MJ (02:22.958)You
Josh Sharkey (02:38.464)Where do you put it and then what do you do next? Because I'm always, I'm sure we all have these because we're, you know, we're building businesses. Like when I have an idea for something for my business or a new business or a team member, where do you put it? And then what do you do with that? So that's one. Regardless, I want to get to that at some point, if not today. Matt or Mike, this was really more for you, but obviously we can all chat about it. But there's a big trend towards divestitures versus &A. So like a lot of large businesses, especially in the foods, in the food space.
Matthew (03:07.094)you
Josh Sharkey (03:08.05)Instead of &A are actually divesting or splitting up brands. So like Unilever is like spitting off Ben and Jerry's Craft is bifurcating their company into two separate businesses now one's got like the you know, the Hellman's in the Philadelphia and once got more like the And there's a bunch of companies doing that Why things like that?
MJ (03:22.573)Yeah.
Matthew (03:27.112)I thought when I thought when we agreed to do this that we wouldn't use so many big words. This was supposed to be like, you know, a down and dirty dumb guy wine guy.
Josh Sharkey (03:32.104)What word did I use?
Josh Sharkey (03:36.182)Okay, first of all, Matt, I feel like you have more of an education than, at least for sure than me. I'm pretty sure. I have two years of an associate from culinary school. All right. I'm going to, got to, I got to breeze through these just so we're clear. So, I call them this contradiction corner because I was doing some research. We started talking about this a bit about how there's this sort of rise of experiential dining, not just things like, you know, where you can.
Matthew (03:42.166)I don't know if that's true, but sometimes you guys talk and I'm like...
MJ (03:42.231)Hehehe
Josh Sharkey (04:06.272)golf and see shows and things like that. But even Michelin is talking about the, you know, bringing back the Gary Donne and things like that. But McKinsey had their study from 2025 come out and there was a very clear driver of like what people consider value in when they go to restaurant, what makes it feel like there's more value or not. The food is like one of the top two, but an important sizes, but like experience was like almost the bottom.
of how good the experience was. anyways, that's one, experiential restaurants and what that means. The cost of dining out is going up across the board, but it's actually getting more expensive and it's gotten more expensive to eat out than it is to eat at home, relatively to the growth.
People are planning to, well, actually, let's drop that one about discounts. talk to that other. Matt, there's a lot of talk around what I'm calling the wine reckoning. There's a huge supply versus demand challenge right now. And there's a bunch, so there's a bunch of oversupply. Demands are dropping. Tariffs are really causing big problems. Confusions around health benefits of it and alcohol.
A lot more like private labeling happening. So there's a whole wine reckoning happening. And it sounds like it's not going away. It might be just a complete paradigm shift of the wine industry. So I definitely want to talk about that, if not today, at some point. The rest you guys have already seen because they're from last time. Mike, I'm going to throw it to you because I know Matt's going to jump in anyway. So what do you want to jump and do first?
MJ (05:51.778)Let's.
Josh Sharkey (06:04.224)Take your time.
MJ (06:04.29)talk let's talk about restaurant value.
Matthew (06:06.192)Take your time. Take your time.
MJ (06:10.766)I mean, you want to start with notes? You want to just start with notes and then move to, I mean, that, I mean, that will take, that will, I don't think that should take any of us much time.
Josh Sharkey (06:13.757)I'd love that if we can.
Josh Sharkey (06:19.018)Well, yeah, so I just want to know, and yes, when you have an idea, what do you do? Like, where do you write it? And then what do you do next after that? Because that's a, I'm always having this like problem and like, where do I put it down? And then have these places I put it and then what do do next?
MJ (06:37.806)I don't see it as like a huge like problem solve if I have an idea I mean I put it in my my Call it my like Work my collaborative work management tool. So we use I use click up I think we had this conversation before or maybe maybe I wasn't using click up at the time I'll just throw it into a task or like some sort of You know, there's like a note interface and click up. I'll throw it in there
And then I use, I built this like, this isn't like anything fancy, but I built an OKR tool using, with Replet. And then I'll try to figure out how it interplays with the, you know, either the chord earlier, the annuals that I've played into. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (07:26.58)Yeah, okay. I'm gonna level set a little bit because I mean more Sure sort of as it relates to like your company your goals things like that that I mean just generally speaking right so I don't know if you use click up for your like for your life personally, but Just in general when you have an idea is are you using click Matt click up is like a product like a project management tool Are you using that for everything in your life?
MJ (07:35.395)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (07:53.094)And like, what do you do if you just have a night like, you know, you know, it'd be a really cool business is if I, you know, started a, you know, my own like wine, my own wine company. And I actually had to, you know, package my branding and I probably did step. What do you like, where do you put that? And what do you, and then what do you do next?
MJ (08:07.212)Yeah. Yeah.
MJ (08:13.538)So if it's literally just an idea, I think this speaks to what I'm currently looking at. It usually ends up as a search in a browser. It's like right now I'm doing a ton of research on residential senior assisted living. And I've got hundreds of ideas, but really the result of that is like six browser tabs.
that I just keep open. there's no, there's no, yeah, it doesn't really become like truly process driven until I really make the decision that I'm gonna, you know, try to go after this idea and really try to.
Josh Sharkey (08:46.45)All right, that seems wild, by the way, that that's like that.
Josh Sharkey (09:01.142)And for but for ideas for any of your businesses that you have those all go into click up. So you just put them into click up and
MJ (09:04.408)Yeah. If it's if if there's already something, if it's an idea that relates to an active project that I currently have, it ends up in my project management solution. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (09:14.878)Okay, Got it. Matt, what about you?
Matthew (09:16.81)I'll answer the question for you. I thank you for translating the big words for me as well, Claire.
Josh Sharkey (09:22.343)It
Matthew (09:25.086)I read it down old school. I don't know if you remember Richard Holoku at cafe gray, but he would walk around with a lined binder in his hand everywhere. And I was like, that's so corny dude. And he was like, there's no better way to keep tracking yourself. Like you scratch it off as you go and keep building the list, come in the next day and rip it off. I've got one by by on the nightstand by the bed. Cause sometimes when I'm trying to sleep, I like have these ideas, thoughts, things racing through my head. And if I don't capture them and like getting my phone out and getting the screen in my face is just like.
little jarring sometimes so sometimes I can't remember or can't read what I wrote in the morning because it's like scribbled because I'm half awake but even in in my day-to-day life before it goes into something more
tech savvy, like a program, I'm always just writing notes, whether it's for the wine bar, whether it's big ideas, shopping, thank you notes I need to send. Like right now, that just went through my list, podcast, gotta swing by the wine bar and do the buy the glass poll for the week and tack, tack, tack down the list. And I'll rip and rewrite until it actually goes into something electronic. I do do a lot of open tabs when I'm, when I'm.
researching something like my staff's always like, can we close these out? They haven't been for a week. So I do get there, but like old school pen to paper, no surprise here, the old school guy in the tech room stick into his sharpening his number two pencil. Yeah, I write it down.
Josh Sharkey (10:38.294)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (10:52.98)I mean, there's something to writing things down. The only reason I don't write things down is because my handwriting is so bad that I literally can't read what I wrote. So let me put this into context for something, and then it'll actually maybe go to the next topic anyways. But Matt has a private label wine.
MJ (10:59.939)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (11:10.998)for his restaurant. great. It's based on some other wine and sort of that you could talk about what it is because you'll explain it better. But you had that idea at some point. You know what? should fucking private label something for for Tippling House. You had that idea. You're saying you put it you wrote it down. And then what and then what did you do? Because then it turned into you now have that thing. But do you remember like the progression of like, that's a fucking good idea. I'm going to write down a piece of paper. But then it turned into now you actually have this. You you met with the producers and you did the like
What did you do from piece of paper to it becoming what it is?
Matthew (11:44.992)The, there's two producers that make half of the wine, Pax Mele and Patrick Cappiello.
Patrick's been asking me to do a private label for three years. He's done one for Chubbyfish, he's done one for other restaurants, and it's like, he's got the winery, you can buy any fruit, process it, make clean, crisp wine, and I'm like, it's not really our thing. There's a winery, very infamous winery in the south of France in Provence called Trevelyne.
Josh Sharkey (12:15.498)Why is it infamous? Is it so bad?
Matthew (12:17.684)No, was an artist family that moved there and infamous might be the wrong word, but I didn't want to call them famous, but they make a wine that nobody else does. It's half Cabernet and half Sarra blended together. And that's like something you just have never seen anywhere else. And it was a really like...
artist family, like rich artist family from Paris that settled here. And what they did was went through like the old deeds from the 1800s and saw that that's what people were doing pre-Philoxera. So he was like, well, if it worked for them, it'll work for us. But the thing that struck me when we went to visit many years ago, Eloah was his name. He's, he's since passed away and his kids run the domain is that he was like, it's a hundred percent whole cluster Cabernet Sauvignon. I've never seen that.
Again, we don't need to get into a geeky wine conversation, but like, yeah, a lot.
Josh Sharkey (13:02.432)What does that mean? Like they take the stems and everything? But what does that mean? Like they use the stems and everything?
Matthew (13:08.424)A lot of wines, most wines are destemmed because consumers don't like to taste the flavors that you find in the stems. But most of the great wines of the world are whole cluster. Like the, St. Joseph that you really enjoyed isn't a hundred percent whole cluster, but it's mostly full bunches. You get a bunch of different flavors and complexity from using the stems, but whole cluster Cabernet, like the stems are tannic and green and just nobody does it. Not in Bordeaux, not in Australia, not in California.
Josh Sharkey (13:18.697)that's interesting.
Josh Sharkey (13:26.528)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (13:36.384)Keeping us on track. I get like, but what, when you had the idea, did you literally just say, okay, great, yeah, now let's do it. And then that was it. And then they did the rest or?
Matthew (13:37.822)Yeah, so I said.
Matthew (13:44.884)I didn't have, he came to me and I said, Patrick said, I made a barrel of Cabernet Sauvignon, seven barrels, because like you said, the wine industry is hurting. So he had this great opportunity to buy this prestigious Cabernet Sauvignon that wouldn't have been affordable to him three years ago. And he's like, I made seven barrels. Do you want to come by the winery and taste it? And we were in Sonoma. And I said, fuck yeah, I'll come by and taste them. And like, while we were sitting there, I was like, bing.
Josh Sharkey (13:53.62)Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (14:03.413)Yeah.
Matthew (14:12.232)like whole cluster Cabernet, I'm sitting in Pax Mele's winery, he's the king of Syrah. So I said, Pax, could we blend a, could I buy a barrel of Syrah from you and blend these two together to make a Trayvillian homage? And he was like, fuck yeah, pull. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (14:12.309)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (14:25.614)well, so you you bought I didn't know that. So you have like literally two completely separate wines and you're just complaining together.
Matthew (14:31.69)We were in the winery and I just, ding, like Patrick's been asking and I was like, he made whole cluster cab. That's crazy. Pax makes whole cluster sera. Those are the two components to Trevalon. Thinking.
Josh Sharkey (14:42.804)Is that what people do, by the way? Do the people often do, like, hey, I'll take this wine and I'll take this wine and just blend them together?
Matthew (14:48.276)No.
MJ (14:50.025)Hahaha
Josh Sharkey (14:50.038)So that's pretty, I mean, that's a pretty like bold thing, right? To just decide, hey, can I take your wine and your wine and.
Matthew (14:54.25)You gotta know the right people, be in the right moment to be able to pull it.
MJ (14:55.96)So where was it actually blended? Was it blended in the winery that you were at at that time in Sonoma?
Matthew (15:03.072)So Pax's winery is in Sebastopol and several people make wine in his facility, including Patrick. So we literally pulled barrels down from Pax's Syrah vineyards with a pitch, with a forklift, thank you, pitchfork. And I tasted them and we did like 50-50, like with like a little, like eyeballing it.
MJ (15:10.882)Okay.
MJ (15:17.56)Forklift. Yeah.
MJ (15:26.104)Yeah, yeah.
Matthew (15:27.486)And then I picked the two, whatever, and then we did like an exact blend. And in 30 minutes, I put a blue sticker on the cab barrel I wanted and a blue sticker on the seraa barrel that I wanted. And we wrote TH.
blend with a date that was in June. They blended it together after you blend it together and let it settle for a week so that the solids sink to the bottom. We bled that off and bottled it at the end of July and it shipped to me August 6th. So from the conception to the bottling in my hand was maybe eight weeks.
MJ (15:54.68)So this is it.
MJ (15:59.832)But also the inception of the idea happened in the exact time and place where you were actually able to create them.
Matthew (16:06.386)execute it right then and there on the ground. And it's been like, I came back and said, I told my staff, yeah, it'll be good. You know, it's by the glass pricing. I think we charged $16 a glass, 25 retail.
Josh Sharkey (16:07.134)Yeah, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (16:11.774)It's delicious wine, by the way.
MJ (16:13.197)Yeah.
MJ (16:18.914)How many cases did that end up yielding? So it was two barrels. How many cases does two barrels yield?
Matthew (16:24.758)I wanted to get 52, but because of solids and all that other stuff, we got 45 12 packs and one six pack of magnums. So 40, 46 cases, think total.
MJ (16:35.221)cool.
Matthew (16:39.242)But yeah, it's 16 bucks a glass and I came back and told my staff, yeah, it's gonna be, like, it'll be good. You know, it's like, it's not gonna blow anybody's mind. And to be honest, we've gotten such wild feedback from it. I'm going through it at twice the space. But anyways, the idea came from a moment and I never actually had to write that one down, but had I not been in...
Josh Sharkey (16:52.352)Yeah.
Matthew (16:58.582)in Sebastopol on the ground, I would have written it down and then I probably would have put it into, to be honest, just straight notes in my phone under a tab that's like things to do or this week or whatever. Call Patrick about cab or something like that.
Josh Sharkey (17:14.144)Yeah, so that so so that happens you have the idea you write it down and then you put it into digital notes So like you have another project you're working on which is how why I introduce you to Mike Like when you had you had an idea to like, okay now I want to try to do this other thing Went from idea to a digital note and then do you turn that into like, okay now I'm going to do that idea and I'm gonna make it into a project or are you literally still just working off of idea note and then it kind of just Flowing with it. However, however it goes
Matthew (17:43.986)I'm a follower. Yeah, again, I'm not very conventional when I approached Mike about expanding our current burrito business. He asked me for like 400 things that I couldn't provide him because I don't, I'm not.
Josh Sharkey (17:45.054)Yeah, yeah, so you didn't decide like
Josh Sharkey (17:53.354)Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew (18:02.216)I don't do, like the burrito business that we have, the press here in Charleston is like thriving beyond anybody's wildest dreams. But it wasn't, it was always just meant to be like a little side thing. Like we didn't like do what normal people do to like vet a business or, you know what I mean? Like in the beginning, I remember we didn't have stickers that like identify the burrito. Like we didn't have any of the things that now, like we did 114 burritos in three hours on Monday. Like we couldn't do that without like,
Josh Sharkey (18:25.034)Yeah.
Matthew (18:31.229)reaching refrigerators and like all these things that we didn't have in the beginning, we kind of just like, we're like, yeah, let's sell some burritos out the window and see what happens. So I might not be the right guy to encourage people to do things.
Josh Sharkey (18:32.235)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (18:36.735)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (18:40.082)I'm honestly, I'm envious of that because I want to do that more. feel like, you know, like for any idea that I have, it starts with an idea and I'll write it down digitally. It's always digitally because I can't have terrible handwriting. And then it goes into a backlog of all the things I want to do. And like this podcast, for example, I mean, this started a long time ago, but like the idea sparked after Wiley came to our team summit and we had a cool conversation by fire and I like, we should do a podcast. But then it went to, okay, what's everything I need to do?
MJ (18:58.21)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (19:09.536)to have a great podcast. And then I just made, then I had to go create this project of like, listen to all these things, learn what makes a great podcast. Like I, I research the equipment that I need, you know, like define like the cadence and can I keep up with it, you know, enough so that it doesn't just die off. Cause when people start something and then it just dies off. And I had like, did all of these things. And then that, that meant that like from idea to actually getting it out the door ended up being like four or five months.
Matthew (19:39.124)Yeah, that's that.
Josh Sharkey (19:39.51)And and that's I don't I don't want that to be the case and I know look I think for me when I do that it's so that I feel very confident that like I will put all my energy into it cuz my if not I feel like I I don't want to like I'll just half-ass it But I want
Matthew (19:51.296)Sure.
Matthew (19:55.242)Well, there are times in my world where I do like, for instance, when we decided to put a hamburger cheeseburger on the menu at Tipling House, it was like kind of high brow, low brow idea. And it was an idea that I wrote down, but we worked on that for seven months before we released it. Like we did exactly what you were just talking about. Like they were just like, it's good. Let's just put it on the menu. I'm like, no, no, We need to know, we blind tasted the grind, the cheese, the bread, what type of pickles, what the pickling liquid was.
Josh Sharkey (20:11.083)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (20:15.179)Yeah.
Yeah.
Matthew (20:25.376)I mean, we did cheese maybe six times, all blind, like over and over for months and months and months. And people say we make the best burger in Charleston. I don't know if that's true, but I know it's fucking very good because we left no stone unturned to make sure that it was absolute extraordinary. And that was list after list after list after list and a lot of shared notes, you know, with like the chef and people.
Josh Sharkey (20:38.996)Yeah, yeah.
MJ (20:45.454)How many how many things and Josh is You know goes to you as well Matt how many things was that project competing against and how did you part because when you say seven months to get a burger blend out the door Obviously what that says to me is like, They really took their time to get it right and they left no stone unturned why couldn't that be compressed into like four days and same for you Josh like
What else did you have competing against? Because it ultimately comes down to prioritization, right? And how do you...
Josh Sharkey (21:17.718)Yeah, well, so I had to, yeah, so I'll answer that. not, I can guess how Matt will answer this. So I'll answer this and then I have a follow for Matt. But for the podcast, this is also a big part of my business and me sponsors it. So, you know, I had to also like make sure I understood, will this actually drive results that I'm looking for for my business and what our goal is and priorities and like, can I actually like, you know, like talk to the audience that we serve and things like that. So I did have to.
MJ (21:32.685)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (21:46.304)Think about that because it was part of, I have these MITs, I only have two or three at any given time, like most important things. And at that time, and it fit into that, right? So because it fit into it. what I love about when Matt just launches a burrito, a burrito line right away, before he has it the things, it's actually the right way to build product too, especially in tech is,
Matthew (21:55.254)Thank you for the translation.
Josh Sharkey (22:15.402)You actually don't even know if people will buy burritos. It might not, before you decide like, is it the best burrito? Can we produce a thousand of them? Will people actually even order burritos if we put them on the menu? And then you've proven that out and then you're actually getting some sales of it and then you can make it better. But now you've already done the thing. You've already kind of like started the momentum of like, we make burritos now. Yep. We got to make them better. Yep. We've got to get more equipment. We got to make it more efficient. We got to get this labeling and things like that. But we know people want them because the problem that happens is
If you over engineer, you think about all the things you need for a burrito and then you launch it. It's the perfect burrito and it's set up perfectly and all the equipment's there and the labeling. turns out actually nobody wants a burrito and then you're fucked. And that's like the struggle I have with features. It's a little bit easier now with tech. can kind of launch things more quickly, but I'm envious of, know, Matt's, I think that's just part of your personality too. Like you're kind of more just no BS. It's like, no, I'm going to fucking do this thing. And then.
Matthew (22:57.909)Ha!
Josh Sharkey (23:14.212)We'll see how it goes. But it's actually the best way.
Matthew (23:14.656)See if it works. To be clear, we never once have changed or improved upon the actual product itself. Where the burritos we're serving to... Yeah, I'm just saying though, the burrito we're serving today is the same marinade, same type of meat, same tortilla, same everything from day one. We knew we were putting out a great product. Like I fucking knew it was delicious. We had inspiration from a business in San Francisco.
Josh Sharkey (23:24.5)Yeah, but you spent a long time on that before. Like, you had a whole business for it.
Matthew (23:43.904)for the actual concept of heaven.
Josh Sharkey (23:44.682)But you also spend a lot of time on that style of food with other business you have and your background,
Matthew (23:48.286)Sure, I'm just saying we've improved and grown in every possible way, but the core product has never evolved. The only thing we've changed in we just passed four years, which is fucking mind blowing is cucumbers instead of squash in the green sauce. That's it. That's the only change.
Josh Sharkey (24:06.87)Have you guys ever worked on something for a long time? Like launched it and it was awesome and then nobody wanted it?
MJ (24:15.598)I I used to record music. I had a previous short-lived career as a musician. I would work on songs for months, and never would go play them live, never would actually go see how people would respond to them, just sat in a bedroom and...
tweak knobs and knobs and added little parts. But, you know, I always question like, was the actual song ever any really ever good? it like actually move people? It made me feel good, but like, did it ever actually have any impact? And, you know, would that have affected, you know, the, underlying song itself? think, yeah, anything in the creative process can.
Josh Sharkey (25:11.446)Yeah, I think Rick Rubin will probably tell you as long as it solved your need, it was good.
MJ (25:11.918)can be seen that way.
Matthew (25:19.646)I mean, it's a totally different topic, but yes, I failed every way possibly. Yes, I've put effort into businesses that have been around for a while, but I've also put in enormous effort to something, yeah, that people just didn't want or where would you like to start? I need to write a list, hold on. Bloody Mary mix.
Josh Sharkey (25:33.3)Like what?
MJ (25:37.889)Hehehehe
Josh Sharkey (25:43.476)I remember you working on that. You were on that for a while.
Matthew (25:45.406)I worked for probably four plus years on a high end Bloody Mary mix, which was fucking incredible.
Josh Sharkey (25:49.824)Did you ever launch it?
MJ (25:57.4)There's a Charleston guy who made a pretty well known Charleston mix. What's Ryan? What's his?
Matthew (26:04.544)The thing that really sticks out in that process for me, not that nobody wanting it, it was more difficult to get the consistency of the quality of ingredients to the co-packers. Like that was a huge problem that sunk the ship, but I'll never forget sitting down with one of the co-founders of Vitamin Water. He was a neighbor across the street from the restaurant. You guys are frozen. You good? You're there? Okay, No, you're good now.
Josh Sharkey (26:30.538)We're both frozen?
Matthew (26:33.642)He was a neighbor, he'd lived across the street and he came in and again, they'd sold the Coke by that point. So the guy was like, I don't even know how much, crazy amounts of money. And he's like, so wait, you want me to invest in a business that people are only gonna buy like once a month, once a quarter? Like, get the fuck out of here. I wanna invest in something that people can drink two or three times a day. Like, there's no money in something that people wanna drink like on Easter.
And like he was sitting there saying the words and I was like, dang, that's a really fucking good point. Why would you want to put all this energy into something that people drink on rare occasions? You want to make something that people want to drink like every morning or twice a day? Like I was like, okay, that makes really valid sense to me. And while we didn't stop there, we probably should have.
Josh Sharkey (27:12.736)Yeah, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (27:24.734)Yeah, you know, it's funny. I learned that lesson the hard way just starting like in tech because it's a pretty common, know, heuristic, know, when you're building a tech company is before you ever do anything, how big is the market? How frequently will people buy it? You know, if you succeed, how big can this opportunity be? You know what, you know, who's doing it today? All those things are like critical to decide to do something because once you do it,
MJ (27:32.429)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (27:52.854)You've to go all in. You're going to put a bunch of cash into it, obviously a bunch of time. And if you don't believe that there's actually an outsized opportunity to have something huge, it's not really something that you just wouldn't do it. Or you would do it knowing that, hey, don't invest a bunch of money or time and don't expect too much out of it. And in the restaurants, I never once thought that way. One, because you don't think that way when you're putting out a new menu item or something like that.
Matthew (28:10.07)Sure.
Josh Sharkey (28:20.48)But it's so obvious and took a long time to realize. But that's a perfect example. The Bloody Mary mix is probably fucking awesome. And then, yeah, people buy it.
Matthew (28:33.366)Well, they're like, you're gonna spend $18 on a Bloody Mary mix? I'm like, yeah, well you're gonna get...
20 or whatever, 10 Bloody Marys out of it. Like it's a small cost if you look at it that way. That's not how consumers think when they see, you know, Mr. T's on the shelf for $5.99 and you're at 18 bucks. They're like, so not only are you not selling it frequently, but it's like, you're now out pricing yourself out of the other potential competition. And sadly, most people aren't willing to pay 12 more dollars for a bottle of something if they can get it for five. But I did this week.
Josh Sharkey (28:38.281)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (28:46.517)Yeah.
Matthew (29:06.13)I'm sure you guys saw I posted about our little podcast here and I got a lot of really crazy feedback. Good feedback, but some people were pretty.
I was surprised by the amount of people that weighed in or shared their feelings. Some people from the Boston area, and again, I don't know how this gets distributed out, but they were definitely enjoying Eli and some of that conversation and had some of their two cents to throw in there.
A lot of people were intrigued by the robot conversation with the sommelay-ays and people texted me, they were laughing their ass off at me standing up for our craft. And then speaking of craft, the whole sharing thing and Tom Click, I mean, had so many people drop in and be like, dang, you feel that way, you don't wanna share, blah, blah, blah. Like was really whatever, but I thought the...
MJ (29:42.177)Mm-hmm.
Josh Sharkey (29:55.083)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (30:03.306)Is that from your, like a story that you posted? Yeah. DMs. Yeah.
Matthew (30:06.718)Yeah, yeah. And again, people just, I didn't expect anybody to really like weigh in or even, I had probably a handful of people that I've never met or heard from ever that like requested it.
Josh Sharkey (30:15.082)Yeah. It's wild. when I hear this now, like my team is the mostly the ones that tell me and they're like, yeah, I was on a call today and they mentioned the podcast and they listened. I'm like, really? Like they're in like Oklahoma. That's crazy. And there's a lot. Yeah. We have a lot of, you lot of, you know, we're blessed with a little.
Matthew (30:33.91)But I will say that again, we can get back onto another topic, but I think that what this conversation has done for me, and again, don't, one person listens or a million listens is not gonna change how I feel about what we're doing here. I'm gonna retire. These conversations have made me realize it's time to hang up the similar issues. Yeah, totally.
MJ (30:52.366)premiere.
MJ (30:59.116)What? What are you talking about?
Matthew (31:02.43)I just think, you know, the conversation about robots and then just the tech point of view that you guys take, and I have a good friend here in Charleston who we should bring on the show, which is also why I wanted to bring Jason on, because he's one of the person who reached out and he had some very strong opinions about Chef Calicchio and being supportive of the industry. And I don't want to speak for him. So I thought it would be best to invite him on and we can get him on so that he can share his two cents about all that. But, you know, I have a friend here in Charleston.
MJ (31:23.246)Mm-hmm.
Josh Sharkey (31:23.422)Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Matthew (31:30.742)who's probably the most famous wine person in this town by a long shot, Femi, and from Graft. And like, he really relies on AI and tech to run his businesses. So he'd probably be a really good person to bring on as well. But, you know, I'm a firm believer that like,
Michael Jordan is a former professional basketball player. He may go shoot hoops in the morning with his homies, but you know, he's not a basketball player anymore. It's like being a sommelier is something you actually actively have to be participating in, table side service. You're not once a sommelier, always a sommelier. Just a conversation. Nobody gives a shit about, you know, what I've done or the people who do the work and...
have sharpened their skill over and over and some of our conversation, it's not that big of a deal, but I'm going to move away from floor service and just put former sommelier on my handle and retire from being somebody that considers themselves an active sommelier. I think it's time.
Josh Sharkey (32:34.838)This is super fucking interesting and I think that the rest of the show might be this because I have a lot of questions and also I just want to know how you got to this but I also want to hear your definition then of what a sommelier means because here's you know and I don't want to inject myself in yet other than like like I run a tech company now and the hardest thing for me to think about is when I'm talking to people. Am I a chef? Am I a chef still? I don't know. I guess I'm not.
MJ (32:35.416)But I...
Josh Sharkey (33:04.896)I don't run a restaurant, so I guess I'm not a chef. I don't fucking know. But when I say former chef, I'm like, that doesn't feel good, because it's so much of who I am as a person, how I think. So I want to start with, what then do you consider is the definition of a sommelier? Let's start there first.
Matthew (33:25.534)You are no longer a professional chef.
Josh Sharkey (33:28.95)Okay, let's start with what is a sommelier.
MJ (33:30.254)Yeah
Matthew (33:33.278)I mean, a sommelier, you know, there's never been a beverage director in a sommelier and that gets confused in the press all the time. I see lists of the best sommeliers and then they pick people who don't work the floor and that's not how that works. know, a sommelier is...
My former partner used to always joke, you know, a server in a suit. A sole-n-a is somebody that's actually tied to service, right? You know, they're working with the maitre d or their front door lead to identify guests and what they're...
Desires are for the evening. They're working in collaboration with the kitchen on the beverage selections whether that's non-alcoholic all the way through wine like a sommelier's job There's a lot of management experience supporting captains like it's a rank in in the in the service and again, not every restaurant has Multi-tiered service levels, but at any level if there's a wine professional on the floor or a sommelier Their job is to be actively engaged in service So that would be first and foremost for being a sommelier. You have to be on the floor working
service period. Do you have to do it a certain amount nights a week or whatever like I'm not gonna get into the nitty-gritty of that.
MJ (34:44.894)So hold on, stop for a second. So you tie a sommelier directly to the restaurant field. There's no active Psalms who are, what about the court of master Psalms, right? Are any of them still engaged in daily restaurant activity or are they strictly engaged in the education of certifying Psalms? Like why does it?
Why are you tying this directly to being on the floor during service?
Matthew (35:18.25)because that's the definition of the profession.
Josh Sharkey (35:21.206)But that's why I wanted to ask that first because, you know, Tom Coleco, we just talked about, it may not be the greatest example, but there are, I don't think he cooks in restaurants, he has restaurants that he runs, so guess that's bad example. I'm trying to think of a chef who doesn't have restaurants anymore, but is on like, well, most of them still have restaurants, so I don't think it really counts.
MJ (35:39.734)any TV chef like.
Matthew (35:43.924)I mean, don't know if you remember probably 10 years ago, like Thomas Keller made an official announcement that he's not, maybe even more than that, he's no longer an active chef at the French Laundry or any of his other.
Josh Sharkey (35:57.93)Sure, but there's no way you would say you don't say Chef Thomas Keller. It's just what you say Chef Emeril Lagasse.
Matthew (36:06.334)I mean, he still wears whites. He still presents himself as the chef entrepreneur. So it's a little grayer, more gray there, but it's like, he's still like eating the food and giving critique. he made an announcement that I'm no, like don't confuse me forever working the pass. It's not part of my job description anymore. It's a little different with a sommelier, but to address the court of master sommelier, I mean, the amount of them that pass the exam and never work a floor shift again, you can do the research on your own. Off the top of my head, I only,
Josh Sharkey (36:10.592)But this is, but this is
Josh Sharkey (36:22.186)But, yeah, but again, the-
MJ (36:27.213)Yeah.
Matthew (36:36.288)know maybe less than a handful out of the hundreds. It's not it's not an organization that I have in a
any amount of respect for it to be honest. Because I think wine should be inclusive, not exclusive, and their biggest brag is how few people pass. And I've had the argument with my friends that sit there, they're like, could you imagine being a professor at like an Ivy League school, for like grad school, and bragging about how few of your students pass? Like, you wouldn't have a job.
Josh Sharkey (36:54.486)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (37:04.308)Yeah, I think that that part is it's like Master Chefs. How many Master Chefs are there? you know, it doesn't even it doesn't count,
Matthew (37:09.142)But I think, I don't think very many of them work the floor. And if they're working the floor, then they can be a sommelier. And that's part of the problem with the whole thing. Like being a master sommelier, like I don't think knowing the sub regions of, know, Valley, Chile matters, right? Like that doesn't make you a good sommelier. And sadly, our...
Josh Sharkey (37:29.077)Yeah.
Matthew (37:32.232)our field is deteriorating and or just outright dying and it's because people like me are so few and far between and nobody cares. Like there's no, the one.
Josh Sharkey (37:46.011)I think people care. I don't think it's necessarily that people don't care. I think there's probably less people...
MJ (37:48.588)Well, people don't care about what? People don't care about the craft or people don't care like what?
Matthew (37:53.216)People don't care about supporting the profession because of its nuance or because of its, people don't care about, most people are happy when they get good wine service, but they don't go out of their way to support places that spend the extra money and time and resources to do it.
Josh Sharkey (38:14.454)But Matt, when you say, would you consider being a sommelier at Kraft? So is an actor who doesn't act anymore, who hasn't acted in 20 years, are they still an actor?
Matthew (38:18.741)Yes.
Matthew (38:25.558)It's a former actor. Former actor.
Josh Sharkey (38:30.804)I don't think, I don't, I... Then what are...
MJ (38:31.256)former actor, so yeah.
Matthew (38:33.808)Yeah, we were just watching a silly movie with Cameron Diaz and I was like, God, whatever happened to her? And we were looking it up and she took a 10 year hiatus to focus on her family. And she said, I stepped away from acting. She was no longer an actress or actor.
Josh Sharkey (38:47.168)Well, she stepped away from the day-to-day of it, but it's...
MJ (38:48.11)stepped away.
Matthew (38:51.146)But would say she was a former actress. She used to be a great actress. You have to be practicing a craft to be very good at it.
Josh Sharkey (38:57.193)Yeah.
MJ (38:57.582)But should she change her career? Like, did she move on to something else?
Josh Sharkey (39:01.31)No, but I think that's I think what I think actually what you just said is that is that because that's what I've been struggling with of like it's I it's hard for me to say yes, I'm still a chef Because I think in any craft it's that you're still practicing, you know because that's part of the craft is that you're constantly like you know constantly like doing it and and in and improving and and and it's a day-to-day thing and it like any like a
MJ (39:18.274)But you've also...
Josh Sharkey (39:31.392)painter, you know, musician. If you don't make music anymore, then you're probably a former musician. But that's his, I think that's...
MJ (39:38.19)You've had a clear transition of profession, right? if you were no longer, like if you were just sitting on your ass all day doing nothing, I guess I wouldn't necessarily consider you a former chef. I'd say you're a chef who's currently not practicing. But the fact that you've now, like not only switched careers, but had a successful transition from one creator to
Matthew (39:45.621)Me?
Matthew (40:02.294)Well, you can, I mean, can be a great cook without being a chef, right?
MJ (40:07.982)But we're talking about something that's.
Josh Sharkey (40:08.0)Well, so David Chang does it. I imagine David Chang is not running his restaurants anymore and he's got a CEO. He's got, you know, people. So he's doing TV shows and podcasts and things like that. Is he a chef?
MJ (40:18.914)Yeah, he's a chef. He's a chef.
Matthew (40:19.04)Did he ever, I mean, I definitely don't think he's a chef and mostly because he wrote in his book that he was never a chef.
MJ (40:24.334)I would consider him a tel- that's a self-deprecating thing that he's always like, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (40:28.67)Yeah, he's doing that on here.
Matthew (40:29.93)I mean, he said he got kicked off the line at Kraft and couldn't make it at any job he ever did.
MJ (40:32.462)God, yeah. Doesn't mean anything.
Josh Sharkey (40:34.102)He did, but that doesn't necessarily make- he just- he wasn't good.
Matthew (40:36.36)He said himself that he wasn't, I'm just saying, he said himself he wasn't a chef. It's not Mike's job to say, he's not a chef.
MJ (40:40.246)It's because he doesn't self identify. Exactly. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (40:40.926)Yeah. Well, but he is, he's, he's self-deprecating. Yeah. He's self-deprecating on purpose, but he's, you know, he wasn't a great line cook and, know, anybody that worked with him at Cafe Blue or...
Matthew (40:48.83)And at every restaurant that he's opened, he hired a real chef. Remember, Tien Ho opened, he hired people that were more qualified for him to open every restaurant that he did.
Josh Sharkey (40:56.694)Yeah, I don't know. think he's a chef. I think he's a chef.
MJ (41:01.292)Yeah, who wrote the menus at those? Who conceptualized them? Dave Chang, yeah, Dave Chang, those were his concepts.
Josh Sharkey (41:05.428)Yeah, Chang. Chang did. Yeah, Chang did. And he also decided what was good, what wasn't. And I think he's very clearly a chef.
Matthew (41:05.568)Honestly, I don't know.
MJ (41:12.302)Exactly, yeah.
MJ (41:17.646)But I still think he is a chef. why would he not?
Josh Sharkey (41:19.476)Yeah, I do too. But this is where it's like, it's really like, Matt, if you, let's just say that you had a TV show where every day or every week you were talking about new wines and there were people on the show who sat down and you served them wines.
MJ (41:35.342)Matt's a Somalie. I'm sorry, you're fucking Somalie. Yeah, you're TV Som. You're a TV Som at that point.
Josh Sharkey (41:37.27)As a TV show, think of it like Molto- I don't say Molto Mario. Think the David Chang show, but it's you, you know, and you're just presenting wines to people and talking about them. You with Samoyed?
Matthew (41:52.48)Hard no. Again, you're not gonna change my...
MJ (41:53.806)Why? Yeah, what are you? What are you? You're just a wine guy. You're no longer a Somalian.
Josh Sharkey (41:54.902)then what are you?
Matthew (41:58.142)a wine guy, you're just doing, yeah, whatever. There's people, there's people.
Josh Sharkey (42:00.959)Okay.
Matthew (42:04.406)The craft is what we talked about in the robot situation. The craft is being able to read a table and walk them through an experience that's so unique unto itself that to disrespect it with the idea that pouring some wines on a TV set even comes close to a parallel example, it's just not factual. And anybody who's done the profession, and people who actually strap up and
Josh Sharkey (42:24.97)No, I appreciate that. I see where you're going with it.
Matthew (42:34.268)and put the suit on? I've had, I'll leave her nameless. She runs in a very, very famous program in New York right now.
She cried on her first day because New Yorkers ate her alive because it was a tentop and she couldn't control them because it takes so much skill to be able to walk up to a tentop of savvy New Yorkers that are dining out on a corporate dime and own that moment. There's no person that passed a test, blind tasting wines or whatever that can do that moment without owning the skills which require being a host, being a,
Josh Sharkey (43:10.678)Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's a really great point. I like the way you're positioning. I think I know who you're talking about, the way. But it's also what I struggle with of like calling, I don't feel like can call myself a chef. And when I'm having conversations with chefs, I can talk about the past of the things that I did and all these things. like, I know in my heart, I'm like, yeah, but like you're living it every day. It's like, you're the one like when the cook calls out, you're figuring that out. Or if your team has a...
Matthew (43:12.145)It's a,
MJ (43:12.622)Okay. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (43:38.57)that has cooks that have called out and how you're teaching them about that. And you're the one that's working on building up your chefs. And you're the ones that thinking with the new, it's an everyday thing and it's a grind. And I think I now have to, I have to officially say former chef. I've always been struggling with it, but I think you're right. I think I need to.
Matthew (43:56.886)I told you that to start before you switched. to get back to Chang, the one thing that I would agree with you guys on is he's still in creative control of professional kitchens on a connection that maybe more, a better example would be a beverage director to a sommelier. Like, you know, he's an entrepreneur chef, which I think there's more gray area there, right?
Josh Sharkey (44:01.259)you.
Josh Sharkey (44:16.48)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (44:20.488)Okay, here's nuance here. like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm planning, you know, so you know, a concept that I'll, that I'll open soon at some point. That is another like food business. Then I'm a chef again. So I wasn't and now I am. How does that work?
MJ (44:34.316)Yeah, I think so. I think you're a chef.
Matthew (44:36.832)Yeah, exactly. mean, Cameron Diaz has started acting again. She's got two Netflix things out. She's now back into acting. She's now a current actress.
Josh Sharkey (44:42.506)Hold on, okay, hold on, hold on. Now here's a, here's, I got an example that's gonna, that I think, at least for me, is gonna twist a fucking knife in this. Daniel Day-Lewis, one of the greatest actors of all time.
Matthew (44:52.309)Yeah.
MJ (44:55.022)I was gonna bring up Daniel Day-Lewis when you were talking about Cameron Diaz.
Josh Sharkey (44:58.706)one of the greatest act and he said by the way i had nothing coming up with the quote because he he explained why he went to go be a shoemaker and it was in service of being an actor
Matthew (45:01.311)Lincoln.
MJ (45:06.734)He was a shoe man. And it wasn't for a short period of time, right? Was it five or 10 years? was...
Josh Sharkey (45:11.135)No.
Josh Sharkey (45:15.094)I'm researching it now, but he said it was in service of his craft.
Matthew (45:23.67)Sure, it's the same thing as Michael Jordan. He's the greatest to ever do it. He's a former professional basketball player. No matter how you slice it or dice it, he could probably school 20 year olds in college today, in theory, in a one-on-one game.
MJ (45:38.446)But this is is semantics. This is yeah. But so. He's a basketball player. No, Michael Jordan is a basketball player. He's a former professional basketball player, but he's a basketball player. Josh or what what what needs to be clearly defined is what is a sommelier and what I think I actually just looked at the definition and I think you're actually
Josh Sharkey (45:38.55)Yeah, but he's not going back to play. He's not going back to the NBA, whereas Daniel Day-Lewis is. I think he is a former basketball player, but he is a basketball player. Yeah. Yeah. He's a former former professional basketball.
Matthew (45:42.088)It is semantics. Of course it is, but that's...
Pro professional.
He's a former professional basketball player. Yeah, sure, but he's a former professional basketball.
MJ (46:07.822)correct, where a sommelier is clearly identified as someone who works within the confines of a fine dining restaurant.
Matthew (46:14.154)It would be really, really disappointing if after a 22 year career I didn't know the definition of my own job. That would be breaking news.
MJ (46:18.997)Sir.
So to give you credit, you could probably, I think you have a more, you have a better argument to say that you are a former Somalian. If you are no longer actually practicing that craft within the confines of a fine dining restaurant. The term chef is a lot more broad. If you look up the definition of chef, it's the same thing if you look up the definition of someone who's a basketball player. A basketball player's a fucking basketball player.
Matthew (46:42.834)Agreed. Agreed.
MJ (46:51.852)A professional, a professional basketball. So Michael Jordan is a former professional basketball player.
Matthew (46:51.86)not a professional basketball player.
Matthew (46:56.224)Correct, and Josh is a former professional chef.
MJ (46:59.81)Josh is a former professional chef, sure.
Josh Sharkey (47:00.0)But then, so if that's the case, then am I just a chef now and not a professional chef?
Matthew (47:01.706)That's it.
MJ (47:06.412)Yeah, I think that makes sense.
Matthew (47:07.06)I mean, my sister is one of the best home cooks I have ever met. Like she literally could, she's one of the greatest cooks I know, but she's never cooked in a kitchen professionally. Would you call her a chef? Of course you wouldn't because she's never done it professionally. But if she has and she doesn't anymore, again, chef is a little more gray area. I will give you that. There's definitely...
Josh Sharkey (47:17.576)No, that's what I mean, like... Okay, alright.
Josh Sharkey (47:26.27)I think, but I think Salma A is really no different. By the way, did you know that...
Matthew (47:30.078)except for the fact that there's a defined definition of being on the floor and there's not for a chef.
MJ (47:31.916)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (47:34.73)Well, mean, that has changed over time, because originally I just Googled this. You probably know this, but originally, sommelier comes from an old French word for pack animal driver or beast of burden. So it's evolving from an official responsible for transporting supplies, including royal wine.
MJ (47:55.501)Stay.
Matthew (47:56.254)I think the early sommeliers job was to taste the wine before the king drank it so that if it was poisoned, they would die first. That was the, and they may have been transporting and moving things, but the original version of the sommelier was the guy who was gonna take the bullet for the king because back then people poisoned shit all the time. So they would drink it and if they didn't start burbling up their guts, then the king would be like, all right, I can drink this now. So you were tasting before somebody else, which is the whole idea of the profession is tasting a bottle, making sure that it's sound.
but doing the dance of service for me it's one of the most
enjoyable things on the planet that I wished more people loved, which is watching a great sommelier do what they do, which is different from a chef because chefs are usually most often out of sight or behind closed doors. But even in an open kitchen, watching a great chef run the pass in an open kitchen where it's quiet and everything's just working in flow, like to me, that's like...
a huge turn on in our industry that as a lifer of this industry, I love more than anything. And I wish more people cared about those nuances than what they're being fed on social media or who's telling them why to eat at the cool place or whatever, whatever. That actual skill.
Josh Sharkey (49:13.716)Yeah, but I don't think that's a realistic expectation that consumers, diners, care about that. It's like when you listen to a great... It's most amazing feeling. When you get into service and it's busy as hell, but you feel like you have control of it all and it's all pacing and you're like... And even if it's crazy, that feeling is amazing, but I don't think a diner even cares about that.
Matthew (49:21.726)It feels so good though. Feels so good.
MJ (49:38.926)It's a drug. think it's a drug. That feeling is what keeps people, think.
Josh Sharkey (49:43.242)But that's really any craft has that flow state where you're like...
Matthew (49:46.578)So last month when I was in Paris, we ate at Ventre, which is...
restaurant owned by a very famous French sommelier and he gave us some of the best wine service I've ever had in my life. I've been there many times. He's a friend. That didn't surprise me. I posted about it. It was an out of world experience. But the craziest part of the evening for me, there's only one restroom. It's probably 50 seats in there. And there was people in front of me in mine and there's a little short window.
next to the kitchen that was like waist high that poked into the dish station. And while I was waiting for the restroom, I watched the dishwasher doing what he was doing in his station. And I was like, it almost made me, it almost brought a tear to my eye because this guy was working this little, only this little station that I could see, sink station with this.
control and confidence and just the way that he washed the edge of the sink and squeezed out the sponge and then took the next cutting board. I would have eaten out of that dish station and I never got to see the guy's face, but I was like, fuck dude, without that guy, this experience that I'm having isn't the same.
Josh Sharkey (50:45.856)Yeah.
Matthew (51:02.938)And I don't get to see that guy very often and that guy never gets any love. But holy shit, do I appreciate the little nuances it takes that aren't even visible to make a great dining experience. But if you're into wine and into great dining, talking about the conversation about robots and whatever, having a sommelier that's confident and...
they're in their feels. It's a subject that I actually put on my notes to want to talk about chefs, which I think is really interesting. Like there's such a short window, right? Like we're talking about David Chang, like he used to be the most popular chef.
on the planet for maybe 10 years. And that's waned off. Like you see now certain restaurants, you put beard awards on your list of things to talk about that are like just winning all of the awards and just crushing every moment. And it's fucking awesome to see, but it's like, how short is that window? know, like the world of...
of restaurants is such a fleeting situation and catching that chef in that moment where he's actually on the pass and his knees don't hurt or catching that sommelier that's like fully confident to go out there and just fuck your dining experience in the best way possible. Like those things are so rare and I chase them like heroin. When you go down, sit down to a restaurant, you're talking about increasing prices. I could care less how much I spend if I walk out of there.
with goosebumps like I did at Vantra.
Matthew (52:29.054)Right? Like there's something that if you've dined out enough at fine dining and sadly, I think a big part of what's deteriorating the sommelier world and also the restaurant world is there's just not enough people in our field that have had the luxury of having those experiences. So it's hard to recreate them when you've never actually had one yourself. And so it's kind of, that's kind of hurting, but I think the idea of how short a window it is for a chef and then a chef in sommelier or just a restaurant to all be on the right page to be clicking on all cylinders.
Josh Sharkey (52:44.778)Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew (52:58.968)I think is what makes this industry so amazing and also what makes it so transformative. It's like there's always somebody willing to eat your lunch. You know, there's always a younger a younger guy that has different experiences than you rooted in different background and culinary traditions. And then you throw in the wine program. It's like when those things hit I mean, there's only we've talked about this before too. I think there's only one that's done it consistently.
for a large period of time, Bernardin that continues to win all of those awards and do all of these things decade after decade after decade. Everybody else that was popular 10 years ago, you look at the names, we were watching a show the other night and this guy, I know you know him, sure, he came up on the show and I was like, fuck, I haven't heard that name in ever, Fergus Henderson? Like.
Josh Sharkey (53:46.538)Yeah.
Matthew (53:48.106)When I was coming up, like that guy was getting all these crazy accolades and notoriety for cooking with Oval. Like for doing something that people have been doing since the beginning of time and he created liver that tastes good. And like the dude was as famous for five years and maybe still is. I don't know.
Josh Sharkey (53:55.306)Yeah.
MJ (53:55.886)you
Josh Sharkey (54:08.296)Yeah, but I think everybody just has their contribution and then it does only last long until you continue to contribute net new things. Yes, he sort of made Ophel more prevalent and that was a big thing then. In the same way that, I don't know, I mean, this might not be good comparison, but Alice Waters changed the way that people cook and eat. But then everybody does. I have, yeah.
Matthew (54:32.042)Have you ever eaten at Chez Panisse? So they like served me like a mixed green salad with a vinaigrette and I'd been like planning on this meal that was gonna change my life forever and I was like, I was like shocked by that that's what they served me. This is probably 15 years ago. I was actually working at Cafe Grey at the time and the sole way came over and said, we didn't expect it to be revolutionary for you today. This was revolutionary in her time.
And I was like, that's deep too. Like when she was blowing mines, it was when people were only using iceberg lettuce and blah, blah. You know, you know the drill like.
Josh Sharkey (54:57.087)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (55:05.556)Yeah, but you can't, but you know, it's change or die, you know? I mean, unless you create some sort of brand where you're just people just keep going because of that, like you have to...
Matthew (55:14.336)How many people reinvent themselves and stay in the game? Can you think of anybody?
MJ (55:19.086)of people who reinvent themselves and stay in the game.
Josh Sharkey (55:19.126)Hmm. In the food, in the food. Well, I think Chang has done it a bunch. I think Chang is a perfect example of that. You know, because he created, you know, like very, like this small restaurant that crushed it, scaled it to more and then added on magazines and he added on CPG and he added on media. And, you know, I think he's continually reinventing himself. So I think that's.
Matthew (55:22.249)Yeah, that's...
MJ (55:43.618)Are you referring just in the four walls of a restaurant and having a
Matthew (55:47.583)I mean my contention with the Chang thing right there is I don't think he ever had a great restaurant. So I wouldn't put him in that category.
Josh Sharkey (55:52.49)Really? Sambar is incredible. Sambar is as close to like an incredible restaurant. Yeah, I remember like when first...
MJ (55:53.944)Some are was awesome. Yeah.
And the original noodle bar, the original noodle bar was fucking awesome.
Matthew (56:02.174)I mean, I lived on 10th between first and second when it opened, before Kate Crater ever wrote the article that changed that man's life. And then I lived on, for 10 years, a block away from the second location and Sombar, and I've eaten there. I don't think Somb was a great restaurant for, if for nothing else, nothing else.
MJ (56:06.851)Yeah.
Matthew (56:24.368)servers wearing ratted things, wine lists that were terrible. Again, even if you loved what was on the plate, they were not putting forward a great restaurant experience, period. When I got three stars from the New York Times, I said, this is the death of that review process. And to be honest, I think that was the first big blow to their credibility as an actual review, like a credibility as a reviewer, because it put huge, like then they had to go give Shake Shack a star and like do all this stuff to drum up readers.
But that Sambar was never a three-star restaurant, I've literally been in there.
Josh Sharkey (56:55.958)I don't know. I disagree. think, you know, this is part of the problem as well with Michelin is, you know, for three stars you have to have X amount of space between tables and all kinds of things. I think that the definition of a great restaurant is do you walk away like, fuck yeah, that was awesome. And I always did. remember the first, like the food there and also the...
like how casual it was and how quick it was.
Matthew (57:24.478)You're a former chef. Of course you were impressed by a chef driven restaurant. It was the anti-hospitality embrace that they, I've been to the restaurant where they served.
MJ (57:33.686)But that was very innovative at the time. That was brand new.
Josh Sharkey (57:35.392)But that's also a decision and I think that... I don't think so. think that you can't make everybody happy and he made a conscious decision that I'm gonna choose a cohort of people that I know I can make really happy and that's enough for me and that's actually fine. In the same way that you can't like...
Matthew (57:37.224)It's insulting to the dining experience. There was, there, they...
Matthew (57:52.598)I enjoyed the restaurants, I went to them. I just wouldn't consider it being a great restaurant. I went to the second incarnation of the original noodle bar, which was right across the street, and for a long time he did a three course menu for like $30. The price changed over the years at lunch only. you got this, the menu changed every day. He probably did this for like five years. They would write it on chalkboard and it was just like three courses and it was usually nothing to do with noodles. And it was like an appetizer, an entree, and
soft serve some funny flavor of soft serve or whatever or like whatever their ice their slushy machine was and the appetizer they served me was beets and the entree they served was fluke and it was just a very delicately cooked fluke and my fork was stained with purple from the beets and I'd asked for another fork and they refused to give me another fork and when I said I just need a clean fork to eat the fluke and they said we don't change silverware here it's the policy from the chef and I
Josh Sharkey (58:29.334)Remember that.
MJ (58:50.958)All right, so that's a little, that's, yeah, that's.
Matthew (58:52.522)That's what they did. That's who they were at their core. They literally said, they'd let me get up and walk out of the restaurant without paying rather than give me a clean fork. And I literally got up and said, I can't eat the fish if you're unwilling to give me a clean fork. And they said, then have a nice day. The door's right there. This is chef's policy. And that...
Josh Sharkey (59:07.456)See, I actually, I would argue, and maybe I'm steelmaining here a bit, but that I think that that's also a decision, because look, here's, and I don't want to make this sound like you're being pompous, Matt, but like, if you came to my house and I cooked dinner for you, and I had like a beat, made some beats, and I made a fluke, and you were like, hey, I need a new fork. I might get you one, but I'm like, fuck you, Like, like.
Matthew (59:11.36)It's the true story.
Josh Sharkey (59:34.048)What are you talking about? Like, come on, we're eating, you know, and you probably wouldn't ask for that either. You would just eat it and say it's delicious. And I think, I mean, like the decision to say, no, we don't do that. Okay. Maybe that they probably, they probably don't do that now, but I think he was also trying to create, you know, a brand and a culture that like his team understood. And sometimes you have to go to an extreme so that your team knows like, Hey, we are building for, we're building a thing that we believe in and we're not going to.
you know, let, you know, things that aren't part of our vision impact that. And so you have to make hard decisions upfront that like later will maybe soften. So I.
Matthew (01:00:11.774)I think the decisions were anti-hospitality and I think that he openly bragged about it in interviews during that time, so it's not like a secret opinion of pompous Matthew. It was David Chang saying...
MJ (01:00:21.134)I would actually agree with you here, Matt. That's a fucking, that is what sort of pissed me off about the cool kid moment that he had was that specific type of attitude. A customer, are you fucking kidding me, asked me for a new fork? Get the customer, get the customer fucking fork. don't care.
Matthew (01:00:39.104)No problem.
Josh Sharkey (01:00:39.67)Yeah, no, look, I don't think that the actual action was right. you know, they should have, you know, yes, he did. And that might be a mistake and he softened over time, but it also, it was that sort of sternness that was necessary to have a net, like, new approach to dining that didn't exist before then, that now you eat at restaurants that are great restaurants where they're wearing t-shirts.
Matthew (01:00:45.898)But he embraced that, he built that culture. I mean, there's other things that are well documented.
MJ (01:01:02.368)It didn't. Yeah. And then there then there now there's there's an there's an anti-movement there became an anti-movement to that. Like the chef driven restaurant became kind of silly. Right.
Matthew (01:01:05.983)So.
So we could, of course. And again, I credit him for being a huge revolutionary figure in American dining. There's no, I'm not taking that away from him. I just, when you said, I said, give me an example of somebody who's done something really well, been in the spotlight enormously and then pivoted very well. And you said David Chang. I don't think he ever had a restaurant while he was very influential.
if not extremely influential for his time, I don't think that he made great restaurants. So give me a better example of a great restaurant that pivoted and moved with their coolness.
MJ (01:01:46.318)How do you define great restaurant? He had great restaurants. Like, they were wildly successful, they were delicious, they were fun, they were like, it's.
Josh Sharkey (01:01:48.574)Yeah, he had great, I mean I think this is, I think we're being a little bit, yeah.
Matthew (01:01:50.644)It's a noodle bar, dude. It's a noodle bar, dude. It's a noodle bar. There's lots of great noodle bars.
Josh Sharkey (01:01:55.99)First of all, there's lots of great noodles now. There wasn't then. And there wasn't anybody who knew how to cook. He invented the approach to doing that with... No, there was not chefs that were trained that were leveraging other types of cultures and other types of techniques and applying it to a noodle bar. Or anything simple of that matter.
Matthew (01:02:00.615)so David Chang invented the noodle bar? Is that what you're saying? Are you on record saying David Chang invent, there was not a noodle bar in New York City before David Chang?
MJ (01:02:04.14)No, no, he didn't invi-
MJ (01:02:12.065)Exactly.
MJ (01:02:17.058)and then think about what that spawned. That spawned the whole movement. mean, think about the restaurants like Franny's who did it around pizza. You did it with hot dogs.
Matthew (01:02:21.618)Okay, so we disagree that we disagree about Chang. I'm cool with that.
Josh Sharkey (01:02:24.832)But there's plenty of other ways. So how about this? about, maybe this isn't a pivot. I wouldn't call French laundry per se a pivot, but that was a challenge. And to do that in New York was really, really difficult. But maybe not a pivot.
Matthew (01:02:40.206)I think in the restaurant industry, there's the Balthazar style of we're going to do what we do really well for very long time.
Gotham Bar and Grill, LaBerna Den, places that didn't change who they were and while they had their cool moment, they were okay with being less cool and just being great, delivering greatness, whether or not it was popular. And then there's people who do try to pivot, but I think it's really hard and that was kind of my point. As the chef ages, wants more money, spends less time in the kitchen, builds a family, spends more time with them, all those things happen, the light bulb dims a little bit with each year.
that passes and that's just part of the industry. That's just a reality of our industry, at least in America. And I truly believe that, which is what makes when you get the moment where that chef is dedicated to putting out the best food every day and they care so much.
MJ (01:03:35.852)Yeah, it's like seeing the band. It's seen the band in that year on that tour. Like, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:03:39.223)So I have- I have- I I have one.
Matthew (01:03:40.854)Yeah, again, you go see Red Hot Chili Peppers now and you're like, what is this, a fucking geezer party? But like, if you watched them in 1992 at whatever, you're like, greatest show you've ever seen. I think restaurants are that same thing. And there are some musicians, sure.
MJ (01:03:45.646)Yeah, but if you saw him in like 92, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:03:51.018)Well, it's not always the food, by the way. It sometimes can be just things, net new things that they're doing. I have to think about examples. I wonder if you would consider major food that because you remember the original Terese, which was this tiny hole in the wall. Did really well, but it's very simple, very simple. And it had a little
MJ (01:04:07.768)Yeah. Yep.
Matthew (01:04:08.064)Yeah, turkey's best turkey sandwich I've ever had.
MJ (01:04:13.506)That was they were doing the sandwiches during the day and they were doing the tasting menu at night. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:04:16.02)Yeah, and it did really well. And then they turned that into this very, very different exclusive Red Sauce bringing back the 1970s or 80s, whatever it was, and completely changed the narrative into something where, know, Jay-Z shows up, you know, and it's a very different, and then, you know, scaled that, did more of those exclusive things. Then went back to Terese 2.0, which was
Matthew (01:04:16.116)Best turkey sandwich I ever had.
Matthew (01:04:23.209)Empire.
Josh Sharkey (01:04:44.65)completely different from the first version, but way better in its own right. And I think they've done, I think they've reinvented a bunch of times.
Matthew (01:04:53.322)I think that's a really good example.
Josh Sharkey (01:04:56.17)Wow, did Matt just agree with me on something? This feels weird.
Matthew (01:04:57.908)Yeah, I think it is. think you finally said something smart, Cherokee.
Josh Sharkey (01:05:02.262)I know there's other examples, by the way. There's probably tons of them, but... Okay, by the way, I made a protein shake this morning, like I always do, and I accidentally... I didn't tell my wife this, but I actually blended, like, maybe a quarter of a piece of paper towel into the shake. Is that... Am I gonna die?
Matthew (01:05:05.238)You
Matthew (01:05:21.342)No, your body can... you could swallow a penny, you're good.
MJ (01:05:22.83)quarter piece of a wet paper towel? Dude, you're gonna be fine. You actually went through the process of trying to strain it out after it was already blended?
Josh Sharkey (01:05:23.828)Isn't there like bleach in paper towels? I tried to strain it out, but it was like already blended.
Yeah, but was already bl- I know I caught it like right, like it was- I had a blender top on and then the lid has like, you know, that little plastic circle in the middle that you can take off. I like took that off because I usually use the, the this thing called the beast for making shakes, but like I made it in the blender and and I saw the paper towel drop into the blender and I ran right over to get it, but it already started to blend. And so I like took it off and then I strained it right away. But you was like, you know, it was this much paper towel and then it turned into this much.
Matthew (01:05:32.907)my goodness.
Josh Sharkey (01:06:02.228)So.
MJ (01:06:05.262)I'm not registering this at all. You're gonna be totally fine.
Josh Sharkey (01:06:09.878)Alright.
Matthew (01:06:10.644)Yeah, I wouldn't even have thought about it. I mean, you're looking a little green, but besides that, I think everything's fine.
Josh Sharkey (01:06:12.48)I'm not going to tell Hannah, but she'll hear it.
well, you guys are officially podcast hosts.
So this is, we're doing this every week.
Matthew (01:06:26.07)Great, I think we should get a fourth next week.
Josh Sharkey (01:06:31.959)Well, you could bring on Jason or Femi if you want, otherwise I have a bunch of folks I'd like to bring on.
Matthew (01:06:36.79)I just think it's good, I think that...
Josh Sharkey (01:06:41.43)We'll just get them lined up.
Matthew (01:06:42.486)I love, I think that Mike's the perfect yin to my yang. He thinks the exact opposite of me when it comes to a lot of things. And I think that having that now for a few weeks and then bringing someone else in, I don't want to ever feel like I'm like yelling at or beaten up on a guest, but I do think it helps like.
MJ (01:06:48.471)Yeah
Matthew (01:07:04.534)swirl some thoughts around, but I think the conversations that we've had so far have been well received from what I've heard.
Josh Sharkey (01:07:14.038)They are they are well there's actually I meant to ask you about if you if you knew somebody that my team we're going to Atlanta for this we have a bunch of customers there and We're doing like a little we have to do like this summer for one of our customers and we're doing a little happy hour at Casa Luci's one of Casa Luci's restaurants I don't know if you're familiar with them But I actually have to find the name there's a guy I Don't remember it that I think he's actually based in
in Charleston, not Atlanta, although he some restaurants there. And my team asked me if I knew him, but I don't. I'm blanking. I'll send you his name. He has a podcast too that interviews similar people. That was a tangent. Mike, we can cut that out.
MJ (01:08:04.494)Two things. One, why the fuck are you retiring? Is this an emotional decision or is this an actual logic decision?
Matthew (01:08:11.06)I think, I don't think it's that.
Matthew (01:08:20.158)I don't think it matters that much. Like I don't think anybody.
MJ (01:08:23.714)Like you still are gonna be working on the floor of a restaurant. You're done. so you're stepping outside of the confines of the four walls.
Matthew (01:08:31.412)I mean, right now I usually go in on weekends and really like shake hands and kiss babies. Like unless somebody's out of town or sick, like.
You know, it's like, the owner's here and I go pour some wine and make people feel good about what they buy. And like, it's whatever. Like I've built a great team and that's part of something that I'm extremely proud of. like saying that I'm not working the floor anymore. It doesn't mean that I can't in a pinch. It just means that I'm accepting the reality that my time. Suiting up as a Psalm is over and that I I'm going to step into the life of being a former Samoan.
MJ (01:08:45.932)Yeah, okay.
MJ (01:09:05.08)Yeah, okay.
Josh Sharkey (01:09:09.654)So I did not realize this part. I didn't realize you were saying that. Got it.
Matthew (01:09:15.028)I think that's important. Closure for me.
MJ (01:09:16.216)Well, think it sparked an interesting conversation.
Josh Sharkey (01:09:20.416)So, but you're, what does that mean for Tipling House?
Matthew (01:09:20.714)Honest, but...
Again, almost nobody will notice.
Matthew (01:09:29.088)That's it. Means I'll spend a little bit more time training, which I already do. My team's great. Again, I get so many compliments about my team, nobody wants to see me anyways, but basically it just means, typically it'll be the same. It's it's me officially, again, it's, that's what I said, it's kind of meaningless. It just can't stem from the conversation at the end of the day. I think that what I've put into the craft, I know what I've put in. I know how I define myself.
I know how it's defined who I am in my career. But there's a time where you have to say, it's time for the next generation. I think that's now because I don't think enough people give a shit.
That's the point. You guys opened my eyes. People would rather have AI tell them the two glasses that they should drink with the dish because that's easier for them than having a human interaction. And if people aren't going to go out and support people that have done all of that work, then let's move on to the next generation. And they'll do something cool with it because they always do, which kind of goes to the David Chang conversation. Like I don't think there's people out there in the next generation that have done the work that my generation had, but that's what every old man says, right? That's what every fucking
says. There are kids or young sommelays out there that are going to do extraordinary things in this space. I just don't see it right now but there's always a transition period and I think COVID kind of slapped everybody down so we'll see how the flowers grow out of the ash ashes and I'll be excited to see what that looks like but I don't think that it's my time to be participating.
Josh Sharkey (01:10:59.254)How are you going to fill this gap?
Matthew (01:11:04.534)Good question. I mean, as I said, I've slowly moved myself over the past 18 months away from being that guy anyways. Again, unless somebody's out of town, it's a small place. I definitely step up when people are sick or out of town and make sure that the restaurant's running properly. But yeah, more burrito shops, the press. I don't know, I'm crazy. I just got a new dog, maybe we'll...
Josh Sharkey (01:11:04.832)for yourself.
MJ (01:11:07.477)Open more restaurants?
Matthew (01:11:34.698)Maybe, maybe we'll, I don't know, man. I'm, you know, I love.
Josh Sharkey (01:11:38.164)Yeah, I mean, if anything, Matt, you're an entrepreneur, so I know you're going to start a business.
Matthew (01:11:41.622)Sure, yeah, and I love my chef, Micah Pearson, and I love my team, and I think they're doing great work supporting them in their journey of doing...
You know, what feels right for them in my space is something that brings me enormous, enormous gratification. So being there more for them and allowing them to lead and make the decisions, even including what's on the wine list and how we're going to serve it. And, know, how the list ebbs and flows. And again, we're doing, you know, my chef wants to do is doing oyster roast and collab dinners and all of these things. And it's like,
I'm too old for that shit, man. Like I'll sit back and order the rentals, you know, make sure that he's set up for success and has the staff that he needs and knows that whatever we talk a lot about food, you know, we taste a lot of food together, like not during service. We're, constantly, I'm constantly be like, you know, I loved the Tello Tonato. Here's a cookbook from this place that I went. You know, he just went to New York and ate at a few places and like got some inspiration. Like, so it's like that part of it is something that'll never go away, you know?
Josh Sharkey (01:12:21.396)Yeah.
Matthew (01:12:45.322)but you don't have to work a service to do that.
Josh Sharkey (01:12:45.43)That's exciting,
that's exciting, dude. Very exciting. Yeah. Steve Palmer. That was his name.
Matthew (01:12:50.934)Yeah, we'll see what happens. We'll see.
Steve Palmer. Yeah, he's like the Danny Meyer of Charleston. He owns like...
Josh Sharkey (01:12:57.866)Yeah, mighty.
Team asked me to bring him on the show.
MJ (01:13:02.83)He's the Danny Meyer. What are some of the spots?
Matthew (01:13:06.408)Indaco, Oak's Indaco is an Italian restaurant. He has Oak steakhouse, which is like one of the OG steakhouses here down like in like the original part of town, like old town or downtown by the city hall. He's got a huge space right down from my house called Merkin. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:13:06.966)It's called Indigo Road is his group.
Josh Sharkey (01:13:25.91)I mean, there's a ton. Barnate, Sistina, Shikuto, Cici, I'm just on the, his restaurant was called the Indigo Road, Corner Chop House. I mean, there's a tons, mean, they should be on Me's by the way. But yeah, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if, I think he'd be a good guest on here.
Matthew (01:13:33.782)Yeah. That's what I'm saying. He's probably got 13, 15 restaurants. Kudo.
He has right next to me here, he's got a big like coffee shop, it's called Mercantile and Mash and it's like a big, he owns that and then next to it is Bar Mash and Bar Mash does live music for free every Monday night. And my good friend.
MJ (01:13:54.572)Yeah, I've been there.
Josh Sharkey (01:14:05.864)I don't even see those on the website.
MJ (01:14:07.884)Yo, he's got a lot of places.
Matthew (01:14:10.346)Like one of my favorite things to do in Charleston, like if you guys come to town and it's a Monday night, I'm like, let's go to Bar Mesh and crush some live music. It's like a fucking, it's one of the great, when the music's great, it's one of the most insane experiences you'll have because it's free. my.
Josh Sharkey (01:14:11.716)wow, he's got like hotels.
I see them,
Yeah, I see.
Josh Sharkey (01:14:23.434)Wow, he's got a lot of like, wow, 16, yeah, December, like 16 bars and cafes. It's wild.
MJ (01:14:24.408)Like, a lot.
Matthew (01:14:26.247)Y'all are funny.
Matthew (01:14:30.836)Yeah, and he just bought Post House Inn, which is a hotel property in Mount Pleasant and that has a restaurant attached to it. Like he's...
MJ (01:14:39.66)He's got five, he's got six in development right now. He's moving Indico. He's got West Palm is in development, Nashville's in development.
Matthew (01:14:42.068)He doesn't drink.
Matthew (01:14:48.714)Yeah, he's the Danny Meyer of Charleston.
Josh Sharkey (01:14:51.414)I wonder if he would like that comparison.
Matthew (01:14:54.59)I'm sure he would. Who wouldn't?
Josh Sharkey (01:14:57.174)I don't know, maybe not him, who knows? Maybe he's the Steve... Maybe he wants to be the Steve Palmer of Charleston. I'm just messing.
Matthew (01:15:00.694)Tandy Meyer is a pretty nice guy right? sure I'm just making an analogy for two New Yorkers man I'm not trying to I'm not trying to take anything away from the guy he's wildly successful. Yeah wow let's let's hear that yeah what you're mad you're mad at greatness?
MJ (01:15:11.777)I'm not a Danny Meyer fan, by the way.
Sorry.
Josh Sharkey (01:15:16.534)Tell me tell me more
MJ (01:15:22.222)Yeah, I think that there's something disingenuous about his...
MJ (01:15:34.83)his whole thing. Like the, I'm just a nice guy from the Midwest who opened up a restaurant. think he's opened up a lot of incredible restaurants. I think that the restaurants are a little like VH1, you know?
Matthew (01:15:37.59)elaborate.
Josh Sharkey (01:16:01.974)I need a minute to process that. You know, a minute to process what you mean by VH1.
Matthew (01:16:02.09)So he's not coming on the show now, Sharkey.
MJ (01:16:04.012)Yeah. Well, VH1 was kind of the adult contemporary station to MTV. And MTV had real artists. It was more alternative, pushed boundaries more. When I think about the, I read his book.
Josh Sharkey (01:16:11.178)Yeah, I understand. Okay, got it. Yeah. Yeah.
MJ (01:16:32.258)many years ago, setting the table. And some of the stories he told and his judgments of Keith McNally, who I have since grown to become way more of a fan of Stephen Starr, Keith McNally, these guys who I view as way more artistic and way more boundary pushing and way more interesting.
Danny Meyer restaurants, I don't think are interesting. They're like super safe. They're like the safest, of most blah experiences where everyone's not, like you walk into Balthazar still to this day and I feel like I'm on a fucking movie set. Like it is.
Matthew (01:17:01.055)Yeah.
Matthew (01:17:14.87)Great, so name another great Keith McNally restaurant. Do do do do do do. Danny's had so many and Keith has one. Two if you count Odeon, which he hasn't owned in 30 years.
MJ (01:17:18.446)I mean, you could argue.
MJ (01:17:24.781)MJ (01:17:28.148)What's, my god, how am I blanking on, no, what did Stephen Starr just reopen for him? Pestis.
Matthew (01:17:30.976)The place with the burger. That's what you're going to say.
Matthew (01:17:36.48)Pastis. No, I would say the close second would be, help me out here. Mineta Tavern, that's what I was trying to think of. Yeah, I've never eaten there to be honest, because I could never get in.
MJ (01:17:41.422)What about Mineta Tavern? Mineta Tavern's a great restaurant. I mean, it's amazing. Yeah, it's awesome. these are way more interesting experiences than like Union Square Cafe. I didn't read his book, no. But yeah, I haven't. He's...
Matthew (01:17:55.872)Did you read his book? Keith McNally? Buy it today, dude. Literally, you'll read it in three days. It's like such an easy read and it's incredible. Not to be, I think setting the tables better for our industry, but Keith McNally is more entertaining. But he's incredibly entertaining and his life is wild when you read it. But let's, let me just push back on Danny a little bit. I'm not a huge Danny.
MJ (01:18:05.389)Yeah.
MJ (01:18:10.06)He's just, he's so much more entertaining.
Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew (01:18:18.846)Like, it's not like I have no skin in the game, I've never worked for him. But like, you're taking out, like, you just said blah and meh. Like, he created 11 Madison Park. Like, Tabla was one of the most important ethnic restaurants to be pushed into fine dining ever. Like, ever.
MJ (01:18:34.134)Yeah, think if you look at those two restaurants, but EMP did not become EMP until it changed hands into Will Gadara. Yeah, sure, he developed those people, but those people flourished way beyond anything Danny Meyer ever could have done.
Matthew (01:18:45.706)who hired those people.
Matthew (01:18:49.942)Again, he's the one who chose to he's the one, yep, sure, but he's the one who chose to bring a young, unnamed, unknown Daniel Um from the West Coast. Like that was his decision. And then he was smart enough to eventually sell the restaurant to him. I think the first iteration of the modern.
MJ (01:19:05.39)He didn't discover, he actually sent out someone who went and ran a process and brought Daniel Hume in.
Matthew (01:19:08.958)Sure. Again, I wasn't there in the meetings. I just know that I ate there when it was Carrie Heffernan and I was at...
MJ (01:19:16.45)Have you seen the movie, The Restaurant, like the doc, The Restaurant Tour? I think that sort of is why I'm not the biggest.
Matthew (01:19:19.476)Yeah. Yeah.
But I think the Modern, in its first incarnation, a great restaurant for what it was supposed to be, for being, think Cranmercy Tavern is one of the great restaurants of all time.
Josh Sharkey (01:19:31.37)Grammarcy Tavern.
MJ (01:19:36.686)I would say, I wouldn't argue about Gramercy. It's a great restaurant. And I would say that's the least of his like, blah restaurants that I'm sort of thinking about. Yeah.
Matthew (01:19:49.174)Sure, but when you say blah and like safe and whatever, putting an Indian restaurant in a category of three-star dining is anything but blah or safe. He put tabla and Indian food in a context that had never been delivered to the American people before. That's revolutionary.
MJ (01:20:07.116)Yeah, I think it's a little harsh to say he hasn't ever pushed the boundary. I would just say he's not my cup of tea. Like, he's like, I...
Josh Sharkey (01:20:14.518)I think you're talking more about his character maybe than his restaurants.
Matthew (01:20:14.741)Yeah.
MJ (01:20:19.086)I think it's a combination, I think it's a combo of his character as well as, like, I'm just, I'm sick of like the Danny Meyer being the like compass of, like the, of, of, like the moral compass of the industry.
Josh Sharkey (01:20:36.458)I didn't know that was, I mean, I didn't know if that is what it is. Maybe it is, but I do think there...
MJ (01:20:40.29)I think what really rubbed me the wrong way about Danny in particular, this was years ago, this was the fucking, like this really pissed me off, was the arrogance around Tipped Included within, and how, and how because he was gonna, dude, like, like I would, like.
Matthew (01:20:59.808)We need a whole nother hour for that. If we can save that to the next time. That's got, mean, you can literally, you wanna get me fired up? And I'm with you on that.
Josh Sharkey (01:21:02.582)Alright, I'm gonna add that to the list for next week.
MJ (01:21:05.964)Like that, that really fucking, that really like, him leading that, it fucking, that ruined him for me. Ruined him for me.
Josh Sharkey (01:21:10.214)We're gonna hold off on that one. I will say, so I kind of think of to Matt's point about how many hits Danny has. It's sort of like, he said it's just there's so many of them. It's almost like the, remember the takeover from Jay-Z when he's like Nas, he's got one hot album every 10 years. Nas is incredible.
Matthew (01:21:14.42)Good. Cool. I'll buy that.
MJ (01:21:33.091)Yeah.
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:21:38.005)But Jay-Z every year puts out hit album. And some of them are incredible, some of them are good, some of them okay. But every year he puts out something stellar. And Danny is consistently putting out more things. think from a... I mean, they're all not great, but not everybody has great... I worked for Danny at Tabla, and I worked for Floyd more than day. where I feel like I worked for Danny is that it was very clear that he...
MJ (01:21:51.896)Blue smoke? Blue smoke?
MJ (01:22:03.029)Yes.
Josh Sharkey (01:22:07.782)What he says about taking care of people he does like I I you know I I came from restaurants where this was just not the case where I was getting health insurance and On my on their dime. They're like bringing me to a place to talk to me about health insurance and give me wine classes and things like that You know, I didn't know what Bantfi was or multiple genitia brutto when I was you 19 years old at tabla and like I got free classes from Danny on wine, you know and
Matthew (01:22:22.57)Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew (01:22:30.368)but they were giving you access to that education. Yeah. And aside from that, I think that, you know, we can debate this as well, but we don't need to. If he's not the best, he is one of the best at letting each restaurant and chef be themselves.
They don't, you can say that they all feel blah, but the different restaurants operate under, maybe not today, let's just talk pre-COVID. Like he embraced the chef and the individuality of their cuisine and what the focus of the restaurant was. And for the most part, he provided healthcare and training and good front of the house staff and let that chef.
be themselves and go win awards and do things that most chefs or restaurant operators wouldn't want their staff getting the limelight over. I think that's what the eventual breakup with EMP was over. Again, he wanted people to be able to be in their own spotlight. And I think that is something that's very selfless and rare in our industry. And I think maybe many people do it now, but back then it wasn't.
MJ (01:23:35.906)Well, to counter what you just said about EMP, him wanting that, like, what were the other options?
Matthew (01:23:43.574)restaurant.
MJ (01:23:44.58)really? And let Will and Daniel just go out on their own and start their own restaurant?
Matthew (01:23:50.324)Have you ever heard of a chef? Have you ever heard of a, the restaurateur selling his restaurant to a chef and walking away?
MJ (01:23:56.374)I kind of think it might have been a little bit of a hostile takeover that you might not, that may not have been publicized that way. So, me who cares, you just coined that as Danny's this great guy because he sold to his employees to let them become who they were. Like, he didn't have fucking choice. Like, if those guys walked out, like, they were gonna take the entire staff with them and that restaurant would have shut down.
Matthew (01:23:59.892)Yeah, sure, but who cares? Who cares? Again, he.
Matthew (01:24:17.16)No, no, I was, I was saying.
No, no, no, I wasn't making, I wasn't talking about EMP, I was talking about him letting Floyd be Floyd at Tabla, him letting each individual chef, like when Michael Anthony took over Gramercy, even today, like Michael Anthony is doing a new project with people that aren't Danny Meyer at the Waldorf, and Danny's allowing this guy to go make money and put his name on another business. Name a restaurateur that allows the head chef of his flagship fucking restaurant, if you don't consider Union Square good,
MJ (01:24:25.8)okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew (01:24:49.118)to allow a chef to go make money and publicly be the chef of a non-Union Square hospitality group restaurant. That's cool.
MJ (01:24:55.084)Well, let's just say first of all, I didn't say these restaurants aren't good. I just think they're I just say they're. They're black, they're they're just super safe like.
Matthew (01:25:02.229)And I...
I hear what you're saying and the tip thing is where I buy into your distaste the most. And again, I got no beef or love for Danny more than what it is, but I just think you gotta give credit where credit's due. I do think he just happens to be, like I just watched a little clip of him doing this interview thing for a website online and they were like asking him New Yorker questions, like what makes you a New Yorker? And it's like, he is just a good Midwestern dude. Like he's like, oh yeah, I'd say excuse me first. Like he's just kind of that guy and maybe.
that's douchey to you in New York or whatever, but I do think that's who he's been. But I do think you gotta give credit where credit's due. He had hit after hit after hit to Sharkey's point. And if you think they're blah, the public disagrees with you. I mean, I remember being like, how can I not get into the modern? It's like 400 fucking seats. And I went in there and it was like standing room only for months and months and months. Like people loved what he put out. And maybe that is because it's a little square.
Josh Sharkey (01:25:59.186)I have a ton of respect for what he's built and I think you can't deny what he's done for the industry. I only have one beef. I have one beef with him. And it's that when I had Bark, before Shake Shack started to blow up, well that's not that, I don't care about that. He came in with Randy and JV and a couple folks to Bark. No, no, let me finish. It fine too.
MJ (01:26:06.112)I, I, I, I, yes.
MJ (01:26:16.175)didn't he fucking open Shake Shack right down the street from you? Okay.
Matthew (01:26:19.734)Yeah, let's get them.
MJ (01:26:23.413)fuck that.
Fuck, I'll let you finish.
Josh Sharkey (01:26:28.666)And so they all came to bark, bark's the hot dog, which is what I had. remember they sat at the big table at the window. before this existed, had like our, all of our trash was set up as compost, recycling, and landfill. And it was very clear. And people like bust their trays, just like you bust your tray at Shake Shack. And they all came in and they ordered the whole menu, which is great.
And they just walked out with all their trays, like, on the table, like, didn't throw anything away and just left all their empty trays on the table. Which, I don't think you even do that at Shake Shack, right? You take your trays out. Hold on.
MJ (01:27:10.882)No, you fucking bust your, yeah, bust your trays.
Matthew (01:27:15.702)dog's barking. Yeah, that's crazy. Not cleaning up your shit when you're in the industry.
Josh Sharkey (01:27:24.598)So that's my only beef. was like, really? You guys know, you're sitting next to that, across from you is that area where the trash is. I think you know it, to put this where everybody else is. It was him, I believe it was Garutti and JV and I don't remember who else. I think Randy was there. I never forget that, because I was like, really?
Matthew (01:27:35.786)Who was with him?
Matthew (01:27:44.084)Yeah, that's crazy. That's the type of shit that, and that's the type of shit that matters in hospitality. Like, especially like living in Charleston, being in a small town, like we got to watch everything that we do because you never want to offend somebody.
MJ (01:27:49.528)Yeah, that sucks.
Josh Sharkey (01:27:56.624)You know, whenever I was hiring staff at the restaurant, I would always sit them down at a table and I would bring them water. would, whether they asked or not, would bring them a glass, at Barclay Head, you know, the compostable cups, and I would bring them water and something else. And then when the, you know, when the, when it was over, when the interview was over, I would always watch for did they throw away their cup.
MJ (01:28:25.922)Hmm.
Josh Sharkey (01:28:26.302)And it was like a telltale sign, like literally like a hundred percent of the time, the people that didn't. And sometimes if I could, I would purposely, when I knew they were coming in before that, before the restaurant was open, I would put a, like a napkin or something on the ground and just see if they pick it up. Cause you know, it's empty restaurant. They're coming in, basically coming in, there's a napkin like 20 feet in, and I would just put that down and just see if they see if they pick it up. Same telltale sign, like a hundred percent of time, the person that didn't pick it up or the person that didn't throw away their cup.
MJ (01:28:34.35)You'd plant it.
Josh Sharkey (01:28:56.214)didn't get hired and not just because of that but they didn't need a bunch of the other things that we were looking for.
Matthew (01:29:07.318)They're gonna have to really edit this down, huh?
Josh Sharkey (01:29:12.266)Maybe not. It was long. It's an hour and a half. We're gonna have to... It is what it is. This is time. Matt, I hope that your new baby dog is not peeing on your floor right now. Mike, I hope you have a good birthday. Plan for Jules. And I will see you guys in seven days. Same time. Same place.
Matthew (01:29:14.804)Yeah, wrap it up.
Matthew (01:29:26.399)off.
MJ (01:29:35.662)Sounds good.
