Brooke Williamson & Bobby Flay Go to Tokyo, Influencer Food Lovers Diary, Moonrise Bagels with Jimmy V

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. We have a fun episode today. We have a returning guest. So far, she is the most watched guest or co-host. My girlfriend, Brooke Williamson, is back today. We're going to be talking about our trip to Tokyo, which was really, really fun. So I could not do that without having Brooke here. She just knows it better than I do. So that's what we're going to talk about. But we'll get to Brooke in a couple of minutes. Just letting you know what's been going on in my world lately. I've been working diligently on my new cookbook. It's about my obsession with Italy. This is going to be a big, glossy coffee table book, kind of like chapter one in the same vein. But obviously it's going to be all about my love of Italy and the food there and how I look at the food, etc. So I've been writing a lot of essays. People have always asked me to write my memoir, which I'm not interested in doing. But I do like telling some stories here and there about places that I've been inspired or where things have magically happened to me when I'm traveling and being inspired by the food and the surroundings and the people and the culture and all those kinds of things. So it's been really fun writing all these essays about Italy. The rest of these are being tested as we speak and then we'll shoot them and we'll make a cookbook. I mean, that's basically the way it goes. This week I'm going to Las Vegas, speaking of Italy, to work on my Italian restaurant in terms of new spring dishes. We're bringing in the fresh green peas and the asparagus and ramps and all those spring vegetables. We're going to bring those in. Lots of very springy things. I'm going to Santa Anita racetrack in Los Angeles for the Santa Anita Derby. That's going to be totally fun. The Oaks and the Derby are on the same day. So that's going to be fun. That's sort of the precursor to the Kentucky Derby, which is I'm going to be cooking at that. That's the first Saturday of May. That's something I've done every year for, I don't know, for the last 10 years. It's really a fun, great American event. We also opened a new Bobby's Burgers this week right outside of Salt Lake, Utah in a town called Holiday. The place looks great. Fantastic operator there. It's one of our franchise deals. And so we're excited about our second Utah location. So Bobby's Burgers continues to grow slowly, but surely. So get your burgers, fries and shakes. You know where to go. Also, please like and subscribe. I know you hear me say that all the time, but it's really, really helpful. It lets us know that you're enjoying these. We dropped these very early on Monday morning. I think that people like the idea that, you know, the weekend is over, Monday starts a new week. Make a cup of coffee. Hit play and you can watch Bobby on the beat. You know, sort of becomes part of your Monday routine. And we're getting a lot of comments about that, which I absolutely love. We want to become part of your week every week. You know, we work very hard to kind of get these done every single week. We haven't missed a week yet. I mean, at some point we'll probably have to take a break here and there, but I'm trying to keep it as consistent as possible. So if you're enjoying this, please hit subscribe, hit like. Some really interesting guests coming up. I've had a lot of people that are clearly in the food industry in some way, shape or form, chefs, restaurateurs, et cetera. And we're also going to have some, some people that are, I would say food adjacent where they might do something else for a living, but food's important to them or maybe they, they're starting a line of foods or whatever it is. And you know, so food will, will always find a place on this podcast, but we're going to sort of expand it a little bit to, to bring in people that you actually might recognize, you know, from other places in the world. So now let's get to Brook Williamson. So we went to Tokyo. I mean, this was your trip. This is your idea. We've been talking about this for. Our trip. No, it was certainly our trip, but it was something that you really, really wanted to do. I had been to Tokyo once, probably 2000 or 2001, when I did the rematch of Iron Chef, the original Iron Chef against Morimoto. Against American Chef to go there and do that. But I hadn't been there for 25 years. You have this great sensibility for, you know, Asian ingredients. You love that, you love that kind of food. You're like cooking that food as well. So you're like, can we please go to Tokyo? And I was like, well, part of the reason I wanted to go to Tokyo was because you hadn't been there in 25 years. There are so many places that you've been that I, that I haven't, and that you like show me and, and know the ropes to. And I felt like this was one place where you kind of really hadn't seen the city. I've been a couple of times, not in a while. But I felt like I wanted to experience something with you for the first time and have it be kind of your first time too. Yeah. I mean, and also like you did all the planning, but you set up an amazing itinerary. And you know, it was like everything from, you know, tempura to obviously sushi to going to the marketplace. Lots of these places kind of specialize in one thing or another. Yeah. Right. It's not like Japanese food. Exactly right. No, it's like different, different versions of what? Specialized. How did you feel about the trip? I had a great time. I feel like we got really lucky with the weather. It was chilly. It was almost cherry blossom season. We were a little bit early for the cherry blossoms. No, but they were out. They were starting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was so much good food and I loved exploring a totally foreign city with you. Well, the one thing we can tell you is that like, you know, we might have like an easier time getting into restaurants than some other people in the United States. In Tokyo, nobody cares. We were like begging. There was one place I really was dying to go to and literally couldn't get a reservation. I asked every semi-connection that I knew and we just couldn't go. So we'll have to go back. It actually kind of made it fun because I felt like, you know, it was one of those places where we could just go beyond vacation and just have a good time. So let's go through like some of the places we went. The first day, the best thing was we get there. So we fly into the Tokyo airport and we get to our hotel. It's like a day later. Will you fly over the date line? We get to the hotel. It's like eight o'clock at night and we're starving because I will not eat the food on the plane. I just won't do it. We were going to go out, but we decided it's opening night. We're tired. We're hungry. So we decided to stay in the hotel and we go to the high end Chinese restaurant even though we're in Tokyo and it was delicious. It was delicious. I remember those prawns, those sort of like. It was some kind of bean paste. It was like a sweet and sour caramel. Yeah, it was delicious. I was a little out of it. I remember. So night one, we're in Japan and we eat Chinese food. We had some soup dumplings. Yes. They were really good. Delicious. So that kind of kicked us off. Went to sleep. I barely slept. I woke up in the middle of the night. I started writing my book because when you're in Tokyo, you have to write about Italy. Apparently. You get a lot of accomplished in the middle of the night. It's actually quite impressive. So the next day, we started off our real Tokyo tour. We went, we walked. What I thought was a very cool place, it was a sushi place. It used to be a conveyor belt sushi place and then they stopped doing the conveyor belt and now you order off of a screen. So for those people that have never seen this, there are a handful of places in Tokyo where you just sit at a counter and the conveyor belt is in front of you. As the plates of sushi come around. You can look at it. You just grab one. And then just decide what you want. Exactly. But they stopped the conveyor belt there and they just put a screen in front of you and you can order up to five things at a time. We were like two kids in a candy store. I know. You've ordered too much. I want that. You can only order five things at a time. You were like, I've been cut off. They cut you off. They cut you off. But you can order more later. Yes. They also give you a time limit. Like they're like you can sit here for 90 minutes and then you must leave. We were ordering things like tuna collar. I had like a crab and miso soup. Yeah. Chayamushi. What's it called? Chayamushi. I'm so terrible with this stuff. I love listening to you say Japanese words. It's amazing. Chayamushi with salmon roe, which was really good. It was also really inexpensive for the quality of sushi that it was. Yeah. It was like a kind of casual lunch spot. I mean, I think they do dinner too. But it was very casual and you're ordering off of a screen. But like the entire bill was very reasonable. We had a lot of food. My friend, Brett Nity Frankel, was talking about like she's noticing that everybody's going to Japan. Is Japan a new country? Everyone is talking about Japan, but like Japan is Japaning. I think that happens too though. When you're going somewhere, you start to, I don't know if social media, the algorithm starts to target you. Your phone is talking to you? Yeah. Like the three weeks that I was planning all of our stuff, literally my entire Instagram was Japan. So the fish market, that was a really cool place that we went. So the fish market is famous there because it's, they have these like basically auctions for like prize tuna. It's crazy. I mean, there are fish that go for millions of dollars. I don't even understand it. We weren't actually in the, in sort of the auction area, but on the outskirts of the The outer market. The outer market. The Tsukiji fish market, but it's the Tsukiji outer market, which is where all the food stalls are, which is, I was like, I didn't plan lunch that day. I was like, we're going to go eat at the market. And you were like, okay. I think maybe you didn't have in your head exactly what that market entailed. No, because I didn't realize what it was. It's like going to a food market. You know, it just happens to be on the outside of the, of the sort of the auction house for the, for the tuna and all that. It's a lot of people, a lot of tourists obviously, you know, checking it out, but we ate like king crab, pearl scallops on the, on the grill. Tamago on a stick. Wagyo beef. I mean, delicious. Wagyo beef. The melon that you had, that green melon was insane. It's the best melon I've ever eaten in my life. Like it's so crazy. The fruit there is so incredible sweet. Yeah. The night before we also went to that, um, tempura omakase. Okay. I want to talk about that. You weren't feeling great that night. No. Like I felt so badly for you because when you're not feeling well, who wants to eat a bunch of food, right? And I was so excited about this place. And, but you like, you worked a toll trooper. You gutted it out. Like you were like, no, let's go. I was like, okay. And I didn't really realize you weren't feeling well until we got there. This is a small place. It's got 12 seats. You know, it's one of these. At the bar. I had this wave of panic and I was like, oh my God, we're about to get like 18 courses of tempura and I'm not sure I can eat. He could not have been nicer. He was so proud of you. He looked right at you and you were like, I'm not eating tonight. And he was like, okay. And he's like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to, I'm going to get a bento box and I'm going to, I'm going to make everything. I'm going to put it in the bento box and you can eat it later, which was so nice. So nice of him. He was doing some really cool greens and vegetables that I thought were like that I hadn't seen before. He told us he was on the taco chronicles on Netflix. He did. He was so proud of it. And understandably this, this was unlike any taco. He said it's my original taco. And apparently he's gotten a lot of attention for this. And it was a piece of perfectly toasted seaweed. And then he fried like a little ball of mochi, like chewy rice. He actually tempura fried that and then put it on top of the seaweed and smashed it. And then topped that with these tiny little fried shrimp. I have to say that was a really fun and like very satisfying dinner. Yeah. I just felt bad that you weren't feeling me that well, but we'll have to go back. Where else we go? We had, we had the, uh, the pork katsu. Yeah. Butagumi. Butagumi. Yeah. They have pork from different regions of, yeah. Harajutsu pork. From different regions of Japan. Different cuts. You choose and different cuts. Where you want your pork to have come from and what cut you want. And they do it all the same way. They, you know, bread it, fry it. And they serve it, they served it with these really delicious charcoal grilled tomatoes that were then lightly pickled in this like sweet pickling liquid. That might have been my actual favorite bite of the whole place. Oh, those tomatoes. Yeah. Those tomatoes were so good. So I made you some chicken katsu. I love this. And like, I don't. You came home and started cooking Japanese food. I know. I love it. So, there you have it. Bobby on the beat. Alright, I'm making chicken katsu. We just got back from Tokyo, so let's do it. We're going to start with a chicken cutlet. Make sure it's nicely pounded and even. And then we're going to make some, we're going to crush some ginger. We're going to crush some garlic. We need a lot of this for lots of different things. For us to marinate, we're going to take the ginger and some garlic. We're going to add some soy sauce, some sesame oil, a little red pepper paste, and some honey. And we're going to mix it up and let the chicken marinate for at least six hours or overnight. the sauce to go along with this, some ketchup, some red pepper paste, some Worcestershire, a little soy, some sesame, a little bit of yuzu, and some sugar, a little rice wine vinegar, just mix that up, no heat necessary, put it into the side. Now we're going to cook some mushrooms, if you got your takis used in my Ikemenis in my refrigerator, so that's what I'm cooking. Ginger, garlic, a little bit of that sauce that we made, some fresh cilantro, some fresh scallions, and put that to the side as well. Now we're going to create our dredging station to cook the chicken, you know what it is, egg, flour, panko breadcrumbs, I'm going to use some avocado oil to cook this in, so we go first from the flour, then to the egg, then to the breadcrumbs, make sure those breadcrumbs get become part of that chicken, and then we're going to put it into sort of medium heat oil, and we're going to crisp up the chicken, all right, a little crispy on the edges, make sure it's cooked all the way through, probably takes about kind of four to five minutes, let it rest, put it with some salt, ah, rice cooker, my new one, Brooks just bought that for me, so we're going to make some rice, perfectly cooked, slice up the chicken, put some rice, put some of the mushrooms on top of the rice, some of that beautiful sauce, some fresh scallions, and add some pickled onions in my refrigerator, so that's going on there too, enjoy it. Bobby on the beat, I know, I got the rice cooker out that you bought me. Okay, let me just say, for all of those who don't sort of understand your method, you have always cooked rice on a stove top, you've never had a rice cooker, I use my rice cooker like three times a week, I always have sushi rice sitting on my counter, it's very easy to do, you put it in a machine, you set it, you walk away, it's done, it's perfect, and you have always been like, no, I make rice on a stove top so that I can watch it. I don't have a microwave or a rice cooker, now I have a rice cooker. So I immediately got on Amazon and sent you a rice cooker, Hudson was in the kitchen when I was on the phone with you walking you through it, and he was like, does he not know how to use the rice cooker? He was like, you're dating like one of the most famous chefs in the entire world, and he doesn't know how to use a rice cooker, my son calling you out. Literally never use a rice cooker in my life. But you like it, right? Yeah. You also had this like newfound fondness of yuzu. I really like it in my margaritas. I drank so many yuzu margaritas in Tokyo. That was your drink? That was my cocktail. Sake and yuzu margaritas. One of the things that I noticed about you there was that you were really into that cuisine. I'm an admirer of it, but it's not the way I cook. How about the cocktail boy? Let's talk about that. Okay. Because I thought that that was really great. The SG Club? It feels underground. I think it is underground. I think we did go downstairs. And the cocktails were? I started with a clarified tequila cocktail. It was a smart, beautiful cocktail, but then you got a yuzu margarita, and I tasted yours, and I was like, that's what I'm drinking next. I think we had a few of those. Getting fresh yuzu in the United States, that's good. It's hard, right? Yeah. And it's generally full of seeds, and it's mostly pith, and you use it for the zest, and that's kind of it. So, would you take things that you saw there, or ate there, and then put it on your menu at Playa? No. I might be inspired by something that eventually goes onto the menu, but the food at Playa doesn't translate. But even using some of the techniques, like the tempura technique and stuff like that, you wouldn't do that? Yeah, I might do that. If you did some kind of tempura version of shrimp on the menu, I think you'd sell a gazillion of them. Yeah, then I'd have to get two more fryers. There are logistical issues with putting certain things on the menu. Where else did we go? The ramen place. Oh, let's talk about that. There was a rainy day where I really wanted to try this ramen place that had been very highly recommended. Ginza Kagari Soba. Yeah. It's a little bit misleading because Soba is not ramen, and all they do is ramen. You were obsessed with going to the— I love ramen. You love ramen. And we waited on the line for close to an hour in the rain. Somebody gave us one of their umbrellas so they had an extra one because they felt so bad. We were the only ones online. I was like literally drenched. You also hate being cold and wet. You want this ramen? We were absolutely waiting to eat this ramen. And close to an hour later, we get to the front and the menu's there. She's like, wrong place. This is not the place. I said I won't believe this. He was real happy. That's when I become the reasonable boyfriend. And I'm like, no problem. I was so bummed. A friend of ours, actually a mutual friend of ours, this guy, Sean, he was like, I see you are in Tokyo. Have you been to Wagyu Mafia? Wagyu Mafia. And I was like, no, what's that? And he's like, at least go to Wagyu Mafia burger. And I was like, okay, I'll do that. And we went there and we had the craziest experience because they were so incredibly nice to us. They knew we were coming because Sean called for us. The guy's name was Shunt. And we had a Wagyu burger called the Big Wag, right? And then also a beef tenderloin sand-o. Catsu sand-o. Breaded like this, but then in a sandwich and they cut it. With katsu sauce. And then gold flakes. Yeah, exactly. And then some gold leaf. Like the most expensive meal we had was at the burger place. So the day before, you were so disappointed because we waited on the wrong line for an hour. Didn't make it, but you really wanted this round of place. So I was like, well, we're not leaving here until we go there. So the next day, we looked it up and they were open at 11 o'clock. So we got there at like 10, 20. And we were the fourth person online. This is the best business model I've ever seen in a restaurant. You get up to the front of the line. So now we're in the right place. They've already handed you a menu. You tell them what you want. You're not in the place. You're outside, okay? You're still on the line. You tell them you order your food, then they let you in, but they don't let you sit down yet. You have to go to this machine. He punches in what you ordered and then you pay. You pay and then you get a ticket. Then you get a ticket and then he says, sit down. So you've already ordered and you've paid before you sit down. We were there for like what, a half an hour? Not even. Max 25 minutes? Yeah. And you like, you don't even have to ask for a check because you've already paid. And it's this like rich, delicious chicken broth. That was, I'm still trying to figure out how they did it. I think that that was the best meal I had there. That was easily one of my favorites. 7-Eleven Egg Sandwich. Okay, let's talk about this. You'd even try it. I don't know. I was very skeptical about the, all I heard was don't miss the 7-Eleven Egg Sandwich. And it's literally egg salad, just like the simplest egg salad on very soft milk bread with the crust cut off. And they put it in like a package and it's literally like in the refrigerated section at 7-Eleven. I was like, how good could this be? Everyone talks about it, but I took a bite of this sandwich. The bread was soft, fully preserved, I'm sure. But the egg salad itself was so simple. It was eggs and probably like QP mayo, which is full of MSG. Probably part of the reason why it's so delicious. But it tasted like the most perfectly seasoned deviled egg. Wasn't hungry. And I ate half the sandwich just because I couldn't stop. In the United States, we think of 7-Eleven as a convenience store. In Tokyo, people like 7-Eleven has like this cult following to it. All right, so let's talk about this. Give me some critiques here. I have no notes other than the rice being slightly overcooked. I love the pickled shallot situation, which is not something that you would normally find. And I like the sauce better than the katsu sauce that we had in Japan. It's more balanced. Like I like the yuzu in there. It's more tangy. It's spicy. It's not quite as heavy and rich. This is this is definitely not traditional. I was clearly inspired by that sauce, but I just made this for my palate. Delicious. I'm not sick of Japanese food. What will you cook for me from Japan? I might try to actually make that chicken broth, that ramen. Yes. I feel like needs to be recreated. Can you do that? I don't know. I can try. I want to talk about our omakase experience there, the sushi. The sushi. But before we do that, I want to show you a clip from Chinatown, actually, in New York City. Okay. One of my favorite influencers in New York. Bobby on the beat. When you go to restaurants, what do you rule? Do you make deals with restaurants? Do you pay for your own meals? Like, how does it work? Well, I do always pay for my own meals. I actually don't do PR invites unless I'm genuinely very interested in that restaurant. I don't like use any version of cloud first. I think that's kind of, you know, weird. But I don't. I just go in, I pay for my meal and I am honest, but in the spirit of like never wanting to tear down a restaurant restaurants are already up against so much in the city. Like we're just talking about like if I don't like a specific dish or there's something about the restaurant I don't like, there's always something I do like if generally it's a bad experience, I just won't post about it. Okay. That's how we feel. I love food history. I love food culture. That is honestly probably why I do what I do because even from a really young age, even before I knew it, it's like growing up as a Russian Jew in Columbus, Ohio, it's like a very like the cow tongue and the herring and the salmon roe. It's like you immediately kind of understand identity and culture and how they're related. So I feel like I just became obsessed with that concept, but with a wider lens. All right, I'm going to quiz you. Oh, now is the time. It's time. I'm nervous. That's okay. And away we go. What's gnocchi? Gnocchi is a potato and flour pasta. Sometimes made with ricotta. Okay. Want to quit now? What's tapenade? Tapenade is an olive condiment. You know where Dungeness Crab is from? Dungeness Crab is from East Coast. No, so Blue Crab is like the East Coast crab, right? The Maryland crab. Dungeness Crab is very specifically from the Pacific Northwest. You know what Batarga is? Yeah, it's a cured mullet roe. Good one. High-end caviar is for more fish. Sturgeon. Alforno means what? Victim of an. Can I get up an notch? I'm feeling really... Oh, really? No, no. Do you know what a caper is? Yeah. I, well, wait. What is it? Doesn't it? Oh, it's a berry. All right. It's a flower bud. Yeah. I'll give you that. I'm going to give you half credit. What's the difference between gravlox and smoked salmon? A gravlox is cold. No, like you see things all the time and you just take it for granted. You don't know the origin. Yeah. So gravlox is cured. Okay. Smoked salmon is... Smoked. Right. But see, I like, I knew that intrinsically. No, no, no. Do you want miso made from? Yes. Soy beans. Cut of steak and beef Wellington. It's a tenderloin. That's enough. Okay. You did well. So many people out there trying to do what you do and a lot of people may not be as well versus you. I always say this to everybody, it's a very hard job. I've been a chef for a long time. I have very specific cuisines that I know basically as much as you can know about. But like after that, it gets shaky because I'm not a food critic. Yeah. I don't have to know everything. But if somebody goes into restaurants and wants to talk about them in any, you know, in a good way or a bad way or just a critique way, like they, it's a huge responsibility for somebody to know that much about food. No, I agree. I also just think that it is similarly to in the chefing world, in the influencer world, if something is not your expertise, I don't think you should feel so comfortable commenting on it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Good job, everybody. Bobby on the beat. She knows what she's talking about. Do you want some? I pour some sake for you. You love sake, don't you? I do, but I'm actually surprised that you want some because we had quite a day yesterday. Well, that's why I need some right now. We were walking along Chelsea on a beautiful New York spring day. It was so pretty yesterday. We went into the Faena Hotel, which is fairly new in New York. And we went to the bar and there was no one there. It was like the middle of the day on a Sunday. It was like three o'clock in the afternoon. We were there for like four hours. So back to Japan. So we also went to one Omokase dinner. What was your feeling? I thought there were some delicious bites. I would rather go back to that first sushi lunch. I got full quickly. Here's a tip. If you ever want to go out with Brooke, don't take her to Omokase. No, no, that's not fair. I love an Omokase sushi dinner. Every single time we go out for Omokase, halfway through, you look at me like this. This is a lot of food. And I know that that's the beginning of the end. To be fair, the second course was like a fatty tuna steak. It was probably five ounces. And I was like, this is the second bite? But every Omokase I've ever taken you to. I have to tap out. You tap out. You're like, I'm done. What did you think of it? I liked it. I found it to be incredibly interesting. He was using a lot of different fish that you wouldn't see in a classic Omokase. It wasn't just tuna. No, it wasn't just tuna and omachi. Actually, I got no yellowtail the entire time I was there. Like they didn't have, they didn't even have yellowtail at the conveyor belt. As an option. No, maybe it's just not something that happens a lot there. I have no idea. Your favorite fish. It really is one of my favorites. Your favorite raw fish. I do love it. The food in Japan in Tokyo was very inexpensive. Moderately priced. Compared to what we're used to in cities like Los Angeles and New York. The amount that we ate at the fish market. I mean, and most of those places only took cash, which you had to figure out because the yen to dollar conversion is very confusing to me. In New York City, like an Omokase per person for food only is like somewhere between $300 and $600. It's insane. In Tokyo, it was like $125 a person. You know what's really funny is like you have this bagel obsession in New York. You're such an LA person when it comes to looking at New York food because you're like, I want a deli sandwich from Katsy's or somewhere. I want to like, you know, you're like, you, you, you desperately want a Ruben sandwich from New York. I love a Ruben sandwich. And then also you're into bagels. I also love like a perfect New York slice of pizza. Like Lin industry is like the perfect afternoon snack. But my favorite bagel is Apollo bagels. My favorite New York. What do you like about it? They're chewy. They have crunch on the outside. There's tons of seeds all the way around the bagel. Yeah. It has that like outer crunch and the dense chewy center. It's really interesting because like as a New Yorker, when you think about New York things and when it comes to food, pizza, bagels, you know, they're, they're, they're having a renaissance. Like there was always like the classic places to go get a slice of pizza. And there was always the classic, I grew up eating H and H bagels on the Upper East Side, which were, it was the bagel place. And I think that yeah, I think they're still in existence, but like now all these sort of younger people are sort of reinventing the New York classics. And I have to say some of them are spectacular. Doing a really good job. Popup bagels just opened in LA. Did they really? Yeah. But we sent Jimmy V to a bagel shop. Which one? And well, I'm going to let you see which one it is. And obviously we're going to see if you like it. America's Food Critic. Bobby on the beat. Jimmy V, America's Food Critic. Outside of Moonrise Bagel, I think it's a COVID baby that started in Woodstock, New York. And it is famous for the stuffed bagel. Or is this something that you saw that was viral and that you had to come by and check it out? Yeah, I saw it on social media. Okay. I don't really understand the concept. I'm going to go in there with an open mind. I guess it's like a, some type of a hot pocket or something like that, but it's supposed to be really, really good. But check it out. These are straight bagels, right? They're all, they're all, they're all stuff. Okay. Let me have a bacon egg and cheese one. Was the cheese pizza one the first? Like, wasn't that like your, your OG? I'm going to go with the OG just to check it out. Do any seeds on that one, maybe some poppy. It looks pretty cool. I'm curious on how they do it. Stuff bagel. So what do you, you boil them, you cut them, you stuff them, you bake them. So we have a little secret about how we boil those things. But yeah, here we do a super boil and bake process. Okay. What are the sauces? Ranch, chili, chili, and mooni. What is a mooni? That's our mooni, our hot sauce. Great. Thank you so, so much. This is the bacon egg and cheese on an everything bagel. Kind of heavy, but I mean, I guess there's the bacon egg and cheese in it. I'm going to rip it just to check it out. The bacon is all ground up. Cheese, egg, I'm going to take a bite and see what happens here. Not your classic bagel by any stretch. Soft. Tastes good. A buttery has the eggs in there. I guess this is really good if you're on the walk and you don't want things falling out of your bagel. It's tasty, but I don't know the need for it to be honest. It doesn't have as much dough as a regular bagel would maybe. And there's certainly not the crispy crunch on the outside. Like a really good bagel shop in New York City. We have access to the best bagels in the world. I don't think this one's going to rank up there. This is the OG. This was their pizza bagel. And here we go. We did a poppy seed on top of this one. The interesting part is you order the bagel and then you can put the different toppings. Well, whether it's the different seeds, plain, salt, poppy, sesame. No dipping, just ripping. It's really soft. There's not a lot of texture to it on the outside. Looks like probably some mozzarella. There's not a lot to go from here. It's just a hollowed out bagel bread with some ingredients inside. Probably a one and done for me. Wow. Big question. Would you come back? Okay, I like that. A little different than America's Food Critic over here. They're coming back. I'm not. Jimmy V, America's Food Critic, on to the next one. Bobby on the beat. The only time I've seen him react that way was over Macha, but that's just because he's Jimmy. But I've seen that place. I think the sister snacking did a little video on the stuffed bagels. And I sent it to, I sent the video to you and I said, I want to try this place. It looks really interesting. They do a pastrami stuffed bagel with sauerkraut, I think, which looked really interesting. But I think the key to that place is you have to look at it like it's not a traditional bagel. I think the problem that they're up against for somebody like Jimmy, let's face it, Jimmy is a traditionalist. He's a New Yorker. He said it. We have access to the greatest bagels in the world, which is completely true. So when you come into a market, when you're trying to do something that people think of in a particular way and try to turn it, you have to hit it out of the ballpark. Listen, I haven't been there, so I don't really know. But obviously, we sent America's Food Critic there. I mean, I've heard mixed things. Beware of Jimmy V. And I don't think the mixed reviews are about it not being tasty. I think it's about it not being what it claims to be, which is a bagel. What else is going on in your life? How'd you date in life? My dating life is swimmingly exciting and fun. My personal life is going really well. Thank you. My son just got into NYU, which I'm super excited about. I don't know that he's going to necessarily go there. But when you talk about parents who follow their kids to college, that would be really easy to do. I do want to talk about this for a second because you brought it up, so I'll bring it up. I've watched you for the last year. It's such a painstaking process. You have two agonizing things going on. Number one, you have a kid who's 17, 18, who is applying to all these schools. So many schools. An incredibly competitive marketplace. I mean, I went through it with Sophie, you know, 10 years ago. I think it's even worse now because it's so incredibly competitive. The other thing that you're agonizing over is that as a mom, and I always talk about what a wonderful mother you are, you're so, you're such a loving mom to your son, you're losing him soon. Meaning he's going to... I have a finite period of time where he's under the same roof. But my favorite thing is he now has a girlfriend. And so he's like, oh, what's up, mom? And then he's like out the door. And then he's like, I'll be at... I'm going to have dinner at her house and I'll see him at like one of the fucking morning. And you're like, but I'm your mother and I'm losing you and I'm going to make you dinner whatever you want. It's like, you're unbelievable. I'll literally make dinner and he'll be like, do you mind if I just stay over at her house for dinner? I'm like, yeah, sure. No, I feel really bad for you because I know that like you just, you're sort of cherishing every single moment that you have left with him. But I have these dreams of like, if he does by chance go to NYU, we have like Sunday dinner here and Sophie comes over and Hudson comes over and we can all sit down and have like a family dinner. How cool would that be that he could literally walk here? Wait, you're moving in? Yeah. You have blueprints from my closet. Okay, take it easy. You don't have to reveal everything. You are getting your own closet. That's for sure. You need it. Well, because I need it because you have no space in your closet. I've never met a man with so much clothing and shoes. That's a small closet. That's a one bedroom apartment. And your dream sequence of life. So you so it's like you move into you move to New York. Hudson goes to school in New York. Sophie's already here. She's now moved here. And so like it's a family affair. Like, Sunday night, we're cooking dinner. We make Sunday, we make Sunday dinner. What's on the menu? We actually made Sunday dinner a couple weeks ago. Sophie and Trevor came over and it was like perfect. You made spaghetti and meatballs. I made a salad. There was like some bread. It was perfect. Like a comfort meal, right? Like braised short ribs, spaghetti and meatballs, like something that the kids want to come home to and have like a stick to your ribs comforting meal. Well, I look forward to our Sunday dinners with the whole family. It's going to be amazing. The Brady Bunch family. Yeah. All right. Thanks for being here. All right. Well, that was a fun conversation as it always is with Chef Lamson. And make sure that you hit like and subscribe. I hope you liked this episode as much as I did because I always love talking to Brooke. So tune in next week when my guest will be Heather Graham. Wonderful actress. She's a New Yorker. She loves food. I noticed that she was cooking on her Instagram. So we invited her to come by and she was so nice to say yes. So tune in. Subscribe. Bobby on the beat.