WEBVTT

1
00:00:04.040 --> 00:00:09.960
This is later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast More what you hear Weekday

2
00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:14.400
Afternoon's on the Drive. Andrew Freeman
is the author of Chef's Drugs and Rock

3
00:00:14.439 --> 00:00:18.480
and Roll. How food Lovers,
free spirits, misfits and Wanderers created a

4
00:00:18.519 --> 00:00:22.719
new American profession. He also is
the producer and host of the independent podcast

5
00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:27.600
Andrew Talks to Chefs. His newest
book is called The Dish, The Lives

6
00:00:27.679 --> 00:00:32.560
and Labor behind One Plate of Food. Andrew Friedman, you say after this

7
00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:36.200
book, you'll never look at a
restaurant meal the same way again. How

8
00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:41.159
so, Well, what we do
in the book, thank you for having

9
00:00:41.200 --> 00:00:45.520
me, by the way, is
we take one dish at a restaurant in

10
00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:51.799
Chicago, and we look at all
the people whose lives and work come together

11
00:00:51.880 --> 00:00:55.640
on that single plate of food.
So you get to meet at the restaurant

12
00:00:55.719 --> 00:00:59.520
everybody from the dishwasher to the line
cooks, to the sioux chefs, to

13
00:00:59.560 --> 00:01:03.079
the chef owners, to the server. And then I also went out in

14
00:01:03.079 --> 00:01:07.439
the field. I interviewed all the
farmers who's wares show up on the plate,

15
00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:14.599
everyone from meat purveyors to produce farmers
to even a winery because there's a

16
00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:19.719
red wine production on the dish,
and the book is told during a restaurant's

17
00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:23.079
service, from which we break away
into those profiles, so you also get

18
00:01:23.439 --> 00:01:29.719
a very intimate look at the inner
workings of a restaurant, how something goes

19
00:01:29.799 --> 00:01:34.200
from your order being spoken to a
server to your food arriving at your table.

20
00:01:34.239 --> 00:01:40.439
We track the entire logistical process,
so people are going to learn,

21
00:01:41.079 --> 00:01:44.719
I think, unless I miss something, literally everything there is to know about

22
00:01:44.760 --> 00:01:49.719
how food gets from a farm to
your plate. This is particularly timely because

23
00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:53.280
people during the pandemic would go to
their favorite restaurant and sometimes the items they

24
00:01:53.280 --> 00:01:59.400
wanted were no longer available, and
this look at the supply chain is probably

25
00:01:59.400 --> 00:02:04.959
going to explain and why it very
much does. There are moments in the

26
00:02:04.959 --> 00:02:10.520
book where the supply chain issue and
also what became known as the Great Resignation.

27
00:02:10.759 --> 00:02:15.120
You know, a lot of people
left the restaurant industry and other industries

28
00:02:15.199 --> 00:02:17.520
during COVID when they had all this
time and to sit back and reflect,

29
00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:23.400
But there are moments in the book
where that situation kind of rears its head,

30
00:02:24.719 --> 00:02:29.639
and you also get a sense of
the things that can go wrong that

31
00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:34.280
maybe people never think about. You
know, there's a there's a meat purveyor

32
00:02:34.280 --> 00:02:38.000
at one point who talks about how
much he has to spend as a small

33
00:02:38.159 --> 00:02:44.520
independent versus what large companies spend because
they get a break for the volume of

34
00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:47.800
it on shipping boxes. I mean, that's something nobody probably thinks about.

35
00:02:47.879 --> 00:02:53.719
But a related issue is if you
can't get shipping boxes, you can't ship

36
00:02:53.759 --> 00:02:59.280
your meat. My book actually got
published a few months later to take this

37
00:02:59.319 --> 00:03:02.719
to a metal line level that it
was originally scheduled to because there was a

38
00:03:02.759 --> 00:03:07.479
paper shortage. The dish, the
lives and labor behind one plate of food.

39
00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:13.599
Andrew Friedman you know him from his
book Chef's Drugs and Rock and Roll

40
00:03:13.680 --> 00:03:19.520
and his podcast as well, and
when worlds collide, which often happens in

41
00:03:19.560 --> 00:03:28.199
the world of food. Oh absolutely, you know, we do get to

42
00:03:28.280 --> 00:03:34.039
see how these seemingly disconnected fields come
together. I mean, for me,

43
00:03:34.159 --> 00:03:38.240
one of the great links in the
book, and it's actually my favorite thing

44
00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:40.759
in the book personally, because it's
the thing I learned the most about is

45
00:03:42.280 --> 00:03:47.960
I spent a day with a truck
driver who delivers food ingredients from one of

46
00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:53.159
the area farms outside Chicago. They
are about fifty minutes outside Chicago and Marengo,

47
00:03:53.240 --> 00:03:57.400
Illinois, And I met him at
two thirty in the morning and spent

48
00:03:57.439 --> 00:04:03.080
a day with him as he delivered
produce to maybe about fifteen restaurants in the

49
00:04:03.159 --> 00:04:08.599
Chicago area. Again, this is
a job most people probably don't think about.

50
00:04:08.639 --> 00:04:15.520
He's the one who collides those worlds
and it's a fascinating job. I

51
00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:19.160
will never again be upset as a
New Yorker if I see a delivery truck

52
00:04:19.199 --> 00:04:25.560
double parked, because you know,
one of the things I learned was there's

53
00:04:25.639 --> 00:04:30.680
nowhere in major cities really for someone
to put a truck while they're bringing produce

54
00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:36.639
or whatever else into a place of
business, and it's an incredibly difficult,

55
00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:42.399
spontaneous, quick on your feet kind
of job. The other thing I find

56
00:04:42.439 --> 00:04:45.920
interesting is just you know, all
the restaurant that I profile is in the

57
00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:51.079
city, and all of these farmers
obviously, you know, they're all between

58
00:04:51.079 --> 00:04:55.879
forty five minutes and three hours from
where the restaurant sits, but they're all

59
00:04:55.920 --> 00:05:00.560
in very rural areas, and you
know, the personality types, very often,

60
00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:05.839
the politics, just the lives that
the farmers lead versus the lives that

61
00:05:05.879 --> 00:05:12.959
the people that they service lead are
those are very much two different worlds,

62
00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:16.079
and it was very stunning to me. Not that I wasn't aware of this,

63
00:05:16.639 --> 00:05:19.959
but I made all my farm visits
over the course of one week from

64
00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:25.480
my hub, which was in Chicago
that week, and to see to just

65
00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:33.360
constantly be reminded of the very different
lives led between restauranteurs and chefs and cooks

66
00:05:34.079 --> 00:05:39.639
and the people they do business with
is quite stark. But I hastened to

67
00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:44.120
add they all get along great.
They all get's a very intimate working relationship

68
00:05:44.160 --> 00:05:47.199
between farms and restaurants. The name
of the book is the Dish, the

69
00:05:47.240 --> 00:05:51.199
lives and labor behind one plate of
food. Andrew Friedman is the chef and

70
00:05:51.279 --> 00:05:56.079
the author as well. What was
the number one thing you learned from putting

71
00:05:56.079 --> 00:06:01.399
this all together, addition to what
I've just said about the truck driver,

72
00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:05.000
which was just I'm embarrassed to say, a job I never thought much about.

73
00:06:06.360 --> 00:06:14.199
You know, the commonalities in life
story between a lot of people in

74
00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:18.399
the restaurant industry and the people who
service the rest for an industry are very

75
00:06:18.480 --> 00:06:21.519
similar. I mean, we've known
for a long time through the writings of

76
00:06:21.879 --> 00:06:27.800
people like Anthony Bourdain and and I'm
not comparing myself to Tony, but you

77
00:06:27.839 --> 00:06:30.879
know, some of the work I've
done in my colleagues that a lot of

78
00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:33.600
people who just don't really fit anywhere
else in the world kind of end up

79
00:06:33.639 --> 00:06:40.720
in kitchens. It's just it's just
the way it works. And that proves

80
00:06:40.759 --> 00:06:45.839
to be in a lot of cases, very true of people who are working

81
00:06:45.879 --> 00:06:51.600
on farms, people who are producing
other things for restaurants. Again, this

82
00:06:53.959 --> 00:06:59.160
delivery driver, who had a very
interesting professional career, never really pondered even

83
00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:02.720
going into an office job. Just
isn't metabolically suited for it. And that

84
00:07:02.879 --> 00:07:08.920
is something they very much have in
common with chefs and cooks. You know,

85
00:07:08.959 --> 00:07:13.319
these are people who very much with
life that most of us, you

86
00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:15.040
know, most even me as a
writer. I mean, I spend my

87
00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:18.680
day at a desk, you know, I spend my day not that differently

88
00:07:20.040 --> 00:07:25.079
the logistics of it, you know, from someone who works at an insurance

89
00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:30.639
firm, But these people very much
live a life that's you know, out

90
00:07:30.639 --> 00:07:33.279
of the public eye, that kind
of goes to its own rhythm, that

91
00:07:33.319 --> 00:07:38.480
has its own hours. You know, farmers are up very early and their

92
00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:42.800
day ends relatively early as well.
You know, cooks very often start their

93
00:07:42.920 --> 00:07:46.639
day in the afternoon and end at
midnight. They were kind of all living

94
00:07:46.639 --> 00:07:51.360
in their own world. And that
again, it's not that I didn't know

95
00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:56.120
it, but to see it writ
large in real life, and over the

96
00:07:56.160 --> 00:08:01.879
course of the two weeks I spent
traveling around and interviewing people was quite stunning.

97
00:08:01.480 --> 00:08:05.839
And he puts it all down in
his book, Andrew Friedman's Creation The

98
00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:09.839
Dish, the lifes and labor behind
one plate of food. I like to

99
00:08:09.879 --> 00:08:13.000
cook, I like to eat,
and I love this behind the scenes kind

100
00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:18.199
of thing might even confirm Andrew when
people say, oh, Lee, you

101
00:08:18.199 --> 00:08:24.800
need to open a restaurant, Why
I have not. Yes, Well,

102
00:08:24.879 --> 00:08:28.439
it's very hard work. And also, you know, it's the finances,

103
00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:31.919
as we all learned at the beginning
of the pandemic. Well, when all

104
00:08:31.919 --> 00:08:35.600
of a sudden, restaurants were shuddering, you know, in record time,

105
00:08:37.320 --> 00:08:39.039
and everyone started to learn about the
margins. You know, a lot of

106
00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:46.080
restaurants function function on a profit margin
somewhere between three and five percent. You

107
00:08:46.120 --> 00:08:50.399
know, a lot a lot of
these places when when the lockdown happened,

108
00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:52.679
they didn't even have enough money in
the bank. To make one payroll or

109
00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:58.720
one rent payment. You know,
that was a big educational moment for the

110
00:08:58.759 --> 00:09:03.000
rest of us. And you know
that's in addition to how hard the work

111
00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:05.960
is. You know, I have
a friend who likes to say that,

112
00:09:07.519 --> 00:09:09.879
as with live theater, to the
restaurant business is a show, must go

113
00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:15.799
on kind of business. You know, one person doesn't show up, or

114
00:09:16.600 --> 00:09:22.879
the dishwashing department goes down during a
service or falls behind, or delivery doesn't

115
00:09:22.879 --> 00:09:24.799
make it when it was supposed to, or like you said earlier, supply

116
00:09:24.919 --> 00:09:30.720
issues and the ripple effect. I
mean, if just one item doesn't show

117
00:09:30.840 --> 00:09:33.720
up at your restaurant, you may
have to alter your menu. You may

118
00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:37.440
have to not just change what you're
cooking, but you you know, your

119
00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:41.720
staff has to adjust to that,
and you may have to reprint your menu

120
00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:45.480
on the same day. And this
is a constant fact of life in that

121
00:09:45.519 --> 00:09:48.639
industry. It is not the same
as throwing a dinner party by any means.

122
00:09:50.279 --> 00:09:52.600
The dish, the lives and labor
behind one plate of food. Andrew

123
00:09:52.639 --> 00:09:58.240
Friedman, thank you for joining us
and we'll enjoy your book. Thank you

124
00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:01.960
so much for having me. Thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,

125
00:10:03.279 --> 00:10:07.720
The Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons

126
00:10:07.720 --> 00:10:11.679
from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation