Adrienne and Joe on Culinary Travel, One-Star Diner Drama, and the Raw Milk Debate

We’re back with another episode of The Chef’s Cut featuring hosts Adrienne Cheatham and Joe Flamm, who tell us exactly how chefs plan their trips around food, including their favorite dining spots and the importance of leaving room for spontaneous culinary adventures. Plus, we discuss: Fork It or Forget It: Raw Milk edition (featuring some unpasteurized opinions) The latest NYT restaurant review and challenging stereotypes about high end cuisine One-Star Guest Behavior: Adrienne shares a story of poor restaurant etiquette – is it time to start letting restaurants review diners too? Walk-In Confessions: Joe recounts a harrowing kitchen mishap Follow Adrienne: @chefadriennecheatham Follow Joe: @insta.flamm

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

• 0:01Adrienne Cheatham?

  Hello and welcome back to The Chef's Cut. I'm Adrienne Sheedham.

• 0:05Joe Flamm?

  And I am Joe Flamm. So excited to be back. Age, what do we got on tap this week for them?

• 0:11Adrienne Cheatham?

  Joe, this is going to be a blast. We are going to be talking about how chefs travel and it's different from the way other people do. We're going to talk about foolproof dairy, raw, uncut, and we're going to talk about our campaign to have reviewers reviewed by restaurants, which I think is catching some steam.

• 0:29Joe Flamm?

  The people want it.

• 0:30Adrienne Cheatham?

  We're also going to talk about why some restaurants can charge more than others based on the type of cuisine.

• 0:36Joe Flamm?

  And I got one more thing for you today involving me, a pig, and a late Wednesday night at Spiaja.

• 0:42Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, I can't wait, Joe. This is going to be a blast. Let's get into it.

• 0:47Joe Flamm?

  Age, so good to be back.

• 0:49Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, man. Yeah, you just had a trip to DC doing the good work for No Kid Hungry.

• 0:55Joe Flamm?

  Trying, trying to get out there, trying to shake some people into making reasonable decisions, but you know, we'll see. We'll see, Age.

• 1:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  Really appreciate the work you're doing with that.

• 1:04Joe Flamm?

  And you're on the road right now.

• 1:06Adrienne Cheatham?

  I am.

• 1:06Joe Flamm?

  You're on the road. You're Mrs. Worldwide. You are, you know...

• 1:10Adrienne Cheatham?

  I'm away from home for six weeks this summer.

• 1:13Joe Flamm?

  Where are you at right now?

• 1:14Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right now, I am in, are you ready for this? Comporta, Portugal.

• 1:20Joe Flamm?

  Comporta?

• 1:21Adrienne Cheatham?

  Comporta.

• 1:22Joe Flamm?

  Can you spell that?

• 1:23Adrienne Cheatham?

  C-O-M.

• 1:26Joe Flamm?

  C-O-M, porta. Ah, comporta. So now they've got tin fish and vino verde and...

• 1:31Adrienne Cheatham?

  You know, lots. Yeah, fried cuttlefish, vino verde, salads.

• 1:36Joe Flamm?

  So one of the things I wanted to ask you, I knew you were traveling this summer. I know you're on the road. Both of us do travel for work. You know, I was, like you said, I was just in DC for, uh, but I was only there 48 hours, quick trip. But we both do a lot of travel for work and then we do it on our personal time too, because I think it's such a necessity for what we do. I think it's a necessity for everyone, you know, right? It makes life better. It makes life more interesting, you know, more experiences. But I think especially like chefs, restaurant people, like we travel a little different way.

• 2:07Adrienne Cheatham?

  We definitely do.

• 2:08Joe Flamm?

  You know, like, we travel a little bit different. I think when I talk to people who, you know, don't do what we do, they're, they're going to cities, they're going on vacations. They're like, oh, I'm gonna do this bike tour, I'm gonna see this river, I'm gonna

• 2:21Adrienne Cheatham?

  I'm gonna go horseback riding down the beach.

• 2:23Joe Flamm?

  Right. You know, like, what kind of, you know, like, events do you have planned? And it's like, all right, well, I have planned this market, this coffee shop, this breakfast, followed by a walk to get to this lunch, where then we'll go to have wine in the afternoon at this place, to have an early dinner here, to have a mid to late dinner here, to have, you know, our nightcap here.

• 2:45Adrienne Cheatham?

  My itinerary, when I travel, and you're right, chefs travel totally different than normal people, because we book our travel based around what restaurants are in the city. So, once you decide on the city, you're like, either it starts with a restaurant you want to go visit, or you pick the city first and decide what restaurants you want to go visit. But usually for me, it's like, I really want to check out this restaurant, so I need to go to Madrid. Once in a while, it will just so happen that, like, I was in Paris for work. I'm like, oh, I've never been to Madrid, so might as well stop in while I'm close by, what restaurants are there? And that's where I build out my itinerary, but it is very much centered around food. I might get a couple sights or attractions in, but it's

• 3:29Adrienne Cheatham?

  usually, like you said, plotting a walk from one restaurant to a bar, or to a cafe, or to a bakery, and that's how my itinerary is built.

• 3:39Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, and I think it's like, well, we travel for work, right? You get thrown into a city, so you're going to wherever the work is. So, you know, when I'm doing that, like, I just went to DC, so it's like, okay, I'm in DC, who's in DC? So, it's like, all right, we had one dinner at Maynard, and then I was like, oh, well, Eric's in DC, so I'm gonna go by Alameda, and at least, you know, I went there before dinner, and I had to have a snack at the bar and try it out.

• 4:01Adrienne Cheatham?

  Got to.

• 4:02Joe Flamm?

  You know what I mean? So, it's like a little pre-dinner dinner. So I think there's that one end of travel when you just get thrown to a city and you're like, all right, you know, and I think it's cool. Our network of chefs where you could just, you know, I've had people hit me up from other cities and be like, hey, I'm a chef coming in from wherever. Like, I'd love to come eat. It's like, yeah, no doubt. Like, you know, and I've, and I've hit people up cold too and said, hey, like, I'm coming into, you know, wherever, Oklahoma City. I'd love to eat at your spot. Where else should I eat?

• 4:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  And we will always find a table for our people. We will always find a way to get them in, no matter what.

• 4:32Joe Flamm?

  I've always followed that with other chefs and I always try to do that for that. But then I think like, well, we do personal travel. For me, it's always like, there's usually like, I have a place or places in mind that I want to eat. That's the reason I want to go to that city. Like for, you know, when, when I got married, my bachelor party, I was like, I wanted to eat at OP de Cresson in Montreal so bad.

• 4:52Adrienne Cheatham?

  Nice.

• 4:52Joe Flamm?

  I had wanted to eat there forever. So that was like the whole thing. Like we're go to Montreal to eat at OP de Cresson. And because we're in, you know, Montreal, we're also getting at Joe Beef and Levin Papillon and, you know, Liverpool House and all those.

• 5:04Adrienne Cheatham?

  Nice.

• 5:05Joe Flamm?

  So like, but I think, you know, the question I wanted to ask you, cause like, this is how I usually do it. I did a big trip recently. I was in Mexico City for three or four days. And so I kind of build it out where it's like, I like to have, if I'm there for, I have three full days and three full nights. Out of that, I like to have like two lunch reservations booked and two dinner reservations booked.

• 5:25Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's the question. Do you book everything or do you leave time open to find some happy accidents?

• 5:32Joe Flamm?

  I'm like in, I'm like in 80% booked, 20% open. And now I'll alternate it. I'll alternate it. Some days it's like, I'll be booked for lunch, but I won't book for dinner.

• 5:42Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay.

• 5:42Joe Flamm?

  Cause I'll be like trying to find a dinner that night. Or if there's like a more casual thing I knew I wanted to see, like if I'm not doing it as just like a pre dinner dinner. Like, you know, it's like, we were in Mexico City. We went to a taco place every night before dinner, just because.

• 5:57Adrienne Cheatham?

  Because of course. Yeah.

• 5:58Joe Flamm?

  It was awesome. But it's like, you know, I felt like. You know, kind of when you go to Italy, it's like gelato is always appropriate. You know, gelato is not seen as dessert. Gelato is a snack.

• 6:08Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, okay, perfect.

• 6:09Joe Flamm?

  You you eat gelato when you happen by gelato. You know what I mean? It's not, you don't need to like make plans for it.

• 6:16Adrienne Cheatham?

  I like to think of gelato just happening.

• 6:19Joe Flamm?

  And then, you know, there's a gelateria and you're like, well, we haven't been to that one. It looks quite nice. We should stop in and, you know, have a scoop, you know, for for research. And I kind of felt that way about like tacos in Mexico City where I was like, well, you're walking by. That looks good. You should just have one.

• 6:33Adrienne Cheatham?

  A hundred percent.

• 6:34Joe Flamm?

  Like, it's just like, it's a little street treat.

• 6:36Adrienne Cheatham?

  The funniest thing, so I went to Lisbon, maybe three years ago with with my husband, with Steven. And we went to, we found this wine bar that was supposed to have really cool, interesting, small plates kind of thing. So we had booked a pre dinner drink session at this wine bar. And we're like, okay, we'll get two or three small plates, couple of glasses of wine, then walk to dinner. We're sitting outside and Steven is not the kind to be eyeballing people around. So we're sitting there at dinner and he keeps staring behind me. To the point that he like looked past me, like he tilted his head to the side to like look behind me. I was like, what the fuck are you looking at? I turned around. I was like, yeah, that pizza does look damn good.

• 7:22Adrienne Cheatham?

  I was like, what are you looking? He was like, I'm looking at that pizza. I was like, oh shit, yeah, that pizza looks, and we went back the next day for lunch because we didn't book lunch the next day.

• 7:32Joe Flamm?

  Yeah.

• 7:32Adrienne Cheatham?

  And we had left that open on the itinerary. And I used to go pure no bookings. Just throw me in a city because I was usually traveling for work, not personal back then.

• 7:44Joe Flamm?

  Sure.

• 7:44Adrienne Cheatham?

  So nothing booked because I might get called, shit might hit the fan. Prep might go sideways, so I can't book anything because I might have to cancel and go to work. So let me just not book anything and whatever happens, happens. Then I have no reservations and I can't just grab a seat at a bar because not every city is like New York or Chicago. You can't just roll up like, hey, solo diner? You got room at the bar? No? Okay, I guess I'm screwed.

• 8:11Joe Flamm?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Adrienne Cheatham?

  So I went to the extreme because my husband is a planner. So our first trip together, he had booked lunch and dinner. And I was like, oh, but I want to stop here and I want to stop here. He was like, I can't eat five meals a day. I was like, you, you got it in you. You just got to dig deep.

• 8:28Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta find it.

• 8:30Adrienne Cheatham?

  Now we have the happy medium of, of maybe 70% booked, 30% open. And we get great recommendations from chefs. We talk to people in the industry when we're traveling.

• 8:41Joe Flamm?

  That's the other thing. I like having enough open-endedness where it's like, cause I love, you know, you and I are both the same. We sit at a bar, we start talking to people and like, if they're like, oh, you gotta go to this place. I hate being like, oh, I don't have time. It's like, I like, like, I usually save like my last day is my open day. So it's like, if I want to eat somewhere twice, or it gives me two days to find a reservation at that place.

• 9:04Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 9:05Joe Flamm?

  Because it's like, I talk to the people wherever I'm staying. If I'm staying at a hotel, or if I eat somewhere I like, I'll talk to the server or the chef or whoever, just people I meet, like, um, I like to go to like, you know, different gyms when I travel. If I meet somebody at the gym, they're like, oh, you eating here? I'm like, no. Yeah, no, like my whole thing now is like, you go to the gym first thing.

• 9:22Adrienne Cheatham?

  Wow.

• 9:23Joe Flamm?

  And that, because then you're like starving at 8 a.m.

• 9:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, smart. So you can really get like five meals in.

• 9:31Joe Flamm?

  When I was at Rob, it's like I'd do a 7 a.m. CrossFit and I'd be like, then like three meals by noon.

• 9:37Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh.

• 9:37Joe Flamm?

  Just starving and walking around.

• 9:39Adrienne Cheatham?

  If that is not motivation for me to work out, I don't know what is.

• 9:42Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, it's awesome. It's like, you know, it'd be, it's super backwards and it's a, you know, but it's kind of balanced. I don't know. It works though.

• 9:49Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's totally balanced.

• 9:50Joe Flamm?

  Like, if you're like, I want to be like, able to eat all the food. It's like you, you know, ripping a super hard workout to start the day and you're like, all right, I'm like, ready to attack this city.

• 10:00Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah. When I'm traveling, I also try to walk everywhere. So I'll rack up 15,000, 17,000 sometimes. I think a couple of days I hit 19, 20,000 steps in a day. Um, but the best unplanned meal I had recently in Madrid, I went to, so I had been calling this restaurant Diver XO. Apparently it's pronounced Diverso. It's number four on the world's 50 best.

• 10:24Joe Flamm?

  Oh, no way. That's pronounced Diverso?

• 10:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  Exactly, right?

• 10:27Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, that's hilarious.

• 10:30Adrienne Cheatham?

  I've been calling it Diver XO for like a few years now.

• 10:34Joe Flamm?

  Every time I've read that restaurant out loud, I've been like, Diver XO. That's weird.

• 10:37Adrienne Cheatham?

  A hundred percent.

• 10:38Joe Flamm?

  Like diver hug kisses.

• 10:42Adrienne Cheatham?

  I'm like XO sauce, like scallop, you know, like the condiment, like dried scallop, dried shrimp.

• 10:47Joe Flamm?

  Letter to divers?

• 10:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  Apparently. That's literally what I thought, but the servers, they were like, welcome to Diverso. I was like, oh shit. I've been saying it wrong this whole time.

• 10:56Joe Flamm?

  Yes, Diverso.

• 10:59Adrienne Cheatham?

  Diverso. I'm so happy to be at Diverso. So the chef, when I was talking to him during the meal, gave us an amazing recommendation for a restaurant. I kind of don't want to tell the name because it was so fucking good. And super casual.

• 11:14Joe Flamm?

  Don't, don't, don't, don't be that. Don't be that gatekeeper. Don't be gatekeeping.

• 11:20Adrienne Cheatham?

  I'm not, I'm not gatekeeping.

• 11:21Joe Flamm?

  It's 2025. We're not, you are gatekeeper. You are literally the keeper of the gate right now.

• 11:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  It was already hard.

• 11:28Joe Flamm?

  Not wanting to give this name up.

• 11:30Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay, okay. So the name of the restaurant is Sacha, S A C H A, not S H A. Sacha and the chef, we walk in, he's wearing like a wide brim hat. He's got a long silver ponytail. He's wearing an old Ramones shirt that looked like it was probably an original, not one he bought off Amazon recently.

• 11:49Joe Flamm?

  Hell yeah.

• 11:49Adrienne Cheatham?

  Cool as hell, but the food was so simple, so delicious, so well-prepared. Like this olive oil poached bonito with like a little escabeche cooked onions and bay leaves. I mean, just amazing.

• 12:02Joe Flamm?

  I love it.

• 12:03Adrienne Cheatham?

  That was probably one of the best meals we had. That and a place called Casatoni that was like, you just see the seafood, they fry it, they might throw some chorizo on the grill and bring you a bottle of wine and that's your meal. Amazing.

• 12:15Joe Flamm?

  Baby. Love it. All right. I could talk travel all day. And you trying to gatekeep places from me that you don't want me to go in Spain. Listen, I'm here for the people, Adrian.

• 12:25Adrienne Cheatham?

  How am I going to get a reservation if you're always all up in my restaurants, Joe?

• 12:29Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you gotta share.

• 12:34Joe Flamm?

  All right, H. Time to get into it today.

• 12:36Adrienne Cheatham?

  Ooh.

• 12:36Joe Flamm?

  First thing of the day, one of our favorites. Fork it or forget it.

• 12:42Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yes. Okay, I can't wait. What are you forking or forgetting this week?

• 12:45Joe Flamm?

  So I got a controversial one.

• 12:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  Ooh.

• 12:49Joe Flamm?

  This week. And I know this is big where you live in New York. This was an article I was just reading. And we're talking about raw milk.

• 12:57Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:59Joe Flamm?

  So I was reading this article about how there's this milk guy in New York who sells like illegal raw milk to like the upper echelon of New Yorkers delivered to their household and how it's like a whole thing. And I don't know that I've ever had, I've had raw milk cheeses, right?

• 13:19Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right, yeah.

• 13:20Joe Flamm?

  And I think from a chef perspective, the idea of like, I'd love to get raw milk to cook with. I'd love to be able to make ricotta from raw milk, you know, mozzarella curd, fermented, whatever. For me?

• 13:36Joe Flamm?

  The idea of just drinking raw milk, like, listen, I don't really drink milk.

• 13:40Adrienne Cheatham?

  I don't either, right?

• 13:41Joe Flamm?

  I'm not even putting down a glass of 2%. So like, you're telling me you want me to drink barrel proof?

• 13:50Joe Flamm?

  Straight out the cow.

• 13:52Adrienne Cheatham?

  Straight, straight, no chaser.

• 13:54Joe Flamm?

  Now, I've been down to Louisville, I've been down to, you know, the distilleries where you drink the whiskey straight out the barrel. That's 140 proof. And that is, uh, will make you see the Lord.

• 14:04Adrienne Cheatham?

  140 proof is gonna kill something, not kill you. It'll kill bacteria.

• 14:08Joe Flamm?

  Right. So I just feel like it's like the lactose version of that. And lactose isn't my best friend to begin with. So I just think like the idea, like if I drank a full glass of raw milk, of what that would do to me internally.

• 14:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:27Joe Flamm?

  I feel like, would, I feel like it would fucking wreck me. Like, I'm terrified of it. And I'm not terrified of it in the sense of like, oh, you're gonna get E. coli. It's like, well, that could be an issue. But I'm like, I might like shit my pants before.

• 14:39Adrienne Cheatham?

  Literally. Like, as you're drinking it, it would just start coming out the other.

• 14:43Joe Flamm?

  Right. And they'd be like, what happened? And I'd be like, I need to go home immediately.

• 14:47Adrienne Cheatham?

  What are the supposed health benefits of that? Like, why are people into raw milk?

• 14:52Joe Flamm?

  It's all like probiotics to that. There's nothing, you know, there's not putting any hormones into it or anything like that or whatever. I don't know.

• 14:59Adrienne Cheatham?

  I don't know. I feel like some technology was invented for a reason. Louis Pasteur invented a process by which to pasteurize shit for a reason. Like, I'm all for it. I don't have E. coli because I, if I'm drinking milk, yeah, it's gonna be pasteurized. So I'm, I'm gonna forget it just because for me, I don't, there are certain ways I don't want to die. And I don't want to die shitting my pants from raw milk.

• 15:25Joe Flamm?

  So you're, you're, you're claiming that you are not part of this secret circle of New York elite who's getting raw milk delivered to their door.

• 15:33Adrienne Cheatham?

  No gatekeeping. No gatekeeping on this one. A hundred percent no. No. That the milk guy is not my guy.

• 15:40Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, for me, it's one of those things like I'm into it if we're cooking with it. Uh, but I'm definitely not there. I'm just sitting down and crushing out a pint of barrel proof milk. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna forget that.

• 15:52Adrienne Cheatham?

  Maybe, maybe making yogurt from it, but yeah, that.

• 15:56Joe Flamm?

  That's what I'm saying. I can cook with it. I'm down to cook with it.

• 15:58Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 15:59Joe Flamm?

  But I'm gonna not.

• 16:00Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah. That's a forget it for me.

• 16:02Joe Flamm?

  At all.

• 16:03Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's a hardcore pass.

• 16:05Joe Flamm?

  Like I'll, I'll, I'll take the hose water.

• 16:08Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yes. I've survived on hose water for decades. That, unpasteurized milk, no. So that's, I, I think we're, for once, we're both agreed on that, on the fork and forget it. We're both forget it on raw milk. So review, review is up next, Joe. And you know, we did the poll on Instagram, on our IG account, The Chefs Cup Pod, where we asked people what you thought, which I think is a great idea, that restaurants should be able to review diners, just like Uber can review passengers.

• 16:40Joe Flamm?

  The people were here for it. The people were here for it. They, they responded. It was great. I've never felt more validated in my life.

• 16:47Adrienne Cheatham?

  It was, I mean, that is the biggest outpouring of support we've gotten on any of our polls. We had a couple, a few hundred people and it was like 96, 97% said, yes, we should. And I think the people who said no are the assholes who leave one star reviews.

• 17:05Joe Flamm?

  Yeah. They're like, no, no, no, no, don't, don't come for me.

• 17:08Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah. So for this week's review, review, I'm going to flip this segment a little bit. And I'm going to review some one star behavior that I saw recently from a guest.

• 17:21Joe Flamm?

  I love this.

• 17:22Adrienne Cheatham?

  Not a chef, nothing wrong with the service. This is one star guest behavior. And I was at a restaurant, it's an intimate U-shaped bar, 12-seat omakase restaurant. Not crazy expensive, it was in Lisbon, using local fish from the coast of Portugal, not flown in from Japan. There was a diner who, you see the chef peeling the mackerel, taking the bones out, doing all that in real time. He's putting the piece in front of you, he's clearing the plate. She had a bone in her piece of fish. Of course, like shit happens.

• 18:02Joe Flamm?

  Yep.

• 18:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  Or for omakase, now if I were spending $700 on an omakase, no bones. But this was like, you know, this was like a reasonably priced one. She had a bone, I didn't, my husband didn't, didn't see anybody else. Instead of just putting it on the plate or saying something, she waved, and it was a small bone too. It was no bigger than like my thumbnail, like in length.

• 18:25Joe Flamm?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  She waves it in front of the chef's face. He's got his head down, working on the next course. She's waving it like this to get his attention. And it looked like he was trying to ignore her. So he just kept making the next course, doing his thing, looks back up, she starts waving it again. He was just like, what, like what the, and even her husband tried to grab her arm and was like, what are you doing?

• 18:54Joe Flamm?

  I would have, no, I would have been like, we're leaving. We're 1000%, we're out of here. We have to leave here, we can never come back to this country. I'm gonna burn your passport on the flight home.

• 19:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  You wouldn't let him do that?

• 19:06Joe Flamm?

  No, that would be insane. I would just, I'd probably just get up and leave. I'd be like, I'm so uncomfortable that like, it's just one of those things.

• 19:13Adrienne Cheatham?

  How should she have handled that?

• 19:14Joe Flamm?

  I mean, it's one of those things, you'd be like, oh hey, there was a bone in this. That's like a reasonable thing to do.

• 19:19Adrienne Cheatham?

  I agree.

• 19:20Joe Flamm?

  It's like, it's like behave like anything else. It's like what people forget. Like if you were somewhere else and you were like, oh, can I have that pink shirt? And they handed you a blue shirt, you wouldn't grab the shirt, start waving it around. And be like, it's a blue shirt, it's a blue shirt. You know what I mean? Like, you'd be like, oh no, I said pink. They'd be like, oh, I made a mistake. Here's the color shirt you wanted. You would both be reasonable adults and move on with your fucking day in life. But I don't know why. When people are in restaurants, they lose their goddamn minds.

• 19:51Adrienne Cheatham?

  I, I literally, it's like airplanes and restaurants. People just like, but at least airplanes, they can put you on a do not fly list. At restaurants, that is exactly why we need to be able to review guests and diners. Because people need to know when these assholes come in the door, what they're capable of.

• 20:10Joe Flamm?

  Right. Well, and airlines have the upper hand because they can be like, you know what I mean? We could be like, even if we kick you out, it's like, you're still going to get fed.

• 20:17Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 20:17Joe Flamm?

  If you're at an airline, they're like, listen, if you don't pipe down, you're not getting on this plane. Your other option is like, walk.

• 20:24Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right. Or, or take a train cross country.

• 20:27Joe Flamm?

  You get a red to car, you're a red to car. Now you're going to drive what would have been an hour and a, because I, I was stuck in DC last week. So I was looking at that drive. So you drive 11 hours.

• 20:37Adrienne Cheatham?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:38Joe Flamm?

  Or like you can behave yourself and you'll be home in an hour.

• 20:40Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right. Now I get it. The stakes are higher, you know, you're, you're not gonna, you're not gonna crash a restaurant.

• 20:46Joe Flamm?

  Right, right. I'm not a pilot.

• 20:47Adrienne Cheatham?

  But, but.

• 20:48Joe Flamm?

  But.

• 20:49Adrienne Cheatham?

  But.

• 20:50Joe Flamm?

  But. I, I'm like, that dude not losing his mind on that. Like, it's one of those things. Like, somebody waved that bone in my face. Like, I wish he would have grabbed it and just like, just like crunched it up. You know what I mean?

• 20:59Adrienne Cheatham?

  Use it as a toothpick, like, ah.

• 21:01Joe Flamm?

  Right. Like, ah, like eat the bones. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like maybe that's just like, you know, like what my grandfather would have done. Like, when we were little, if we complained about something, like, it won't hurt you. You know what I mean? But it's like, I know that's bad customer service, but I think that would be.

• 21:16Adrienne Cheatham?

  But it's, you know, that happens. Like, if you have a bone in your fish or something like that, what etiquette, proper etiquette used to say was, put it on the edge of your plate. The chef, the server, somebody will see it. They'll ask you about it. They'll apologize. And in this case, it's an omakase restaurant. If she had just put it on the edge of the thing there, the chef who prepared it would have seen it and she could have just pointed it out.

• 21:37Joe Flamm?

  Right.

• 21:38Adrienne Cheatham?

  Just point it out. Just quietly. Why do you have to like literally wave it like this? It was, it was embarrassing to watch.

• 21:43Joe Flamm?

  Yeah. That's, you should have started waving your napkin. Like, it was like a Greek nightclub. You know what I mean? Like, you were in Miquito. So like, she was just getting it going. Just like started standing on your chair. Just like, oh, this is what we're doing now. You know what I mean? And just, you know, ran with it.

• 21:56Adrienne Cheatham?

  That would have been so awesome. So that is this week's review review, Joe. I am, instead of reading out a review from a platform, I wanted to bring up one star guest behavior that I've witnessed. And I think this is a good, a good point that so many of our friends have been like, oh, I gotta send you this review. Yes, please. Friends in the industry, front of house, back of house.

• 22:19Joe Flamm?

  Send those, send those through. Send them on through to the chef's gut.

• 22:23Adrienne Cheatham?

  Send us those stories of the one-star guest behavior that you've had to endure as front of house, back of house, Psalms, bars, everything. We want those stories too.

• 22:34Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, and I'll tell you this, this wasn't a guest behavior one, but this was, I, when I was a young cook, I sent out a pizza that had arugula on it. And it had, apparently it had one yellow leaf of arugula there. That was not perfectly green. It was to another chef in the city, um, who I was familiar with. Um, but the chef I was working for at the time had been standing at the table when the pizza was dropped. So he took the yellow piece of arugula off the pizza, put it on a plate, and then walked it back to me on my station, and brought it to me, and showed it to me, and then eviscerated me. For about 10 minutes.

• 23:14Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yes, chef, I'm an idiot.

• 23:16Joe Flamm?

  What a piece of shit I was.

• 23:17Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yes, chef, I need to open my eyes. Oh, my God. That is crazy. And see, the chef at the table didn't just wave it like a flag in front of your face, nor did the chef you were working for.

• 23:28Joe Flamm?

  He kinda wove it at my face. He was not a well-behaved man.

• 23:34Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yellow arugula for the win.

• 23:38Joe Flamm?

  All right. Take me to line check, Age. What's going on this week?

• 23:41Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah. All right, Joe. So line check. I want to talk about, I don't know if you saw the review in the New York Times. It's about a restaurant called Kabawa. It's a new restaurant that opened up in New York. The chef is named Paul Carmichael. It's a Mama Foco restaurant, the first one they've opened in a long time. This restaurant, though, is More influenced by the Caribbean. The chef is originally from Barbados.

• 24:05Joe Flamm?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Adrienne Cheatham?

  And I've wanted to go to this restaurant since they opened. I'm a fan of chef Paul Carmichael. I've followed his career for a long time. When I was a line cook in New York, there was a rumor like, oh, there's a black chef in the Mama Foco group. And this was pre-social media. So it's like, I would hear rumors, oh, there's a black chef here. There's a black chef. But I never fucking met them. Cause I was always in my kitchen and they were always in theirs.

• 24:28Joe Flamm?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Adrienne Cheatham?

  So I was a fan of his, then he moved to Australia, was there for a long time and just made his move back to New York to open this restaurant. So in the review for the Times, it was a great review, but in it, they talk about introducing a high price point for this type of cuisine, being Caribbean. And how some diners might hesitate about paying a high price point for this type of cuisine. I thought, and this is for line check, I thought we were past this conversation. Like if it's not French, if it's not Italian, if it's not Japanese, you know, we all know if you're cooking at a high level,

• 25:09Adrienne Cheatham?

  you're doing solid, interesting technique, you're doing cool food. It doesn't matter what the flavor profile is. What matters is the type of food you're serving. So it's, I was surprised that that even came up in the review. It's like, why are we still having this conversation? We have Korean restaurants. We have Vietnamese. We have Thai. We have, you know, West African. We have Ghana, Senegalese restaurants at different price points. Why are we still talking about, about that?

• 25:35Joe Flamm?

  Well, I think, this is why I think we're still talking about it. I'm not excusing it, but I think like this is the thing that they never address. Whatever food it is. And I think like, you know, I've seen an Italian food work in that a lot in my life and I've worked in Korean food. And the

• 25:55Joe Flamm?

  Not like the problem, but I think the issue you hit with the diners is when you're doing a cuisine that's specific. People have an idea in their head of what it is, or they've had it before. You know what I mean? When you're doing, I think, fine dining and stuff like that where it's more, you know, like conceptual, right? People are like, oh, I don't know what to expect. I don't know what this is, right? But when you're doing something where it's like people's only, you know, like when Mexican fine dining exploded, right?

• 26:23Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 26:23Joe Flamm?

  And people are like, I'm not gonna go spend, you know, a hundred dollars for tacos or whatever, you know, and it's like, that's not what it is.

• 26:28Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 26:29Joe Flamm?

  But their only concept of Mexican food was tacos. You know what I mean? You think of Italian food of like, people be like, oh, well, I can go here and get a giant bowl of red sauce for twenty dollars. And then I come here and it's like, you know, a little plate of pasta. It's like, right, but we're like making all the pasta. We're doing all the things right, you know, doing all these things. And so I think whenever you're doing a cuisine that people have a preconceived conception of. For better or worse. Like if you go to a steakhouse, you know, you have in your mind what a steakhouse is. You know it's gonna be expensive. You know it's gonna be that. But I think when you're doing something like, okay, like you said, Caribbean flavors, right? They're thinking of, man, there used to be this great Jamaican place in, in New York that like Steph took me one time where they did like fried fish cakes and stuff like that. It was really low key. It was like in the, a bottom floor of a building.

• 27:15Joe Flamm?

  And I think they're thinking like, you know, those fun, like approachable beach vibes. And I wish they just did a better job at like reporting these things of not being like, oh, how will people react to it? Be like, this is why this is this. You know what I mean? This is the ingredients they're using. This is the technique they're using. This is this man's, this is the chef's pedigree.

• 27:34Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right, exactly.

• 27:35Joe Flamm?

  You know what I mean?

• 27:36Adrienne Cheatham?

  Ingredients are high. New York rent, labor costs are high. High level technique, like look at the man's resume and the types of cuisines he worked in before and the type of technique he was, why should he bring down the level of technique because of the flavor profile?

• 27:51Joe Flamm?

  Right. And I think it's, and I could get into how I feel about reviewers forever, but I think it's also, it's like, if it's something they don't know and understand, I feel like there's a lack of effort they put into going back and trying to understand it, right? Really doing the research, really looking into it, not just reading all the bullet points that are sent their way and then eating there. And being like, oh, well, this is really, you know, they're thinking I've had, you know, fried fish at this place, wherever. And it was 20 bucks for a whole fried snapper.

• 28:22Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 28:23Joe Flamm?

  And now this guy wants to charge, you know, 52 for a filet of snapper.

• 28:28Adrienne Cheatham?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:29Joe Flamm?

  That in their mind, they're correlating to the same thing.

• 28:31Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 28:32Joe Flamm?

  They should be the number one people out there advocating for like, hey, this is the same idea, but taken to a way different level.

• 28:38Adrienne Cheatham?

  Exactly.

• 28:39Joe Flamm?

  These guys buying way different fish, he's using way different techniques. They need to be better advocates.

• 28:44Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Joe Flamm?

  For this. You know what I mean? And that's like my biggest, like, it almost goes back to our Caesar salad and fry conversation. But it's like, if you want to advocate for people pushing the boundaries, doing different things and all this stuff, then like advocate for them.

• 28:56Adrienne Cheatham?

  Exactly. Don't even bring up this noise.

• 28:59Joe Flamm?

  If you bring it up, I want you to have the solution, resolution of it.

• 29:03Adrienne Cheatham?

  Hmm.

• 29:04Joe Flamm?

  Tell people why they should be supporting this.

• 29:07Adrienne Cheatham?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:08Joe Flamm?

  Why this is different, why this is special, and it's not just an expensive version of that.

• 29:13Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 29:13Joe Flamm?

  And I think it's like irresponsible to kind of throw out there just like, oh, you know, like getting people to pay this much for this. It's like, it's not the same thing.

• 29:22Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right. Yeah, in their defense of, you know, the reviewer who wrote the article, they did after floating that out there, did say why it was different, what the cuisine was, you know, like, well, this is what he's doing. You know, so it it kind of mitigated that, but I was just so surprised to read it in the first place because that's the same thing that they were saying about Korean food when Jungsik opened in New York.

• 29:45Joe Flamm?

  Also, it's New York.

• 29:46Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 29:47Joe Flamm?

  What are we talking?

• 29:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right, it's like, and that's how French food started. You had somebody's grandmother cooking off in the country and then some guy was like, oh, let me take my grandmother's recipes and flavor profile and make it a little different style.

• 29:59Joe Flamm?

  Right, like, it's not like, oh, are people gonna pay high money for, you know, high end Caribbean food in South Bend, Indiana? It's like, no, that's an interesting conversation. Probably not.

• 30:09Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 30:09Joe Flamm?

  You know what I mean? Probably not. That restaurant's gonna struggle there. It'd be a weird place to open it. But it's like, you're in one of the richest cities in the world and you're like, this is expensive. It's like, it's New York. Everything's expensive. It's expensive to get off of a plane there.

• 30:22Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah, exactly. Breathing the air is expensive.

• 30:24Joe Flamm?

  Right, like, that's, that's my problem with it. It's like, it's New York City. If you're going out to a good restaurant in New York City, it's fucking expensive. Fucking deal with it.

• 30:34Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah, exactly. It's a, it's pretty crazy. Um, but that's, that is my line check thing that's been, been eating at me since I read that. Cause I'm like, why are we still talking about this? Why are we still talking about price points and

• 30:47Joe Flamm?

  I'll have that conversation in small markets all day, but like in New York, it's like, yo, you're in New York. It's expensive.

• 30:53Adrienne Cheatham?

  Exactly. All right. All right. So what do you have for us next, Joe? Is it, is it walk in confessions time?

• 30:59Joe Flamm?

  It's walk, it's walk in confession time. And I got, I got, I got a story for you. So this is from my sous chef days. And this was, you know, when you think, you think you're getting really proficient at something. And you're really not quite as proficient as, as you think, or you still make mistakes. It's a great reminder that we all make mistakes.

• 31:16Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay.

• 31:17Joe Flamm?

  So I was working at, uh, Spiaja and I was a sous chef there. And one of the things I did as a sous chef is that I would butcher the pigs. So I would butcher the pigs for, we had two restaurants there. We had cafe and dining room, but I ran cafe. So I would butcher the pigs for both. That's what I do. You know, they come in on Wednesdays from the farm and every Wednesday night I butcher them. So, you know, per usual, it's Wednesday night. I'm in the back. I'm butchering a pig and we would get smaller ones, like 50, 60 pounds usually. So they're pretty, uh, pretty quick breakdown. Um, and you know, I'd just do it with a knife, uh, cause when they're that small. So we'd usually do it between fifth and six ribs. So we'd get a little more copa.

• 31:56Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay. And you did, you say you didn't need like a cleaver to get through the bones? You were able to do it?

• 31:59Joe Flamm?

  Not really. I'd use a cleaver a little bit to get through the spine.

• 32:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay.

• 32:03Joe Flamm?

  But I was doing three pigs a week, every week. So I was getting, you know, decent, you know, you're not butcher good, but good for a chef. So it's a Wednesday night, I butchered my pig. I'm in the back by myself, whatever. I'm going through. And as I'm going through the ribs, this pig was a little bit bigger. It was like 70 pounds.

• 32:23Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, big, big.

• 32:25Joe Flamm?

  So I'm going through and I get stuck. There's a little piece of cartilage that comes out. And on the smaller ones, you just go right through it with your knife.

• 32:33Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay.

• 32:34Joe Flamm?

  So it was a little bigger. So I'm pulling out, it's kind of stuck. And so instead of doing the smart thing, like stopping, going back and retracing the line. I just took my other elbow. And I pushed the pig with it so that it would go through it.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:49Joe Flamm?

  Which it did. Went right through the cartilage, then through my apron, through my chef coat and into my stomach.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Oh, for fuck's sake. Oh, my god.

• 33:00Joe Flamm?

  So it wasn't too far, but it was far enough that I had to go like that. And I like drop, you know, and it's like, you know, when you cut yourself and you just drop your knife real quick to be like, that didn't happen. So I like, put the knife right on the cutting board. And I just stand there for a second. I'm like, it's fine. You're fine.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 33:19Joe Flamm?

  Everything's fine. This is okay. You're okay.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  No, Joe.

• 33:23Joe Flamm?

  So I'm not even looking down yet. So I look down. I'm wearing a black apron. I'm like, I'm okay. So I pick up my apron. I have a chef coat on. My chef coat's okay. I'm like, alright. Then I open my chef coat and I have a white undershirt on. It is completely puddly red with blood. I'm like, okay, that's not good.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  How deep did the knife go in?

• 33:44Joe Flamm?

  So then I sit there another second. I'm just standing there in silence. I kind of give it a minute and then I pull my apron up again. I have completely now started bleeding through my chef coat.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Oh, fuck.

• 33:55Joe Flamm?

  So I'm like, fuck, like, this is not good. So I had this Serbian in front of the house manager dude at the time, Nikola. So I tell one of my polishers in the back, I'm like, hey, can you go get Nikola? He's like, yeah. Nikola comes in the back. I said, go get a bottle of vodka. Get a roll of plastic wrap and meet me in the employee bathroom in the back. And you know, Nikola's like, crazy Serbian dude from East Chicago. He's like, no problem, no problem. I got you chef. I got you chef. So I go in the back. I stripped out. I'm wiping myself off with C folds, patting it dry. You know, I don't know how far the knife went in, not that far, but it was, I was bleeding.

• 34:35Joe Flamm?

  I mean, I was bleeding. So he meets me back there. I'm standing in the employee restroom. I have no shirt on. I'm bleeding out of my stomach. And I'm just holding C folds on myself. He's like, chef, chef, chef, what's going on? I'm like, I stabbed myself getting the pig. Like, you gotta get me, you gotta get me wrapped up.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:54Joe Flamm?

  And he was like, alright, alright, let's do it. So he takes a vodka. He pours the vodka all over me. He wiped me down. And then I just grab some gauze, I press it to my stomach, and then I have him plastic wrap me.

• 35:04Adrienne Cheatham?

  Like a, like you're wrapping a speed rack, like all the way around?

• 35:08Joe Flamm?

  Hurricane wrapped me like.

• 35:10Adrienne Cheatham?

  Tear that box off.

• 35:11Joe Flamm?

  Like it's a catering, catering order. So he plastic wraps me, I grab a fresh chef coat, I go back out.

• 35:17Adrienne Cheatham?

  No.

• 35:19Joe Flamm?

  At one point, the, the CDC I was working for comes back and he's like, what's going on? I told him, he's like, alright. And so he gets me wrapped up, I go back in there and my CDC is like, alright, well, I'm gonna call it a night. And he just leaves. So then I have to, I have to butcher the rest of the pig.

• 35:38Adrienne Cheatham?

  I thought he meant call it a night for you to go to the fucking hospital.

• 35:42Joe Flamm?

  He went home. So then I had, I go back, I had to butcher the rest of the pig. So I butchered the rest of the pig, I then go out, run the rest of service in the dining room, close the restaurant, go home. And then I'm like, alright, well, like, if Hill finds out about this, she's gonna be like mad. Or like make me go to the hospital. She's not even mad, but she's gonna like definitely want me to go to the hospital.

• 36:06Adrienne Cheatham?

  She's gonna be mad that you didn't go to the hospital. I'm mad you didn't go to the fucking hospital.

• 36:10Joe Flamm?

  So, I was just like, but you know what I mean? I'm like, I can just kind of like, you know, we work different hours, I could kind of avoid her for a couple of days and hopefully this'll, this'll come around.

• 36:20Adrienne Cheatham?

  But you're gonna crinkle in your sleep from being plastic wrapped?

• 36:24Joe Flamm?

  Um, I took the plastic wrap off before bed and replaced it with tape.

• 36:28Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, oh, okay. Well, in that case, yeah.

• 36:31Joe Flamm?

  I had a plan. Uh, luckily I'm not that hairy. Uh, so, I waited for a couple of days, and a couple of days later at my, at my buddy's house, who's a chef and he lived down the alley from me. We were like, you know, shoveling snow or something, you know what I mean? And we went inside to have some drinks and I was like, bro, I gotta show you this. And I lifted up my shirt and he goes, holy shit.

• 36:51Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh my god.

• 36:51Joe Flamm?

  It looked like, Agent, it looked like I got beaten with a baseball bat. I had a bruise on my stomach that was like the size of a dinner plate. He was like, what? I was like, and I told him the story, I was like, I stabbed myself, butchered a pig, man, it was bad, you know? And he's like, what are you gonna do? I'm like, I'm just rolling with it. Like, I'm just kind of avoiding the hill. Like, it just hasn't come up. And so I was able to avoid her for long enough. Like, the bruise went down enough, but like, eventually it came out, she found out that she was not happy about it. But it was like, far enough removed that I couldn't go to the hospital then, you know, because it'd been four days. And it's like, you know, you're not gonna go to the hospital after four days. You just kinda.

• 37:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay, so it's too late to get stitches?

• 37:28Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, no, I had stopped bleeding. I had been bleeding for four days straight. Like, it bled out and off for a while. But like, it was a massive bruise. Like, it was a massive bruise. But then I, you know, the best part was, a buddy of mine I went to high school with, I saw him at a party the next week. And I was like, he was, he's a doctor. And so I asked him, I said, hey, you know, I was gonna text you the other day, and I told him what had happened. And I was like, I didn't know if I should go to the emergency room or not. And he was, he had a lot of disgust in his face, as I told him the story.

• 38:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  He was judging the fuck out of you.

• 38:03Joe Flamm?

  Yeah. And he goes, yeah, um, kind of as a rule in medicine and in life, like, if a knife goes inside of you, like, you should go to the hospital.

• 38:14Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah, that's a good rule to live by.

• 38:16Joe Flamm?

  I was like, this is why I didn't text you.

• 38:19Adrienne Cheatham?

  Uh, you, even I, and I have worked through some shit, Joseph Lam, you should, I'm gonna call you like, Joseph T. I need to like, throw out your whole government on this, but what the fuck? I can't believe you, Joe. You should have a hundred percent gone to the hospital. I can't believe your CDC left like that, too.

• 38:37Joe Flamm?

  Oh, that was unbelievable move on his part.

• 38:40Adrienne Cheatham?

  What a dick.

• 38:42Joe Flamm?

  I'm gonna get out of here. It's like, all right, well, I'm just gonna stand here and bleed and finish butchering.

• 38:46Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah. That's like in a, in Tombstone, what are you gonna do? Just stand there and bleed?

• 38:50Joe Flamm?

  Yep, pretty much.

• 38:52Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, my God.

• 38:53Joe Flamm?

  There you go, age.

• 38:54Adrienne Cheatham?

  Joe, that is fucking crazy. You should have a hundred percent gone to the hospital. I cannot believe you stayed at work through that. That's crazy.

• 39:00Joe Flamm?

  Hey, still standing for another week and for another week of the chef's cut. Age, always a pleasure.

• 39:06Adrienne Cheatham?

  Always a blast, Joe Flamm. Where can people find you?

• 39:09Joe Flamm?

  Find me in real life at Boulevard Steakhouse, Roseberry, Chicago, or Il Carchofo. You can find me online at It's The Flamm. Age, where can they track you down?

• 39:18Adrienne Cheatham?

  You can find me at Chef Adrian Cheatham on IG. Follow along with all these European travels and restaurants I've been going to. You can also check out the Sunday Best Cookbook or the Chef's Cut Pod IG account, where you can find me and Joe and clips from all of our cool, fun episodes.

• 39:36Joe Flamm?

  Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. This has been the Chef's Cut.

• 39:39Adrienne Cheatham?

  Life beyond the past.