Scott Conant Talks Sobriety, Career, Restaurants & Sauce Brand, Justin's Salt Bread with Jimmy V, Bobby's Morning Routine

It was until I left school and I started working in a restaurant and working with my hands that, you know, my life came alive. I take those things that I learn and see and experience and I make them part of my life's work. And I also think that if you work in a restaurant, like it teaches you about life. You saw this man who worked around the clock and he still does. I mean he's such a great role model. He leads with kindness, he leads with work ethic. Bobby, we were talking one day, he's like, you keep doing that and you keep being your authentic self, you're gonna win. This is what he said. So 100% what I did and I ended up winning. First of all, I love Bobby Flavio very much. I've loved him on The Today Show. I love him here and now. Bobby Flavio, everybody, check out Bobby's triple threat. Bobby, you're not filming a show with him. You're like being coming friends with him. Food business and the restaurant business has been great to me, right? It's been such an important part of my life. I'm in a really good place right this second. For lots of reasons. It gives me that momentum to keep striving to be better, to learn and to look for the next adventure. But I feel like I'm now directing my own life. Bobby Flavio has been a great mentor for me. Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Flavio! Bobby on the beat. Hey everybody, welcome to Bobby on the beat. I have a very exciting guest today. We have Chef Scott Conant. He knows Scott from being a judge on shop. He's been on the Food Network for many, many years. He's had tons of restaurants. People have been loving his Italian cuisine for a very, very long time. And rightly so, he's such a good cook. But we'll catch up with Scott in a little while. I just wanted to catch everybody up on some things that have been going on this week with me. To give you some of my thoughts on things that either I saw, read, ate, whatever it is. There's actually an article in a sub-stack called The Broken Palette. The guy that wrote it, his name is Marco Shalma. I think that's how you pronounce his name. He wrote an article that really resonated with me. Something I've been thinking about a lot lately in terms of restaurants and how technology has really become a big part of the dining scene. I miss the personal attention. And what I mean by that is, as somebody who's been a restaurant tour my entire adult life, I think about this stuff all the time. But I also think about it as a diner, as a consumer. It's all based on technology and it's not based on anything else other than that. Now I think that that's incredibly important. It makes things much more efficient. But we're missing the human element. And I don't want to sound like the guy who doesn't want things to move forward. I absolutely do want things to move forward and I don't want anything to get stuck. But there are certain things when it comes to the restaurant business that make the restaurant business a special place. Just for instance, try to call a restaurant. Just try to call. Either there is no phone number or they don't answer the phone. If you make a reservation and you're running late and you want to tell the restaurant that you are running late, you can't get in touch with them. The other thing that happens is the technology is telling them exactly who's coming in, where to seat them, how long they have for that table before you have the next seating. There's no sort of decision making on the fly. So for instance, this guy from the broken palate was talking about the idea of walking into a restaurant, walk ins, that whole idea is dead. If you have a person on the door that is nimble and thoughtful and really understands the room, they can get you in. It could be at the bar, it could be at the lounge, it could be at a table that just never showed up. Or it could be, hey, thanks for coming in, have a drink at the bar, give me 15 to 20 Let me figure something out. That always should happen because it creates this walk in environment and it keeps your restaurant full because I don't care who you are. At some point, you're going to be wishing that the walk ins were walking in the restaurant. You want people to think about you as that restaurant that understands that not everybody has a reservation that wants to eat in the restaurant that night. It just struck me reading this article. This guy is spot on. That's not to say that every restaurant is like that because I go to restaurants that definitely take walk ins, but they're far and few between. I think what's happened is it's made people gun shy thinking about walking into restaurants. We have to keep a little of the old as we move on to the new. That's just my thought. A couple of things I've been working on this week, I really started in earnest on my book about Italy and the food of Italy. This is something that I've always wanted to do. I am obsessed with Italy. That's really what the book's about. I'm in a Italian restaurant in Las Vegas called the Malfi. I've been working on the head notes and some essays. I'm really looking forward to this book. I think it's going to be a beautiful book. It's going to be a coffee table book. Let's just say the same vein as chapter one, which was my latest book. 100 beautiful, full-colored photos of dishes. We're going to Italy. We're going to shoot some stuff because why not? We're just going to go from place to place and capture a lot of our photos and film. This is a total passion project for me that I'm so, so excited about. Be on the lookout for that. It's not coming out for a while, but that's where my head is at the moment. Also, I do a brunch every year at the Kentucky Derby on Derby Warning. It's for about 125 people. I have a relationship with Senchens yet, a private-air company. I've been in business with them for a really long time. First of all, I love horse racing. The Derby is such a great American event. Over 100,000 people go to the Derby and probably close to that for the Kentucky Oaks, which is the day before. It's a really fun weekend. Kentucky people there are fantastic. This year, one of my new dishes is I'm going to do an eggs Benedict, but instead of a muffin on the bottom, it's going to be fried green tomatoes with a poached egg. I'm going to make a fresh tomato hollandaise sauce to go on top. I haven't decided if I'm going to make my buttermilk biscuits again this year, but we'll see. It's a really fun day to get the Kentucky Derby started. I worked on that menu as well. Then I had a cool business thing happen. I'm sure some of you know that I've been a crazy cat guy for my entire life. I have two amazing Maine Coon cats, Canelo and Stella. They are an important part of my life. Just a couple of years ago, my cat Nacho passed away. His presence in my life inspired me to start this company called May by Nacho, a cat food company. It's been a business for about six years and we just merged with a bigger company called I am Loving You. I love these guys and so we're joining forces. May by Nacho is still going to be its own brand of course, but onward and upward for May by Nacho and I am Loving You. We just want to feed cats and dogs everywhere. That was my week. Actually, I'm going to take Brooke to Tokyo this week. This is definitely her thing. If it was up to me, I would go to Italy and Europe and London and Paris. That's sort of where I always want to jump on a plane and go to just because I love that part of the world. I love Europe. Brooke is obsessed with Asian ingredients and cuisine and I've only been to Tokyo once. We'll report back on hopefully all the wonderful things that we saw and of course all the wonderful things we ate. That's what's happening this week and now let me introduce you to my co-host this week. He's a great guy. He's a wonderful chef. He and I laugh a lot together. I'll just say that. Please welcome Scott Conant. So nice to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. I don't know if you're going to remember this. Oh boy. I never know what I'm going to get from you. This is a safe place. Okay, good. Thank you. I'm already, I'm a huge admirer of you and what you do. I appreciate that. And always have it. Thank you. You're the real deal. You know what you're doing. You're a great chef. You're out there making it happen and everyone's in Hawaii doing some television. It's like you have a really nice balance of your professional life. That's the intention. I consider you one of the people on TV who knows their stuff. You know exactly what you're doing. I know when you walk up and grab a pan and you're going to start cooking arboreo rice it's going to be delicious. To me that's the difference maker. Do you remember a meeting that you and I had, I mean I think this is in the 90s. You and I had a meeting in the 90s? Yes. I definitely do not remember that. And I'm shocked because why wouldn't I? But okay. I believe it was at Mesa Grill and Jerry Kretzmer who was a huge fan of yours. Yeah. And I'm a huge fan of Jerry's by the way. Well me too. Jerry helped me actually have a career. We had opened Mesa Grill. I can't believe you don't remember this. This is amazing. No, seriously. I don't remember that's why. I'm so excited. Okay, good. For those that don't know Jerry Kretzmer is the person that put me into business. He helped Mesa Grill come alive. He introduced me to his son Lawrence who's my age who became my business partner and best friend for 35 years. Yeah, amazing. I become partners with Jerry to open Mesa Grill. I'm not going to bore you with all those details but in 1991 I was 25 or 26 years old. He and I went into business together and Mesa Grill took off. And he said to me, I found this young kid who's a really good Italian chef. His name is Scott Conant. Should we do a restaurant with him? And I said, what do you mean? He's like, well, you're my partner. You're making all these stories in New York. It would be good for us to bring Scott into the fold. And I said, okay, sure. I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do to help him. I'm not cooking any of his food. These are the stories that you hear later in life and you're like, why did I not make that happen? I was like mid 90s, Scott. You were young. You were in your early 20s. Mid 20s. Yeah, right. Mid 20s. Okay. So we're sitting in the window at Mesa Grill. I said, hey, Jerry asked me to talk to you. It sounds like he's really interested in opening a restaurant with you and I want to talk to you about us all being partners together. It's something along those lines. And you were like, what? Which honestly, I know you so well now. I can hear you saying that. And the one word, the one word, what? This is what it meant. Okay. In my mind. Yeah. Of course I'm interested in doing a restaurant with Jerry Crescent. But like, what do I want to be in business with you for? Like I'm the chef. And so like I walked away from the meeting and I said to Jerry, I was like, he doesn't want to be in business with me. We're chefs. We want, we want our own space. And he's a young guy and this is an amazing shot for him. He doesn't want to be in Bobby Flay's shadow. I said, Jerry, like leave me alone. Like go do something with the guy. You know, I want to talk to you about your career a little bit because the one thing about you is you get a lot of great opportunities. I do. Okay. Because of your skills. You never give up at some things work, some things don't work, but you're always back at it. Yeah. And sometimes relationships, partnerships are good and sometimes they're hard. Most of the time they're hard. They've been very difficult in my career. I want to hear about this. I have a very short wick for bulls***. Can I say that? Yeah. Is that all right? I feel like I've always kept my head down. I've always, you know, facing a plate young chef coming up, like working with a lot of Europeans, mostly Italians throughout my entire career, worked in Germany for a while, worked in, you know, I would travel to Italy and just get lost for three months and just work and travel and lose myself there and then come back and kind of take what I've learned and really infused into the next restaurant. I would do that by myself. How old were you when you were doing that? I would do that in my mid-20s. So yeah, early 20s, mid-20s, just steal away to Italy, go for weeks, months, whatever the case was. And when I moved to New York City in 1990, people would talk about Le Cirque, Le Bernadin in San Domenico. Those were the three restaurants that people would talk about, at least in the circles that I was in. And so that was the reason why I started working. I worked with Paul. I worked under Paul Baralota. I was 19. It was one of those eye-opening experiences where I just, you know, I grew up with Italian food, Italian American food, but I'd never seen food like San Domenico's food, Italian, like super high-end. When they do Italian food at that high level, sometimes it almost turns French. 100%. But there's the inherent simplicity and the foundation of flavor that I think is, you know, they use some French technique, but it's Italian ingredients with some of that French technique. I just found it to be very specific, you know, and that's what resonated with me. Okay, so you were into it. So exciting. Oh my God. I remember the dish that changed my life. Tell me. Paul was cooking this halibut with like zucchini. He did this little guacetto of zucchini and this some kind of red sauce. I can't remember what the sauce was. He put olive oil over the top of it. It was a steamed halibut. It was zucchini flowers. And I remember him putting that in the window and I was like, that's what I want to do. Really? I may not have ever told Paul that story, but you know, Paul's very, you know, a very proud chef and one of the great chefs of this country. Absolutely. Probably underrated. So when I started to kind of venture out on my own and do the things that I wanted to do. You didn't go to college? I went to CIA. Oh, you did? Yeah, I went to CIA. So you graduated in high school and then you went to the CIA? I went to Wreckley there. I worked in New Orleans for a little while. You know, I was living with these Italian guys. I was working with these Italian guys. I'm friends with these guys and it was just a major part of my life where this Italian kind of influence was all around me and I loved every minute of it. And you have Italian blood, right? Yeah, my mother's family is Italian. I always like one of these. Is Conan? Conan, so it's interesting because my great, great, great, great, whatever grandfather came from England in 1626 and founded Salem, Massachusetts. So if you ever go to Salem, there's a huge statue of a guy named Roger Conan. You're kidding me. And he founded Salem, Massachusetts. Yeah, that's amazing. Do you speak Italian at all? I haven't spoken it in years, but when I was going there all the time, it was... Listen, I'm actually writing a book about my obsession with Italy because I go there all the time. Yeah, I know you do. And I'm not Italian, but I love the food so much and I love the people and the culture and the... Listen, you understand exactly what I'm saying. I don't gravitate towards high-end Italian food only because I think the romantic part for me is the rustic approach to this because when you look at the ingredients in Italy, it's like a handful of ingredients over and over that are so satisfying. And it's funny how a small tweak of something completely changes the composition, not just flavor profile, but textures of a dish, all kinds of different things. I think one of the things that separates Italian food is the craftsmanship of the things that you're serving those ingredients with, like the pasta shapes and things like that and how you handle rice. I have this idea where I always was like, every time I do a restaurant, it's like, let's do that risotto moment where we make a risotto in the kitchen, we push out on a cart and we serve people from just random people. Like you want a risotto, here's the risotto. You know what I mean? Yeah. If Sirio Machone would do that with a plate of prosciutto or a Culletella or something, just walk around and serve people. People love that stuff. What's not to love? I know. That is the, especially in an Italian restaurant. That's a real host of a restaurant. That's right. That's right. I love those moments. Yeah. Because those moments feel like somebody is actually, has a heartbeat that is caring about what the experience is. That is a lost art. There's no technology in that. No. No, no, no. It's care. Sometimes we're also focused on the bottom line and we get so caught up in the business of the business that we forget that we love this. I feel like that's been a big change in my life over the last couple of years, that I've identified the gratitude within it. Instead of focusing on the things that I want and I don't have, I focus on the things that I have and how much I have gratitude for it. I have these moments of gratitude where I sit with it and I appreciate the things in my life and it has changed everything in my world. Really? Yeah, truly. How did that happen? I had these moments of awakening, sitting with my daughters. My daughters are teenagers now. You remember when Isla came on B-B-B-Flea, she was like five years old. She's 16. She started driving a couple of weeks ago. A real lady. She's a young woman. I feel like I don't have a lot of these moments. Sophie's out of the house now for how long? She's 30 years old. She's 30 years old. I got a year and a half before Isla goes to college. I don't have a lot of time left with her. I want to make sure that not only am I spending that time with her and I'm connecting with her, but also I'm appreciative of that time as well and I make sure that she knows it. No matter how uncomfortable it is for her to hear and Kati, my younger one, how uncomfortable it is for them to hear how much I appreciate their time and I love them and all that kind of stuff, I feel the absolute obligation to be able to express that to them. That's actually very lovely of you. Seriously. The moments become less and less as they get older, but they also become more important as well. I want my daughters growing up and marrying the guy that I used to be. I want them to marry the best version of who I am today. I love that. One of the reasons why I quit drinking 10 years ago was because I didn't want my daughters growing up seeing me drunk, even if it was once in a while and thinking that's a normal thing and then choosing a life partner who acts the same way. You feel like you would get drunk way too much? It wasn't that I would get drunk. It was just that it was part of my life. Just grabbing a glass of wine or two. It's part of our business. It's part of our business. Everything is a cocktail. It's unnecessary. I feel like I gained years by stopping. It's not that I had a problem. I just didn't like the direction. I remember when you stopped. I hated the way I felt. I'm happy for you because you seem, listen, you're still Scott and everything that we love about you, you still are. Thank you. You definitely seem like calmer. I have always been and I was thinking about this the other night. I've always been a go-getter. I'm ambitious to a fault, admittedly. I feel like, especially with some of the things, you know what is, I got all that, you talked about bad business partnerships and if I ever had a superpower, I think it was finding the worst piece of business partners and allowing them into my life. That was my superpower. I made a decided change on that. For the first time in my life, I have the right people around me. I mean, because you had so many great restaurants. I think about it. Over and over. Yeah. I mean, it's not, you know how it is, right? When you're in New York City, you don't have the opportunity to capture lightning in a bottle very often. If you could do it once, it's great. If you could do it more than once, it's amazing. With LeanPato, I felt like we did it and with ScarPato, we did it as well. As I shed those relationships attached to those places, my biggest moment of awakening was realizing that I harbor no ill will towards those business partnerships anymore, that I would never be able to be who I am today if I still had those. It's part of your opportunity of life. 100%. I mean, it's no different than anything. You have to shed certain things in order to grow and expand. I wanted to make sure that I was putting myself in a situation where there was constant growth and constant expansion. Bob Dylan has a quote to always be in a state of becoming. That really resonates with member Big Dylan Finn. It's a lot more fun looking forward after something that wasn't so great than holding grudges, hating on people. It's not healthy. It's exhausting. Yeah. Honestly, what's it going to accomplish? It's just going to hold you back. I agree. It's so good for you to be able to push forward. At some point, if somebody doesn't want to be in business with you and doesn't want to be your partner, somebody like you can say, okay, no problem because I'm going to take what I have, which is my skill set and my ability to create businesses and be creative in this world. I'm going to go take it somewhere else. You can just step to the left. That's what I've done many times. Are you opening more restaurants now? I am. I just opened Leola in Bahamar and in the Bahamas. I'll tell you. I went to Graham Davis, the president of Bahamar, and Marcus had introduced us. They needed an Italian restaurant. They'd spoken to everybody. They'd spoken to literally everybody. Anybody who is an Italian restaurant, they'd spoken to them. I sat down with Graham and he said, what would you do? I said, I'll tell you what I would do is I'm walking around this property. I think you need a swanky Italian joint. That's what I think you need. He was like, tell me what that means. I expressed to him my idea of what Leola should be. What does Leola mean? Leola doesn't mean anything. I say, this is the real insight and stuff, I say that it's kind of a play on a female lion. What's the approach to the food there? The food is my food. It's kind of this balance between high-end and rustic. I agree with you when you talk about the soulful aspect of what makes Italian food. I think it is that rusticity. It does stem from that Cucina povra, the poor kitchen. But I think to be able to identify a balance between the Alta Cucina and Cucina Rustica is really important for me. You're probably selling tons of pomodoro there. We sell a tremendous amount of pomodoro. There's lots of families there. We do this other thing, like I do a veal parm for four. We take a giant elefante, like this giant, literally this big veal cutlet. We fry it, put it on a cutting board, and then table side we'll do baby tomato pomodoro sauce and four cheese fondue and Parmesan cheese and burrata and fresh basil salad over the top of this thing. It is... Oh, that's just one dish? That's just one dish for four people. It is naughty. I'll make you one. Okay, that sounds amazing. And so it's wonderful and we make a lot of people happy. We're three months in and knock on wood, it's going really well. Do you do anything to keep in shape? I deal with some health issues, so I haven't been able to work out for a while, but it is swim season. I'm a swimmer. Oh, you are? I swim about a mile and a half a day. That's so funny. I only really learned how to swim like 15 years ago. You're a city kid. You don't grow up swimming. Swimming is not the same kind of breath, obviously. It's not that kind of part. An endurance of running. I've been a runner my whole life, I've run a handful of marathons, etc. I really struggled with it because I didn't really learn well as a kid and it's hard as an adult to learn something like that and be good at it. So you're a swimmer. I love it. Yeah, I love to swim and I'll lift weights and work out, not like I used to, but yeah, I like... And people ask me all the time, like, what do I do because we're always around food, which is, you know, it's a lot of calories, no matter what you're doing. So I'm going to show you what my morning routine is. Oh, let me see. Let's see it. Bobby on the beat. It's 5.30 in the morning, so basically what happens is I turn on CNBC to see what's going on in the financial world. I make coffee, make espresso. I just make, like, a little macchiato or a cortado, which is just basically a double espresso with, like, a little splash of milk. I found this coconut yogurt that I really love. It's got so much flavor to it. Just take a little cinnamon. I'm cooking, folks, a couple of blackberries. Give myself a little bit of fuel. Most importantly, I got a few of my cats. These guys are hungry. I have two big cats, Maine Coons. One is named Canelo for cinnamon. The other one is called Stella. Stella is the major yard of the family, basically. They have a cat food company called Made by Nacho, named after my late cat, Nacho. We drive food, we eat wet food. Do you want chicken or do you want chicken and herring today? Who do you guys want? Canelo will only drink out of a glass. You've got to make sure that these guys get a lot of hydration, so I let them drink water the way they want to. By now, at 8 o'clock, I need to run for close to an hour. I live in New York City, so in the winter it's cold. I live near the West Side Highway, which is a great place to run, but it can be cold and breezy. It wakes me up. I kind of run, walk for about an hour, and then I go to Equinox and have a Pilates class with Taylor for an hour. My guy Paul picks me up, and then we go to the studio, and then my day starts. It's already been up for two and a half hours. Got to make my own chicken broth for lunch. Good morning. Morning. Good morning. Hi. How are you? I'm lovely. Good? Yeah. Hair cut, and makeup, hair and makeup. Breakfast of the champions is my coconut yogurt with pistachios, hand chopped, and some berries and honey. This is the routine. Everybody has their role. Paul picks me up, he makes the yogurt. Michelle comes in once a week, cuts my hair, so it kind of stays the same length, more or less, for the whole series. Courtney is doing wardrobe. Dahlia is doing hair and makeup. Kiji is making believe she's doing something on her computer. Always. Many people is taking to put a tie on it. I like that. I love you. Thank you. Oh, hi, Kiji. The camera people are ready. The producers are ready. They're basically just waiting for me to go downstairs and start the show. Let's go. Damn, Bobby's making his way down to set. Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby. Hey. Bobby on the beat. Yeah, that's great, man. That's my morning routine. Love it. I need a running start. Yeah, I've never been an AM workout person. I feel like that needs to change. Yeah. I've got a lot of stuff going on in my day that I can't carve out the afternoon workout like I want to. The afternoon doesn't work for me. I want to talk to you about your sauce. Yes, please. Because this is so exciting. I feel like I'm on the tomato sauce tour. I had Mario Carbon here a couple weeks ago. I've heard of that guy. I know. But you're crawling up behind them, right? I mean, we got a long way to go. God bless him. Carbon is crushing it. Rayo's is obviously the unicorn in the room. I think there's one point of differentiation for us that a lot of people don't necessarily look at. A lot of people get their tomatoes from Italy. We get ours from California. We're using fresh, peeled, seeded tomatoes. And then they're packed without preservatives and then shipped to us. And then we unpack them and we cook them for about 45 minutes. So why did you make that decision? I made that decision because Italy actually doesn't produce enough tomatoes for what they're either exporting or using. So what you're getting aren't necessarily Italian tomatoes. And I know this might be a little controversial. A lot of times when they're packing tomatoes, they use citric acid and they don't tell people. But I can taste it. I'm not a fan of citric acid. And if you were to come to my house, I wouldn't necessarily start cooking food and put citric acid inside of it. So for me, I don't want that stuff, those preservatives inside the food. There's no added sugars. There's no seed oils, which is a really hot topic these days. There's no gluten inside there. Honestly, man, I've done a lot of things in my career as we've spoken about. I mean, I'm no Bobby Flay, God knows. But nobody's going to look at me and say that I'm not my own man. You know what I mean? Like, I'm proud of that. I am proud that when pushes come to shove, like you said earlier, I'm on to the next one. And this is, I think this is the best thing I've ever done in my career. Honestly, I think the storytelling behind it is something that is so incredibly personal and it resonates with other people, not just me. It's not my story. It's the story of people who were building a life in the United States. You mean your family? When my grandparents came. Tell the story because Marton Street is in Connecticut, right? So Marton Street is in Waterbury, Connecticut in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of Waterbury. And that's where my grandparents built a home and they moved to the U.S. from Italy. And so I always say that the place that I learned to love food and connect with family was on Marton Street. And so the brand question we ask is where's your Marton Street? Where's the place that connected it for you? Right. Right. And so everybody has the place and it triggers and conjures up memories and connection. And for me, that's the exciting part of it. Like food and Italian blood is just different. There was an Italian family who I was very, very close with across the street from my apartment and I would literally go and eat at their house on Sundays at five o'clock and not tell my mother. And I'd go home and I'd be like, I'm not hungry because I was eating like baked CD and all the delicious things that was an Italian-American family and they made beautiful food and it was so good. And this is the point, right? Like as you're telling that story, that story started because I'm talking about Marton Street. We wouldn't be having that conversation if we didn't start to find that connection with food and where it happened. What about the tariffs and stuff like that? Has that... Well, that's really the reason why we started to use California tomatoes. We didn't want to have those. The only thing, we didn't want to have any of those issues. So the olive oils from California, the tomatoes from California, the only thing we're getting from overseas are the jars. So I made you a dish today and you look at the dish and you're like, oh, this is one of Bobby's Southwestern things, right? But that's not why I made it for you. I made it for you because I wanted to talk about your sauce. I made a sauce for you today, which is a sauce that I've been making for decades. They call it Colorado, which is like basically a brick red mole sauce. So it's brick red from all the chili peppers. If I told you it was in here, you wouldn't believe it. I find mole sauces to be one of the most interesting sauces in the world because no two mole sauces are the same. They just almost can't be. It's savory, it's sweet. It's all kinds of things. And I used your sauce. Oh, nice. I was like, what can I do for Scott with his sauce that he probably hasn't done? I appreciate that. I had like half a jar in my refrigerator and I was like, I'm using it for the mole. I love it. So give it a taste. May I? Bobby on the beat. Okay, we're going to make a Southwestern version of mole. This is a brick red mole sauce. I love it. So let's start. Aromatics, some onions, some garlic, three or four different red chilies, New Mexico, Oaxillo, Chipotle, etc. And then I'm going to actually use a little bit of Scotch tomato sauce I haven't left over. So why not? A little bit of cinnamon and allspice, some almonds, some mangoes, some sweeteners like molasses, maple syrup and honey, a crispy blue corn tortilla helps to thicken up the sauce, a little bit of red wine vinegar and let that cook for a while. And let's get to the chicken marinade. Citrus and red chilies, a little bit of avocado oil and then some chicken thighs, boneless and skinless, season them on both sides with salt and pepper. And then I'm going to just sort of brush on the marinade on both sides. Get a cast iron pan nice and hot. You can use a grill pan as well or you can cook it outside on the grill. You want to make sure you get them really nice and crusty. You see that beautiful char in there? Finish it in the oven so they're cooked through. Let's get back to the mole sauce. We're going to finish this off with a little semi-sweet chocolate and some lime juice and some salt and pepper. We're going to put it into the food processor and just let it get incredibly smooth. Look at that sauce. Look red and beautiful. Smells great. All right, so we're going to take our chicken thighs out. We're going to put a little mole sauce on the plate. Don't forget the mole sauce gets better as it sits. The next day it's even better. Some blue corn tortillas, some of that citrus and red chili chicken, pickled onions, limes and you can make your own tacos. I mean that's what it's all about. A little chicken, a little bit of the mole sauce, some of those pickled red onions, a little splash of lime. Oh yeah, this is good. All right, fire up the margaritas everybody. Bobby on the beat. That is so good. Thank you. Oh man. Is it too spicy? No, no, no. That's what I love about mole's though. It is a contemplative flavor. You sit with it and you kind of think about what it is that you're experiencing. I have to say, I think Mexican food is probably one of the more underrated cuisines in the world because it is so incredible. I think that's changing at this point. It is. I mean with restaurants like Pujol, I know they open a place here in California and all that kind of stuff. It's a wonderful cuisine. Amazing. Obviously, I was inspired by all those ingredients in the mid-80s when I started cooking Southwestern food. I mean I took a very American approach, made it sort of contemporary and that's what Mesa Grilla obviously became. And you had worked with Dean Fearing. I worked with Stephen Piles. I worked a little with Mark Miller. Those guys, Robert Del Grande from Houston, I will tell you that those people who basically created a cuisine in the United States, they created the Southwestern regional cuisine. And I was a punk kid from New York City and I went there and they all let me in their kitchens. Yeah. Which I always tell that story because it's a great story about how great the restaurant business is in that regard. Such a giving generous business. We serve people. That's what we do. That's right. Ultimately, we're serving people. We are. Once you forget that, that's one of the things I think can go sideways. Another one of these things that I had this moment of awakening and it was only to do the things that I love to do and forget about all of it. I had the same thing during COVID. Did you? Yes. Exactly. I was like, I'm only going to do things with my daughter, with the places that I love, the food that I'm interested in and the people I want to work with. That's it. I'm going to do it. Simplify your life. It's like a great plate of pasta. Couple of ingredients cook the pasta right and it's the most satisfying thing in the world. It really is. Do you pay attention to all the things that are out there that people are opening these shops and it's one product and people are lining up down the block? Does that kind of stuff interest you? It doesn't. Those days of chasing food and stuff like that, I feel like are over. There's no restaurant in the world that I'm dying to go eat at like I used to be. Those trips that I would take to Japan to just to eat in 20 restaurants in 10 days, I have no interest in that anymore. I don't know what it is. I'm probably more passionate about the restaurant world than I've ever been. I feel like I'm better than I've ever been. I feel like I think my best days are really in front of me. I truly believe that. I don't spend a lot of time looking at other people like I used to. Okay. Speaking of Tokyo, do you know this thing called salt bread? No. I don't know what it is either. So when I don't know what something is and people are talking a lot about it, I only do one thing. I said Jimmy V. Bobby on the beat. Jimmy V, America's food critic outside of Justin Salt Bread. I believe it started in Japan and now it is a craze in New York City. I believe it's something similar to a croissant and maybe a dinner roll. I'm not really sure. It comes sweet and savory and it's real buttery and I'm really, really excited to test it out. Okay. Original salt bread. It's sweet. I can't do a matcha thing. What exactly is salt bread? Correct. Salt bread is literally salt, bread and butter. It's mainly from Korea and Japan. It's like a very close relationship in there. Pretty much the only place that very much specializes in the salt bread. We have the different creams too so you can go ahead and dip them in. That's really it. It's as simple as that. You make one thing, right? That's it. That's it. So it's simple but it's so good. If you do things very simply but you know how to do them correctly, that's usually the best thing you possibly ever have. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the motto is we just try to do it like, as we're in production. I am. Jimmy V. They forgot America's Food Critic at the end of it. I take my shoes off. No shoes on the whatever. What is it called? Tatani. Tatani. I'm going to make this as authentic as possible. Oh my God. What do we need to do? Have the fat kids sitting here. Sweet cream. Chocolate sweet cream. The unveiling. The salt bread. I'm going to test it out. It's really light. I thought it would be dense. You can tell the butter and the salt on the outside of it already. Almost like, what is those Pillsbury dough croissants that you wrap up and roll. I'm going to pull it apart and take a natural bite here. Fluffy, poofy. I don't think that's a technical cooking term but it's poofy. It's airy. It's light. It's crunchy and you get the bite of the salt on it. That's a really addicting buttery bite. I don't think you even need these creams at all. I don't know what I was expecting candidly. I thought it would be more layers almost like a croissant but it's not. Look how airy that thing is in the middle. See what the sweet cream does to it. Little bit of grease. Little oily. But it's the butter. It is finger licking good though. I need napkins for sure. Just a little bit of butter. I think this would be pretty cool if you cut it in half and put things in it and made a sandwich. It was tasty. It was like a great muffin with extra extra extra butter on it. If you're in the mood for that, I really don't understand why there's a long long line to go in there. It was good but I'm not standing in line for it. That's for sure. Jimmy V, America's food critic. We'll catch you on the next one. Bobby on the beat. He's on blue. You walk around New York City now and there's lines for everything. It's crazy because social media obviously is like pointing people in the right direction. They just go. It's incredible what social media has become. It is incredible. I feel like it's, I would always say that television is the greatest advertising platform that there is and I really feel like social media is starting to take over. Oh yeah. For sure. The new generations aren't turning on televisions. They're just looking at their phones. I always say it doesn't matter where people watch it. It's all about the content. If you make good content it will show up where people want to watch it. It's a great point. When was your first show? What year was it? 30 years ago. So like 2000, oh I know exactly. We shot a show called Grilling and Shilling. Yeah. I remember that show. With me and Jack and David. Sophie was 10 days old. So I know exactly when it was. Wow. It's going to be 30 years. You've been famous a long time man. Think about that. I've been on TV for the same amount of time that I've not been on TV. That's right. My entire life. Exactly. So it's only going to grow from here which is wild. Well who knows about that. I was standing in the right place at the right time. Mesa Grill if you remember was the restaurant. One of the top restaurants in America for a long time. When it opened it was a very hot spot so we got a lot of attention. Obviously no social media then. The food network started and I was standing there. So I just, and I'm still standing there. You're like the last leaf on the tree man. This has been fun. Thank you man. Thank you. You're the best. I love hanging out with you. I've done a lot of respect for you and everything you've done. I'll tell you the most impressive thing, and I say this to anybody who will listen about you, the most impressive thing is your decisiveness. Your ability to make a decision and never look back is something that I always think about when I'm doing anything. Like if we're going to say yes to this, we're going to say yes and we're going to do it 100%. If we say no, we leave it behind and we never think about it again. And I learned that from watching you. I appreciate that. Thank you. I just said yes when I wanted to be your partner in 19. I really should have. I really should have. Who knows where we'd be today? God only knows. Who knows? Yeah. Anyway, thanks a lot man. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank everybody for all of your amazing comments. I love the engagement and it just seems like people are really enjoying this. I mean I'm loving doing it. I'm loving having these conversations with people, letting people know what I'm up to in my professional life and a little bit in my personal life. And so if you continue to like it, please tell your friends and please hit subscribe. It's really, really important. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but ultimately it is a big deal to us because it lets us know that you want us to keep making more of these. So hit like, hit subscribe and then tune in. Next week we have my man Elvis Durant from Elvis in the Morning Show. He is a legend when it comes to radio. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next week. Bobby on the beat. Bobby on the beat.