I’m not a foodie, I just eat a lot. Mike Miranti and Tom Miale talk about food culture from the point of view of a veteran of the hospitality industry and a food marketing / PR professional.
Episodes
Wednesday Apr 17, 2019
Wednesday Apr 17, 2019
Clean Chinese Food and Runaway Pigs
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.
Tipping is Stupid and Unfair, but Completely Necessary
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.
A Guide to Sake with Zak Gross
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 back to me and explains his answer thoroughly.
Zak started serving at a very popular Japanese Restaurant in Hollywood, California and decided he would separate himself from the other servers by learning about sake and being able to upsell expensive bottles. His sake knowledge allowed him to go work at top Japanese restaurants all over LA and NYC. He eventually became the head bartender at Shuko and then worked with as the Beverage Director at Sen Sakana.
Sake 101
There are two ways to categorize sake
Purity:
Junmai: Roughly translates to “Pure” this classification means that this sake was made only with Water, Yeast, Rice, and Koji. The rice milling can be at 70% for it to be called Junmai, but can also be a prefix for Ginjo and Daiginjo, hence Soto Sake being a Junmai Daiginjo. If sake does not have the Junmai label it means that the brewer decided to add a small amount of neutral spirit to the sake.
Milling:
Honjozo: This is the most popular classification of sake in Japan. It is the minimum amount of polishing at 70%. I like to try a brewery’s Honjozo before I try anything else because if it is good, the rest of their sake will most likely be good
Ginjo: Rice with a polishing rate of 60% or less, a cleaner sake compared to Honjozo
Daiginjo: Rice with a polishing rate of 50% or less, the highest quality sake
Wednesday Apr 10, 2019
Wednesday Apr 10, 2019
The Return Of Zagat
Last year The Infatuation acquired the Zagat brand from Google. Zagat was the original crowdsourced restaurant reviewer aggregator. It relied on customers going and dining and then giving Zagat a short review. Zagat would then take all the reviews about a restaurant, average out its grade, and write a blurb about it based on what their reviewers said. It was essentially Yelp before Yelp. The Infatuation has decided to bring back the Zagat Print guides, which have a history of being a great stocking stuffer. In this age of nostalgia-driven content, people will love to thumb through a Zagat and pick out a restaurant, instead of hopping on Yelp and seeing what people say. Zagat’s biggest advantage over Yelp is the quality of the review. Because Zagat reviews come out once a year, they are filtered, averaged, and generally positive. People who review on Zagat do so because they enjoy dining out. Yelp’s reviews hit as soon as they are published and usually, by people who had a bad experience, or honestly don’t know how to dine out and are mad that a restaurant won’t substitute their side salad for grilled organic asparagus. The vetting that Zagat does, allows it to be a much better aggregate review system. I also want to touch on OpenTable’s reviews. These are the go-to reviews that I look at on the internet. OpenTable users are more serious diners than yelp users and offer a much better critique of the restaurant. OpenTable also moderates their comments better, and because their business model isn’t based on reviewing restaurants, they don’t use them to strongarm a small business into giving them money
The NYC Hot Sauce Expo
Steve Seabury, the founder of High River Sauces, hopped on a phone call with us to talk all things Hot Sauce including next weekends NYC Hot Sauce Expo. Steve is a veteran of the Music Industry who loves heavy metal and spicy peppers. He left the music industry to start his own hot sauce company and hit the ground running. We talked to Steve about High River Sauces “Cheeba Gold” Hot Sauce is featured on the current season of the hit Youtube Show “Hot Ones”, and how his Disney obsessed daughter wanted to name a hot sauce Bippity Boppity Boop but instead came up with “Foofoo Mama Choo” In addition to owning High River Sauces, he is the owner and coordinator of The NYC Hot Sauce Expo, The California Hot Sauce Expo, and The Chicago Hot Sauce Expo. You can expect to see a Guinness Book of World Records Carolina Reaper Eating Challenge, The World’s Hottest Ramen Challenge, and of course the Chihuahua Beauty Pagent You can still buy tickets here.
Scott’s Pizza Tours
I literally ran into Scott Weiner while he was giving a tour outside of Patsy’s in East Harlem. I had heard of Scott’s Pizza Tours before because he put one of his stickers up at Dani’s House of Pizza. I lived across the street from Dani’s for 2 years and finished many a night there with a pesto slice. I told Scott about NotAFoodie and that I’d love to have him on the show. It was our easiest booking ever. I had no idea what we signed up for by booking Scott. Scott knows more about Pizza than you know about anything. He has been operating Scott’s Pizza Tours since 2008 and is the Guinness Book of World Records Holder for most pizza boxes. He also is a star of Really Dough? A Thrillist Youtube show with Lucali’s Mark Iacono. He also writes for a Pizza Trade Magazine and has a documentary called “Scott’s Pizza Tour” Scott introduced us to the Pizza Cognition Theory, which states that the pizza you grew up with is what you now define as pizza. This means that you will always compare whatever you are currently eating to your childhood pizza. We all discuss how some neighborhoods are flush with great pizzerias, and some are pizza deserts but regardless of where you live in NYC, you have better pizza options than most of the rest of America. I’ve always been a stone’s throw from great pizza, and am spoiled from the options that I have had. If you are interested in doing a Pizza Tour you can book hereTom and I are very serious about doing a NotAFoodie Private Tour though, so if you’re interested please reach out to us as well
What Are We Drinking Tonight?
Scott is going to have a Lambrusco with Meatball Pizza Mike: Ginger and Cucumber Ginger Gin Fizz 1 oz Cucumber Ginger Simple Syrup 2 Oz Gin 1 oz Lime Juice Muddled Cucumber Mix all ingredients, strain and pour into a Collins Glass with ice and top with club soda Tom: A Negroni Tom cheated, he’s going to make a Negroni with St.Agrestis from Brooklyn. I’m still made he broke the rules
Thursday Apr 04, 2019
Thursday Apr 04, 2019
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.
In this week's episode we talk:
The resurrection of Zagat
The NYC Hot Sauce Expo with Steve Seabury
All about pizza with Scott Weiner of http://www.scottspizzatours.com/
Tune in to http://www.radiorampa.nyc/notafoodie on Saturday at 3pm
Oink
Wednesday Apr 03, 2019
Wednesday Apr 03, 2019
Baseball is finally back! Food and Baseball are two of the most important things to me, so of course, we were going to talk about the best concessions at Citifield and Yankee Stadium. I’m going to address the elephant in the room and just say it. THE FOOD AT CITIFIELD HAS ALWAYS BEEN BETTER THAN THE FOOD AT YANKEE STADIUM. Period, no contest. Listen to this segment to hear our favorite places to eat at the respective stadiums, newcomers this season, and how I feel about something called a “Pizza Cupcake”
We also do an amazing "bracket challenge" to find the best college food town.
All this, plus Jason Rand stops by the studio to talk about how he worked his way up from Dishwasher to The Manager for the Antinori Portfolio. He tells us all about his hospitality journey all over NYC.
Thursday Mar 28, 2019
Thursday Mar 28, 2019
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.
This is our favorite episode yet. Baseball food, College basketball food bracket challenge, and an awesome story of a guy who worked his way from a busboy to a ninja, to a high end sommelier.
Tune in to http://www.radiorampa.nyc/notafoodie on Saturday at 3pm
Oink
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
Thursday Mar 21, 2019
Thursday Mar 21, 2019
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.
Oink
Wednesday Mar 20, 2019
Saturday Mar 09, 2019
Monday Mar 04, 2019
Monday Mar 04, 2019
Mike and Tom decide that they need to record without worrying about the FCC. This episode contains swear words!
They talk about their radio show, and Mike's fresh hell of working a restaurant opening (even though he said that he would NEVER do another opening again).
Listen!
Oink!