Virtual Happy Hour! Sit back, relax... and listen... Hal Holden bache, Austin Smith.. and friends

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Well, hello Music City. How are you guys doing out there? And happy Saturday. Today is the first Saturday that we have we have lived in isolation. So we've almost had a full week where the sky is kind of falling. It's been a rapidly changing week. We have closed restaurants. Essentially, bars got closed this week. Yesterday, Davidson County closed down restaurants for all guests to go in and dine. And now we are in the to go game. So I thought we'd have a happy hour, right? I mean, what what do we do? We're in the restaurant business. And that is what happens. We we need people. And every one of you out there does what you do, because you love people. And the thing that we've missed out the most on is really spending time with each other. I saw today say this isn't social, social distancing, we need to be physically distancing ourselves from people. But we need to be socially like we still need to be around people socially, not around people, but we need to be talking to people. So pick up a phone, call somebody you care about.

01:37For me today, I thought it'd be fun to go live and just talk to people live as it goes. So this is a little choppy. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm not great at this yet. I'm still working on it. I'm a restaurant guy that decided to start doing a podcast. So as these go along, my skills will continue to get better. But for now, grab a cocktail, grab a water, grab whatever you like, sit back, relax. We've got some great guests for you today. We are going we are live on Facebook. And this is kind of an interesting day, because I think a lot of people are sad, because they've just been furloughed or laid off. And then I've got a bunch of friends right now who are super sad, because they've had to actually lay people off. And that's something that I don't think a lot of people understand. And I think people understand being laid off. But they might understand the dynamic of restaurant relationships that people we work so close to each other on a regular basis. That when if you own a restaurant, you have to let your entire staff go. It's painful, like it's something that you don't ever want to do. It hurts. And I just feel for everybody that's had to do that today in this past week. So today's for you. With a heavy heart, we do this today, but wanted to do something fun, again, for everybody to hang out. So what we're going to do today is I've got some guests coming on. And they're going to be talking about I thought it'd be really fun if we had a great bartender come on and talk about how to make just some basic cocktails.

03:22So if you work in the restaurant business, or you don't, now you're kind of relegated to being your own bartender. So hey, how do you make a Manhattan? How do you make a Cosmopolitan? And how do you make your old fashioned? So we've got a great bartender. Jessica Long is coming on today. She's bartender at Mayor Bowl restaurant in Brentwood. My buddy Austin Smith, who is the co owner and party fouls going to come on and he's going to talk boozy slushies with us for just a brief moment. I've got chef Ed Butler. He's a food fanatic chef for us foods. Everybody knows Ed Butler. We love Ed Butler. And then my good friend Hal Holden Bache is going to be coming on and he's the owner chef at Loughlin Table. So a lot of exciting guests today. We're going to have a lot of fun. Hopefully you can sit back and just kind of relax. Let's get some positive vibes going. Get a drink in your hand, get a cup of coffee, get the morning paper, whatever you're doing. Hopefully you can enjoy this. And we're going to go ahead and get started off. Let's bring Jessica in here. We've got Jessica Long. She's going to jump in and we're going to jump right into this. So sit back, relax, enjoy yourself and welcome to Restaurant Radio. Jessica Long, are you there? I am here. Are you there? I am here. So we are live right now on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Fantastic. How has your isolation been? It's been great. I think a lot of people are doing things that they've been saying they were going to do for a long time.

05:08And now they're kind of pretty much forced to. So I'm doing a lot of that. But it's good. It's been good. It's been a crazy past couple weeks. You know, I think all of us were not prepared for this. So we're adjusting accordingly. That's to say the least. Yeah. My wife has like completely created a home gym outside. Wow. Yeah. She's like got all these little weights and yoga mats and she's putting everything around and she's just been amazing. That's impressive. That's very impressive. I've painted one of my children's rooms. We're going to start the other one tonight. There you go. All the things that you were like, all right, we'll get to this eventually. I have one yoga mat. So if I can actually have two, so if I can contribute, I've got two. So you're the lead bartender at Mare Bowl and I met you last year and your passion for spirits is just absolutely amazing. I love it.

06:10Well, thank you. And your talent for making drinks is amazing, which is why I wanted you to come on today. And so everybody's out there. Cheers to who we have on Right Now Live. We are doing a happy hour. We've got Jessica Long and she is what I wanted to know is everybody's out there right now. We've all become amateur bartenders except for me. I don't drink alcohol, but if we were amateur bartenders at home, what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? I'm hoping maybe you could come on and give us some pointers. Yes, absolutely. So I know that there's a lot of people who will be anywhere from a range of like people who are just now learning how to make cocktails. They're just understanding some of the basic cocktails. And then there's going to be people who are wanting to do something a little more challenging. So I'm going to try to cater to everyone, everything in between in the next couple of minutes to just give you some basics, some do's and don'ts, if that's cool. Sweet. So obviously you've got your main spirits. So for those of you who have quite a budget, you know, you might be able to get away with getting a bunch of different types of liqueurs with bitters, things like that. I know some people, a lot of us are on a budget as well. So I'm going to speak to those people as well. I'm a bourbon girl. So your bourbon basics, Manhattan's, old fashions, a lot of people really like whiskey sours as well. Of course, you can always do. I'm personally now drinking a Woodford on the rocks. So, you know, it's a basic, easy thing anyone can do. A few tools that you'll want to probably take advantage of, especially if you're trying to kind of get your measurements just right. You'll want to have a jigger, which is essentially a measuring tool for, you know, by ounces. Most jiggers will be a two ounce and a one ounce. There's two sides to them. And you can also measure an ounce and a half with those as well. So if you want to get accurate, that's a great thing to have. Obviously, I also

08:11recommend a shaker or any stir you have. There's the long spoons you can get that stir cocktail as well. There is a little bit of science behind shaking and stirring. And so those are just a few things that you'll want to have, obviously ice as well. You can get the like cases with the large cubes. And if you want to be classy, those are a nice thing to have. So your basic bourbons, can I catch off Jess? I'm so sorry. So if I'm making a just a general drink and I'm at home and I normally just pour straight out of the bottle, how many ounces just so everyone we all get back to being in a restaurant and everybody gets back to going to bars. If I order a Jack Daniels and Coke at a bar, how much Jack Daniels do I get? What's the standard pour? That's a great question. So you're going to probably get from any sort of mixed drink about an ounce and a half is generally important. Now if you do like a specialty drink like a Manhattan Old Fashioned traditionally, a lot of a lot of places do two ounces. I prefer two ounces. I know it's a little heavy on the heavier side. If you are a little bit of a baby when it comes to alcohol, I would recommend an ounce and a half versus two. So you know, but if you're just getting like a Jack and Coke or like a gin and tonic, you're going to get an ounce and a half of those. Just so the people know when they get going back to bars, that's a standard pour is an ounce and a half. And sometimes you'll see on your check, some of those say rocks. You can get a rocks pour. It's typically there's an upcharge for that, but they give you an extra half ounce of liquor. And then martinis typically have two ounces, right? Two to two and a half ounces. You know, some people standardize that based on the size of their martini glasses because you don't look like you're not getting enough in there. And then obviously if you add olive juice, that kind of adds to the way that the presentation of how much you're actually getting in the martini glass. All right, so I didn't mean to interrupt you. You were talking about all the stuff you're doing. I'm just trying to break it down for people. Absolutely. So I'm starting with bourbon because I'm a bourbon girl,

10:13that's kind of my go-to. I also love gin, but typically just a few things. So we've talked about a little bit of tools you'll want. Some staples in your kitchen that you may not even know are great for cocktails, but they are definitely staples. If you want to have a variety, especially during a quarantine, I recommend getting lemon juice and lime juice. You can actually get organic lemon and lime juice, just pure 100% lemon and lime. You can squeeze your own as well. Sugar is going to come in handy. If you have honey in the house, that helps. And then orange and cherry for old fashions. So I personally like my old fashions with a lemon peel and an orange peel. So what I usually do, just basic old fashion, you're going to add your peels. So what I do is a lemon and an orange peel, but you're welcome to use cherries as well. A lot of people like the cherries. And essentially you're going to muddle that with a simple syrup. Now, some people out there don't know exactly what that is. What is a simple syrup? Yeah, it's essentially just hot water and sugar. You can make this in a pan and that's going to be a staple for most cocktails. So you'll just do half sugar, half water. You can boil the water and add your sugar until you like the consistency of it. I literally just do it in like a pan or excuse me, like a pot.

11:35And then you can store that. Basically just pour it into any container, a pourable container. Stick it in your fridge and you've got simple syrup for days. Okay, so just a quick update. We have more people that have joined us. Jessica's talking about drinks that are easy to make from your house. If you're now, if you've been relegated to being a home bartender because you can't go see your favorite bartender, she's just kind of helping us, giving us an idea of some easy things you can make at home. So she's talking about making simple syrup. She's talking with bourbon. Go! Perfect. So for my old fashion, what I usually do is I muddle an orange and lemon peel in the simple syrup. When you actually use simple syrup with your fruit, it's going to bring out more of the oils. So to muddle with the simple syrup is always best. And muddling is when you take the fruit and then you grind it in? And you can find muddlers at any of your local liquor stores. I'm sure Target and Walmart probably have them as well. So that's going to be a staple if you like old fashions. If we're quarantined, what do you, you know what I used to use for a muddler when I didn't want to leave the house? An A1 bottle. I used to get an A1 bottle. Whatever floats your boat, just don't get any A1 in there because that'd be kind of gross. You leave the cap on, but I would always just grind it in there as a, as just a go-to. There you go. Hey, whatever works.

12:51You know what? If you don't have a muddler, there are plenty of household items that'll get you by on that. These are desperate times. Exactly. Desperate times, desperate measures, you know, got to have your fix. So, uh, so yeah, with that old fashion, I recommend two ounces of bourbon. Um, you can, I mean, there's a variety. A lot of people like different, I personally like four roses. Um, they're small batches, really nice for old fashions. A lot of people's go-tos are Woodford and Bullitt. Um, so yeah, two ounces and you're just going to stir those. Basically rule of thumb. If you have any citrus involved, you can shake. If you do not have citrus involved, we recommend stirring. So for an old fashioned, you're going to want to stir that and not shake it. I did not know that. Yes. Um, so that would be a basic old fashion. Uh, now a few liqueurs I do recommend as well. If you want to have basically, again, a variety, a triple sec is really nice to have. Super cheap at the liquor stores. Dry Curacao or Grand Marnier will also be really nice. It's kind of like a highland Grand Marnier is really nice for, for that kind of stuff too. Uh, Sweet Vermouth, uh, it's a staple of all of Manhattan, um, which Manhattan is many people don't know. It's super, super simple cocktail to make. You basically, yeah, it's just two ounces of either rye or regular bourbon. Um, I prefer rye. Um, it's going to be a little spicier. The rye is going to give you a little more spice and one ounce of your Sweet Vermouth and then you just add your bitters.

14:17And I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but obviously old fashioned, you will put bitters in that too. So that's always a good staple to have. Uh, Angostura is basically, uh, the go-to old fashion bitter. Um, orange bitters are really nice as well. Do you recommend those too? So, um, so those are a couple of basics there. Um, of course you have, I know I'm, I'm, I'm flying through stuff with the time we have here, but, um, but those are just a few staples. If you're going to do anything with bourbon, um, of course vodka, you've got martinis. Cosmos are really nice, um, as well. Um, so those are a few I would also recommend having on hand. Um, if you don't know how to make a Cosmo, essentially you're just going to do an ounce and a half of vodka. Uh, I would do about three fourths an ounce cranberry, half an ounce lime. Uh, you can use a triple sec. If you don't like it super sweet, just add a little simple to no simple syrup. Uh, but generally I would do about, you know, maybe like a fourth simple and half triple sec. And that is a cocktail you want to shake because you do have those citrus juices in there. So I recommend having a shaker on hand, um, if you want to do a Cosmo. Perfect. And of course martinis as well. Um, they say not to shake a gin martini because you bruise the gin. Some people don't care. Of course James Bond kind of changed, you know, the idea of the martini with the whole shake and not start thing.

15:43Yes, he did. Yes, indeed. Um, but yeah, so those are a few staples I would definitely recommend. All right. So we've got some quarantine cocktails by Jessica Long. Yes. And uh, what's your personal favorite drink that you've ever, that you, that you make for yourself? Okay. I personally really like the vicaray, which is a new Orleans style, uh, cocktail, which consists of, it's pretty boozy. So if you're just, you know, I'm on lockdown, I want something to just wind down with that's going to be a little boozy. This cocktail is for you. Um, one ounce whiskey, one ounce of brandy. You're going to do three fourths, an ounce of sweet vermouths. And I actually prefer, uh, Benedictine as well, which is you would do one fourth an ounce of Benedictine. Benedictine is essentially, it's a French herbal liqueur, which has really aromatic properties. So you're getting a lot of dynamic from this drink, but you're also getting a nice buzz from it. Um, so that's a really great one. If you want something fruitier, um, I really love French 75s. If you're not a gin fan, but you want to try to explore gin, this is a great cocktail to start with. Um, essentially you're going to have two ounces of gin, uh, three fourths, an ounce of lime, half an ounce of simple syrup. Um, you're going to shake that and top it with champagne. It's honestly, it's a great spring cocktail. Um, nice light, very aromatic. Um, I love putting, um, a little bit of St. Germain in there as well, which is an Elza flower liqueur. So that's going to kind of boost it to the next level. Um, so it's a really great spring cocktail. So definitely recommend that that's kind of been my little quarantine cocktail. Um, and then you could serve that in a champagne too. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Jess. Um, I just appreciate you taking a few minutes to jump on here with us. And, um, I, uh, I do have one more thing I want to say, and that is just, um, for the people out there, myself included, I was, I was, you know, I'm temporarily out of work. A lot of bartenders are out of work. One way you can help, um, if you

17:47go to serviceindustry.tips, um, it allows you to, you know, you're making these cocktails at home and it allows you to tip, essentially tip your bartender. So all these bartenders out of work, uh, can get a little bit of compensation. Uh, you can also go to usdgfoundation.org, um, and you can donate directly to the COVID-19 relief program for, um, for bartenders. So definitely check it out. Thank you so much, Jess. I really appreciate you doing this today. Yeah, absolutely. And good luck to you all out there. Find what works and, uh, and peace be with you. Thank you so much, Jess. Take care. All right, you too. All right. All right, so that's Jess. We've got another person jumping on the, uh, call right now. Hey, hey. Austin. What's going on, brother? Uh, we are, uh, we are live right now on Nashville Restaurant Radio. All right, all right. So thanks for joining in. So this is, um, Austin, tell me about who you are. So yeah, I'm Austin Smith. Uh, I am the co-owner of Party Foul. Um, and, uh, I play a lot of softball with Brandon. I wouldn't say what I do is, is actually playing softball, but yeah. Drop bombs, hammer, whatever you want to call it. Shoot.

19:03Shoot. So yeah, so Austin, thanks for joining me. So this is obviously a crazy time. Um, we're all pretty sad right now. I think that we all want to be around people. We want to be talking to people. We want to serve people. That's what we do. And we're unable to do that for the most part. So I wanted to create a happy hour for everybody to get together and, uh, kind of share and just hanging out. So you are a co-owner, like you said, in Party Foul, Hot Chicken. And one of the things that, um, tempts me every single time that I drive by your building is a big sign outside that says boozy slushies. Yeah, they're delicious, brother. They'll get you. They will get you. So I thought, hey, while people are quarantined at their home, is there something that they could make at their house that they could pretend like they were at Party Foul? Uh, absolutely. You know, one of my favorites is, you know, a Sonic all-time great cherry limeade, which is very simple to make.

20:07We actually use a lime vodka so that we already have that lime component in there. And it's also a little more candy, which you want when you're drinking a cherry limeade from that Sonic. Yes. Uh, so we use, uh, lime vodka and grenadine and Sprite. I'm not kidding. That is it. That's how simple it is. An ounce and a half of lime vodka, uh, grenadine to taste with Sprite and, uh, blend that up, uh, you know, you want to blend everything else up with the ice before you add the Sprite. Add the Sprite at the end so you still get that crispness. If you add it before you blend, it'll beat the hell out of that Sprite and it'll go flat on you. So you're cherry limeade boozy slushy. So we're taking, what if you don't have lime, um, vodka? You can just add a lime to it, right? Oh yeah. You can just add lime juice to taste. I mean, honestly, you're, you're, you'll know how much lime and how much, uh, how much of the cherry you really want to put in there, uh, depends on the person, you know? A little more lime, add a little more lime. That sounds like something that like yesterday when it was like 75 degrees would have been like just absolutely perfect. Yes. And it's just the quickest, easiest thing to do ever.

21:15So I hear you, you're at home. You're probably like the rest of us running around with children everywhere. Oh yeah. I am on a, uh, Disney, Pixar, uh, this and that marathon. Actually we've switched off of Disney Pixar and we are on, uh, uh, birds, uh, Angry Birds 2 right now. Oh yes. We came out on Netflix. We're celebrating Angry Birds 2, uh, and I'm, I'm sipping on a little bit of, uh, a little bit of Johnny Walker and trying to make the best of this day. Blue, black, red. What do you got? Sipping on black right now. Oh, we're going black today, huh? I am sipping on, um, water in my happy hour. So cheers everybody out there. Cheers. Salute. All right, man. Well, hey, thanks for joining. I'm really glad you did that and, um, that's huge, man. Thank you so much. I hope everything works out for you and stay safe. All right, you too, brother. All right, buddy. That's pretty fun. Um, I'm loving hanging out. Hey Sue, hey David, Josh, I don't know who's still all out there. Um, we are live right now on Restaurant Radio. Welcome to the happy hour.

22:24Um, I don't know if you have a drink or whatever you're doing. We are trying to create something that is fun and exciting. We want everybody here to, uh, be, while, while there's some sadness going on, uh, people are losing their jobs. People are having to lay people off. We wanted something that's going to brighten people up. So people in the service centers, we need each other and I thought we would do something for each other. And if you haven't checked out Nashville Restaurant Radio, um, we have a Facebook page. You're on it right now. Check out one of our podcasts. Um, I've got, I think five or six out there and I will be adding more as the week goes on. As I have more time at home, I'm going to be adding more as people are available to meet and do all this stuff. And so now we're going to go to a good friend of mine. His name is Ed Butler. And if you don't know Ed Butler, then I don't think you actually work, uh, in the restaurant industry in Nashville, Tennessee. That's been around forever. Uh, he's the food fanatic chef at U.S. Foods and, um, let's check in on Ed. All right. And look who we've got now. This is, uh, Ed Butler, food fanatic chef from U.S. Foods. Ed, how you doing today, man? Man, I'm doing great and it's awful good to talk to you. I'm glad, uh, that you and I are getting to chat because it looks like nobody's shaking hands or hugging right now, right? Yeah. Well, welcome, welcome to the happy hour. Here we are. We're at a happy hour with the restaurant community. Since we can't do that, trying to create a medium for everybody to get together and spend some time together.

24:00Well, I absolutely love that idea. You know, we've got so many people with kids at home and people trying to work from home. And what does that look like trying to put meals together at your house or with our restaurant brothers and sisters changing gears from dining room to take out or delivered food, right? That's a great question. Do you have some insight for that? Well, I do. I mean, you know, you just have to change gears. If we don't have people walking in the front door, you know, gear up your staff to deliver for you and make it not cumbersome for people to order and get real noisy about putting out kind of a, maybe a family style, simple menu without too many items on it. And look at the inventory you're already holding and how do we sell that as family meals to help our customers, help our neighbors and help their businesses as well. So what are you doing this time right now? What are you, what are you up to? Well, what I'm doing is I'm really, really assessing my freezer, my refrigerator. What do I have eating the perishables first, try not to bombard the grocery store and really breaking stuff out, ziplocking, labeling dating is really important right now, especially in your own house.

25:21If you've got ziplock bags, you can use those, double them up for things that might you need to hold a little longer. And hopefully some people have deep freezes, but you need to really assess your inventory and what you really have for your family and sit down and eat together and eat what you need. Don't eat to eat, you know, especially it's so easy to do that when, you know, you're, you're just sitting around the house, you're, you've got all this downtime and try to be, you know, really thinking about eating together instead of individually eating in the house and everybody really, I mean, if that makes sense, I don't know if that makes sense. You know, a lot of people, you know, everybody's Scooby snacking and just, you know, eating at the house and you're going to run through your groceries really quickly. Be, be a really smart shopper, you know, maybe even ask the grocery stores that you shop at when they're getting their deliveries, because they're getting bombarded. And as soon as their inventory gets in and they put it on the shelf, boom, it's gone. So why not talk to that guy in that meat department and go, Hey man, when's your next delivery coming in? So, you know, when you can be there to get your proteins, when they pull them out, put them on the shelf. A lot of their stuff's all pre-packaged, especially like, I'm just using this as an example, Walmart, different stores like that.

26:38It's all pre-packaged, comes in IQF, they just throw it out there and they're blowing through inventory. So to help you not waste your time going to the grocery store, go in with a real smart thing. Think about the dry things that you're going to use, rice, beans, things like that. And I'm not trying to act too desperate, but you know, dry things like, you know, five pounds of pasta dry is almost three pounds wet. And how do I manipulate that? Cool it quickly, oil it, bag and tag it where I can do different meals, whether it's a cold salad or a hot pasta. And be a really smart thinker of what you're doing in the kitchen. Also, you don't want to spend a whole lot of time walking through the grocery store, right? Because you want to make sure that you're not, that we're socially or physically distancing ourselves and having a plan as to what, like game planning, like your meals, what you're going to eat intentionally is a great way to, is a great way to walk in, be intentional with what you're buying there and just get everything at one time. You are absolutely right. And a lot of these people are doing, you know, you can pick it up at the grocery store, whether it's Walmart, I'm sorry, I keep using Walmart as an example, but you know, you can, you can pick up a delivery, you know, or, or so forth.

27:55I think there are some apps out there where people can grocery shop for you and deliver to you. If you feel that you are at risk or, you know, maybe you're a diabetic or there's different health issues with your lungs or something like that where you're too high a risk to even consider going to the store, you're going to need to really look at those kind of windows. And I think what we need to do is really help our elderly community, especially your own family members, really dial into that and help them and keep them out of the stores to cause any problems with them. My mom and dad, my dad's 89, my mom's 88. They still live at home and we're calling them every day and trying to get them on board to, to be really smart about what that looks like. Wow. That's some really good stuff right there, Ed. Thank you so much. Do you want to say anything? So right now we've got the restaurant community listening. We've got people out there who are sitting at home alone. Any words of encouragement? Anything you want to toast people? They're there. We're at a virtual happy hour right now. So if I could just say one thing, man, make sure and exercise. Get out of that house.

29:09Turn the TV off. I'm a big music person. Crank on the tunes. Keep your energy level up. Don't, don't fall to this, um, as this tremendous disaster. You know, we're in an ever changing environment. Stay positive. Move forward. Just keep going and, and let's all get through this together. That's the way I feel. Dude, you're the best. Hey, thanks for stopping by today and, um, appreciate all that you're doing. I know you're running around town all over. This is a crazy time for you because you're just out there every day helping restaurants identify what you can do. I mean, you, you essentially, it's what you do. You go around and you're the, you're the chef that goes around to all the other chefs and helps them figure out menus, helps them figure out math. When I say math, it's easy to cook food for everybody every day, but then when you have to change, they're doing family style. You can cook 200 people a la carte, but when you got to do 40 meals for four, there's a lot of different things you got to do. So I know you're out helping a bunch of people and that's a, that's big, man. Yeah. You know, what, what kind of containers am I using and what, what kind of volume am I doing? There's a lot of math to it. Like you don't want to comfort cook and cook too much stuff. And then we're hung with stuff. Really, really look at that and dial that in on what your orders are that are coming in and what you're preparing.

30:25And now we're keeping our staff busy, keeping them paid and keeping the door, well, shut to the dining room. But we're, we're, we're making head wave on creating some revenue for sure. And we're helping our community. You know, these people aren't supposed to be going to grocery stores or getting out. If we can keep them all at home and slow this thing down by having these great entrepreneur restaurant people flip this coin and get really smart at creating revenue, helping the employees, which they have, and initially helping the entire community, man. And I, I think that's going to be the key right now, because I don't see light at the end of the tunnel right now, but if we can all stay out of stores and stay off the streets, like I'm helping my brother today. I'm out here in Las Casas, Tennessee. I drove all the way out here from Nashville and people are all over and out and going to stores and everything like nothing's going on. And I, I think we all have to really try to chime into this and try to put an end to this. Well, thank you so much for taking just a few minutes to us, Ed. So long from happy hour and I hope I pray for everybody and best of luck to you. Cheers, brother. Have a great one. All right, brother.

31:45So that was Chef Ed Butler from U.S. Foods and this is where I tell you that we are not live. This is an after edit because there's a lot of Facebook live talking back and forth and nobody wants to listen to that on a podcast. So my next guest is Hal Holdenbaich and he is just the greatest guy and I'll throw a tease in there because the end of this interview, I do talk about a future interview that we're going to do together and we're planning to get together in the next week to do a full on Hal story of everything that he's been doing, how he does it, why he does it. So look forward to that coming up on National Restaurant Radio. So let's jump right into this. Yes, Hal is a chef owner of one of the city's greatest restaurants. You're a cookbook author and I thought it might be really cool for you to come on and maybe share a recipe or two with everybody listening for something that's relatively easy for them to make at home and just kind of check in with you, bro. Sure. Well, you know, at Lock and Sable, we've had quite a couple weeks here like most people in Nashville and of course the tornado into the virus. As of Tuesday of this past week, we have been doing a to go only program and we shifted into doing like family meal. You know, we do family meal every night here at Lock and Table for the staff when service is over and thought that would be a good way to approach this to go service where we're doing meals for families of four and then we also have some appetizers and desserts that were offered as well and our gracious neighborhood has received this very well and we feel as if so far it's been a win-win. We're feeding our neighborhood

33:52and currently we're sustaining our staff. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. So let me ask you a question while I have you here. How hard is that to do? I mean, when you go from doing all of just the logistics. I mean, a lot of people you see on Facebook, somebody puts a post out there and they say, we're moving to family style. Like you can't just do that. I mean, you have to have the to go materials, A, but then just creating recipes to do it and batch. What's that like? What's the process and how do you do that? Well, once we decided that we were going to go to the to go program, it did take us one day to get the things here. Like you say, all the special to go material that we need and one of the first phone calls I made was to Jacob at Southern Natural Farms because ground beef is a big thing and then I called our friend Dan Nicoletto over Nicoletto's pasta and asked him what he had in the pasta department. You know, Monday night when I got home, I started thinking about possibly going in this direction and I got out my notebook and I just started, you know, writing some things down and you know, whether it's a flood or a tornado or you know, any situation, a couple of my go tos for large batch cookery are chili and bolognese.

35:25So we can always, you know, make a nice batch of chili and offer some cornbread and you know, we do some sour cream, green onions, cheddar cheese along with that. And then of course the bolognese we cook down and mix it with one of Nicoletto's wonderful fresh pastas and then we've been selling that with a family size garden salad and some of our wonderful yeast rolls that we make here at the restaurant. So you know, it did take a day or two of transitioning and then we kind of started building the menu for tomorrow today and we try to stay one day ahead of it for ordering purposes. I was afraid to order too much, you know, what we originally did was we dealt with in-house inventory. You know, what do we have now that we can cook food with? Which I think a lot of people are doing right now. They're taking inventory in their home. Yeah, just for the best, you know, financial decisions. But you know, we've kind of blown through all that and we're back to getting orders and, you know, we've been able to give some of our farmers, you know, some good business and, you know, buy some pasta and, you know, we bought some crab and, you know, we're able to spend a little bit of money to make a little bit of money to sustain our staff. So we're kind of, you know, helping everyone we hope, you know, from the community to the purveyors, to the farmers, to the staff. You know, that's kind of, it's a survival mode really. Hey, how are the purveyors doing? You talked about Nicolettos and you talked about your farmers you're buying your ground beef from. How are they doing? What are you hearing from them? Well, I think we were the only people that besides their own shop that Nicolettos was I think making pasta for this week.

37:25So lots of purveyors are definitely down. We just went over to the Frothy Monkey here off Fatherland where Creation Gardens had dropped off like four pallets worth of produce for them to call their friends to, you know, in the industry to come pick up and share with staff who is either out of work or making, you know, less money because less work. So that was very nice of Creation Gardens and Frothy to call us over there and I ran over there and picked up a bunch of mushrooms and, you know, probably tomorrow or Monday we'll make a big old batch of mushroom soup and share that with our staff and some of our neighbors. And, you know, it's just kind of a day by day right now. We don't want to get too ahead of ourselves because we don't know how this may change. It's such an ongoing changing situation. We hope to be able to continue doing our to-go program but we're not exactly sure if that's going to happen or not.

38:38Well, I can speak for like the entire city that I think everybody wants you to continue going on. I follow you on Facebook and when I can get out and do all of these things, all the food is just mouth-watering and all of the work that you're doing as far as the community kitchen and putting food out there for just really being the steward of the community that you are. I just, I don't know, I think it's just amazing and the way this whole city comes together but you're definitely one of the leaders in that push and I think from all of us I say thank you. Wow, you're welcome and thank you for your kind words. It's just what we kind of figured we needed to do. I wasn't about to close down shop unless somebody told me I had to. And hopefully they're not there yet but I think we share a similar thing that eventually they may ask you to and we'll get into that later but if there's something that you wanted to share, is there a recipe you wanted to share with everybody?

39:40Well, I thought since we talked about the chili, what we did with the chili was cornbread. I'm sure everybody probably has most of this stuff in their pantry maybe. If we want to talk about the cornbread that we make here and I can even, you know, talk about a couple of variations that we use throughout the year. Sure. But we get our cornmeal from Weissenberg in Kentucky which I believe is the oldest water milled grind facility in our region if I'm correct. But what we do for our cornbread is we use six cups of cornmeal to two cups of all-purpose flour, two teaspoons of salt, four tablespoons of baking powder, four eggs, one pound of melted butter, a half gallon of buttermilk, and a half cup of oil.

40:43And for our oil we typically use a sunflower oil which is a non-GMO product. And we just mix all that together and that makes about a third pan for us and you know that's usually about 10 to 12 orders we do in our little Lodge cast iron skillets here at the restaurant. And throughout the year, you know, we might even add some things to that. Sometimes in the wintertime we'll add some pimento cheese into the cornbread. Sometimes in the summertime we'll do some caramelized onion and smoked jalapeno pepper into the cornbread. And then in late summer when or you know middle summer when corn arrives, we'll actually cut the corn off the cob and roast it in our wood-burning oven along with some smoked jalapeno and pound that into it. So I think it's fun to maybe put some different things in your cornbread if you have them available. Or if not, you know, just the cornbread itself is wonderful. And we usually serve it with either a honey butter or a smoked salt butter. And of course we smoke our own salt here at the restaurant and just pound it into the butter. But I feel like butter is very important with cornbread. I enjoy butter with cornbread anyways. I'm not sure how everybody else feels about that. I don't think you can have cornbread with that. Well, I think you can have without butter, but you got to have butter in them for sure. Now I'm a big fan of spoon bread as well and there I think butter is less important.

42:25But with the cornbread it's a little less, just could use the butter for sure at the end. All right. That's awesome, man. I tell you what cornbread is one of the most comfort food is you can possibly get. And I know that's one thing that everybody out there needs right now is just a little bit of comforting. And I think you're exactly right when you say that. We were just having that conversation in the kitchen. It is the comfort food that is selling. Like we did some carnitas taco kits and they're wonderful and delicious. And you know, most people like tacos and I've been practicing my carnitas cooking procedure for years and it's something I really love and enjoy. But we are finding that the more comfort things are I think what people are really wanting right now. And for Monday's menu, we're already looking at doing some pot roast with some beef cheeks and some chuck roast and also some meatloaf. And then we'll also make that mushroom soup that I had mentioned. We've got some pork butts coming in. I got a bunch of poblano peppers. Thinking about maybe doing something, a poblano pepper cream maybe with the braised pork. And you know, figuring a dish out around that. So you can't see the smile on my face and I know that I can't see the smile on your face. But for those of you who don't know how, one of the things about Hal is that he loves to cook. If you can't tell in his voice, when you get him talking about food, that's your passion, right? Oh yeah, yeah, without a doubt.

44:15I mean you just start talking about different food. Like this doesn't feel like it's quarantine time. This feels like it's dinner time. I'm like immediately hungry hearing you speak. Yeah, you know, we figured that people obviously still need to eat. And you know, kind of my new thing that I started saying when the tornado came through and we just kind of immediately sprang into action. You know, we got a generator at the restaurant. You know, day two we were just in here making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ham and cheese sandwiches. You know, getting food out to the community. And then when we got a generator hooked up and we could actually use heat again because I can get my hood system working, we started cooking. And a lot of the batch cooking there again, you know, large portions of food that are fairly easy to cook that can feed a lot of people was kind of the game plan. And then, you know, Kara was figuring out, you know, where that food needed to go. And, you know, by day three there was a lot of organization. And, you know, we knew what to do and where to take it.

45:35You know, things like that. And, you know, a week later we finally got power back and had a grand reopening. And then the next day is when the coronavirus got a little more serious. It was that probably last Thursday, right? Yes, that was. Yeah, we reopened on Thursday and then on Friday, you know, we got kind of shell shocked by what was going to be happening. And then we kind of predicted the in dining room service ending and we went ahead and ended it ourselves. And then, like I said, we went directly into the to go program and it might have taken us about a half day to, you know, figure that out. But, you know, now I think we've got it figured out. Our sous chef Jason and I have been working closely on, you know, writing the menus and getting the food here. And then, you know, just getting in here early in the morning and getting all this food cooked because we're actually selling the food from three to eight. So we need to have all this food ready by three o'clock. And, you know, people start calling and placing their order. We're still cooking pizzas and steaks with our chimichurri to order. But then we're also offering the family style meals, which is more of a take home and reheat kind of situation. All right. Well, I tell you what, Hal, I don't want to give everybody too much here, but I do want to give a little bit of a teaser that in the next coming week or two, you and I are going to sit down and do a full interview on this podcast. Am I right?

47:25Yes. Yes. Look forward to it. So we're going to do a full interview. So hang out. You guys want to hear more about how like where he came up, how he how all of this happened. Tell the story. The first time I met him when he was at the Eastland Cafe and Eastland Cafe. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. And we'll go through your whole story. So if you like how you love locking table coming up, Nashville restaurant rated, we'll have the full interview. Hal, thanks for stopping by the happy hour today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I look forward to being part of it more in the future. Heck yeah, dude. All right. Thanks, Hal. Best of luck tonight. So there you have it. Nashville restaurant radio's first ever virtual happy hour. Thanks to everybody who joined on Facebook Live and thanks to everybody who's listened to this entire podcast is really been a labor of love putting some of these podcasts together. Like I said, it's been a dream of mine to have a radio station or a station where I get to just talk with people in this community that I love so much, which is the Nashville restaurant community. And I will leave you at this.

48:40This is a time where you're in your house with your loved ones, you with your kids, you're by yourself. I don't know what you're doing, but I do know that every day you get decisions to make and you can, you can do it. Like everything's going to be okay. I read something that is it. Yeah. Every single time you thought that you weren't, didn't know what to do or you didn't know how to handle it. Guess what? You're okay. You made it. You made it through whatever the hardest challenge you've ever dealt with. You made it through it and you can make it through this too. No matter what it is, we're going to get the support you need. This community, there's GoFundMe's everywhere. People love you. You're awesome. You're, you're just amazing sitting there. Identify some things that you want to do during this time. What a gift it is to be forced to sit at home. You can read that book. You can paint that room. You can reconnect with your kids, reconnect with your wife, call some of your old friends you haven't talked to in a long time, find out how they're doing.

49:50There's so many things. Take a walk, do some push-ups, get in shape, write a book, whatever you want to do. In my case, I started a podcast. It's a way for me to just talk out all of this stuff and we're all going to get through this thing and I can't wait to shake your hand and give you a high five, give you a hug, whatever it might be once we're able to do that and that will happen again, okay? It's probably going to get worse before it gets better. We know that, but that's what we do virtual happy hours, right? So everybody hang in there. Remain positive and I'll talk to you soon. Love you guys. Bye.