you know Wayne, Wayne Boych?

• 2:00:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:00:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, we were at Wayne's house, we're for this paddle thing, we gotta get you on paddle, you're on tennis, I don't know why you're playing tennis.

• 2:00:14Speaker 05

  Oh, a real sport.

• 2:00:15Speaker 03

  It's like using a typewriter. You gotta go with what's new.

• 2:00:18Speaker 04

  It's like the 1950's.

• 2:00:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, that's right, you're trying to have like an immersive experience when you're doing sports.

• 2:00:22Speaker 04

  It's like ping pong for adults, for sure.

• 2:00:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. People like ping pong, China's taking over. So, so with, and we're hanging out there, and we're talking, he starts telling me a story about how he got shot up.

• 2:00:34Speaker 04

  He got stabbed.

• 2:00:36Speaker 03

  Stabbed.

• 2:00:36Speaker 04

  Stabbed.

• 2:00:37Speaker 03

  You know, it's funny, he would lie and make it a gun.

• 2:00:39Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, he got stabbed like 20 times.

• 2:00:42Speaker 05

  Jeez.

• 2:00:43Speaker 08

  Yo, tell your shit.

• 2:00:44Speaker 03

  Ah, hold on a story. He'll tell the story. We gotta get him on, so that's your cousin?

• 2:00:49Speaker 04

  I told him, I was gonna tell him to come to today, it would have been funny.

• 2:00:53Speaker 03

  I mean, it would have been great. So like, what type of cousins are you? Are you cousins like, how are you cousins?

• 2:01:00Speaker 04

  Cousins like, cuz, like, we're cousins.

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:01:02Speaker 04

  I dated, I dated his cousin for a short period of time, too.

• 2:01:06Speaker 03

  Isn't that your cousin?

• 2:01:07Speaker 04

  Not my cousin. That's his cousin. Their cousin, but that's his cousin. We're like cousins, but like, we're cousins.

• 2:01:12Speaker 03

  Alright, we're not gonna ask him.

• 2:01:14Speaker 04

  I also love Lindisfree, Lindisfree's phenomenal, that's great.

• 2:01:17Speaker 03

  Okay, okay, okay, best burger?

• 2:01:20Speaker 04

  Best burger, I love the, I love the aged burger at Minnetonka Tavern, I still love that burger.

• 2:01:27Speaker 04

  And I'm gonna throw in, uh, hometown, uh, I'm gonna throw in Red Hook Tavern.

• 2:01:33Speaker 03

  It's unbelievable, it's the best burger I've ever had in my entire life.

• 2:01:35Speaker 04

  Billy Durney, shout out Billy Durney.

• 2:01:36Speaker 03

  Shout out Billy, Billy's the fucking man, dude.

• 2:01:38Speaker 04

  Fucking incredible.

• 2:01:39Speaker 03

  Sushi?

• 2:01:40Speaker 04

  Sushi, Sushi Naus, incredible.

• 2:01:44Speaker 03

  That's on the Upper East?

• 2:01:45Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:01:45Speaker 03

  I did not like it.

• 2:01:46Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:01:47Speaker 03

  You know what's interesting, when I was doing some research for you, I, when Carbone got its first review, I think it was from either New York or Time House, you were like, second best restaurant, not first review, but one of your reviews, second best restaurant. And your second best restaurant to Sushi Nakazawa. And I confused it with Naus at first, and I was like, I couldn't believe, I told my wife, I'm like, are you kidding me, what the fuck? I will say, Sushi Nakazawa was fantastic.

• 2:02:14Speaker 04

  Nakazawa's great.

• 2:02:15Speaker 03

  It is fantastic. I did not like Sushi Naus, I liked, I preferred Carbone to Sushi Nakazawa, but I will say that I thought Sushi Nakazawa, and I'll tell you why. The waiter there had this encyclopedic knowledge of the sake. And he was this Korean guy, like, he wasn't even Japanese, he was telling me the different ways each of this, he could have been making it up, dude.

• 2:02:38Speaker 04

  Probably was.

• 2:02:39Speaker 03

  But it was phenomenal, and it was like transporting me, there was an experience there that was, that was really good. So that place was good, okay, so best sushi, you say Naus, really, I did not like Naus at all.

• 2:02:49Speaker 04

  Nakazawa's a great call, I'll take Nakazawa.

• 2:02:52Speaker 03

  Okay, um, hmm, Chinese.

• 2:02:58Speaker 04

  Cafe China, Szechuan, spicy as fuck.

• 2:03:02Speaker 08

  Indian food.

• 2:03:02Speaker 04

  I love, I love, I love Szechuan. Cafe China.

• 2:03:05Speaker 08

  Indian food.

• 2:03:06Speaker 04

  Indian food. Well, we're about to get Jim Kana from London, which is my favorite Indian food in the world. Have you been to Jim Kana?

• 2:03:13Speaker 08

  You're the whitest person.

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  That's not, that's made by brown people.

• 2:03:21Speaker 08

  I mean, it's, listen, they were so kind when I went there, but it was not meant for, the spice level was nonexistent, I will say. How was the quality of the meal? It was cool, but it's like venison, biddy on it, and like, oh, that's cool, but like, just give me the, give me this good stuff, you know what I mean?

• 2:03:37Speaker 04

  You want the street stuff?

• 2:03:39Speaker 03

  He wants an armpit.

• 2:03:40Speaker 08

  I don't want the street stuff. Going back to Jersey. I, I am telling you.

• 2:03:44Speaker 03

  He also doesn't like anything popular, like he immediately rejects it because it's popular.

• 2:03:48Speaker 04

  He hates Drake.

• 2:03:49Speaker 08

  I just said Theresa's best dining experience I had in New York City.

• 2:03:53Speaker 03

  How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that?

• 2:03:56Speaker 04

  Rich, did you hear that, Rich?

• 2:03:57Speaker 05

  It's not boating well.

• 2:04:00Speaker 08

  Aw, thank you, good sir.

• 2:04:02Speaker 05

  Garibaldi for chef. This is a garibaldi.

• 2:04:04Speaker 08

  Oh, what is that?

• 2:04:04Speaker 05

  This is orange juice, uh, Campari and a little bit of Aperol. Whip it up.

• 2:04:10Speaker 08

  Really? Could I try one of those?

• 2:04:11Speaker 05

  Absolutely, on the way.

• 2:04:12Speaker 08

  Thanks so much. I'm trying. Second to the drinking, if you're trying.

• 2:04:18Speaker 08

  He's gonna get me one, he's gonna get me one, he's gonna get me one.

• 2:04:20Speaker 03

  Okay, what about Mexican?

• 2:04:22Speaker 04

  Mexican, I just opened a great Mexican restaurant.

• 2:04:24Speaker 08

  Where, where?

• 2:04:24Speaker 04

  In Miami.

• 2:04:25Speaker 08

  What is it?

• 2:04:26Speaker 04

  It's called Chateau, it's an old French chateau that we made this like really dope Mexican restaurant out of. Cause I've, I actually got a chance to spend a bunch of time in Mexico.

• 2:04:35Speaker 08

  Mexico City?

• 2:04:36Speaker 04

  Mexico City, but traveling around a little bit to other regions as well.

• 2:04:40Speaker 04

  My favorite Mexican here, I mean, Cosme is amazing.

• 2:04:43Speaker 08

  Cosme is incredible.

• 2:04:45Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 2:04:45Speaker 03

  I heard that place.

• 2:04:46Speaker 08

  I know that that is the Jim Kana.

• 2:04:49Speaker 08

  The Jim Kana of Italian from India.

• 2:04:51Speaker 03

  Enrique, I thought Enrique is like a really respected chef.

• 2:04:54Speaker 08

  Legit, legit, legit. Yeah.

• 2:04:56Speaker 03

  I thought, I thought, I think Cosme is, I think they got one of the best desserts in the city.

• 2:05:00Speaker 08

  Oh, the corn?

• 2:05:00Speaker 03

  The corn, corn husk, it's, it's.

• 2:05:02Speaker 08

  It's incredible. That's one of the best dishes in the world.

• 2:05:06Speaker 03

  Really?

• 2:05:06Speaker 08

  That's one of the, I mean, I'd put that in like one of the 10 best dishes in the world.

• 2:05:10Speaker 03

  Bro, that's another thing, like Mexico City specifically, as just a world, I always say this, it's, it's a world-class city. Like you can't think of it any differently than you think of New York, Paris, Rome, like.

• 2:05:20Speaker 04

  Especially when it comes to dining. Like Pujol, did you go to Pujol? Yeah. Unbelievable. Pujol is incredible. Contra Mar, Pujol. Even like their old breakfast spots like old Cardinal. Like the old school Mexican breakfast spots like like the Sedels of Mexico City. They're incredible. Yeah. Okay. Best chocolate chip cookie in the city?

• 2:05:43Speaker 04

  I don't know if I have an answer for that. I don't know if I've done a lot of chocolate chip cookie research. Are you a sweets guy? I am a sweets guy. I'm a sucker. Italians are suckers for like sweet breakfasts. I don't know why. It's like they're a big pastry coffee culture. So I think I'm a sucker for that stuff, too. Like all things from donuts to like all things croissant. I love all that shit. Best bakery then?

• 2:06:06Speaker 04

  Best bakery? They're talking my fat ass languages.

• 2:06:11Speaker 04

  Bakeries.

• 2:06:12Speaker 03

  Is this hard since you know all these people? Like, is it like asking us who the best comedians are?

• 2:06:17Speaker 04

  No, there's a bakery in Brooklyn called Apartment 4F. That's great. Oh, I've heard of this place. They make some really incredible pastries and breads. Yeah. Balthazar's Bakery I've always loved. Yeah, it's fire. Always loved that. I love the old school donut shops like Peter Pan. Oh, Peter Pan's great, yeah. I love donuts. I fucking love donuts. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:35Speaker 03

  If you were to go to an Italian restaurant, you needed to judge the quality of the food with one dish?

• 2:06:40Speaker 04

  Ooh, great.

• 2:06:40Speaker 03

  What would you order?

• 2:06:41Speaker 04

  Great question. I would order like a dry pasta. Not a fresh pasta, a dry pasta. It's trickier to make. So something like a spaghetti or penne rigatoni, a dry pasta. Cooked perfectly, cooked from scratch, au dente, sauced right. It's trickier than it takes a certain touch of someone that really knows what they're doing. Oh, interesting. Fresh pasta is easier. It's more forgiving. It's soft, it's luxurious. It only cooks in a few seconds. It's good with just plain butter. It's harder with a dry pasta. It's trickier. That's interesting.

• 2:07:19Speaker 03

  What is the thing on the menu at Carbone?

• 2:07:24Speaker 03

  That you think people should order. Like the thing you're most proud of that people aren't ordering as much as the spicy rig.

• 2:07:33Speaker 04

  Are pork chops. We serve great pork chops, but because of the veal parm. I don't eat beef, so that's what I'll do. Um, we serve a fantastic, big, thick cut pork chop with vinegar peppers, like, which is a classic Italian-American dish. Um, that I order a lot when I'm there as a customer. Um, which is really important to be a customer, like to sit in the seat of a customer. Yeah. Uh, I get, I get a whole different set of notes than I do when I'm in the kitchen. But pork chop with vinegar peppers.

• 2:08:05Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 2:08:06Speaker 04

  Great dish.

• 2:08:07Speaker 03

  That's the one. All right. What about at Terese?

• 2:08:10Speaker 04

  A dish that doesn't get ordered that often. Um.

• 2:08:18Speaker 04

  His menu's smaller. He, he sells a lot of everything. The duck, the duck at Terese. Hmm, I've heard. He's a duck master. We used to have, we should probably shouldn't say this, but we used to have.

• 2:08:30Speaker 04

  So when, when, when we first opened Dirty French on the Lurie side. Thank you, sir. Rich had developed a technique for cooking duck. Where the duck had to age for 30 days like beef. And what would happen was the skin got super dry and crispy when you cooked it. But also that it tenderizes the meat, just like it does with beef. We were selling a lot of duck. We couldn't hold all the ducks we needed in the restaurant to age them for 30 days. So we, we, we rented an apartment across the street. You know what? On Ludlow, across the street from the restaurant. And the landlord didn't care at all. Like I, the landlord had no idea what we were doing. We, we, one, we just moved refrigerators. We, there's no furniture. It was just refrigerators in an apartment across the street on Ludlow Street.

• 2:09:15Speaker 04

  And, and ducks hanging. Wow. Throughout the apartment, aging in this apartment across. And then every day at four o'clock, you'd see a cook come out. With just a tray of ducks from this apartment into the restaurant.

• 2:09:28Speaker 03

  And it just sounds like a racist conspiracy. These Chinese people are hiding ducks in apartments downtown.

• 2:09:34Speaker 06

  Don't say that. Meanwhile. Meanwhile, there's rich trees. How often are restaurants hacking the margins? Where you try to take an item that's gonna sell well, but it's also the cheapest to make, but you price it the highest? Or like, they'll do this with wine sometimes. Sometimes they'll make like, the cheapest wine, or one of the cheaper wines more expensive to try to like, create a psychological effect.

• 2:09:53Speaker 03

  Have you heard about this? It's like what movie theaters used to do? Where they charge a certain amount for the small Coke, and then the medium, and the large.

• 2:10:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:10:03Speaker 03

  Are you guys doing that with wine?

• 2:10:05Speaker 04

  I mean, no, we're trying to apply a pretty... You don't apply, like, for us, for example, we don't apply the same price structure to an expensive bottle of wine as you do to a less expensive bottle of wine. So you're, generally you're looking at like, a three-time markup on a less expensive bottle of wine, a hundred dollars or less. And then as it gets more and more expensive, the markup becomes smaller.

• 2:10:28Speaker 04

  So like, if it costs us five hundred dollars, we're not charging fifteen hundred dollars. We're probably charging closer to a thousand dollars on it. While a bottle that costs us thirty, we might charge ninety. Right? So there's a greater threshold on a less expensive bottle than there is on a more expensive bottle. Those margins are critical to the survival of a restaurant. Because at the end of the day, the final number at the bottom is generally a really small... Everyone, like, if you know anything about restaurants, you know that it's, they're generally gonna close, and that you don't make a ton of money. So, that money that's made in alcohol is critical to the life of a restaurant. Also, it's, as opposed to food, it's non-perishable, right? Like, if you fucked up and you ordered forty ducks this week,

• 2:11:11Speaker 04

  and only twenty people ordered the duck, like, you're gambling on something that's very perishable, right? Now you're eating it for staff meal, and you lost money. So it's a very fine dance with food and perishable items to get the number right, so that they don't come to the table and like, "Sorry, we're out of the duck tonight", or "We eat it for staff meal". What's in between those two is like, really knowing how to run this business. And it's a fine dance.

• 2:11:35Speaker 06

  If you're on a date with a girl, like, let's say you've gone on a couple dates, you get a reservation at Carbone, you really wanna impress her, is there anything you can do internally to send like, a message to, to really like, blow her mind? Like, something with like, dessert, but not like, corny?

• 2:11:48Speaker 04

  You wanna send a message to her?

• 2:11:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, if you wanna like, you know, have a good experience.

• 2:11:53Speaker 04

  I'm sure there's some people listening.

• 2:11:54Speaker 03

  Mark's never been on a fucking.

• 2:11:55Speaker 04

  I'm sure there's some people listening.

• 2:11:57Speaker 03

  He married the first, first girl he met. He married the first girl.

• 2:12:00Speaker 04

  I'm taking a Carbone. I would go back to the implementing the bring a beer rule. Like you're going out on a date and you, you, you carry like this gift to the kitchen. And then, and she's, she wants them like, what are you doing? Why you got like a 12 pack Coors Light? Like, oh no, it's, I just, it's a thing that we do for the guys. And like, that's going to put you in a position of like, this, who is this guy? He's a regular, he's a regular. He got a Carbone reservation and he knows this place so well that he brought beers for the kitchen. Yeah, that's fair. And then all of a sudden they're going to start sending extras out, compliments of the chef. Now you look pretty great. Right. So I would, I would go back to that, that strategy.

• 2:12:35Speaker 03

  Tell me about this F1 thing.

• 2:12:38Speaker 04

  F1 is our fourth year of doing it. I mean, obviously, you know, Miami is at its like capacity that weekend. The city's crazy. So the first year we were sort of like, okay, well, if the restaurant's so full, maybe we can do something else. Like there's, there's such a, there's such a demand for this weekend. What can we do that's like over the top to meet the weekend? So we kind of devised this idea of like throwing this like really elaborate supper club, dinner party, where there's a performance, there's a house bands, Ricky sings.

• 2:13:10Speaker 03

  Ricky can sing?

• 2:13:11Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, he's a, he's Sinatra. No way.

• 2:13:14Speaker 03

  Ricky?

• 2:13:15Speaker 04

  What's your favorite Sinatra song? Oh, My Way.

• 2:13:18Speaker 03

  My Way, without a doubt, yeah.

• 2:13:20Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 2:13:21Speaker 03

  But he could also fly me to the moon.

• 2:13:23Speaker 04

  He'll give you, I mean.

• 2:13:24Speaker 03

  But keep going, keep going.

• 2:13:25Speaker 04

  He loves a good saloon song. He loves a good sad song.

• 2:13:27Speaker 03

  Like what?

• 2:13:28Speaker 04

  You gotta bring him out. That's like. He can bust that one out.

• 2:13:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, we got three, we got three good ones. Okay, but tell me. Do we have any sashitas?

• 2:13:38Speaker 04

  But go on. So there's like about four or 500 people that come. We build this giant, amazing tent on the sand of Miami Beach. There's a headlining performer every year. The very first one we ever got was Andrea Bocelli, which was crazy.

• 2:13:52Speaker 03

  Wow. Wait, what, uh, where in Miami Beach?

• 2:13:55Speaker 04

  It's on basically 21st and Collins on the beach.

• 2:13:58Speaker 03

  Where is that close to? What hotel?

• 2:13:59Speaker 04

  It's like right where all the hotels are. So like right behind the Satai.

• 2:14:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:14:04Speaker 04

  On the actual sand, we build the kitchen, the whole thing, Friday, Saturday, Sunday night. In conjunction with F1 and it's it's pretty great. I mean, it's like it's a Carbone meal, but like plus plus plus. It's like Carbone meets a form of the 12 Caesars. It's like really over the top.

• 2:14:21Speaker 04

  And add all the live music, a giant, you know.

• 2:14:25Speaker 04

  Ice sculpture, raw bar, and we throw everything at it.

• 2:14:28Speaker 03

  How does the average person go to something like this? Impossible.

• 2:14:31Speaker 04

  No, I mean, you first MX sells their tickets through, you know, you can buy tickets through them. You can buy tickets through us. You can get them, you know, at, you know, majorfoodgroup.com. You can get them through our, you know, all the individual restaurants. We sell them on Instagram, you know, Saturday, I think Saturday sold out, but we still have tickets for Friday.

• 2:14:49Speaker 05

  I went to F1 Miami, I think, two years ago. That was the place to be.

• 2:14:54Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:14:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:55Speaker 04

  Like the last performance last year was Lauryn Hill and it was one of.

• 2:15:00Speaker 04

  We got Lauryn was one of the great ones we've ever had, but we've had some amazing ones, but Lauryn brought the house down.

• 2:15:05Speaker 03

  She's one of my favorites ever.

• 2:15:06Speaker 04

  Brought the house down.

• 2:15:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. What do you, what do you, what's next? What do you want? You've achieved all the dreams.

• 2:15:14Speaker 04

  I don't have a lot of wants. It's it's amazing. I mean, like, things are fucking amazing. I mean, I've far exceeded my own expectations.

• 2:15:22Speaker 03

  Thank you, sir.

• 2:15:23Speaker 04

  He's got the orange, he's got the orange handkerchief for Frank.

• 2:15:26Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We got a little light.

• 2:15:28Speaker 04

  We got a little light. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

• 2:15:31Speaker 03

  I've heard that you have a phenomenal voice.

• 2:15:33Speaker 05

  I sing a little bit. That's very kind of you to say, but I'm a huge fan of the American popular songbook.

• 2:15:38Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 2:15:39Speaker 05

  And, you know, music has been a big part of my life and my family, and we used to sing around the house growing up. So I figured I might as well give it a shot.

• 2:15:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, whatever, whatever you love. I mean, we would love to hear something. Where are you from?

• 2:15:50Speaker 05

  I'm from Yonkers, New York.

• 2:15:52Speaker 03

  Oh, no way. Okay, what is, what is your, what is the song? The song that you would go to, the song that lights up the house?

• 2:16:00Speaker 05

  Well, there's many, but just to give you, you might hear a little something now.

• 2:16:03Speaker 03

  Please.

• 2:16:04Speaker 05

  Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars.

• 2:16:11Speaker 05

  Let me see what life is like on Jupiter and Mars. You know, something like that. In other words. In other words, hold my hand, my man. In other words, baby, kiss me. You know, we do something like. What about, what about, what about that's life? Oh, yeah, that's one of my favorites. Oh, give us some of that, dude. Yeah, that's life. That's what all the people say. Wow. You're riding high in April, shot down in May. But I know I'm gonna change that tune. When I'm back on top, on top in June. Oh, I could keep going.

• 2:16:54Speaker 05

  It was my pleasure. Thank you so much. Ring ding ding, you know what I mean? Yeah, fucking legend, dude. He's great. He's awesome.

• 2:17:01Speaker 04

  Have you had princes come to eat? But like royalty or like a, like a shake or something?

• 2:17:06Speaker 05

  What's the weirdest request? Yeah, Jay-Z's been to the restaurant.

• 2:17:09Speaker 04

  We had, we had, you know, Obama, when he was still sitting president, come in. Which was as. New York, New York? New York, yeah, to have him as the sitting president. Eat at the restaurant and the protocol that goes around that is bananas. Okay, what's the protocol? Well, I was the only, I was one of the only people that knew about it. So I was pretty convinced that they were watching my phone. So I didn't tell anybody. Because it was an, so that night it was unannounced. So no one knew that he was supposed to be there. So at that point, Secret Service deems anyone that's in the restaurant to be safe. Because they don't know it's happening. So they don't, they don't, they don't need to check that, right? Interesting. So the second that he shows up, then, then, then they go full. They shut down all communication, all phones stopped working.

• 2:17:55Speaker 04

  They set up a metal detector outside. Someone, someone goes to every exit downstairs throughout. There's someone in the kitchen with me. And immediately, the second he walks in, then things sort of shut down. But it was amazing. He walked in, the place went absolutely bananas. And so to have him there as the sitting president of the United States. And he's been back since, but like to have him there that night was pretty unbelievable. Does he order? Or does he say, give me your best hits? We, they ordered for the, someone at the table ordered for everybody. And he ordered his drink, which was a dirty, dirty, I think he's a dirty gin martini.

• 2:18:37Speaker 04

  So all the, the only thing he ordered was his cocktail, but everything else just came out.

• 2:18:40Speaker 03

  So you, you, does he speak on any of the dishes?

• 2:18:44Speaker 04

  Uh, I went to the table, I said hi to him. Um, he's unreasonably cool for President of the United States. Um, he got up at the end of the night, he kind of addressed everybody in the crowd, which is amazing.

• 2:18:56Speaker 03

  Where do you seat him in the restaurant?

• 2:18:57Speaker 04

  Uh, we have one table in the back that's like topped.

• 2:19:00Speaker 03

  To the left.

• 2:19:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, topped all the way up, so that you, you know, the most unbothered of all the locations.

• 2:19:07Speaker 03

  And but when he stands up, he knows that everybody's looking at him.

• 2:19:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, it was like standing ovation, like.

• 2:19:14Speaker 06

  Every night for dinner.

• 2:19:15Speaker 04

  So here's the thing, I, I was at, I was at the Comedy Cellar once and like, uh, Madonna was upstairs. She actually went on stage and did some comedy I didn't watch, but she was upstairs. And it was like a very weird experience because the gravitational pull to her, like, any conversation you and I would be having was a pretend conversation as we like, through the side of our eye, watched Madonna. And the fact that he would get up and just acknowledge that, I think is quite honorable. Like, it's the most authentic thing you can do, because you know everybody's fucking staring at you the entire time.

• 2:19:47Speaker 06

  You finish, you're like, everyone can have a look.

• 2:19:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:49Speaker 06

  And then I'll leave. Does someone taste Obama's food?

• 2:19:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, great question. There was a person in the kitchen that, um, all they, you know, they, they have like a whole, like kit with them, a giant briefcase. Um, and all that they asked of me that night was to let them know when we were preparing his food. And he got real close to kind of the preparation of it, but I don't remember them like tasting it ahead of time. I thought they were going to.

• 2:20:11Speaker 06

  That briefcase is doing something.

• 2:20:13Speaker 04

  There's like a whole, yeah, there's a whole kit of something in that briefcase that never came out.

• 2:20:18Speaker 03

  Did Daniel Boulud ever congratulate you, validate you, give you your flowers? Is, was there ever a moment that he had with you that was really important to you?

• 2:20:31Speaker 04

  Well, we're very close now still, which is great with Danielle and Jean Georges.

• 2:20:36Speaker 03

  Danielle, sorry.

• 2:20:39Speaker 04

  You know, it's important for Rich and I that we're close with that generation because they were our heroes. And they're still operating at a really high level, which is amazing. Rich was even closer to Danielle because he had worked there for like far more years than I had. So that relationship's really important to him, but it's important to me as well. He definitely gives us our flowers, as does JG, Jean Georges. And I think that that relationship means the world to us because those coming up, reading the review every Wednesday in the New York Times as kids to see who got reviewed and to see their names and to eventually work with them and now to be their kind of colleagues and peers

• 2:21:21Speaker 04

  is everything.

• 2:21:21Speaker 03

  Have you ever had a personal moment with him where he's like, hey, I'm really proud of you? Or even Mario, any of these people?

• 2:21:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I've had, I've had, I've had a lot of moments with Mario. I spent a lot of years with Mario. I've had moments with, you know, Danielle telling him that story about like the resume and having that moment with him where I get to tell him that story.

• 2:21:40Speaker 03

  What'd he say?

• 2:21:41Speaker 04

  You know, he doesn't remember it, but he loves that that happened. He loves that we're alumni. That means a lot to him. So to see the pride that we came from his kitchen, that we made it, is the greatest possible reward for us. That goes back to that, we made it in New York and that was the biggest thing we could have ever imagined.

• 2:22:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22:03Speaker 04

  I never thought about a restaurant in Hong Kong. I just wanted to be, I wanted to be big here.

• 2:22:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Have you ever been asked? Oh, real quick, and then with Rich specifically. In, you have to have an ego to be a chef. But you and Rich seemingly have navigated the fact that you both have a lot of ambition and egos and have built this like incredible company. Maybe with Zelensky, he did a little bit or whatever. But we love you, Jeff, Jeff.

• 2:22:31Speaker 03

  But I don't like a lot of times bands break up.

• 2:22:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:35Speaker 03

  You guys have done this thing. Like, I imagine there's been difficult times. But has there ever been any reflection where you both look back and you're like, "Holy shit, we both got big egos. We're like really ambitious. We're really confident, but we managed to kind of stick together and build out this amazing company." Do you talk about that ever?

• 2:22:50Speaker 04

  We talk about it from time to time, for sure. I mean, there's definitely moments, especially because you're creating something, so you're sensitive to it. So when there's, when we're criticizing each other for the betterment of whatever that thing is, you can't help but get emotional about it. I made that, so like, I'm sensitive to it. That still happens today. I think the confidence that we have in that whole, like, the band's not gonna break up thing is that, especially with Rich, I've known him, I've known him my whole life, right? I've known him since I was a kid, since we're teenagers. So we know that if we're, if we're fighting about something, or we're not agreeing, or we're butting heads about something, that it's, it's just like when you're doing that with your actual brother.

• 2:23:29Speaker 03

  You built a friendship before the business.

• 2:23:31Speaker 04

  You're not gonna break up with your brother.

• 2:23:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:23:33Speaker 04

  Like, you're gonna fight with him, you're gonna call him a dick, and something's gonna happen. And then tomorrow's gonna be tomorrow, because that's your brother, and he's gonna be there. And like, you're not gonna break up with your sibling. So I think that that's what we have. And there's never, it's never gonna get so blown out of proportion that this whole thing's gonna be a house of cards.

• 2:23:50Speaker 03

  I will say, one thing on the menu, we were talking about like the sneak things on that Terese menu, the zeppelins.

• 2:23:56Speaker 04

  Zeppelin ham.

• 2:23:57Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 2:23:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:59Speaker 03

  And it's like a pineapple.

• 2:24:00Speaker 04

  Pineapple, yeah. Have you had the avocado? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like an avocado. I like the shaved part of it. Yeah, that's good. As much shit as we give them, that zeppelin thing.

• 2:24:10Speaker 03

  I get it every time I go. It's, it's fun. That, I think that's really cool. I think it's easy when people get successful to kind of rupture, break up, or whatever. I think it's something that like, not saying that we've achieved your guys' success, but like, it's something that is important to us to like, maintain, like, the friendship comes first. Something that Akash always reminds us every single time that there's any kind of confrontation, like, "Why do we do this?" Because we're friends.

• 2:24:33Speaker 04

  The confrontation's good.

• 2:24:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, we should bump heads.

• 2:24:35Speaker 04

  The confrontation's good.

• 2:24:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24:37Speaker 04

  If you guys just agree with each other all the time, then like, what?

• 2:24:40Speaker 03

  What are we doing?

• 2:24:40Speaker 04

  What are you doing, right? Like, you wanna have people that are challenging you. And, and you're gonna be sensitive about it. You like, made this, you made this thing, you wrote that. That was my joke, or I, that was my idea, like. You gotta just acknowledge that, that we're all creatives, and we're sensitive artists, you know, at our core. But... It's not gonna, it's not gonna break us. This is, this is, the whole point is that we're gonna make each other better. Where the, where the, where the sum of our parts are gonna be greater than us as an individual.

• 2:25:08Speaker 03

  Okay, before we get out of here, why is New York City the greatest city in the world?

• 2:25:12Speaker 04

  I mean, there's just not another city that looks like this, right? There's not another city that looks like New York. I think for those that, for those that sort of complain about the classic New York isn't what it was, I think you're misunderstanding the point of New York. New York's job is to change. Exactly what he said. I say this all the time. New York's job is to... It's so annoying that you say you can't stand fucking New York. I can't tell you how annoyed I am. There's a generation of 18, 19, 20 year olds that are getting their first taste of New York. Yeah. It's, it's the great, um, it's the great tournament of New York. Like, how long are you gonna be here? How long, how many rounds are you gonna make?

• 2:25:58Speaker 04

  It's, it's here, it's, it's here to be the great editor.

• 2:26:02Speaker 04

  There's so much to learn from this place. New York is not the one that our parents remember. It's not the one from my grandparents when they came from Ellis Island. It's not the one from our childhood. That's what makes New York great. It's malleable. It's here for the next generation. It's gonna challenge the next one. And for those that are still here, right? It's, it's the great tournament of life that is Manhattan or New York City. Yeah, yeah. Do you still look here? I do not still look here.

• 2:26:32Speaker 03

  Before we, before we go, before, before we go.

• 2:26:35Speaker 04

  That's my camera.

• 2:26:35Speaker 03

  It's, it's, as, as you were, I don't wanna say given opportunities, but earned opportunities from these, you know, great chefs. Are there any young creative chefs that you're seeing right now in New York City that we can shine a light on? I think it's important to us, definitely as New Yorkers, to like shine a light on young comedians that are coming up in New York, but also any industry for some of that we bring on the podcast. Are there any young restaurateurs out here that you really believe in? Like, people you're seeing with promise?

• 2:27:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's hard when, when the financial world is in a questionable place, right? It's hard for... It's hard for young aspiring restaurateurs or any industry to get the backing in a shaky financial moment to do something. So in times like this, you're gonna see less creativity because it's too risky. You're gonna see more status quo, you're gonna see more safe plays. You're gonna see people taking chances when it's safer to take chances.

• 2:27:34Speaker 03

  When money's cheap.

• 2:27:35Speaker 04

  When the economy's healthy and money is cheap and there's investors out there looking to take chances on you. So it's a tough time for that generation, like it was for us, you know, coming out of 08. There's not a lot of us that are gonna get that break and we had to do crazy shit to get those six tables. So I'm here for those who are out there, who are challenging. Guys like Kwame, Tatiana, who are doing incredible work right now. It's a tough time, man. It's a tough time to take a chance.

• 2:28:07Speaker 03

  Any other little guys. It could be the tiny, it could be six tables. Like anybody that you've seen or you've tasted recently.

• 2:28:12Speaker 04

  Industry, I remember when industry was just starting, right? These two guys who looked and felt a lot like me and Rich when we first got to that pizzeria, but you see it in their eyes. It's like Tony Montana, man. Like it's the eyes, man. Like you can see that guy, they're gonna make it, man. I don't care.

• 2:28:30Speaker 08

  There was that guy that was making pizza, I think Chrissy's Pizza or something, in the oven in his apartment.

• 2:28:34Speaker 04

  Oh, in Brooklyn?

• 2:28:35Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think Chrissy's Pizza, yeah. Similar vibe, I assume.

• 2:28:39Speaker 04

  You're not gonna tell them no. They're gonna figure it out. They're gonna make it through it.

• 2:28:44Mark Gagnon?

  Are tariffs affecting the restaurant industry at all?

• 2:28:46Speaker 04

  They're going to. Yeah, I mean, we're just starting to see it. But it's going to. And I think that its greatest effect is going to be in cost to the customer. It's gonna get passed on, right? I think certainly for us, like if my options are...

• 2:29:07Speaker 04

  Choose a lesser ingredient than what I'm accustomed to bringing in because it's too expensive, or bring that ingredient in at the additional cost and pass it on to the customer. We're gonna choose that one, right?

• 2:29:20Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 2:29:20Speaker 04

  Because I feel like I've made a promise to my customers to give them the best ingredients in the world. And if I'm saying that I need that, I'm not gonna choose something else. So it's going to get passed on to them, unfortunately, right? I think that's where it's gonna manifest itself, isn't rising costs to customers.

• 2:29:38Speaker 03

  Okay, last one.

• 2:29:39Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:29:39Speaker 03

  Italian-American.

• 2:29:42Speaker 03

  You put a spotlight on Italian-American cuisine, as you said. It becomes one of the most successful restaurants in the world. And I'm not even talking about financially, but in terms of notoriety. Is there like a moment where you kind of like look back and you feel this sense of pride in your culture? You know, this is, you're doing like a, this is a sauce joint that now is being mentioned in Drake songs.

• 2:30:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:30:07Speaker 03

  What does that kind of feel like? Do you feel the community, are they supportive of it, are they happy of it?

• 2:30:14Speaker 04

  I feel like it is a function, I feel like Carbone is a functioning museum, right? I think that it's Italian-Americans, not dissimilar to any sort of other immigrant path, right? The whole, the whole point of this journey, if you follow it back to your ancestors, my ancestors from Southern Italy, leaving a place to come to the United States for the betterment of the next generation, right? The entire point of the experiment was for us to assimilate into just becoming Americans and to sort of eventually become less and less Italian. As each generation passes, you become just Americans. That was the whole point of this assimilation.

• 2:30:55Speaker 04

  To me, for community, for what we're doing, what I'm leaving behind, I have great pride in that Carbone stands as a nightly functioning museum that you can go to, you can visit, you can consume what was the woolly mammoth that is the Italian-American in New York in 1950s. Children will be less Italian than I am, as I am less Italian than my parents are. And that's the point. When you lament the fact that there are no Italians in Little Italy, you are also proving the point of what the purpose of that was. They weren't supposed to stay here. They were supposed to just become Americans. That's why they left their country. So when it was at its most potent,

• 2:31:37Speaker 04

  and I chose that period, the first generation of Italian Americans in 1950, to make this thing, to make this play, that's thankfully had a very long run, we're fucking cats over here. We're 10 years in and we're still going. You get to experience this museum because over time, the Italian American will just become the American. So I get to do this thing.

• 2:32:01Speaker 03

  So you get to maintain your culture while at the same time embracing this new identity, which was the point of it all.

• 2:32:08Speaker 04

  I believe the point of it all.

• 2:32:09Speaker 03

  That's beautiful. Mario Carbone, everybody.

• 2:32:13Speaker 00

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