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Transcript:

Hey, and welcome back to Inside the Pressure Cooker. My name is Chef Chad Kelly, and I know it's been a couple of weeks since we put anything out there. We've actually been in the process of working on some new formatting. And the reason for this is we've had some really great guests on, we've had some really great shows and but unfortunately, we're only able to kind of hit the surface level of topics without having a show run hour and a half plus, which nobody really has the time for. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be revisiting some previous guests and we're going to be doing more of a host co host kind of situation where we're going to be over the period of several weeks producing episodes that will allow us to do a little bit of a deeper dive into the topic. Thank you for listening. Welcome back. Enjoy the show.

Speaker B 00:01:06

All right, Josh. So kind of a new format, right, where it's not necessarily chef interviews, so to speak. It's more chef topics, current events, and kind of compare and contrasting to talking various, you know, your perspective versus my perspective. Right. I've got I'm much more of the old school chef mentality. The chef bringing, you know, even in culinary school, when I was going to culinary school, I had the threat of 64 ounce ladles being thrown at me if I put my foot on the counter when I was chopping. I'm not even kidding. This was like the second week of school and being yelled at by big Austrian guys and French guys, that was just kind of my upbringing. So obviously a lot of that has been ingrained in me and who I am. That's just kind of what I understand the industry to be. It's a very different world now. You grew up in this industry with kind of a different perspective and growing up. So the whole thing about this is going to be kind of talking the different perspectives. Right. All right. So topic at hand, art versus suspended suspension. Sustenance.

Speaker C 00:02:39

There you go.

Speaker B 00:02:39

Right? It's just more fun to say it my way. Suspects. It's like saying Warshire.

Speaker C 00:02:48

Worcester.

Speaker B 00:02:49

Yeah. Warchester Shire. I know. They're all wrong, and I don't care. It's just fun. So art versus Sussex. Where do we want to go with this? Kick this off.

Speaker C 00:03:04

It was just kind of a title to give. It kind of a broad scope because there's no telling where this conversation might go. No idea. Started was recently I saw the menu. Have you seen the menu yet?

Speaker B 00:03:20

I have not.

Speaker C 00:03:21

All right, well, it was marketed as, like, a horror movie when they were showing the previews. Right? Yeah. They really kind of geared it towards, like, it was going to be a horror movie. And that movie, it is hilarious. It is insanely funny. But the reason it's so funny is because it pokes so much fun at fine dining while also empathizing with the people that work there. Okay, so a lot of the guests I know you haven't seen the movie, but they have a very short guest list. There's only twelve guests, and you kind of want them to die. You kind of want bad things to happen to them just because there's, like, rich assholes who don't really give a shit about food. They're just there for the exclusivity of this. And while I was talking about this movie with some friends at work, this other thing came up where you might remember this, too. About a year ago, a little over a year ago, there was a chef in Italy, I think it was a Michelin starred restaurant, who served a citrus foam in a mold of his own mouth, and he didn't serve it with utensils. He told the diet to lick the foam out of the plaster molds. And it kind of spiraled into this conversation about, like, where does food end and art began and vice versa.

Speaker B 00:04:57

Well, and at what point is that art? And what point of that is just kind of a fuck you to the guest.

Speaker C 00:05:02

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:05:08

Because cooking itself is an art. It's a beautiful art. It's a combination of art and science. Right?

Speaker C 00:05:16

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:05:17

You really have to have a foot in both worlds unless you're in the pastry, and at that point, you're just man almost all science and doing lines of fucking all purpose flour in the back. They're a whole nother breed. Yeah. So if you're a pastry person, you want to get on the show, defend yourself. Hit me up. God. Lost Chuck. There. No, but I mean, it's all an art, right? But it's all about the guest. But at a certain point, the guest starts to weigh on you as a chef, where you're just kind of that, you know what? Fine. I'm going to do this. But it's just despite you, it's like, oh, yeah, you want to see how far we can go with it here? Fine. Fuck you. Oh, now you want to bitch about it? But then there's also was that chef so egotistical that he thought that was a good idea, too.

Speaker C 00:06:33

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:06:34

Which one is it?

Speaker C 00:06:36

I don't know, because it does seem kind of like a fuck you to the guest. If you're thinking about it just from a food perspective, that's pretty disgusting. But if you're thinking about food as art and you want to push art into a more progressive area, you're going to have to make some people uncomfortable. You're going to have to ruffle some feathers. Was that the best way to go about it? Probably not.

Speaker B 00:07:09

It got them attention.

Speaker C 00:07:10

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:07:11

Who knows? Maybe that was the only point of it. I mean, in today's world where people become so fucking desensitized to so many things because of the Internet and all this social media crap, that I mean, you actually need to have something pretty significant to shock people into reality.

Speaker C 00:07:35

Yeah. So a fan of punk rock, that guy, like, literally spit in people's faces to make a statement. But I don't know, it comes off kind of pretentious at the same time, too. None of it's like a justification or is he right or is he wrong? No, it was a strange thing to see, and it kind of got me thinking about that. Plus, watching the menu is like, how much justification of quote unquote art is there? I know you haven't seen the movie, but there is a scene where a cook shoots themselves in the dining room and the diners are like, oh, it's just part of the theater. I mean, they're literally saying, like, a chef could literally get away with murder as long as it's on the menu. I thought that was a very funny but thought provoking thing.

Speaker B 00:08:41

God. And it's also so fucking sad at the same time.

Speaker C 00:08:45

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:08:46

Because at that point, everything that I'm hearing so far and the reason I haven't watched it is, honestly, I've been avoiding all those shows because I can't stand the sensationalized versions of what's