Tootsie Lou's Tacos

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host. I'm going to be joined shortly in this interview with Jen Ichikawa as we talk to the fine folks from Tootsie Lou's Tacos. And they're the nicest people, I'm telling you. They are transplants from California and Austin, Texas. We just spoke with Tyler Cobble last week, and he is the guy, the mind behind the wash. And Tootsie Lou's Tacos is going into the wash, and so many things happen to make this kind of a perfect scenario for them.

01:06And I can't wait for you to hear in this interview all about that. But first I want to tell you that we are going to bring back the Music City Roundup. Yes, it is coming back, and it's hopefully going to happen this week. So stay tuned. Don't know if it's going to be live yet. We're putting together all of the segments right now. We are going to have a pop-up segment. We're going to have a local legend segment, a what's new segment. We're going to have an African-American-owned segment. We're going to have so many fun segments for you. So if you want to know what is happening in the Nashville food scene, this is going to be the show for you. We're going to do it bi-weekly. So every other week we'll have a new episode of the Roundup, and we're going to have a top 10 on the Music City hot list at the end of every show. So stay tuned for that. And we're going to go on brand right now with Jordan Williams. Let's see if we can catch up with him. Hey, there he is. Jordan Williams, WEC Nashville.

02:06What's going on, brother? Hey, Brandon. How are you doing? Thanks for having me on again. Absolutely. So first of all, thank you. You guys are amazing. Both of my restaurants, you guys are in there doing your thing. We appreciate it so much. You guys are so good. You just, you come in, you do your thing and you're out. You give us the intel. You've been a godsend. So thank you. Thank you. Glad we could help you. So I know we talk a lot. You've got some cool stuff on the horizon. What are you working on right now? Yeah. So everybody knows about Neemixology, obviously, with what we're doing with Maribou and Green Hills Grill for you guys with all the inventory, the ordering, creating menus, training, all that kind of stuff. One thing we're spinning off for the beginning of January of 2022, and there's more details to come on this soon, I promise. But we've created Neemixology Beverage Club, which is a private buying club that allows national buying power for anybody with a liquor license. It is exclusive.

03:06We're capping it at, I believe, about 100 members total per year. But like I said, not too much of that right now. We're just kind of kind of getting the word out there, starting to lay the groundwork a little bit. The biggest thing we've really had going on so far is we've created a new division under Williams Entertainment and Saltine, Music City Festivals, launching a new, yeah. We've had some great conversations so far with Whiskey Jam. Obviously, these guys right here. Everybody knows who they are. We've been talking with iHeartRadio to do some sponsorships along with Warner Music Nashville. So some big things come into Nashville through Music City Festivals in 2022, so ear to the ground on that for sure. Man, you guys are blowing up. So what you're saying is, hey, look, we're doing orders for all these different people. And if I'm a restaurant, and I am, that only orders X amount of this type of vodka, well, we're going to get 100 restaurants together, and through all of these purchases gives us massive negotiating power to order everything for much cheaper, so to speak, and prioritize you with what you want to buy.

04:22Exactly. So we've already started the conversations with the suppliers and started running through some ideas with those guys, what they're looking to get. The end of the day, our goal as a company is to connect suppliers with retailers, whether it's a restaurant, off-premise. And we do that with festivals, with connecting the dots a certain way, by having conversations with the supplier directly on behalf of the restaurants, which doesn't happen unless you are a large chain. I know there's a few here in Nashville that have enough power to kind of support that, but unless you're a national chain, like you serve a lot of wings, I know I use these guys all the time, but you've got 2,500 locations with liquor license, you can go to the big guys and say, hey, I want a couple of bucks off a bottle to run a feature, well, we're giving the independent guys here in Nashville and in some other areas of the country, actually, the opportunity to have that same price structure built in because it's a collective at that point. Wow. I'm telling you, man, it seems like everything you're doing is just leading into the next big thing, and I'm glad I know you now.

05:29Our whole philosophy here in our office is that we've been in the beverage industry for a long time. I grew up in it, we all know that. And I feel like the beverage industry got a little buttoned up, you got to wear a shirt and tie to work anymore. We just want to have fun, let people have fun, do the right thing, bring the joy back to this industry a little bit, and then that's what we're doing. What is the back, you have a whiteboard behind you, what does that say, innovative, beverage, helping the little guys. I love that. Yeah, thank you. Innovative, beverage, helping the little guys. Hell yeah. That's our motto. Well, I know you just did a big interview with iHeartRadio recently, too, didn't you? I did about a week ago. We were lucky enough to be asked on the CEOs to know a feature with iHeartRadio. You can check out some of the guys who have been interviewed in the past on their website, and we should be live, I believe, in early October when they're done with all the editing and stuff.

06:31We'll be airing over five different radio stations, two different days, so just getting our word out. Man, that's awesome. You guys are doing fantastic things. Thank you so much for everything you do, and thank you for coming on today to go on brand and tell us just a little, we're going to, everybody stay tuned because there's going to be, that was a teaser, when you get more details and you can let everybody know, you'll do it here. For sure. Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate it so much. All right, Jordan. All right. Talk soon. Thanks. Big thanks to Jordan for stopping by, and let's jump in right now with our friends from Tootsie Looz. All right. Super excited today to be joined with Drew, Jeremy, and Megan from Tootsie Looz Tacos. What's going on, guys? Hey, thanks for having us. I'm so excited. This is three people at one time and one screen, so I love it, and we have a little pup there. Who's hanging out with us sleeping next to you? This is our CDC, Tootsie Looz, the namesake of the restaurant.

07:40So we've got Jeremy, Drew, Megan, and Tootsie Looz, too. This is awesome. The whole crew. She's going to sleep through most of this, so that's okay. It's all good. I'm not going to ask her any questions. So, Jeremy, I met you over at the bacon barn at Gifford's Bacon, and you said, hey, we've got this new pop-up. It's a new restaurant. We're going into the wash, and yes, that's awesome, Tootsie Looz Tacos. That sounds fantastic, but I wasn't really sure what the wash was, and then I had Tyler Cobble on the show, and now I'm freaking super excited for the wash, and I know exactly who you guys are, so thanks again for being on the show. This is great. So you're from Texas. Let's get your background story on each one of you so we can come full circle. Drew, we'll start with you. Sure. I grew up in central Virginia, and I started cooking when I was about 16 years old, just kind of doing country club stuff out in the countryside in Virginia, and was kind of putting myself through school at the same time for music, and by the end of all of it, I was kind of taken away by how much better I was at cooking than I was at music, so I decided to kind of pivot into that direction, and I moved to Austin to go to culinary school, which full circle was the same culinary school that Jeremy went to, and where was the culinary school you went to?

09:20Le Cordon Bleu in Austin, Texas, and so yeah, got into the Austin food scene, met a lot of chefs there, like kind of fell in love with the city and the culture of Austin. It's a great place, so I kind of stayed there for a long time, and I kind of climbed the ladder pretty quickly. The first place I worked at after school was a place called Padgie House, and I started as Garmin J or like salad person, fresh out of culinary school, and by the end of working there for four years, I was the head chef, so I kind of took that upon myself that I needed to learn more and do more. I didn't feel like that was appropriate to be at such a young age and to be running a restaurant, so I moved to Chicago and I did kind of a stretch of just trying to work in as many kitchens as I could get into, tried to get into the Michelin star restaurant circuit While I was living there, I had some great experiences, I worked at Grace with Curtis Duffy, I worked at True, I staged at Moto, I staged at Alinea, I just kind of bounced around and tried to find a home, and then I ended up, I found that home with Chef Ryan McCaskey at a place called Acadia, and I worked there for over a year, fell in love with his view of cooking and view of restaurants, and just had a really, really great experience in his restaurant, and then at that point, I decided to move back to Austin, and I opened up my own place with some friends called Nightcap, and I was the head chef operator

11:22for about three years, and really found my style and my voice in my own cuisine, and did a lot of food there I was very proud of, but by the end of it, I was kind of burning myself out, I was doing everything I was as well, the pastry chef as the head chef, so I was covering a lot of bases and was just too ambitious for my own good, and so definitely burned myself out, and then that's when I moved to a group called Ramen Tazia, and I was kind of a kind of a corporate position, I did a lot of R&D, did a lot of recipe and restaurant development for them, and that's where I met Jeremy, he was also working for them at the time as the culinary director, and so we kind of instantly hit it off and clicked and found out we had a lot of the same philosophies about food and life, and we opened a concept together that was a Domo Alligato, it was like a Japanese curry food trailer, and that's where we really connected and kind of figured out that we were exactly had a very similar career path, that's when we figured out we both went to the same culinary school, and it got even deeper, we lived in the same apartment complex and didn't know each other, and like just all these, we knew all the same people, we were kind of blown away that we had both worked in the same industry and in the same city for so long and never met. Yeah it's funny, I had like a very similar story with Ryan Pruitt, the guy that owns the Frothy Monkey, he was on the show and we were like, wow we're the same age man, I went to the same high school, and then we found out we both got married the same weekend, like 16 years ago, we both have two boys that are the exact same age, I'm like, we have like 125 Facebook friends, like this is a little weird that we don't like totally know each other already, and that we're both meeting in our 40s, a lot of crazy things

13:23going on, I don't want to cut you off, but there's, you said that you had the opportunity to run a restaurant at a very young age, how old were you? I was 24. 24 and you decided I'm too young for this, this is too much for me, what, how does like most people that are 24 think that they're invincible and can completely bench press a million pounds and run the world, somebody gives you the opportunity to run your own place, usually like, hell yeah I can do this, what comes inside of you to say, I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I've got to go stage at these places, I want to work under people, I need to develop myself, how does that happen? Well, part of like doing a lot of my own research, you know, studying a lot of other chefs, and that was the advice that I think a lot of older chefs have given me is like, just expand your horizons, learn as much as you can, see as much as you can, and then kind of pick and choose what speaks to you, and so I just felt like I hadn't had that exposure yet, and I was looking up to a lot of these chefs at the time, especially in Chicago, the food scene was booming a few years back there with a lot of this molecular gastronomy stuff and a lot of these new ideas about food, and I wasn't seeing that in a lot of other places, and so it just called to me, I was like, I want to be a part of this, I want to see how they're accomplishing this food and running these restaurants, you know, how does one make a successful three-star Michelin restaurant, how does it make money, how does it work, so it was a little bit more than just beyond food and techniques.

14:57That's one of the most mature things I've heard anybody ever say. Thank you. I mean, nobody at 24 has the wherewithal to say, I'm going to listen to people who have been there and done that, and I'm going to pass up on the opportunity right now to have my own thing, to really hone in my culinary skills and learn my perspectives of other people so that I can be more well-rounded, like damn, man. Thank you. Yeah, it's definitely a rare outlook, you know, and I feel like that's where a lot of culinary professionals go astray and have kind of lackluster careers or maybe don't achieve all the goals that they want is they decide too early that they're fully formed and that they've arrived and they have something to say with their food and they might be missing leadership skills, which, you know, the moment that you're a head chef you realize I'm not just this artist in a corner, I'm a team leader and a babysitter and a therapist and a mid-tour and all of these things, so if you don't have all of these fringe skills, it's like you're going to stumble and fall really quickly, and it's something that, you know, when I met Drew, it's like we connected immediately on that basis where it's like the moment you think you're fully formed, you're probably going to start putting out some pretty mediocre food, you know, you've got to keep on learning, keep on growing, challenge yourself and get all of those fringe skills and, you know, with Tootsie Loose it was like we all came together and finally came to a place where we were like we think we have the business, you know, of course there's still a bunch of like stress and trepidation and, you know, you're so nervous to put yourself out there, but we finally got to a place where it's like okay, let's try, you know, I think we might have some of these pieces, so.

16:44So how did you all end up in Nashville? Yeah, so Nashville actually has kind of a, we have a deep affection for Nashville that. Me too. Yeah, we're all here, we're on the Nashville restaurant radio, right? Yeah, it was kind of serendipitous, honestly. My wife Megan is originally from Texas, San Antonio, and then spent years, over a decade in Austin, and she had actually, before we met, she had actually planned to move to Nashville, sight unseen, just kind of attracted by the music culture and all of that, and I had come to Nashville in 2015, yeah, to actually cook, you know, I was working for the Ramen Tazia group in Austin, and we came out here to cook at the Slurp XL Fest, which was Sarah Gavigan, otaku ramen, yeah, he threw a ramen festival, invited us to come out and cook ramen from Austin, so that was kind of my first culinary focused trip to Nashville, and Sarah, huge shout out to the Gavigans, Sarah was such a great hostess, and she took us around to all the spots, and you know, we ate at Husk, and we ate at Peg Leg, and we ate at Arnold's, and we went to the whole gauntlet, she took us to Dino's and got us drunk, we went to the tree house, and like all of these things.

18:12She took you to the right places, man. Yeah. It was great, man, and that was my, such a positive experience, not just with the people and the culture and the music, but with the food, and so I already had this affection for Nashville, and in 2020, you know, the pandemic's hitting, and we felt like it was time for a change, as a lot of people did in the restaurant industry, and Drew was looking for something a little bit closer proximity to his family in Virginia, and Megan was ready to get out of Texas heat and try living someplace with seasons, and she had Nashville, and you know, the name kind of just came up, and we were all kind of like, yeah, we all love Nashville, like, yeah, let's give it a go. Have you guys seen the video, Brandon, I'm sure you've seen it, where it's like, Nashville's full, move to Austin, and it's this whole thing. No, I haven't seen that. I mean, sister cities, right, it's, we always joke that, you know, and I think Portlandia, like, rift off of this, where a lot of people in the same age bracket with the same interests and tastes, like, we all love music, we all love food, we all love art, we love all this culture, there's like five cities that we're all fighting over, you know, we, I think, know and respect this city enough, we're still trying to learn and go out and eat and meet all these people, but we really want to come and tribute to that really healthy culture that you guys already have happening here.

19:43So that's really important to us is to lose, to come and respect the community, get to know everybody and actually play a part in it, and I feel like that's kind of the, it's a very delicate thread to walk on, you know, you don't want to be the outsider that comes in and tries to change, you know, don't Austin my Nashville or whatever, we don't want to come in and make this into the place we just came from, we came here because we like this place, you know, so it's a funny thing being here, but we love it so far, yeah, we're having a great time. So Drew, we got to hear your story and now Jeremy and Megan, I love a good love story, I do, I love it when we have couples, we met at a bar, yeah, we met the good old times, it wasn't online, no, no, we didn't do that, yeah, take it away, let's tell your story, I want to hear your love story, come on, I feel like we have a great love story in that, you know, we were both, I was working in kitchens, I had a really unhealthy lifestyle, you know, as a lot of chefs did coming up 80, 100, 120 hour weeks and living and breathing the restaurant and not really having enough space for anything else in my life and a lot of failed relationships because of that, because I wasn't willing to give up my career to, you know, spend time with anyone else and because of this kind of string of failed relationships, Megan, little did I know, was kind of going through a similar thing in her life where she was just burning herself out on these relationships that were failing and we had both honestly, not to start off really bleak, but we had both honestly kind of given up on dating for a while, we were both in a place, we were like, you know, we're going to focus on career, on our happiness, on our friends, and so we actually started going to this bar, the hideout in Austin, Texas, yeah, so there's, I was going to say when I last time I was in Austin,

21:48we went to a bar that was inside of a parking garage, oh, it's called the garage bar and it was, you like walked into the parking garage and like in the corner was like, oh, there's a little door and you just walk in, it was like this whole really cool bar, did you guys, do you know anything about that place? No, I think I've heard the name, I've never been there, it was a speakease, it was hidden, cocktail forward concept, right, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard of it, that's cool, some of the bartenders I knew in Austin always talked about it, I got lucky to like, we were at a bar, some new Mexican restaurants, very fine dining Mexican downtown, yeah, I remember the name of it because it's that good and they told us that you should go to the garage bar, it's just right there and I'm like, we walked by this garage like four times and I go, maybe it's in the parking garage, we walked into the parking garage, I'm like, it's right over there, there's a bar in here, it was crazy, anyway, you guys are hanging out at this bar and you weren't looking for love because that's, by the way, if you're out there looking for love, stop looking for love, it'll find you. Yeah, focus on yourself, focus on your joy, your personal joy, yeah, your career, yeah, we started going to this bar because we had, turns out we had a very strong core of friends that we shared and we had never met each other, kind of similar to how Drew and I met, it's like, we knew all the same people, so I was going to hang out with my friends who were also Megan's friends and we were going to this same bar for forever and one night just kind of started talking to each other and I feel like the first impressions were great because I was not interested in dating and I was very confident and secure in myself and happy in what I was doing and Megan kind of the same and when you're in that place where you're just healthy and happy and nurtured, it's just your rate of success goes up, so it's kind of that where we just clicked immediately and found out that we have the same taste in music and a lot of similar life ambitions and you know, really similar

23:54to how I met Drew too, it's just like, it felt really organic, we all kind of like fell into the same paces and valued the same things ethically and had the same vision of food in the world and and yeah, it's right in 2020, March 2020. You guys got married in March 2020? Literally, March 7th, so a week before Austin shut down, before South Korea and everything was cancelled, it's crazy. Of course, it was, you know, I was wedding-brained so I had no idea what COVID was and then afterwards I was like, oh dang, okay, let's shut it all down, I guess. So did you have your honeymoon? No. Yeah, one day. I love it. Well, it's funny because I didn't think about this because I celebrate my 16-year wedding anniversary on the 16th of September. Thank you so much, but just the idea of looking for somebody or wanting to find a mate, like you're in a different mode, but like when you're not looking for somebody and you're in your most authentic self, I'm comfortable with who I am, I'm loving life where I'm at right now, I think when you meet somebody in that regard, like you're both getting two authentic versions of yourself and I think you can find really good matches. I didn't even think about this, but like that's pretty cool. I totally see that. Yeah, sure. How did you propose? We're going to hear all about their proposal story right after a message from our sponsors. When talking about what chefs want, really the question is how do they do it? No fees, no fuel charges, no surcharges, never. This allows you to order as much or as little as you need as often as you need. Seven day delivery, access products every day, trimming your waste, increasing your valuable shelf life, and allowing you fresher product. 24-7 customer support, call, text, chat, email, anytime from

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27:08Jason Ellis is a hard-working man and he is here to help save you money, increase the cleanliness of your dishes, and provide the best service in Nashville. So check him out. Go to our website at nashvillerestaurantradio.com. Click the sponsors tab. Find the link for Supersource and if you sign up there you will get three free months of dish machine rentals right now. You can also check them out at supersource.com or you can call Jason Ellis directly at 770-337-1143. Okay, so here's the thing. It's impossible to find a linen company who you can trust, who you like, who you'd recommend and if you're a restaurant right now and you're looking for that company you're unhappy with who you're currently using and you want to start sourcing out but you're waiting for recommendations right now is your lucky day. Sitex is a third generation family-owned and operated linen, mats, and uniformed company. They really are the good guys in linen business. They're transparent with their pricing. They have incredible quality and their service is second to none. Check them out at sitex-corp.com or give Ross Chandler a call at 270-823-2468. How did you propose? Oh yeah, yeah so music is kind of a continuing thread through all of this as you can kind of tell. Drew went to school for music. We initially bonded over this, you know, loving the same bands.

28:43Over the same, having the same music. Like I remember early on in our dating she was like scrolling through my itunes library like what and this band. I was like I'm gonna marry this guy. I'm gonna marry this guy. We did the show comparison where it was like do you remember this tour? Yeah, she was at the San Antonio date and I was at the California date and you know Drew was at the Virginia date. We all went to the same tour the same year but just didn't know each other in different states. What band was that? So Bayside is actually from Bayside. We're all like pop punk emo kids. We're punk and metal and hardcore and yeah and all of that and so this this pop punk band Bayside was like a huge part. Megan and I have matching tattoos of the band and they were just like really formative to both of us independently and then actually became formative to us in our relationship and so I proposed at a Bayside show in Austin at a since defunct music venue. All right, barracuda. Yeah. Did you know it was coming Megan or were you surprised? So funny story, he like we had talked about never getting married.

29:53You know we're like we don't need that. We don't need like a piece of paper to prove our love or whatever and then one day we had met a couple friends that one of his old friends was in town and we met them at a bar and had some drinks and I met them for the first time. When we were leaving he was just like so we're gonna invite them to our wedding right and I was just like what you're kidding no and then little did I know he had like while I was sleeping like measured my finger about what so I knew he wanted to and I was like okay yeah let's do this row move but so there's a band called smoking popes and they have a song called Megan and we had seen the smoking popes at a venue in Austin called Hotel Vegas and it was very intimate and it was awesome. They played the song Megan when we were leaving I was just like missed opportunity you could have proposed to me then and then fast forward to the bass side acoustic show little did I know he had like requested them to play that song. They do a cover of the smoking popes song and when it when they played it I looked at him I was just like oh you could have proposed tonight and he did like 20 minutes later yeah totally I have like the ring in my pocket and I'm just getting bullets just like oh that would have been crazy. I'm an asshole. Yeah it was wonderful it's perfect that's awesome. I love that. Drew are you a single dude what's your story? No I have a girlfriend she lives in Chicago she recently moved. Shout out to Claudia. Shout out to Claudia.

31:32Oh hi Claudia. She moved last August to go back to school at the University of Chicago so we met in Austin January of last year and yeah so we I just got back from Chicago about two days ago so we we try to see each other once a month and kind of jumping back and forth between here and there so it's been going great actually I never thought I'd be into like kind of a long distance relationship but it's been the best one I've had so far so I love it yeah so we got a little bit of background we know Drew's background you have a background in culinary Jeremy are you are you what's your culinary background Megan are you full into food are you what's your story I can't cook to save my life but I did you know my first couple jobs I worked in the restaurant industry like front of house for about 10 years at different restaurants in Austin like as a young young person after when I was about 21 I moved into like corporate America I was in like IT I have a lot of administrative customer service roles so my title is director of ops which means I do everything other than cook that's me that's my title too yeah Megan's the one that pushes the business forward when drew and I are nerding out about some specific ingredient and the fermentation method and Megan will just be like guys yeah so accounting we get so yeah yeah just Jen does that to me all the time by the way yeah should go Brandon farmers market let's go that's like an actual thing that we talked about like last night yeah how did the ideation how does this happen are you guys all sitting around having a cocktail one day and you're like hey let's do a taco thing or is this even talking about for a long time whose idea was it tell us that how this how this was birthed

33:34yeah so this I mean it would I feel like Tootsie Looz was entirely born out of the pandemic I'm not sure if if COVID hadn't happened I'm not sure we'd be having this conversation it just changed a lot of our perspective and on what food could be or should be on working conditions in restaurants on what we three personally wanted for our lives um and full credit to drew for having the idea for the taco the taco concepts but it was definitely the the byproduct of a lot of really long conversations throughout 2020 we were drew was our roommate Megan and I have a house in Austin drew was living there so every night we would come home from work and we would just sit in the backyard and drink beers and kind of just commiserate together about you know COVID the state of the world the state of the restaurant industry I mean y'all know restaurants were a pod art so the whole the whole restaurant industry was kind of on its head and it was causing us to think a lot about what we wanted and what would make us happy and what would make us fulfilled as chefs and you know what what food what cuisine what concept we could do because you know honestly in some of the darkest moments of the pandemic we were talking about career change you're like you know should we even do this what is the path forward you know what does it look like for us to be successful in food um with COVID being this like huge dark cloud looming over the the whole restaurant industry and was there a tipping point I feel like the so the tacos came up really organically you know we um obviously living in Texas and then I'm from Southern California originally and that they have a great amazing taco scene and um all of these it was kind of like crazy that we never thought to cook with these flavors knowing how deeply we loved the flavors

35:36and it was like every day off we were eating tacos we were seeking it out we were you know making reservations at some of the best Mexican restaurants in Austin and we were during the pandemic we were stuck at the house and we started cooking tacos together at home just because we loved it that much and for whatever reason we were still thinking like oh we're gonna the next job will be a fine dining restaurant it'll be a Japanese something it'll be New American and we never thought about tacos even though we were cooking them on our off days we were eating them all the time and uh I think that was kind of the the tipping point was just like Drew started making fresh tortillas and then he got like he like dove hard into tacos for dinner at home during which I wasn't mad about and yeah we just started talking about what if like these are good like what if we do our own thing and like sounds like the plot of chef you know that movie with um yeah and I've I've viewed it more of like how do we change the industry so that like chefs are in control again you know we're kind of taking the power back like instead of having to pull investors to get you know these million dollar restaurants and and all this pay all the people that you need to hire from front of house to back of house to dishwashers like how can we take it back to like almost cutting the middleman out you know where it's just us serving a product that we're proud of directly to the world and I feel I felt that it would be more fulfilling that way too because it's like direct face-to-face you know um interaction with the chef and the people that are passionate about it you know there's not all these layers built in between um so I kind of viewed it as like maybe this is our chance to change the industry because we see you see that all over the country that chefs you know since COVID hit they're doing these pop-ups they've pivoted their cuisine from like oh I do this like crazy fine dining food to like now I just sell like cheeseburgers you know but they're amazing John Brock Joy Lynn yeah exactly so you

37:39we kind of started to see these little glimpses of light through the darkness of like oh maybe this is the direction that could change the scene and like make it more enticing for chefs to get involved with their own businesses their own concepts um and then we found the wash and it was just perfect you know because that's that's their kind of goal as well we thought you'd align with them a lot so we went for it have you got to meet the other people that are going to be in the wash have you met like Chad and Gracie and you were there Jeremy the thing with Chad and Gracie oh yeah two Peruvian chefs all those guys you met everybody yeah we've met so Chad and Gracie we've met the Soy Cubano folks um we have yet to meet two Peruvian chefs and Poké um yeah the Poké yeah but we're excited I mean the wash is going to be kind of a dream for us because it's all very small focused concepts it's it's a diverse spread of food and being able to have these next-door neighbors that are doing their own thing but in a completely different part of the world so culinarily it's just it's a dream for a cook you know and we're going to be eating really well yeah yeah no kidding exciting but yeah we're excited about the wash um can't wait to serve the rest of east Nashville that we haven't hit with our pop-ups yet but it's going to be a really fun concept I think it's going to be a really cool thing for the community to kind of rally behind and take some diversity and support some really really small organic pop-ups and startups um you know that are just doing food that they love I think yeah we're super excited about it I was at some dinner party a couple nights ago and they were like so what's coming up on the food scene and I always feel like whenever somebody asks that I'm always like well I don't know you well enough to know what you're looking for right

39:39because some people come here and they want the fine dining or they want the steakhouse and like my husband and I own a restaurant and it's fast casual so some people want that and I was so I just talked about the wash I was like here you go go here it's going to be incredible and there's all these different options and like we're so excited about it yeah yeah we are too we're very pumped when is it gonna open um last I think we're at we're at november now you know how it is permitting delays and stuff I'm sure Tyler covered all of that I mean kind of we didn't get into I just knew it was coming and in the meantime you've been doing pop-ups variously around the city your next one is going to be September the fifth yep sunday yeah so we'll be at um shops at porter east we live in east nashville obviously the wash will be in east nashville um so yeah ranger stitch matt from ranger stitch invited us to do this um and you know in the pop-up scene we've made other friends like bad luck burger club I don't know if you've heard of them they're killing it right now uh they're popping up sunday as well there's gonna the oscar meyer wiener truck's gonna be there it's gonna be a wiener mobile oh now i'm in it's gonna be super fun so yeah we've just been having a blast honestly like it's been really nice to kind of like meet people and uh get to know the community we did a pop-up at daisy may hatco with the wash crew a few weeks back and neighbors like where we will be cooking and neighbors in the community just walked by because they smelled good food you know um and we've just heard a lot of good things everyone's been really lovely so we're having fun we're you know i'm glad we have the opportunity to pop up and we're not just like waiting around for the spot to open like jeremy said earlier we didn't want to just like come in here from texas like we know the place and like here's our tacos you know we wanted to like get to know people and kind of vibe out what

41:41they wanted as well so moving here and opening a rec like moving here during a pandemic is got to be lonely and then you're opening a restaurant which means you're working insane hours and that's got to be lonely have you had chances to like experience the city at all have you made friends outside of the restaurant industry at all or is it all kind of yeah i mean we're trying i think it's still very much alive yeah but i we are lucky we do um one of jeremy's groomsmen and his wife are our neighbors are literally just oh great so we got lucky there his brother also moved from la to nashville like a week after we did um we our neighbors are lovely we've met a lot of them drew uh drew's currently working at butcher and the bee part-time and he's made a lot of friends which means we've made a lot of friends so we're trying you know the best you can with the schedule and the pandemic um yeah everyone's been so lovely so far go out to eat yeah for sure not as much as we want we have like a giant list but we're we've been to some really good places where's your favorite so far because i wonder if you're gonna say the one everyone says well my personal favorite is east side banh mi hands down like before i even met them that was like i'm gonna eat this every day we knew that they were gonna be our neighbors in in the wash with the pho concept we were eating at east side banh mi like twice a week yeah just because it's that good it's incredible it is that good yeah um restaurant-wise locust yeah is like one of the most impactful meals that we've had since we've been here yeah wow i mean so many good places like megan and i celebrated our anniversary at city house that place is insane um i had a great meal at lou that's like in our neighborhood and the only problem with that is it's it's it's kind

43:42of hard to get in sometimes you know i tried several times uh and couldn't get in and i finally did and had it had a great meal there um so but yeah like they said the list is staggering uh there's a lot of good food here and we have a lot of work to do yeah yeah we all just ate it yeah that's one that we hear a lot about yeah uh philip crasher does a great job hey let me ask you a question we've talked all about this thing let's talk about your tacos can we talk about the actual food that you got going on here me talk about the food a i mean i want i want to i want to introduce you guys to the city but i got to know i mean anybody can make a taco right tacos are pretty pretty easy to make but what makes your taco special so i think i mean tacos are deceptively simple and i think that's kind of why we chose them coming from a fine dining background where we're used to bells and whistles and steps of service and 15 components on a dish and all of these things looking at a taco where it's like three things or four things um is a is really a challenge for a chef you know it's it's you can't hide behind anything you can't dazzle people with technique or um you know like i said piling components on top of things where it's uh you can kind of misdirect the guest a little bit and and make the value of it seem higher than it is it's just it is what it is everybody knows what a taco is everybody has a reference point for it already they're supposed to be affordable they're supposed to be street food um so choosing a cuisine that's this simple forces us to execute everything perfectly to really be thoughtful about how it eats texture flavor building all of this complexity into a bite that is essentially you know a really great tortilla as the foundation of the taco a really great protein and then onion cilantro lime you know it doesn't we're

45:44not trying to over complicate what is already like an age-old perfect food we're just trying to do it the best that we can so you know tortilla wise we're going to be you know grinding our own corn we're getting our corn from Oaxaca and um trying to pay our homage and our tribute to Mexico in that way um but we'll be nixtamalizing it in-house and grinding it in-house and making fresh tortillas every day throughout the day you know kind of trying to one of East Side Bombi's strengths is baking those baguettes throughout service that you always get something fresh and you know we're we're doing the same thing with tortillas and um really just trying to execute everything as perfectly as we can because there's nothing to hide behind it's you have to just make the simple thing as as best as you can so that's kind of the name of the game with its eludes yeah and i think that what also is kind of separating us is our backgrounds you know we have all this experience with ingredients and and different techniques and all these things and we get to apply that to this you know not all of it sticks not all of it lands like Jeremy was saying but um one thing that's super important for all of us is using local food and using farm food you know things that we feel very strongly about we get a great way to to provide that service you know we get to kind of work with the farmers here and uh hold up Nashville's produce i mean the produce here is incredible um it's outstanding um so we're really excited to have that as our our foot forward you know we're using local uh ingredients as much as possible i love it and then our flavor profiles are well we're trying to stay very traditional in mexican cuisine we're not trying to do uh americanized or tex-mex kind of flavor profiles we're going for the real deal of authentic kind of flavors so so have you guys gone to bastion

47:46on sundays have you met edgar victoria alabri hey you know yeah i mean that's the that's one of the other great things about moving to nashville now is we immediately connected with these guys who have been here doing the work already and you know shout out to edgar from alabri hey um julio at my east elevator these guys that have really started to already push the envelope with what showing national what mexican food can be and should be um and so we're really excited to join them um and they've been so friendly to us and so welcoming um you couldn't have nicer guys you guys would fit right in like the nice people in the world i'll say that about the the nashville food industry as a whole everyone has been like open arms like they want they want us you know which is kind of bizarre from what we're used to you know in in the food industry it can be very cold shoulder and it can take a lot of networking and work to get to know and meet people and here it was just come on in you know the water's fine kind of scenario so um everyone has been super super excited about us and just kind of a lot of people haven't even tried our food yet and they're they're like excited for us to come and want us to come so we couldn't be luckier to have landed that here um it's a really special thing that nashville has i think it is it's very much like this city and i remember i worked under a chef that came from millenia and um not josh habager i love josh habager but different chef from millenia who was basically only here for like a year and the restaurant ended up closing because you just truthfully wasn't nice and it's like you can't not be nice here like you have to be nice or nobody's gonna want to work for you or eat with you or anything that's i love that about the industry here yeah it's great it's very it's a nice uh change of pace you know from what we've seen in the past and um yeah i'm just happy to be

49:50a part of that you know i want to continue to do that for other businesses that come here and try to do the same thing you know it's like cool now we get to be the big brother and like help help people as well i mean we've we've been so lucky it's it's been insane what to be or something i said it really it honestly sounds like kindred all of these things kind of coming together the way that you all met the pandemic just kind of nashville should we leave the industry and go do something else no let's do it here the the wash is opening it's the perfect thing for our style of concept you get here and just i'm a big fan of our community our nashville hospitality community because it is that i think that i've said this a million times on the show is that we as nashville hospitality people have to lead by example whoever comes into town we got to put our arms around them and welcome them because that's what we do here that that's the city of nashville and if you could have you know march 2020 was it was a crazy time for us in this city and you know you'll see it right now with what's happening waverly with this tornado with the with the flooding but we had massive floods here in 2010 and then in 2020 with the hurt with the tornado the city just rallies i mean everybody is your brother and it's just it's amazing how special the city is but the culinary scene inside of the city is some one of the most special communities that i've ever been a part of i mean it's just amazing and for all i can tell you guys are like just right there with us you guys are the nicest people i'm so excited for you to be here wish you nothing but success thank you so much yeah we're super excited it's we moved in january um to nashville and we're just like ready to go yeah we're we can't wait to feed people and yeah that i mean the culinary culture here in the restaurant industry like you said is it's really something special and it's something to be proud of as as people

51:52that have cooked all over the country i mean it's it's pretty rare yeah and and it's something that you know we hope to to do you guys proud and and carry on that legacy and be a part of it you know that essential like kindness um that y'all have going on here is definitely a foundation of of tootsie lou's tacos and what we're trying to do is be kind to each other as husband and wife as business partners um be kind to ourselves so that we can have the bandwidth to cook good food and deliver great service um and then be kind to our neighbors and our farmers and the rest of the community and i i genuinely believe and and we believe as a company that when you do that and you put kind of basic human kindness first your end product is going to be better you know it's just going to speak for itself yeah i completely agree well guys uh one of the things i like to do um we kind of get towards the end of the interview and i i'm excited because we have a new our show is coming back it's called the music city roundup and one of our segments is going to be called pop and we'll be talking about pop-up restaurants and uh hopefully until you guys get this place open there's going to be a lot more pop-ups because i want to come try it because i haven't had it yet and i want to get out there you'll probably see me on uh sunday because that sounds like a lot of fun i want to take my kids out to see the oscar meyer wienermobile yeah if anything it's a photo op yeah if anything for sure so one of the things we always like to ask our guests to do and you can do this all together one at a time however you want to do it but i like to open the floor and you guys get to take us out so so jerry's final thought style whatever you want to say to the city of nashville to your mom and dad whoever you are talking to you guys have the floor whatever you want to say as long as you want to say it go taking away drew um i mean like i said i just want to honestly thank nashville for

53:53being so welcoming i mean we have so many people that like i said don't even know us that are they're helping us so much they don't even know how much they're helping us you know um sarah from otaku has been more than gracious to us you know she she had us jerry and i working on some dishes for her in the beginning we were kind of consulting i feel like it was like oh you just moved here you guys have ramen experience like let me let me help you out you can help me out we'll kind of work together and then now we're currently doing all of our prep out of her um commissary kitchen um so you know like i said stuff like that that just continued to blow my mind about how nice and welcoming everyone was here i think is my biggest takeaway from nashville so far and the butcher and bee people too i mean that they do great food over there they're bumping restaurant um they have fun um and so it's it was great to to be involved in that community as well um yeah i don't know i just feel super lucky to have stumbled with i mean we didn't know this moving here we we just kind of knew that nashville was similar to austin and kind of had some of the same lifestyle and culture things that we we were into we had no idea that people were going to be so cool and um i think that for me is what i want to end with is just i've i've i love uh how welcoming nashville has been so yeah megan i mean if you don't have anything i'm gonna just say if you guys want to try our food uh because we can talk about it all day long but if you want to try our food come to one of our pop-ups um follow us on instagram at tootsie lose and we post about it um we post our menu with the flyer every pop-up we have we try to do at least one pop-up a week um just with our schedules right now um yeah check us out yeah we we feel gracious

55:53we feel so grateful to be here and we're just excited to feed people so yeah come out to the pop-ups come to the wash when it opens uh we just want to we just want to feed people yeah all we want to do oh you're muted brandon we're honored that you guys decided to uh i'm glad it's so nice to meet you jeremy in person i love that you're like are you national restaurant radio i was like yes what's up man it's so nice to meet you guys i couldn't be more excited for all of your success i know you're gonna do wonderful here in town guys go follow tootsie lose tacos on instagram at tootsie lose tacos right uh it's just at tootsie lose at tootsie lose um and go see him this sunday uh september the fifth at the porter at shops at porter shops at porter east yes do you have another pop-up planned after that we can talk about yeah so the next one is uh we we're going to be off the next week uh for a private event but the next one will be september 18th at harding house brewery and then september 21st at um bearded iris in germantown nice yeah all right well guys i wish you nothing but the best of success and we will talk to you soon yeah lovely talking to you all right thanks for listening today please go check out our friends over at tootsie lose uh they're at the shops at porter east on sunday hope that you have a happy labor day brandon's book club episode is going to be coming out where we talk about anthony bourdain we're trying to figure out a makeup date for talk and shift and next week the music city roundup so if you know any pr teams anybody that has information that they want to share with us about anything cool happening in town please send an email to brandon at nashville restaurant radio.com or to jen at nashville restaurant radio.com

57:54we hope that you guys are being safe out there wear a mask and go get vaccinated love you guys bye