transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] I sold my car in Carvana last night.

Speaker 2:
[00:02] Well, that's cool.

Speaker 3:
[00:03] No, you don't understand. It went perfectly, real offer, down to the penny.

Speaker 1:
[00:07] They're picking it up tomorrow.

Speaker 3:
[00:08] Nothing went wrong.

Speaker 4:
[00:09] So, what's the problem?

Speaker 5:
[00:10] That is the problem.

Speaker 6:
[00:11] Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.

Speaker 7:
[00:14] Maybe there's no catch.

Speaker 3:
[00:15] That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

Speaker 8:
[00:18] Wow, you need to relax.

Speaker 3:
[00:19] I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?

Speaker 9:
[00:22] I think it's laminate.

Speaker 3:
[00:23] Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

Speaker 8:
[00:24] Car selling without a catch.

Speaker 4:
[00:26] Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.

Speaker 10:
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Speaker 3:
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Speaker 5:
[01:28] This season of Pack Your Knives is presented by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. And we got something special, a six-part savor Charlotte edition diving into the people shaping one of the South's most exciting food scenes. Charlotte's been getting a lot of national buzz lately, and for good reason. From hosting Top Chef Carolina's to its growing presence in the Michelin Guide, the city is quickly becoming a place where bold new ideas and Southern tradition come together on the plate. So go check out charlotsgotalot.com for more. Sara, what's your birthday dessert?

Speaker 11:
[02:00] Strawberry pie. My mother always made me strawberry pie because they were always really good strawberries in Paducah around my birthday. So I always had strawberry pie.

Speaker 5:
[02:08] What goes into a strawberry pie? Is it a lot of strawberry topping? Is it like bordered with strawberries? Is it topped with strawberry slices? What are we talking here?

Speaker 11:
[02:17] You gotta blind bake the crust. So you make a crust and you bake it in the oven till it's done because the filling goes in and then it sets up in the refrigerator. So a lot of strawberry flavored jello, strawberries, cornstarch, sugar, water. That's it.

Speaker 5:
[02:34] It's not as good as Funfetti cake from the box. I do Funfetti cake every birthday and I need to have two things of Funfetti icing.

Speaker 11:
[02:44] Icing also? Funfetti all the way?

Speaker 5:
[02:46] All the way. Yeah. Big Funfetti guy. When I was a kid, my mom used to get spice cake from the box and that was her thing. I didn't quite know what spice cake was, but I think a little bit of it was in this episode. So you know what? We're going to talk about it all. This is Pack Your Knives, I'm Tom Haberstroh.

Speaker 11:
[03:15] I'm Sara Bradley.

Speaker 5:
[03:17] Whoa, we have lots to get into, Sara. Sara, there's like Seager Gate, like where is Seager? What is going on? We have Last Chance Kitchen kind of drama that we're gonna get into, and typically we don't do the most recent aired Last Chance Kitchen, because we wanna let people watch the real episode of Top Chef, and then some time before we jump into the digital second side show, and this week we're gonna kind of do things a little bit differently, because there's just so much here that we gotta unpack, and I also have to unpack, I went to a Top Chef watch party on Monday at Sweet Loose Barbecue with Oscar, Dwen and Anthony, and Brittany was there too. So lots to get unpacked here, Sara, but any questions for me about the experience on Monday night?

Speaker 11:
[04:10] Did you find out what's up with all the grapes? Did you remember to ask?

Speaker 5:
[04:13] I did. I asked Dwen, and she had no idea. She's like, that is so funny. I didn't realize that, but grapes, like grapes, Jen, she didn't put two and two together. So there's no backstory there, unfortunately, but maybe we gotta get to the source at some point this season and ask Jen about the obsession with grapes.

Speaker 11:
[04:34] I'm gonna find out. I have stalked her social media a little bit.

Speaker 5:
[04:39] Yeah, yeah. As we will get into here, because it was a crazy week with Jen being asked to leave the competition or slash she decided to leave the competition because of her shoulder injury. We're gonna get into this, all of this, but I wanna also mention it was at Sweet Lou's, which is Louis Donald's barbecue joint in Charlotte. And he was at, and one of the pit masters for the barbecue episode. It was great. There was a lot of fun. They actually cooked, Anthony, Dwayne and Oscar cooked their dishes, their barbecue dishes from the barbecue episode. And I gotta say, Alison, my wife and I, we went back for like seconds and thirds of Dwayne's dish and we got the backstory. Dwayne, the nickname came from Oscar. Yeah. Oscar gave it to her because they were playing poker and cards in the back, you know, wasting time and spending time. And Dwayne was such an assassin at cards that he's like, who is this person? This alter ego? Is this Dwayne? And that's the first time she's ever been called Dwayne. But now she's like, yeah, I'm gonna run with this. So Dwayne was coined by Oscar, who is the guy that you want at every party, like a bachelor party, a hangout. You want Oscar there. He is so much fun. Dwayne, Brittany and Anthony too. But the personality of Oscar, as you get on this episode, how he's just schmoozing and he's a big talker. He's, he is so much fun, Sara.

Speaker 11:
[06:18] Did he tell you, is it Tamal or Tamali?

Speaker 5:
[06:22] It's in a plural, I think it's Tamales. Yeah.

Speaker 8:
[06:25] Okay, there we go.

Speaker 5:
[06:26] So he cooked the Tamal. It was delicious. We had, I had a plate and a half of that. It was great. And he had just come down from Raleigh. It's a three hour drive. So it's not a small trip, but he's like, I gotta come back to Charlotte so much more. It was, we had a great time. And it was, Sara, watching with the chefs, they have so much fun watching the edited episode because there's so many things that are like, ooh, did that make it to air? Like the mango, the mango, how do you say mango in Spanish moment from Dwen and then asking Oscar and he's like, it's mongo is a moment where they were secretly hoping didn't make it to the show because it was just like, how could I not know this? But that little moment captured in the Super G grocery store did make it to air and they're just laughing hysterically. So there's some earnestness, there's some joy like innocence that it was fun to watch the episode with the other chefs because they have not seen the final product. And so they're just giggling throughout the episode. Oh, they showed that. Oh, I can't believe it. And so there was a lot. It was really fun to watch with them. So, and then if I had known what was happening in this episode, at that Monday watch party, I'd have so many more questions for them. But of course they can't say anything because this is all very strong NDAs and they will not say anything. They did not leak anything at this event and they were very, you know, this is one of those things where all these fans are there. There's over 100 people at this barbecue. And of course, they're asking all these questions. And they're just like, you'll have to watch and find out. And this week's episode of Top Chef felt like to me, one of those, Sara, do you have any answers about how they're gonna play this out? Because Jen goes home and then in the same episode that Justin gets eliminated, but then when you go to Last Chance Kitchen from last week, there's no new eliminated chef. So Seeger's nowhere to be found.

Speaker 11:
[08:39] Is he nowhere to be found or do they have to bring someone? Someone has to come back, right? So I don't know, I thought maybe it'd be like, okay, the winner of this round of Last Chance Kitchen. I mean, maybe Seeger was like, F y'all, I'm out of here. I'm done with this. I am through and I'm gone. And so they're like, okay, well, we can figure that out because we'll have somebody the next time, but then they lose two chefs because Justin says he's not coming. He's not participating if Jen is in the hospital. But then we see that he goes to Last Chance Kitchen and he's like, she's fine. And we've decided that I'm going to try to play it back in. But they still have to have another chef. So does Seeger replace Jen? There's that option. Or does one of the teams cook a man down? Because the brothers, you can see them in the preview of next week. They are struggling. They're like doing knife work when service is going to start. So do they go maybe a man down and they're like, okay, you guys just don't have to do to go orders to like even the field or something. You know, I don't know.

Speaker 5:
[09:55] Well, I have a revelation here for you, Sara.

Speaker 11:
[09:58] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[09:59] I went to Restaurant Wars.

Speaker 11:
[10:01] Yeah, I think I remember that. Did you go inside? No, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[10:05] So I was at Restaurant Wars and now I'm racking my brain and I can't come up with anything. Did I see Seeger there?

Speaker 11:
[10:13] Well, it's crazy because you wouldn't have known. You wouldn't have known who they are. You don't even know their names. Like, yeah, I don't know. I think you got to save the Restaurant Wars for Restaurant Wars.

Speaker 5:
[10:24] That's right. So I'm saving the experience of Restaurant Wars there, but I just want to let people know that I was there and I still don't remember whether I saw Seeger or I didn't see Seeger, I saw Jen or I didn't see Jen or I didn't see Justin. I don't, because you don't know their faces. Like, yes, we did the draft before we went, but like I don't, like, for example, I wouldn't know if Seeger walked through holding a dish, bringing it out to the restaurant, or if it was just a server working in the restaurant, I wouldn't be able to distinguish the two. So it's not like I was able to recognize faces when I'm at a restaurant or I'm walking around. So this, I'm just, all the audience are in the dark about what happened to Seeger and we're there too. Sara and I have no idea what's about to happen on the show. And Tom Colicchio in the Last Chance Kitchen said, well, we'll explain it all next week, but in the Last Chance Kitchen, there's still lots of questions that need answered. So.

Speaker 11:
[11:25] Of all the episodes of Top Chef that I have watched, which is every single episode that has ever, ever aired, this might have been the craziest one. Like, they finally bring a couple on, and that one of the haves is having, like, horrible medical episode, and we don't find out what happens, and she is, has to leave the competition, and then her partner leaves with her. But we see him come back in LCK, and I mean, it's just like nonstop. It just, yeah, it was crazy.

Speaker 5:
[11:58] I mean, doing a production like Top Chef, there's a lot of, there's a lot of... structural production scheduling that has to happen that complicates the messaging that makes it to the final air. And so, Last Chance Kitchen is going, at the same time when it airs, but there's different production schedules when it comes to Last Chance Kitchen. So they have to think about, how are we going to explain this in a few months, and how are we gonna like let people know what's actually happening here? And then there's the cliffhangers, we gotta figure out how to leave people hanging. And this episode ends with kind of a cliffhanger is what happens to the teams for Restaurant Wars. And so we don't really get all the answers we need, which is in of itself a good cliffhanger. And like you said, this is one of the craziest episodes. I wouldn't say the strongest episode, but I would say definitely one that has my head spinning more than just about any Top Chef episode we've seen.

Speaker 11:
[12:58] I will say the one thing about this episode that I distinctly remember from being on the show is that I hated when we didn't leave set, when we were there for the whole thing, right? Like quick fire on set, and then it goes into cooking on set, and then serving, and then elimination. Like I wanted to leave and walk away and be able to go to the store and like develop my dish. It almost is like two quick fires, you know, just one of them is a little longer. They shot that all. I bet they were there so early in the morning and they didn't leave till so late at night. And yeah, that was, talk about production schedule. That was a big one. And then they had to like work in all the Jen stuff. And then you see Kristen in her street clothes, like crying after the show.

Speaker 5:
[13:49] Yeah. That was a long day at the Top Chef kitchen.

Speaker 11:
[13:52] Long day, long day. They needed all those meals. They needed breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, to get through the filming. What did you think about the Quickfire?

Speaker 5:
[14:02] I actually thought the two should have been flipped. The Quickfire should have been in its own elimination challenge, and the elimination challenge should have been the Quickfire, where it was like, desserts fit for a queen, dessert quick, dessert challenge. And then we'll go to the Cracker Barrel sponsored segment. But usually the sponsored segments are in the Quickfire, right? So it's lower stakes. It's not like a eliminated chef is doing a Cracker Barrel themed episode where they have to do breakfast, lunch and dinner with their own thing. And kind of, I actually thought that there was a lot going on in this Quickfire, you know, like it was, it felt like elimination challenge. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 11:
[14:38] Yeah. I mean, it was, I mean, they're, they pull out the peg game instead of the knife pull, which I absolutely love. Like I love, I love Cracker Barrel. Listen, Cracker Barrel, every time I go to Cracker Barrel, I know exactly what I'm getting. I'm getting a fried egg sandwich, leave off the tomato, and I want extra mayonnaise. That's it. Eggs over easy, fried egg sandwich, and now they have these like little hashbrown tarts. So it's like the hashbrown casserole, but they make it into like a tater tot. They're disgusting and they're delicious, and I love them, and that's what I'm getting. And so yeah, I mean, I know their menu, it's not a huge menu. They now have booze at Cracker Barrel. I don't know if they have it where you are, but in Kentucky, you can get a beer, you can get a mimosa, I don't think you can get vodka, but you can get beer, you can't get liquor, but you can get beer and wine.

Speaker 5:
[15:26] Yeah, I know. Well, I think they've mastered the whole like, we're gonna merch the heck out of this, is they've, you know, they have that gift shop in the front of Cracker Barrel that you have to kind of like walk through in order to get to the restaurant. And it reminds me, did they do that before Disney did that? You know how like, if you go to Disney and you do a ride, you come out of the ride, and then there's just a merch shop after you go through Space Mountain, and there's just a ton of like space, spacey astronaut merch that you can buy. Cracker Barrel's got it down. They've got it figured out. All of it, all of the marketing, the rocking chairs that they had on set in Top Chef Kitchen was brilliant. And the other thing is that kind of pulls in that the Charlotte Airport is famous for all the rocking chairs throughout the airport. And so you got that element to it, and you could see that they were nervous. It was the yellow team, Brandon, Jonathan and Anthony, that were really rocking their chairs. They were called out, Audit, because they were so nervous about it. But they ended up winning this challenge. We have to back up here. I'm not a Southern Charm guy. This is not a Southern Charm household. So when Craig Conover and Madison LaCroix walk in, I could vaguely know that they were a part of the Bravo Southern Charm world. But I did not recognize them. So Sara, do you have people in your life or are you a Southern Charm fanatic?

Speaker 11:
[16:53] I am not a Southern Charm fanatic. I'm very sorry if they're listening, which I don't know if they are. But I had to look them up. I didn't know who they were. Yeah. You didn't know. But I thought that they had really valuable insight. Very quippy. You know, he's like, you know, I picked a thin steak because I wanted it to cook quickly. And he was like, well, you definitely achieved that. You know, like they were funny. They were really good. And I felt like they kind of knew about food and what they were talking about. So, yeah, I thought it was I thought it was a fun quick fire.

Speaker 5:
[17:28] Fun quick fire. Again, there was a lot going on. So it was the Southern Charm folks were there. They pulled pegs instead of knives. And the twist on the twist on the twist is that they have they break out into teams, but they can only cook one chef at a time. One chef can cook at once at a time. So there's 45 minutes to cook for three people on each team, which is about average out to 15 minutes. But as soon as the first person's done cooking, then the next person can get going. I love this stuff. I love the I love like the challenges where there's like a blind challenge or you have to cook while blindfolded. Then you have to pick up where your partner left off, your team left off. I love those challenges. And I know people might think those are gimmicky. I think those are super fun to watch because it, it does this, this really like I'm watching the clock and seeing, oh, Dwayne only has 12 minutes to get her dish out or wow, he took 17 minutes and the gamesmanship of all of that is really fascinating to me.

Speaker 11:
[18:34] Yeah. I mean, I would have been, I would have been losing my shit. I would have been absolutely panicked. I would have said, I'll go first. I want to go first. I always want to go last, but what if like all of a sudden you're left with like six minutes? You know, I mean, I think that they would understand, the chefs or the judges would understand, but you still, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 5:
[18:58] Well, and because I feel like breakfast is the eat, you just do an eggs dish and you're done, right? It's quick.

Speaker 11:
[19:04] Well, you had to recreate, you had to create a like a new Southern classic that wasn't on the menu. Um, I don't know that corned beef hash is a Southern classic. Um, you know, there, I think there's like, I love corned beef hash. So I like corned beef hash too. Um, yeah, I mean, I thought, you know, I thought it was really good. The, uh, the chicken tender, Lawrence, dude, how long have you been on, how long have you been watching the show? Cut the thing open and make sure the chicken is cooked. And it was just, I, it was, I probably would have eaten that chicken. I would have been okay with it. It was just a little bit pink. Like, I don't.

Speaker 5:
[19:43] They really roasted him for that.

Speaker 11:
[19:45] I was like, you did not serve undercooked chicken. I still would have eaten it, but, um.

Speaker 5:
[19:51] Arnovitz famously likes undercooked chicken, so he would have gobbled that up. Uh, Kevin would have. And, but for me, I mean, if it's undercooked in a, in a fry, if it's a chicken tendie and it's under, I'm not going to freak out about that. But they, you know, what it told me is that they believe in Lawrence as the, the favorite in this thing so much, because I don't think they're ragging on Justin. If he does the same thing, but I think they hold Lawrence to such a high standard that they're like, come on, man, you know how to cook chicken. And I think that speaks to how your number one pick is just held to a higher standard than the rest of the chefs.

Speaker 11:
[20:28] Yeah. I mean, I don't know. We see two fried green tomato sandwiches. I would have preferred to have twins because I love country ham. Like really. So a lot of people don't know. Around here, country ham. So there's this thing called the hand belt. Okay. It starts way past kind of Paducah, but it kind of hits western Kentucky, kind of dips down into Tennessee, goes straight across through North Carolina. Then you can follow it all the way around the world where it hits in Italy, down into Spain. Like it's the hand belt. It wraps all the way around the world. And it's a lot of areas where the humidity and the heat are very similar because that's such a part of making ham. So around here, country ham is sliced and shaved like prosciutto. We call it country ham. There's two styles. There's like the big, huge, over salted, really dried one that you got to soak in water. And then there's the one that you shave really thin. And that is one of my favorite items to eat. So of all the stuff out of there, I wanted her fried green tomato sandwich.

Speaker 5:
[21:32] It looks great. And I think Anthony, the open faced green tomato, I don't know. There was a lot going on on that dish. It just seemed like I would rather go for twins too.

Speaker 11:
[21:41] Salmon roe, avocado, like didn't make it. Yeah, I didn't like it.

Speaker 5:
[21:46] But yellow wins. Team yellow, Brandon, Jonathan, and Anthony win. Jonathan did the smothered steak with bourbon, pan gravy, no mashed potato in there. And he said, you know what? I didn't have enough time, but I would have thrown some mashed potato in there. Brandon, the eggs benny with hash brown, shortcut hollandaise that he says he cooks for his kids and they love it. It looked so good, so good. And so yeah, team yellow wins.

Speaker 11:
[22:15] You know, I think what I'm taking away from this is Oscar. I just feel like his day is coming. I mean, he is like on the top, on the bottom, on the top, winning money, going home. Like he's like, he's all over the place. He had the favorite dish of the quick fire. And then the least, one of the least favorites of the elimination challenge. So, I just, I don't foresee Oscar. I don't give him longevity in this competition.

Speaker 5:
[22:44] It's what I'm learning. Because he's too up and down, you're saying? So, that just, yeah.

Speaker 11:
[22:47] He's too up and down, yeah. Which we've seen other chefs, like be up and down and kind of all over. I mean, here we watched Rhoda win to, now she's in Last Chance Kitchen. You know, so there is always a lot of up and down, but I think Oscar is just, he's too all over the place. I thought maybe this was his week, when I saw him put that pan of bread pudding in, I thought he's going home.

Speaker 5:
[23:12] Yeah, well, there's the fried oysters that Jim is trying to use, kind of like the batter left over and try to throw it in there. Lemon pepper, cream corn. Dwen did the fried green tomato we talked about. Justin, the New York strip beef hash, which I mean, in theory, this sounds like a good dish, but when I was watching it, I was just like, this is not a good dish whatsoever. Yeah, and I have higher hopes because I love the canned corned beef hash. I think it's from Hormel. I don't know. But I love corned beef hash and that was a sad production of it. Oscar with the panday elote with the berries. It looks fantastic, fluffy. The corn cake was excellent. The crab and shrimp bisque with Sherry just really smart with the shrimp paste to throw in there and pow, it was super flavorful. But Lawrence took them down. The fact that you had Sherry and Oscar on the same team, they had to justify why they didn't win it over because those two may have been like the two favorite dishes of the day. And yet Lawrence's undercooked chicken sunk them.

Speaker 11:
[24:22] Yeah, I mean, well, they said that, they said that the, that what, Oscars was the favorite dish of the day. I have so many notes, got all those damn desserts. Yeah, but I don't know. I think that you can't be, listen, I've done it. You can't be on a team and win with undercooked protein.

Speaker 5:
[24:47] Yeah, yeah, in there.

Speaker 11:
[24:49] You know, even Jossie, when he remember, he just couldn't cook the lamb long enough. Like it's, it's always a protein. It's going to send you home.

Speaker 5:
[24:58] One last thing before we get to the elimination challenge. I really like the puns of right before, you know, they have to announce who is the winning chef or who is the losing chef. This one this week was which team cracked under pressure. And I'm wondering, Sara, is that, is that your favorite one or could you come up with a better cracker barrel pun? I thought maybe which team had us over a barrel? Which team had us doing a barrel roll? Didn't work. None of those work. So when the which team cracked under pressure, I felt like was the best one of all the puns that you could come up with.

Speaker 11:
[25:36] Do you think Tom is in the back writing those? Because he like, here's my crowning moment for the best dad joke.

Speaker 5:
[25:43] This is why I'm the executive producer of this show, is just so that I can come up and produce those last lines, the cheesy dad jokes. Yeah, which team cracked under pressure? And we go into the dessert challenge, which is Melissa Benoist is a singer, actress, super popular, again, not in my world. I'm not a glee, super girl fan, and yet she has four million followers on Instagram. She was delightful, really liked her. She's a Top Chef super fan. She says she's watched from day one, and you could really feel that with the reviews and how kind of starstruck she was on set, which was really fun to see. For someone as successful and famous as she is, I always like those moments where they turn into just a fan.

Speaker 11:
[26:33] Yeah, I agree. I did not know who she was. I had to look her up. I feel like I've seen her face. I recognize her, but I didn't know who she was. But I can imagine, I think she is in this world. She lives in the TV world and she has this show. I mean, she said she wrote a letter to get on. So I can see her. She's got four million followers. She's on all these TV shows and she's writing a letter to Top Chef. Please let me be on yours. I see you bring celebrities on. Please let me be on it. And then she gets to come. And it's like, you know, she probably didn't know early on she was going to be some super famous person. So she's been watching Top Chef. And now all of a sudden she's there. So I really like that one. I like that. We had Michael Cera on one of ours. We were so excited.

Speaker 5:
[27:25] Yeah, I was just going to ask who would you geek out the most when they walked in? Besides like the guest judges from the culinary world. Is Michael Cera up there?

Speaker 11:
[27:32] He was there. Yeah. I mean, there's trying to think who else. I can't remember. Padma had so many dear friends.

Speaker 5:
[27:40] I don't remember.

Speaker 11:
[27:41] Oh, you know, I don't know how I feel about him. But, you know, that is a different podcast.

Speaker 5:
[27:52] Yes, I was just going to say that would be a whole other episode.

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Speaker 5:
[29:19] All right, we got Charlotte history here. I've kind of let people know about how Charlotte calls itself first in freedom because they declared independence from Great Britain before the founding fathers did. And so I was thinking that they were gonna do a little bit of that in this for the 250th anniversary of Charlotte. And what we got is the Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg County, Germany. That's why it's called Mecklenburg County here in Charlotte. And there is elimination challenge, which is dessert fit for a queen using an assortment of Southern famous Southern dish dessert dishes. And there is going to be served to 60 Top Chef superfans and they vote for the winner. And I wasn't totally clear whether they voted for the loser too. And they eliminated the chef. But it turns out that the judges would eliminate the chef. So it wasn't up for a vote. Sara, these desserts, how Southern are they and are any in your cookbook?

Speaker 11:
[30:22] Okay, I got a list. This is what I could come up with. Benny wafers, which I heard them call them Benne wafers. It's Benny, like B-E-N-N-Y, even though it's not spelled like that. We got coconut cake, apple stack cake, caramel cake, banana pudding, strawberry cake, chocolate chest pie, Atlantic beach pie, hummingbird cake, I'm speculating, from the overhead shot that one of those was hummingbird cake, sunker, ambrosia, marovian, sugar cake. And then there's two baked pies that I can't figure out. One is maybe a sugar pie, and one is maybe another chest pie. I can't really tell. I see a pecan pie up there. You know what? I have sunker written twice, and there were 16 desserts, so I'm missing one. Hmm. Well, I counted 16.

Speaker 5:
[31:11] Which one are you sprinting towards?

Speaker 11:
[31:13] Um, so my gut instinct tells me to get the chocolate chest pie, because I would have done something very, very similar to what Jonathan did. Chocolate chest pie and pudding, those are the same ingredients. It's like, you know, I mean, he doesn't, yeah, it's not that different. But what I really would have reached for is the apple stat cake. That is a very classic dessert, where I come from. And my grandmother made it. Can I give you the history of apple stat cake?

Speaker 5:
[31:49] Please, I would love nothing more.

Speaker 11:
[31:51] This is the Appalachia history, Appalachian, whatever you want to say. People would show up to a wedding, and as they would show up to this wedding, they would bring a layer of cake. They would make a small little layer of cake. And they would bring it. And those parties, these weddings would go all day long until people would show up, they'd put the cake down and then they'd smear it with apple butter. Next person shows up, they put the layer down, they smear it with apple butter. It goes and goes and goes. And finally at the end of the party, they cut the cake. And sometimes if these parties, these weddings went on for more than one day or so, it might be day two before you cut the apple stat cake. And I actually prefer my apple stat cake on like day three or four on when it's really been sitting around. But yeah, the bigger your cake was, the more kind of affluent because you had more people at your wedding. So that is the history. And I am very sorry to the people, the culinary team on Top Chef, but that was the worst apple stat cake I have ever seen in my entire life. It was so blonde. We make it with like spiced cake and like it has sorghum in it and stuff. And that was like the blondest, most vanilla looking apple stat cake I have ever seen. But that's what I would have gone for. I would have reached the apple stat.

Speaker 5:
[33:07] The one that was on the...

Speaker 11:
[33:10] Yeah, not Anthony's, the one that was on the table.

Speaker 5:
[33:13] A poor representation of a good apple stat cake.

Speaker 11:
[33:17] Yeah, and it was like four layers. Like what is, that's not a wedding cake. That's like a fun, fatty box cake. No, I'm just joking.

Speaker 5:
[33:24] Yeah. That's so good. I mean, it's my Cheetos, or it's the thing that is not the most culinary gourmet thing, but I can't get enough of it.

Speaker 11:
[33:36] Do you even love the batter? Do you like the batter of a cake more? Or do you like the cooked cake itself?

Speaker 5:
[33:44] I am the guy who goes straight for the brownie mix and just inhales brownie mix. And I want that gooey brownie. I like the, if you can give me a really gooey uncooked center and then a crispy corner piece in the same bite, that's heaven to me. Cake batter, everything, all of that funfetti, it's gonna take years off my life for sure, but I love that stuff. So yeah, I'm a big batter person.

Speaker 11:
[34:15] Yeah, I mean, I would have done that or I would have gone for that banana pudding.

Speaker 5:
[34:19] Nanner pudding, man.

Speaker 11:
[34:20] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[34:21] It is pick and pig in Carthage, North Carolina, barbecue joint where there's plant, it's on an airstrip and people fly in from all around North Carolina, South Carolina to like go to this barbecue joint in More County. They have this Nanner pudding that is so good. And it is like, you gotta get like three of them and take them home so that you can have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner dessert.

Speaker 11:
[34:47] I gotta ask, you're saying Nanner pudding. Is Nanner pudding what they call it or is that like how you... That's what they call it, Nanner pudding.

Speaker 5:
[34:55] Okay.

Speaker 11:
[34:57] I have this friend, Chef Kevin Lee, and he makes banana-less banana pudding. And it's like just, yeah, it's exactly what you think. And it is like one of his biggest sellers. It is like everybody, he's out in Oklahoma City and he, yeah, banana-less banana pudding. And it's like he came to the off the menu. Yeah. But...

Speaker 5:
[35:21] Wait, so banana-less banana pudding, is it artificial banana is what we're talking?

Speaker 11:
[35:26] No, there's just no bananas in it. It's like, it's got the vanilla wafers, it's got the pudding, it's got the whipped cream, it's got all the stuff just without bananas.

Speaker 5:
[35:37] I like that. I like that.

Speaker 11:
[35:39] But it's delicious, it's absolutely delicious. It just doesn't have bananas in it. And he calls it that on the menu.

Speaker 5:
[35:43] Well, because I was gonna say, artificial banana makes me gag. So like there's a skittles, there's a skittles, tropical skittles thing that I remember at the YMCA after basketball practice, everyone would go get like their dollar and go put it in the vending machine and they would always get the tropical skittles with the one with the banana skittle in it. Disgusting. And ever since then, it's artificial cherries and artificial bananas. So the real thing has, that's why I asked whether this is an artificial banana flavoring, which is why it's a bananiless banana pudding. So I'm glad that Kevin does not do that because it wouldn't stay down.

Speaker 11:
[36:22] We see a lot of banana in this episode, even from Dwyane, but my favorite banana candy is banana Laffy Taffy. I like to hold the Laffy Taffy in my hand for just a little bit before I actually eat it so it's kind of warm. Like inside the wrapper, you kind of rub it around in your hands, it gets a little soft and then you can really like stretch it. I would do like, I thought for some reason I was being so cool, I would pull the taffy like I was making my own saltwater taffy as a child. And I love that shit.

Speaker 5:
[36:55] The banana Laffy Taffy is the bottom of the barrel. That's insane. It's insane. Wait, do you also, when you get airheads, do you smack it and create a ball? This is what I used to do.

Speaker 11:
[37:09] I think you told me about that. Someone recently told me about that and I'd never done it. And I did it and I was, and that takes a while. You're like, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[37:18] So here's, I don't think I've told you this. So someone else does this too. I guess this is a thing. So you get airheads and the wrapper, you just kind of hit it on your thigh or your forearm or your hand enough that all of that, you know, gumminess gets into like a hard rock at the end of it. And so you can put it in your mouth and just chew on it or suck on it for like hours. So it's a very dense airhead.

Speaker 11:
[37:47] I feel like somewhere in your life, you were a heavy tobacco user because you're like, I want big league chew. Like I want a big hard ball that I can just like put, and you're like talking about putting beef jerky dip in your lip just for the drive home. Like I'm just wondering if like-

Speaker 5:
[38:02] I went to Winston Salem for college. Like the tobacco, isn't this crazy? All of these things suggest that I am like a chain smoker, like big time tobacco user, and I've never smoked cigarettes in my life. So like, it's like I getting it from all these different sources and maybe in like my, maybe the Tim to the Dwen's Dwayne, I was just like a tobacco fiend, right? Cause this doesn't make any sense why I'm like constantly doing all these like fake tobacco products. Anyway, Atlanta Beach Pie, that just seems like to me Key Lime Pie, is it not?

Speaker 11:
[38:42] I think, I mean, I think so. I think it seems like Key Lime Pie.

Speaker 5:
[38:49] Tom loved it, Yuzu Heavy, it would have been one of your top picks if you were going to go.

Speaker 11:
[38:54] I don't think it would have been my top. It would have been, it was definitely one that you could duplicate or replicate. It didn't look like it was a regular crust. It looked like it was either like a pretzel or a graham cracker crust. So that's definitely easy to make. You know, I think that Strawberry Cake would have been an easy one. Benny Wafers was hard, because what are you going to do with that? So if you don't know what Benny is, Benny is just like kind of an heirloom variety of a sesame seed. They're a lot smaller. They have a much nuttier flavor and you just mix them with sugar. And there's usually like a little, we like to put a little vinegar in ours. But anyway, you make this really thin, crispy cracker that you could have gone anyway with that, anywhere with that, and you could have used sesame in so many ways. So maybe actually Benny wafers would have been smart because you would have had access to tahini, toasted sesame oil, like all of these different types of sesame. That could have been a fun one. You could put whatever you wanted in there. Then whatever.

Speaker 5:
[39:59] I noticed Anthony, Lawrence and Jennifer, obviously Jennifer with her shoulder injury, she's not sprinting to the dessert cake table. Lawrence doesn't and Anthony doesn't either. The interesting thing is Lawrence and Anthony, and I would say Jen had one of the top dishes, they won, they got in the top three. So it's almost like Sara, the ones who sprinted and really wanted to go get a certain dish, there's almost some strategy involved of just like, all right, rather than pigeonholing myself into one vision, maybe I just hang back and look at the resulting eight dishes and choose the one that I like best, because they hung back, that's a strategy.

Speaker 11:
[40:43] I do not think that the judges thought Anthony had the winning dish. They very specifically said to him, they said that he was in their top three also, said you were a top choice of ours. I don't think that he was, I don't think it was, I really think that they liked Brandon's the most. They had, they, not a negative comment. They were really into it. I thought Brandon's was the most interesting. It looked great. It had, you know, he, like the Sabayon made looked perfect. Everything about it looked really good. I don't think that the judges would have chosen Anthony. And so I don't actually love that they let the super fans pick. Sorry, super fans. But we saw how much, like we saw last time when they let, like the pit masters have a vote, you know, like they didn't always line up with the judges. And so I would have liked to, I would have liked to seen what the judges also had to say.

Speaker 5:
[41:48] Are you like me, I feel like this is top Sabayon this year.

Speaker 11:
[41:53] Oh God, they just love it.

Speaker 5:
[41:54] It's been on every fricking episode is someone doing a Sabayon. And every, I think there was a couple in this one, in this episode too. Is this like Sabayon had a big Sabayon, like something like when avocado just hit and everyone had to do avocado toast. It's everywhere in this season and it's not top scallop, it's top Sabayon now.

Speaker 11:
[42:16] I mean, you are correct. They're making mustard Sabayon. Like I think Justin did that, right? Mustard Sabayon with his hash. Yeah, there have been a lot of them. They are an easy sauce to make and it sounds, well, to make quickly. They are pretty stable. Doesn't she make a dulce de leche Sabayon too? Isn't that what Dwyn makes? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's everywhere. They're stable. They're pretty stable. They're easy to make. You know, they, yeah. That you are correct.

Speaker 5:
[42:53] It's everywhere. Yeah, it's everywhere. And but I will say, Brandon, I have in my notes that he's going to win this episode based on the judges' reactions. Top three goes Lawrence, Anthony and Sherry, and Anthony wins by a single vote. And it was voted on by the guests. Sherry, they thought was a little undercooked, but the guests love it. And Marta Cujá, in Brazil, passion fruit, we would have it all the time when I lived there. And so it was a great use of the fruit, Sanker, Twist, Justin, the Ambrosia, this from the Gecko, it felt like to me a big miss by Justin. If you're going on Top Chef, learn how to use a liquid nitrogen tank. Learn how to do liquid nitrogen, because at some point you're going to need it. And it just looked like he didn't know his way around a liquid nitrogen, which yikes.

Speaker 11:
[43:51] Okay, so this is my favorite Justin moment of the episode. We get to get a lot of Justin. You know, they're like, oh, you know, the producer's like, do you like sweets? And he's like, I love desserts. And they're like, really? He's like, no. And then he says, you know, growing up in my family, there wasn't a lot of sugar. It was a lot of healthy eating. So we didn't have a lot of desserts. And they cut to a literal picture of him as a child. And he has a plate of fried food as big as his head. And he's like talking about how he grew up like eating healthy food. And it's, I can't tell what it is. It looks like it's like a fried fish platter. Like, I think he's from like the North. So maybe has like white fish. It's like a plate, a huge plate with the most underriped tomatoes sliced on top of like cottage cheese. I don't know what this kid ate growing up, but-

Speaker 5:
[44:35] But no sugar, Sara. Can't have that, but give you all of the fried foods. Yeah.

Speaker 11:
[44:42] I also noticed in his dish, so it was a cherry granita, roasted pineapple, brown butter, walnuts, raspberry, whipped cream. There was a lot of potential to make a really, really delicious ambrosia salad. Like he could have, there was so much, and I saw what I saw him doing. He was like cooking down. I could tell he was going to make this cherry gel when he was throwing dried cherries and fresh cherries in the pot. And then you see him, and he's roasting that pineapple and got all that char on it. It did appear that he had bagged marshmallows in his dish, which I know is a part of ambrosia salad, but I saw little bitty baby marshmallows, mini marshmallows. I don't know if I would have gone there. I probably would have made a marshmallow fluff and piped it on top and torched it or something. But yeah, it's just too cold. It's too cold. Everything was freezing. I don't know if you've eaten stuff that is frozen with liquid nitrogen, but it hurts. It's really cold. I think that Gail makes a really smart point. She says, when things are this cold, you just can't taste them. If you're home and you're cooking and you're going to, let's say you're going to make a cold soup, whatever. You make it in the soup and it's hot and you taste it and you're like, that's seasoned perfectly. I like the salt, I like the acid, I like the sweetness and you put it in the fridge to serve to your guests later on the gazpacho or I guess you wouldn't cook gazpacho, whatever you're making. It will not be as seasoned when it's cold. So taste buds in your mouth, taste buds, those things they can attract. So you can't taste food as well when it is cold. That's why if you leave your ice cream out on the counter for like five minutes, it always tastes better. This is not as cold. So yeah, so he just, I mean, I bet it just tasted like nothingness. Because he's literally going from liquid nitrogen onto the plate and serving it to the judges.

Speaker 5:
[46:40] As soon as he was like, I don't know what I'm doing, how do I do this? And I think, was it Sherry or Dwen gave him the tutorial on how to do liquid nitrogen?

Speaker 11:
[46:49] Yeah, Dwen.

Speaker 5:
[46:50] Yeah, Dwen. It was Dwen. And I was like, oh, but he's going home. There's no way. There's no way. Liquid nitrogen also, it's one of those myths. And maybe Carly can back me up. It just feels like when someone doesn't know how to do liquid nitrogen and they have to do liquid nitrogen, it just feels like you're automatically eliminated with the same thing with a pressure cooker. As soon as someone gets out of pressure cooker and it's like, how do I work this? Always ends poorly on Top Chef.

Speaker 11:
[47:16] I thought we were going to see Oscar. I thought, well, I, I, no, actually, I felt very strongly about Justin as well, but we see Oscar. Okay. So Oscar did the, he got the Moravian sugar cake, and then he does this Capiotata type thing. He, so number one, he puts all of the breads in there. He's got like baguettes and brioche and slider buns. Those things all absorb liquid at different rates and they cook differently. Like brioche can get pretty soggy if you don't have it toasted before you put it in there. Baguette, it takes a lot more custard to absorb into it. So he's making this enough bread pudding or Capio Tata to serve 200 people. But yeah, when they're like two hours out and he doesn't have it in there, and I think Brandon says to him, he's like, I hope he doesn't go home. I would have said as someone standing next to him, I would have been like, dude, don't put it in that big ass pan. Get some short hotel pans. What are you doing? This is ridiculous. I wouldn't have kept my mouth shut. Cause I just, you know, especially if Oscars is as cool as you say is, I would have had to have said something. I'd be like, dude, you're gonna, this is crazy.

Speaker 5:
[48:33] Yeah, he overcompensated cause he was like, this is the thinnest, like flavorless cake you've ever seen. And so I'm gonna just do this big fat gooey thing. And you're right is the judges are one thing, but the attendees didn't know that it was broken whipped cream. Tom is destroying him about, why did you serve broken whipped cream? And he's like, I mean, the diners don't really know. I mean, it was just, I felt like I could get by with the whipped cream rather than not selling it, not serving it. And Tom was just, he was agitated by that. You could clearly see that Tom was like, get this guy out of here. But ultimately Justin with the flavorless ice cubes.

Speaker 11:
[49:19] He says, they're like, why did you put it on there if you know it's broken? He said, well, I looked over at Sherry and she had all this colorful stuff. And I'm like, so you added, her dish was colorful, so you added white whipped cream? It doesn't make any sense. And she even goes, she's like, why are you blaming this on me? Like, yeah, that was a rough one. It was a rough one.

Speaker 5:
[49:40] Are all the chefs colorblind? Because we had the whole color episode with Jamie Brown and there was almost no color. And so here we go again. Oscar's like, oh, I saw her do color, so much color. So I added a pale tan thing to my dish. Come on.

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Speaker 11:
[51:05] We do see, so Lawrence, who makes the Coconut Tres Leches, and he ends up in the top. And this is, I'm pretty sure that the producers are maybe listening to us, because remember we said like, hey, I know you guys are still cutting these episodes, so maybe we could get a little immunity talk, and then they put it in there. So I think that everyone can thank you and I, that they finally mentioned that Lawrence has immunity, and they asked him like, and this is a great one to have immunity on, the dessert. And love it, love it. But they like his. They wanted more coconut, but they said it had a really nice crumb. I also think that his description on his menu was the best, because it said, Coconut Tres Leches, as opposed to other people who had so many words on there. And then he, you know, you have to, yeah, I'm going to say, so Lawrence, we get Coconuts, Tres Leches, Brandon. No, it wasn't Brandon, it was Jonathan. Chocolate chess pie, he does chocolate sabayon, cocoa custard, pate sucre, and candied kumquats. So if you don't know what pate sucre, it's like pie crust, it's like a really sweet pie crust. And we see the sabayon again. I think he went in a, I think he did a really smart play there. Like the sabayon and the custard, those are both egg dishes, and they are done with chocolate, and chocolate chess cake is literally cocoa and sugar, a little vinegar. Some people put cornmeal in it, and that's egg, sugar, cook it all together. And that's what he did. He took eggs and sugar and chocolate and cooked it all together. So I thought his dish was really, really smart, but maybe he didn't have enough crust on it. I don't know. They obviously didn't like his.

Speaker 5:
[53:00] These brothers are really good, man. The brothers are really good at this show. They're really smart. They tell a good story. They have fun. They're talented. They've figured out Top Chef in a way that is going to serve them really well. And I think I underrate, obviously, in the draft, we had them in the bottom half of the draft, but they clearly think about, they present well, like they tell the story. Like when he's giving, I think it was, it was Brandon with the eggs bening in the quick fire. He's like, this is my kid's favorite dish. Instantly, you're going to be, that storytelling is going to strike a chord with the judges. It's just they have an ability to cook within the parameters of the show, tell a story, and that goes a really long way in this competition. And Lawrence is the same thing. He's always got a good story with his dish. And it reminds me of Vinny where it's not enough to just say, hey, I used to cook at this restaurant and this is how they did it. That's not going to win over the chefs, but if you can tug at their heartstrings a little bit, they're really good at these little stories. And I remember, was it Lawrence just talking about how to really think about the challenge and the theme and the prompt when Lawrence went and got the sweet tea off the table and was like, I'm going to incorporate this into my dish. I'm just like, oh, like they're really thinking about this in a creative, innovative way. And I just think the Deardens, again, they're not in the top three, but I think after this episode, them being on the same team in Restaurant Wars, I feel really good about. They've got, they clearly have great communication. They, I think it was this episode of the last one we learned that they talk every single day. So them being on the same team and them performing well in this dessert challenge, I think they're really strong. Like if one of those brothers wins this whole thing, I would not be surprised, Sara. And I know this dessert challenge wouldn't have been my favorite to go and attend. And I wasn't thrilled when they were in the Chopped Chef kitchen. It gave me PTSD from last year's Top Chef Canada, where they were constantly in the Top Chef kitchen. And it felt like they weren't venturing into Canada all that much. And so I felt bad for the chefs that they were basically living inside that. It felt like, honestly, America's Culinary Cup, where they're just in that room for so long, I just feel bad for the chefs at a certain point, that they have to be in the Top Chef kitchen set for so long. So that's just where I'm at with this episode. It was crazy. I wasn't in love with the dessert challenges, because that's a lot of sweet and the timing of it. You probably want to be one of the first ones, right? The first ones to serve the judges, because at a certain point, it's diminishing returns on desserts.

Speaker 11:
[55:54] Yeah, I mean, they probably were allowed to like run. They probably didn't have to keep all their ice cream at their station. You know, they were running back and getting ice cream. Yeah, I guess you want to go first. But here they say the very last one, Brandon's, they're like that. It was the last one, but that's the one I'm going to go back and eat. That's the one I keep wanting to eat.

Speaker 5:
[56:16] Oh, I want that one, yeah.

Speaker 11:
[56:17] I know, right? I'll tell you who I didn't really want to eat was twins and I like her so much. But I thought it was, she was like, I had this idea for this, here we go again. It's a Dolce Giolece Sabayon. She has this idea and she brings it down. I honestly think that if she had wanted to do that dish and she had presented it differently, she could have worked out. She didn't have any of the layers that are so important in caramel cake. That is what a caramel cake is all about. She has this Pandan. If you don't know what Pandan is, it has a vanilla flavor. But it's bright green, super yummy. She has roasted bananas, Pandan, coconut rice. I don't know. Like maybe...

Speaker 5:
[57:14] This is the shoehorn problem. This is the shoe... You come in and you want to make Pandan at one of the challenges, and she shoehorned it into this one and it didn't work.

Speaker 11:
[57:25] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[57:26] And the judges were like, it almost seemed like you just wanted to make Pandan, and then you kind of threw in a little bit of caramel whipped cream in there that didn't actually taste like caramel. Gail was like, I just didn't get any of the inspiration at all on this dish, you know?

Speaker 11:
[57:42] Yeah, well, I mean, she pulls it from a restaurant she used to work at, and then a woman that was serving roasted bananas on the street, and she puts it all together. I thought maybe we were going to see a really great dish from her because they opened with her. This episode was her talking about who she wants to win for. I was like, oh, we're going to get a good win episode.

Speaker 5:
[58:01] A redemption story, right? Because she's like, I can't win, I can't get over the hump and Lawrence is coaching her up and you got this, you can do this. And she was in the bottom for this one and she wasn't in the top. She did the fried green tomato, which we both preferred over Anthony's fried green tomato. But Anthony ultimately gets the three points on that and the ten points for the elimination challenge win. So, Sara, you lost again this week. You still hold a very commanding lead. But Justin goes home, he's eliminated. He gets offered the opportunity to stay in the competition or go home with his partner, Jennifer. So, Jennifer, she's complaining about her face is like dragging, I don't know what the right word is here, but kind of-

Speaker 11:
[58:54] Almost like dropping or something.

Speaker 5:
[58:55] Dropping, right?

Speaker 11:
[58:57] Like Bell's Palsy is what we both kind of think, right?

Speaker 5:
[59:02] Yeah. This happened in the NBA playoffs with one of the biggest stars in the league, Joel Embiid, had in the middle of a game, his lips were falling on one side and his eye was covered because the half of his face was drooping in the middle of the game. And there was no report about what was wrong with him and his eyes were not working. It was so bizarre and everyone in the room watching on Twitter and everywhere was like, is he going through like a stroke in the middle of a game? Like we were all very concerned and he's notoriously coy about his injury reports. So he doesn't and this is all very, if you're a normal human being, you don't want like to blast all your medical history on the masses. But in sports, it's very different because those ailments because of gambling and all this stuff, they need to report in football whether you're questionable, probable and there was nothing about Bell's policy before the game in a playoff game and he's fighting through this very clearly some sort of ailment. And that's where my mind went to when I'm watching Jen slowly in the strew room, they're like, are you okay? And Chris, they bring everybody out, out onto judges table, which is a new, a weird thing. So already my, I'm like, what is, they're bringing them back out. And then I look at the time and I'm like, oh, there's a few minutes left here. I wonder if they're going to like do a tease on Restaurant Wars. Sara, they did the whole Restaurant Wars picking teams right off the bat here.

Speaker 11:
[60:30] Yeah, I think they, I mean, I am glad that they said Jen has to go home. I, number one, I think they're, it's the responsible thing to do, right? Like there's some negligence if she does, if they don't. Of course she wants to be there and she's doing really well. So like, think if she wasn't hurt, like she would be whooping that ass. She would be, she'd be up there like Lawrence Anthony, like all of those people, because she does really good and she is struggling, like she is in a severe amount of pain. So I am glad though that they sent her home because it's, it's painful, it's painful to watch, you know, like you feel for her and you want her, I want to see her come back and like especially now, if she came back and she already knew like what the game was, I don't even think it would be a question of how much she would dominate the show because she knows, she knows now, she would have such a one up on everybody else. But I'm glad they sent her home. I hate one of the answers that she gives to Justin when Justin calls her. He's like, well, what should we do? And she's like, you got to do what's best for you. Uh-uh, uh-uh, that's not the answer. The answer is get over here. I need you to be at the hospital with me. Like, you know, I need you to be at the hospital with me. Like, this is serious. They've been together, what, like 18 years or something crazy like that.

Speaker 5:
[62:04] When my partner says, do what you want. I mean, really do what you want. I know what that means.

Speaker 11:
[62:10] You need to do what I fucking want.

Speaker 5:
[62:12] You want, I fucking want, right? And so in a way, she's communicating, you know, sweetie, you should do what you wanna do, is like, you better want to come rescue me and make sure I'm okay. You know, like you need to, I need you right now. So in a way, like whenever I get that, I know it's not what I wanna do, is that's not the answer. It's that's your way of telling me, I need you. So yeah, come home and I need you right now. So that, when I'm watching, I'm like, oh man, I know what she's doing and I know for sure Justin can't, he can't stay in the competition after that.

Speaker 11:
[62:53] So I know, again, we usually talk about LCK, the next one, but this episode is just, you know, we're deviating from our normal plan. I think that he left, he went with her and he said, listen, if she's okay, I'll come back and I'll compete in LCK to try to get back in. Still doesn't tell us where Seeger is. Does Seeger go take the place? Does Seeger stay? I don't know. Had to Seeger just walk off set because he's tired of this whole hog thing. Yeah, I think he probably left, made sure she was okay, and then said, I'll come back. And I like, I want to come back. She's good. So I, you know, and I've been looking at her social media. She looks good and healthy. So I don't know what happened, but.

Speaker 5:
[63:40] She was at the premiere. There was no, like, there was no visible ailments. Like she wasn't in a slaying or anything like that. But I, of course, didn't know any of this was going on before the season premiere. So I'm watching it. And in retrospect, I'm looking back and maybe I could have asked the, no, there's no way I would have known that she was going through this at the time at the premiere in Charlotte. So, okay, so I'm watching, as we always do, I'm watching Last Chance Kitchen a week later. And so when Rhoda goes in and Tom Colicchio is like, hey, here's the actual verbatim. And as a journalist, this is what we do, is we get the transcription from all of the interviews and we write them down just to make sure we get LeBron's quote exactly right. Tom Colicchio says, this week's Eliminated Chef is not here. Something really unusual happened during the competition, so there's no chef walking through this door right now. It'll all be explained next week, so all I can say is that tonight's Last Chance Kitchen will do something that's never happened before. Whoa, okay, so they've gotta throw an audible here. They've gotta figure out a way to bring some steaks that there's no Eliminated Chef, but also Rhoda, you're not like skating through. So they get $5,000 Wells Fargo cash because that's 2% of the overall prize. And what was so funny is when they have all these weird, they show a video of all the, in the grocery store, the teams are picking, they're given the chance to pick like three or five ingredients, but we can't, we won't explain how they're gonna be used, but you get to pick them. And they're all thinking that this is gonna be ingredients that the other team has to use. So they have all these crazy duckhead. There is shrimp and crab boil, which man, does not sound pleasant to eat. They had fried fish with peanuts, coriander, all sorts of weird stuff in there. And the judges, or sorry, the teams didn't actually have to use those, it was actually for Last Chance Kitchen. And then Tom has to, for whatever reason, add two more of his choosing. And I got a lot of vibes of like, this is a bizarre foods chopped competition I do not want to watch. It was too much. It was too much. In 20 minutes, are you kidding me?

Speaker 11:
[66:05] That's what you get. I've done chopped quite a few times. And you get the first round, I think you get 20 or 25 minutes. Like it's not a lot. And also like the duck heads, like come on. What I was thinking though, the whole time I'm watching this, and then when they show the other chefs are using them, if I was still on the show, I would constantly be thinking like, oh fuck, are they going to bring out these duck heads now? Are they going to bring out this like fried fish with peanuts? Like what is happening? Why did they have me buy these ingredients? Like where are they? What have I done to myself? That is what I would be thinking the whole time.

Speaker 5:
[66:42] Yeah. So I guess you just throw the duck heads in a stock and try to extract some flavor out of that. Cause it just, oh my God. Poor Brittany had to use the shrimp and crab and shrimp boil, which apparently is like fire, hot, spicy, super bitter, salty, and just not, I don't know, wasn't my favorite, but they had to call an audible. And I just think they overdid it. And Rhoda had the sweetener of like, if she wins, she gets to actually choose the challenge, but she doesn't win. Nana wins with the fried fish, with peanuts, with coriander, fried green tomato, salad. That was really good. She gets $5,000, which is, you know, a nice little thing for her. But that whole episode, I could have done without. And I know they could have done without because they would rather have a true competition. My favorite thing though was when Tom was like, well, she's gonna need some competition. And Nana gets up and starts walking over and she's like, Brittany, you too. And she's like, wait, me too? I gotta cook too? I thought I was done. I'm good. I'm over here. I don't want to have to cook again. For what? Oh, oh, 5,000. Okay. But Brittany was just like, am I cooking again? I'm sorry. So I'm with her. I was just like, oh, this just seems like they have to make up things on the fly. And we don't get an answer of why there is no person coming back to Last Chance Kitchen. Because Seeger, I didn't watch the entire episode, but I watched enough that we could talk about the fact that Seeger wasn't in the next Last Chance Kitchen. And it did cut to like a little montage that Justin, two days later, decides to come to Last Chance Kitchen. So like your theory is, he checked in on Jennifer. Thank God she's okay. Everything's all right. Enough for me to go back to the competition. Do what you want to do, Justin. And he's like, all right, checking on you, but I'm going to go back to Last Chance Kitchen. So we'll see what happens with that episode. We're not going to do the full report here, but I'm glad you're with me. There wasn't anything inspiring in this Last Chance Kitchen episode with the crazy ingredients here. It just felt like they all were very confused and not happy to be doing this. In 20 minutes, that's crazy.

Speaker 11:
[68:55] Yeah. I mean, if I had to pick one of the dishes, I would have picked, I would have eaten, wanted to eat Britney's. The way she like treated the melon, like a green papaya and she had like the perfectly barely poached shrimp. I also love barely poached shrimp. I thought that was super smart, but I guess maybe it was too spicy for Tom, you know? I don't know.

Speaker 5:
[69:16] Rhoda? What happened? You know, we've got to get Rhoda on the show. She went on the two first episodes and won them and then has totally hit the wall. This dish, Tom said was inedible, too salty, like could not take another bite of that dish.

Speaker 11:
[69:36] The plums, like she's doing the salted plum and she's like, oh, it's really sweet, but they are salted, like they're cured, they're dried and cured. All of the moisture has been removed by putting them in salt. And then when I saw how much fish sauce she put in there, I was like, dude, there's no way this is going to be good. But there also wasn't any risk of going home, right? So I think she just went for it. She was like, I fuck it. Maybe I don't win the money, but there is no risk of me going home. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[70:08] All right. Well, we're left with Restaurant Wars. Again, I was there. I've got some thoughts, the experience. I don't know if I made it to the show, but the takeout, I did do the takeout. And so I will reveal what that was all like on the next episode. The two teams are the Dearden Brothers and Jen and Oscar, but Jen goes home or goes to the hospital, and we get the scene with Kristen and Justin with the twist that Justin actually was eliminated. And so they brought him back to like talk about what he wants to do. He starts crying, Kristen starts crying, we're all crying. It's all a big Waterworks party. And on the other side is Anthony Lawrence, Dwayne and Sherry. They had to choose the teams, which is always awkward, especially for Restaurant Wars. We're at the point where it's not just like, oh, whatever, I'll just, I'll go with you. There is, there's stakes here. And the Deardon brothers are linked on the same team, as well as Oscar and then to be determined. But my guess is that Seeger steps in for Jen as the fourth member. Cause I just don't, I don't, I don't see how they're going to thread this needle any other way. And then they're just going to have to figure out a way to incorporate a fourth chef. They can't, I don't remember seeing Seeger. But again, I don't, I don't know if I would have recognized them in the first place from just every other person in the room. Just last thoughts here, Anthony, Lawrence, Dwayne and Sherry on the same team. And then the Deardon brothers, Oscar and whomever. Clearly the Anthony and Lawrence squad has the most, and Sherry too. Dwayne, that's a pretty gangster squad there.

Speaker 11:
[71:56] Yeah. I mean, you can see them. They reach out and they pull themselves into this little group. And it's just Anthony, Sherry and Lawrence that pull themselves into this little group. And then Dwayne is like, oh, and she walks over like, I'm on this. So, yes, I think that, but the brothers, they are brothers, but they're different styles of restaurants that they run. One is a lot more upscale, and then one is like the culinary director for a large restaurant group. So very different styles. And then they've got Oscar in there. Who's the other person? They give them 36 hours. They got to do three courses where there's what three, it was three courses and they had to have two options on each course. One exec, one front of house, two on the line, and they have to take out orders. And they have one hour to plan. I'll tell you what. I did not do a single take out order at my restaurant. We have been open 11 years. I did not do a single take out order at my restaurant until COVID. Didn't do them. And the answer was no. I didn't care. If you were eating in the restaurant and you wanted to get something to like take home with you, different. But we didn't do it because I just don't, I don't feel like my food is food that is meant to travel. You know, like, I don't want you to get your French fries home and be like, oh, these French fries are just not that crispy or like, they kind of are soggy.

Speaker 5:
[73:29] Well, I wouldn't let people take out.

Speaker 11:
[73:31] No shit.

Speaker 5:
[73:32] I had it on the menu.

Speaker 11:
[73:33] Yeah. Yeah. I'd be like, no shit. They, you know, and like, or people will try to order stuff. And we have a lot of things that are like baked in vessels or prepared in vessels. And so you can never get those to go. Like I will never give you, I will never scoop a banana pudding out of the jar that we made it in so that you can take it home. Every once in a while we'll catch a server. They'll be like, I'll just just order it. And then I'll bring you a box to take it home. And like, y'all, we don't do that. Like it's not going to be good. It's not going to be good.

Speaker 5:
[74:01] But now you do take out?

Speaker 11:
[74:03] Not really. Friday and Saturdays, it's, it's off limits. We just don't do it. If during the week, if we're slow and we can have time. But we usually tell them, yeah, come on in. And then when we see them there, we will like drop the fries or we will, you know, if there's something that's fried, we'll put that in the fryer. Yeah, but I hate to go to orders.

Speaker 5:
[74:29] I was just going to say, is this like the bugaboo of all chefs is take out and the way that DoorDash has completely transformed the restaurant business?

Speaker 11:
[74:36] So yeah, so we have no DoorDash, no Uber Eats. I refuse. If you want the food, you come drive your ass down to Frayette House, you can pick it up yourself. But I love to go food. But I know where I'm getting to go food from. And so there's some places where I would just never try to order to go food from there because it just isn't going to work. But yeah, it is the, there's no, the only other thing that throws a kink in service as much as to go orders, is the person who orders a burger and they want to replace the Swiss cheese with American cheese and the tomato with grilled onion and the this and that, and they want their bun extra toasty and can they have it mid-rare plus? And like, dude, that's why we don't serve burgers at the restaurant. The only other thing is someone who gets that many, like, you know, they like, they need that many switches. I can't even, why can't I think of the word? Yeah, substitutions. They want that many substitutions. That's the only thing that throws a kink in service as big as a to-go order. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[75:46] I have lots of thoughts next week and I will share them, but this is, this is gonna be a, in terms of highly anticipated episodes of Top Chef, this is gonna be up there because we're gonna presumably know what happens with Justin, Jennifer, Seeger, what started out as-

Speaker 11:
[76:06] You see that? Is it backwards to you? Next time.

Speaker 12:
[76:10] Looks shitty.

Speaker 11:
[76:12] It looks so hard. It looks so hard. God, Restaurant Wars is such a, ugh. It's hard, man.

Speaker 5:
[76:19] Well, you had a Restaurant Wars that I attended, and it was so hot in there. I just remember it being very steamy in there. Three different restaurants. So, well, this is going to be great. Sara Bradley is going to break down Restaurant Wars for us next week, and I was there, so I'm going to bring my side of the table and experience. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I did Restaurant Wars in your season. I went to the Southern Sides episode this year, and I will tell you, it did not prepare me for what was going on with this episode of Restaurant Wars. So I will explain all of that next week. Sara, any last thoughts?

Speaker 11:
[77:00] Do I get extra points? I need to know the score, but also if I picked one, if I actually nailed one of the Restaurant Wars concepts.

Speaker 5:
[77:10] You get an extra five points. Yeah, you get an extra five points. I will give you a bonus because you know what? I want to encourage extra credit on this show. Like if you're going to bring all of that great analysis, I want more of it. So I'm going to incentivize this. Here's where I'm at. The scoring this week, how do you want to do Jen? She was in the middle, right? She wasn't in the top or the bottom, but she went home. I gave her the two points for just getting in the middle, but I don't have her as an eliminated chef because I felt that that would be unfair. But she's on my team too, so you can tell me what you want me to do.

Speaker 11:
[77:45] I mean, there is also the option that the doctors are like, she's cleared, she's good. She just had a pinched nerve and we clear her. And Top Chef is like, well, fuck, I mean, she's doing great. You're gonna let her come back. I mean, I don't think that happens. That is an option that she's not eliminated. I don't think that she gets negative points. I don't know, do she? It's out of her control that she has to go home.

Speaker 5:
[78:16] So she doesn't come back, would you say she doesn't get any minus points? She's just kind of in the middle, like they said. You can come back at any season, at any point, so you're still like live, you know?

Speaker 11:
[78:28] I mean, she's on my team or your team? I have, Ben.

Speaker 5:
[78:31] My team, you have Justin.

Speaker 11:
[78:32] Negative 50 points if she comes. No, I think she just kind of lives in limbo. I mean, I think you just gotta, you know, she doesn't get that big black mark next to her name when you eliminate a chef. Maybe it's like, it's a gray, you know? It's a gray territory.

Speaker 5:
[78:55] It's a grape.

Speaker 11:
[78:56] Yeah, she didn't do it. It's a grape. Yes, you better make it a roasted grape color. She doesn't do anything that is offensive. She hasn't really served any very offensive dishes. She hasn't really done anything that is bad. I mean, she's actually doing such an amazing job. Yeah, I don't want to give her any negative points. It's beyond her control. So we'll just let her ride.

Speaker 5:
[79:23] All right. We're letting it ride. Speaking of ride, there's quite a roller coaster here. Three in a row eliminated chefs from your team. Rhoda, Episode 5, Seeger, Episode 6, Justin, Episode 7. So you had one, two, three, seven chefs, and now it's down to four. Brandon and Jonathan, the brothers. You have Sherry and Lawrence. I have Anthony, Oscar, and Dwen, but Jennifer is gone. So I've got three chefs left and hung out with them all last week. We had such a good time. It was, they're great. And you know, like, I just love that they're, they're not jaded by Top Chef. They love this stuff. And Dwen continues to say, this is like the greatest thing that I've ever done. And it's so much fun. She's having an absolute blast. And you could really tell, they genuinely love hanging out with each other and they're so much fun. So Charlotte had a great time hanging out with them. And they're my three remaining chefs. That's really cool. That's really cool. All right. For Sara Bradley, for Tom Haberstroh, this is Pack Your Knives.

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Speaker 14:
[81:18] Half-Man, the new HBO original limited series from baby reindeer creator Richard Gad, examines the tumultuous relationship between two estranged brothers, tracking the highs and lows of the pair over the course of 40 years. Starring Emmy Award winner Richard Gad and BAFTA Award winner Jamie Bell, Half-Man premieres April 23rd on HBO Max.

Speaker 5:
[81:56] Hey, it's Tom here. All right. It's time to continue our six part series, Savers Charlotte Edition, presented by Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. And I can't wait for you to listen to our sit down with Chef Callan Buckles of Rada, a Michelin recommended restaurant in Charlotte that was also named to the New York Times most recent 50 best restaurants in America list. So if you remember part one of this series was a conversation with a Charlotte born and raised chef, Chris Coleman, you might recognize from Beat Bobby, Flay, Chopped and many more of those food network staples on TV. He grew up with the city alongside its rise to national prominence. And this week, Chef Buckles shares a much more common story, moving from the bright lights of New York to Charlotte to make a culinary dream into a reality. And why so many chefs are following his lead. Culinary professionals, restaurateurs are doing the same, going from San Francisco, Miami, New York, making a home here in Charlotte. So Chef Buckles opens up, shares his story, and the reason why, at some point in his culinary restaurant journey, some news brought him to tears. Such a cool story. All right, everyone, enjoy. All right, I am here with the great Calum Buckles, originally from Seattle. You're here in Charlotte by way of New York, Napa. You're well traveled and you made it here in Charlotte, just like me. I'm a transplant from Connecticut, ended up going to college here in North Carolina, fell in love with this city, went down to Miami, and came back once I decided to start a family. So I wonder if you have any sort of commonalities in that story of ending up in Charlotte and being like, whoa, I kind of dig this place. This is pretty cool.

Speaker 15:
[83:50] Yeah. So like you said, I grew up in Seattle, moved to New York. Pandemic craziness brought me out of New York for a little while, moved back to Washington state with my mom for like three months before going down to Napa. I was in Napa for two years and I was in Napa, not enjoying living there. And I planned to move back to New York and I was like, this is it. I'm never leaving New York again. That's where home is. And then I met my wife and her family is here in Charlotte and she was already feeling a little homesick, already missing her family and not being around them and having that support. And then when she got pregnant, we decided it was time to make the move to come down here and start our own family.

Speaker 5:
[84:32] That's almost exactly our story, Allison and I. We were in Miami and it was big city, bright lights, really fun in your 20s. And then we, she was pregnant with our first child. And this was 2016 and it was a crazy time in America, in Miami, the Zika virus was hitting and it was like, we got to get out of here. And she has a sister in the mountains in Waynesville, North Carolina. And I have some family here in Charlotte and Charlotte area. My grandparents retired to North Carolina, Charlotte, Pinehurst, and all like my favorite childhood memories were here in North Carolina. So I was like, yeah, let's raise our kids in North Carolina. Let's try this out. And 10 years later, here we are. And we're now sitting here, it's March of 2026. And your restaurant, Rada, where you're the executive chef, is one of the New York Times' 50 best restaurants just named it September. You must be like, wait, how did this, this happened all very fast. You opened up Rada, I wanna say like a year ago, and it was already on New York Times' 50 best restaurants. Congratulations.

Speaker 15:
[85:35] Yeah, thank you so much. It was a really kind of like humbling experience, you know. I moved here, again, with the motivation of family, you know? Yeah. Not really knowing what I was gonna do with my career. You know, I first moved here and I got connected with Chris Coleman. I started serving tables at the Goodyear House just to, you know, get some money in the bank, have a little flexibility having a pregnant wife. And I ended up at Haymaker for a little bit with them as supporting them. And I was maybe actually, it's funny that we're here at Tabor's, because I was in the conversation to be the chef at Mazzee, which is the space right next door here. And things just ended up not lining up. My brother-in-law and I had discussed opening a restaurant together. And, you know, things just line up the way they're supposed to. So I came on board, we opened in January of 25, and yeah.

Speaker 5:
[86:38] It's awesome. For those who haven't been to Charlotte, you need to come. And one of the first stops you gotta make is Rada. It's a restaurant that we need here in Charlotte. It's got a lot of, it feels like, sorry, I'm gonna get this mic up here real quick. Let me tighten this bad boy up. Um, let me just do that real quick. I don't know why it dropped on me. I feel like it just dropped on me.

Speaker 14:
[87:07] Let's see if I can...

Speaker 5:
[87:15] And then, okay, hopefully that stays. Um, picking up one, two, three. So, Rada is one of these restaurants that I think Charlotte really desperately needs because it brings, um, European, Mediterranean flavors really bright. And we have so many good, like, fried food restaurants or like big steak houses. But you go into Rada and the flavors are super bright. Uh, veggie forward, I would say. A lot of, um, fish. Uh, it's just not a heavy place to go eat, but also the, the energy is very bright. It's a smaller place, 50 seat tables, a 50 seat restaurant. And I feel like there's just a lot of good energy there. Did you mean for that to happen that you wanted, like, a smaller space that felt like a vibrant New York City restaurant? Because that's the feeling I get when I go in there. And the food very much is up to standard of a New York, good New York restaurant.

Speaker 15:
[88:09] Yeah, for sure. You know, I've worked in small restaurants, I've worked in large restaurants, I've worked in corporate restaurants, I've worked in independent restaurants. I've always felt the most liberated in a small independent restaurant. Some of that's politics, right? You got to play like certain marketing rules and things go different ways. But when you're an independent restaurant and you have a small dining room, you really get a lot of freedom to put your statement out there. And so I think that's just built into what I want from a restaurant. It's the kind of restaurants I want to go dine at. I'm never going to make a restaurant that I wouldn't want to be a diner at. Going back to the New York Times mention, it was incredibly humbling. We knew that Kim Severson came. She was, we like, you know, recognized her and we're like, oh my God, like she works in the New York Times. It's really important and crazy that she's here. And like coming from New York, where like I've cooked for people like Pete Wells, you know, that wasn't lost on me, the importance of someone like that being in the restaurant.

Speaker 5:
[89:21] So watching The Bear, all these people are like, oh, you have pictures of all the writers and critics in your office and everyone asked to know them by name and what they look like and all the disguises that they might bring in with the mustaches. So you knew that she was there when she came to RADA, and what is that like for you as the executive chef?

Speaker 15:
[89:40] Yeah, I was definitely certainly on high alert, super thankful in the moment, but anxious. These kinds of diners can make or break your success. I remember the server was telling me, hey, she's dining with this woman, it sounds like they're doing an interview. And then as mains are coming up, they're like, hey, they actually need to leave. They have a flight to catch. They want to pack stuff up and get out of here. And like in that moment, like my world came crashing down because I'm like, man, like, yeah, like somebody from the New York Times is here, an important food writer, you know, and they're not getting the full experience, they're not getting the ability to like really see the full spectrum of like what it's like to dine at Rada. And like, granted, like Kim is telling us like, hey, everything's great, we're loving everything. But, you know, for me, I'm like, in my head, I'm like, oh no, this is not how this should be happening. Couple months go by, we get an email from the New York Times saying like, hey, you know, you guys are being included on a piece, we'd love to fact check some information, get some photos from you guys. And I was like thinking to myself, like, what could this possibly be? Because like, I know that none of the official food critics had dined at the restaurant. Since they've expanded just doing New York City, they now do like national restaurants. And I knew that they hadn't been there, or at least I knew that I was confident I hadn't seen them there. Maybe one of our servers who wouldn't have recognized them dined or served them. But, and then I started seeing these lists of like, oh yeah, like top 20 restaurants in Rhode Island, top 20 restaurants in like, and I was like, it has to be like a top 20 Carolinas kind of situation, which like, again, super humbling. Would be awesome, yeah. And I was like, but this isn't like a solely rot a piece, right, like this isn't like anything like that. And then the list came out, and I'm a New York Times subscriber, but I don't like check on it every day. But my friend who owns a restaurant in the East Village, Smithereens, his name's Nick Tamburo, we worked together at Mubafuku and again in California, again in New York the second time I was there, and then he opened Smithereens. But he texts me as I'm sitting on my couch, like I got home that night hanging out with my wife and my son, and he texts me, dude, congratulations. And I'm like, what? And he sends me the link. And I'm like, there's no way.

Speaker 5:
[92:07] Oh, it's already live, and you had no idea?

Speaker 15:
[92:10] And because he recognized, because he was right above us on the list. He was like the last restaurant in the New York section, and then it was straight to North Carolina. And so like Smithereens and Rada are right next to each other. And it was like, holy shit. I just couldn't, I don't know. It definitely brought me to tears.

Speaker 5:
[92:28] No way.

Speaker 15:
[92:28] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[92:29] So what are you feeling?

Speaker 15:
[92:30] What is it?

Speaker 5:
[92:32] Relief? Is it joy? Is it all of it? What do you feel?

Speaker 15:
[92:35] Yeah, all of the above. I worked in some very notable kitchens, right? That got a lot of great accolades, a lot of great reviews.

Speaker 5:
[92:43] So Four Horsemen, Claude, Momofuku, I could go on and on. You've been in-

Speaker 15:
[92:47] Big Carter Oak in Napa Valley for Christopher Costow. These are all places where it's high stakes. But all of this time, I'm never really cooking my food. And I would say even when I was in those places putting dishes together, there was always a level of self-doubt, a lack of confidence, and I think that's like, you can taste that in somebody's food. And so I never really got a chance to make my mark on a menu. I had dishes here and there that were good, but never something I was like, boom, this is kind of like my identity. And I don't know if it was like moving to North Carolina and to Charlotte and not having the external pressure of like the titans in the industry I had been around. But like I felt a little more free and I was able to kind of like pull from my experiences, pull from what I learned in a more kind of like casual manner. And it gave me the confidence, I think, to put dishes together in a way that I was like, oh, this is like what I've been trying to do for so long. And I did a little bit of that when I was at Haymaker here in Charlotte. I was there for about three months. And when we did Rada, it was totally my menu. And it was the first time I'd ever put myself out there like that. So like the moment of reading that in the New York Times is like the ultimate vindication, you know, validation of like, I'm doing the right thing and people are recognizing it. You know, there was a conversation I had with somebody when I was like going through menus I wanted to open a restaurant with. And they're like, yeah, man, like, you know, Charlotte's like, they're kind of a steak and potatoes town. Yeah, some of these things might be a little too ambitious or a little too unfamiliar, uncomfortable for diners in the city. And I remember like in that moment being like, I'm not going to live my life like that. Like, I'm going to do what I'm here to do. And people are either going to love it or they're not. Yep. And like that New York Times thing was like, you made the right choice.

Speaker 5:
[94:56] Yeah, because you're a dad too.

Speaker 15:
[94:58] Right?

Speaker 5:
[94:58] You're like, you're making a big move coming to Charlotte and you don't know everybody here. Chris, who we had on the show a couple of weeks ago, talked about how he's like born and bred here in Charlotte. And you're coming in as an outsider in the sense that, yes, your wife is from here and has a lot of ties here, but that's nerve wracking to come into a city with some Titans already here. It might not be, you know, the biggest names nationally recognized, but that's an anxious thing to do in your life.

Speaker 15:
[95:31] For sure.

Speaker 5:
[95:31] Because you have a lot on your shoulders, right?

Speaker 15:
[95:33] Yeah. I do need to correct one thing because my wife will kill me if I don't. She is not from Charlotte. She went to high school here. They moved here when she was a freshman, but she will always say, I am from Miami.

Speaker 5:
[95:43] Where are Miami?

Speaker 15:
[95:45] Miami Garden, Miami Beach.

Speaker 5:
[95:48] Yeah. Miami Gardens. Yeah.

Speaker 15:
[95:50] I believe Miami Gardens feels right. Okay.

Speaker 5:
[95:52] Yeah. That's important distinction because they're not the same city, Miami or Charlotte. As someone who's lived in both cities, they're very different. But I love Charlotte. I'm wondering, what are your impressions of Charlotte since you came here because you've been in some pretty big-time towns around the country, and it's not like any of them, I would say.

Speaker 15:
[96:13] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[96:13] Well, I would say this. Chris made the interesting point that the farms and the vegetables and the produce here in North Carolina, it felt very California to him in the sense that you're locally sourcing your stuff because you've just got great access to some amazing farms and you do it because it just tastes amazing in the same way that the California garden movement happened where it's just everyone wanted to do the farm-to-table thing.

Speaker 15:
[96:41] Yeah. I've spoken on this a couple of times recently, just in personal conversations, but farm-to-table, I think, has this very specific style around it that people think of when they think farm-to-table. They think Chez Panisse, they think very California cuisine.

Speaker 5:
[97:00] Yep.

Speaker 15:
[97:01] But I would say Rada does not fit in that preconceived notion of farm-to-table, but we really do try to get as much stuff from local farms as we can. And having experienced farms that do stuff in New York, farms that do stuff in Northern California, and now farms that do things here in North Carolina, it's like there are definitely parallels. But I would say the farms that I've had the pleasure of working with here in North Carolina, they're much smaller than a lot of the farms that I've worked with before, and they're real mom and pop spots. Every farmer is there working every day, but it's really small grassroots things.

Speaker 5:
[97:50] I was talking to Perry over at Dozo, and he was saying at the Matthews Farmers Market, he would become best friends with a 75-year-old couple, who just have this little outpost, this little farm, and he said those connections really mean something, like really cool, that you could be at a restaurant and then have a personal relationship with the farms rather than just being a package that you get every day.

Speaker 15:
[98:14] Yeah. Actually, Isaac, who owns and operates up at Harmony Ridge Farms in Tobaccoville. Yeah. He came by the restaurant yesterday and we were talking about this because it was our first time meeting face-to-face, and he was like, I don't remember how we started working together. I was like, well, I was at Haymaker, so Chris Coleman did the introduction, and that clicked for him. But we were talking about how it's definitely one thing to do business things and be looking at your phone or your computer and writing e-mails and doing text, versus speaking with a human.

Speaker 5:
[98:47] Right. Exactly.

Speaker 15:
[98:48] Which honestly, this ties back into a lot of the ethos of how we like to operate the restaurant. I think a lot of the times when you go to restaurants in this day and age, there's a lot of formality and what I like to say roboticness. I'm like, Hey, my name is Calen. I'll be your server today. Our menu works like this. And it's like, you can almost like write a script. We call it the spiel, right? In the restaurant industry. And I'm anti spiel because I want that human connection. So like we do a really, we try to do our best to really educate our staff on everything about the food and the farms and like all the places of resourcing things from, you know, we fall short sometimes because like day to day business is hard and you got to run around and do a lot of things, but it's important because when those people are going to the table, I don't need you to stand over the table and regurgitate all this information like you just crammed for your SATs. But like when somebody's like, oh wow, like this is really interesting. I've never had a father being like this. And they can go, well, you can meet guests where they are, right? As much conversations they want to have, you are there with the information for them, but you're not shoving it down their throat. You're having a dialogue. It's a real human connection.

Speaker 5:
[100:05] That's right. That's right. You know, like sometimes you'll be like, oh, I love this dish. Is it a new menu, you know, plate on the menu? And then the server will just like, oh, I just talked to the chef this earlier today. We just got this great, you know, pack of cabbage, right? Whatever it is. And there's a real like personal story attached to the dish that's on your plate that at like a larger restaurant, corporate restaurant, you're just not going to get that same feel, which is, I have that conversation a lot in Charlotte where it's, it's, and you see the same servers, you see the same people every, and I don't know, it just feels like home, you know, it feels like home in ways that maybe other places where you're hopping from restaurant to restaurant all over town, you just might not, if you're looking for your favorite neighborhood restaurant, you're going to find it in Charlotte in ways that might be difficult to do that in other cities.

Speaker 15:
[100:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just like, have this experience that is always stuck like a thorn in my brain. I dined at this restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. I went with my wife when we were still early in our relationship, and the server comes up and starts to go through the menu with us, and they're going dish by dish. He gets like five dishes in, I'm like, is he going to go through the whole thing? As best as I could interrupt him, be like, hey, man, we actually have a pretty good idea of what we want. He put his hand up and said, if you'll let me continue. I just remember being like, is this the Twilight Zone?

Speaker 5:
[101:31] No, sir, you need to sit there and I'm going to read through this damn thing.

Speaker 15:
[101:35] It's like people are trained to do this stuff, right? It's so built into their training and their brain, that they have to do it this way or it messes with their flow and the way they perform their job. Like that is indoctrination over training, right? Training is like showing somebody how to be, and you can show somebody how to walk in a straight line. But all of a sudden, if there's a tree in the straight line, what do you do? But if you show somebody how to move and walk around and be able to dodge obstacles, they're going to be better off for it. And the thing that they're able to give to you as their employer is going to be better too.

Speaker 16:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 5:
[103:31] Well, I wonder about this because I, as an outsider, don't know what it's like to get a Michelin recommendation or a New York Times' 50 Best Restaurants. What is that behind the scenes? Is that crazy? Is that just like, oh no, this is great. I love that we got this recognition, but now what?

Speaker 15:
[103:48] Yeah, I mean, for us, like, the New York Times hit, and all of a sudden reservations went crazy. And then the Michelin recommendation kind of like started to come out after that was already happening. So like, there wasn't like this huge influx in reaction.

Speaker 5:
[104:04] You only have 50 seats. Right.

Speaker 15:
[104:06] Exactly. So it's like, there's no ability to distinct between those two things. But we were busy. We were cranking on all cylinders.

Speaker 5:
[104:14] And what does that do? Like, what does cranking on all cylinders mean at a restaurant that you just opened a year ago?

Speaker 15:
[104:20] Yeah, well, and that's an interesting question too, because like opening a restaurant, you're also going on all cylinders. You know, the first days, first months of being open, I was there from 8 a.m. until like 11 o'clock at night, because, you know, I'm getting there in the morning, I'm there with the prep team, showing them what I need, organizing how we put things away. We have a very small space with limited storage, so like getting things from local farms becomes difficult when those farms only deliver once a week, right? If I need 50 pounds of broccoli for a week, and they only deliver once, like my walk-in is smaller than this room that we're in, feature pounds of broccoli is not a small container. So being able to play that chess and figure all that stuff out while I'm trying to train staff, while I'm trying to design menus that are feeling good to me, and also contribute myself to this work, and not just tell people how to do things, but also there's a lot of stuff that I'm doing for all the things that we're all working on collectively. It never felt like that first year was just, okay, we're getting open, okay, we're getting standardized, okay, we've been recognized, like it was like kind of one thing after another. So there was never kind of like a time where I felt like I was able to slow down at all.

Speaker 5:
[105:35] Yeah, and it just, the train keeps rolling down the tracks, where you're flying up to New York back in your old stomping grounds to go to the James Beard Foundation, the platform dinner that Charlotte Chefs came up and did this amazing meal that I was able to go to, and it was a really great celebration of Charlotte food. And then Top Chef is airing in Charlotte. So I feel, has your head stopped spinning since you came to Charlotte? I feel like you opened up a restaurant in January 2025 and then the Charlotte food scene just kind of keeps exploding.

Speaker 15:
[106:10] Yeah, I mean, I'm grateful for it, you know? It's, and I was discussing this in about a week and a half, two weeks from now, I'll be up in Philadelphia and I'm speaking on a panel for chefs operating in emerging markets, right? Yeah. Charlotte is definitely of that ilk. And we were kind of having a phone call discussion with everybody that's going to be on the panel and the moderator. And we were talking about what it's like to work in these places and how it compares to how myself and a few of the other chefs coming from places like New York, Chicago, or LA, what that's like. And it's anybody who is a chef that works in the style of restaurant that I work in or that any of my peers in this city or any other city work in, if they say that there's no ego involved, it's just a lie, right? Like there's always a certain amount of yourself put into your work. And if you're not putting yourself into your work, then, you know, there's a whole other issue with that, right? But like, it's impossible to do something that feels so personal and like have it be completely detached. So coming from places where there is a lot of this buzz to somewhere where there's less, like sometimes that can feel bad, right? Where do I, where am I going to get my validation from? Where am I going to get, you know, I'm not being reviewed by the New York Times here in Charlotte. I'm not on the Infatuation's like top 10 hit list, right? Like we have Eater here, it's for two whole states, right? It's not for the city of Charlotte. Yeah. It's for North Carolina and South Carolina. It's like, there's a lot of kind of like, where am I going to get this validation from? Luckily for me, like we've got a lot of that validation from our clientele and from the city itself. You know, what I always like to speak on is like, we're lucky to have been accepted the way we were, right? Calling back to that person saying like, hey, your food might not be ready, like Charlotte might not be ready for that. You need to kind of think about it a little more casually and then introduce things later. And I was like, I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 5:
[108:29] Why not now?

Speaker 15:
[108:30] And like we did it and people are loving it. People are coming to the restaurant. People are supporting us. And so that's where I've been able to get that validation from, which at the end of the day, feels a lot more meaningful than any one person coming and writing something, you know, is like when people are coming daily and I have like people are coming, like I can't remember the last time I went to a restaurant ever, actually 30 times in a year. We have guests that come over 30 times in a year.

Speaker 5:
[109:01] It's so rare to find that.

Speaker 15:
[109:03] And some of that's due to us being in a neighborhood, right? And being in a neighborhood restaurant is important. Living in a neighborhood and having a community where I'm going to go to this place all the time. And I was actually talking about this because I went to Dozo for the first time about a week ago. I went for lunch with my family. And I left that meal and I was like, if I lived here, I would come to lunch here every week. Every week, it's delicious, it's approachable, it's not going to break the bake. I don't think they had a single lunch menu item that was over 20 bucks.

Speaker 5:
[109:38] Wasn't over 20 bucks.

Speaker 15:
[109:39] Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 5:
[109:40] Yeah, and it's great food.

Speaker 15:
[109:41] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[109:42] Oh, and I had this Yuzu beer and it was a Japanese beer.

Speaker 15:
[109:46] I had the Sancho beer.

Speaker 5:
[109:47] Yeah, and you're like, I can't think of another place in Charlotte that would be able to get something like that. And they do, John and Perry do such a great job. And you're in there and you're like, this opened like weeks ago. This isn't fair. But that's the kind of vibe you get in Charlotte, where it's all these exciting things that are seeming to pop up, where you go from a food truck into your sharing a space at CityKitch, and then you're opening up in Dilworth, one of the most high net worth neighborhoods in the South. And there you are delivering amazing food, like from the jump in a cuisine style that I don't think many people in that neighborhood have eaten there, that type of food before. And it's just awesome to kind of have that. I do think that you might not like hearing that you're a trailblazer, not in the Portland Trailblazer sense. I know you're from Seattle. But did you get messages from people being like, dude, I want to do what you did. Leave New York, leave the hustle and bustle, leave California and then just go to a town like Charlotte and open up a restaurant and like, I don't need to be in New York. I don't need to be in Chicago. I don't need to be in LA or what have you. Is there an appeal to Charlotte and like having your own place in ways that maybe you wouldn't be able to do in New York? Have you had messages from people being like, dude, that's really cool what you did. Like, I kind of want to do that too.

Speaker 15:
[111:12] Not so much personally, but like we were kind of discussing this again on that phone call prepping for this panel. One of the other chefs I'm gonna be on this is with Kyle Knoll. He has a restaurant in Minneapolis called Birch. They just opened a second one that I can't recall the name of. He was talking about, he grew up in Alabama and Birmingham. He worked for a chef there. He was like, oh yeah, I want to go to New York. There were people like, man, you already worked for the best dude in Birmingham. What are you trying to do? Go outside. You have all the experience you need. He went and did his thing, and then when he was working at Gramercy Tavern, he was like, hey man, you should learn all you can, and go back to Alabama and open up the best restaurant in Alabama. Yeah. Of course, he did that, but not in Alabama. He's now in Milwaukee. And we were discussing this topic, and how when you're in somewhere like New York, or Chicago, or LA, you have this talent pool of people that are moving to these places to be chefs, to learn, to get into their feet, and into the water, and whatnot. And then in places where people aren't moving to Charlotte to be chefs from elsewhere. But one of my newest prep cooks, his name's Myers, he was like, hey man, people keep telling me I need to go to New York and Chicago. He's like, but I'm from Charlotte, this is my home. I don't really want to leave.

Speaker 5:
[112:46] Oh, cool. Yeah.

Speaker 15:
[112:47] He's like, I just want to learn from the people that are here. And the ability for somebody like myself to move to Charlotte, and hopefully- I'm sorry, I'm going to fix this.

Speaker 5:
[113:00] Yeah, mine was falling too.

Speaker 15:
[113:04] The ability to move here and have a talent pool that is dedicated and interested is important. I mean, not everybody has the resources and the ability to go to these other cities to learn these things. So it's up to us as chefs to, if we want to be able to go outside of the three or four or five cities that you view as like the end all be all of dining in America, then we need to spread out into, this is a large country, right? The ability to go to more than just five places to go get a good meal is important. There's no way that that's going to spread better than people leaving those places and setting up roots in other places and being able to get involved in their community and take the younger generation that is around them and train them with these skills, right?

Speaker 5:
[113:57] Yep.

Speaker 15:
[113:58] It's the idea of you have to go to an Ivy League school to get a good job, but what happens when somebody does that and then they come here and they teach at a smaller university that's here, and then all of a sudden, those students who might not have access to going elsewhere are getting valuable information, valuable training, and valuable knowledge and education. It's an important thing to be able to leave somewhere like New York, come to somewhere like Charlotte, and be able to share an experience that might not otherwise be in the ether around here.

Speaker 5:
[114:39] So you're glad you came to Charlotte?

Speaker 15:
[114:41] I'm super glad I came to Charlotte. Do I miss New York every single day?

Speaker 5:
[114:44] Yeah. Same here with Miami, where there's things about Miami I just can't get here in Charlotte, but I feel like the life that I had in Miami in my 20s is very different than the life I can have here in my 30s and now 40s. I just turned 40s.

Speaker 15:
[115:00] Yeah. My mentor, Josh Pinsky, he owns Claude and Penny and the newly opened Stars Wine Bar in New York City. Him and Chase are both very big mentors to me. He talks with me about it. Man, it's tough. I do this, but living in New York City is like it's expensive. He has a baby who's only six months older than mine, and he talks about how he wishes he could do what he's doing elsewhere. Obviously, he's very established. Of course. For me, I don't have that same necessity to be in New York City. Would I love to be successful in New York? Yeah, that would be incredible validation in its own right. But I can be successful here in Charlotte. I can enjoy my life, and I can have a place where there's not all of this external pressure. Life is more affordable here. My son is able to get up and get out of the house as a one-and-a-half-year-old. It's pretty hard to get a one-and-a-half-year-old out in New York City and have. There's a lot of things around. My wife, of course, is very focused on him being safe. Yeah, sure. A subway platform in New York City isn't always the safest place for someone who's 16 months old, you know what I mean?

Speaker 5:
[116:14] Yeah. My girls, when we went to New York City, it was the first time they saw a rat. It was in the subway in New York City. Before that, they were like, I thought those were just in cartoons. Yeah, because I think for me, I think there's this notion that moving away. I had a lot of imposter syndrome of leaving Miami. LeBron James is there. They're a championship-winning organization. I'm covering this team, and then I decided to go to the city with the Charlotte Hornets that have never done anything. People are like, why are you going to move to Charlotte? I'm like, I don't know, man. It's affordable, it's green, it's wonderful weather. They've got a great airport, emerging food scene, and I was going out to restaurants all the time in Miami. I just felt like we were getting on the ground floor or something. Over the past, you talk about validation. Over the past couple of years, I just feel like that intuition that Charlotte is on the up and up, has really been validated, and I'm also understanding that there's growing pains with that. We're not New York, we're not Chicago. It took hundreds of years for them to establish what it meant to have a Chicago food scene and New York food scene and California cuisine. What does that mean? Charlotte is still creating that identity. But as you're building the menu right now in early March at RADA, is there anything on your menu that you're like, especially I want the people to know, like you'll come to RADA. One thing I'm really excited about on the menu these days, not that, let's say if they book this and book a trip down to Charlotte, it might not be on the menu because you guys change the menu so much. Can you give a sense of what would be on your menu or something you're really excited about the RADA menu?

Speaker 15:
[117:51] Yeah. I mean, two days ago, brand new on the menu. I'm really, really excited about this dish. It's a fava bean dish with mussels escapades. So it's like a salad of pickled shellfish and fresh spring fava beans. With a little bit of shaved onion and the dressing of the escapades, with a little more vinegar and a little more olive oil. I love these very simple, bright things. Yes. There's a lot of chefs, I think, across the world that they're doing so much with a dish. But I really like to just let the two or three things on there really sing. There doesn't need to be this giant chorus of voices. But this fava bean dish we put on three days ago, I'm very excited and happy with. I'm actually planning to go on my day off tomorrow to eat with my family. I've been thinking about this all week long.

Speaker 5:
[118:48] So you're going to eat your own food, but you've on the other side, you're not in the kitchen anymore.

Speaker 15:
[118:52] Yeah. Oh yeah. I think it's something I've always done at the restaurants I worked at. Living in New York, when I'm eating out, I'm going out to enjoy and experience, but I'm also going out to do my homework a little bit. And I would always make sure to at least once in a while, come to the restaurants I was working at and eat it, because the perspective change is important. Not only to understand what it's like to be a guest, but to understand how the juxtaposition of being on this side of the passing puddings and being like, well, maybe this isn't important. And then when it gets to the table and you're like, oh, that part is really important. And it's very different eating something out of a stainless steel bowl with a tasting spoon versus seeing it come to the table, having the aroma hit you all at one time, and really kind of experiencing it in that way. It matters, right? Renting a VHS is not quite the same as going to IMAX.

Speaker 1:
[119:52] Yeah, I think being there in person and experiencing that on the other side in the way it's supposed to be is important. I hope you get a reservation.

Speaker 2:
[120:05] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[120:07] You guys have been pretty slavs since even when you guys started. Congratulations on all this success. Thank you. Welcome to Charlotte. I've been here for 10 years. It's great to have you here. We are some of the very few but proud Miami to Charlotte families. That's great. I'm glad you're here. Who would be more nerve-racking for you if they walked into the restaurant? Ichiro, Ken Griffey Jr., or I'll say Gary Payton since you're a Seattle guy? What person walking through that door would you get most starstruck by?

Speaker 2:
[120:42] I mean, definitely Ichiro, 100 percent. Yeah. As a kid, watching him hit a grand slam with my grandpa was like core memory.

Speaker 1:
[120:53] I feel like he was in the derby contest one year and just like, we always thought of him as a slap hitter and a guy who just sped around the bases. But then you get him in front of a home run derby and he can just hit bombs.

Speaker 2:
[121:02] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[121:03] So you saw a grand slam by Ichiro in the flesh.

Speaker 2:
[121:06] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[121:06] That's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:
[121:07] Yeah. And then many, many years later, the first year I was living in New York, I went to a Yankees game and it was the day after Aaron Judge had just broken his home run rookie record.

Speaker 1:
[121:20] I'm a Red Sox fan.

Speaker 2:
[121:21] Oh, well, sorry.

Speaker 1:
[121:23] Yeah. But hey, we beat him in 2004. It was the greatest comeback in sports history.

Speaker 2:
[121:28] I remember watching that game.

Speaker 1:
[121:30] Dude, I'm still floating and it's been 20 years. I was in high school when that happened and it was incredible. But hey, maybe they'll win a World Series one of these days in the New York Yankees. Kyle Buckles, thank you so much, man. It's a pleasure. Go eat at his restaurant. It's called Rada here in Charlotte on the 50 best restaurants in America, according to the New York Times. Also Michelin recommended and also a favorite of mine. So I don't know where that counts on your leaderboard of recognition, but the Haberstrohs really love eating at Rada. Welcome to Charlotte and thanks for bringing your talents here.

Speaker 2:
[122:12] Yeah, it was my pleasure. Yesterday we had somebody come in and the server walks up to me and goes, Hey, is the name Sean Alex Gray mean anything to you? I was like, Yes, Sean Gray is. Yes, absolutely. Is he here right now? That was my starstruck moment. You're talking about these sports players coming in. I thought Sean Gray walked in my restaurant and I was going to lose my mind. But he's never been to Rada, but he was suggesting to some of his regulars to come to the restaurant, which almost is better.

Speaker 1:
[122:42] Maybe when he comes, it's not going to be halfway through the meal. He has to pack up and catch a flight.

Speaker 2:
[122:47] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[122:48] That's crazy. Well, congratulations on everything, and we'll have to do this again soon.

Speaker 2:
[122:53] Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.