From Food Cart to Restaurant: Chef Fredo’s Culinary Journey in Rochester

I'm Chris Lindstrom and this is the Food About Town podcast.

Rochester.

Well, why Rochester?

Chris Lindstrom was a hoot.

He was just so much fun.

He never stopped talking.

I mean, it was great.

Here's a good idea.

Have a point.

It makes it so much more interesting for the listener.

Then we don't need any characters around to give the joint atmosphere.

Is that clear?

Because I'm a pro.

That's what pros do.

I'm a professional.

Look it up in the book.

But now, yeah, I'm thinking I'm back.

And we are back with another episode of the Food About Town podcast.

And I'm very excited about today's guest.

I've done a lot of episodes of the podcast.

I've done a lot of writing about.

Writing about Puerto Rican food, about Jamaican food.

I've done a lot of work with those kind of restaurants, but I haven't had a lot of people over to talk about that.

And I'm working on changing that, starting with today's guest.

Guest, introduce yourself, please.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Wilfredo Argonzoni, AKA Chef Fredo.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm working on my new soundboard sounds.

I'm having a good time.

So, um, first off, let's throw out the plugs for all of the things you're involved with.

So why don't you get some plugs out for the restaurants and how people can reach out to you.

Yeah.

So I'm co owner of two restaurants, Palermo's Market.

You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Google, all under Palermo's Market.

Also corner of Magusta Caribbean Cuisine.

You can be found on Instagram, Facebook, Google.

Me Gusta Caribbean Cuisine.

We also have Magusta Food Truck, which is in Florida, located right now in Plant City, South Tampa area.

My brother and his wife, Ramon and Eric Argonzoni are running that down there.

You can find that Magusta food truck at Instagram and Facebook and Google.

Did they move down there permanently or they moved down for the winter?

Well, they've been down there almost two years now.

Oh, they really?

See, I.

I was wondering.

I hadn't seen them in a hot minute.

They're actually in a school.

Okay.

It's called the River.

So it's a Christian college aimed at enhancing people's faith and their alleys of expertise.

So we obviously run restaurants and we deal with a lot of business things.

So right now they're doing faith based activities.

Like currently.

Right now they're on hurricane support.

So they're getting a Lot of donations sent to the college and they're taking that like semi trucks full of toys, foods and goods up and down coast of Florida, providing that to families and needs and things like that.

But on a regular basis, they're just working on faith based activities and then polishing skills, business skills, personal skills, life skills, meeting and working with other organizations that are able to put together large events and host activities, outreaches, things of that nature and trying to bring some of those skills and assets back here eventually.

Okay, so the move is permanent.

Yes and no.

Yeah.

No.

That's interesting.

Yeah, because that's, you know, it's something that, you know, a lot of people aren't super comfortable talking about sometimes is unless you're super active as a religious person.

People don't talk about it a lot because I'm, I'm 100% not.

But when I hear that people are doing the good works while they're down there, those are the, those are the organizations and groups.

I tend to, you know, say positive things about when the organizations are doing the work of, you know, feeding the hungry and clothing the unclothed.

Those are, those are the things that I can support and those are the things that I'm.

When I hear people doing that stuff, that's, those are the words that are, that are written that matter to people, that make a difference.

When you're out, hey, you're helping people recover from a hurricane by giving them the food they need and helping them get the supplies they need.

Yeah, that's worthwhile.

That's, that's the stuff that matters to me is I don't care about the religion.

If you're a good person and we can still have a great conversation, that's what matters to me.

Like that you're not hurting others, that you're, you know, embracing the diversity of our, you know, of our culture here in Rochester and beyond.

That's the stuff that matters.

Agree.

I just, I love the, this side of the conversation, so I don't shy away from it.

Oh yeah, well, there's a lot of stuff we do behind the scenes, like we don't really gloat about, but we do like to be active in what we preach.

Yeah.

As in we don't just sit around and wait for stuff to happen.

You know, God's been great to us and he calls us to be active in our communities, to share the love that he's given to us and the assets that he's provided us with.

We're able to do those, use those things and make Positive impacts in the community.

There's some local churches and ministries, you know, Camry Outreach, Rescue Revive Ministry, Father's House, Salvation army, the Lamp Community Church.

Gotta be ministries.

I mean, these are just a few.

Cameron's one that I.

That I tend to reference as well, because I've been there.

And the mission of the place is to, you know, help.

Help teenagers and kids have a place to be that's safe and positive.

You know, feeding the people that need to be fed, giving them clothes.

Like, yeah, that's.

That's something I can stand behind.

You know, I.

I don't necessarily.

I don't believe in those things, but I believe in that work that works.

The important part, because that's building community, that's engaging with the people that need it and.

Yeah, I'm really glad to hear that, man.

Yeah, that's awesome.

So, yeah, let's dive into.

Let's dive into, you know, your background before we go back into the restaurants that they are now.

So when did you.

Were you somebody that grew up in Rochester or did you move here?

So we're born and raised Rochester.

I was born on Potomac street, which is the west side of Rochester.

Then we moved to the east side of Rochester, Hooker street, and then moved over to Peck street area right behind the public market.

Okay.

So, you know, we've been all over Rochester, but our family's here.

We're basically like first gener.

First generation, I guess, city people.

Yeah, up until now, my father's side of the family, you know, from Puerto Rico.

They owned a lot of land out there.

They were farmers, butchers, a lot of trade, workers, things like that.

My mom's family was originally from Florida.

They had time in Georgia as well before they moved up to Batavia and Leroy area and lived in the country.

And then my mom was one of the few that decided to move to the city and see where it went from there.

Oh, it's interesting because I.

I've actually been talking a lot about Batavia recently because the.

The Mexican population.

Batavia has like, completely exploded in the last, you know, certain amount of years.

And there's like an infrastructure between Batavia, Medina and Albion.

Just a big infrastructure of Mexican grocery stores and restaurants for Mexicans that have popped up in the last, you know, 10 years.

And it's so great to go out and get, like, truly awesome food made for Mexicans that is really delightful and it's so interesting.

I didn't know there was it.

Was there a community of Puerto Rican in Batavia or is it just isolated that you guys were There.

My mom's side of the family is Italian, you know, American.

Okay.

English dominant.

My father, you know, they originally came from Calle, Puerto Rico and Ponce.

That was like where a lot of our family was.

They originally came, well, dirt, long story.

During the Great Depression, my grandfather sell off parts of the land and he wanted to send the children to the, to the States to give them a better life.

So he sent some to Florida, some New Jersey, New York City, Brooklyn.

My dad went to Brooklyn and stayed there for some time before he ended up coming to Rochester.

And that's how my mom and him met.

And okay, actually met at Teen Challenge on Alexander and South Avenue, right by all the old John's Tex Mex.

So what, what, what, what is that place?

I don't know much about it.

Teen Challenge.

So Teen Challenge is a place where people who have addictions or drinking problems or any type of form, things like that, would go for support.

And that's how my mom and dad met.

They met there together.

My mom used to have a drinking issue.

She quit years and years ago, changed her life, gave her life to God.

And you know, my dad had issues with drinking as well.

But that's how they originally met.

And from there, you know, we were born family.

Nine in total, seven kids.

Yeah, that's.

That's a lot to have that many siblings, isn't it?

It is.

That kind of goes back to the old school farm mentality.

You know, big families, it was just normal for them.

Nowadays with the economy ways, people are a little more conscious of how many children they have just because the finances required to have like, sustain that is a lot different now than it used to be.

Oh, for sure.

And like, you know, when I was a kid, like I grew up in a small family business, so I, I worked since before I was 10, you know, working.

We had a sports card shop, greenhouse, Christmas tree business that I think we had all three of them maybe by the time I was 10.

Oh, nice.

So I remember going to the farm auction in the summer to buy our first stuff and selling when I was 10 years old or before out there doing that stuff.

And there's something about that attitude, you know, where, hey, kids are working.

Because that's the thing, you know, on farms, kids are working.

You're not.

Oh, you can't not.

You have to.

And there's something special about that.

It changes you in lots of ways.

Yeah, we were active young.

Well, I noticed Chris had a picture on the wall of the public market and that's.

Yeah, one of the One of the first small business experiences we had was my mom and dad started a stand at the public market called Jessica Tropicals, or also was under the name Linda Tropicals.

Okay.

And what we majored in was all Caribbean goods and items.

Homemade desserts like flan, boudin, acapulias, pasteles, Things of that nature we would carry, like Caribbean roots like batata, yucca or cassava root is.

More people know it as mangoes, coconuts, even.

At some point we had birds like parrots and parakeets and things like that.

The rules at the market.

You have them at the house too?

We did have them at the house.

How.

How was that?

Like, I see the videos of people with birds in the house.

It seems like just a wild experience.

It was.

It wasn't bad because I was young when we started doing that.

Maybe five to five to 10, 11, I think we had it.

So sometimes we have lizards there and things like that.

It was interesting.

We had ducks.

I mean, yeah, we.

We're in the middle of the, you know, the neighborhood, and we got ducks and stuff outside in our yard.

And people.

Now I look back at people, I think those are those crazy people over there.

They got ducks and all types of who nut knows what over there.

But it was great.

It was fun.

We got to experience a lot of things.

I mean, we're at the market when you were still able to buy freshly slaughtered animal there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, because that.

I mean, this has been a market for a very long time, and it has changed a lot.

I mean, that was early 90s.

Yeah.

I was born in 91, but, you know, this is around 94.

95.

Yeah.

Right after I graduated college, I think I started going.

And I do remember when they were still selling, like chickens in cages and stuff.

Oh, yeah.

And then it basically completely went away.

There used to be a farmer named Joe there.

Okay.

Some of the slightly older generation who maybe have been there a long time will remember him.

I used to call him a banana guy because you would hear him say, Banana, banana, banana.

It starts the day.

It would start the day.

Banana, banana, banana.

Three for a dollar.

Yeah.

As the day goes on.

Banana, banana, banana.

Six for a dollar.

At the end of the day.

Banana, banana, banana.

20 for a dollar.

Oh, my God.

Or something.

Because the farmers that brought the stuff there, they have to get rid of it.

Because they.

They're not trying to ship that back to where they're coming from.

Yeah.

So they try to sell off what they can, or if it's like a banana or something, turning, they'll give them a deal.

But I always remember that because at the end of the day, if we had a few extra dollars, my dad are like, here, go find something.

And I'll go around and I'll find someone selling something for like dirt cheap.

Because it was the last of it.

Oh, I got a whole case of strawberries for 10 bucks, you know, which is unheard of nowadays.

I actually did that recently.

I was walking around and somebody is like, hey, blueberries, whole case.

I'm like, how much?

It was like, you know, 20 of the, you know, the clamshells that are like this big.

They're not the huge ones, but it was like a whole case, you know, this big.

5 bucks.

Oh, it's like $100 at Walmart.

Yeah.

And I was like, there was half a waste, like, stuff I need to clean up.

I just made a whole bunch of syrup out of it.

Oh, yeah.

I cooked them down, made some syrup, added some hibiscus, you know, built out like a real robust, like blueberry and like floral syrup.

Yeah.

It turned out great.

It was.

It's a lot of fun.

But that is one of those great things about the public market, though, is it really is for everybody.

Oh, yeah.

Even now, it's still for everybody.

If you need to go and save money, you can go to the public market and get food to feed your family really affordably.

Yeah.

You have to time it right.

Yes.

You might have to do a little bit more work, but if you need to save the money, that's where you go if you really need to get cheap food.

And then you can get high end, you know, high end farmed food as well, and high end restaurant food and then, you know, affordable food at the same place all in one location.

And then.

Which I'm kind of interested in hearing your thoughts on one street away, you're in an area that has so much going on.

Like one street north, you're in the neighborhood you grew up in.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I mean, I literally grew up.

So if.

If you're familiar with the market, the parking area that's located near the Pennsylvania street exit.

Yeah.

The farthest part of the fence is Peck street behind it, small walkway.

I don't know if the guy's still there, but there used to be this guy.

We just called him like the arts arts nuts guy.

But he had a house on the corner of where?

Garson.

Nowhere.

Hayward.

Is it Hayward or Garson and Peck Street.

Like make a roundabout.

Okay.

And he was right on the end.

And he had built like this bowling ball mechanism that if he dropped a bowling ball in it from like his roof, it would go all through the entire property, hit different things.

It always reminded me those I Spy books.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And that's all he would do.

Like, he was just one of those unique guys who had like, artistic views.

Now I look older and I think about how impressive that really was.

But he had all types of little mechanisms through his yards.

Like when you see those Lego videos or the domino videos.

That's what his house was essentially like.

Yeah, with bowling balls.

He was like famous for it.

I love stuff like that because like those, those kind of people, they're.

That defines like to me, that like eccentric character.

Like, you're just a character.

Like, I love people like that.

Like, why not do weird stuff?

Like try something interesting, have a good time.

You know, people remember that stuff.

If you're just generic all the time.

People don't remember you.

They don't remember all the little things you did.

They remember that weird shit.

Yeah.

I mean, as a kid, it was just fascinating.

I mean, he had these big iron fence fences with like concrete between them.

It just reminded me of like something from Matilda.

Like when she.

Like how the fence was in the Trench Bulls house.

I don't know.

That's what it get.

This was always reminding me of.

But it was cool because he just had that stuff.

So I would see that as I walked to the market, my mom would make sandwiches in the morning.

Like, here, take a stack of breakfast sandwiches up to your dad or your brother.

My brother would help them too.

And they just go get some eggs and go get some bread from the Monk's bread guy.

Yeah, it used to be like five lows for a dollar.

Oh God.

That.

That just brought back such a specific mem.

Me.

So I grew up in the Buffalo area and we'd go to the Walden Flea Market.

Like, not every week, but we'd go, you know, a couple times a month.

And we bought the discount bread from the, from the bread vendors there.

And we'd go walk around and find stuff we could buy and either resell or do other stuff like that.

And we always would get that, you know, discount bread from the, from the guy that's got all those loaves and little plastic racks, you know, Man.

I.

Don'T Miss that stuff.

But at the same time, it was such a specific time to be, you know, in an entrepreneurial family when, yeah, we.

We were poor, but we did what we could do and we made the best of it.

Oh, yeah.

It was very interesting, I would say, just like the market is very nostalgic for me just for that reason.

I mean, I was there before they built the whole new era where all the restaurants are.

Oh, it's crazy.

None of that existed.

The office was like a tiny red box.

It's not even like now it's like a whole brick building.

Yeah, I remember the food where.

I remember the original fish market was like, on the left side.

Used to stink so bad.

And then they had, like, these little huts.

And the huts were breakfast sandwich spots.

Yeah, yeah.

Three or four of them.

I remember even back then, they were like three, four bucks.

But they were like.

I just remember as a kid, it was fantastic when we could have them.

Yeah.

But it was just.

It's just a memory because I just always remember smelling the sandwiches and then smelling fish right after it.

Remember that?

Like the old Scots with the red.

The redwood.

Yes.

Building.

Yes.

Like that.

That thing was.

That thing was rickety by the end.

Scott's, too.

It was Scott's.

Scott's too.

I remember that.

It was really rickety by the end.

But, man, you walk in there, that.

That griddle, I mean, that griddle has seen some stuff.

I can only imagine how much sales they did off that little, little thing.

Man.

Man, the amount.

The amount of bacon grease and butter on that.

On that.

On that griddle, that whole time on that flattop had to just be astonishing.

Well seasoned.

So now that.

So that's awesome.

So, you know, you're around.

You're around kind of this kind of, you know, the food thing.

Since you were a kid, when did you make the call to actually stay in that?

So.

So this kind of goes back to the market.

So we used to make a lot of the products we sold.

Yeah.

So, I mean, as early as five years old, I remember starting to cook and simple things like, we would just help my mom grind because now there's all these fancy food processors and grinder stuff.

But for those unfamiliar with the pastele, it's a very intensive, laborious item to make.

It is made from yucca or green bananas, and you have to mash them into, like, a paste.

I remember hand grating them.

I remember taking the garlic and soaking them in water and then hand popping them, chopping the onions, you know, chopping everything.

Getting the banana leaves, making the trolley from the seeds, it takes.

You're actually.

You're actually grinding achiote seeds.

You were grinding at the seeds.

Oh, my God, that's so much work.

I mean, those things are like little rocks.

They are, they are.

But for.

For those who don't know, like, when you see.

I'll use an example that people probably know al pastor, you know, the Mexican.

Mexican taco meat or otherwise.

That big red color is coming from these achiote seeds, but they're small.

They're like kind of like the size of a peppercorn almost.

They're shaped a little bit differently.

They're almost like not pyramid shape.

They have little angles to them, kind of like ner.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

That's a.

That's a great thing.

And it's got this beautiful, earthy text, earthy flavor.

But they are hard, these little seeds, and you grind them like in a.

In a mortar and pestle or below.

Yeah, exactly.

So you're Puerto Rican or in Mexican.

That would be.

Oh, why am I freaking the name of those things?

Oh, I feel terrible.

Why am I forgetting the name of the.

The Mexican term for the mortar and pestle?

That's going to drive me crazy.

But anyways, so that's.

That's a ton of work, by the way, to do for what is essentially a street food snack.

Yeah.

I mean, we'd make this by, like, those giant blue igloo coolers.

Yep.

Maybe three or four of those every week.

Potentially making a junta, which is two pasteles wrapped up together.

And you would sell them.

I mean, we might make a few hundred of those weekly.

A few hundred acapulas, things like that.

Yeah.

So I just kind of fell in love with cooking and just being in the kitchen with my mom and my dad and then my grandma.

On my mom's side, my grandpa were hunters, so they would hunt deer and bring them to the house.

My dad being born and raised in Puerto Rico, slaughtering animals would, you know, chop it up.

I just remember walking downstairs, I was like, six or seven.

There's a deer on the ground in the kitchen, and they're, like, cutting it up.

And I'm like, are we gonna eat that?

And I'm like.

And he's like, yeah.

And I'm like, okay.

Yeah.

It never bothered me.

That stuff never bothered me.

My sisters, on the other hand, they were like, you killed, baby.

You're an animal.

Yeah.

I mean, like, I choose to eat vegan now, but I grew up.

I grew up going out with my dad and tracking deer, and we processed our own stuff.

We grounded in the house.

We did all that work.

Yeah.

It's.

It's so funny how similar, like, our.

Our background is.

And starting that early, by the way, finally, mokohete.

Okay.

You know, the.

It's more like lava stone.

It's a little coarser, and you can really get in there and grind stuff that needs to be ground.

Yeah.

Because, like, I've got the, you know, like the.

The granite version from, like, Asia food market.

You know, it's that kind which got good grinding, but local hete.

So, like, you can really grind stuff.

Coarse bottom.

Yeah.

And the pestle's a little.

Yeah, that's a.

They're both a little bit coarse.

You could really get in there and get stuff done.

So.

Yeah, you.

So you started in at that point.

Yeah.

So that just made me fall in love with it, you know, as I got a little older, closer to, like, you know, early preteen, I think, like, oh, you know, I just think, like, oh, it'd be cool to own a restaurant one day.

Yeah.

And then, you know, I tell everyone, like, we all start kids with dreams.

You know, everyone wants to be, oh, I want to be a firefighter.

I want to be a lawyer.

I want to be a doctor, whatever.

And then you start getting a little older and you forget.

You start forgetting your dream.

Yeah.

But I always had a passion for cooking.

Even when, like, our friends would get together and we'll have, like, hangouts, I would cook or initiate maybe what we should cook, things like that, just because it was fun, you know?

And I always worked in the food industry for the most part.

I mean, granted, most of it was McDonald's, but I spent maybe almost 15 years in total with them.

There's something to be learned from that, though.

Like, the efficiency, the consistency, all that stuff.

Systems.

Like, there's so much to learn from that side of things.

You know, it can be very repetitive.

But the.

The rest of it is so important if you're going to start a business that's going to do volume.

Very, very much so.

I mean, I wouldn't be able to do the things I do today without the knowledge I gained through those experiences.

I mean, Grant, I worked with some other stuff, like Kohl's and like that, but mainly.

Mainly the restaurant stuff.

Yeah.

And also, it's just the old school approach to stuff.

My mom and dad always taught you work hard no matter what you.

You work hard even when people aren't watching you and.

And learn from what you're doing, everything has value.

You're not doing nothing for no reason.

The systems McDonald's have are phenomenal.

Yeah.

Do everyone that works there implement them on a day to day basis?

Probably not.

But from a business standpoint, just being able to learn what I did, like how to do inventory, how to, how to figure out what item costs you, how do you figure out what item wasted cost you, how do you figure out what to order, when to order, where to order from, you know, things like that.

What is food safety, how do you implement it, how do you keep track of it?

All those things add up.

Forecasting, scheduling.

You know, I granted I don't use a ton of scheduling because we have a small crew, but just having those experiences are irreplaceable.

I mean I was able to take those skills and immediately implement them.

Yeah, and that's another part of like having a team is really important because not only was I really good in the back end of a restaurant, I also had a lot of front end experience, a lot of behind the scenes experience.

My brother's wife, she's more tech savvy and artistic than us.

So she was good at designing things and putting little forms together for stuff like that.

My brothers, the old school salesman, marketer, personable, you know, let's talk to people, old school hand approach.

So we mesh really well with the ideas we had that helped us really kind of propel us to have some of the success we're seeing now, which you know, we continue to refine and the goal is to just keep improving on what we're doing now and then get further along.

But, but yeah, back to the, to McDonald's.

I mean like I said, without that I wouldn't be able to do half the things we do now.

I mean it sucked at the time, some of those times of course not that it was all bad.

Great people I met, you know, good experiences.

Also really tough times.

Just like any job, but it could be very taxing.

But like I said, without that wouldn't be able to do this.

And then I worked at like Salvators, which that gave me a different perspective on the food industry.

You know, local small chain that was able to develop and have success now throughout parts of rest of the country.

I think Florida just got their first Salvators, North Carolina, a couple other places there were that from scratch.

Original style restaurant.

As you grow, obviously you have to trim food.

Cost has changed, wages have changed.

But just being there, learning from some of the guys, I mean I worked at the Original one, East Maine.

I mean, Sim, the manager there, he's been there since he was like 16 years old.

I mean, this guy knows everything there is to know about it.

It was just good learning with them experiencing that style, which is more similar to what Palermo's is now, I guess you would say, like just the logistics in the systems and the formations of how you're like going to go about your order per order every day.

So that was a really good experience for me as well.

Again, I took a lot of those skills I learned there paired with what I learned from McDonald's and just life skills in general and really kind of apply them to the restaurants.

Because before we even got to Palermo's Amigusta, we started a food cart called Palermo's Foods, which was.

Okay, a hot dog cart which we sold homemade sausage, hand ground burgers, Sicilian sausage, really, things like that, on the corner of Goodman and Gray Street.

Oh, okay.

So we did that during COVID Yeah, so we actually started.

The first day we sold product was the first and last health permit granted that at the beginning of COVID No way.

Really, if you remember.

So it's like right in like mid March.

Oh, it was snow on the ground.

Yeah, that.

Oh, wow, that's wild.

There was snow on the ground.

It was though.

I don't know if you guys remember, you know, it's a few years ago now.

Oh, it's only going to be a week, huh?

Very well.

I was in, I was in Milwaukee working on installing a machine for my, for my day job.

And I flew back on March 19th.

It's like the 18th or the 19th.

So I flew back right then and when I got back, the whole plant closed.

Whole plant closed for a certain amount.

Of time until it was nuts.

Yeah, it was, it was wild how things changed really quickly.

But one of the great things is like you were still outside.

You're still outside and you're still doing some of that.

That actually breathed considerable life into us.

Yeah.

So, you know, we're taking a huge risk.

You know, I was at McDonald's making a decent wage.

I had a 401k, I had health plan, all that.

You know, McDonald's came a long way.

You even get free college tuition now.

If you're there for over a certain amount of time, like a year, you can go to college for free.

So, you know, I left all that.

My security blanket, as I would say, which I would say to anyone that ever has a dreamer wants to be someone who creates their own, their own future.

You have to Take a risk.

So was I necessarily happy there?

Maybe not.

Was it secure?

Did it pay my bills?

Did it feed my daughter and clothe us?

Yes.

Can we talk about that for a second?

I want to talk about that.

And then I want to go to break and we'll dive right into, you know, the launching of the, you know, the brick and mortar places in the mercantile on Main in the Sibley building.

I've been thinking about it a lot recently, about failure, about.

And really failure has been the topic in my head, but it's been around the risk taking because I'm really not.

I'm not great at it.

And I'm.

I struggle a lot with.

I struggle a lot with the interim failures because I know where I want to be and struggle with not going as fast as I want and feeling all the time like I'm not doing enough, like I can't do enough.

That's a.

A very common perception of oneself, I would say.

Yeah.

And first I would say, what do you feel failure is?

Because that's different for everyone.

Yeah, I.

I think personally, and it's.

I.

I feel that when you have lots of capability that I could do that I could do more.

I could.

Oh, man, I crashed that day.

What if.

What if I didn't.

I could have gotten more done.

What if I, you know, didn't waste that time?

I could have gotten so much more done.

And obviously it's unfair to yourself as a person to feel that way because you need time to recover.

I'm working a full time plus day job, and then I'm doing all this stuff on the side, but I never feel like I can do enough.

And it's.

I know for all the people that I talk to, we care hard.

Right.

We care hard about the stuff we do.

Oh, yeah.

Which means that we want to do better all the time.

We want to make things better.

We want to get the business to the next level so we can do that next thing, so we can achieve the goals that are in our head.

And I'm trying to be a little more transparent about that stuff and talk to people about it, because I think we all go through versions of that.

Yeah.

As people who are trying to create something.

So, like your version of failure, to me, how I view it, this is how I had changed my lens.

Yeah.

Those are educational moments for you.

That is.

That's actually growth, not failure to me now, if you feel otherwise, that's fine.

You know, by now, looking back, oh, I could have improved in this area.

That's a Learning experience.

Failure for me is letting someone down.

I care about knowing I could do that task.

Yeah.

Not getting up and going to work, not taking care of my family, not taking care of my daughter.

Those are failure moments to me, because I know better.

Yeah.

Failure, as in, I've been through an action, now I can look back at it.

Yes, that might have been a terrible mistake, but if I don't learn from that now, that's true failure.

Yeah.

No, it's.

I appreciate that, man.

Yeah, it's.

I don't know, just trying to have these conversations with people because I think it's something that's not.

We're not talking about it enough.

We're not talking about the struggles of doing these kind of things and, you know, living and breathing these.

These businesses and projects that we have in front of us, you know, takes a lot out of you as a.

As a person.

Sometimes it does.

And I.

It is important to talk about them.

This is what I tell people who come to me for advice.

They see me down there, for example, in the commissaries there, and there's a lot of new members.

This might be their first rodeo.

And they see us and they're like, oh, well, how did you get here?

You know, what do you do?

How do you do this?

And I always tell them, well, first and foremost, do you love what you do?

Yeah.

If you don't, don't bother, because it's not tv.

I've watched other businesses in there, in Rochester open and fail because the reality of what they were doing is not what was in their head.

Yeah, they watch too much Hell's Kitchen and too much stuff like that.

This isn't tv.

You gotta work hard there.

There's no way around it.

There's no way to pay someone unless.

And if you have that much money to pay someone, what's the point opening the business in the first place?

Unless it's something you really enjoy doing.

But, I mean, the ultimate goal is to obviously make a living wage.

Right.

And doing what you love is a freedom.

You know, there's.

There's a.

There's a.

There's a sense of freedom you can't put a number on.

You know, I could theoretically right now go probably back to McDonald's and make more money than I make personally.

But I wouldn't be happy.

I wouldn't be able to bless the community or things like that.

So those are things that come with it.

And I tell people, like, you really have to know where your heart and mind is when you want to do these things, if it's a restaurant, if it's being a photographer or podcaster, if this is what you love to do, then the money isn't a thing.

You know, obviously you gotta make something off it.

Or if this is what you're planning on doing to make a living wage, then, yeah, you have to obviously figure out a way to generate some positive income.

But the mindset behind it is you have to love what you do, man.

You gotta love what you do.

You got to be willing to take risks.

You can't be afraid to, you know, anti, quote, fail or not succeed the way you want to.

You, you gotta try because people like going back to McDonald's.

I was just talking to my customers.

Who would have thought, 50, 60 years ago, some guy named Ray Kroc opens a spot and boom, you're going to be the second, first, second biggest chain in the entire world.

Yeah, who would have thought?

Google, Amazon, you know, just to name a few.

Bitcoin, right.

You know, I was, I was actually most people who laughed at bitcoin.

Oh, absolutely.

I found out about that when I was 14 years old.

Yeah.

I remember very well when I was in college when the first stories of that were coming out, when people like, oh, God, this guy wasted all these, you know, spend all this money to buy a pizza.

And then you look now it's like, yeah, that's like $5 million of that stuff or $10 million of that stuff to buy one pizza.

Yeah.

Those are just good examples for people like, who are like visual learners.

Yeah.

No one can tell you where you're gonna be.

No one can tell you.

I don't care if there's 5, 000 people that sell cheeseburgers.

Guess what?

There's a demand for it.

Be creative, be the next burger astronaut, I don't know, whatever.

But there's, there's an avenue for you.

You have to carve it out.

If there's no demand for it, make one.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's really what it comes down to.

Was there a demand for, you know, Google?

When it came out, they had asked Jeeves and stuff.

Yahoo.

Oh, not necessarily.

Now you can't did anything without Google.

Yeah, no doubt.

Well, thank you for humoring me.

So we're going to take some special sauce and work sauce and we're going to blast off into space and we'll be right back.

And we're back with the second half of our conversation with chef Fredo of Palermo's and me gusta restaurant.

So yeah, we were talking during the break about a whole bunch of different stuff.

And I'm really excited to dive into, you know, the actual opening of the restaurants which are both inside the mercantile on Maine in the historic Sibley building right in the heart of downtown Rochester.

So I think Palermos came first.

Right?

Palermos did come first coming from the.

Coming from the.

Coming from the food cart.

So the food carts a keeper pivotal moment in here.

So as I was saying in the first half, we started during COVID and that allowed us to gain traction.

People like the fact we're outside.

So we're like, well, how can we grow this more?

And we're like, well, we heard about the commissary getting built before the commissary.

It's very limited spaces.

And Rogers, you had to actually use for a commissary.

Weren't very many zone for it or approved by the health department.

No.

And they were all, they were all like either private owned.

There wasn't like space that you could really get into.

You could if you knew the right person, but they were few and far between.

Like I remember going to Marty's commissary.

Yeah.

When he was running the truck out in like East Rochester or wherever the hell that was.

I think it was East Rochester.

I remember going out there once.

I'm like, wait, this is out here.

This is where all this is happening.

Like all of there were like all just wherever the heck there was tiny.

Limited equipment, you know, very limited space, things like that.

So we heard about the comments.

You're like, oh, this would be a great opportunity for us to go down here and have more workspace and a better since brand new.

You know, we heard all these things.

So I had to work.

I was still working McDonald's, Salvators and doing.

Helping my brothers between on the cart.

So I was wearing like three jobs essentially.

So I'm at work.

And they went down to the city building.

This is before the Merc tiles open.

This is before 50 of the businesses are in there that are in there now.

It was almost exclusively apartments in a few small businesses in Next Corp.

It's probably about it.

That was in there at the time.

I remember going through that building a lot.

Our.

The you know, little startup we were trying to do.

We were in Next core.

And I remember walking through that area and how desolate it was.

Oh, and going up those, going up some of those.

That elevator at the back, man, the noises that thing would make were just wild.

They still have it.

Well, it's Historical.

So they won't get rid of it.

Which is so cool, though, because that myself, the civilian, obviously, is.

Most kids that group watch have some memories of it.

Maybe more midtown than others.

Sure.

The siblings.

I just.

My doctor's office was there and stuff, so I just remember the elevators and all that.

But, yeah, so we went for the commissary.

There was a security guard named Mr.

G that worked there.

Our brothers and their loss.

You know, they haven't been in that building probably 20 years, so they're like, oh, we're looking for this place.

And then they just kind of told them what we do, and, you know, God, just put them in the right spot.

Right time.

Because Mr.

G is like, well, you know what?

I got a better idea for you.

How about not go to the commissary and I'm going to introduce you to someone else.

Ken Green.

So Ken Greens from Wind Companies, which owns the building.

He's the building project manager.

And many other things for when they're.

And he's literally coming off the elevator.

It was like, just the moment in time, we're supposed to be there.

He comes off the elevator.

Mr.

G's like, hey, these guys are interested in, you know, the food industry.

And then he was like, you got 30 seconds.

And they just run them down.

30 seconds.

What we do really quick.

And he was like, you know what?

I like the energy you guys have.

Next week, 4pm Wednesday, be back here in the office.

We'll have the whole team here bring us food.

And just like that, we had a shot.

I love that.

Yeah.

I mean, literally, just.

You can't make it up.

You can't make it up.

And then I think that's also like, all the other work, right?

It's all the other work that comes up to that because you're.

You're not.

You have to be ready for the opportunity.

If that would have happened before you had started the cart, you might have been able to do something, but you wouldn't have been ready.

Agree.

But having done the rest of the work, having done the prep, you know, having lived it for all that time, when the opportunity was ready, you were ready to meet it at the same time.

Agree.

So a little bit of our past I left out is not only was my dad a butcher, he helped, like, start Skips.

Like, he was like the original butcher there.

No way.

The original butcher for the original Skips.

He knew the owner.

He worked in.

My grandpa worked there.

He also worked at Burbinos and then the original Palermo's food And meat market on Norton Culver.

Yeah.

Is where we take a lot of our inspiration from.

He was a head butcher there for a long time.

Our brother was other half brother Mike was there for years.

The original owner, Norman.

Awesome.

Family, like old school.

Everything from scratch.

Customer service, backbreaking, hard work, like just anything you could possibly want in like a.

A person for.

As an example for you to run a business was Norman and his wife.

Awesome.

I just remember being young, going in there, just amazing place.

Homemade sausage, you name it.

So we took a lot of inspiration from that.

So I still remember the menu we sent Ken.

We made a homemade roast beef top round with the garlic in it, salt, pepper, crust, thin sliced on the slicer.

AJU Then we did.

We made some chicken sausages, which we don't make anymore because it got a really pricey wine, cheese and parsley.

We made the broccoli rappy, kalamata olive, sun dried tomato and basil.

We're making the Sicilian rope sausage.

We're making the Italian sweet sausage.

I mean, these.

This is what we sent them.

You're going for it.

Fresh kaiser rolls, provolone, lettuce, tomato, onion.

If anyone had the privilege of like going to Palermos the first year or open, I mean, we were.

It was nothing we weren't making from scrat scratch.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, Covid and food prices changed a lot of that.

We had to scale certain items, but are still our core menu items.

We keep homemade, and I think that's really what sets us apart to this day.

And that's just back to the.

The Palermo's like, you gotta.

You gotta give them that fresh taste.

We gotta give them that what it feels like to eat at our family's table.

Yeah.

Because Palermo's is, you know, for all intents and purposes, both a combo, you know, almost like some of that corner store menu, some of that.

You know, you get your breakfast sandwiches, you get your.

You get your, you know, deli sandwiches at lunch, and then you can get some of these, you know, specials and some hot stuff along with that.

But it's not a.

It's not one thing.

It's lots of things at once.

I.

I kind of describe it as currently New York City bodega meets Italian butchery.

Yeah, that's kind of where we're at.

But yeah, so that's how plan was got in there.

We went back to the meeting.

Ken Green, I remember Chris, he's the head accountant.

Frank, he's one of the other head project managers, a couple other guys there.

I mean, these are big Time Win C.

Not CEO, but like top level guys for New York.

I mean, we're guys off the street.

We don't even belong at the same table with these people, you know, but.

These are guys making decisions for, you know, one of the more most historic buildings in the city.

Yeah.

So, you know, they taste our food and they're just blown away way by.

They're like, you're selling this on the street corner.

Oh, I forgot the burger.

We're making the burger out of ribeye and strip at the time, but they were eating.

They're like, you guys are making this on a street corner.

I'm like, yeah, we're selling this on a street corner.

Yeah, there's like no way.

And they were just blown away by it.

You know, like I said, thank God we're in the right spot.

Right time.

They're like, well, we got some concepts.

We got this project going on.

You guys want in.

And we're like, oh, we talk about like, yeah, we want in.

And you know, we're talking some other business.

Like, you guys are nuts.

You're gonna commit suicide going down there.

Suicide.

Going downtown Rochester.

I mean, in the natural they were right, you know, five years ago, downtown.

I mean, forget about it.

Ten years ago, downtown.

You're talking Detroit level desolation.

Well, and there wasn't, there wasn't the, the base of things.

There wasn't the growth that we're seeing now.

And there's ups and downs to all of it.

And it's slow, but things are, things are changing.

Oh yeah.

So if anyone, like I said real Rochesterians know, you know, as Midtown went down, it was like a blow for the city.

We're a very unique city for those who've never traveled.

You're not going to find another city like us.

And the reason that is we're one of the few medium to large cities in the country.

If there is any other like us, that where the downtown is not where the majority of your shopping is.

Yeah.

That is like unheard of.

I mean, go to Buffalo district downtown, bar district, fun district, shopping district.

We don't have that.

We had two top Fortune 500 companies unfortunately pretty much collapse at the same time.

I mean that's like essentially like pulling your bones out of your body.

That's pretty much what happened to Rochester.

And it was, and it was later.

So I've been thinking about this a lot.

It's because it was later than Buffalo and a lot of them were white collar jobs and really high end blue collar jobs.

And it Was.

It was a different blow to the city than Buffalo and the steel.

You know, Bethlehem going out and Trico and all those companies going down.

It's a different hit.

And Buffalo's was earlier by like 15 years.

Yeah.

And you can see the positivity going on in Buffalo now and the attitude has changed.

And I think we're finally starting to see some more positivity.

I would definitely say that.

I would say one of the biggest key factors.

I know a lot of people disagree with it at first.

Parcel five.

Yeah.

It might seem like just a patch of grass to a lot of you guys if you've never been downtown.

It's more than that.

It's actually.

I would say it's going to be potentially a make or break thing for the city.

And right now it's making it.

Not only does it bring events downtown, it's bringing national money to the city.

I mean, we had.

A few years ago, we had a national bike race here.

I remember they shut like half a downtown.

I mean, these are national things.

If people don't know Rochester had a NBA team.

I'm gonna.

I'm gonna pull out my satin jacket that I got and I'm going to show it to you.

So I.

I grew up in Buffalo and live in Rochester.

I love NBA basketball.

So my teams are the Buffalo Braves and the Rochester Royals.

Oh, yeah.

Also known as the Sacramento Kings.

Yeah.

Light the beam.

But I mean, to think about that now.

Yeah.

Is like, wow.

Do you know where they played?

No, I didn't.

So I think I forget the exact name of the stadium, but I think it's on the same side as like the Edgerton Community Center.

Okay.

So I think that's.

I forget what the stadium they played in was called, but I believe I'm looking it up.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Edgerton Park Arena.

So it was.

And I think right now it's.

It's like a community center.

So that's where it was.

It was in Edgerton Park.

It's like a 4,000-seat spot.

And that's where.

That's where it was at the time.

I mean, it was big money.

Yeah.

Money involved that the old timers always tell you.

Because I don't know if anyone remembers, downtown used to have pavers.

Those pavers were gold.

Wow.

Our city was paved in gold.

That's the old expression.

I mean, I know most people my age, I'm only 33, probably won't understand that too much.

Yeah.

But I remember a little bit when I Was really young.

It was.

There was stuff downtown and then just got pulled out.

Parcel 5 has kind of brought that back.

I mean, agreed.

Without parcel five, the mercantile won't be here.

I would just say that it, it's.

That gave us a catalyst to really propel some of the business there to have some success.

Because it has been.

And I think, you know, I want to dive into it a little bit.

But it's.

It has been a struggle too because, you know, not as many people came back to downtown to work post pandemic.

And it doesn't.

It's not easy building that without all of the people who used to work in downtown Rochester being there as much.

Agree.

So when we first started the mercantile.

Yeah, Parcel five was just a desolate plot of gravel and dirt and trash.

It's pretty miserable.

It was.

It was bad.

There's actually, if you look up Buckingham properties, they have a before and after.

It literally looked like a bomb went off and then now it's just like green and vibrant.

But so we first opened.

We did free food for like a day.

I remember like a media circus.

It was insane.

I mean we're doing tons and tons of sales.

Yeah.

The first year, you know, the year.

The first year is up, up, up, up.

Covet actually researched and helped us.

And I know that sounds crazy to a lot of people.

Well, that just destroyed me.

Well, we had an advantage over everyone else.

Space.

Covert regulations were based off space.

Seating, proximity to a bathroom, proximity to exit.

Yeah.

Which for some people, you know, they might understand.

We have our bathrooms far away.

So they count the space from where the bathroom is to the exit as your square footage of allowed areas like a football field.

It's in that space.

It's huge in there.

We got tons of space.

So we were still able to legally have almost up to 300 people there at any given time because of the space.

Whereas unfortunately, like say like Park Ave.

East Ave.

Merchants, they're small venues.

They were just.

I just can only imagine what they went through.

You're allowed to have one or two people in there.

They were.

I remember they're taping cubicles off of plastic and things like that.

That is what I think drove people to the mercantile.

It was new, but there was space.

You felt safe.

You know, we had things in place to make sure stuff was getting sanitized and.

And stuff like that.

People felt comfortable there.

There wasn't.

Market wasn't really open.

The lucky flea didn't exist yet, things like that.

So Saturday at the Mercantile and Sunday, for the few that experienced it, I would say it's a.

It was a very special time.

Yeah, I remember, you know, the first.

You know, when Rocco opened where.

Where Lola is now.

You know, I was.

I was going in there a lot of.

A lot of Saturdays going in and hanging out and grabbing food, bringing home for the wife and stuff.

It was the ultimate Rochester mixer.

Yeah.

Inner city, outer city, suburban, which I had people coming from Hilton, you name it.

To come to the Mercantile, just to eat a sandwich and just drink coffee and have fun and meet people, and it was great.

As things opened back up, we started taking a little dive, which is to be expected.

Your favorite places back open?

Oh, you know, this place is open.

I want to go hang out.

My friends who haven't been there in two years, you know, okay, fine, I get it.

Then it kind of going down a little more, like, oh, you know, as new business owners, we get a little nervous.

We're like, you know what?

We got to push through.

We'll be fine.

Some people started coming back to the office, but, I mean, we lost, like, big customers, like CGI.

I mean, they're housing 10 of what they used to.

Just, for example.

They were our close neighbors.

I mean, that was a huge, huge part of our lunch crowd.

A DNC across the streets.

I mean, there's.

So there's five of them.

Fewer people.

Five work there now, right?

Six, but.

And almost all of them come, which is great, and I'm thankful for.

But a lot of offices went two days in, three days out.

And because the reason for that was they couldn't compete.

Other people are like, well, why would I stay with you when I could make, oh, a thousand dollars less a year and go work for your competitor?

And he lets me stay at home.

Yeah.

And, you know, could I.

If I could do this at home, would I?

Probably, I'm not gonna lie.

If I could be like, Bob's Burgers, yeah, I wouldn't be too bad.

But, you know, that's the reality.

What it was downtown for a while.

We just didn't have the people there.

And in order for any city or business or anything with anything to thrive, you have to have people, places and things.

We had a place with no people and no things.

Parcel 5 has given us things.

More and more offices are coming to downtown.

National companies are moving downtown.

Billionaire companies are moving downtown.

The people are coming back.

The colleges have dorms downtown.

There's new businesses, new bars, new restaurants.

New art places.

The things are there, the people are there.

And that's really helping us develop.

I mean, I remember the first Jazz Fest back.

It was, it was free.

Everything we had Covid money allocated to the state.

I know people probably like, why were they wasted on that?

It gave so many Rochesterians an amazing experience at the Jazz Fest.

Yeah.

Me as one of them.

Up until I experienced it, I always thought the Jazz fest was like middle age white collar boringness.

Like, you know, I just didn't know what.

Jazz wasn't my thing.

I used to play the trumpet, but like jazz was, wasn't my thing.

I'm just thinking this is all one type of music.

I learned that it's very multicultural.

There's tons of amazing people that run it, operate it, which have also been amazing to us.

I mean, we've done tons of catering for the Jazz Fest.

We're.

I mean, we're a hub for it now.

It's.

It's awesome.

Like we've been able to grow with it.

More inner city people, I think, came to the Jazz Fest than ever before.

Oh, wow.

And I think the same kind of thing happened to them.

Their eyes got opened to what the Jazz Fest is.

And I noticed since then the jazz festival has grown.

Yeah, that's for sure.

I mean, it's already a giant, giant festival.

One of the top ones in the world.

And just having that there and you know.

Yeah, it's only 10 days, but in those 10 days, I mean, you're bringing a hundred thousand people downtown.

Maybe more than that.

That.

Never been downtown.

Never seen our restaurant, never seen the civil's building, Never seen props five.

And now like, oh, there's stuff here.

I didn't know this stuff was here.

Let's go back.

Even some people like, oh, I was here six months ago.

Hey, you came back.

I'm happy.

Yeah, that's been like a real important part of it.

I mean, there's new housing complex going up down there right behind the Sibley building.

I mean there's.

They're renovating one east as venerating.

That's so exciting, by the way, to see that.

I mean, to see more.

To see more going on down there.

And I know there's.

There's still a lot of work to be done to make sure everything's inclusive and equitable to the community that lives in that area as well.

But at the same time, it is nice to see some of those buildings that haven't had things in it for a long time start to have things that people Want to go to?

Yeah, I think, I think our city leadership had to start looking at other cities and saying, hey, like Detroit for example.

Detroit took up, I mean you think it was bad here?

They took a whole nother level of blow.

Right.

And they've been rebounding and they're looking at them, they're looking at Chicago, they're looking at other places.

Like who was desolated by things, how can, how do they recover from it?

And people places, Things is like the model for it right now.

Yeah.

A lot of these buildings are actually installing like a fair amount of low income housing, fixed income, which is good because it's bringing that multicultural asset back downtown.

And, and I think that's like a key factor too.

There has to be things like that.

Oh, there's a Spanish restaurant, this is Jamaican restaurant.

There's this, I mean East Maine and Style has had Caribbean restaurants for like ever there.

Yeah.

You know, for sure.

Peach Blossom, their Mexican owned restaurant opened up by the old State street in Maine.

Authentic real deal stuff down there.

Yeah.

Squatchos right next to him too.

Killing it.

A vegan spot.

I mean then you got, of course you got Pizza stop on State Street.

I mean these are people that have been there and now you're adding other stuff to that now.

People like, okay, I'm not just going downtown for pizza stop.

I'm not just going downtown for native.

I'm not just going downtown now.

I'm going downtown because Monday I'm gonna go to the Mercantile, I'm gonna eat at Playrmos, then Tuesday I might eat at Lobola, and then Thursday I'm gonna go to Barbantum and you know, and stuff like that.

That's just, it's exciting for us as business owners to see the potential.

Yeah.

And I'm witnessing it day by day.

So the people that don't see it, they just, oh, I don't see it.

And then you don't come downtown for six months.

Come downtown, I beg you guys, just come downtown and just see what we're offering.

Don't even have to buy nothing, just see it.

And, and if you were Rochesterian through and through, you're gonna appreciate where it's heading.

I mean there's just, it's, I can't even fathom like five years ago that I'll be looking downtown the way it is now.

I want to see what it's going to do in five more years.

That's awesome, man.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really glad you said that because I think it's important to, you know, to go and support places in person.

Don't just order online.

Go in and support them in person.

Support them the best way they can be supported.

Matters a lot.

Let's just.

Let's go through real quick Magusta.

We're.

We're at our time, but I want to at least get a little information out about Magusta, because, like, you guys are really bringing the Puerto Rican and Jamaican and the heritage into the food.

And I gotta say, it's also really good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, we got stuck on Palermo a little bit, but Palermo was the key pivot.

Yeah.

So some may know there were original vendors in the mercantile.

Unfortunately, some did not make it.

Yep.

We were able to capitalize on.

On someone else's unfortunate situation.

Not in a bad way.

Whereas there's empty spot in there, in the.

In the building approach.

It's like, hey, you know, you guys have been successful at this one concept.

Would you consider a second one?

You know, we thought about it, talked, and we're like, you know what?

Let's.

Let's kind of divide what we're doing.

We try to jam everything into polynomials.

Like, our Spanish side, too.

It was just too much going on.

We're like, okay, let's separate it.

Let's put our Italian American one side.

Let's put our Caribbean side on the other.

I mean, we're Puerto Rican by race, but I grew up around neighbors that were Jamaican.

My fiance's Haitian.

A lot of Caribbean.

Shout out to peak leaves.

One of the best things I've ever eaten was peak leaves.

And the.

The.

The.

The mushroom rice and the legume.

Oh, man, that's good stuff, man.

I love that.

There's a lot of, like, awesome stuff.

So we're like, hey, we don't want to be like every other Puerto Rican restaurant.

Not.

There's nothing wrong with anyone doing what they're doing was like, we want to be different.

We want to do like, a little fusion.

So I wouldn't label us necessarily, like a hundred percent authentic.

Like, yes, we make authentic items.

My concept was like, I don't want to be like everyone else.

Let's be who we are.

What's authentic to your experience is what it is.

Yes.

So it's our variation of what authenticity is.

So we do authentic items for each place.

So like, maybe a traditional Hispanic person coming out, oh, this isn't Spanish, you know, and that's fine.

But I wanted to appeal to everyone, like, hey, I love jerk chicken.

It's like, my favorite Caribbean dish out of every island.

I mean, I make it.

I was making it on everything.

So 1.

It's so good.

And I gotta say, also, 1, thank you for working with us with.

With Nominate.

When we were running that.

Loved working with you guys.

It's always great to work with professionals where you don't have to worry about them.

And I was so glad to, you know, get you guys some orders through there.

And it was great to get to know you a little better during that.

And I remember that jerk chicken, man, that people loved that when we had events with that.

They really adored that.

I mean, that's still, to this day our number one item.

We do, like, some Spanish meatballs, which is.

I let my chef.

That's her baby.

She's.

That's her family recipe.

So that's like generational stuff right there.

Yeah.

That jerk chicken is like my cultivation of all the experiences that I had with Caribbean people and making it my own.

The rice, the beans.

It's just kind of a cultivation of all our experiences.

We kind of like, feed off each other, like, hey, you know, maybe a little less this, maybe a little more that.

Oh, my family does this.

Oh, that's a good idea.

Let's try it.

Even like our grilled chicken, like, we do it more traditional seasoned baked chicken, where you would get it most Spanish restaurants, but we grill it on a flame grill.

So gives a little different flavor concept.

We also make all our own spice blends in house.

We have our own spice recipes and things like that.

That's helped us.

We make, like, grilled pork chops, which I would say is more Italian influence than a lot of our other items.

Whereas traditionally more Hispanic style restaurants fry pork chops or they bake them and they're thinner.

Cut or bone on.

We're doing boneless fresh pork loin, which is more Italian style.

Okay.

Like, inch thick.

Oh, yeah.

Juicy pork chop.

So some people come like pork chop, and they're like, a little turned off by.

And then they try it and they're like, oh, this is really good.

I was like, we just try to do spins on things like that and make it our own with our butchery experience.

So I can butcher stuff that maybe puts me at advantage compared to someone who doesn't know how to use the knife very well.

And by no means am I an expert, but I know enough how to debone things, take cartilage out, how to trim things like that, you know, like, shout out to the great McCanns.

Oh, man.

Kevin.

Awesome.

You know, I Watched his business for a while, you know, got a lot of inspiration for him and things like that.

Probably one of the last few dying breeds of old school butchers there are around.

But, you know, he was awesome to us too.

We were getting like, pork belly and stuff from him.

Great guy, you know, wish him the best, but, you know, things like that.

We're able to take experience of the people we met and just kind of use this, what they did.

Well, okay, how do we apply that for us?

How do we apply it to our recipes?

How do we use that same similar mindset to create menu items?

So we kind of keep it simple and do a core of four things, and we do different variations of specials.

Sometimes I'll do like, Mac and cheese, or we'll do salmon or bacalao or.

Or things like that.

So we'll.

We'll mix it up.

We were just discussing.

They like, oh, we should try this Cuban item my friend, my chef makes.

She's like, oh, I want to make this.

I need to get some.

Some chuck roast.

So we could do this.

Okay, cool.

Let's try that out.

You do a ropa vieja, a little.

Something like that, a little bit without.

Without the flank steak.

But it works.

You know, that's the thing is you don't have to do everything exact to honor the tradition of the flavors.

You know, we don't have to go to every specific thing for it to be respectful.

And that's what I love when I've had the food is it's respectful of tradition.

But you're still having.

You're having a good time trying out different things.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, probably what huge differences.

We use boneless chicken, which is like unheard of in the Caribbean.

Everything's boning now.

I mean, we also have to cater to the demographic that's coming.

And we still do Predominantly lunch crowd.

A lot of people are working.

They don't want to get their hands dirty.

So we, like, do ribs sometimes, but I'll try to gear it towards dinner, things like that.

We get creative, but it allows our food to have a different flavor concept and maybe some of the other spots and that people who don't know about meat.

That makes a big difference if the bone in or bone out, how the flavor goes or how you have to cook it.

So that's been a.

Interesting for us.

So we started with some bone in stuff and switched it, and then it's worked for us, you know, so until the customer says otherwise, I mean, we're just kind of.

Kind of Stick with it.

But you know, and then we also try to refine ourselves.

I mean, we're in the refining stage of our business.

Five years realistically, you know, was in your first five years.

Well, one, you got to get past the first year.

Yeah, of course, 70% of restaurants close first year.

I think it's even higher in this first six months.

Then your second year is, okay, we made it through the first.

Now let's figure out how to generate some.

Some profit.

You know, threes, like how do we expand on it?

Four, which we're in now.

Four to five is refine, refine, refine.

You know, I small edits to the menu.

What price do I have to lower?

What price do I have to raise?

What item should I take off?

You know, we've done this for a while now.

What's working, what's not, you know, how can I improve on this?

And that's kind of where I'm at right now.

So I don't have any too many major practices going on because right now we're just.

I need to hammer down how can I get this box cheaper, how can I get this paper cheaper, how can I get this easier, how can I get it all on one order?

Things like that.

And I think that's really going to benefit us, you know, God will.

If we're here five years from now, that's gonna have our systems even more refined and then maybe to a point where I could hire a manager or something like that.

Right now I'm pretty much managing it and running it almost exclusively alone.

Yeah.

Besides the back end, help my brother and his wife for helping with me remotely while they're not running our food truck down there.

That's awesome, man.

Hey, I'm.

I'm so glad we got a chance to talk today.

Fredo.

This is what a delight.

And throughout the plugs again, where people can find you and where you're located.

So we're located downtown.

240 East Maine.

The mercantile on Maine.

You could find the Merc on main online.

Instagram, Facebook, Google.

Then Palermo's market.

Instagram, Facebook, Google.

Me gusta Caribbean cuisine.

Instagram, Facebook, Google Chef Fredo Five85 on Instagram, Wilfredo Arkansas.

Facebook.

You can follow me, my personal or the business pages, either or.

Oh, should have links to both on there or just come see me in person.

It's probably the best way to.

Best way to come see what we're about.

Yeah.

Go experience the food and like you mentioned, go visit downtown.

Go visit Rochester and embrace Rochester for what it is and hopefully have some positivity with where we're all heading.

Man, thank you so much for coming over.

And if you're interested in learning more about the other shows on the Lunchadore Podcast network, go to lunchadore.org we're going to be up to 13 shows by the end of the year.

It's really exciting to see where we're going and I hope you tune into one you haven't listened before, so I'm going to mention one at the end of every show going forward.

So hopefully you can check out behind the Studio Door starring Molly Darling and Christian.

They are talking to artists of all different kinds about their process in Rochester, and I gotta say, in their first season of episodes, there's some real, real tremendous interviews in there.

And if you haven't listened yet, you are missing out.

So subscribe to behind the Studio Door and let them know how you're enjoying the show.

We'll be back next time with more from the Food About Town podcast.

This has been a presentation of the.

Lunch Door Podcast Network.

The Palermo Special of the Day the Chef Fredo Burger Burger with Alfredo Sassaioli White American cheese crispy fried fettuccine noodles, thin strips of grilled garlic chicken thighs topped with Parmesan Gremolata.