The NotAFoodie Podcast

by- Mike Miranti

Hello to all of our Fans (editors note- fans???!!!),
Last week Tom and I were able to land an interview with the incredible Brian Koppelman. We have been pumped up about it all week and really believe that this is our best episode, but sometimes in life with great happiness comes great pain and we have to first speak about Chef Floyd Cardoz.
Today Chef Cardoz passed away from COVID-19 related illness. I had never had the pleasure of meeting Chef Cardoz but I have only heard incredible things. A friend of mine who worked for him at Northend Grill said he left the job as soon as he learned that Chef was going to open his own place. Tom shared some really nice moments of when he first went to Tabla.

In other food news, some of New York City’s top Restauranteurs (Andrew Carmellini, Tom Colicchio, Danny Meyer, Missy Robbins, Marcus Samuelsson, and Adam Saper) penned an Op-Ed in the New York Times about how Washington absolutely needs to bail out American restaurants. You can read it here
Lastly, the Brian Koppelman interview is amazing. I am never someone who is at a loss for words and I just wanted to listen to him speak forever. I really don’t want to spoil anything but we found out what his favorite food scene in a movie is and it will definitely surprise you.
Thank you all for your continued support,
Mike Miranti

It’s 2019 and people still use food to perpetuate racist stereotypes. Food blogger and nutritionist Arielle Haspel opened up “Lucky Lee’s” a “clean” Chinese Restaurant named after her husband. I personally don’t have a problem with someone opening up a restaurant serving food from ethnicities or cultures not their own, as long as they respect it.

Haspel is not respecting Chinese culture by playing into awful stereotypes about Chinese Food being greasy and making you feel bloated. Don’t even get me started on MSG. In the ’50s and ’60s, Chinese Restaurants were incredibly popular, but never considered fine dining because of negative stereotypes. Putting up Instagram posts saying that your food has less oil than traditional Chinese Food is like putting up a post saying “Our chicken is real chicken, not cat like other Chinese restaurants”

Also, this place is only open from 11-3 so its barely a restaurant.

In other news Princess, the Pig escaped her pen in Humboldt County, California. A neighbor posted a photo on Facebook, and the local police were able to figure out who the owner was. They went to a neighbors house to ask him to watch Princess while they tracked down her owners. The neighbor obliged, but when the police got back to the home, the neighbor was in the front yard butchering Princess.

R.I.P Princess the Pig, we hardly knew ye.

Finance Giant CNBC ran this article in February, but it went viral this week. With a clickbaity title like”This Tipping Trip Can Save You Up To $400 A Year”, of course, I knew not to expect anything good, and would probably walk away angry. Long story short, to save you the click and not give them the web traffic, the author says that it is socially acceptable to tip on the pre-tax total instead of the post-tax total and he is correct but just because he is correct doesn’t mean he is right.

People, customers, guests, whatever you would like to call them don’t tip on service. They tip on personality, how they connect with their server, and a million other tiny little things. All this author did was take money out of servers pockets. This article will not turn any pre-tax tippers into post-tax tippers but will have people think that they are saving money(You just spent $100 on dinner, tipping $20 instead of $22 isn’t going to save anything)

Tipping is a necessary evil though. I definitely come from a place of privilege for what I am about to say. I’m a Tall Cis-Het White Male who has only worked at Upscale Casual/Fine Dining establishments. Every place I’ve ever worked at had a check average of $50-$100 per person, and people tip me between 18 and 20 percent. I love working for tips because I live in a place where people tip well, and I am a person that statistically speaking, people like to give money to.

If you live in a small town and work at a chain restaurant that gets people in by serving them 3 courses for $10, tips are everything to you. That fifty cents you get from a table tipping post-tax might be what actually keeps you above zero this week. Server wage is $2.13/hr in most places, which means after taxes you are working strictly for tips.

I can go deep into serving actually being skilled labor, and how most people reading this cannot do what my team is able to do. Every dinner is a symphony that I’m conducting, and much like a conductor, all I can do is tell my orchestra what to do and hope they execute it correctly. If your food comes out wrong, give the restaurant a chance to fix it before you decide you now aren’t going to tip. If you ask a female server for her number and she says no and you don’t tip, you’re a garbage person. Lastly, if you actually want to save money, learn to cook and dine out less. The best way to learn to cook is to keep following us on Instagram and Twitter and asking us questions about recipes, techniques, and anything else you can think of food wise.

Sake Expert Zak Gross joined us in the studio this week to talk all this Sake. Zak is a partner of Soto Sake, a newer sake brand that is taking the US by storm. It is an incredibly smooth and affordable Junmai Daiginjo.

Essentially everything I know about sake I learned from Zak. We worked together at Sen Sakana and he made sure to teach me everything I needed to know and then some. I still occasionally text him questions and he always gets bac...

by Mike Miranti

After a very long 3 month hiatus (sans North Fork Summit), Tom and I got back into the lab to record 2 incredible interviews and had a Skype call to catch up on our summers. My catchup was pretty quick. I moved even further uptown, but now I have a dishwasher and a kitchen island so no more complaining about cooking in my apartment. I also penned this article which got over 3.2 clicks in a week. If you haven’t seen it I would really appreciate if you could take an extra 5 minutes and read it
Tom and his family took an incredible trip out to Australia to see The Great Barrier Reef and eat all the seafood that the entire continent had to offer. His favorite was a bar and restaurant run by the local lifeguards as a way to self-fund; a low key spot right on the beach with great prices and vibes.

Spiked Seltzers took the world by storm this summer. White Claw, in particular, flexed their branding/marketing genius because they were everywhere this summer. The sparkling malt beverage has great bubbles and light and refreshing flavor, they also weigh in at 5% so these guys do the same damage as a Bud Light. You couldn’t go to a single party this summer without seeing some sort of boozy seltzer. Four Loko even got in on it and photoshopped their own 14% one just to see how people would react, and obviously twitter fell in love with the idea.

(Editors note: Call me an old man, but I still don’t get the whole concept of getting drunk on flavored water- Tom)

Two weeks ago while scrolling through Instagram I saw an ad for an entirely online Supermarket called Move. I checked out the website and was very impressed with what I saw. Move is an entirely transparent Supermarket disruptor who is sourcing the highest quality products from all over the world and selling them for 30% less than other retailers. They also have such an open dialogue with their customers that the CEO gives out his cell phone number for your to text him, so I obviously did.
“Hey Chai, I’m all in on Move. Would you like to come on my food culture podcast?” was literally all it took to book him on to our show. I’m so glad he did because he was great to talk to and I learned so much more about the product. We try not to do many phone interviews because of the sound quality and overall feel but this is a must-listen. If you like what NotAFoodie is about, you are going to like what Move is about and will want to be an early adopter of theirs. Check out their Kickstarter

(Editor’s note- In the interest of full transparency, I am a Kickstarter investor on this product. Mike sent the link and I immediately invested. I love the idea)

Giorgia Caporuscio, The Queen of Neapolitan Pizza, is the Master Pizzaiolo of both Keste Pizza and Vino locations and Don Antonio all located in Manhattan. She stopped by the studio to talk to us about Neapolitan Pizza, how to make and ferment Pizza Dough at home, and the classes that she teaches at Keste.

The 2nd Annual Pizza Festival is this weekend on October 5th and 6th. Giorgia, Tom, and I will all be there. This free festival is a bridge between Naples and New York. After you get there you can buy tickets for Pizza and Wine, VIP Options are also available. Check it out here

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We've decided that we're going to start recording previews of our radio show.

We record on Wednesdays and the show airs on Saturday, so we figured we'd give you a short podcast each week. The whole radio show will drop on http://www.radiorampa.nyc/notafoodie on Saturday at 3pm. We'll post it to our podcast feed a few days later.

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Hi Everyone.

We have a bit of a departure from our usual format this week. These are unprecedented times and we felt like we had something important to discuss.
I’m sure you all know what this is about before you even listen to it. On Monday the NYC restaurant industry essentially shutdown. Restaurants can deliver food and alcohol but no one can dine in them, and suddenly, thousands of hardworking people are out of jobs. We sat down and interviewed two friends and restaurant professionals who are doing their part to help.
Andrea Strong (@strongbuzz ), a good friend of the podcast, is a food and food policy writer. She took some time to speak to us about different philanthropic organizations that are helping, and what options are currently out there for displaced restaurant employees
Andrea’s latest Food and Wine article has become THE list of companies that are offering help. The article is constantly being updated with more philanthropic efforts as things continue. You can check it out here
Vincent Vee (expressdiscard.com), is another friend and former guest of the pod. Vince is a bar consultant and restaurant veteran, and he talked to us about his Food and Beverage Solidarity Facebook Group, and what he has experienced these last few days
His Facebook group ‘Food and Beverage Solidarity‘ is here

Lastly, we apologize for the audio quality of this episode. I think the term “fast is better than great” describes it well. We conducted all of these interviews remotely, using a cobbled-together system. Please cut us some slack on the audio levels, background noise, buzzing, and dog barking in the background.

Stay safe, be well, and be good to one another.

Tom & Mike