#156: Joshua Skenes -- Playing with Fire

"The answer is either yes or no. If it's 'no,' then I have to start over." - Joshua Skenes Joshua Skenes (IG: @jskenes https://twitter.com/jskenes) has become famous for his use of fire. As chef-owner of Saison http://saisonsf.com/ in San Francisco (three Michelin stars), he has classical training and loves his high-end Japanese Nenohi knives http://nenohi.co.jp/en/index.html, but nothing captures his imagination quite like the open flame. The back of his business card sports three words, stark on ivory stock: Play with fire. In this episode, we explore his obsessions: simplicity, food, and martial arts. We became friends during the collaboration of The 4-Hour Chef http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Chef-Cooking-Learning-Anything/dp/0547884591/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, and this was a long overdue catch-up. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Headspace https://www.headspace.com/tim, the world's most popular meditation app (more than 4,000,000 users). It's used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace's free Take10 program https://www.headspace.com/tim — 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It's like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn't need to be complicated or expensive, and it's had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free https://www.headspace.com/tim for a few days and see what I mean. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, we're just in an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Headspace. More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across the military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple, and you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day, and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation, and Headspace is by far the most popular app for this purpose. More than 4 million users, it's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice, meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, supported by thousands of scientific studies, and try

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E, if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program. For 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes, you should give it a shot. Headspace.com/Tim. Just go to Headspace.com/Tim.

• 1:42Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I used 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things. With 99designs, designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. For you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, my listeners,

• 2:25Tim Ferriss?

  you guys, will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out.

• 2:36Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, whether they are chess prodigies, military strategists, former generals, entertainment icons, athletes, or otherwise. And this episode, I am speaking with a friend I hadn't caught up with in a very, very long time, Joshua Skeens. And that was my dog yawning in the background, otherwise known as Josh Skeens. Skeen, depending on who you ask, S-K-E-N-E-S. Instagram, @J Skeens. Skeens has become famous for his use of fire. As chef-owner of Saison in San Francisco, which has three Michelin stars, one of the very first restaurants ever in San Francisco

• 3:20Tim Ferriss?

  to receive three Michelin stars. He has classical training, which of course you would expect, and loves his high-end Japanese Nenohi knives. Check them out. But nothing quite captures his imagination like the open flame. The back of his business card sports three words, stark on its ivory stock, "Play with fire." That's what the back of his business card says. And in this episode, we explore three of his obsessions: simplicity, food, and the martial arts. We became friends first during collaboration for The Four Hour Chef, where he taught me about all sorts of incredible things. And this was a long overdue catch-up over lots of different types of tea. So I hope you very much enjoy it. And if you have

• 4:03Tim Ferriss?

  not yet checked out Five Bullet Friday, every Friday, I send out a free short email, five bullets of the coolest things that I have found, discovered, uncovered that week. Then you should check it out. It is free and has 70-plus percent open rate, so people are loving it. It is found at fourhourworkweek.com/friday, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/friday. And without further ado, here is Joshua Skeens.

• 4:35Tim Ferriss?

  Joshua, sir, welcome to the show.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:37Tim Ferriss?

  It is.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:38Tim Ferriss?

  It has been so long since we actually hung out.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's been too long. And in fact, it's been probably, what, five years, really?

• 4:48Tim Ferriss?

  Probably that we've actually spent any sit-down time together because the way we connected originally with the, when I was doing research for The Four Hour Chef and visiting the, the older location of Saigon brings back a lot of memories. And before I get to that, though, I want to know, do you still have, what does the back of your business card currently say?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  I haven't picked up a business card in like four years.

• 5:16Tim Ferriss?

  So maybe I got the older version.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it used to, I think the one you're talking about used to say, "Play with fire."

• 5:22Tim Ferriss?

  Play with fire.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Play with fire was the old one. That was some, one of the guys who does, his name's Jim Ailes, really, really, you know, amazing creative designer, does all the stuff for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And he thought we should write "Play with fire" on the back because that's what we do.

• 5:38Tim Ferriss?

  And the, at the, we're gonna get into a number of different facets of our shared interests. Of course, we're sitting in my house. It's filled with Japanophile paraphernalia everywhere, saddles and armor and whatnot. And at the-

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Completely different from my house.

• 5:54Tim Ferriss?

  Completely.

• 5:56Tim Ferriss?

  But at the first location that I visited of your restaurant, you had a wooden man right there, about, I would say, what, 15 feet from where you did-

• 6:05Speaker 01

  From where you seed people.

• 6:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, from where you see people.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  We used to, we used to throw a, like a blanket, like a little cashmere blanket on it, just cover it up from the guests. But, you know, then we started leaving it uncovered and, and, you know, it's very interesting if you see people's reactions. They, they loved it.

• 6:22Tim Ferriss?

  So the, the martial arts and the cooking seem to go back a long way. What are your earliest memories of either?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Well, martial arts, I mean, that, that, I've been doing that for as long as I can stand. So I don't, I don't, you know, my earliest memories are, you know, like four years old in the backyard. You know, my friend's kicking me or something in the stomach. I don't know. We've got an argument. Uh, but, uh, but in, in cooking, it's kind of the same way. I don't know. You know, there was really no, um, there's no direct, uh, path to, um, starting cooking. You know, I, I have pictures of me when I had, uh, when I was probably, I don't know, four, with a little chef's hat on, floppy Chef Boyer D hat and, uh, mud pies. So it, it was always something that was, um, maybe of interest to me and, and I can't, you know, this is, this is a, a super common question. I'm sure you know.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And, and I can never answer it really properly because I just don't, I have no idea. It's just, it was just always there.

• 7:19Tim Ferriss?

  But it was, it was ever-present. I mean, in the sense that you grew up in Florida, correct?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it was just an interest, right? Uh, just you're drawn, we're drawn to things as humans sometimes. And that, that happened to be something I was drawn to.

• 7:33Tim Ferriss?

  When were you formally introduced to a, a specific martial art?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Uh, I think I was, uh, six or so, uh, and that was, uh, Tang Sudo.

• 7:46Tim Ferriss?

  No kidding?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  My hometown of Florida. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I started with Tang Sudo and, uh, uh, you know, my parents got me into it. I think I'd always been into it. I'd expressed some desire and so, uh, and then from there Taekwondo, and then from there I went to, uh, Northern Chinese Martial Arts and then with Changchuan. And, uh, and, um, you know, the various things from there. So it, it was all, it, it just,

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I, I, I done it, you know, off and on and, and, uh, jumped around from martial art to martial art. So there's so many different ones that I, I toyed with.

• 8:20Tim Ferriss?

  And the play with fire, to return to that for a second, uh, how do you use fire? In your restaurant, because that was one of the things that really drew me to engaging with you when I was looking at cooking as a metaphor for learning, but also life in a way, because you're exploring all of these different senses. And when I visited your restaurant, I brought a friend of mine, Jeffrey Zarofsky, who's run many different restaurants, worked as a line cook in many very well-known restaurants. And he said it was one of the, it could have been the intoxication of the 80s music that was being played at the time. It could have been the wine pairings, but he said it was one of his top, I think, three

• 9:04Tim Ferriss?

  meals that he'd ever had. And the fire-

• 9:07Speaker 01

  We're not doing very good, then. We gotta get that up to the top.

• 9:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  That was a long time ago.

• 9:11Tim Ferriss?

  And the fire always struck me. How do you use fire and why do you use it so much?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, how is every way, but why, I think, is, I mean, literally, everything on the menu is, has been touched by fire somehow. And there are, there's so many different ways that we've kind of explored cooking with fire. It's not, it's not all barbecue, it's not all grilled, it's all these kind of, you know, just ways that we've come up to cook with that are based on what the product needs, right? I think really great cooking is based on what the product needs. So if you get a, you know, you get a fish in one day, it has a certain taste, a certain texture, a certain, you know, amount of moisture inside, the next day it changes.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  So you have to change your cooking based on that. So, so, you know, we, we, we approach, you know, the fire the same way, you know, to really base it around finding great products, amazing products, kind of the best thing in local existence. And then, you know, employing a technique that is, that makes those products better, right? But they still wind up as what they are. So, so that's just in taste in general, and that's temperature, texture, and flavor.

• 10:30Tim Ferriss?

  So the, let's talk about just state of freshness for a second, because this is also something that you made me think a lot about. For those people who hear- What sound like coffee mugs, that's exactly what you're hearing. So Josh is armed with a glass or a bowl, glass or a bowl. I should say a mug, half glass, half bowl mug, full of green tea and black tea. And I have some as well. But the, the question of freshness, so I was reading about, and I've never seen you do this, but Ikejime and like the going through a traditional Japanese butchering process with, from live fish to using pretty much every component of said fish, right? Which is an art form in and of itself.

• 11:14Tim Ferriss?

  People tend to assume fresh is always what you want. How would you, how would you educate them or what are your thoughts on the subject? Because you also, just to, I guess, provide some of the punchline, I mean, age a lot of different types of food.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:31Tim Ferriss?

  How do you think?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, so you have to look at it like this, every, everything has its moment when it tastes its best. And so it really becomes about understanding products and then learning, you know, what, what period of time those products are best in. And so, you know, for some fish, like a big, you know, fatty fish, it's not right after you kill it. It's, well, let me take that back. It's actually a little complicated. It's, it's one of two things generally for fish. Like as soon as you pull it out of the water, you kill it, you hack off a slice and you eat it right then and there, within the first 30 minutes. It's kind of like hunting, right? Like you have a window, like you can, you can eat it within the first 30 minutes or so and it's really great. It's still tender, hasn't set into rigor mortis yet. Or you can really take it, you know, into its sweet spot.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  And, and that can be, you know, a week, a day, six months even for some things. Just really depends on the product.

• 12:22Tim Ferriss?

  What about, I was gonna say pigeons, but I guess I should say squab. Do you age squab?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:30Tim Ferriss?

  You do, right?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, it depends on the time of year. It depends on the diet. And that's the whole, the whole understanding of products thing is you have to, you have to really kind of, you know, get a grip on what, what they're eating, you know, how much fat is in the meat.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  You know, did you, if you shot it and then, you know, BB went through the breast, then you probably shouldn't age it. You should probably eat it the next day or something. So, so there's a lot of factors that, that, that, you know, contribute.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I would say two weeks on a, on a squab.

• 13:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Or a pigeon, either one.

• 13:05Tim Ferriss?

  And. The, let's talk about the hunting for a second because we're sitting here and right to our, or my left, your right, on this couch, there's a caribou mounted on the wall, which some people could actually see and might have seen on a show called Meat Eater. I actually went with a guy named Steve Rinella, who's also.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  You know, I saw that. That's right. That's the caribou.

• 13:29Tim Ferriss?

  That's the caribou. And avid cook.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I love that show.

• 13:32Tim Ferriss?

  Wouldn't consider himself a chef, but he's actually a really good cook.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:36Tim Ferriss?

  And he took me on my very first hunt, which was whitetail deer in South Carolina. And I always grew up with a very negative association with hunting because on Long Island where I grew up, you would find just beer cans littered all over the place and injured deer on our property and across the street and so on. There's just a lot of negligent hunting. But Steve showed me a very different side.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  On Long Island? No.

• 14:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, can you imagine? The responsible denizens of Strong Island, but, and I'm sure there are great hunters on Long Island also, but the point being that Steve showed me a very different diametrically opposed, responsible approach. And took me through the entire process of field dressing and whatnot. And my experience was with the whitetail deer, which I felt no guilt about whatsoever. And actually, this right here, and those who don't have a visual, because you wouldn't, I'm picking up a tanned skin that's over the side of my couch is from that first deer. So I want to make these into gloves, but we used everything.

• 14:43Tim Ferriss?

  And he, we also have Chester, who is, who is Joshua's dog here, a little Frenchie with a brindle coat.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And his hunting collar.

• 14:53Tim Ferriss?

  And his hunting collar.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  It's my bird. It's my bird dog. It's pretty vicious. You gotta be careful sometimes.

• 15:00Tim Ferriss?

  When did you, did you start hunting when you were really young? Or did it come in?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I did in the woods. You know, I never, I never picked up a gun to hunt until I was.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Just a couple of years ago. And, uh, and so, um, up until then, when I grew up, well, let's go back to Florida. Growing up in Florida, you know, you're, you're just surrounded by swamps and alligators and wildlife in general. Um, you know, there's, you spend most of your time in the woods somewhere, you know, whether it's a park or, or the woods or something. So it's just, you just can't help it. I mean, kids are, especially being a kid there, growing up, there's like, it, I, I think it's, might be the most dangerous place on earth, besides maybe Australia. And, uh, I mean, there are alligators, crocodiles. Uh, I think it may have the highest variety of poison snakes in America. Uh, big water moxons, huge rattlesnakes, alligator gar, you know, you know, alligator gar, fish that look like, you know,

• 15:56Speaker 01

  alligator mouth that they grow 10 feet long, snapping turtles that can take your hand off. Uh, and just all kinds of other shit, like giant spiders. So it's, uh, you can't help but kind of be in the woods and hunt and, you know, rummage around and gather. And, and my dad was always big into that. Um, so yeah, that's how I grew up and, and, uh, he would take me over to this, uh, he had a Native American friend of his, uh, named Silver Fox. And so there was always this ethos of, you know, using, using what you kill and hunting, you know, ethically and, or fishing or just doing anything ethically, right? Being in the woods, kind of being one with nature. Um, so that's how I grew up and, and, you know, the product side of that has always been a part of my cooking and, and part of my thought process.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  And, uh, and in fact, I, I went, you know, from that to the big city to being vegetarian to be, or pescatarian to vegetarian to vegan. And then finally back to hunting again, uh, after becoming chefs.

• 16:52Tim Ferriss?

  What led you from, what led you out? Was there any particular moment that led you out of veganism or realization or?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I, taste.

• 17:02Tim Ferriss?

  Taste.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  You know what, you know what it was? Actually, I just, there's, so there was, I, I was training again. Uh, I, I, I took a brief moment off of training when I went to school.

• 17:11Tim Ferriss?

  Um, and this was, uh, FCI?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, the French Culinary Institute. It used to be called back then. It's now called the ICC or something.

• 17:18Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, and back then it was a bunch of crazy old French dudes, some very well-known French chefs.

• 17:23Tim Ferriss?

  In New York City.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, in New York City. And so I, uh, went into school being kind of a vegetarian.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Um, in culinary school.

• 17:34Tim Ferriss?

  That's tough.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  And I remember tasting this meat and I was like, God, this is fucking disgusting. This is like, you know, like, because it's commodity veal, right? You're talking about, you know, uh, feedlot cows and stuff, and that's really nasty stuff. And, uh, so the point was is that I, I had a dream one night and I was vegetarian at that point, not vegan anymore. Um, and I, I was in a river, I was standing in a river and I just reached down in and I grabbed a giant squid out and I just bit into it and bit a big hunk of squid out. And so then I woke up and the next day I woke up and I had this craving for salt and pepper squid. And so I went and got salt and pepper squid and it was the best thing I've ever eaten. And that was, that's how I got out of it.

• 18:13Tim Ferriss?

  And that was it?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:14Tim Ferriss?

  That's, that was the gateway.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:17Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, at the time you were training in Bagua or what were you training in?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bagua.

• 18:24Tim Ferriss?

  Can you describe that for people who are not familiar?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  So, so there, there, the, the typical path to Chinese martial arts as a kid, when you start very young, you start in, uh, like long fists, right? Which is a normal, either, either southern or northern, you know, you pick what, what's best for your body type. Um, so, uh, if you have longer, you know, limbs, then usually long fist is the way to go. Um, so, and then you can kind of choose after you do that for your years of basics. Um, and once you get through your years of basics, which, you know, take, you know, 10 years or so, then you can kind of start to choose what you want to really kind of specialize in or what you have aptitude towards, um, depending on, you know, not just your body type, but also your, your sensibility and your movement.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And, uh, and so, uh, I chose internal martial arts, which is the family of, uh, three Taiji, um, Shingi and Bagua. And so I chose all three of those, right? And I, and I started, uh, in Taiji because my teacher in Florida, um, was a student of Chen Xiaowang. And, uh, Chen Xiaowang is a, uh, really amazing Taiji teacher from, uh, Chen Village in China. Um, and, and I just traced up the lineage from there. So when I left Florida in high school, I just traced the lineage back and, and, uh, and started doing Shingi and Bagua and Bagua was always very interesting to me. Um, and then I got just, and then I just specialized in Bagua. And then when I moved out, that was. I don't know, 10 years before I moved here, and I moved here about 12 years ago.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Um, and, and then I moved out here and I traced my lineage back to the last surviving member of fu-style Bagua, and his name was Liang Xiaoyao, and he just passed away a couple years ago. But I studied with him for about 10 years, uh, until his death.

• 20:06Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh,

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I was supposed to describe Bagua, right?

• 20:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  So, so Bagua, I mean, you know, it's one of those, it's a, it's kind of this esoteric martial art, and it's really hard to describe. I don't know that there's a really, a two-sentence description for Bagua. But i- i- if, if I could, if I could, it would be evasion. And I think it's kind of the art of evasion, but there's all these kind of prerequisites to, to that. And I think that it's really hard, even more hard to describe, because most of our understanding in America of, of really high-level Chinese martial arts is total garbage.

• 20:38Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  There's, I don't know if there is even one, to be honest with you. Well, I mean, you could probably count them on your, on your hands, right?

• 20:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  To get really good Chinese martial, that, that would be effective. Um, but in terms of, you know, healthfulness, it's a really amazing thing. Um, so you kind of walk in circles until you get dizzy, and then you're no longer dizzy anymore, and then you learn how to do these little patterns where you go back and forth and up and down. Um, and it teaches you basically to have a very supple, strong, flexible, um, series of movements that can, uh, react at any time to someone else's movements. And, and kind of almost confuse them, if you will, or, or just evade just enough to where you always have the angular, uh, upper hand.

• 21:27Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, because when I've, when I've thought of Bagua, and I don't, I know very little about it, even though I lived in, in China for six months in 92, and went to two universities there in Beijing, where I studied something called Da Changquan for a period of time. Uh,

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Did you go to Beidai, or where'd you go?

• 21:44Tim Ferriss?

  No, I went to, there's one called Oddly enough in English Beijing Normal University, which is Beijing Shifan University. And then there's Beijing Capital University of Business and Economics, which is Shoudu Jingmao University. But they call it the, yeah, Jingji Maoli University. So that, those were the two. And with Bagua, I only, I remember seeing someone practicing and I, the Ba, I guess is eight. I don't know what it refers to, but there's some relationship to, what are they, the trigrams of like?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Bagua is basically like, um, is the eight trigrams, right?

• 22:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the eight trigrams.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  And so somehow this relates back to a philosophy of, you know, the beginning of everything. It's a binary system essentially to where there was, there's a, there's, you know, the void. It all starts with Wu Ji, right? And then there's the void and then there's one and zero and one binaries. And then it builds from there and I don't really know. That wasn't my purpose for studying things. I never really, I never understood it and I still don't today, so.

• 22:52Tim Ferriss?

  The cosmology aspect of it. How has, if, if it has, the martial arts affected how you think about food, cooking or vice versa?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  I think it affects everything. I really, I think it affects the way that you really think and act and everything you do. And, and I mean, you know, the, just overall, the ability to be more peaceful with your surroundings. But I think that in cooking, I think it's the essential nature, right? We're, we're a restaurant. I mean, if, if you were to ask me what Saison is, I would say it's a restaurant. And what kind of restaurant? Well, it's, it's American food because there's no, you know, I think, and that's the part where martial arts kicks in. Because you're not, um, it, it's meant to be the essential parts of things, right? In life and where you're stripping away all of the unessential to get to the essential, right?

• 23:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  And, um, And so that may be, you know, taste, maybe the the actual dish itself in in the restaurant, where you just have what's essential on the plate. You have a beautiful piece of wild, you know, deer or elk or whatever it may be, one that I hunted in a good place at the right time of year. And you just age it just enough to get to its sweet spot, and you just barely grill it, and you just put a beautiful sauce on the plate, right? And that's the essential part of what pleasure is, right? And so that's the same with the service, right? I mean, here's the description, it's very simple, it's very basic, we want to get in, give the person their food, get out, let them have a pleasurable experience, right? So all of it is kind of reflected, the whole philosophy of the restaurant and everything

• 24:31Speaker 01

  else is reflected through, you know, those those kind of principles. I think that's very martial arts, right?

• 24:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it is. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that the, you know, there are parallels in all these things. And the reason, part of the reason I wanted to have you on is because I know you have this deep love and obsession with the Chinese martial arts and internal martial arts. And so I've been fantasizing in part myself of doing, sorry, just keep laughing, because Josh's dog, like a prairie dog, keeps popping up because he wants to get on the couch.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Chester, get up here. I'm gonna take a picture of this.

• 25:08Tim Ferriss?

  But I've been fantasizing about doing a second podcast, I don't think I'm going to, called Side Gig, because I think that what we do as the primary activity, as people view it, is so informed by what other obsessions we might have, and vice versa. The, so the question of reducing and simplifying, I think, transfers across all these different areas, right? You look at people who are really world-class as athletic coaches. There's one track and field coach, I remember, I think he was Dutch, who said, you know, do as little as is necessary, not as much as is possible, right? You could apply that to your food, you could apply that to bagua, anything, really, I think, in life.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:51Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Sorry to destroy your couch.

• 25:54Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's all right.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Chester's having a

• 25:56Tim Ferriss?

  Chester's having a nervous breakdown.

• 26:00Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think has made Cezanne unique and successful as a restaurant?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I think that at the end of the day, it was about that, actually, that just the philosophy, the ethos of the restaurant. And because, you know, it started with just the food.

• 26:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  You know, asking myself, you know, a series of questions about what I thought about the food and the quality and the essentialness of everything.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  And I think that triggered everything else. And that was, you know, really starting and saying, okay, you know, when we first, before we even started Cezanne, it's really just my thought process about how to create good food. And is this, let's say I'm making a dish and I eat, I eat it and I get to it and I say, is this really the best version of this thing that I've ever eaten or ever put in my mouth? And if the answer, it's either yes or no. And the answer is no, then I have to start over. And I have to really think through the reality of what, and just keeping yourself grounded and thinking. And what is the reality of if, you know, Mr. Joel Robichon came in or something, what would he say? Or what would the best chef in Japan say? You know,

• 27:13Speaker 01

  so that it was that kind of process that I think is certainly influenced by martial arts. And that's, that's how it all started, I guess.

• 27:20Tim Ferriss?

  How have you responded when, what is your internal dialogue?

• 27:29Tim Ferriss?

  Or self-talk, like when you get, say, a review from a critic that you wish were better? Or?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  We don't get those anymore, but I hear you from local.

• 27:39Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  I'm just kidding.

• 27:41Tim Ferriss?

  When you get, no, well, so I want you to correct my timeline if I'm wrong. But so let's, I'm going to use my flawed memory to try to just paint a picture here. So we connected when you're at the old location, much smaller location.

• 27:56Tim Ferriss?

  We kept in touch, hit it off. You ended up then developing the new location, which I wanted to invest in purely. And this is the only time, I don't know if I ever told you this, this is the only time I've ever done it, where I made the investment viewing it like, this is gonna sound silly maybe, but a patron grant in a way, because I enjoyed your work so much, I just wanted to see what you would do next. And so it's like, I cared more about you being able to continue to experiment and refine what you were doing, than I cared about ever seeing that come back. Now, the restaurant's done extremely well, but that was the reason for doing it. And then the, I remember at one point, there was, it wasn't a bad review,

• 28:41Tim Ferriss?

  but it wasn't like a flawless review that came out. And we had a little bit of communication and there, you didn't really say anything and you just went heads down. And then it was like, maybe a year later that you became, is it one of the, one of the two restaurants ever to receive? Three Michelin stars in San Francisco?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  In San Francisco, yeah.

• 29:00Tim Ferriss?

  In San Francisco.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So we were the first along with one other restaurant.

• 29:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Benue, right?

• 29:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  And when, when you get either an imperfect review or a great review, what do you say to yourself? Well, I mean, you know, reviews are, you know, the whole, whole media, it's a great validation in some ways to hard work. But at the end of the day, you know, if those things didn't exist, you know, asses in the seats are really what, what make you enjoy your life, right? And so, you know, for that reason, it's just, you have to just, I mean, there's learning tools there. You know, you get a bad review, then you have to really think about it. You know, is this really true? You know, it's important to, you know, take in what's, what's real and discard what's not, right?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Because we know the media is, they can be a little silly sometimes. So, or inaccurate, let's say. But, but there is also a lot of really knowledgeable people out that have traveled the world and, and I don't know. To be honest with you, I don't think about it anymore. I don't think about it anymore because when I see people come in the restaurant and really have such an amazing time, that's what's kind of special to me, that's what, that's what makes it worth it. It's very. You know, simple in a way, and I'm a, I'm a simple, simple dude in many ways.

• 30:24Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the, I remember the first time I did a, I guess, I'm not sure if I would call it chef's table. I think it was a chef's table dinner at Cezanne and the, the, there were a couple of simple, and I was looking for things that I could share in the Four Hour Chef, right, and things that people could try, test themselves. And one of them was so simple, but so well done, and I want you to describe it. I don't remember the name, but it was effectively a piece of cling wrap on top of a, not a martini glass, but a very nice piece of glassware.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Oh, the magic bowl.

• 31:02Tim Ferriss?

  There we go.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  The magic bowl.

• 31:03Tim Ferriss?

  The magic bowl. Can you describe this? And then a piece of food suspended on top.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so it's just like, it's, it's been around for a long time, but it's basically just, you stretch a piece of Saran Wrap over the top of a glass bowl, or any bowl really, for that matter, where the, basically you stretch it far enough around the edges so that when you rip it off, the top seems like it's floating on air, right? So you can't really tell that there's Saran Wrap there. And, yeah, people love that. And then you just. It looks like the food's floating. You put a piece of food on top of the Saran Wrap. It looks like the food's floating.

• 31:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's just, but it's a very, I'd never seen it.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Now, I think it's totally ridiculous, and I would never do it again.

• 31:41Tim Ferriss?

  Well, but at the time.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  It was fun, though.

• 31:43Tim Ferriss?

  At the time, it was fun. So what are you experimenting with these days? What are you most excited to work on or experiment with?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  I, I, it's, it's products, you know, as, as time goes on, you know, just like if you practice your, you know, your martial arts over and over again, you, you do that one throw, you know, millions of times if you can. And then that's when it really starts to get interesting. It's the same way with cooking, like you do, you repeat the same process over and over and over again, thousands and thousands of times, and you start to, you know, get a little better understanding of it. And then another few thousand times go by, you start to get a little more better understanding of it. And then you maybe start to look at your products a little differently. You start to chase down better products.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  You know, a little bit less salt, more natural flavor comes out. You know, there's, it's such subtle little differences and, but that's really what makes up really, really great cooking is just all of those little tiny things done really well throughout a process that you've repeated, you know, thousands and thousands of times.

• 32:50Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it makes me think of Bruce Lee, right? I mean, and I'm gonna butcher the quote, but along the lines of, I don't fear the man who's practiced 10,000 kicks one time each, I fear the man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Well, that's really what it's about because in that, that's from martial art. I mean, you know, the more I talk about it, the more it comes back to really just martial arts and practicing. Cause we used to, you know, we used to, when I was young, we would practice the same throw for hours and hours and hours again. I would just do that throw over and over and over again. That's all we did until we could just do it no matter what, right? Until it's default, until it's, you know, you go through those isolation drills where you basically isolate everything that you do in your arsenal. And then you do it so many times that it's there when you need it, no matter what.

• 33:33Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  That's, that's same with cooking, right? Same with anything, I guess.

• 33:37Tim Ferriss?

  Make it part of your on-demand repertoire.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's that?

• 33:41Tim Ferriss?

  Make it part of your on-demand repertoire. You can call it when you need it.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:46Tim Ferriss?

  So of the, if you were to think of some of the biggest influences or mentors, they don't have to be from cooking, but in your sort of development as a chef, as a cook, who, who are some of the names that come to mind or people that come to mind?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  You know, that, I don't know. It's a great question. You take influence from everywhere.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  This is another question that happens sometimes that I can't ever answer.

• 34:16Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure there are a ton of them, but I'm not gonna let you go with, they're, they're everywhere. I'm gonna, I'm, so I wanna.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  They, they are everywhere, but I, but I.

• 34:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just, I'm looking for any, any specific lessons learned. So for instance, I'll give you an example. One of my friends who, who used to work at one of Danny Meyer's very first restaurants.

• 34:37Tim Ferriss?

  No, it wasn't a day. Well, he did. He did do that, but he worked with this very famous French chef at one point. And he, so he wanted to, he ended up teaching this guy Jeffrey, how to move through the kitchen without being underfoot and like getting in the way of everyone else. And he would always say to him, he'd go, Jeffrey, you were like my dick, always between my legs. And he would yell at him, but he, that is one of the lessons that he'd learned was just how to navigate moving between line cooks and so on, right? So like, in the school of hard knocks.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  I'm like running through my head right now to try to find an example and I, and you know, I think what the problem is with me is that I don't remember shit. My memory is absolutely terrible. And, and in many ways, because I think that my process is feelings and shapes and you know, here's a, here is a, an image that triggers a memory. Here is a, you know, a feeling that creates a thought. And I guess that's the same for everybody. I don't know, but, but um, maybe it's just that my memory really sucks.

• 35:50Tim Ferriss?

  It could be.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  But if I, if I really could, I mean, if I could, if I could look at mentors, then it would have to be probably my, one of my first martial arts teachers in Florida, Chinese martial arts, his name's Cam Lee. And he was just, he, he was this guy who was this, you know, he's shorter, stockier dude. And he would just practice everything that he preached. He was a living example of, of everything real around him and truthful and kind of sincere and honest and, but he was also, you know, real badass on the side. Like he, he would, I mean, like he could just throw you to the ground. It just that there was just no, but he wouldn't ever unless you're training, right?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  And so, uh, he just embodied this kind of peacefulness and um, healthfulness and patience and all these things. And I don't know, I, I lost the patience a long time ago, so I didn't really do well with that example. But, uh, but, uh, but in many ways, you know, I still look back to him, you know, all the time, just, just based on those simple, you know, kind of simple examples that he provided that are, you know, simple to say, but really hard to do.

• 37:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:05Tim Ferriss?

  The, uh...

• 37:08Tim Ferriss?

  What have been some of the toughest times for you professionally or personally?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Opening Saison was both a great time and a really tough time. In the beginning, I mean, we're, you know, we were in an alley, right? When we started, it was one day a week. And we started it because I was unhappy in my, you know, consulting job that I was doing. I was, I wound up being broke after spending all my money in 2007 or whatever it is. You know, 2007 was a very kind of prosperous year for money for me and I made a bunch of money. But then I wound up, I thought it was just gonna keep coming and then all of a sudden everything crashed and I was like, "Oh shit, I screwed this one up." So I said, you know, "If I'm gonna be broke, I'd rather be happy and broke than miserable and broke." And so that's why I started Saison.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  It gave me the, the kind of like courage to just say, "You know what? Fuck it, I'm just gonna jump out on my own here and just do what I really wanna do, what I really believe in." And that started as just a simple thing, one night a week, you know, in a, in an alley, really, right?

• 38:13Tim Ferriss?

  Now, the one night a week, was that because you were renting the space from someone else just for once a week and that's what you could afford? Or was it that that was the only way you could really prepare?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Well, there's no deposit, so that's why we could afford it.

• 38:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  No, but we, we started, we started with like 10 grand, right? Of our own money. It was just, it was $10,000 and that was it. We, we had, there was one opening in this event space, which was the old Saison. And, and we just, you know, Sunday nights at Saison. We started Sunday nights at Saison. I just wanted to cook again.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  And, and so we, we went. We, we bought some pots, we bought some plates and we, we, we went.

• 38:52Tim Ferriss?

  Jumped into it.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:53Tim Ferriss?

  What were... What were the hardest experiences in those first few months for you?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Oh, right. So to get back to your original question, you know, we started this thing inside a cafe. That I'm sure they're gonna be very angry once I expose all this, but there was a, there's this cafe and they would just had, they just had really bad practices. And, and we, you know, worked out a deal to where we would do, um, you know, our Sunday nights, but they would always get in the way. Or like some of their workers would come in and just like touch our food and shit that we spent three months, you know, trying to perfect.

• 39:29Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Or we had, you know, like, we would have like these beautiful like ferments that we made from like three years ago.

• 39:35Tim Ferriss?

  What are ferments?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Well, just like pickles or something. Let's say pickles or something. You got a pot of pickles in the backyard that I've had for, you know, seven years. That have been aging carefully and now they're amazing. And then, you know, you got this knucklehead coming in and like spilling shit on top of them.

• 39:49Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And, uh, and the dish pit was shared. So the dish where the dishwashing happened was shared between the old saison and the cafe. And it was just a nightmare and the place would flood every year with sewage water and we had to rip everything out, throw everything away, start over. I mean, it was just, it was, it was, it was like the most volatile place ever. Um, so it was, I mean, you know, what's funny about that is that the day that we were moving out, you know, we got all our investments to move to the new location. Um, that was like four years ago now, I think. And, and the day that we were moving out, it was, we had finished service for the night, you know, great last service.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  We hired movers. Everybody came in, packed everything up and it was probably four in the morning or five in the morning by then. And we're just waiting and we fell asleep. I fell asleep on the, you know, on the stool outside. Uh, just waiting for the movers to show back up because they needed to go get breakfast or something. They were supposed to just take all the shit. Uh, and then all of a sudden I woke up to somebody screaming, shit, it's flooding. There's fucking water everywhere. And, and within 15 minutes, the, the, I get whatever. The system was on Folsom Street is really the worst infrastructure in all of San Francisco. And within 15 minutes, we're under three feet of water back there because there is a gradient and it went down.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  And you know, from the street level was approximately two or three feet higher than than the back of the restaurant. And so all of our stuff that we packed up was completely soaked in sewage water. We have pictures of like Mark Bright, you know, the sommelier floating on a barrel and a wine barrel out in there, you know, with a little lasso in his hands. That he made, just, just ridiculous. So that was, that was how we ended, uh, that's how we ended the old space. And we just threw everything out and started over.

• 41:41Tim Ferriss?

  So in a situation like that, catastrophe strikes. Uh, how do you contend with that mentally yourself? I mean, is there a person you called? Do you just go fucking smash on the wooden man for 17 hours straight? What do you do?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  I, I just, I, I just, it's all internal. It's all just, I just, uh, I was just thinking to myself, you know, I was just kind of exasperated. And, and I, cause I lost all my old books from my culinary school.

• 42:05Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, man.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Um, like every note that I'd ever taken for, for, um, you know, 10 years or so, or 15 years was in that flood. Like all of my notes, my little notebooks. All the ideas of like, uh, any, any, uh, thing that was truly unique to my thoughts.

• 42:25Tim Ferriss?

  You sound like me. I've just got like bookshelves of notebooks.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So all those just gone in sewage and all the ink was running on them. And I was like, that, that was the, everything else is replaceable, but that was really truly the thing where I looked at it and I was like, fuck, I just had to sit down for a while. And, uh, and, uh, but, uh, you know, we're moving into the new space. So there's a positive spin. I was like, you know, fuck it. We're just gonna start over. And, uh, it's the same thing that we started with. It's, it's all up there somewhere. I know, not those exact things, but you just gotta start over.

• 42:54Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I remember, uh, so something very similar happened to a guy I had on the podcast recently named Cal Fussman. So Cal is one of the. Most masterful interviewers I've ever met. He did the What I've Learned series, probably 60% of it for Esquire magazine. So he's interviewed everybody like Gorbachev, Clooney, like you name it, it's everybody. And at one point, he'd been working on this piece for like a year and a half. And it was in the basement of some, I think relatives' house, and then it flooded. And he lost all of his notes for a piece he'd been working on for a year about becoming for a day a sommelier on top of the World Trade Center. Because 9/11 happened and like interrupted everything, of course, I mean, huge tragedy.

• 43:39Tim Ferriss?

  He wasn't sure he should even work on it. And the advice that he was given by, I guess it was a mentor who just said, "The good shit sticks." It's like, "Sit down and write it." He's like, "The good shit sticks." Did you, what were the best decisions that you made with the new space? So, in a way, I mean, you get this flood, notes are gone, you're starting from, I mean, scratching away, right? You have to buy.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Well, they were starting over, actually. I think, I think, I think the best decision I made was just to, to say, "Okay, screw it. Let's, let's really start over. Let's, let's just, let's just completely empty our cup here and, and really think about now. And, and what is really valuable? You know, what's really valuable to me now? What, what's honest? What's sincere about what we're doing? And, and let's do that. And, and that's really still the driver to, to say it's on now.

• 44:36Tim Ferriss?

  When you have people come in, when you hire people to cook at the restaurant.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Really, Chester keeps farting right in my face.

• 44:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right in your left armpit?

• 44:47Speaker 01

  He's a passionate little puppy, yeah.

• 44:49Tim Ferriss?

  Very passionate, yeah. He's, he's out cold.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  He's, he was, so this, he looks kind of like a little pork chop. And there's, there is, I went pig hunting. I go all the time, but I went in last month or so.

• 45:03Tim Ferriss?

  Up, up northern here.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Out like to the west of Red Bluff, near Mendocino National Forest.

• 45:07Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  And, and there are pig dogs on one of the hunts. And, and they're all in the truck. And so we were walking by, I walked by with Chester. And they thought he was a pig, I think. Because they were going fucking crazy in there. And they were barking at him. And he stopped and looked at you. It's, it looks kind of like a little.

• 45:25Tim Ferriss?

  He does, does look like a little porker. Pork chop.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  But anyway.

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  When you, when you bring someone in, you have a very, very high level, or you have a very, very high standard at Cezanne. What training or pep talk or anything do you do with these people?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  We give them the silent treatment as soon as they walk through the door, basically.

• 45:44Tim Ferriss?

  You give them silent treatment?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  To see if they're gonna crack, yeah.

• 45:48Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm just kidding, we don't. We're, I mean, just, I do, but my staff doesn't, my team doesn't.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  You know, I guess in terms of, in terms of training, you know, there is, I went through a long period of just like, the old school, you know, mentality of like,

• 46:09Speaker 01

  zero patience, you know, kind of, here, here is,

• 46:14Speaker 01

  here's why, you know, I don't know, just, just that old school, like abusive mentality of cooking.

• 46:19Tim Ferriss?

  Drill sergeant, like military.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all a drill sergeant, you know, that, that kind of military ridiculousness, really, right? But that's evolved into, over the years, of just, you know, going back to kind of the martial arts thing and, and, you know, just kind of remembering, you know, that patience from, from my teachers and just from what martial arts does in general. So now, it, it's really like, I like to, you know, if I can create the, you know, the Google of restaurants, then that's, that's really a nice thing, right? It's a, it's a great goal for me, in terms of having a really exceptional workplace. And, you know, granted, I don't really know anything about Google at all, so I could, it could be terrible, I don't know, but maybe from the outside. Who, who was it that, I was just listening to somebody talk about, you know, from the outside, everybody's trying to get in, and from the inside, everybody's trying to get out?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I don't remember, I think it was some podcast or something.

• 47:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I can, I can see that. I mean, the, I know, I have a lot of friends at Google, though, and it seems to be pretty exceptional.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so that's really the goal. The goal now is really, is really mentorship and how we can create this kind of like, package on the inside to help our team navigate through some really, you know, difficult and enigmatic, you know, environment, because there's always a gray area when you started a new place, right? You don't really know everything that you need to, and even if you are a great cook, let's say, and you start in a new kitchen at a very high level, then, then there's gonna be things you don't know. Every chef has a different way to do things, every restaurant has a different SOP for something, and, and so I wanted to create.

• 47:48Tim Ferriss?

  SOP, standard of practice?

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And.

• 47:51Tim Ferriss?

  Standard operating procedure.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and so, I, I wanted to create really this.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  App essentially that'll allow people to operate every moment of their day like Subway. Subway's actually sucks, but but I got a funny story about Subway later on, I'll tell you. But but and so that it gives people, you know, this this huge influx of information. So they can be successful. So that's kind of the way we operate now. We want people to be mentored through the process. And, you know, in return, they develop loyalty to that kind of, you know, patience that you give them. Right. And and then they wind up, you know, really learning something that's tangible because I want these guys to come and work for us and,

• 48:38Speaker 01

  you know, spend a few years there. And it really takes, you know, five years or so to really learn about, you know, cooking at a at a certain, you know, a certain kind of cooking, certain level. I won't use level because I sound like a dick when I say that. But but I just want to use, you know, a certain type of cooking. And I want them to be able to walk away with something really tangible where they can, you know, contribute or re contribute. And so since you brought it up Subway, tell me the story. I don't know, I might go to jail after I tell you the story. There was a I used to work in Subway and there was always like a little manual and I was I was probably 15 when I was 16, 16 probably when I worked there. And we would.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I don't know if I should tell the story. We would. We can cut it out later if you change your mind. Let's go for it. We would, you know, it made me think of Subway because of their manual, their operating manual. So my first, my second memory from Subway would be us learning how to block out the cameras by standing in strategic positions, putting bubble gum on the end of a coat hanger and fishing hundred dollar bills out of the safe in the floor drop.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  So we did that for about a week and then I think we all got fired after that. Because everybody, nobody knew what happened to the Hundy's. It was like, what happened there? Wow, that's some real like Ocean's Eleven action at Subway. Who knew?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  So my contribution to Subway.

• 50:05Tim Ferriss?

  I've always wanted to ask you and I've never asked you, do you, what's your opinion of Francis Maulman, if any? I don't know if you even know who I'm talking about.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  I know who you're talking about. I don't, I don't know enough about him to really give you my opinion. I saw the chef's table episode that he did, that I thought was really cool. I love that series. And he's, he's very philosophical.

• 50:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  But, but you know, I, it's funny. It's cool. I like, it's beautiful to see like what he's doing out there in nature. Obviously he's a legend. He's been around for a long time. I don't know enough about it though to really say anything meaningful, but, but, but I think it's amazing, you know, looking at like him out in Patagonia and there's like just pulling trout out of the lake. And I mean that for a chef, that's the ultimate, right? And I, that's actually something I've been working on for years and years is just to get myself to the woods and just so I could stay in the woods. I can gather, I can hunt, I can fish, I can cook, I can eat and just be happy. And that's kind of really my goal of happiness is just to be out there in the woods and, and just, you know, look, here's a root, I'm gonna dig it up and I'm gonna cook it and it's gonna taste great and we're gonna have some wine together and we're all gonna

• 51:12Speaker 01

  celebrate and have a great time. And that's, that's, that's what I'm looking for. So, so I don't know. I don't really know enough about him.

• 51:18Tim Ferriss?

  I think.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  He likes to burn shit.

• 51:19Tim Ferriss?

  He likes to burn shit. That's why.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Burnt shit everywhere. I don't really, I don't like burnt food like that. So I.

• 51:24Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So you don't like, so you're talking like the charring?

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I like food that has a delicacy to it. So that's, so it's very like, I like food that is, you know, you gotta think in terms of volume, right? If you put on like, what's that, like heavy metal band like Guar or whatever?

• 51:38Tim Ferriss?

  Guar, Slipknot.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  You know, you turn, you just pick something like that. You just turn the volume all the way up in the house and you're just, then there's, that's like Guy Fieri, right?

• 51:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Right? He's Guar on level 10. Okay? So then you take, so then you take, um, let's just use a really, a restaurant that I really love in, in the mountains of Kyoto and they serve all wild foods from around there. Really delicate. The brats are under-seasoned by our western standards. Um, and you know, it's all about natural taste, but there's an incredible beauty to that food. Then that's a volume one, right? And so that's really what we're looking for in our world of cooking, right? So, so I don't, I don't like the level 10s. I like the level 2s, you know, around there.

• 52:22Tim Ferriss?

  I'd be, yeah, I, I would love to just be a fly on the wall. Maybe sometime we'll get down to Patagonia and have a couple of bottles of Malbec with, with Francis. But what struck me. There were a handful of cookbooks that really inspired me when I was working on The Four Hour Chef, which was, very confusingly to most people, a book about accelerated learning, kind of disguised as a cookbook. But Seven Fires, which was by Francis Mollman, because he had the fancy French training, right? But he chose to go back to a lot of basics. And, but like refine them to such a degree that they were highly, highly advanced from a kind of a technical level, right?

• 53:01Tim Ferriss?

  And then, I think it was just Mission Street Food or Mission Chinese, just a beautifully well put together book. A handful of others. There was another one on hunting and foraging from the UK, the name of which I'm blanking on at the moment.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  River, maybe?

• 53:18Tim Ferriss?

  Could have been. So the Escape-

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Those are cool.

• 53:21Tim Ferriss?

  The TV show is what I, was my kind of like fantasy escape for all the first, I was Escape from River Cottage or Escape to River Cottage by Hugh Funsley Wittinghall, like I think that's his name, most British name ever. Incredible books, but that TV show, for people who fantasize about getting out of the city and going back to the land and hunting and foraging and fishing, I highly recommend the first season of that series.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  I gotta check that out, I don't know-

• 53:47Tim Ferriss?

  It's so good. It's so good. Is there, do you gift books to people, like historically? Have you given books as gifts? If so-

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:57Tim Ferriss?

  Any that come to mind?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  They're all different. I mean, you know, the one that I just gave out in most recent history was, there's an old bar book. It's called Cocktail Techniques, and it's from old, have you seen that one?

• 54:08Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  It's a little tiny book and it's from the, I think it's the guy from Bar High Five. He's like, you know, in Tokyo?

• 54:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  It's just about pure craft and technique.

• 54:19Tim Ferriss?

  It's just called Cocktail Techniques?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's Cocktail Techniques, I think. And I think that's the guy, it could be a different guy, but, but a really cool book. I just gave it out to a bunch of my staff. But the other one is The Art of Taiji Chuan, and it's, or The Tao of Taiji Chuan. And it's by a guy named Joe Sung Wah, I think his name is, I don't know, something along those lines. But it's a really, um, it's, it's a really amazing book on Taiji and, and it has a lot of epiphanies in there because he started, uh, Taiji when he was forty something because of his bad health. So he was like on his deathbed or something along those lines. He got cancer or something like that.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  And he, uh, he apparently, you know, went through, you know, started from being completely unhealthy and then took his, his journey through Taiji to, to become, uh, one of the foremost experts in America on Taiji and he traveled the world and, uh, Starting at forty. Yeah. And, and of course, within a few years, just like everybody else that does Taiji, they become fixed essentially more or less, right? As long as you're consistent in your practice, you do it the right way and you practice it for health and you, every, I've seen a lot of people over the years, like, you know, car accidents or whatever. Um, so, uh, that's one of my other favorite books because there's a lot on the, the application process and the actual martial part of Taiji, which is really almost non-existent.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Um, in China too, and it's still almost non-existent now because everything's kind of sport-based ever since, uh, ever since I suppose martial arts became, uh, inessential. Once, you know, the, the, you know, firearms were, were created. Then that was the downhill of, of, uh, you know, hand-to-hand combat, right? Well, it was, uh, Those downward trends. Yeah. It was like in necessity is the mother of invention, right? And it's like, once you don't have that as a necessity. Yeah. Everybody's like, oh, thank God I could just shoot this guy. I don't understand it. A horse stance for eighteen hours a day.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Uh, when you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind? Uh, I don't have a person. To me, success is, is living what brings you joy, you know? And I think doing whatever, whatever, uh,

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Process brings you happiness, I think, is what success to me. And that's really, that's really all it is, right? Because at the end of the day, it's freedom that matters. And, and whatever that freedom is to each individual is kind of what's important. So for me, it's just being in the woods. At some point, I'm just, you're gonna, I'm gonna disappear. I'm gonna be in the woods.

• 56:55Tim Ferriss?

  There'll be, uh, I'll see, I'll see some, the, the, like the Montana Freeman. I'll just have some holdout skeens. Now, now, I'm embarrassed to say, hold on a second. So I've only heard you say your last name once, and it made me think that I've been saying your last name incorrectly for as long as I've had your, your name written anywhere in front of me.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody does. So, well, okay, so, uh, my family, you know, we grew up saying it's skeens.

• 57:21Tim Ferriss?

  Skenes.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  But in Scotland, they say skeen. Skenes is the proper way to say it.

• 57:26Tim Ferriss?

  God, so the silent S.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess so, yeah.

• 57:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, okay.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Maybe they say skeens too.

• 57:30Tim Ferriss?

  But you say skeens.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we say skeens, yeah.

• 57:32Tim Ferriss?

  Skenes, alright. The, what is the most joy that you felt in the last three months, six months? Recent memory?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Well, for those last six or, you know, three, six months, I've actually been working on a big deal for the company. And so, uh, it would have to been last week when I closed the deal. Because I could finally breathe again. I, I feel, I read so many legal documents in the last, in the last six months that I feel like I could be a lawyer. It's mind numbing. It just, it's, it's so, it's so miserable in every way possible. But it's nice to get it done.

• 58:07Tim Ferriss?

  Can you talk about that or not yet?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  No, I can't talk about it yet. There's a lot of exciting stuff that happened here. Very, very exciting things. And, and, uh, you know, this whole woods thing is something that I've been thinking about for years and years and years. Because, um, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that, um, to really get to the highest level of your craft of cooking, you need to be submerged in, in the woods. And it'd be surrounded and isolated by the wild, really. To, to really reach a certain point. It's the water, it's the air, it's, it's the, the way the air tastes when you're there. It's, everything contributes to that. It's the products, of course, so. But that's an ultra geeky level of it, you know? It's like, it's only for a handful of people that really enjoy that kind of thing. But most people enjoy being in the woods, so.

• 58:50Tim Ferriss?

  If you could pick anywhere outside of the US to immerse yourself in the outdoors that way, where would you pick?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Outside of the US, I guess, you know, my whole life is just a few things. It's, it's, um, well, I mean, besides family, the only thing that I really, uh, you know, give a shit about are martial arts and cooking.

• 59:19Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  And it's not just cooking, it's just, it's the whole process, the whole act, the whole commune with nature. Uh, you know, being out in the wilderness and being able to hunt your own meat, uh, and it's not about the killing, it's about the, the, um, the sustenance that we get and kind of the feeling that we get from being part of that process.

• 59:38Tim Ferriss?

  Also, it's just like the consciousness and the reverence in a way of having to go through the entire process.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, you have to treat things differently once you experience killing another, you know, thing, right? Another living thing, especially when you kill a big animal like an elk and a deer. There's a very different feeling from shooting a bird or something, right? Even though, you know, the bird, uh, I, I didn't, you know, start doing that stuff until later. So, uh, to me, they're all the same. Um, but, uh, but yeah, you, you walk away with, um, you know, as a cook especially, you know, knowing that you're not going to waste a single piece of anything on that animal. And I think that's very important because a lot of our, this, this ties back into a way bigger conversation, which is about, um, just our, our commodity food processes in America.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  And, and we are full of disease and shit because of the way that we eat and the way we treat our food. You know, there's feedlot cattle and, and, uh, you know, chemically induced, uh, you know, vegetables and crops. And, and, uh, you know, most of our food sources now are, are products that we use on the commercial market or have zero or, or, you know, almost very little, uh, resemblance to what they originally were. And, uh, and so, um, you know, that, that's even more reason to just go to the woods, get out of here.

• 1:00:54Tim Ferriss?

  So where would you, if you had, if you had to pick a spot outside the US to?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry, I missed that.

• 1:01:01Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, that's okay.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  I get off on these tangents.

• 1:01:03Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's, I, I, it takes one to know one, so that's, I can realize.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  You keep me in line.

• 1:01:08Tim Ferriss?

  I can realize.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  You know, I don't know, I, I.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  I was just looking at British Columbia. My picture, my, my, um, perfect place would be mountain streams. Where, where the mountain streams meet the ocean, really, you know, and, and that's, that's kind of the perfect place where it's. So British Columbia has a lot of that. I, I want to experience the four seasons. You know, I want to see snow. I want to see the flowers in the spring and, uh, you know, I want to have, uh, you know, a bear walk through the woods and potentially eat my goat, you know? Cause it's, uh, I, there's a cycle there. There's a, there's a cycle of life and a cycle of, um, you know, things that don't exist in a city anymore. And we're so, uh, removed from, from just everything, really, in a city in a lot of ways. So, so, um,

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  I don't know, location wise, I mean, I love.

• 1:02:01Tim Ferriss?

  B C is a good choice.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 1:02:03Tim Ferriss?

  I think, yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks amazing up there. I was just looking at buying, um, there's a, there's a hunting territory up there that I wanted to buy. And, um, it was really cheap. And so we came, maybe we can go in on this. There was, shit, you know, there was, there was a 250 square mile hunting territory. And, you know, the center of that was, uh, I think 200 acres or something like that.

• 1:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Uh, there's cabins on it. It's on a lake and the stream and it was $500,000.

• 1:02:28Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  So, uh, uh, you know, I mean, so naturally like.

• 1:02:32Tim Ferriss?

  Before this gets, before this podcast goes out.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Let's get out of here.

• 1:02:40Tim Ferriss?

  I dated a very lovely, um, woman whose family was from B C. So I ended up spending quite a lot of time up around Victoria. And some of the more rural outskirts of Victoria. Stunning. I mean, it's, and we, we, we wanted, I mean, you had to be cognizant of bears and so on and so forth. And I, I spent so much time trying to track down, of course firearms are very difficult to get a hold of, but this was while I was doing also the sort of refinement on the four hour chef and I wanted to go rabbit hunting. And I spent so much time trying to track down high powered pellet guns. And then I was like, well, maybe I'll just.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  You should just call me. I'm like six. Am I safe?

• 1:03:25Tim Ferriss?

  But it's a beautiful part of the world. I did a road trip, for those people interested, with my brother, because I'd done so many trips between San Francisco and LA, right? San Francisco, south. I think it's very common. I'd never gone north. So I did a road trip with my brother from San Francisco all the way up the coast to Whistler in Canada, and stopped along the way at all these lumberjack houses and so on in Oregon. Saw the dunes that inspired the Book Dune. I think also in Oregon, the Avenue of the Titans and so on.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  It's amazing up north. It's gorgeous.

• 1:03:57Tim Ferriss?

  It's gorgeous. People search, for those people interested, search my last name, this, I think, Gems of the Northwest or something. I highlight 16 different stops that we made. But, um...

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I spent a lot of time last fall going up into like Hat Creek and the, like, all those falls up there. It's amazing up there. Yeah, it's incredible. Shasta, especially up around Shasta. Shasta's apparently like one of the vortexes in the world, whatever that means. I don't know what that means. That's what I heard.

• 1:04:29Tim Ferriss?

  Worth exploring. Do you have, what is your, what does your morning look like? What are your morning rituals? And let's say, not necessarily when you're in like hyper legal due diligence mode, but let's just say when, when you're not covered in that kind of stuff.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  When I'm at peace again, Hong Kong milk tea and tai chi, to be honest.

• 1:04:47Tim Ferriss?

  What time do you wake up?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Um, it's always different. I'm very inconsistent with that. I'm like, one day it'll be 1pm, the next day it'll be 5am. It just depends. But I do, I love the morning and I, I, um, I, uh, if, if, if I had my perfect scenario, it would just be, you know, a cup of tea and, and some tai chi and then get on with it.

• 1:05:15Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Do you, do you, what type of tea?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Hong Kong milk tea.

• 1:05:19Tim Ferriss?

  Hong Kong Milk Tea.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Hong Kong Milk Tea, yeah.

• 1:05:20Tim Ferriss?

  What is in Hong Kong Milk Tea?

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  So, Hong Kong Milk Tea is like a, there's a mixture of black teas. Every place has their own brew, you know, different types of leaves. Could be Darjeeling or Ceylon's or, or whatever. And then you essentially soak it in water and you, you overbrew it in some ways. There's a very high ratio of leaves to water. And then you mix it with evaporated milk. And some people put sugar or sweetened condensed milk in there. I just take it straight, but, but it's something that I, I grew to love in Hong Kong. It was just an amazing thing in Hong Kong. I, it's addictive. It's highly, highly addictive. So that's what I drink in the morning.

• 1:05:55Tim Ferriss?

  And then the Tai Chi, how long would you practice that for? What type of Tai Chi?

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  You know, I've gone, I've gone as short as like 37 seconds in some mornings to like, you know, three hours. It just depends, depends on the time. I usually do like a couple of sets. I do like one set, maybe slow, a couple of sets, that's it. Yeah, just, just to get the blood flowing and to, to rebalance yourself because there's a lot of, like, one of the things about doing, doing these forms for the, with the intention of fighting and not with the intention of performance or health, is that you, you develop a certain kind of like stability in your body and legs. And I've noticed that start to go away over the last few years with just being busy and stuff like that. And you feel it in your knees. Like I went, like when I was going, especially going hunting and stuff, I was like, wow,

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  this, this would have been super easy, you know, for me a few years ago, but now I feel like fucking Chris Farley. It's like the worst, it's really hard, yeah.

• 1:06:53Tim Ferriss?

  I, I noticed this very recently also doing, I mentioned when we were just making tea before we started recording, getting into gymnastics training, which I'm doing with incredible coach named Coach Chris Sommer, who's the former national team coach. And we're doing, for the first time, I'm doing remote coaching. So I'm sending him videos, he's reviewing, we jump on the phone, et cetera. And one of these series that I've been doing, and I need to start doing more consistently, is this knee sort of prehab rehabilitation series, all body weight, that focuses on strengthening, say, the ACL, the cruciate ligaments, et cetera, with these different types of weird looking squats.

• 1:07:36Tim Ferriss?

  And I did them for, say, three weeks, just once or twice a week, took maybe five minutes each session. And it was incredible how more, how much.

• 1:07:47Tim Ferriss?

  More stability I felt in my knees doing any type of movement, any type of walking, hiking, jumping, and it highlighted for me that that must mean my knees were fucking unstable as hell beforehand. If like within two or three weeks, I felt a huge increase in stability, which I guess is a symptom of just sitting down too much.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Also, the way we move too, you know, I mean, our, our, our western, you know, patterns of movement in a lot of ways are not, uh, well, I guess everyone's pattern of movements are not very, they're kind of just like up, down, left, right, um, you know, computer, you know, bar.

• 1:08:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's not, there's not a lot.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Couch, TV.

• 1:08:27Tim Ferriss?

  There's not much, there's not much lateral, there's not a lot of torsion of different types, uh, and you know, rotational exercise is pretty much out the window for most folks. So then when you encounter that in any capacity and it's forced upon you, then you get injured.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, do you, I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  No, I was just gonna say there's some, there's a, there's a, some of the, like the way, in, in Bagua, they isolate some movement, uh, patterns.

• 1:08:53Tim Ferriss?

  Mind if I have some of your tape?

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Were you, no. So, and they, uh, and it's really just kind of an exercise in, in, uh, in balance and being able to, um, learn, you know, power versus, um, uh, resistance. Um, and you have to.

• 1:09:12Tim Ferriss?

  What do you, what do you mean by that?

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so let's say you're, uh, let's say that you are, um, practicing, um, you know, a stance, let's say, just for, for lack of a better example, um, without going into too much detail. And, and that stance, you feel very stable in that stance while you transition to another stance and you're, you know, undulating or rotating or going up and down, changing levels. But that's without pressure, without resistance. So let's say you take that same technique or stance or whatever, and then you pressure test it and apply, um, another human being to push on you or throw, try to throw you while you do that same thing. So you basically are pressure testing, you know, the reality of some of these movements. And, uh,

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And you know, you have to, I mean, before you do that, you have to have a lot of, you know, time and solo practice with those movements or stances and, you know, repetition and all that stuff. So you actually don't rip your knee out of socket or something. So just don't go doing this at home. So you practice a little bit, but, but the thing is, is that it, it brings a sense of reality to it. Because that's always the problem with Chinese martial arts that you see is there's no reality to a lot of the shit.

• 1:10:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's never.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  It's very silly.

• 1:10:22Tim Ferriss?

  It's never tested under the circumstances in which you would need to use it.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, or, or against bigger people that, or against real violence, or against any of those things that you would, you would need to actually make something truly effective. And, and so, you know, that, but the point was is that it develops your, you know, all of your connective tissue and all of your body. And I'm pretty sure the only reason that I can't, I can still walk is because of my early years of martial arts and all of this kind of stance work and transition work and, and, you know, that kind of like twisting and turning of the body and like Tai Chi and internal martial arts. It's very helpful for the body.

• 1:10:59Tim Ferriss?

  I think that, I think there's something there. And my interest in Tai Chi, at one point was pretty close to zero, just because I was so focused on the harder fight sports like Muay Thai and so on, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And in the last, say, five years, my interest has really been piqued by a friend of mine named Josh Waitzkin, who's been on this, I'll just have like a podcast, Small World Story, real quick. So I get this text at one point from Matt Mullenweg, who's the, I guess he's the CEO of Automatic right now and was one of the lead developers of WordPress. And he goes, I was walking with my girlfriend through New York, it's like Central Park or somewhere. No, it wasn't Central Park.

• 1:11:41Tim Ferriss?

  It was near the water. And he said, we saw this guy doing some weird martial arts stuff right on the water. And so I was commenting on it and how it looked really beautiful to my girlfriend. She said, well, you should walk up and say hi. So walked up and said, hi. And it was another person who'd been on the podcast, Josh Waitzkin, doing Tai Chi. Now Josh was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, this movie about this chess prodigy, which he was when he was a kid. But he's also a, he was a push hands world champion. And then after that became the first black belt under Marcelo Garcia, who's like the Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky combined of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And I always associated.

• 1:12:23Tim Ferriss?

  Tai Chi with non martial applications, right? But he uses this and has prescribed it to his parents who've seen fantastic results for rehab, prehab, just life stability and wellbeing in general. So even though he has a tremendous amount of experience with BJJ at an extremely high level, he still does the Tai Chi on a regular basis, which has made me think that there's, that I should probably make space for a practice of that type.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what, there's a, there's a lot more to it than, than, you know, most people give credit for because the reason is that there's no good Tai Chi really anywhere, right? So it's very-

• 1:13:06Tim Ferriss?

  And Josh would agree with you about that.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and just imagine, you know, if you had no good, you know, jiu jitsu anywhere.

• 1:13:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  And, you know, then everybody make fun of it because these guys would just get on the ground and get stomped.

• 1:13:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  But, you know, if it's the same thing, it's the same, the same would apply to any kind of system. And, and so, but, once you, if you, if you really, you know, happen to be lucky enough to stumble upon someone who's truly, really great at the martial side of Tai Chi, then, you know, it's all, it's kind of like this immovable mountain thing. And, and, you know, my take on it is that in terms of like real, real applicable martial arts, which means being able to defend yourself against someone who's using real violence. I'm not talking about sport, which is still very difficult, right? I mean, that's not, but, but to really be able to defend yourself against real violence is a different kind of ball of wax, right?

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  And oftentimes that requires less, less of a lot of things than a sport would, right? You don't need to train for 20 hours a day to be able to get to that point. You don't have to have amazing cardio necessarily, you know? Another, a lot of things go out the window due to this kind of ability to evade.

• 1:14:18Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  And evasion is not in a, a large circle. It's really, can be a very small thing. Like, let's say you, a, a simple example would be, let's say that you practice standing with your knees bent a little bit. To the point to where you would, you know, fall over the first day. And for 20 years, you practiced that same kind of standing against somebody trying to push you over. Right? Well, eventually you get to the point to where you can't be pushed over. Right? And you, you went through a series of different opponents and different people trying to, you know, throw you over. But that's all you practiced forever. Right? And so Taiji develops that kind of skill, right? When it's done in the martial sense. Um, but then you're able to mobilize it.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  So you, let's say you take the static, you know, uh, starting point of being immovable. Immovable doesn't mean you're actually movable. It means you're adjusting your body to the other person, right? And to their, their force that's coming towards you, you're adjusting a little bit. Right? And it's not this whole, there's a lot of like, you know, hokey pokey shit out there on people that don't really, that say a philosophy, but there's no real applicable, uh, you know, reality to it. Um, so, uh, that's one thing. And the other thing is just kind of the, the, um, uh, ability to evade. Like if you're, if you have a, let's say you take, you know, a Thai boxer who Muay Thai guy who can kick really fucking hard. And a guy who practices kicks every day is a professional Thai boxer.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Um, what, what we have to realize is that the distance, there's just a distancing thing, right? At the point of impact of anybody's kick or punch or attack is one place. Once they release that, you know, intention, once the intention leaves the, you know, the mind and goes into the body and the action is created and it's traveling towards your opponent, there's a target, there's an intended target. If you can change yourself from being that intended target, you know, the origin of that and reroute yourself only a few inches, then all of that force goes away. Right? And so it's a, it's a, it's a simple kind of thing to say, but you know, just to be able to do that with one punch or one kick takes a lifetime to learn, right?

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Um, and I'm not saying I know these things. I'm just saying that that's, there's a couple of simple truths that I've learned from it that, that, that are, uh, that, that's a couple. But, um, so yeah, so I think that, that, uh, Tai Chi is very applicable because, you know, I go out and practice with, uh, over the years, I've practiced. Some really amazing MMA guys, some really amazing jiu jitsu guys. Um, and you see a translation from this kind of traditional martial arts. Uh, but only very little. It's not like overall, you know, you can't just go get in the cage. You know, it's not so, but there are, there are some really great things that I think that, you know, it'd be really interesting to see. I would love to see, uh, you know, professional fighters start to explore that a little bit.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  But the issue is that that to even get remotely efficient at those kinds of things, it takes at least 10 years of like daily practice.

• 1:17:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Right? And so that might be the challenge.

• 1:17:18Tim Ferriss?

  By then your career is over. It's a time budgeting issue. The, uh, how, how old are you now?

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Thirty six.

• 1:17:25Tim Ferriss?

  Thirty six. What advice would you give your thirty year old self? If you could place us where you were and what you were doing at that time?

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Um, I, you know, I, I think, uh, I think it would be to, um, take a step back, right? Take a step back really, slow down and really, uh, really think through what really, you know, matters in the long run, right? Because we're, uh, you know, a lot of time.

• 1:17:55Tim Ferriss?

  What were you, this is, what were you doing at the time when you were so thirty?

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Well, but, well, my, my, but I guess the, actually my thirty year old self, that's different because that's when I just started saison.

• 1:18:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  So I was doing the same thing I'm doing now. Um, only in a more kind of, uh, ridiculous way. But, um, I mean, my twenty year old self, twenty five year old self.

• 1:18:14Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, let's do, let's do twenty five.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, twenty five year old self. Yeah. I mean, I think it would be to just really take a step back and, and, uh, and not get caught up in anything stupid because, you know, a lot of times when we're chasing success or what we think is success. Like trying to, as a chef, you want to build a big name. You want to, um, you know, get three Michelin stars. You want to get the accolades. Um, but ultimately none of that shit matters. It matters in the beginning and it certainly matters along the way, but, but if you, if we all just take a step back, and I think there's, um, a bigger lesson to be learned for the way that we operate as a society is, is to really focus on what really matters to us and is what is genuinely makes us happy. Then we'll travel down the right path, right? And we won't get sidetracked by, you know, uh, you know, tits and ass or, uh, whatever.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  You know, fame and sports cars and all silly shit that you don't need. And, uh,

• 1:19:04Tim Ferriss?

  Unless those are the things that really make you happy.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, look.

• 1:19:08Tim Ferriss?

  Cup two of those three.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Do make us happy.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  But I, but I mean that, uh, you know, if what really makes you happy is getting in the woods, then you know, you focus, you're able to really take a step back and focus on quality, maybe. If you want to be a cook, you want to be a chef, uh, what kind of chef do you want to be? You want to be a, you want to be Instagram chef? Or you want to be a, you know, a chef with real quality and skill that's respectable, you know, respected by the world, you know, for your, your ethos or something. So they're just, you know, I would say, um, get your head out of your ass, probably. That would be my summary.

• 1:19:48Tim Ferriss?

  What were you, what were you getting, what were you distracted by or focusing on at 25? That you shouldn't have been?

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  All right. Oh, my, uh, my parents in law don't hear this.

• 1:20:04Tim Ferriss?

  It's just like two people listening to this podcast, you're fine.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I was just, I was just cooking. Oh, actually, you know, I was, I was a chef at a restaurant called Shay TJ. Uh, I don't, in a place in Mountain View.

• 1:20:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  It's been there for like 30 years. Um, and, uh, I shortly after that got poached by, uh, Michael Mina to do some development work. I opened a restaurant, restaurant for him down in the St. Regis in Orange County, um, as a temporary gig and then went to work with him on kind of the, uh, just to learn business from him. Right. I wanted to learn some business. I didn't know anything about business at all and I wanted to see kind of how that, um, operated and function as a restaurant group.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  So a lot of it was like Vegas and partying, partying all the time and just, uh, just ridiculousness. I mean, we would go out after work, one, and go home at sunrise and wake up in 4:00 PM and go back to like the kitchen the next day, just, and just immediately need like a whiskey. Cause you're so hungover.

• 1:21:04Tim Ferriss?

  Cause he only. Care of the dog.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  So, uh, so that was a good few years of my life, just kind of going crazy.

• 1:21:12Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Because I, you know, I wasn't, all I did was train. So I didn't do that when I was younger. Like I had a period in my teenage years where I was a lunatic and then I, I went back into training around 15 and pulled out of that. And then, uh, and then I didn't really even drink until I was 25, um, after I got my chef's job. Um, and so, you know, a couple, a couple of makeups were lost time.

• 1:21:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. The, uh, I, I've, I feel like oftentimes reflecting back on my high school career and college, uh, experience that if I had not had competitive sports, I mean, who, I would, would have ended up in Skid Row or in a gutter. God knows where.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Yeah. If I didn't have martial arts, I'd be dead in gutter. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

• 1:22:00Tim Ferriss?

  Where would you like to have food that you have not yet had food?

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Um, the exciting food to me is, you know, the original peoples of wherever, um, whatever location. So if we go to, uh, in Australia and have, uh, some Aboriginal, um, traditional food and kind of explore that side of things and in, in nature and, and the same thing with anywhere else. So if you go to any country or any place and kind of, you know, exploring the, the natural foods that existed before, uh, commodification took place. That's what, that's what's very interesting to me.

• 1:22:39Tim Ferriss?

  I was playing with, uh, had a lot of fun messing around with it. There's a guy named Cliff Hodges, who's also on The Four Hour Chef. He makes his own bows and arrows like from scratch and his haunted black bear with his, uh, with his, I guess they're Osage bows. I want to say they're incredible, but, uh, he, uh, introduced me to cooking on fire. So he, he is a outdoor survival expert, uh, and she taught me how to build debris huts and whatnot. Knows how to track. Really interesting guy. You'd get a kick out of him. Lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And he, uh, where was I going with this?

• 1:23:18Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, he introduced me to acorn meal and making things out of acorns, which I looked into it at one point. It represented for certain indigenous North American tribes, a substantial portion of their total calories. Acorns.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:36Tim Ferriss?

  And I got really, I got really interested in leaching acorns and making things out of acorn.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  They're delicious. Acorns delicious.

• 1:23:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, really, really good.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the thing about our food stuffs now is that we're, there's so many amazing things. And that's kind of what Cezanne does at the moment is that we're, you know, it's just exploring what's here. The native foods. I mean, what is, what exists really at a, at a really, you know, incredible quality. And there's all kinds of shit here. There's, I mean, like we get, you know, we set up a program with fishermen where we get only live fish in our tanks. Right. They bring us fish that's alive or we don't want it. And that way we can kill it a certain way they kid you may and control the process. And, and same thing with like all the commercial fisheries. Or, or the, the vegetables, the produce. We have wild kiwis in the woods in Marin.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  There's.

• 1:24:30Tim Ferriss?

  Wild kiwis?

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there's acorns, there's ginseng root growing, there's berries, there's all kinds of crazy shit around. There's diamond turbo in the waters here. There's pink scallops, there's monkey face eels. So we're, we're exploring.

• 1:24:44Tim Ferriss?

  Those are some funky looking things, man.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  And they're really delicious too.

• 1:24:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, like you just cook it. Let's say you cooked it like unagi or something, right? It's delicious. Yeah. So there's all these amazing things around in, in our, in each location around the country. And, and the Pacific happens to be amazing because of the ocean, but the, the, you know, the cold climate of the ocean. But that's a very exciting kind of food, right? To just really kind of. Look at what's around us, like really explore what's around us. Um, it's nothing new. It's been done. It was being done before all this other shit was being done. And so, but that's really where great food comes from. Great food comes from not from growing it on a farm, but from really exploring the wild and finding, you know, that kind of reference point for flavor, right?

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Like you find the, you find the best, um, fish during the best season, or the best, uh, you know, bear during, after eating the blueberries, uh, during the rite, you know? So there's all of these, uh, and the same thing with produce and all that other stuff. So those are, that's a very exciting, uh, exciting way to cook. Uh, what, what, pretty soon I'm gonna have a restaurant that only does that. It's just gonna take six hours to get to and, uh, maybe I'll just do it for one table a night. And, uh, you know, maybe you're part of the hunting process, who knows? Or, you know, go out and catch our trout.

• 1:26:04Tim Ferriss?

  I'm in. If you need, if you need a guinea pig, uh, to, uh, to take it for a test drive, count me in. The, now you, you did, this makes me think a little bit of an experiment that you did, uh, I'm not sure how recently this was, but the chef's table, uh, rotation that you did with, uh, help me out with the name here, Jiro.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  Jiro, yeah.

• 1:26:26Tim Ferriss?

  But not the Jiro that people would associate.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Tsukigashi Jiro, yeah.

• 1:26:30Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, but Jiro who was cooking, I guess previously in Noi Valley, is that right?

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. He, uh, but he, he was trained in Tokyo. He was a sushi chef in Tokyo. Um, and, uh, I just, I love his sushi. He has a, you know, he has that timing. You know, he has a sensibility to the, the flavor of his sushi. And, and unfortunately in San Francisco, there's no good sushi at all. And, uh, I really wish there were, but there isn't. And, uh, so that's why I fell in love with his sushi, cause it was so delicious. Had the warm, the rice was a little warmer, had the right texture. Uh, you know, the thickness of the cuts of the fish, the way, the direction in which you cut against the grain or with the grain, um, you know, the balance of the seasoning, just everything was there.

• 1:27:13Tim Ferriss?

  And so for a period of time, I don't know how long it was, but he...

• 1:27:18Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, would seat, how many people per night?

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Eight people. Yeah, so I built this little, for those who don't know, I built this little chef's counter out next to Cezanne. And it was, it was, um, or behind Cezanne. And it was, uh, eight seats and, um, there were no turns. There's no real, um, commodity to the situation, I guess.

• 1:27:38Tim Ferriss?

  You know, no turns, meaning somebody wouldn't get up and get replaced by another diner?

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And, and in today's real estate, for the cost of renting a place, paying for labor, um, you know, all these other things, insurances and taxes and all that shit, you have to do more than one seating, right? You have to, you know, get as many people in there as you can, which is a very sad state of restaurants. Um, especially when you're trying to, you know, do things that are really amazing or give people a great experience. Um, but, uh, so this was just a little eight-seat workshop essentially. And so he cooked in there for a little while. We would do some collaboration dinners. Um, and it was really great. Um, but then I realized we're still in the city. And you, you know, you can't, there's only so much you can do on a busy street with a dump truck driving by, you know, so, so, uh, so I, I've been working on, uh, some new stuff and,

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  uh, uh, one day I'll be able to tell you about it.

• 1:28:33Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, why the eighties music? You always have great eighties music playing, at least in my experience so far. Uh,

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  It, it just fun. It's a, it's a restaurant that's in the, it's pleasure. It's about pleasure. It's about enjoyment. It's about people coming in. I know not everybody's gonna like eighty music, but the substantial majority of our, our subset of diners that come in, uh, like, you know, that kind of, uh, eighty music. And it's just fun.

• 1:28:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  That's the only reason. It's just about fun.

• 1:29:03Tim Ferriss?

  Speaking of fun, Molly just got, um, so Chester's gonna have a playmate here. There she is. Ooh, tail smashing the cuffs. We almost went for a yard sale with the cuffs.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's really, it's really just about the whole, the whole reasoning of Cezanne was about those, the essential nature of hospitality experience. The food being what we talked about earlier, the, um, the eighties music being fun. You know, the, the things you pick up in your hands feeling good, the, the seat being comfortable, the service being warm and real, you know, so that, that's kind of why the eighties music came about.

• 1:29:42Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what, what I love about the, uh,

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  and plus when you have a couple of glasses of wine and you can go to.

• 1:29:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I was gonna say that I've had, I've, I've, I've taken a few friends to Cezanne and, uh, they've always, they've always had questions about the eighties music and then they get a few dishes in, maybe a glass or two of wine and they're like, you know, this music's perfect. I really think this music is extremely suiting to this experience. And I always have to ask people when they, when, because I've been in San Francisco for so long and I get questions about places to go to eat and I always have to ask, you know, what's your budget and what's the occasion? Because Cezanne's, you know, it's a higher end, higher end, I mean, I'm grasping for a better adjective.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  It's expensive.

• 1:30:25Tim Ferriss?

  It's an expensive.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Comparatively to other places, yeah.

• 1:30:27Tim Ferriss?

  It's comparatively expensive place, but for an anniversary or something like that, uh, or just a special experience. I think it's, it's always been my go-to. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if I'm like, if you want a really filthy delicious burrito in the Mission, then I think El Farolito, if you want to like also have a conversation with a couple of meth heads, then that is the spot to go.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  It's always my preferred, uh, choice of meal. No conversation.

• 1:30:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. And, uh, our dogs are playing, folks, but, uh,

• 1:30:57Tim Ferriss?

  so Joshua, we could keep talking forever. Where can people find you online on the socials, learn more about what you're up to? Uh, I think your Instagram is fantastic also, if you want to see a lot of very, very peculiar and delicious ingredients, then that's a good place to see you, but where, where can people find you?

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jay, Instagram is Jay Skanes, J S K E N E S. Almost forgot my answer. Jsk is on Instagram, or on Twitter, I think it's Saison SF.

• 1:31:23Tim Ferriss?

  Saison SF, and the website also is

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  SaisonSF.com

• 1:31:28Tim Ferriss?

  And I will put all this in the show notes, folks, including links to anything that we might have mentioned. Our dogs are having a blast, speaking of joy, so you can find the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. Josh, thanks for taking the time, man.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me here, man. We'll have hunting now.

• 1:31:46Tim Ferriss?

  We'll have some, let's go hunting and have some wine, in that order. And to everybody listening, we're gonna play with the dogs. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:32:01Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends,

• 1:32:42Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email, and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 1:33:05Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I use 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things. With 99designs, Designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim.

• 1:33:47Tim Ferriss?

  And right now, my listeners, you guys, will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Headspace. More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple, and you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day, and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation, and Headspace is by far the most popular app for this purpose.

• 1:34:32Tim Ferriss?

  More than 4 million users. It's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice, meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, supported by thousands of scientific studies, and try it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E, if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program. For 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes. You should give it a shot. Headspace.com/tim.

• 1:35:15Tim Ferriss?

  Just go to Headspace.com/tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.