#theroundup with Guest Host Craig Schoen

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. Hello Music City and welcome to the Nashville Restaurant Radio Roundup presented by Springer Mountain Farms Chicken. My name is Brandon Styll and I am joined as always with the editor of Eater Nashville. Her name is Delia Jo Ramsey. What's up Delia? Hi. Hi. Today is a very special show because we have another guest host. Last week we had Caroline Galzin and this week we have Craig Shone of Peninsula Restaurant. Welcome Craig. Hello, hello, hello both of you. Nice to see you. It is nice to see you too. So we are super excited to have you here Craig. We've been, you know as Nashville is kind of in this space where there's not a ton of new openings and happy hours and bars. We're bringing in some different people to bring in some different opinions so we're super excited that you're here. But I'd like to introduce our audience as to who you are. So if you don't know who Craig Shone is. Craig will you give us like a 90 second elevator speech like just the answer to all of the random questions that I would ask you if I was trying to get to know you? Yes. Grew up in New York. Started in kitchens as a dishwasher at 14.

01:39Worked my way through the kitchens and then to the front of the house. Eventually moved to Seattle with my wife Yuriko who's also a business partner. We met our chef Jake Howell in Seattle. Brought him to Nashville three years ago and we've been open three years in September which is actually going to be two and a half years since we've been closed for six months. But yes we will be celebrating our three-year anniversary hopefully opening on our three-year anniversary. That's the goal anyway you know. We opened in October of 2017 I believe. So yeah so that's my story. I've been in the restaurant business for 35 years which is ridiculous. I look so good because I don't have children by the way. That's my secret too. My wife is much younger and I don't have children so Dillian and I look freaking fantastic. Are you gonna say something here? I think I look pretty damn good. I don't know how old you are. You're 64? Because if that's the case then you got me beat.

02:47I am 61. Okay see that? You're more gray. I'm 49. I don't have much gray and I still have hair as well which is amazing. And for the restaurant business that's pretty impressive. It is you know drugs and alcohol and easy living. I don't know. Drugs are bad. Drugs are bad. So people that are listening to this you'll have to go to the YouTube page and watch this. You can see what we're talking about. You can see my cat. You can see my old windows and blah blah blah. We just recently found out which is a whole different story. I got a random letter in the mailbox from a 95 year old woman who was born in this house and told us the story of how this house was built in 1899. That's cool. Yeah but she didn't leave her return address so I can't get back to her which is really frustrating. Oh no you have a full name? Joyce. So when the National Archives open again I'll go back and try to do some research and find her because I really want to write her a letter. Yeah Very cool. Yeah. Cool. It's so good to see you Craig. I haven't seen you or Yuriko or Jake in months. How many months has it been now? We have literally been close since March 14th and we have no one's been in our restaurant at all except for this week. I picked up some broth and gin and tonic one day and that's like the event of my interaction. So I've missed seeing you guys.

04:09Brendan I don't know if you know but I'm a big fan of Peninsula and have a favorite corner spot at the bar where I like to perch and bring my laptop and work and nobody bothers me and I have great conversation with these folks and so every experience I've had which has been multiple of them has been excellent. They have seen me bring in like four different dates and they act totally cool and I have a new date to bring you next time. So thanks for never being judgmental or excellent. You know so far I've liked your dates. I mean whether they worked out or not is not my business but so far I've liked them pretty well and you know me. I'll give you my opinion about your dates anytime you need to. I appreciate that. They find out my favorite place and I'm like okay let's go. It's a good test because if you bring a date to my restaurant and they won't eat anything you know it's probably the wrong person for you. Exactly it's a good weed out. Yeah because I don't really cook hot chicken. I don't cook anything but I don't sell hot chickens.

05:16No chicken tenders. Yeah right although I love them. Well I feel like I am completely missing out because I have yet to dine at your establishment Craig and I'm so like I had Brian Lee Weaver on the app on the show and I asked him who his favorite chef was in town and what his favorite restaurant was and he said Peninsula and Peninsula. Like I love that place. He's doing such unique things that are just different and it's the best place in Nashville and I went I gotta go there but they're closed and they're not they haven't reopened so you're probably the top of the list for me of places I need to go and because especially now you know like give and take you know here I am spouting off at the mouth you know so so yes no. The other thing that I heard about you and I've spoke to you a couple times since then is that you that your filter is broken. You are that you have an opinion and that you stated and I thought damn that's the perfect guy to come on the roundup and just kind of open conversation with us so again super excited you're here. Thank you. The greatest thing about getting older is my filter has never been there. My language is much better now and and because and because everybody's so polite in Nashville it's pretty easy. I love this town by the way and I really really miss Delia coming in and all the people that come in my restaurant they we all know each other now and it's like I can say whatever I want because I'm not angry anymore I just have lots of opinions so so yeah I mean I'm happy to be here and you know people can take it or leave it for what I have to say but I love Ryan Weaver too.

07:06He's one of the sweetest dudes in town and works his butt off. He's truly a great chef. He's truly a great person and that is not rare here. It's great. The community here is great. I mean from from big restaurant owners to tiny ones I've had very very few interactions with anyone who I'm like which in Seattle was every five days I wanted to punch someone so. It's interesting because I had Josh Hobbiger on the show a couple weeks ago and we discussed kind of how he came about creating the the Patterson house. I'm sorry not the Patterson house but the Cappard seat. He was at the Patterson house when he had the idea for the Cappard seat and when that came to fruition they read they opened the restaurant. He's from Chicago and he was in there he was in Chicago working in New York all over the place but he was in Nashville opened the place and he goes I was so afraid when industry people were going to come in because what we were doing was this food at a bar and it was expensive and it was really unique and delicate and all this food that was just completely different than what was just typically happening and I was afraid people were going to come in and kind of hate kind of be like oh who does this guy think he is he goes but everybody that came in from the community was like open arms blown away dude I love what you're doing and he goes and I immediately fell in love with this city like the people in this this industry how everybody bands together and I thought yes that's that's it that's that's what we do that's it right there and that's coming from a guy who is extremely quiet and very reserved like Josh is I love him but he is not the big loud restaurant guy like me he is like does his work does his job and you know there aren't places like Catbird Seat anywhere that is super unique period I can probably name two restaurants like that in the country that like that small that focused

09:13that experimental that's something that I really really hope does not disappear here and I don't think it will but but but that it's super unique and I had three ridiculous experiences there last year with Will and Liz and I'm gonna miss them terribly but but they're opening something soon off not on the record yeah no I know she's been texting me back and forth for she's like I can't really talk about it but something's happening yeah well you know we'll be around Jake and and Will and Liz and Josh and Brian they all get it like you know there's a lot of people in this town they get it and I'm just thankful that when we came here because really no one was doing what we're doing and still isn't but which is great that's that's awesome but but one of the greatest things about Nashville is the customers if they may not know any ingredients on my menu but they're so open like it you know it's so refreshing to be running a restaurant where I have a pretty eclectic eccentric menu and I don't have to people aren't like making faces you know what I mean like it's pretty awesome like I mean I worked in New York for decades and people were difficult in New York about certain things and here it's just like ooh sweetbreads what's that ooh snails you know like you know our biggest selling dish is rabbit think about that yeah what what restaurant almost anywhere in this country is biggest selling dish is rabbit it doesn't happen so I'm pretty psyched to be here awesome well we're pretty psyched to have you here and I cannot wait to go try that rabbit in the sweetbreads and and I can't wait for tomato season to come back and you'll be open we're gonna probably catch the we'll probably hopefully we'll catch the last couple months of it right like hopefully yeah well we because last year they lasted pretty long we had until mid-november or something okay well I'll have my fingers crossed for it then yeah I've had so many people asking me about that yeah oh well all right Jake bring I'm gonna bring the conversation

11:14back in a little bit and one of the things we do at the beginning of the roundup is we kind of talk about our last week how everything went um Delia we're gonna start with you how was your week well I don't know if you noticed but I'm not in my apartment there's no cat in the background of mine I'm at the beach orange beach with my family and it's it's especially the kickoff of birthday month which if you know Alia which I know you're married to one you know that it's birthday month and um so we had a nice little birthday dinner last night and I've been just kind of working during the day but also like getting some beach time and enjoying being away eating a lot of seafood and trying to basically keep my head in the sand about what's been happening in Nashville since I left town yeah you know it's funny because we're going to talk about that here in just a second there's a lot there's I saw like a bachelorette's coffin on people in a restaurant there's party oh boy I don't even know what's going on like what day is your birthday it's on the 11th I saw you're launching dumplings on my birthday I am launching dumplings on your birthday you know you're gonna you're hearing it for your first that you can actually go order them now today so hey but yeah yeah I thought yes her birthday you were doing that it is kind of I know how much she loves dumplings actually I should say Yuriko Yuriko knows how much Delia loves dumplings well yeah go ahead talk about that what do you what do you got going on well so when we moved here that was the thing we missed the most was like dim sum so there really isn't places to get dim sum here at all like we've tried we even got drove to Birmingham for a while to eat them in Birmingham and that place closed so during quarantine Yuriko just started making bao buns soupy buns wontons crystal dumplings and giving them to friends and chefs and everybody started freaking out and I was like honey these are

13:18ridiculous like these are insane so we've been doing a subscription and pickup service for our Jake our chef's broth and ornette bread and my tonic all summer which has been great but we thought well let's throw these in there in the mix and see if people are into it and within four days we had sold 800 dumplings so we're we're about five days in now we didn't we didn't even publicly announce it I haven't even I mean I mentioned it to Delia but I didn't really tell her to say anything about or anything or ask her not tell her I don't tell you but no I mean it really just came from her us not having the food and it's it's going to be fun and it's really just her doing a pop-up at Peninsula because you know the three of us are bored you know like we need to do something else to keep our busy and you know so that's kind of where we're at we didn't really want to envision we didn't envision ourselves pivoting to take out because we're not that type of place like we didn't want to reinvent our model some people have made perfect sense like Caroline you said you had Caroline on like it made sense like she does pizza and like that's great but for us it didn't make any sense to to re-envision what we have done with my life and what I spent the last 10 years literally 10 years developing this concept before I opened it so yeah so it's you can get the Peninsula nashville.com has a store for the dumplings and broth and blah blah blah go ahead and order if you would like some delicious dumplings maybe I'll make a birthday dumpling order yes I have a feeling that we have some dumplings for you for your birthday no matter what I'm going to catbird seat for to celebrate on Wednesday nice and Brian's been back so I'm excited to do that on Wednesday so let me ask you this how are they doing that since that's all counter seating they got a special permit okay supposedly the parties are

15:21distanced so it's a smaller seating but yeah yeah cool yeah I'm curious for sure so that's my week birthdays and beaches and trying to hide from drama national but how's your week going how's your how's your life going Craig oh you're we're skipping over Brandon's week is that what we're doing uh I went to take care with Yurko to take care of her mother-in-law or to my mother-in-law who just had a knee surgery so we went to Charlottesville Virginia and I went to Shenandoah National Park for a couple days and had the most hilariously scary thunderstorm rain out camp night that I've had in probably 15 years um yeah so we just made her mom a bunch of food so she didn't have to hobble around and cook for her and her husband and um again I was surprised at how few people were wearing wearing masks in Charlottesville so but I couldn't really go anywhere anyway because I was at a house with a 90 year old and a 70 something year old so yeah so we just got out of town for a few days it was nice to get out of town other than that nothing all I did was read about stupid parties in Nashville and stuff like that it's so funny because my vacation was very similar I uh well you got on an airplane I did I did I got on an airplane and um thank goodness I had listened to the roundup the week before and I got all of Delia's travel advice oh because my wife is like we can't take that and I'm like oh no you can right now oh no you can take one bottle you can do this she's like how do you know it's like you didn't listen to the show honey I listened to the show thank god Delia came on and gave us all the travel heads up so that was big uh and what you know it wasn't bad at all and you know in California we go across the country we landed at LAX and it felt like I was in a different country really I don't mean that like it like it just I've gone to I've gone to Los Angeles a hundred times from there you know I've flown in there a hundred

17:25times but just landing there and walking into an airport that's not busy with every single person wearing a mask just felt it just felt it felt weird you know it just felt like where are we like what's going on in an unfamiliar place hadn't been to LAX in a while but um yeah it was good seeing family is good doing uh when we went to the beach one day and that I haven't been to the Pacific coast in a long time that water is cold it's freezing for like 60 degrees cold dude there when I was living in Seattle people go swimming in the water I'm like you're freaking crazy man first of all it's only 70 degrees outside and then the water is just like mind-blowingly cold yeah look what's the water temperature there do you like 89 uh I got in for only a second because there's a bit of green stuff floating in it which I then found underneath things later um so from briefly what I remembered it was like maybe 80 80 something um comfortable yeah roll with a bunch of green things floating in it nice walking along the shoreline to get to like the Huntington Beach Pier with just your feet and like the water as it rolls on your feet was like the water's cold I mean I like that well you also become really wimpy when you come to a place like Tennessee like when I lived in Seattle I got warm when it was 75 you know like uncomfortably warm so then like you move here and you're like what in the hell is going on but you adjust to it it's amazing like I actually have enjoyed most of the weather this summer not all of it it hasn't been terrible well the crazy about restaurants there is it's a leak you can't they're closed as far as eating inside the restaurant but you can eat outside the restaurant it says it never rains there during the summer months these restaurants you drive like a Newport Beach or in these places and the restaurants that actually have parking lots just put up gigantic tents these huge white tents and they put like 50 tables and did a full restaurant underneath the tent just outside of their restaurant so while you can't eat inside the restaurant right you can eat in a tent right

19:29you all the patios you could eat outside people like okay we can't eat outside you can't eat inside we'll just put 30 tables outside and like the restaurants were packed it was like the whole tents people outside and you know they eclipsed 500,000 coronavirus cases while we were there and I'm like honey are we making the right we went to Florida yeah the pandemic's hitting then we go yeah I'm like what's next Texas what do we think yeah where's the next hot spot let's go find it everybody was wearing a mask everybody was social distance we stayed really in a car with the kids we drove to Big Bear but we didn't do much but it was really fun take it out of town and I you know I think you as long as I think as long as you're incredibly safe and you're not like walking around without a mask coughing and we stayed away from everybody I think that's just kind of the general thing that you you know it's amazing masks freaking work who would have thought I felt fine on the airplane everybody was wearing a mask the entire time I just felt like okay I mean it's not the greatest thing I'd rather not wear a mask what my kids did my kids did not complain one bit five and six year old boys the entire airplane they just sat in one spot with the mask on and played on their ipad your your your kids are better than trump supporters that that is the state of America right now your five-year-old is more mature than a trump supporter yeah sorry sorry to lump you all together but y'all are a bunch of idiots and you're the reason that we're at where we're at right now so I don't care who doesn't come in my restaurant because I said that if you don't wear if you think that masks are against your freedom you're a moron you're a moron I'll repeat that as many times as you need me to repeat that just so you know Dealey and I have repeated so many times it's nice to hear somebody else say we can talk more yeah yeah whatever funeral for our mask conversation yeah good because that's all we need to say yeah first of all think of just that statement

21:31mask conversation there shouldn't be a conversation right like we it's funny I almost feel like we should do like peewees playhouse you know where we have like the word of the day and everything you hear like the word of the day it's like yeah totally our word of the day or to me say it we have to freak out um well so yeah we had a couple big shows last week Jeremy Lister and Brad Schmidt and uh I got to talk um I get to be very vulnerable and talk about my recovery and that was um it was good to do but it was kind of scary and I'm glad that I did and hopefully um we got past it we're gonna uh we're gonna have some more interviews coming up we don't talk about my recovery it's gonna be great next week we have Nashville food fan Kate Davis will be on the show on Monday and Jesse Lee the owner of Robert's Western World is gonna be on the show on Wednesday and I am super excited for both of those interviews I think uh Kate Davis like her first interview she's ever done so well like is this her first like outing of her like name it's it's gonna be a puppet it's not even gonna be her it's just gonna be a puppet head like yeah I hope not it'll be interesting she's uh I've talked to a few times I'm excited about getting to know her a little bit and I think letting all of her followers know uh who she is and um it's gonna be good and won't she hey she made me come up today in conversation so um so let's do that you while I was in California I was sitting in the line at Starbucks because I didn't have my coffee maker and I had to go to Starbucks every day and uh sitting in the line I get a text message that says hey did you hear about this party in Nashville this is on Sunday morning and I'm like no like what what's up and um and it started me going down the rabbit hole of looking on social media to find everything I can about this Nash trash house or what's the Nash Nash fast or something and um and it took me down a spiral

23:36that was a negative spiral I started looking at all of these people just going crazy online calling people out fighting if you start reading comments people just going how dare you and all these different people's opinions and so much anger and I kind of thought man I did a podcast today called Nashville strong and it's just a 15 minutes of me talking and I remembered back on my first podcast in the beginning of March you closed on March 14th uh March 13th was my first podcast and in March 10th 11th we were all just dripping in Nashville strong you know we had just come out of this tornado everybody's just arms around each other what can we do hands on Nashville right and now we're like in the middle of Nashville wrong I mean this isn't I don't know what's happened to our city but we're in no maskville as you know TMZ and now the the White House had a response to this party today I saw it was just like a form letter but the White House responded to the party and I'm like damn it like why do we keep what what is this press for because we just talked about earlier Craig you say Nashville's freaking awesome man people around here are great like what has happened to our town and how do we get back it's not our town dude well that's the thing that's the thing we need to put we need to put this in perspective because to me you're totally right the response to the tornado which we were closed then too so really we've been closed since the beginning of March we were open maybe two days three days the response was overwhelmingly beautiful like it was just amazing like I lost two close friends I lost several of my friends bars they lost their bars but the response was so fast and it was so genuine I don't think you can compare what we're all as a nation going through to and equate it to being rational I think people are being irrational because they

25:38don't know I mean we don't know what's going on and we're rational people so if you're a slightly more less or less rational person your reaction is going to be baseless and you're going to read stuff that you believe that you know that that you don't know isn't true but isn't true because you're in your house on your computer for 18 hours a day I want to say I'm much more positive about Nashville coming through this on the other end and getting back to what we all love about it than I am the nation as a whole does that make sense I just think there are too many good people here and I and aside from that because that's a general statement there's a there's a politeness to this city that I've never experienced anywhere else and I truly don't believe when people are in person again and they're not going to behave like that like the people who are acting like idiots and going to these bars they don't live here most of them don't live here nope the people downtown no mask partying are not people that live in Franklin or Brentwood or East Nashville or Hendersonville they're not coming downtown to do that no I agree I just I'm not as pessimistic about Nashville I'm disappointed because I didn't think we'd fall into the same trap the rest of the country has but I'm not I'm not I'm not as pessimistic about us going back to where we were and I will say I'm not pessimistic about it but I want to identify I think you've answered I think I want to identify where we went because I feel like something we were all here together and now I feel like it's just about who's right and who's wrong and who can point the finger the most and I think it's a conversation I think it's the word together we can't be together so it enables you to be a jerk online because it's much easier to be a jerk online than it is to someone's face you know half the bullies online they wouldn't say that to my face never never and so

27:46I think that's part of the problem is just we're all stir crazy my god give it you know give give us a break not and I know you're not doing this but like I I'm crazy right now so I can't imagine with if I were more vulnerable and susceptible to depression and blah blah blah I can't imagine this would be awful right I mean I have go ahead I have a house and a wife and level yeah I mean I want to know like based on talking about the mental health and my choice this week and what you think about this was I didn't cover the party I didn't cover the mockingbird story and that was for me I think a form of self-protection I was like I don't want to even like delve anymore into that because I can't handle like any more negativity right now so I just focus on look what's about to open and that's what I focused on on either this week because I didn't want to talk about anymore every publication in the country has already talked about this fashion party you know they're all you know all the news stations are talking about the coughing bachelorette and I made the choice I think for my personal sanity to not cover it because I was like this isn't what I want people to see when they come to Eater Nashville and everything's just bad horrible weird and tourists and party barges and bachelorettes and I just kind of gave it a break this week and I don't know if that was the wrong call as a journalist but I just decided what more what more could you add to that story exactly you're not it's not like you're you're not one to give five paragraphs of opinionated you know so I agree with you what's the point we all know about it what's the point right you know it's the old adage if it bleeds it leads right and I didn't it's the it's what do people you know unfortunately people there's there's rag magazines right people want to listen to about other people there's a there's a neurotransmitter people get dopamine hits when they are able to when you feel bad about yourself when you can point the finger at somebody else makes you feel better and I mean the reason why people magazine is like the number one magazine in the world or why people buy the national inquirer is because they want to talk

29:47about somebody else and I personally wanted to bring it up today because I've been out of town I haven't got to talk about it really but I think that I've got three different people here that have different opinions and we've been able to process some information and I just kind of you know level-headed people communicating in front of each other this isn't me on a Facebook page yelling at somebody this is three people communicating that can see each other talking face to face kind of just what are your thoughts and I just have I've got this general feeling that Nashville is just kind of I think you nailed it Craig that there's a lot of uneasiness not just in the people the vulnerable people that did everybody everything is different and I said it on the show the other day everybody not every I don't use absolutes but a lot of people like to point fingers and like to point out the victims and say that you need to change what can you do what can you do and I said what I would like to do is ask everybody to look in the mirror instead of saying why did they do that how come they do that they're they're ruining Nashville it's them how come they are downtown what are they doing and going online and saying that everybody stop look in the mirror and say what can I do what can I do to make this a better community and if we all did that I think that we um I think that's why you drive change stop oh I voted today that's one thing I did and unfortunately like look whatever you want to say about our mayor which has had his ups and downs during this whole thing um I think the problem is is that that fashion party house party whatever the idiots um for every one of those there's 10,000 stories of people doing the right thing that you don't hear about and that's kind of the problem is is that yeah these 500 idiots who actually weren't very fashionable by the way do you see they were addressed they were dressed like idiots so I don't know why it's called fashion

31:48house for that one stupid party there's like 100 business owners doing the right thing or more so yeah I mean the headlines I think it's kind of fair to point out the idiots like that guy because he'll be prosecuted and maybe he won't do it again but I mean I think that Delia was right not putting it in either who cares we've already heard about a hundred times like that's not a restaurant it's not a bar yes there was an affiliated liquor brand right I don't know the facts I wasn't going to the time when it was breaking news would been Monday and I didn't know the facts so I'm not going to post a story I don't know what the hell's going on and what's the difference between this guy throwing a party and a bar on Broadway skirting around the mayor's rules and letting 500 people in his bar so you know like yeah he's an idiot but so are the idiots that open their bars on Broadway so and the transportation people that have they're still running or they were running their party barges around town loaded full people with no alcohol yeah that's coffee in those cups and let's be honest the reason not some of them but some people have to open their business otherwise they will lose their livelihoods because our government I don't care what political side of the spectrum you're on has failed us our government has failed us we have left it on our own and our state in particular has left it on our own to make decisions that we as business owners should never have had to make I still feel that way I don't feel it's fair for me to have to decide what's safe and what's not safe I'm not a freaking doctor I'm a restaurant owner so yeah I mean I don't think anybody knows what to do I think it's so if you're you know a small business owner and you're like well if I don't open my business I'm going broke I understand that's not the case with the bars on Broadway I'm talking about smaller kids you know what I mean but look I get it I get like I'm luckily not going to go broke if I'd open my bar in fact it would probably be the opposite because I'd probably make no money so

33:52but yeah I think it's a it's a terrible situation this leads all the way back to what we started with I just think people are so overwhelmed and confused by the situation and all of us assume that it would be way better than it is at by August you know when I had my initial meeting with my entire staff on March 13th or whatever it was we were like three four weeks maybe a month we'll get this thing sorted go on unemployment right away I did not think I would be sitting here six five months later you know so it's it's I get it that's all I'm saying is I get the stress I get the lashing out online I don't like it but I get it okay well I value that perspective completely I think that's um that's legit all right so can we move on officially from that particular conversation anybody else can move on too yeah hope we can in the city can yeah right yeah all right everybody follow the lead we're gonna move on we're not gonna talk about that anymore it's like the mass we're gonna have a funeral for the nash fashion party we're gonna mourn it it's gone by we'll we'll now talk about positive things like brand new restaurants opening and fun things going on right we have some good news today um radish is a new healthy place at sylvan supply which I have not been to sylvan supply yet we were supposed to be their neighbors by the way oh over there yeah I was gonna open a bar next to them not anymore not unless they come they want to give me free rent for a year sure noted um so radish opened yesterday with fast casual salads and um someone just told me about blue crab shack out in madison it's a black owned business and someone said the blue crab seafood pizza is really good I think they also have boiled seafood and that kind of stuff which I have not ventured to try anything like that in nashville because I've been nervous about it so if anybody

35:56can confirm I have never tried the like juicy seafood places but the the sechuan hot pot place in nolensville has really good backed crab and stuff yeah yeah um another one so I'm loving people telling me now about the things outside of my national bubble that I don't know because I again can't keep track of everything someone told me about burger and company in old hickory and so they have a really solid pickle burger um also this week el fuego moved just down the street on gallatin so they added like a garden outside meeting space so that'll be good for people it's huge yeah it looks good yeah yeah so excited to do that and then taylor reopened the vague reopens tonight uh thursday and um is taking reservations again so he closed I think right when you did craig yeah he was one of the early ones also to close so excited to see them back taking reservations um anything else y'all have heard about that missing opening wise uh just bees is are they opening soon willie bees I think they're soon they've got a uh sip they had a sip and uh taste last night and um I may or may not have gone to that so we will okay yeah we have no idea if you went or not so yes we don't know because it's not thursday um because whether I went or didn't go and tell you all about willie bees when it's going to open and everything what is that what is it willie bees creole seafood social house is what it says online and what about the banh mi place east side banh mi opens august 13th so I'm excited about that and yolan is the italian place um coming to the joseph and they're opening august 25th so a couple of opening dates to look forward to later where's the joseph downtown it's downtown near korean veterans downtown yeah right yeah okay um the

38:00bridge near that um gotcha gal this is all brand cheese gal is opening in the fair lane hotel and she makes these beautiful cheese boards which I have never had one so now I'm trying to think that's gonna happen on my birthday weekend maybe um she makes these cheese plates and she's gonna have them in this hotel for dining and takeout and um smoking thighs opening a second located because it's smoking not smoking smoking thighs which is a little strange thing is opening a second location on charlotte next year so um I think that's what I have I also have some pop-ups to talk about um you you also mentioned hearts open too right yeah hearts opened last week and have you been uh I haven't yet but I love those people so much I'm excited to try them next week when I'm back in town um arnold is doing a pop-up on sunday with alebri hey so they're doing some street tacos and a it's I don't know how do you say it tlayuda tlayuda the mexican pizzas they're doing one of those with oxtail um you guys are doing the dumplings on tuesdays now so it's sort of a pop-up right yeah I mean we're treating it as such yeah um and I want to try deep sea vegan they're popping up on weekends at hunter station and they have vegan like fried fish sandwiches which are made of banana blossoms and I'm not even sure what banana blossoms are but I want to see if they taste like fried fish I have never understood and growing up in New York and going to like Chinese restaurants that were vegan and they had everything was seitan at the time was like wheat gluten which now no one will eat why do you call it vegan ham or vegan fish I've never understood that I was just saying that last night why not let it just be a fried banana blossom sandwich I don't understand like no one who actually eats fish is going to think it tastes like fish and if you're vegan and you want something to taste that much like fish then just eat fish yeah here's a beef burger that tastes like a vegan burger I struggle with it I struggle

40:01with it myself yeah I don't get that um it's like vegan milk like if you if you're so adamant against milk then why like Joe Rogan does a good bit where he says make a new sound with your face that is not that right well I gotta kick out of these places vegan ice cream I'm like that's freaking sorbet we already have vegan ice cream there's no like you did not create anything this is not new it's sorbet it's but whatever anyway I love you vegans but no I will say I'm going to come in some vegan queso this is big um so beehive I someone told me about the crunch wrap which I have no idea what's in that meat and it tastes like taco meat and I have no idea what it is and I don't want to know but the crunch wrap the vegan crunch wrap and the tots with queso were very good the cheese was good yes and I said I was like I have no idea what it is I was like what's the secret and they like said something about citrus helps to make it taste more like cheese and I mean you know it's not queso but I mean I would say it was solid I ate it so that was good um what else what else okay there are some chefs some chef shuffles happening um um if you wanted to talk about those hey look you don't don't look at me I'm not saying anything who's talking about chefs what well I mean actually Daniel left um Henley right and then Nathan left the marsh house so they're both looking I guess what's that they're both looking actively in Nashville and I would imagine they're kind of competing for the same type of chef right like it's higher end big big places and I'm gonna you know I'm really looking forward to see where Daniel Gorman and and Nathan end up because I don't want to lose them they're good good chefs in this town so I think it's also interesting to see who takes over the spaces that are closed like in particular like a space like

42:03pheasant which is a beautiful space and like you know that's not a cheap who can afford it yeah right right I mean it's I mean except for the fact that it's already built out um but yeah like it'll be really interesting to see who slides in I think smart business people will have plenty of choices in the next six months absolutely um and that's why Sylvan Supplies is going to be hurting I mean I'm not saying anything you know that is shocking but all of these new development projects that are complete build outs oh boy I would not want to be a developer right now no um and so I mean speaking to go back to chefs departing restaurants you know another big news story is that they're trying to figure out a new stimulus plan for our country and right now there's millions of workers who they've stopped paying uh the extra six hundred dollars a week for and I haven't heard how that's going I don't know it'll be 400 well they're gonna go down to 400 look the the states that are suffering the worst right now besides California are republican states the republican it's an election year they can't go home to their constituency and say sorry we still have 10 million people unemployed but you're not getting any money the most money you can make in Tennessee is 250 dollars a week no one can live on 250 dollars and and and this argument about people won't go back to work is a crock because if you're offered your job and you're free you freeze to go back you can't collect unemployment so no one can actually milk the system like the republicans have been saying you can't do that if I offer my staff if say we're reopening again which I can't do right now but if I could right now and they refuse to come back to work I could deny their unemployment I wouldn't but they I could but you say you wouldn't I mean something don't you isn't there an obligation to

44:08to do you have I don't know I don't have employees right now so I don't know how that whole thing works like I think that's a big fear like if somebody if they call you back to work and you need to go if you're a restaurant you're open you call people back to work and they say I don't feel safe I don't want to come back to work do I then have to send in something that says because I think that was no PP loan is that you had to have 75 percent of it or was 75 percent had to go towards paychecks and when you tried to get people to come back to work and they said I don't feel safe like well I have to hire people back if this is going to be forgiven and then they said well if you offered people to come back to work and they don't come back to work as long as you offer and you put it in writing that they that you offered them the job then that will count as you hiring then you can just hire somebody new right that's where the the PPP kind of threw a wrench in the whole thing well the PPP and you know knock on wood luckily I we I should say my wife and Jake we knew that the the stipulations were going to change like the original we knew the eight week or we we thought it was so we were like there's no way this is going to expire in eight weeks most of the country isn't going to be open in a week so we didn't touch it we put it away we didn't touch it so and we also knew that it was going to be lowered from 75 to it went to 60 but but we knew it was going to be lowered the bottom line is so many people couldn't afford to do what we did right like but I do believe it was foolish to hire everybody back right away because what are you going to do in October November December January when it's much slower than it has been in the years prior and you needed that PPP money that's what I don't understand why people like and I know some people that did it they're like all right we're immediately going to hire everybody back or pay people from PPP why would you do that these people have paid into unemployment their whole time they've been working so let them use that you know yeah and I think that some people felt an extreme sense of responsibility to the people that work for them and they want to

46:13be the ones that provide for them they want to say hey we got this loan we can now take care of you but but they're not taking care of you if you're closed in six months because you weren't able to stick it out so it's better to make it make it so that you could open eventually than to have them come back in May and then we're back to phase two now that like I just think look again I'm not blaming people I'm just saying you had to be that was very complicated the PPP was very complicated but now it's not so if you didn't spend it all or if you get the second one which I think you'll be able to apply for a second one use it correctly you know like there it is yeah um and you know like I'm very very fortunate I don't have a huge staff my staff is taken care of if one of them said to me I'm going broke I need help I would have figured something out to take care of that is not I definitely would have um but the bottom line is is $850 a week when you're locked in your house is not a bad amount of money and those people paid into that fund that's their money that is not the government's money you had taken out of your employee and I've paid unemployment for a long time so you know this this myth that this is people taking advantage of it no they put that money in there that's their money to use it's not the government's money so I I think that they need to extend that at least for a few more months whether it's 400 or 600 is debatable whatever um but you can't just let I mean two million people last week alone new people filed for unemployment so what are you going to tell them sorry here's 250 a week try to live um yeah for sure um that's an interesting perspective Craig I'm glad I'm glad you're on the show day I like that I mean because I you know I think that it's I think it's been helpful to a lot of people I think

48:16that this is a really stressful time for a lot of people who typically would be at work they're hustling they're doing their thing and the government came to came to the plate and offered people a good you know it wasn't as much as a lot of people were making it was probably right around the same amount as a lot of people are making and then there was there there is a group people that are now making more on unemployment and I say good for them like I think that's good I think it's good that people don't have to fear if you're on employment you don't have to fear about how you're going to live right now I mean I think we'll let's put this into perspective okay if you took the full Tennessee unemployment plus the 600 that's $40,000 a year that is not a lot of money so if we're saying to people well you're making more than you did before that's the real problem that is yes that is people should not be making less than $40,000 a year in a city that's as expensive as Nashville that's that's a problem and then you know no I know but you know but but but I mean look if the real problem is income inequality and wage wages haven't increased and you know to tell people that well you're not worth that money when congress is canning out 85 billion dollars to airlines it's absolutely absurd I agree agree 100% and if you're a good business owner you take care of your people everywhere you can like and that that's true with a good person period like you know you don't let your friends and your employees starve just don't let them starve like just make sure that they can feed their families and pay their rent it's not that difficult I mean just don't be a jerk it's pretty easy right like that sounds like a core value of a company just don't be a jerk it's pretty simple deal you're awfully quiet over there what are you doing I'm thinking about what's the dealio that was really good by the way when they called you that online dealio

50:17was that fox news that you're on yes my first debut what dealio dealio I'm telling you the next pad cat podcast is what's the dealio we could do it today talk real quick while we're talking about unemployment and people not working and holding it's a great segue to talk about foe and bo foe and bo is foh and boh.com and they are a new way to hire and be hired here in nashville this is a locally owned and operated company that is a website that you can go on you can create a profile you can put in all of the different things that you like to have when you work all the different categories and I want to work in this area I don't like to work on this schedule whatever it might be that employers can sign on and they can look if you want a bartender you click bartender and you look at 150 different people there'll be bartenders and you can click on a button that says request interview and it's just a unique way to hire people if you do want to get back to work you need to get back to work go check out foe and bo right now sign up create a profile and if you're a restaurant and you would like to hire somebody right now go sign up for foe and bo it is free through the end of the month so if you're on one of these hospitality sites any kind of job board and you're posting blindly hey need somebody for this go to foe and bo and click the person that you want to hire and then request an interview and I think you I think you'll find it to be really cool no strings attached you don't have to put a credit card in your restaurant you need people check out foe and bo dot com that's foh and boh.com today that free offer ends at the end of august let me add one more thing about unemployment because I because I think this is really important um I've had several friends in the industry reach out to me looking for jobs in the last two weeks and the bottom line is there are 15 million people in the service industry there aren't a lot of jobs to be had

52:20so these are these are people with experience eventually that's going to change and then people will be able to get any job they want because there's going to be a lot of restaurants needing workers but right now it's not like you can just pick and choose where you want to work right now there's still a lot of places that are barely scraping by if they are open at all so you know I've got dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of friends who are bartenders and servers and they're not working because their places aren't open so when they try to pick up work somewhere else they're making 50 bucks yeah you know so I mean you know I hope that foh boh thing eventually gets going because I've always wondered about that why there wasn't like a good restaurant sort of headhunter-y like job site thing you know and you know the cool thing about them and I've kind of jumped on with them as a sponsor because I believe in what they're doing and we I had the owners on the show you know they're they're living they live here in Nashville and they saw a need for the way that restaurants hire is unique in finding the right type of talent and the right type of people you know just putting a job on indeed and getting 100 resumes versus going through it's almost like a dating site I guess I've never been on dating site but like you go in you can actually look for the people and you can create a profile video you can create like a 30 second profile video about yourself and I thought that's so interesting if it was me and I was a line cook I would have like Andy Littles on the show and he said that he does I've said this story a hundred times this has got to be getting old but he he has a ladder at Josephine and he puts a ladder at the end of the line and then he stands there and films his line while they're working like during a busy night and he films them while they go and then he goes back and watches game tape with them like a football player and he goes see when you move this way if you move this way in the middle of that time this would happen and I was like that's so next level shit right there like I love that you're like watching game tape with you like that's some serious I want this to be perfect I want it to look amazing I think if I did a video

54:22if my profile video would just be me watching game tape be a video of me watching game tape going I'm gonna get better I'm gonna be better and it's like yes I want that guy I want the guy who's watching game tape himself on the line getting better every day I can't even imagine Delia I'm sure I'm assuming that you know a lot more about dating sites than neither of us do only only in like a year and a half or so yeah oh yeah that's true it hasn't been that long right it seems like longer than that it sure does it seems like way longer than you're on the bad bumble days yeah totally yeah no I can't even imagine like I cannot imagine meeting someone online like that try dating during a pandemic oh boy yeah that's yeah how do you even you know I thought thought about this a lot if you live in a city like New York or LA Chicago where you have like roommates that are potentially strangers and awful people what did you do for the last four months or let's say you're just started dating someone okay and you're like you started sleeping at their house did that just stop well I had a live-in I had a live-in boyfriend at the beginning of the pandemic right and you realized yeah after six weeks quarantine with a new relationship right um because I mean that that's kind of what I'm saying even the best relationship much less a very like young rebound essentially rebound relationship yes yes so then but then I'm like oh my gosh how are these single people how are people at home like alone all this time so then I'm like okay I have to like get back out there I have to increase my circle so then I you know can see like I have like two girlfriends that I will see regularly and then you know I ended up responding to an email that I got last year from someone I didn't know was interested and then meeting but then you're meeting with masks on it's so interesting because you know you want to look cute but

56:26you're like you can't even put on all your makeup down here and then you're trying to like meet somebody for the first time walk through the restaurant you got your mask on it's that's a whole podcast of it well yes well there's two things that first of all must be really hard to kick someone out during a pandemic and second of all you can have some janky ass teeth and with the mask you can look pretty good you know because your eyes are great so you can have terrible teeth and it would be good it would be fine you know so get it get it going you know it's good it's good for english people right now I guess because they all have such bad teeth so gotta hide the man I called my dentist before my appointment last week and I was like wait do I have to wear a mask through the appointment I was like Julia whoa this no that's a good blonde moment by the way I know I know I was like I'm surprised they haven't come up with something that just has like a straw hole you know what I mean like a little flap thing put the straw through I need one of those I'd buy one of those yeah they make those oh they do they make masks with little straw holes I haven't seen that well can we get a national restaurant radio mask yeah guarantee you Cuervo has one they they they would have brought them by your restaurant by now if you were there Cuervo doesn't come to my restaurant they know better than that not unless they want me to use it to clean my floors that's about the only thing but I would like one of those if I'm gonna look for one now because I I dig that I would still not be cute on a date but it would still not be cute on a date but still easier to drink from yeah totally interesting all right but this is a good opportunity to take a short break and hear from some of our other sponsors springer mountain farms is a family-owned business nestled in the hills of the blue edge mountains with over 50 years experience in raising chickens

58:27we exercise great care in all that we do our dedication providing our chickens with a quality life and healthy diet results in a healthier more delicious chicken for you and your family to enjoy try spring mountain farms chicken today by locating a store or restaurant near you for ordering online at spring mountain farms dot com nashville's own pennington distilling company produces davidson's reserve tennessee whiskey in fact it's the first grain to glass tennessee whiskey made in nashville since prohibition they also distilled picker's vodka walton's vodka in whisper creek tennessee sipping cream pick up a bottle at your favorite package store today or order a drink at your favorite restaurant visit them at pennington distilling co.com fo and bo is the newest way to hire and be hired in the hospitality industry in nashville tennessee so visit foh and boh.com for more details and remember it's free through august so sign up now times are tough but recovery doesn't have to be curt's hospitality marketing is a full service sales marketing and public relations agency dedicated to growing revenue for their clients contact them at 615-456-3953 or at www.curtshospitality.com that's kurtshospitality.com all right welcome back we are so excited to have each and every one of those sponsors as if you would go to our website nashvillerestaurantradio.com visit the sponsors tab we have special offers from almost everybody for you we they're the people that are supporting our local restaurants and we ask for you to support them one more sponsor who is the sponsor of our next segment which is the local legend is mobile fixture established in 1927 mobile fixture and equipment company has always prided itself on providing the very best products services and communications with its clients their focus is simple they want to provide each

01:00:31and every client with everything they need to create the perfect meal to achieve this they have to learn everything there is to know about all parts of the food service industry from storage and handling to prep to cooking and to serving the perfect meal their dedication to their clients always comes first always these are the guys you need to call if you want to open a restaurant you want to do it here in nashville you need to call mobile fixture visit them at mobile fixture dot com or again at our sponsors tab on our website you can find them get a hold of them they will do a full consultation to help get you outfitted the kitchen of your dreams a local legend this week is going to be the cafe at thistle farms and we're going to talk with courtney sobrowski she is the director there and tells us a little bit more about what they're doing this week's local legend is the cafe at thistle farms and i have with me today courtney sobrowski and you are the cafe director at the cafe at thistle farms welcome to being our local legend thank you thank you for having me i'm so excited to get to talk to you and learn a little bit more about what you do tell me about thistle farms and kind of just talking about being a thistle farmer is that what you is that how you say it yeah yeah we say you're a thistle farmer so most people around nashville has probably heard of thistle farms we've been around a little over 20 years we're a non-profit organization dedicated to helping heal empower and employ women survivors of addiction prosecution and trafficking and we do that by providing a safe and secure place to live meaningful employment and a lifelong sisterhood and a community of support and so the cafe is a part of the meaningful employment part and that's where that's where

01:02:36i've been serving since 2012 wow okay so you're you're eight years into this and did you when you started tell me about the beginning of the cafe at thistle farms well we we have definitely come from very humble beginnings our founder becca stevens she's a visionary and she had this vision of opening a place for us to to welcome more survivors and more women and also just to welcome the general community to kind of open our doors to to to everyone to be part of our community and so at the time i was i was volunteering i was helping the final papers uh helping with database entry just really simple stuff and um i remember she sat in the circle and said i i want to open a cafe and i have a huge passion for food and hospitality it's just something i've been around since um since i was 14 both my parents my parents own restaurants growing up and i said i'd love to help you know i'd love to to help get this started and at the time i was 22 and uh she said well great um you know you can do it it just kind of handed me the reins with uh just this idea and said run with it and we already had um we already had the space and uh you know we we didn't have a lot of money and we just kind of used the community the community really came uh came and and helped us helped us do it uh everything from you know donating china and teacups to helping to lay the floor and and paint the walls it was definitely a labor of love but um in doing so we kind of created this uh customer base from the beginning you know people would come in and say i helped paint that wall or you know i got my grandma's teacup that we're drinking out of and it was it was really this beautiful um this beautiful

01:04:41endeavor for the whole community to come together and support um you know support women getting a second chance at life and um it's been a wild journey ever since um for sure wow what a what a cool story i mean just you know there's a lot of people out there who have restaurants and go eat there support local but i mean for you what you guys are doing is uh it's god's work i mean really working with women to give them the opportunity to get back on their feet and um how the community came together to do that i mean that's just amazing but that's pretty fulfilling every day to go to work and work with these amazing women isn't it it's uh it's definitely a job that um i i absolutely love um with all of my heart um it's it's like a family um i mean it's it's uh it's words really can't even can't even explain um you know i i'm so incredibly close to the incredible women that i work with they're they're part of my family and um you know that's that's definitely a safe place for all of us well awesome so are you guys open right now and are you serving guests right now yes we we are open um we are open and so grateful to be open the um you know with all the craziness that's going on um there's something about our space that just makes you feel safe um you know even even during shutdown we um we were still coming in to work and we were actually making sandwiches for second harvest and delivering them to communities across nashville just to to give us a chance to come together and still give back to the community when you know i think it it was needed most um and so we've even though restaurants

01:06:42have been closed at certain times we've continued to to stay i guess together um in some capacity through all of it um i know uh isolation can can be really difficult for um for people who struggle with addiction um and so we've tried to maintain uh kind of that sense of closeness and community in spite of um a social distancing um and so that's been a really beautiful part of our community and that's so important right now i mean i've been talking about it for months that that is just so important for people to have a sense of community for people to talk to especially in i'm in the recovery community myself so just being in that um having people to talk to it it's it's been it's been huge so where are you located so we are located in west nashville off charlotte avenue um we are right past the region's bank with the gold dome and right across the street from san and school um right off charlotte we've got parking plenty plenty of parking all right so if you are off charlotte over there in west nashville kind of close to the nations um swing by and support the cafe at thistle farms you're doing more than just eating lunch or are you guys open for dinner too we're open for for breakfast and lunch um and um yeah our breakfast is to me it's the best in town like there you go it's incredible so go support go say hi to cortney and support the cafe at thistle farms over off charlotte pike in west nashville do you have anything uh is there social media following how can people do you have like specials you do on a regular basis that you might be posting somewhere anything like that and people can follow you yeah you can follow us on instagram um facebook and twitter um we we are doing weekly specials uh we're using whatever we can get at the farmers market and creating really fresh beautiful dishes um and uh we're changing those up every week

01:08:46um we also are the only place in nashville that does a regular afternoon tea service so if anyone is interested in doing the tiered display with you know traditional scones with clotted cream and jam uh then we serve all of our um uh fair trade organic tea out of uh donated china tea cups um they're beautiful so that's that's something unique that that we offer um you know that most other places probably aren't doing in nashville right now i don't think so i think that i think that's unique to you and that is so cool yeah it's a lot of fun well thank you so much for coming on and joining today i'd love to talk to you more maybe we can do on another podcast we can talk like the whole time about cafe thistle farms and what you guys are doing over there and everything but i just want to say thank you for being our local legend this week brought to you by mobile fixture and um we will talk soon awesome that sounds great we're gonna talk about one more sponsor here before we get into this next segment it is super source super source is a family-owned and locally operated dishwasher and chemical company uh they offer no minimums and no contracts so right now for nashville restaurant radio listeners they're offering three months of free dishwasher rental and uh if you call jason alice right now he is on the ball he's signing people up right and left and he is amazing we've i've personally worked with him in the past couple weeks and the thorough nature of what he does coming in he'll do an audit he'll identify if you're using the right products he'll identify what machine you're using how you're doing it and the guy's just absolutely amazing and i highly recommend you check him out like i said go to www.nashvillerestaurantradio.com and check out super source for the free three months of dishwasher machine rental if anything call the guy have him come in your restaurant and just look at your dish machine and see what you're using see if he can save you some money

01:10:47because he's averaging 20% savings right now it's pretty amazing craig who do you guys use over there for your dish machine autoclore autoclore working out well not right now there's no dishes uh yeah i mean sure question about that yeah so you probably have a deal where you have a dish machine i did i did a what's the deal yeah about this a couple weeks ago you probably have a deal where you have a dish machine and then the chemicals are included with the monthly price right yeah thank you yeah it's a monthly yeah full price right now no all of our companies have like linens stopped everything the only thing that i'm still paying for obviously electricity and the ice machine because i'm not giving it back um but no i i have to say all the companies for the most part trash removal composts we haven't really had to pay much of that but you know that's not really what i'm worried about call them and say hey we're closing i'm not gonna oh sure i had to let them know we were closing because i didn't want a stack of 5000 linens on you know every week but but no i mean for the most part everybody's been pretty cool about that i except you know the landlords haven't but but everybody else has who do you use for linen allsco i have to say i have to say linen companies are notoriously terrible like all notoriously like there's a there's a huge problem with all of them and then you just kind of find the one where you can deal with the problems because they're terrible amen i i found that where these companies really get you is a in the contract be in the replacement cost that the linen companies charge you and then see when they when they make you feel comfortable and you stop watching them that's when it all goes south you can't stop watching anybody so that's not a problem and here's the other thing i'll say those contracts are not valid if you call and say you have to cancel this i'm not paying or accepting they don't stand up in court

01:12:49so you just have to be a jerk those contracts don't i never signed a contract i was like and the contract will hold up anyway so what i would say is you people don't realize you have the right you can change the contract when you they ask you to sign a contract you you can read it and you can say hey i don't like this language i'd like to change it to say this and they'll change the language of a contract so like one of the things with the linen contract is they'll say you have to give us in writing 30 days to fix the problem or else you can't get out of the contract if we fix the problem then you can't get out of the contract so if you say i want you to fix the problem to my satisfaction then that's subjective and you can you can you can that's exactly what i did i said you didn't live up to your contract goodbye and they bothered me for two weeks and then they left me alone and i switched companies so but but but but i'm very i'm loud i'm scary when i want to be so they don't really bother me and i look the bottom line is for any company whether it's linens or food or whatever just do it right and i will pay you if you don't do it right i'm not paying you that's it a prominent soda company that one of my clients switched to and it didn't work out every time i'm not going to say names here but you can figure it out when somebody walk in and say hi i'd like a soda a and we said sorry we don't have soda a we have soda b and they went no i'll have water and you went okay well that's happened enough that i said hey look we just want to move back to soda a because soda b we're losing revenue on a regular basis and people don't like it and it doesn't work with our mixed drinks and it's just we tried it thank you like we really you know we did our best to give it a shot and they said no you signed a five-year contract and i said i didn't sign the the old general manager signed a five-year contract said well okay we understand that and they gave them and we gave you two thousand dollars as a signing bonus and we're happy to pay that back obviously we'll pay you that money back but what do we need to do and they said twenty eight thousand dollars they said what it's going to cost us for the next four years of your lost business is 28 write us a check for

01:14:5328 thousand dollars you can be out of the contract and i went you're going to tell a locally owned and operated restaurant a small restaurant here in nashville that in the middle of a pandemic they're losing revenue because they gave your company a shot somebody who's not the owner signed a contract and now you're telling him it's going to be 28 thousand dollars tough shit you have to use my product i'm like wow that's that's not going to age well like that's not you know what you never should have switched to fago in the first place brandon you should have just kept your rc cola and been happy with it and fine but fago sucks and so does the company so yeah that's agreed so long thing to say uh jason alice and super source they have no contracts so you don't have to worry about any of that stuff you just bring them in and they they sell you the stuff and it's fantastic call jason alice check them out now it is time for delia joe ramsey to um help us find out what's the delia there you go delia what's up all right so today i was going to go a different direction but then i was sitting on the beach casually open my phone look at facebook because i'm trying to keep up with what's going on in nashville with people posting stuff and i immediately just got really upset i was like i'm gonna like scrap what i had and switch it up so today we're going to talk about what's the delia with the city's first mask related citation um i clicked on this tennessean article and all i could think immediately when i read that was what another public relations nightmare for the city of nashville and its police force um i just as a human i want to call out wrong when i see it and after we've sat here and talked about for weeks there's tourists congregating carelessly on broadway people are crowded in the midtown bars um we've been calling out the party

01:16:58bar just in the buses and the restaurants are the bars that aren't restaurants pretending to be restaurants and somehow last night or they arrested a 61 year old homeless black man um the man's last night address was the national rescue mission um he had masks in his in his possession but so do all of the tourists and the bachelorettes and after a second second warning they arrested him and held him on five hundred dollars bond which thankfully the national community bail fund will cover um i'm just floored that the decision was made that that's going to be our the face that we're going to put out there as our first city arrest for not wearing a mask because there's been blatant blatant issues for weeks um and so this man's public defender articulated what i wanted to say really well so i wanted to read part of his statement because i thought it spoke to a lot of what i was thinking when i when i read this and was very upset um so he said for weeks nashville has been at the center of national attention focused on the massive crowds on lower broadway highly popular to tourists there has been continued outcry for enforcement of the mask public health order despite blatant disregard from the bars pedal taverns party buses wedding parties and individuals who frequent the lower broadway area this past weekend we watched as the metro public health director passed out masks to people who ignored him we saw photos of metro nashville police officers posing for photos with tourists who removed their masks after the photo we witnessed video footage of a house party last weekend featuring violations of the mass ordinance prohibitions against large gatherings and a disregard for recommendations about social distancing all of the individuals in these scenarios have one thing in common their freedom no one was arrested in any of these situations despite being warned educated and allowed to discard mass provided to them the juxtaposition of how we police tourists and partygoers in nashville with the treatment of poor and marginalized

01:18:58nashvilleans is evidence of continued wealth and privilege disparities in the criminal legal system i just i think that that said it all yeah and i think it also brings up a very very very good point which people have tended to miss during this whole police brutality protest there are plenty of idiots in the police department just like there are plenty of idiots that go to broadway you know like it's it's that officer who i hope he's reprimanded is an idiot he's an idiot or she i don't know if it was a here she but it's just plain stupid it's just yeah what what can we possibly add to something so freaking stupid i can't pay the fine if we're looking for fines for mass like that's the wrong person to hit with one yeah and and it's too little too late you know how in the hell i first of all i don't know all the information about anything so everything is just kind of spectacular i don't want to speak definitively and i will say that this is an opinion but why have we not been doing this for weeks you know if we're two months there like why have we not been this has been a mask has been a mandate since it's been a mandate i went downtown several weeks ago and i was meeting with leila vartenian at leila's and we were shooting a bad yelp review right and there was police officers outside i was wearing a mask but i started they're handing out literature and i said are you guys taking the people she goes no we're not they're never going to ticket people that's not what we do and i said okay and apparently the downtown police officers their job is to be friendly we want like they've been told be friendly with the people down there we want people to think that nashville is friendly want the police officers to come across as friendly so friendly that they're taking pictures with people without masks masks on like that's a little overly friendly and it's been told that

01:21:05it's like the knee-jerk reaction now that we've had this big nash house party and it's like now the mayor's like oh there's an outrage about this maybe we should uh maybe we should start giving out citations so every police officer has been told on no uncertain terms you give a warning and then you give a citation and if they if they resist then you take them to jail and it's like really the the first guy the first guy is a homeless guy that you're going to pick out and take to jail because he's he's the one he's the one at the super spreader causing causing all of this that that's that's the decision making and i don't know if i'm a police officer if i'm in a situation where this guy i don't know what this guy said to them i don't know what caused him to get arrested typically i mean i don't know but it's a bad choice and why now why now is it just a go get him with vengeance like can we not hey let's give two warnings or let's i know we need to do i don't know i don't have the answers nobody has the answers but well first of all being a police officer right now is really difficult yeah like and and rightfully so right but so you have that added to this i also don't feel like look we haven't had anybody from the top that has said don't be stupid wear a mask since this started until like two weeks ago when trump finally said wear a mask so i mean this is we love i agree with you we lost an opportunity to be smart because we have a freaking moron who runs our country so you know and look no one will ever argue with you picked the wrong person to make an example out of and that's why i hope this guy gets punished or a girl gets punished that's it because i agree like how could you possibly enforce a mask mandate that isn't legal with 15 000 people on broadway how are you gonna do that how did you single out the one person i'm like if you handed out 50 that'd be one thing but i clicked on that headline i was like just what a just what a marketing nightmare for the city

01:23:07and then what were you what are you gonna do during protests are you gonna do the same thing during protests no yeah so that's the thing is that they're saying now they are now everybody is getting a ticket or you're going to jail they just gave out one yeah yeah i'll believe it when i see hundreds right yeah it's way too late for that chip it's way too late we asked you to do that as restaurant owners and business owners months ago and you didn't do it so and also he took the whole guy into the jail which is a current hot spot so then when he gets out where's he going back to the homeless shelter to spread it good idea guys yeah and if you you know i want to put myself in the the shoe like you just said put myself in the shoes of a police officer if you're a good police officer who's out there serving and protecting and doing the things that you're supposed to be doing and they are there i certainly especially in nashville nashville's got a very very positive relationship with this community yeah i more so than a lot of places but you you know if you're a police officer what kind of orders are you getting yeah don't give out tickets go hardcore like you're not setting them up for success in any way like you're told to be friendly with people out there now go be a dick my guess is that this incident didn't have much to do with the mask right yeah i mean that's that's just really what it is will come out yeah yeah because you know in times like these the police are not going to risk because they're so under the microscope that seems like the dumbest thing right my god like you know what of all the people just pick the stupid white chick no one will blame you like i'll do it like get me when i'm walking up through the goal fine yeah let me do it it's fine it's funny because i'm tempted to yell at like a group of gaggle of fuck sorry a gaggle of you know dum-dums who are huddled together in the gulch when i drive by and

01:25:10then i'm like yeah i don't want to be that person yeah you know to me think like i don't know the whole story like you'd have do they like there's got to be some really compelling reason to arrest this guy i mean you've got to have you've got to be aware you've got to be cognizant if you're a police officer the optics of i'm gonna arrest a homeless guy for not wearing a mask an african american homeless guy like you've got to recognize that right like something had to go down right again we're assuming yeah there aren't idiots in the police force there are plenty of idiots in the police force but thank you to the ones who aren't yeah absolutely thank you absolutely you know no no question about it i'm not one of those guys in restaurants as well so that's all of it of every of any city i've ever lived in this is the most positive relationship with the police in the community that i've ever seen seattle's was terrible absolutely terrible and that's a city with basically no racial diversity whatsoever and it was terrible there so i'm yeah we we have a we have a few super high up regular police commanders at a restaurant who are one of them is one of the sweetest people i've ever met so i mean you know like and i've been in my dealings with the police here um in general they're much much nicer and much more professional than in a lot of places i've played so but that guy or girl who did that as an idiot so it's just tone deaf it's just again a tone deaf moment that i yeah yeah yeah yeah well there hey hey we did it we did see that i told you we could have gone on for six hours it's just could have and i every episode i give our guests the floor and i let them i say hey take us out with whatever you want to say the floor is yours you're speaking to the city of nashville well who to take us out today what's your final thoughts craig shone oh boy okay my final thoughts are this if you're

01:27:17going out right now to restaurants be nice to the people that's one thing if the restaurant owners right now think that putting up a sign in a window or any of those things are going to prevent uh coronavirus or people getting sick no just be careful and then i think third eventually all of us as restaurant owners and restaurant workers if we don't get guidance like we haven't had guidance from the beginning we all just have to ignore the stupid guidelines and open our restaurants at normal capacity and say sorry you failed us now we're doing what we need to do it to survive and i think that's sad that it's coming to that but i i really hope you know if cases start to go down some more and that you know because we can't operate at 50 i'm not paying 50 rent i'm not paying 50 on my bills i'm not opening at 50 i'm opening up when i can open up and i think eventually i'm going to be forced to have to just to defy the guidelines that's what i have to say i mean i have a lot more to say than that but for for now that's what i have to say i i wish everybody who owns a restaurant can make it through this because there's a lot of good people in this town and those of us who haven't opened at all we were lucky to be able to do that very lucky to be able to do that um but i thought it was very important to not put anyone at risk my parents live here i don't want any of my staff to get sick i don't want to you know that's where i'm at so just be nice to people that are open because they're they don't have to be there you know yeah so that's all i gotta say very cool and kids go back to school this week and be nice to your teachers you know there do they go back to school here yeah oh really i mean metro davidson county is uh they're starting from school from like uh remote learning oh yeah i live in williamson county and they do have schools where people are going back to school

01:29:20right now back in teaching or they're teaching remotely that if you're out there and you have kids that are going to school and something doesn't go perfect recognize that teachers are like anybody else they don't know the all the answers either they're winging it they're trying to figure it out too i think they all have the best intentions so if something doesn't go exactly the way that you want it to with little bobby and mickey sue then um mickey and bobby sue uh don't get on there and just send them nasty emails i mean let's work this thing out cooler heads will prevail and um thank you so much craig from the show delia you got anything you want to finish off with just i hope nothing happens this weekend because i don't want to talk about anymore this crap next week everybody be good be nice wear your masks yeah and order some peninsula dumplings peninsula nashville.com yeah well you'll get them trust me that sounded way weirder than it needed to be you stay pretty music city i got it for you bye guys love you bye