Burnt Hands Perspective
This is a raw and unfiltered look into the state of the restaurant industry as a whole, powered by longtime friends Chef/Owner Antonio Caruana and former bartender turned News Anchor/TV Host Kristen Crowley.
Representing all aspects of the industry from the front to the back of the house we will dig into the juiciest stories and pull from decades of experience in one of the sexiest and most exciting industries in the world...the food and beverage industry.
From international chefs, sommeliers, industry pros, and so much more, this show will cover all of it without a filter. You turn up the volume; we'll turn up the heat.
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Burnt Hands Perspective
Ep 42: From Farm to Table: The Truth About Quality Meat, Pricing, Labels, and Sustainable Practices
"The quality of your meat matters more than you think," declares host Chef Tony as he welcomes his longtime friend and meat expert, John, to the Burnt Hands Perspective. Their passionate conversation cuts through marketing hype to reveal uncomfortable truths about what's really on your plate.
John brings decades of culinary and industry expertise to this meaty discussion. Having started as a dishwasher at 13, he worked his way through kitchens before transitioning to the sales side, where he now represents premium Australian and New Zealand lamb and beef. This unique perspective—combining chef sensibilities with industry knowledge—makes him the perfect guide through today's complicated meat landscape.
This episode gets into how meat production has changed dramatically over the last decade. Family farms are selling out as feed costs rise and younger generations lose interest in continuing tradition. This has led to America now importing more beef than it produces domestically. Meanwhile, countries like Australia maintain traditional grass-fed, grass-finished practices not as a marketing gimmick but as their standard approach to raising livestock.
Their conversation takes turns through topics like halal certification (which is exploding in popularity not just for religious reasons but for its superior flavor profile), the misunderstood nature of veal (a byproduct of dairy farming), and the shocking truth about mass-produced chicken (which they colorfully describe as "the tilapia of meat"). The comparison between different lamb varieties—American, Australian, and New Zealand—reveals how geography, diet, and breeding create distinctly different flavor profiles.
Perhaps most valuable is their frank discussion about meat pricing. "Stop bitching about the prices of food," they advise listeners who complain about restaurant costs. Quality ingredients demand premium prices, and if you want superior culinary experiences, be prepared to pay for them. As they put it, "Eating is one of the best forms of entertainment" and worth investing in.
Whether you're a home cook trying to make better choices at the grocery store or a food enthusiast wanting to understand what's happening behind the scenes, this episode delivers straight talk about meat quality, sourcing, and why it matters. Subscribe now for more unfiltered food wisdom from industry insiders who aren't afraid to tell it like it is.
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Welcome to the Burnt Hands Perspective Welcome back. This is a very serious moment. Go ahead say it, Start it off.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Burnt Hands Perspective.
Speaker 1:There it is Very solid. This is my man, John. Me and John go way back. We're going to talk meat today.
Speaker 2:We're talking meat. We're talking meat, one of my favorite topics.
Speaker 1:But first let me tell you something.
Speaker 2:John can cook now.
Speaker 1:See, that's why I like talking to him, because when I talk to him about meat, he knows what the fuck he's talking about. He comes from a cooking perspective, not just a fucking salesman of meat. Or someone who's just trying to sell their product as the best. Any product he touches and works with Is the best, because he knows what a good product is.
Speaker 1:So I know I can always call John. I call John about stuff I don't even fucking. I know he doesn't even deal with. Hey, what do you know about this? Can you help me out with this? You got a guy for this and typically it's yes, you know your meat, your meat Dinner's dangling for you.
Speaker 3:Dinner's dangling brother.
Speaker 1:You got it right, so we cooked together way back in the day we're talking, 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:Well, 20, that's coming up on 26 years, yikes.
Speaker 3:If we could squeeze six years off it, I'm fine with that too, though you know what I mean If we want to make it 20. Y'all just try it and get younger. I'll take six years. I'm trying hard.
Speaker 1:So anyway, john, so you have a really good Italian history Back to you. You cook a lot of Italian food, you've always been around Italian people wild, and, uh, you know, we've even played hockey together. So we, we've, uh, we've, we've had some time together in the day, but I think we had a couple cocktails together at some point once or twice. Yeah, we had one and then two the ones you can remember yeah, so yeah, we've had some good times.
Speaker 1:Now, bro, listen, you are now. Give us a little background. I just gave you a little history with me, with you, in a very short term, but what is your history when it comes to cooking, transferring or transitioning over to the, to the sales end of everything, and being a purveyor? Give us your little lineup yeah, I mean ultimately.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, my dad wanted me to get a job and work and make some money, so he'd have to pay for everything.
Speaker 3:So I started washing dishes at 13, man that's how I broke into this whole thing and then realized that that wasn't the the greatest path either. So just worked hard throughout and, uh, you know, worked kitchens, ran kitchens, um, got up into the point where, you know, my best friend's dad worked in the sales side of the industry. I love the culinary aspect of it, but for me I looked at it was like you know what I needed, a more of a professional path to, uh, you know, just to see what was available for me out there with my knowledge, um, so I got into the sales side of things in 2000 with a broker. A broker represents multiple manufacturers. We're out there running those goods and services out there to clients like yourself all around the Baltimore DC market.
Speaker 1:That's a big market. It's a huge market. It's a huge market and there's a lot of competition because there's a lot of people trying to sell that great product to that great market. So that gives you a lot of fighting there.
Speaker 3:Well it does, and you've got a lot of regional chains there. You've got a lot of national chains that are based there too. So there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of action, a lot of college university. I just kept working my way up and then I got in the manufacturer side of things and that's really where, for me, where I can have most influence, um, knowledge, expertise, that sort of thing. So I bring my culinary aspect, which I'm still learning, uh, today. I mean, obviously we were just talking about it, right, let's talk about sauce, we're just talking about all those different things to continue to do. So I've been, uh I've been on the sales side of it, on the manufacturer side of it now for like 15 years. Um, and really, what I bring? I bring my contacts and I bring uh ideas and products to guys like you and other people around the country, giving them expertise on what our products do. So now I work for a company called Pilot Trading. We import lamb and beef from Australia, new Zealand, real, high quality stuff.
Speaker 1:Nice. So in order to do that, you have to first understand your own country's product, which you have. You have a lot of background and I've seen you grow from, like you said at the beginning of this, where you're dealing with a lot of chains and a lot of things like that, to where the product there is a little bit different, and then you you progressed into more fine product right. So now you're more of a professional and more of a. Your expertise is more on the finer product that you're putting out there.
Speaker 1:You're not purveying garbage no, no, no, we wouldn't be hanging out talking much if you were, because I'm not a garbage guy, you know what I mean, so neither are you. But so when you're talking about the veals and uh in the, you know now you're going to australia. That's a good topic, because we're going to talk about a little bit. What I really want to talk about is how the meat market has changed so much in the last just decade because of the mass amount of people that we have to feed. You know we're talking about. Everybody wants grass-fed or the natural or, you know, non-gmo or organic.
Speaker 1:And is it even fucking possible to be honest with you with the amount of people that need to eat meat daily? Think about one fucking town worth right what. What if we had one town and one farm to satisfy that town? That wouldn't even happen. You know how many fucking cows you need to satisfy a thousand people on a normal day-to-day basis. So how do you produce this stuff and how do people produce this stuff? Where do you go for this real meat that you want? How much of it really is out there. You know what I mean. As a chef, I can pick and choose my purveyor, but as a consumer, how the fuck do you know where this meat's coming from, man.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean you know, you got to read your labels, you got to read your packages, you got to do your research. I mean just like everything else we do. When you go to the store and you look at the back of a cereal box or whatever it might be, what ingredients are in there. Well, I mean you got to look at, you know where's your meat coming from. You know, is it coming from australia, new zealand? Is it domestic? Is it coming from uruguay? Is it coming from brazil? I mean it's. You know we import here, um on beef and lamb and veal from so many different countries outside the united states more so than the united states right, yeah, more so the united states absolutely so we.
Speaker 1:We get more beef and veal from out of the country than we do with our own country.
Speaker 3:I mean it's close, man. I mean it's starting to get to the point where we can't keep up with domestic demand. Herds are down, there's drought situations, you know. Feed has gone up, so farmers are really reluctant to rebuild their herds because of the cost of everything.
Speaker 1:You said something to me smart, and it's made sense to to me a lot and it really opened my eyes a minute. You told me one time maybe it was earlier, but you, you told me that you knew somebody who was in the beef game and they ended up selling their farm and realizing they made more money.
Speaker 3:So go ahead, touch on that, because it starts at the farm well, I mean, I think covid had a huge influence on a lot of this, you know what I mean. And then you had drought conditions and and then you had, like we said, feed has gone up. So I think farmers are really starting to take a look at their business. They're looking at their family. They're looking at their kids. Do they want their kids to take this over? Most of the time, the kids don't want to take this over.
Speaker 2:So the family generational farm.
Speaker 3:It's a different era. It's a make a lot of money on it you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So just want instant gratification.
Speaker 3:It's 100% well, it's not like us growing up, where we would go out and bang out two, three jobs to make money all the time. Now kids don't want to do.
Speaker 1:I used to ride a bicycle with a fucking lawnmower tied to the bike like fucking napoleon dynamite with a little he-man out the back of the truck.
Speaker 3:I had a fucking lawnmower like that, anything I could well, I was shoveling drivers, I was cutting grass, I I was delivering paper, whatever we could do, right, to make some cash. So really, farmers kind of took a look at like, okay, I own this amount of acreage, this amount of land, how much is this worth? Worth? Way more than what they're making could make, probably in 10 years. So they look at it and say you know what? I'm going to create some generational wealth for my family. I'm going to take a little break from the hard farming I've been doing for 30, 40, 50 years and sell off that land.
Speaker 1:Right, so that's kind of where that's at. So, with that being said, that's even taking away the percentage now of more meats being made here. That's yeah. So when you're going to New Zealand, now that you work with New Zealand and you said Australia, right, so the farming practices, the laws, all that stuff, are they that much different from here?
Speaker 3:So it's funny, we talk about regenerative farming. You've got a lot of these smaller farms talking about regenerative farming now in the United States. So more land management, water runoff, fertilizers, those sort of things grass-fed, grass-finished. You know, when you look at Australia and New Zealand, those are practices that they've had since the beginning. They never changed, they never went to that factory farming. So everything in Australia for the most part is grass-fed grass-finished. Like 85% of that is grass-fed grass-finished, because it's the only process they really know.
Speaker 3:That's the only process they really know it's all pasture-raised. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So it's not a matter of convenience, it's just a matter of ritual.
Speaker 3:Yeah, more or less, yeah, absolutely, where we stories of like okay, this farm over here in the midwest is really making sure that land management is a huge part of what they're doing. They're making sure they're not overworking the land and telling that story over there. They're not. So everything over there is antibiotic hormone free for the most part. Everything's certified halal. Now, which is amazing, the amount of halal meat that's coming and what is that?
Speaker 1:for those who don't know, what is hal?
Speaker 3:So halal is a slaughtering practice and it's from Islamic. It's Islamic rule. Right Rule is really what it comes down to at the end of the day. So you know, most of the meat coming in from Australia and New Zealand is all halal, and now more of that in the United States.
Speaker 1:It's more of a humane practice, correct, it is more of a humane practice, so they slaughter them.
Speaker 3:You know, facing Mecca and that whole thing they go across the throat type deal. So they're not stunning, they're not doing any of that. It's definitely a more humane practice.
Speaker 1:And not only that when you slaughter like that, the animal doesn't have time to tense up To stress up.
Speaker 2:It's more of a relaxing.
Speaker 1:It's going to cook better. It cooks more tender. Halal beef actually does cook better. Even ground beef obviously does come out a little bit. It renders differently. It has a much more beef taste.
Speaker 3:Well, you're not shocking the animal, Right? You know what I mean. A lot of times here we're shocking the animal and that really leads to that tensing of the muscles Right Once it's tense it doesn't release.
Speaker 1:I mean, those muscle fibers do this. It's hard to release.
Speaker 3:You know it's. So now there's, uh, there are, there are stamps on the uh you know from a retail perspective. It will say if it's halal, so there's a certification.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen that anywhere, I mean I guess in commercial, you know, for you're going to start seeing more and more.
Speaker 3:A year ago, a year and a half ago, I'd get it once a week, I'd get a call about halal meat.
Speaker 1:Now I'm getting three, four, five calls a day it's, really it's really obvious to see the word halal and the way they spell. It really looks like that arabic with english yeah, it's got that font to it. Yeah, and it's usually in yellow writing and stuff okay but yeah, most things that are labeled halal and there's a lot to it.
Speaker 3:I think you just don't realize it, or look for it in food service it's going to be stamped on the outside of the box because it's not retail. Yeah, in retail it's going to be on the probably the back of the package, by the ingredient deck or by the almost like a uh, like a nutritional fact exactly like gluten-free or something along those lines. Same difference exactly.
Speaker 1:And and now when you say you, you, you came to me and I'm not not to cross professions for you, but when you came to me a couple years ago, we would talk and you would bring me this beautiful veal from this american veal, this American great product, and that meat that you brought me was quality meat, it was really good and it really had that American taste to it, that really fucking good black, angus-y, beefy protein that makes the rest of the dish taste good as well.
Speaker 1:Whatever that thing leaks into you know, when you have the protein juices coming out there, some people consider blood when they call it red meat, the red's meat, it's still blood in it. I can see blood. There's no fucking blood, okay. So just stop saying there's blood in your meat, there's no blood, there's no veins, there's nothing in there carrying blood, okay. So that's the protein that kind of leaks from the meat as the meat cooks. But that flavor of that rubbing against something else is delicious and you can make a meat that's not so good quality. You know more of a GMO product, something like that. Then you can tell the difference, man. You can tell it it's waxy, it tastes different.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's like anything, man. It's like you know, if you get farm fresh vegetables around here and cook them in your restaurant, they're going to taste better because they're locally grown and sourced. And they're here right, they didn't travel from across the country under a controlled environment, not picked at harvest. Same kind of thing with protein, you know. Is it a low stress environment? Is it getting quality food? Is it being harvested in a way that, like to your point, is juicy, is stress-free, like that?
Speaker 1:I mean all those things play a huge role in the finished product and you, you have let me tell you this you have, you can say anything on this show, because that's what this show is all about. It's about the good, the bad and the ugly. Right, um, I'll be the ugly for most time so the uh so when, what? What is some? You have to have seen some of these inhumane conditions that people are always talking about. Is it really that fucking bad, or what?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it depends what we're talking about. You know what I mean. So veal barns, I mean the veal barns and when I was working for Strauss, domestic veal, vertically integrated, controlling the whole process from A to Z. You know what people don't realize, like in that situation, is that you know, veal male Holsteins are a, they're a byproduct of the dairy industry, so you have to birth male cows, so you have to do something with it. So you know, in that process, like you know, taking care of that from a to z is huge. Now I've been to some chicken plants back in the day, so hold on one second.
Speaker 1:Hold on one second. I'm moving to that fucking pigsty in a minute.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that pig with feathers, that's a different.
Speaker 1:That's a different animal. We got to hold on to that one. So veal? You said it's a byproduct of the dairy industry. Most people don't understand this. When you have multiple male cows, it costs the farm a lot of money to live them for nothing. There's going to be too much competition for food for the other ones. Is that what you're getting at? Is that what you're saying? So when you have a male cow, typical Good Veal is a beef male right, it's a male cow.
Speaker 3:It's a male cow, male bullstein yep.
Speaker 1:And when you don't have, when you have so much cows already that you have to feed, take care of. There's nothing left to do with the pork.
Speaker 2:Well, they're not producing milk, they're not going to make you any money.
Speaker 1:They're not producing milk. Well, they're costing you money.
Speaker 3:They're costing you money actually breed bull cows to actually and now with genetics they're getting where you can actually even drive it even more to like have a really good idea of how many like you're gonna, how many females you're gonna actually, as I say, they even it like artificial insemination and breeding programs within the.
Speaker 2:That industry is the same as a horse, I mean they're.
Speaker 1:They're breeding for performance and taste and size and yeah, so they're, they're, they're actually so a lot of people will say I hear it all the time the poor baby cow, da-da-da-da-da, you're actually helping out a farmer and you're helping out a fellow person in America by buying veal because they have to do something with this calf To make money off of it. They have to do something. They have to survive. The calf has a duty. There's nothing they can do with it. They're not just going to let it free and roam the neighborhood. And what are you going to?
Speaker 3:do with it when you look back at the 80s and if people remember the commercials from the 80s with the pita and you have these little containers and the arms of an angel.
Speaker 3:I mean, honestly, who would really want to eat that? I mean you're like, wow, that's a really horrible situation. That's not what veal is today. You know veal is today is a controlled environment. In this barn that basically has like a plastic floor to it, that the atmosphere is completely controlled. They're getting milk fed, they're getting grain fed. I mean they're living an unbelievably good life. Until you know, everybody meets their maker at the end of the day, right, you know, that's one way to do it. So that's how Strauss did it. Strauss did it in a very humane way. Now you have other producers out there that actually harvest that animal within a week of being born because they don't want to pay for it, they don't want to raise them, they don't have the capacity to do it. So then you have Bob Veal. So you really kind of have to know what you want, what you want to serve in your restaurant.
Speaker 1:Bob Veal has become very popular amongst people who don't know what they're buying.
Speaker 3:It's a lot cheaper.
Speaker 1:In restaurants out there who are putting veal on their menu are using that type of veal. It hasn't even had time to develop yet at all to have a muscle structure. So nine times out of ten it's really tough because it hasn't had time to fucking massage out or anything. It's a tense little guy.
Speaker 1:I'm a huge fan of veal. I love veal. When prepared properly, it's good. When it's not prepared right, it's not like anything. But when veal is good and it's on, it's absolutely delicious. It's absolutely humane to eat because there's no need to make this animal grow longer and struggle longer in a climate or condition that it doesn't need to be in. So if the farmer doesn't have access to make this thing have a decent life, at least make it's not. It doesn't need to be in. So if the farmer doesn't have access to make this thing have a decent life, at least make its life worthwhile by eating it deliciously. Exactly, you know. You know, good veal chop is with a little bit of rosemary, a little bit of fucking truffle got it here man it's worth it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that life was worth it.
Speaker 3:Animal well, that veal, what do you got the veal?
Speaker 1:chop melanase on the on the menu I got the melanase right now I have. Uh yeah, we have what's better than that. We got the salt and basil, which is a traditional Roman dish. I mean, that's it right there. If I could be anything else other than me, I'd probably be a piece of veal.
Speaker 3:You'd have a short life, but It'd be short. It wouldn't be delicious, though you wouldn't have to worry about much.
Speaker 1:I'd be pounded out.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's the angle you were trying to go for.
Speaker 1:Pound it out, man. You know what I'm saying. You got to pound it. I think he just wanted to be pounded. I think so too.
Speaker 2:I think that's what it is.
Speaker 3:That might be it for another podcast.
Speaker 1:Let's get to this fucking dirty bird. Let's get to the dirty bird. Let's get to the dirty chicken.
Speaker 2:It's been a while since I've been to a harvesting facility, but it is, uh, not the best.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. It's not the best, especially when you look at the eastern shore virginia and maryland, bro.
Speaker 1:That's where a lot of it smells better than it looks it looks better than it smells.
Speaker 1:I think the other way around. It's so bad, those fucking skeleton birds of fucking. You know they're so mass produced. Now that's where I worry about the gmo stuff, not so much in the cows. A cow still has to grow, it still has to be an animal, it still has to develop bone structure and get big enough to carry meat and live a little while. So at least it's a living thing. I think a fucking chicken and I love chicken, don't get me wrong. Chicken's one of my favorite meats. But I got to eat an organic, good chicken.
Speaker 3:Well, that's thing I will tell you. I buy air-chilled chicken the right, like Bell and Evans type, deal I always along that route.
Speaker 1:Spend the extra money.
Speaker 3:Spend the extra money.
Speaker 1:You can taste the difference, you feel better when you eat that too.
Speaker 3:It's just better for you. It's better for your family.
Speaker 2:If chicken was a fish, it'd be a tilapia of meat.
Speaker 3:Slithering through the fucking field. Oh yeah, dude, that is a great way to put it, that's really good. Yeah, chicken is the tilapia. Commodity chicken is the tilapia, yeah, so people tilapia.
Speaker 1:See if I can start anything. Man, I'm trying to put a ban on tilapia. I hate it. Modified fake food in the world and when I go to a restaurant and literally people put it on their menu, I want to shake them and say dude, you even know what a tilapia is? First of all, for all you who don't know, it's not even a fish. Tilapia is not a breed of fish. It is a multiple breed of any crap fish that lives in the tilapia region. So it gains its name because tilapia is a region and any fish that came from that region was called tilapia. So now they took the name on tilapia and this tilapia is in this pacific. It's disgusting. And they fucking do it in sewage pits and all that stuff. They they didn't raise them in sewage pitch. These fish just evolved in them, almost like when you find a pond with a bunch of frogs in it.
Speaker 1:You don't know where the frogs came from. No one put them there. That's how this is. So they rice paddies that are stagnant, sewage plants, these things in Southeast Asia and stuff like that where these type of fish live. So they took the name tilapia and put it on a breed of fish that they genetically modified, and that fish really doesn't exist.
Speaker 3:It looks like a carp almost. You know it's like a car.
Speaker 1:It's just disgusting and it's, it's that fish is made yeah totally to give you their bottom feeders, but they're only eating the bottom of whatever cesspool that they're living other and and I'm totally against that, yeah, I am totally against it. And people say oh, it's good, good, good that is the funny thing?
Speaker 3:Go, get your tilapia taco.
Speaker 2:I really like tilapia. Well, they still sell it at the grocery store. They have breaded tilapia. It's the most sold and consumed fish in America and I stopped eating it probably about 10 years ago. That's why you're still living life and feeling good, and why you're beautiful in your age and why you're aging good, Because if we were eating tilapia dude, forget it We'd be 60 years old.
Speaker 2:I'll eat it out of. You know. Again, it was cheap and it was protein. When I was training fitness-wise it was like just get as much cheap protein as you can, which usually ends up being cheap chicken and cheap tilapia, and you start to develop these like food sensitivities to those. So I couldn't eat chicken for years without getting sick, and now I've. Obviously we buy all organic Everything is, you know, whatever and I'm fine eating it now. But if you eat too much of that and you're starting to feel sick, it's not because you're not. You know, just buy it, just spend five bucks more and get the better food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, exactly, and that's a lot of people make you sick if you eat too much of it.
Speaker 2:I don't care what everybody says. Yeah, it does. Over time, your body starts to reject it. Ask anyone in the fitness industry in the 2000s you start getting slimy, slime ball.
Speaker 1:Stop eating that crap. So back to lamb, One of my favorite animals.
Speaker 2:We weren't even on lamb yet, but let's get to it.
Speaker 1:Let's get on lamb.
Speaker 2:Let's get on lamb, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 3:We're not even on lamb yet. She did it Sorry.
Speaker 2:I had to do it, that was perfect.
Speaker 3:That was quick.
Speaker 1:So we have this lamb. I love lamb, I love cooking lamb, and the reason I like lamb is because it's a skilled meat to cook. Yeah, okay, you can either really fucking make it amazing or it can turn your day into hell if you don't know what you're doing because, some guy, somebody will cook the same cut absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:And you can cut that same cut, cook it and it comes out tough, chewy, greasy, oily, whatever. It all depends on your time and temperature and then what you're doing with it and your understanding of how lamb cooks and that each cut of lamb, each muscle on that animal is unlike any other animal. Besides a pig, pork also has. Their muscle groups are so different. You get the flavor out of a pork jowl. It's totally different than the bacon or totally different than the rump right. Same thing with lamb. Depending on where you're eating whether you're eating the shank or the roast or whatever it is the rack you're getting totally different flavors. You know the rack is going to give you more of. If you cook that right on the grill, you're going to get more of a beefy type of texture more of a beefy type of taste, whereas if you're going to cut, you know the shank.
Speaker 1:You're going to get more of that lamby or the. You know that that good gamey, gamey flavor. So no matter where you are on the lamb, you're going to have a different experience. So if you really know how to cook lamb right, you can get all kinds of different flavors. You can make sauces, ragus, bologneses, stews uh, spezzatinos in Italian where you can do, you know, oven roasts um slow cook sous vide. There's a million ways you can cook lamb.
Speaker 1:For me to find lamb, though, as a chef and a restaurant owner, is the hardest meat to find because it's so fucking expensive, or you're going to get the shit you can afford and it's the tilapia on four feet. You see what I'm saying. So are you getting a bad goat? You don't even know because you don't know. So in your experience, john, how about when you go like, are you seeing the difference? The Colorado lamb? I think you turned me on to the farmer back in the day. I'm still getting that product and it is a domestic huge lamb rack and it's beautiful. Now it's pricey and it costs my customers money, because it costs me money and my profit margin is small. But we're talking about a $65 menu item of pure luxury. This isn't something you're eating frugally or on a diet. This is something you're coming to eat to experience, and that product is delicious. Now compare that Colorado private farmed meat that I get to a new zealand or a new uh, a new zealand lamb where the rack shrinks down spider or australia.
Speaker 3:Australians are a little bigger too, right.
Speaker 3:Um, you know, I think people come out to eat and will spend more money, like you're saying, for an expert like you or your team to cook something like that, where they know they're going to cook it right every time and it's going to be delicious because it is finicky. It is a finicky meat you got to be really careful about, you got to pay attention to it. You can't walk away from it. You gotta you gotta really dial into like once that temperature starts taking because it's so lean.
Speaker 1:Once you start taking temperature and the heat starts running through the meat, it's going to continue to grow until you stop it. It's not going to have there's not like a lot of fats that will cool it down as it goes. So is the breed of a new zealand lamb I think people want to know this or Australian lamb rather, a lot of people get their lamb from Australia, okay. Or New Zealand New Zealand's big New Zealand's big.
Speaker 3:Both are big. It really comes down to flavor profile and it really comes down to sizing, like you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Is the breed itself a smaller breed, or are they not letting them grow as big it?
Speaker 3:is a smaller breed and they aren't. You know it just depends on the season because you know, just like here we're talking about with beef, you know you get droughts, you get all these other, all these other situations that you can't control. So it depends on the weather a lot on when they're going to go to harvest. You know it also goes like where's the pricing on these things right now? So if they know that they can make more money on a larger animal, they're going to let them grow longer. So it's, it really comes down to supply and demand also, um, you know the grasses are different in New Zealand than Australia in here. So flavor profile-wise, you know, and you get that big lanolin is really what gives that. That wool really gives it that gamey flavor profile. So New Zealand is definitely going to have smaller, smaller lambs.
Speaker 3:Australia saw what was going on in the domestic market here and they let their lambs grow bigger so that they could sell that bigger eye chop that you talk about, that you're talking about from colorado. But here domestically, what you have is their grass, their eight. They eat grass, they finish on grain. So what happens is is that it's more leaning towards beef people. You know, here in the united states they definitely like a domestic lamb a little bit more because it eats a more mild than a new zealand or an or an Australia, new Zealand probably is the most pungent and then Australia is definitely in between here in the domestic and imported.
Speaker 1:So if that makes sense, yeah, definitely. Oh, it makes plenty of sense. So this is the educational stuff I like to have people listen to. A lot of people have questions what's the difference between New Zealand, Australian, domestic American To me, my favorite out of the three and I can't say this because they all produce at let's talk about the highest levels, because every country produces the bottom levels and they have their different levels as they go through, depending where you are. Let's talk about the highest levels. I'm still an American lamb guy at the highest level.
Speaker 3:Although.
Speaker 1:New Zealand's got some really nice clean, and Australia, to me, is the least gamey. And then you've got New Zealand coming up and then it goes into—that's for me. Am I wrong in saying that?
Speaker 3:No, no, I mean, listen, it gets very subjective too right, like in what you want, what you want to serve, what you like to eat. Some people like a gamey or a lamb, some people don't you, some people don't. You know what I mean. It all depends on what you're looking for and what your expectations are, and really what your customers' expectations are.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, the gamey thing is what turns a lot of customers off and some just aren't ready for it.
Speaker 3:Some people absolutely love it, depending on where you are in the world. I think someone can come to a restaurant like this though a higher-end fine-dining restaurant, and have something a little more gamey with someone with your expertise. Pairs those sauces, pairs all that to make it this beautiful dining experience.
Speaker 1:Sure, the game is part of it and you have to enhance it. You do, and you have to balance it.
Speaker 2:The best, I mean one of your best lasagnas ever still was that lamb.
Speaker 1:I think it was tarragon and something else Lamb, tarragon roasted fennel oh the fennel, that was good, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Still hands down to date probably one of my top three dishes that he has made, because it was just the flavor on that was so insane that it was just like it was stupid. I still remember that that was like 10 years ago.
Speaker 1:I tried to actually follow that again and I couldn't because I forgot how I made it. I was trying to go off, remember? It's one of those things I made it. We're going to try again. You know what I mean. I was just in my zone and everything was hitting perfect. I remember making that lasagna because it had a batch of fennel that was fresh local.
Speaker 1:The fennel was so fucking good that I made the lasagna for the fennel more so than the lamb, but the lamb actually worked so good with the whole dish that could have won awards.
Speaker 3:For sure, I made the lasagna because of the fennel. No one ever said that in the world before the first person. I ever said that that's right.
Speaker 1:The roasted fennel was good and I wanted a way to work it and I made this lasagna and roasted lamb and put that in the lasagna and everything just to enhance this fennel. And the fennel was so fucking sweet and I think that's what. That's what you're not. You don't realize the actual flavor. That was that sweet fennel no, I realized all the.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying that was one of the things that was different about it, and that's why it stuck out in the memory. That is the coolest thing about like cooking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, about sourcing unbelievably great ingredients yeah, is that you take something that's like yeah you take something that's not center of the plate, it's not the focus, but you make it the focus, yeah, and then you've got this phenomenal dish that I mean, people don't even know why that she's still talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great and I love that and so anytime that you have like you, I get fucking. I call you for stuff. I mean, you've called me for a couple things here and there, for for tips and stuff, and it worked out both ways great. But you've turned me on to some great demi uh ways and some some extractions of marrow, and there's a lot of things that you have knowledge in and I think that the meat industry, or whatever it is you're working with, gets a huge benefit having you there. So anyone in the market who's out there listening wants the knowledge on meat. If you're purchasing, buying, where can they find you?
Speaker 3:is are you findable, are you? Yeah, of course I'm on. I mean LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Go to LinkedIn, yeah if you want to go to LinkedIn. If they want to get a product you represent, is that a thing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I mean we've got national distribution. We import to the East Coast and the West Coast. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can connect through you. I mean I give my phone number. If you want it like, give me a call. You know what I mean, let's go. But we've got national distribution. So we work with all the major distributors in the united states and then we work with the meat guys. Um, so yeah, you can find me for sure and you're always on the quest to do better.
Speaker 1:I know that about you, and you're always on the quest to find the next you want to, you want to surround yourself with quality.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I mean, you know, the thing too is I'm lucky because I get to travel around the country, so I get to go to major cities and eat at great restaurants and experience phenomenal dishes like you're talking about, and then bring that back and bring a value to like when we have in conversations like, oh, I ate at this place in chicago, right here, here was something that happened. Like you know, I like to share that experience, I like to share that knowledge because it sparks imagination and sparks creativity for others too. You know what?
Speaker 3:I mean sure, so I try to bring that that exactly well, listen man I'm fucking honored you're here.
Speaker 1:We love it. Great talking. I love talking about meat, all the meat sweats.
Speaker 2:We all love meat.
Speaker 1:So we need to make a t-shirt or something up that says fucking meat sweats Meat sweats.
Speaker 2:let's do it Meat sweats.
Speaker 3:How much meat do you eat?
Speaker 1:We eat meat almost every day, man. We eat for you. Just take samples and stuff your fucking feet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you get to taste? No, not like that.
Speaker 3:I mean I get some of it because I'm kind of the corporate chef too, so I mean, I absolutely work with the products. Like you know, next week I got a major presentation, like I was telling you, so I'm going to make a lamb ragu for next week I'm going to make a bra, and then we're going to make beer tacos for everybody. So, I like to expand it into so many different areas, middle Eastern, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:Nothing sucks about anything you just said.
Speaker 3:Nothing sucks about the taste of anything.
Speaker 1:Except the fact that I won't be there eating it.
Speaker 2:Except you're not delivering it here.
Speaker 1:Lamb ragu, that's my shit, Lamb ragu. So bonny.
Speaker 2:Shredded, roasted oh, it's so good man, a little whip fat on top.
Speaker 1:I eat red meat probably six days a week, twice a day I do.
Speaker 2:I eat like 100% and it's funny, a lot of the people you know I mean if you eat too much of this, I'm like now, if it's quality, it doesn't affect you the same way with your health. So take your blood work, change your diet and see if you're eating quality meat, you can eat meat. I mean, I like I do. I probably eat red meat. I do eat it every day, if not twice a day, which is most people are like no, no, tooth melt, I just don't that's it.
Speaker 3:That's all I do. You know you want to eat quality. You want quality.
Speaker 2:I just I spend a lot of money on on meat, that's I mean.
Speaker 1:I am good for it, so just spend money on the meat.
Speaker 2:that's the the bottom line of today Spend the money on the meat.
Speaker 1:Spend the money.
Speaker 2:Get good meat no seriously.
Speaker 1:When you go to a restaurant, stop bitching about prices. It's not going backwards. Here's something else I like to end this with Stop bitching about the fucking prices of food. Stop bitching that restaurants are jacking up their prices. Nobody wants to do this food as much as possible, and we also know that it can only go so high where people can't afford to come out. So we're in the same boat as you. We need everyone to stop raising prices too, so we don't have to raise them on you. Unfortunately, we have to.
Speaker 1:If you want quality, if you want good stuff, if you want the education of the people cooking it, you have to pay for it. Don't skimp on paying for it. Eating is one of the best fucking forms of entertainment there is, so just don't skimp on it. I mean, I understand people are on a budget, don't get me wrong. Not everybody has the money to just go throw out. But every once in a while, go to a restaurant and treat yourself and don't bitch about the price. Celebrate the price, because it's the only way you're going to fucking get it.
Speaker 2:There's a lot that goes into it.
Speaker 1:If you don't, if You're never going to get it, it's never going to go backwards. We're not changing. That's the way it is.
Speaker 2:Be about it, don't bitch about it, that's right, all right Beth that's it for now.
Speaker 1:Ciao for now.
Speaker 2:Ciao.
