Hal Holden-Bache and Chris Winters

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are super excited today because we have got Mr. Hal Holdenbache as well as Chris Winters from White Squirrel Farm on this episode and I'll tell you some backstory. Hal has been on the show this will be his third time and Loughlin Table is one of my favorite restaurants in the entire city and if you've listened to the show you hear me reference foods and season and Hal talking about his vegetables is you go to Loughlin Table and you eat vegetables and you're like damn these are the best vegetables I've ever had.

01:08I don't know what you do with them and so I asked him one day I said what's the story with your vegetables? How do you make your vegetables taste so good and he said I buy from a really great provider, a local farmer and he produces foods that are at the peak of their season and that's when I serve them and so I thought that was pretty brilliant. I mean it's pretty basic but it's pretty brilliant and today we're talking with Chris Winters who is the owner of White Squirrel Farms and your mind is about to be blown because the things that this guy is doing at White Squirrel Farms I don't I mean I sold produce for ten years and I didn't know this was a thing and it answers the question as to why Hal's food is so damn good is really quite amazing what they do. So I'm excited to share this interview and I would love to hear your feedback. Tell me if your mind gets blown the same way that mine is because holy cow this is a fun interview. We do this interview at Loughlin Table.

02:08I basically packed up the studio and took it out there to Loughlin Table so this episode is coming to you from Nashville Restaurant Radio East at Loughlin Table so there's little sounds behind us. It's a restaurant. Things are happening in the building. So apologize if that that comes through but super fun interview and I'm super excited to share it with you. I do want to say I'm even also very very excited that one of our sponsors poached poached jobs hospitality jobs is extending their free posting for the month of October. Wow. So the month of September they did so well. So many of you jumped on and started posting your jobs for free on poachedjobs.com. You can go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com and if you go there you can click the sponsors tab where you will see poached jobs. Click the link there take you directly to it and if you do that I appreciate you going to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com and clicking the sponsors tab and hitting that link because it is special link that shows up that you found poached through Nashville Restaurant Radio.

03:11I would love to get the credit for that. I want them to see a little return on their investment. So if you go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com hit the sponsors tab poached jobs. Let me tell you a little bit about poached jobs. They are based in Portland Oregon and they are founded in 2011 by hospitality veterans. More than half of them spent years working in the hospital industry and many of them still actually do. So poached is the nation's top jobs marketplace for the hospitality industry with innovative on demand staffing technology and permanent hire solutions. Poached gives employers the flexibility and control needed to decrease labor costs and increase productivity. I don't know if you know this but they also offer gigs. So if you just need somebody to be come in and wash dishes for the night you can go to poached and you can post a job just for that day. Now that posting is not free because you're actually paying for the employee. But if you need a bartender, you need a manager, you need a server, host, whatever it might be, go to poached.com or go to the NashvilleRestaurantRadio page and place an ad, place an ad for whatever position you need and it is 100% free.

04:16So stop paying money for these other sites. Once it is, once it comes back on, it's only $59 a month, right? So this is a $59 value for each job posting and it's free for the month of October if you are a listener of Nashville Restaurant Radio. So super exciting stuff here. Hey, I also want to say I don't typically do this, but I had somebody reach out and her name is Gina Syracuse and she owns a place. It is called Gina's Italian Cuisine and she's doing a special dinner. If you like Italian food on October the 15th, 2022, you can get a taste of Southern Italy with Gina's Italian Cuisine. There's only 25 spots available, it's $125 a person and it includes three glasses of wine plus Prosecco and it is at 144 McGavic Pike. You should go check it out. It's something I told her, I said I would be happy to mention it. She's doing something really cool. She's a musician, she's Italian, she is making, she's making this big Italian dinner and if you want to go, you should definitely, definitely go.

05:22You can give her a call, 215-801-9074 if you would like to partake in that dinner. Some people love Italian food and this is an opportunity for you to go enjoy that. I also want to mention that my good friends Chad and Gracie over at Eastside Bon Me are doing the Bon Me project with Bon Me's that benefit the Nashville Food Project. I think this week is kisser and it looks absolutely amazing. You should follow them on the social media and see who's coming up because man, Trevor Moran, her aunt over at Lyra. This week is kisser. Like I said, the Michael Hanna was really, really good and they're going to announce they're going to have a special guest to do the final one. It's a surprise and you can listen here to find out first they're going to announce it on this show. Hey, another thing I want to know, let you guys know that is an opportunity here, this studio that we're in, if you want to host your own podcast, we are going to be renting studio time.

06:25If you are interested in renting the studio, coming in and utilizing the studio, I've got four microphones in here. It is something that we are going to start booking out. It is really affordable and if you need editing, if you need the whole thing, if you just need help getting your podcast off, just starting it, please feel free to reach out to me at Brandon underscore NRR, send me a DM and let me know you're interested. I'd be happy to tell you more about it. We're in Hillsborough Village and it is set up for audio as well. If you want to do video, you're welcome to bring your own stuff, but I have StreamYard. I can record video, but if you would like to utilize the Nashville Restaurant Radio studios for your own podcast, we are happy, happy, happy to post or to host you. Those are announcements for today and I hope you enjoyed this interview with Hal and Chris Winters. We're excited today to join you from Nashville Restaurant Radio East today.

07:28We have a special studio set up inside of Loughlin Table. I am joined with the chef and owner, Chef Hal Holdenbaich and I'm also joined with Chris Winters from White Squirrel Farms. Gentlemen, thanks for having us here today. Hey man, what's up? Thanks for coming over to the East side. Thanks for having us. We're really excited. This is a special episode because Hal is going to be my co-host for this episode. Nice. Hal is going to be helping interview Chris because Chris has been working with Hal since what? You're two? How long have you been doing this? From the get-go. From the get-go. Pretty much from the beginning. Wow. More or less. When you reached out and talked about wanting to do another show, I honestly didn't have a lot to say, I don't think. We had kind of talked about COVID and the mess of reopening and the employee shortage of the past year and a half that everybody's been dealing with, all the different struggles.

08:31I just kind of grew a little numb to that and didn't know that I had much to say. Then I was like, man, let's bring Chris in and let's talk about what it's like to have a real good chef-farmer relationship and how this benefits so many people. Obviously, the restaurant, the farm, but then the guests, the community, everybody that comes here to eat, the wonderful food that is being grown at White Squirrel Farms by Chris and Tracy and Winston and all the care that they're doing and then obviously harvesting to us two to three times a week here at Loughlin Table. Chris and I met year one through a mutual friend, year one of Loughlin Table. I didn't realize at that point in time just how important White Squirrel Farms was going to become to Loughlin Table.

09:32Well, I think one of my favorites, and Chris, we're going to get to you, we have tons to talk about to you. If you've listened to the podcast, one of the things you hear me talk about is how over at Loughlin Table. I reference this because I hired chefs at Mayor Bull and I said, I want you to focus on seasonality and I want you to find product that's growing in that season. I don't want asparagus in December. I want the products that are growing in that season to be reflected on the menu. I asked you, I think it was in our last interview, I said, I don't know how you do it, but your vegetables, your regular vegetables, if you come in here and you get roasted vegetables, they're the best tasting vegetables I've ever had in my life. And I asked you, I said, how do you do it? And you said, I buy from local farms at the peak of the season when the products are supposed to be grown. And it's kind of an honor today because I've referenced that like a hundred times on this show to be sitting with the man that's growing those vegetables. So this is really exciting, Chris, to have you here. Thank you so much. And what Hal does also over here just to say is not only does he use them when they're But he goes through the trouble to change the menu, to make adjustments.

10:39It's trouble. It's trouble for them. There's no way it's not. It takes work and effort to make changes in your flow. So he basically tries to make their flow match the flow of nature, which is what we're working with more or less through seasonality. Yeah. And I mean, one of my favorite chefs is Marco Pierre White. And one of his sayings is, you know, to follow mother nature, like Chris just said, you know, she knows what's up. And if we follow her lead, we should be doing good things. You know, there was an old story about him bird hunting one day. And I'm not sure the type of bird, but the bird was eating a certain berry when he came upon it and he harvested the bird. And then he went and picked some of the berries. And he made a sauce with the berries. And it's like, how beautiful and brilliant is that? But we're not really thinking that way, I don't think.

11:40So it is so simple. It's beautiful. And I love the way that we talk with Chris at White Squirrel Farms. He always gives us like a five days, you know, maybe seven days heads up on the last harvest. And then also like maybe a heads up on a product that is going to be harvested soon. And we've learned how to do that together so that, you know, the kitchen has time to, you know, talk about, okay, these are going away. And we're in a big part of that right now. You know, summer things are going away, fall things are coming in. So we're, we're, we're constantly changing. You know, tomatoes are kind of still here, but almost still not, you know, arugula is coming in, radishes are coming in, kale is coming in, lots of things are coming in. You know, we're just always standing in constant communication so that we don't miss the first harvest or the last harvest. You know, like it's important to me when you start working with a farm, like your own convenience is one thing, but you've got to be there for others as well.

12:44I don't want to stop buying tomatoes from White Squirrel Farms four weeks before they're done because then there's a commitment to each other. There's a partnership there. Yeah, it's a commitment to each other, whether it's spoken or written or not. Yeah. You know, can we get some background on your actual farm? So where is your farm located? It's in Bethpage, Tennessee, which is in northern Sumner County, an incorporated area. Been there. We bought the farm side and scene, actually, when we were living in California, learning to do some of the vegetable farming on a farm up there. And we've been there since it wasn't really farmed. And it was farmed back in the late 1700s. Oh, wow. So not really since it was grazed a bit. How many acres do you have? The farm is about 30 acres, but we farm vegetables on about one and a half acres. Oh, wow. So just one and a half acres. Very intensive. How many restaurants do you service to? You service two restaurants, two restaurants right now, because our intent from the very beginning, there was a point where I had maybe more like eight restaurants.

13:52But our goal wasn't to spread ourselves out like that, because farming is not all I want to do with my life. You know, we're dynamic people with dynamic interests. So if all I'm doing is running around, I deliver the produce for our farm. Right. And let me stop for one second, because my wife, Tracy DeLong, really is the reason it works. I'm more into like soil biology, electromagnetism, things like this. She's the logistics. She's the planner. She's the seed starter. But you have to have that yin and yang to make everything work. Yin and yang is everything. It's rhythmic, balanced interchange. Rhythmic, balanced interchange. That's the way everything in the universe works, from soil to human beings. Now we're getting deep. I like it. Yeah. So electroculture is what the broad term is that what we practice. It goes beyond organic. Of course, it's organic. Definitely no chemicals, no chemical pesticides of any nature, anything like that.

14:54That's pretty commonplace these days. You know, you can go to any major food outlet and find organic options of something. And that's great. However, most of the issues that have brought about conventional agriculture, like the need for all these industrial products, is because of electromagnetism being out of balance in soil. Tell me about that. So it's yin and yang. We're getting granular here, and I'm good with that, but just like... It's yin and yang. So everything is yin and yang. And the rhythmic, balanced interchange of those energies, every single thing. And I would challenge anyone in the world to find a scenario where that wasn't the case. Because it's observable. In the soil for here, for example, we have a limestone bedrock. You see the limestone outcroppings everywhere. It's limestone city, right? That's diamagnetic rock. There's only one energy, but... What does that even mean? Diomagnetic rock? Diomagnetic, D-I-A. Well, I'll explain. Diomagnetic. There's only one energy, but it manifests in the appearance of two.

15:55And then goes back to one. Just like male, female, they have a baby, back to one, right? OK. Just like the ocean, the oceanic field is always there. That's the female. The male is the electric spark that makes the wave, OK? And in soil, you have bedrock here, for instance, that's diamagnetic limestone. This can be measured. Phil Callahan is a far-American farmer who actually developed a machine for measuring this. Really? A Callahan soil machine, PCM. Phil Callahan Soil Machine, PCSM. That's the name. And they're hard to buy these days, unless you find one used. But they can measure the diamagnetic or paramagnetic qualities of rock, or anything for that matter, right? So diamagnetic is like yin. And yin energy flows from the Earth up toward the cosmos. I'm trained in medical qigong, Chinese medicine. So this is what I do as well. Same concept for when you treat a person is treating the soil, because everything is the same.

16:58Only different densities of light discern how we perceive the soil versus how I see how, dust to dust. So the diamagnetic limestone is sending energy up, right? Like rising energy from the Earth, female energy, yin, cold. You have to balance that out with paramagnetic, which is the other manifestation of the one energy. It's like the yang. So we balance the yang here. In some areas, like let's say in Vermont, where there's lots of basalt rock, or in Colorado, where there's lots of granite rock, you would be balancing with diamagnetic. You'd be balancing with more yin rock. How do you do that? You add the rock. So in our case, we add paramagnetic rock. And what does that do for the soil? So then you plant seeds and together they grow? Well, so when you have a balance of yin and yang, and in this case we're talking about diamagnetic rock and paramagnetic rock, they create alternating current.

18:05They create life. Life only comes from rhythmic balanced interchange. So if you're too yang, you need yin. If you're too yin, you need yang. Same way traditional Chinese medicine works. Wow. See, that's a different level. That's a whole other level of farming that I didn't even, I never would have assumed or even thought that people were doing. Right, and this is very old. It's very old. Do other farmers do this? There are others. We are a small bunch, but there are others. And there used to be a lot more. So what does it do for the actual plant? Like you plant the seed, you have these two different, you have this yin and yang, and I've been saying yin and yang forever. I'm wrong with that, right? Yes, sir. It's yin and yang. I'll now know that. Thank you for the subtle correction. At the end of the day, it's just all sounds. Yeah. If you know what you mean, you know what you mean. I think that's most important. Yeah. I am fascinated by you all of a sudden. Oh, he's he's an amazingly intelligent person.

19:06I get the benefit of getting to have conversations with him a number of times a week. I mean, he inspires me. He educates me. You know, if I ever get sick in life, I'm calling Chris. Like I'm moving to Beth Page. I'm going to, you know, put a tent out in his front yard. Like I'm going to let him take care of me, you know, because he's just incredibly intelligent. And that's all like on the other side of. Yes, that's my side. You know what I'm saying? Like at home. Yeah. The whole chef thing and all the beautiful produce that we get here at Lachlan Table, you know, that we get to cook in our wood burning oven and feed to our guests. And they're like, oh, these are so good. These are so good. It's like, well, you know, once again, a lot went into that. It's full of energy. Yeah. So you can measure it with an angstrom meter. You can the energy, the energy off of a piece of food. Let's get back to this. So you have the yin and yang with these different rocks. You plant a seed and then those two energies come together to help that life form.

20:09It germinates, it sprouts. What is the, so you said there's actual, like you have zucchini squash, right? Just a yellow squash that grows. You pull that out of the ground. Then there's an actual energy that you can measure inside that vegetable. Of course. Everything has energy. You can measure angstroms. Actually, when we first started, so we didn't do this stuff in the beginning, we were organic farmers, right? So years go by and you do it. Whatever successes and failures are always in tandem. And over time, you may become disinterested, which was my case. And I went to school for medical Qigong. Kept farming. Not disinterested, but there's more to what we're doing than adding NPK values and nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. NPK fertilizer is kind of like basic all purpose, like an all purpose fertilizer, like a 333 NPK, right? And that's what, you know, like if you go to the USDA extension office in Gallatin, the extension agent will straight up tell you that most farmers are making their money off playing crop insurance games.

21:21And they spend more time in the office filling out paperwork than they do doing farm work. And then they go spray a bunch of horrible pesticides because they have all these bad bugs. One of the things about electromagnetism is that when it's out of whack in the soil, the plants that are in that soil give off gases, namely ethanol and ammonia. And the bugs are attracted to ethanol and ammonia to come get high and drunk on the gases. The plant matters collateral damage. Interesting. They're not there for the plant. And then in effect, they draw up the soilborne diseases by going in the dirt, crawling on the plant. So most of the detriment is caused by the out of whack electromagnetism. And then most of the fertilizers that conventional farmers are using are ammonium nitrates, which is putting more ammonia in the soil. And it's also a product of bomb making. So de facto, I mean, carbon footprint is nothing. Carmic footprint is everything.

22:23Carbon is beautiful. Everything is carbon. Carbon is not our concern. Is that a misterm? It's not a misterm. It's an intentional miseducation of the public. Tell us about the karmic side of that. Demonizing carbon. Let's talk about the karmic side of that. I always took that as meaning the less distance you had to travel in a vehicle to drop something off. Yes, and it does. And in that point, that's great. But it's way overemphasized as far as what's really what. You know what I mean? In my opinion, this is obviously all my opinion. Carbon footprint was definitely latched onto. And I still see places with little posters up about their carbon. And yeah, OK, but it's a coffee shop. And where did you get that coffee? There was a lot of carnage in certain industries. Chocolate. A lot of carnage and chocolate. It's delicious. But that's undeniable. So concerning yourself with how far you carried that bar of chocolate from the factory to the spot it was sold is just not an issue compared to how many children might have suffered to get that chocolate.

23:32So what I mean by karmic footprint is, for instance, on our farm, we don't use inputs from conventional farming or any farm or anything slaughtered. So we don't use blood meal, bone meal. We use pure minerals, mineral rocks. Because the energy of fear affects the kidneys. In Chinese medicine, and in all traditional, Chinese medicine is not Chinese inherently. The Chinese taking old wisdom and putting it through their lens and doing a very good job. Because just as a culture, they're excellent at record keeping and explaining and writing down. So this is old, same as comedic medicine, same as many native tribes in the Americas, same concepts through and through. So are you a hunter? No. I have no need. I don't know, are you a vegetarian? I am. OK, are you vegan? Yes, but I don't like the term.

24:32OK. Well, no, I just. But no, I don't eat meat or dairy. But beyond that, it's more about it's more about sufferation, you know. If I was, I would hunt it. That's what I was asking. If you're a vegetarian, you just don't eat it because of the way in which it's sourced or farmed, harvested. But if you are out hunting something for food and you can see the bull in the group and he's an older bull and you can take that older bull. It would feel much better. So that the rest of the herd can now thrive and a new bull can come up. If you're hunting that way. There's a part of me there, though, that, like, that's my perception of the scenario. I didn't ask the bulls, hey, you guys tired of this old bull? You can get him out of the way. You just took him out of the way. You're like, if there was a person that wanted to take an older relative of mine out of the way, I wouldn't look at them like that. But if it was a matter of that, that's I guess you can look at it. That's not my perspective. Hunting and gathering is to I need to eat food and there's protein available as the hierarchy on the.

25:34Yeah. Hey, you know what? Do what vows will kind of to a point. I don't hunt. That's not my thing. But I just I think it's much more honorable for sure. OK. And again, my point here is not to tell others what they should do or judge it. I'm just telling you what I do. Yeah, sure. Because because really, that's all I'm concerned with at the end. I have to live with me. I don't have to live with anyone else. Well, I think at Lachlan Table, too, like we're attracted to small farms. Obviously, Chris is more intense. I don't know if intense is the right word. It's the right word. OK. You know, then a lot of other farmers. But you know, I think to be general, I don't know if I'm if I can say that we try to just avoid commodity, you know, whether it's vegetables, protein, you know. I mean, besides white squirrel farms, we also use, you know, Nashville Grown, Porter Road Butcher, Simpson's Meat, all Tennessee, Kentucky based situations, you know.

26:41You know, we don't want to do a lot of commodity support for so many of these attached reasons, whether it be the caretakers being treated improperly, the animals being treated misproperly, you know, whatever the case may be. And then we can also probably get into at some point, you know, talking about all these all this knowledge and all these philosophies that, you know, they use at white squirrel farms, what that result is in the final product of the harvest. And, you know, whether we talk about it being more dense in nutrition or, you know, there again, I do like buying things locally to, you know, less travel. You know, the sooner you consume something that used to be part of the earth, I don't know if it's always better. Nutritionally, it's way higher.

27:42Yeah, yeah. Ideally, I mean, in an ideal world, we'd pick it and eat it. Right. It's got half life, basically. And let's talk about that for a second. Like, when you text us or when Tracy texts us the list, you know, two days before Chris makes the delivery and we gather our inventory and we decide what we need, we build the menu according to what's being harvested, when do you actually harvest that before you come to Lockland Table? We try to collect the data from you guys just so we can make a plan. And then most things are done in the morning of or evening before, depending on the nature of the crop, how the weather like in the fall or early winter, your harvest windows are a lot larger than in summer when you have to kind of make sure you do it early morning or maybe possibly very end of the day. And again, like, these are the things that I'm also highly focused on. You know, I'm into all these other things. We practice all these things.

28:43But that's not what I bring to the restaurant in terms of, I don't come in and try to tell how or anybody, for that matter, what I think about anything else, right? I mean, unless they ask, because we're friends. I just do all these things because this is how I wanna live. And for me, I wouldn't be living, I wouldn't live with myself well if I did it. I find it absolutely fascinating, the idea of a karmic footprint versus carbon footprint. And I'll tell you why. I had a girl who worked for me a while back who was clairvoyant. And she said she could feel, she didn't eat meat because she said she could, when she ate meat, she could feel the pain in the meat with the way it was harvested, right? She said, I can't do that. And then she could see, it was just this whole thing. And I was like, damn, this is really fascinating. But the idea that when you're, when you get the yin and yang in the soil and you grow that food that way, that there's a positive energy because you didn't use any of these other chemicals that would affect it in a certain way.

29:48It's growing organically, like uber organically, and then it comes out and it's got a positive energy to it. So I mean- And a higher yield. And a higher yield and a positive energy, like a physical energy that you can measure. The angstrom. And you think about eating this food that has a positive energy about it and putting that into your body, it makes sense when you think about a carbon footprint versus a karmic footprint. Not only does it taste better, but ingesting it into your body is a whole thing. Like it's adding positivity and a holistic approach to eating. And let's not, I mean, just from my- Am I right? You're exactly right. And not only is it that, I don't wanna get too focused either on like, you know, there's a lot of fear and trauma for animals, but you also have those energies going on in every agriculture. So vegetables too. If you have scenarios where the laborers are disgruntled, being treated poorly and their thoughts, all thought is light and all light makes motion.

30:52I mean, these are laws of the universe. So thought creates matter. This is for sure. And so they're creating matter based off of these thought patterns. Now I'm not saying everyone doesn't have moments of negative thought or lots of them, but what we do need to be honest with is what it affects. And so it affects everything. I mean, I can only imagine some of the produce growing operations in the Central Valley in California. I've driven through there a bunch and it doesn't look like a pleasant place to be. You know? And that's saying it lightly. Well, I think it's a unique, it's nice having you here to do this and Hal, thanks for kind of arranging this, but it's really an interesting process when you look at buying bulk produce from Salinas and you're like, there's, there it is, or you know, the weather's about to shift down to Yuma right now for all of your lettuce production for the winter time, but like that's a labor intensive process to move it down there. And like, does that energy and the stress transfer into the food?

31:58And I don't know- On a mass level too. I don't know how you measure that, but I think that's cool. It's a really, really fascinating way to look at it. Well, and just the opposite. We know what he's doing in Beth Page. So when he shows up, we continue that energy because A, we're always happy to see him. You know, B, we're getting the supplies that we need to cook for the next three days, you know? But then when we prep and we get our knives and cutting boards out and we fire up the wood burning oven and we put salt and olive oil and pepper on these things, maybe another component, maybe not. But then, you know, we put these things in the wood burning oven and, you know, even evaporate a little bit more of the water out and intensify the flavor a little bit. And, you know, people then come in here and eat dinner and they're like, you know, this is some of the best, whether it's a turnip or kohlrabi or collard greens or beets or whatever's going on, whatever's been roasted, I'm talking about the oven now for a minute.

33:08You know, they're like, what have you done? And it's like, my equation is always the same. You know, it starts with good product and then the caring for the product continues through the whole process. Proper preparations, which we do here in the kitchen and then the execution of service and then it is in front of the guest and that's the final destination, right? Or maybe not exactly the final destination, but, you know, kind of on our end, you know, Chris has done his work, they've done their work at White Squirrel Farms, he's brought to us, we've continued to love the energy, you know, put proper technique into it, you know, put it in a wonderful tool such as the wood burning oven and then ultimately put it on the beautiful summer triangle pottery that's made a block away from the restaurant and served to the guest. You know, all this stuff, all these people that, you know, help Lachlan Table with all these beautiful local, you know, supplies and I just mentioned something that isn't food related, you know, the pottery, but it's still so important, it's what we build up off of and all these awesome people and, you know, a word that we've always loved is relationships.

34:22You can't do anything great without good relationships. You know, you need other people who have different knowledge, different, you know, whatever they do differently to bring to the table, but when you get all these people, you know, helping on the same project and that project is Lachlan Table, it's just a really cool, beautiful outcome that we can be proud of. Like I've always said, if you're embarrassed to answer a question, you need to change something about yourself. Oh yeah. You know, hey, where did these vegetables come from? Oh, I don't wanna tell you, you know. They come from a farm. Yeah, somewhere, you know, across the sea where they were giving gas to look pretty on the way over, but they're absolutely flavorless, you know. Gas green tomatoes seem so sad right now. Oh, I know. It's really like, I mean, just listening to Chris talk, I'm just thinking to myself, how blessed am I, you know, to get to use their product at this restaurant, you know, and we've been doing it now for 10 years.

35:26You know, we just had our 10 year anniversary. You know, like I said, I think we learned how to use each other a lot better in the first three, four years, you know, cause like, I didn't know what to do with Pak Choi. How put a lot of effort into it. You know, I think then Chris also realized the first fall that we were together, that, you know, we'd like sweet potatoes. And I don't think he grew sweet potatoes that year. I didn't at first, but I grow them now. Now he, you know, made a spot, you know, to grow sweet potatoes. So as we learned, you know, each other's desires, and then I really, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but because of my desire to buy more from the farm and take the relationship seriously, I learned how to use the products better. You know, I want to use almost everything that I can. So like the following year, I brought up Pak Choi for an example. We started like cutting it in half and dousing it with like oil, salt, pepper, and charring it on the grill.

36:29What is a Pak Choi and a Bok Choi? It's like a Bok Choi, but bigger, right? Same thing. Okay, it's a bigger, it's not like a baby. The difference in Pak Choi and Bok Choi is this Cantonese versus Mandarin. The two different dialects of Chinese language. Okay. Oh, okay, perfect. But then after we would- Pea and peas are interchangeable between Cantonese and Mandarin. Oh, so it's basically the same thing as Bok Choi. Same exact thing. It's just called Pak Choi, okay. I always thought it was a bigger version of a Bok Choi. Now there's another vegetable called Tatsoi. Yeah. And it's smaller. Yeah. Tatsoi, Bok Choi, Cantonese, Mandarin, as far as I understand. Well, you know, we- See, this is the kind of stuff we're bringing you on Nashville Restaurant Radio. This is the, I love it. Well, and we started charring it on the grill and then like letting it cool and then like cutting it up a little bit and adding it to a farro, which we also had other roasted vegetables in. I think this was probably for a roasted chicken dish. So, you know, I've figured it out the following year. It's like, you know, I'm not gonna let that Pak Choi get the better of me and, you know, not know what to do with it.

37:30When Chris puts Pak Choi on the list, like, oh, I'm sorry, Chris. I don't know what to do with Pak Choi. You know, I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna learn how to do it. And, you know, that's what we do. I mean, we get the list of food and I do this so many times throughout the year. Like I just did Dinner on Main in Kingston Springs where we're using local farm. And, you know, I'm doing another event called Song and Supper here in about four weeks where we're using a local farm out in Cheatham County. And people wanna know what the menu is. I'm like, well, give me the produce list and then I will give you the menu. You know, I'll build the menu off of what you're harvesting. You know, and luckily we're good enough here in the kitchen to make that work. And we also have the guests who will come in here when we open and eat that food. We'll try that. You know, so we're able to keep this beautiful circle alive and moving through all these avenues, you know. Well, I was gonna say the same thing. You pull up to Loughlin Table and you see this big amazing mural kind of in the middle of the four way here.

38:36And you see the 10 years of Loughlin Table. You do the community hour. You're giving back to your community. When you think about, when you get the backstory on what White Scroll Farms is doing and the positive energy around everything and then that entering, there's almost a responsibility that you have that absolutely, my perception of Loughlin Table is that it absolutely matches that. When it comes in the door, there's gonna be a respect for the food. And I love Andy Little said, if you take a seed and you grow a potato and you water it and every day for, you know, however long, a month, two months, whatever it takes to grow the potato, when you pull that potato out of the ground, you're gonna have a little more respect for it than buying a 50 count box. Like, you're gonna do that. So I think you continue that level of respect, but it's all about the community. Here, it continues on as a karmic. I love the karmic footprint of what you're doing for this community is everything. You never hear him say, let's talk about food costs. Let's look at the dynamics of data based upon how many people are walking the door.

39:39You're like, no, we're gonna do the right thing. We're gonna do the right thing. I'm gonna produce amazing food and my community is gonna, I'm gonna strengthen my community and it works. It's funny. That's the recipe. You said food cost, you know, I don't even know what we pay a pound for vegetables. You know, Chris might, but like, we don't even talk about it. Not gonna get into that. But my point is, is like, when you're dealing- Is that your Ferrari outside? That was, okay, I'm just checking. When you're dealing, and Thomas Keller even said something like this one time, like when you're dealing with such amazing people who are producing such amazing things, just buy it. Yeah, support them. He's not overcharging us. I mean, we're operating a business here. But there's a respect for that. Again, that same thing. There's a karmic for me. You're not gonna- I mean, our produce is more expensive than most. And that's another way in which, not just because, but because of the inputs, because of the level of responsibility we've taken, and because in general, you know, the food market is a dynamic place.

40:44And people, our customers in general of any establishment, you know, there's a big disconnect between what one might pay for, let's say, something that might actually detriment them long-term, versus what someone might pay for something that's gonna benefit them long-term. Let's say like, you know, an expensive cocktail versus more expensive vegetables. Now I get it. It's fun to drink the cocktail. I'm not saying I don't get the impulsive response, but in our opinion, produce in general is underpriced because of the labor. It's intensive. Oh, it's incredibly intensive. And that being said, you also need to be able to like pay your bills and make a living. We all have to look at our cost, whatever business we're in, but there's a bigger responsibility. And Lachlan Table, we're blessed to have them as our customer from the very beginning. It's a different place. From the inside, from my perspective, I've been in and out, not as many restaurants as some, but enough to see how most of them go and it's a different place.

41:50And like you were saying too, with Andy, I mean, I got some box gardens at the house and Chris helps me with some seeds and stuff, and I enjoy gardening. I don't claim to be on any kind of level. It's just something that I enjoy doing. But I mean, there is something about being a cook, somebody who loves to cook. And like the way that ingredients are just always, so giving to you, you need to give back to them. But like to go out and like, I don't care if you're picking a couple chives to put on top of a steak, or if it's tomatoes and peppers, and you're gonna make like a little salsa. Like when I'm at home on a weekend and I go out and I'm cooking in my kitchen or I'm outside with a fire, and I go over to my garden and I pick something that I bring into that meal, the level of satisfaction that I get out of that is huge. It means more to me feeding that to my family. It means more to me as a chef, like to have the, and I know that maybe sometimes as a person with a home, like gardening might be even considered a luxury.

42:59Money-wise, time-wise, maybe we don't have the time, we don't have the money, whatever. It brings me so much satisfaction to, even this morning, I dropped my kids off at school, came home, and for the first 30 minutes of my day, I spent around my box gardens in the coolness of the morning, getting some things prepared. I got some radishes in the ground. I love that. But I also love, I can't obviously do it on a level at the restaurant. So, I mean, what a great thing to have, White Squirrel Farms and. Have you come out and tested his soil quality? Are you doing Yin and Yang over there, too? Do you have different rocks in the garden? Are you doing this? I do offer consultations. Okay. But it would be mainly, I mean, to home gardeners, sure, mainly to other farms who are trying to figure that out. So you would go to other farms and help them do that? Yes, there's more components to this, too. There's antennas that actually take electric, telluric current, as well as heat electricity from the sun and from the wind and from the rain.

44:07All on antenna heads. And then that's put into the ground. This is designed by Justine Christophelou from France in turn of the century. Very, very great, great, great work. Well, I'm blown away. We've maybe forgotten a lot of good things as the years have gone by. I don't know if you're as blown away as I am at this point in the interview, but we're gonna take a break to hear a word from our sponsors. You know, what chefs want, some people still call it creation gardens, but what chefs want has been, was our first advertiser on the show. Monty Crawford saw what we're doing. He goes, I wanna be part of it, dude. I love it. And I just, I love that. They're so perfect because they work with locally owned and operated restaurants better than anyone. And let me tell you how they do it. No minimums, no fees, no fuel surcharges, no surcharges any time. They deliver seven days a week. They have 24 seven customer support. You can call, text, chat, email anytime from anywhere, or you can reach them at 502-587-9012.

45:10They have a diverse line of products. Their chefs have access to thousands of items across many different categories that allow them to receive fresh product daily. What chefs want is the perfect addition to any broad line company as they've got all of your fresh produce delivered daily plus custom meats, anything that you need that your broadliner can't get. Give them a call 800-600-8510 or visit them at whatchefswant.com. We've been talking about having a guy. Who's your guy for whatever you need. When something happens in the restaurant, who's the person that you call? And I will tell you right now when your fire suppression system doesn't work or it works or you shoot off a fire extinguisher, you need staff training, who do you call? And I will tell you right now that guy is Kevin Rose and he is at Corson Fire and Security, total protection, one source. The guy is amazing. They do fire extinguishers, general fire products, emergency exit lighting, fire alarm systems, fire sprinkler systems, fire suppression systems, monitoring, communications.

46:13I'm telling you they do everything. And when you need it, you need somebody to call. And Kevin is your guy. He is the restaurant specialist. He's in all kinds of restaurants. He is the guy. His number is 615-974-2937. If you think right now, who do we get our fire stuff from? Who does our fire? If you don't know the answer to that question, you need a guy. You need to call Kevin right now. He will come out and do an audit, kind of check out where you're at. He did this for me in my restaurants and the previous company we were using hadn't done like everything. Like they were really not doing a great job at all. And so we're excited to switch over to Corson. Guys, this is something that is vital. You know you're gonna need it at some point. Who are you gonna call? Call Kevin Rose. Again, that number is 615-974-2932. Also really excited to talk to you today about Justice Industries. And Justice Industries creates job opportunities for people experiencing barriers to employment by providing quality goods and services to the community while offering employees stability, independence, and upward mobility.

47:22Let me tell you, their biggest company is called JustGlass. And what they do is they recycle your glass in the restaurant. Man, we go through so much glass. Why not recycle it? Let's do the right thing for Mother Earth, but also support a nonprofit here in Nashville that is helping employee people that need jobs. So I mean, while we're throwing stuff away and filling up dumpsters, you're paying people that empty dumpsters, why not separate it? Put the glass in a separate container. Let JustGlass come pick it up and do the right thing. So Ellen Peterson, she is the director over there and you can email her because every single account is different. You need to email her Ellen, E-L-L-E-N at justiceindustries.org. She will get you set up. She's amazing. And if you don't need it, tell a friend about it. They actually will come to your house. If you need glass pickup at your home, email about that too, or you can visit justiceindustries.org and you can sign up right there on the website. Yes, we've forgotten and they've been suppressed for larger entities to make lots and lots of money.

48:27A lot of the fertilizer wouldn't be necessary. A lot of the things would be necessary. There's a lot of misunderstanding in agriculture in how elements work. They're alchemical, so they transmutate. They transmutate in the soil, in fulvic acid and humic acid, which is compost, right? That's why compost helps. It's not just because, oh, it adds organic matter. Well, yeah, but it's adding fulvic acid, humic acid, which are essentially the same thing. It's carbon, right? It's carbon that's so wonderful. The same thing as motor oil. That comes from decaying plant matter, not from dinosaur bones. Any farmer will tell you this because I've tasted decaying plant matter. I've tasted diesel oil and I've tasted fulvic acid that's a hydroponic plant additives. On purpose? No, all on accident. Okay. Accidentally tasted all these, tasted diesel oil while changing the oil, splash in my mouth, tasted fulvic acid, using it in a reservoir, splashed in my mouth. This was 20 years ago. The taste is unforgettable.

49:28Wow. Tasted compost by having it go in my mouth while I'm forking it. It all tastes the same. It's all carbon. It's all the same and it's all in plentiful supply. I can imagine, yeah. Oil is plentiful. How important is it for restaurants to compost their waste? Like somebody to come pick up their waste and to take it somewhere and create organic compost? Well, that's great because compost is needed for this transmutation. So you know how a cow, a dairy cow will eat grass, right? It's silica. That's all that is. There's not really any calcium in that. That's silica. But what the cow produces is like 22,000 gallons a year in milk, which is almost pure calcium. Plus they have to have a calf, which has its own bones, which is calcium, plus maintain its own osteo system, which is calcium, right? So how does the cow produce so much calcium if they eat zero calcium? It's because silica transmutates through heat and pressure into calcium. The same way that the salt rock in compost with humic acid through heat and time transmutates into natant lime, which is newly birthed lime, like neonatal unit, natant lime.

50:39So it's not the same as adding lime. Yeah. It didn't go through that. What it is, it's a flux. It's a ratio of polarities and flux. Like things change, right? Like wood, for instance, from a tree is diamagnetic until you put it in a fire and it becomes what we call biochar, very common agricultural additive because now it's paramagnetic through the use of fire. So it's basic alchemy. Yeah. I'm blown away over here. You don't add lime to get calcium is the point. And that's what most farmers do. You know, another thing we believe here at Lachlan Table is to get people on board and let them do what they're good at. Yeah, I'm good at cooking. I stay in the kitchen. We've found Chris, he's good at this. We are blessed to have him. Finding people that are good at things and using them.

51:42And it's once again, just a beautiful circle. It's amazing. This is amazing. I wanna get into, we're, I don't know how much more time we have left. I know you guys are both busy guys, you've got a long day and I was late getting here. I forgot the aspect of the recording that is vital. So I had to go get it and I thank you guys for your patience. I don't know, I think it's so cool, the relationship that you guys work with and so many people out there in restaurants look at their vendors as these people that are out there to not help them. And I love the, there's a battle against Cisco or GFS or whoever it is like that they're trying to screw me. Or even a tiny farm. And I'm battling against them because it's everybody's out to get me. I run a small restaurant, so everybody's out to get me and I'm just trying to battle everybody. And I hate that. Like I hate that to my core that people do that.

52:44I hate that that large companies have taken advantage of small locally owned and operated restaurants that are just trying, I just got back from FS Tech, I've been in Dallas all week, listening to huge corporations talk about how they can squeeze an extra percentage out of all these different things. And the idea of just people in relationships and doing the right thing kind of escapes them. The idea of people isn't really there. And I just love the fact that you guys use each other as partners, that it's not a, hey look, I need to charge you a little bit more because this is what it costs me and I need to make a profit. And you go, yeah man, I'm getting really amazing quality products. Thank you. You're communicating what you're growing and then you're adjusting your menu based upon what's available in the season. And I think so many people call their restaurants local and farm to table. And there's just this small, well I'll buy from this large company that sells a few local products. They've partnered with one local farm. The cilantro comes from a farm.

53:45I'm buying local cilantro from Bloomsbury, right, who's great and we love Lauren. There's nothing wrong with Lauren, but you can't call yourself farm to table if you're only buying cilantro, but the rest of it comes from California and Chile. I mean, that's not locally owned. So I think that the idea of what you're doing, Hal, is legitimately the differentiator that we all need. What I think is legit. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that whole farm to table thing might've been getting thrown around. We never wanted to jump on that phrase. I think a lot of people that did probably aren't or weren't. You know, your guests know who you are. You know, they know what you're doing. You can look at the website. You can see it on the plate. You know, maybe a person who's king shouldn't say they're king because everybody knows that. Like, you don't have to say your farm to table is my point there. People know that you are. I would never- Just do it.

54:45I'd never, you know, use that phrase. The truth doesn't have to defend itself. It's like a lion. You just let it out. Yeah, well, I just like to model this. I wanna shout out to you guys that if you're a chef, you're a local owned and operated restaurateur, find somebody to partner with. Find somebody that you trust and say, man, help me. Help me get the best stuff, right? I tell people too, man. You know, you can't just buy tomatoes in July. Like, this is a year long thing. You know, and yes, things may not be, there might not be a lot going on in January, February, and March, but there's still something going on. You know, we'll continue to use those things. Yeah, kohlrabi might be a little bit of a harder approach of a vegetable to use, but you know, could we like, you know, make a mash with it? Could we use it in a hash along with other, you know, root vegetables for a fish dish maybe? Parsnip and celery root and kohlrabi.

55:47There are things that you can do with it to once again make it approachable. Your guest has to want to order these things. We can't just write an awesome menu and everybody ignore the chicken dish because there's kohlrabi on it. And in four days, we've got a bunch of rotten chicken in the kitchen. You know, like we've got to move that chicken and we do move that chicken. You know, that's another beautiful thing about a small, busy restaurant is nobody has to worry about the freshness here. Like we have such a small refrigerator and we're cooking for so many people at night. We're rotating our inventory every day, every other day. I come twice a week and it's empty. Yeah, yeah. You come here on Friday afternoon at three o'clock and you'll have to turn sideways to walk through our walk-in. Come in on Monday and you can spread out. That's amazing. You know, but then we got to fill it back up again. And you know, another thing about Lachlan Table, when we built it, if I went back in time 10 years, probably two things I'd do different is make the pizza station a little bit bigger. So it's a two-man station and it still can be a two-man station.

56:52And we'd probably have a bigger walk-in. The walk-in is always just super full. And you got to figure on Friday at three o'clock, we're getting ready to cook for, I don't know, 525 people in the next two days. So no doubt. How many seats do you have in here? I believe inside we're 87. And then with the outside seatings, maybe that's like another 50. But we're probably averaging 150 to 265 covers a night Monday through Saturday. And these people are eating one to four courses each. I think it's important that, I mean, just to other farmers, I say like, make your own deliveries. This is a big differentiating thing, I think. Most don't. And like I always have for our farm, it takes a lot of my time off the farm. I leave, it's a couple hours of driving, it's all the time in town.

57:54It's a burden in that sense of time, but it's invaluable in the relationship. You can't not come around and expect people to think about you. You can't send your stuff and no disrespect to the third parties that are facilitating. But for the farmer, this is my call to them, like make your own deliveries. You're the interesting person with the knowledge. You're the one who did it. Only you can tell what you did when you were there on your farm alone. And embrace your divinity and embrace your full on like eccentricities. Well, I'll tell you a cool, quick story about that is we just all got to taste some of Jamie Miller's delicious musk melon sorbet that she made with one of White Squirrel Farms melons. And I want more. So good. When it comes melon time, I'm slightly selfish because I wanna take some home to my family. I know when White Squirrel starts bringing melons, I'm like, okay. I've even wanted to ask Chris here recently, how many melons do you guys think you harvest in a year because I don't think it's a big number, but like they're so special.

59:03You know, the maybe three to four weeks that they're here, you know, you're eager for that day to come, for that melon to show up on the list. And we currently have a cantaloupe salad on the menu right now with like a charred serrano, honey vinaigrette and some arugula and some radish, you know, other things that are currently popping up out of the ground. You know, things that are harvested together, typically go together, I think, you know, if not all the time, most of the time. But when Chris brought some melons, maybe like a week or two ago, I was eager to take one home for the weekend. And it's always difficult to know the perfect time to cut into a melon, you know, and I've definitely been disappointed before when I cut into a melon because I should have probably let it sit for two more days, or then maybe you let it sit too long and the texture maybe becomes a bit off. But I remember I actually walked back outside as Chris was loading up the vessels that he brings all the produce in.

01:00:06And I said, hey, man, like, do you think I'm able to use these melons or should I wait a couple of days? And he goes into the process of telling me that when I bring you a melon, it's ready to eat because it's in the picking of the melon that I know when the melon is ready. So that was an interesting, you know, just use them. My wife is the one, just to be honest. And she is really good at telling when they're ready. Well, and maybe Chris can explain that, but I do want to say I got that melon home that weekend and I cut it up for my family and it was delicious. It was, you know, I hate the P word, I hate perfect. I think like perfect is more of a thought, but man, it was just such a nice melon. And I got one in my car right now because I'm taking another one home tonight, you know? And when I cut up a cantaloupe and put it in my refrigerator, my whole family gets in there and eats on it. You know, maybe only half of it even makes it into the refrigerator, you know, after the cutting.

01:01:08But man, like a musk melon, a cantaloupe from White Squirrel Farms, it's just a super, super big treat. And- What are those bricks at? I'm sorry, what? What are they bricks at? Do you test the bricks on them? I do not. Oh. I do not. I'm curious what they, the sugar content. Like what- Yeah, sugar, yeah. No, I don't test the sugar content. It's more about stem hardness and coloration and stuff. Again, my wife is the expert on the melons as far as when to perfectly pick them. Well, I'll tell you, whatever that sorbet was, was the best damn thing I've ever eaten. And not that I would ever not trust or believe Chris, but he was absolutely right. I mean, that melon was beautiful and delicious. And it's just such a treat. And I think maybe that is how food was originally meant to be. Like, okay, I'm here for three weeks. I'm awesome. I'm special. And then I'm leaving. And then this is coming. Leave them one more. And I'm awesome and I'm special.

01:02:09And then you move into this and then, hey, here I am. And what are you gonna do with me? And just constantly, and I go back to a lot of, not to say original thoughts, because there's always this or this that I could do, but what can we do different even, maybe, and bring something different to the table? We'll change up the dish. Don't just do the same dish we did last fall. Like, let's do something different with it this fall. And that's the challenge too, creatively as a chef. But man, when you're staring at beautiful product, it's pretty easy being a good chef. And if you can't, you may have to stare at yourself in the mirror for a while and ask yourself if you're doing the right thing. But, like I said- Who am I is always a good question. Yeah. But I don't have to stare too long. I know when I'm looking at these things, and we'll have managers meetings, the sous chefs will get together.

01:03:12I've always, as far as menu design goes, my brain never stops, man. Whether I'm in the shower, whether I'm driving, I've always got a pad of paper on my kitchen counter at home. That same paper travels with me to work, and it comes up on the pizza bar when I'm prepping, if I need to write a thought down. But I'm constantly, my brain just actually won't turn off. Makes it fun trying to sleep, doesn't it? Well, and I sleep pretty well when that day, part of the day comes. When it's time to disengage, it's time to disengage. Yeah. Oh, it's so hard to turn it off, man. But man, I just, I can't- When the ideas happen. Yeah, I can't stop thinking about it, and I think, I want to give the food, the produce that they're growing there, the respect that it's earned, and just see it through properly. I mean, what if we treated their wonderful produce horribly? It wouldn't be about money for him at that point in time. It'd be about respect, you know?

01:04:12Yeah. So, you know, it's not, although we all need to pay our bills, I get it, but it's not money driven, you know? That's just, you know, I, yeah, that's essentially what the podcast is to. We can all find ways to glean more money out of a situation. Well, and what you said earlier too about the bigger corporations, you know, sucking the life out of the little, you know, mom and pops. Protein, I feel like that is the case. Like you want to sell me protein, what's the first question I'm going to ask? How much is it a pound? You know, that's a center of a plate thing. It's like, all right, you know, it's 10 bucks a pound. I'm serving 12 ounces. I got 750 in it, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. I got 11 bucks in the whole dish. You know, multiply that by whatever your number is, get your cost. It's funny that we do look at protein, you know, that way. Well, it's so expensive. Well, we're less interested maybe in the price of other things. It's not what drives it. It's the quality and what we can do with it.

01:05:15And most certainly we can, you know, turn a profit off of it. You know, we have to. Like I said, we're a business. We got plenty of bills to pay, but it's just such a pleasure to have these relationships and to get these products walking in weekly. We've been doing this for 10 years. We're gonna die together. You know, it's not gonna change. How we just thought we weren't dying. But it's not gonna happen, man. You know, it's really become, you know, such a great thing. And that was the whole idea of this podcast was, you know, not just for Chris to, you know, share a lot of who he is and what they do out there, but to stress the importance of a restaurant, a chef having a farm or farms that they can count on and rely on to give the product that they wanna give. And vice versa, that you're gonna sell the product and make the product that they can grow.

01:06:17So we'll wrap this up. The final thing that we do is the Gordon Food Service Final Thought. And I will tell you that I've partnered with Gordon Food Service because they're the only company that I've worked with over the past 15 years that truly partnered with me, who truly felt like had my back. And I think that that was both, again, yin and yang, it's gotta go both ways. It can't just be one person trying, the other person not trying. It has to be a, I trust you for what you're doing. And then in turn, can you partner with me? Those are things you can do with anybody. It's kind of how you approach things and what your attitude is. So the Gordon Food Service Final Thought, that was the segue there. See, that's the segue into our final thought. Hal, I think you just did a really good version of it. I don't know if you can really come up with something else, but this is where we kind of summarize the interview. We take a moment where you guys get to say whatever you wanna say as long as you wanna say it. I've learned a lot today. I am gonna now take the carbon footprint and the karmic footprint and focus on the karmic footprint.

01:07:23And I think that that's really do the right thing. Workplace, every single day, there's an angel and a devil that pops up on your shoulder. And profitability and greed versus, hey, look, let's do the right thing and let's do right by people and let's partner with people and let's help them. And this is community. What we're doing in the hospitality industry, hospitality industry is service. We're serving others. And that doesn't stop when it comes to your vendors, doesn't stop when it comes to the food and how you respect the food in your kitchen, what you're doing. I feel like that's a major theme with both of you. And I think that your partnership, absolutely. That's where you're in a restaurant. You get the- You're gonna get blenders. You get blenders. So, Chris, we'll start with you. Kind of final thought, like I said, whatever you wanna say, as long as you wanna say it. Like what I've been saying, I guess, like, you know, we're very fortunate to work with Hal and Kara and Lachlan Table. Like you said, to make advance, you have to have something that yields.

01:08:23Otherwise, you got two people pushing against each other. So, that's the only way there's the whole, is if there's one advancement and one yielding. If both are yielding, you go in opposite directions. If both are advancing, you're clashing. So, it's a rhythmical interchange. That's my thing. It's a balanced, rhythmical interchange of give and take, push and pull, hot and cold. And it's a relationship like that too. The successful relationships grow like life because that's what provides life, is interchange that's balanced and rhythmical and respectful. You know, we can have different thoughts on things, me and Hal, and we're still gonna respect each other. We're still gonna fulfill our agreements, do what we said we're gonna do. And if we don't, we'll apologize and we'll accept that responsibility. We don't defer it to someone else. I'm not gonna defer my responsibility to someone else. You know, exactly. And more than anything, you know, I'm just wanna say thank you to Hal and Kara and to my wife Tracy and son Winston for being my partners.

01:09:31I love it. Hal? I think to wrap things up for me, you know, growing up and cooking and becoming a chef and all the studying that I did, you know, all the terminology studying, like everything, I never knew when I was young, I knew that I wanted to be a chef. I knew that I wanted to have a restaurant. I didn't ever know that partnering with a farm could help me be a better chef. But I think it definitely has. Just working with Chris on what's being harvested at the time and learning how to utilize it the best. It has made me, it's made me a better person. It's made me a better chef. It makes me, like he said earlier, able to live with me. Like I do believe in all this. I do believe that it's better to source things from smaller farms as opposed to, you know, commodity farms for all the reasons. But it's just such an honor to be able to do that and to have it here at Lachlan Table.

01:10:38And, you know, overall, I think it results in just a satisfied happiness. You know, you're happy with what you're doing. You're happy with what you're doing it with, not just the product, but the people. And the energy continues to circle. And the yin and the yang, because I haven't said it yet, is alive and balanced. And, you know, I use the word balance when I decide to open a restaurant. You know, the whole thought process there was to balance work life with home life. Because before I was an owner of a restaurant, I was working 70 hours a week to be able to do what I felt like I needed to do to represent myself well in a kitchen. So, you know, the opening of the restaurant was not just to, you know, be in a little bit more control of my own life as a chef and as a person.

01:11:42And I'm pretty happy with myself on both levels. And, you know, I think that I'm able to say that, you know, one of the biggest reasons is White Squirrel Farms. Like, as a Preds fan, you're the seventh man, you know. I always thought that, like, if Lachlan Table had a non-employee seventh man, it's White Squirrel Farms. You know, they're not actually on, like, the staff payroll. They're on the payroll. But we would not be who we are without White Squirrel Farms. And I think they would be the hardest relationship to replace. Wow. Thought, reaction? Well, like he said, he started the restaurant out of an attempt for balance in his personal life. Our farm also started, we had just had our son, who just turned 13 on Sunday. And he was, I guess, about two years old. And we started the farm originally, basically, obviously out of interest and lifestyle choice, but also out of trying to balance being around and being able to raise our son, who we've raised on our farm.

01:12:49So it was also an attempt at balancing our personal lives and professional lives. I mean, Winston has hardly known life without Lachlan Table. Oh yeah, he's been coming with me to deliver since he was a baby. Yeah. All right. Gentlemen, thank you so much. It's been an honor transforming Nashville Restaurant Radio into Nashville Restaurant Radio East. I love being over here on this side of town and I love conversations like this, where there's a lot of positivity and I love hearing how you guys work together. Again, thank you so much for having us here and we'll catch up soon. Cool, thanks man. All right. Appreciate it. Yeah, baby. That, I don't know, are anybody else out there feeling what I'm feeling after that? Like just, I had no idea. I had no idea that this kind of thing was happening and I think that we've answered the question why Hal's vegetables taste so good. That cantaloupe sorbet was one of the best things I've ever put in my mouth and you should go to Lachlan Table.

01:13:50You should go eat there because the food is delicious. They're a community restaurant and you should say hi to Hal and Kara and support White Squirrel Farms. This is what we do. This kind of episode and the last one of Flora and Fauna was so much fun. I tell ya, I get to pinch myself sometimes. Thank you for the kind words. Some of you messaged me and said, hey dude, hope you're doing well and I just, I really, really appreciate that. You guys are an amazing community and I'm gonna keep putting these out there. So thank you guys for listening. I hope that you're being safe. Love you guys. Bye.