Sweet Pea Plant Based Kitchen – Ryan Jennings

The transcript is auto generated and unedited

SPEAKER A

But now, yeah, I'm thinking. I'm back. And we are back with another episode of the Food about town podcast on the Lunchadore podcast network. It's a beautiful day here in Rochester, and I'm here with somebody who I have actually known for a long time, but we see each other exceedingly rarely. Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris. I'm Chef Ryan Jennings of Sweet Pea, plant based kitchen. It's great to be here with you today.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's the weird thing that I'm doing right now after all this time doing this. So full transparency, you reached out to me, which is great timing, because I'm making a list of all the people who I've known for, like, the last ten years that I've never had on, which is a complete abdication of duties on my part for, like, not forcing. Like, I've never had Dan Martello on.

SPEAKER B

Sure.

SPEAKER A

Like, I've never had a lot of people on that I've known for a long time. And I'm like, wow, I'm trying to take a, take a page out of the book of a lot of people on the network who are so good at reaching out to people. I use one of the hosts as an example is guy named Mike Huntone. He runs one of our shows, punches and popcorn. Great show. And, and I say this with the greatest of love for Mike. He has no shame about asking people to guest on his shows. Zero. And I adore, adore that about him. Like, he had, he's had national level comedians on because he reached out to them online like, hey, squire brothers, you want to be on our show and talk about stuff? They're like, yeah, great. They had a great time. When they came to town. They came over to the studio and recorded here. It was awesome.

SPEAKER B

This is a good place for comedy.

SPEAKER A

It really is. I mean, comedy. The Carlson. I mean, shout out to the whole team over there. I mean, they do such a good job. And the level of comedians they're bringing is awesome.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. And then even, you know, for bigger comedians, we have so many nice venues.

SPEAKER A

Oh.

SPEAKER B

And so whether it's gonna be a theater, if it's gonna be a bigger thing, they can even do blue cross if you get.

SPEAKER A

Oh, yeah, there's certain ones. There's been a few recently, too. They came in and did that. Um, but you didn't come in to talk about comedy.

SPEAKER B

No. I love comedy, though.

SPEAKER A

Oh, me too. Um, maybe we'll get back to that later. But what I do want to start with is let's get some plugs out right away for sweet pea kitchen. Um, where can people learn more about it? Online. And where can people, uh, subscribe or order, uh, meals for use at home?

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So sweet pea, uh, is all online. It's all through our website, which is sweetpea plantbased.com. we're the only plant based meal delivery service in the area and offer a different menu each week. Always lots of variety of entrees, soup, sauces, snacks, treats. I brought you some of our granola bars today.

SPEAKER A

Oh, super excited.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So the menus go up every Thursday. Folks can order up until Wednesday, and then we offer free pickup at our location and then delivery within 40 miles of the kitchen.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, that's a pretty generous delivery radius.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, I mean, we're going out as far east as, you know, Wolcott, as far west as, you know, Hamlin and down past candagua. We're all over.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. I mean, when we did delivery at the start of doing curate or nominate, we did. God, it had to have been like maybe six months before Chris Grockey was generous enough to have us hosted at the german house.

SPEAKER B

I love grocky.

SPEAKER A

Oh, he just, you know, every time I say great things about him, he'll text me later and say, why are you saying good stuff about me? But, like, the first few months, we delivered every single meal we did. And I remember, you know, I picked everything up and then we drove it all around town. It really is a bit of a thing. I enjoyed it for a while.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a logistical. Well, I mean, we've got a good system now, but it was tricky.

SPEAKER A

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER B

We first got started, and especially as we scaled up, you know, we're doing a couple hundred deliveries and it's all just got to get put on the map. Everything's got to be done efficiently. We only have one refrigerated delivery vehicle. So then just having the other folks who are using their cars big, coolers big coolers, and shortening the routes so that everything stays safe. Yeah, but, I mean, it's a big part of our business. People kind of depend on it.

SPEAKER A

Oh, absolutely. So. So you mentioned already. So let's dive into the details of sweet pea. So you mentioned that you're doing, essentially, meal prep service and reading online. It looks like it's both. You know, you can order small quantities. You can order whole weeks with snacks and everything else. So that's like. That's stuff you can do. But I guess the big question is, why sweet pea plant based kitchen? Because you've been bouncing between medium to medium defined dining level food, which is where I originally had your stuff. We'll dive into the history later then. You've been independent for a while. So why this? Why is this the thing that caught your eye?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, well, after I left my position at Max, you know, running. Running the show over there, I needed a bit of a break. You know, my last year there, I think I had nine days off.

SPEAKER A

So your last year there was what.

SPEAKER B

Year that would have been? That's ten years ago now.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. So I was. That was in the middle of when I was writing restaurant reviews at the time. So I think I started in city at around 20, or, like, early 2012, running to about 14. And I was, like, writing on Yelp when Yelp was a thing that you could actually depend on some people for. But that was, like, right in the heart when I was really deep into writing restaurant reviews. And I know we crossed over at some of the Mac spots I wrote about at the time, writing about Paul Vroomans when he was doing Aunt Rosie's.

SPEAKER B

So that was just sort of the end of my tenure would have been.

SPEAKER A

That time right around there and then, you know, that. That big grind, because you were. You were also doing, I'm assuming, a lot of the catering and big event stuff, too.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So, I mean, at that time, Max was doing over 900 events a year. And so that's.

SPEAKER A

Oh, my God, that's wild.

SPEAKER B

So that's, you know, things like a 20 person tasting menu in the private dining room, up to 700 or 800 people at the art gallery for, you know, an autism up gala or something like that.

SPEAKER A

Wow.

SPEAKER B

And, yeah, it just. It was taking its toll. You know, I had a young child at the time. She's now 16.

SPEAKER A

Holy cow.

SPEAKER B

And it. That sort of lifestyle doesn't. It's not conducive for raising family or for general sanity. No, not at all. And I was getting. Yeah, I was getting, yeah, pretty pretty burnt out. But during that time, I had grown, built relationships with a bunch of our guests, and they were always asking me to come cook in their homes, and I did it in some capacity at Max, but then after that, they were interested in that sort of thing. So I started doing that and started chef at large and was able to do that for about five years. And one of my clients at that time, Mike Linehan, who's my partner in Sweet Pea, we'd had a restaurant together in 2008. The absolute worst time to start a fine dining restaurant.

SPEAKER A

I was gonna say, great, great timing. I mean, doing chef at home for a while was interesting. And you got out of it before the pandemic hit, but you got hit right in the heart of when you started a restaurant.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. No, that wasn't great. But it established a good friendship and a business relationship. And he and his family were one of my clients at chef at large, and Mike's somebody who at that time was in his late thirties. Two young kids. He'd self professed foodie, but not in particularly great shape. Struggled with his weight his whole life, you know, blood pressure medication, pre diabetic, and, you know, wanted to do better so he could be around for his kids. He had a friend who was able to avoid heart surgery, you know, about the same age, by switching to a whole food plant based diet. And Mike's family is in the healthcare field, and, you know, no doctor had ever shared plant based nutrition with him. He thought it was crazy. He thought, this guy should have the surgery. And, you know, thankfully, he didn't listen to Mike and went ahead and did it. And this really got Mike's attention. So he.

SPEAKER A

There's. There's something about. There's something about. Sometimes when you're looking into things, it's easy. Despite the. Despite sometimes the preponderance of evidence, if you're looking at reputable sources and things like that, despite the preponderance evidence, sometimes it takes somebody close to you to see something happen, which can be very frustrating for me. Sometimes that it takes something direct for somebody to see a different angle on things. But at the same time, even if you're open to certain ideas and certain perspectives, sometimes it, like, I'll be. I'll be, you know, straightforward about that because it's like, like I've been around. Yeah, I'll use an example. So something, you know, I was always familiar with and always a supporter of was, like, the trans community, and. But I wasn't around a lot of people who either had or been in the process of transitioning and because my wife sells at furry conventions, crazy dude. All over the country, I've had the opportunity and pleasure to be around a ton of people who were going through that process and who had gone through that process. And even though I was already in support and already around that, something about being in having those relationships, it does change the context.

SPEAKER B

It sure does.

SPEAKER A

You know, being, you know, sometimes the context matters, even if you're a supporter of something. And sometimes even if you're not a supporter of something, sometimes it takes seeing something in person to change your mind.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. And I mean, especially in this day and age, where most everybody is living in their phone or in some sort of device, having a real lived experience with another human being, being able to empathize with them, learn their life story, I mean, it's indispensable.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, it matters. But I think they came to the final lesson, which we say a lot now on Lunchadore, is showing up in person matters more than supporting online, which matters more than not doing anything. Yeah, but showing up in person matters, you know, it's. And it does matter. Knowing people in person, being there for other people.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. No, I mean, just being here with you today, there's a difference. I've done, you know, several things on zooms or whatever it is, and it's not the same.

SPEAKER A

No, of course not. So. So, you know, he has a friend who is now, and he's learning about the success that somebody went doing whole food plant based. So what was the next step for him?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, so, you know, he was a client at the time, as I mentioned, and, you know, he started doing this. He did it for ten days, and on the 8th day, he woke up and just felt great, slept wonderfully. He was somebody who suffered from sort of inflammation and the things like that, and just all of a sudden just felt wonderful. And he just couldn't forget how he felt. So he started reading voraciously about it. He took the Ian Cornell program with doctors Tom and Aaron Campbell, read the China study, watched the movies, the forks over knives, the game changers, all this kind of stuff, and was just convinced that this was going to be a big step for him on his journey towards better health. And trouble was, he was eating a bunch of stuff that he didn't like, and he's somebody who really enjoyed food. So he came to me under the auspices of that and, yeah, I started working on some dishes that I thought he'd like. We started out with things that were approachable, kind of everyday american dishes, burgers, enchiladas, lasagna, all that kind of stuff, and then started branching out. I mean, I've got enough cookbooks to fill this room and, you know, have spent most of my free time for the past 25 years learning about other cuisines and trying to apply that to sort of my french trained background.

SPEAKER A

So you. You, were you culinary school trained or.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, I went to the french culinary institute in New York.

SPEAKER A

Okay. I mean, yeah, classic, you know, classic, high end.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. I mean, as. As classic as you. You can be. I mean, the. My. My deans at french culinary were Andre Saltner of lutes, Alain Sillac, le Cirque. Jacques Pepin taught me how to make an omelette.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's. That's. Yeah. Certainly somebody who you'd want to teach that.

SPEAKER B

Jack Torres was the pastry dean. So, I mean, it was really a dream for me. It was a lot of hard work, but that's the foundation for everything I do. But being able to play with different cuisines from around the world and then just apply the whole food plant based ethos to that. So everything's coming in whole. We're making everything from scratch, with the exception of dried pastas right now, you know, ordering as much as we can locally from within the state, or trying to find vendors who operate here. But, yeah, getting back to the. The sort of beginnings, after about six months of this, Mike's a serial entrepreneur. He thought we had something, and we decided to take a go at it. That was five years ago.

SPEAKER A

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER B

This just last month. So, I mean, it started out with just the meals through the website in a pretty small operation. I mean, the first week of sweet pea, I worked 72 hours in a row to get that first order out and delivered and everything else. Yeah, well, we had.

SPEAKER A

Did you deliver it yourself, too?

SPEAKER B

Mike did some of the deliveries. I did some of the deliveries, and I took care of the pickups. Cause I had to, like, clean up the place. After 72 hours of furious cooking. Yeah, it was kind of a nightmare. You know, we like any startup, there are fits and starts getting going, for sure. We were thinking of building out a space. Initially, we had looked at the Genesee Valley regional market. We looked at a few different places, and then had a great relationship I did previously with headwater food hub. So we got in contact with. With Chris and Steve over there and thought that it would be a natural kind of partnership.

SPEAKER A

I mean, that is kind of the angle I would originally have thought of as well, if I were you.

SPEAKER B

And they had extra space in the depot out there in Ontario, but for one thing or another, just dealing with the landlord, the sublease didn't work out, and we were just very anxious to get going. So we found a kitchen in East Avenue, self storage, which was formerly Wesley Gardens.

SPEAKER A

Self storage had a kitchen?

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

I mean, obviously. I mean, what, what, what self respecting self storage company doesn't have a commercial kitchen ready to go?

SPEAKER B

So it had been part of the nursing home, Wesley Gardens, over there on Goodman.

SPEAKER A

That makes sense.

SPEAKER B

So they, it was like the pink tile from the fifties.

SPEAKER A

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER B

The six burner stove, a convection oven. Walk in, and, you know, pretty cheap rent. And, yeah, we signed a lease and just tried to, tried to get it going. So I'm getting everything ready that we need, and I go down to the local city office to get a business permit and give them all our information. They look at it and they're like, so you can't have a business here. This is zoned as residential. You can't have a commercial property here. I was like, well, there were businesses, food businesses operating out of this space before. All right, well, I don't want to get anybody in trouble there.

SPEAKER A

But, yeah, I mean, that's the kind of thing where, you know, I'm not, I'm certainly not a no regulations kind of guy, but sometimes some of those things go a little, it's a little excessive or, hey, come and inspect me. Have a great time. Yeah, like, come and inspect me. It's going to be okay.

SPEAKER B

That was the thing. Like, we'd already had the Monroe county health department in there. We've already had the U of R in there because we have a separate contract with them for some things. We'd have, you know, the fire department was in there and checked the answer. You know, just everything except for this one critical part.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

So they're like, well, you can operate until something gets sorted out here. You got to go down the city and figure it out. And, yeah, I went down there. It was when John Swan was opening Verne's.

SPEAKER A

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER B

Doing the build out. So we were both sitting down there together trying to get this stuff sorted out for our respective openings. But, I mean, long story short, the city eventually kind of gave in that week, but they didn't let us know until, like, Friday.

SPEAKER A

Oh, of course.

SPEAKER B

So, you know, the website had already been live for a week. We had a bunch of orders come in, so I hadn't been able to hire anybody because I weren't sure if we were going to be able to operate. And I didn't buy any food because, you know, I didn't want to throw it out.

SPEAKER A

Hey, that's, that's startup mentality right there. Last second, scrappy.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, so we, yeah, Friday went, bought everything, brought back there and cooked everything by myself, packaged everything by myself, printed every, put every label on by myself. And, yeah, three days in a row and, yeah, somewhere through like the second day and a half, I was like, what are you doing, man? Yeah, trying to like, take it a little bit easier, like, yeah, not so much. But I mean, that was five years ago. We got through it. We brought on a few folks right away that I'd worked with in the past, some other restaurant expats, and just kind of hit the ground running. Later that year, we added the nutrition, coaching and weight loss side to the business. So we hired an exceptional RDN, rather gen wen, and then we're able to grow that business a little bit. As the pandemic kind of got going.

SPEAKER A

I was going to say, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's not easy to say, but, you know, in this situation, very true. It couldn't have been kind of better timing in a lot of ways for you.

SPEAKER B

I mean, we, we were so new that nobody knew who we are, so we had to dump a lot of money into marketing. Yeah, I mean, we did tv, radio, print, digital, the whole, the whole thing. And for a while it was working for us. But, yeah, I mean, the other thing is, like, our target market tends to be folks who are over 50 who have experienced some sort of health event and want to change their, change their health through diet. You know, they're the biggest part. Then you have people who are already vegan or some sort of adjacent lifestyle who are looking for quality, convenience and that sort of thing. Then you get younger working families who are looking to make a few better choices every week just to have the meals ready for them. And then we have wholesale clients and some institutions.

SPEAKER A

It's so funny that you mentioned those demographics because other than the wholesale, those are like the identical demographics that what we were doing with nominate was. We had mostly people over 50 who were looking to be adventurous without knowing everything.

SPEAKER B

Yep. Some disposable income.

SPEAKER A

Then we had busy professionals who wanted to have something good without planning. And then we had some younger people who were just like, oh, this, this is cool. This is a fun thing to do. And it's so interesting how the demographics, even though for very different reasons, ended up almost the same. Yeah, it's so, it's so weird.

SPEAKER B

It's kind of wild. We. Not to skip too far ahead.

SPEAKER A

No, please.

SPEAKER B

We were part of the grow New York competition. We'd applied three years in a row, and in 2022, we were fortunate enough to win the $250,000 prize, great food and ag startup competition here in New.

SPEAKER A

York state, which is amazing and very humbling. Oh, absolutely. And also the work that goes into that and the prep.

SPEAKER B

Oh, a whole nother full time job.

SPEAKER A

Like, you have to dive in so deep, and you have to get the story down so repetitively perfect. But also, at the same time, I.

SPEAKER B

Do it from memory right now.

SPEAKER A

Right. And then know all the numbers and be just so on top of every aspect and be ready for all the eventualities. That kind of prep changes you a little bit, too, and it lets you know your business so much differently than you thought you did.

SPEAKER B

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, not for nothing, I'm a cook.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

You know, I'm not a venture capitalist who's, you know, pitching an aspen every year. And that's, you know, it was in the on center. Excuse me, the on center in Syracuse. Big room. And, you know, there's six or eight judges, all from various walks of business, all very successful in their own right. People from Empire State development, you know, Cornell, obviously. Yeah. It was a big, big amount of time that we had to spend to get there and to win. I mean, 300 and some odd companies applied from 53 different companies, countries. Excuse me. And, yeah. So for two local companies to win that year, Kraft Cannery, your buddy Polly. Our buddy Polly won that year as well.

SPEAKER A

And, I mean, just to see those two things, you know, to win those prizes. But, you know, it's one. It is about the, you know, the recognition that, hey, we. Maybe we are doing the right thing, maybe because, you know, the money is obviously a game changer when it comes to investment and growth. But there's something about that. There's something about that reassurance that after all that work, that it's the recognition that, hey, you know what? Yeah, the money's great, and it's. It's huge. Like, there's. There's no discounting that part, but there's something about those moments where somebody says, yeah, we believe in what you're doing, too. That kind of changes your. That twists your head a little bit and forces you to kind of rethink, who are we?

SPEAKER B

No, absolutely. And it's something that hasn't stopped today. You know? I mean, yeah, we had to. Had to make some difficult changes at the beginning of this year, as. As any sort of young company would have to do. You know, I mentioned the nutrition program before. Unfortunately, it just. It wasn't gonna. Wasn't gonna make money for us. So we had to, you know, just refocus on the local delivery, looking at some other avenues, some other projects maybe we can talk about a little bit later. But I forget why I went down that road. Oh. So as a part of that, we got to work with greater Rochester Enterprise, and they hooked us up with something called the National Economic Gardening Program. So part of what we were able to do, they asked you to ask four questions that you'd like them to answer. And one of ours was finding the pockets of people who we know exist in the Rochester area, but finding them elsewhere, because at that time, our main strategy for growth was shipping the meals. So they were able to use our customer data, plug it in with their software, and just basically show us a heat map of the entire country, like, where all these people, the people we were just talking about before, where they all live, so that we could have an effective digital marketing strategy to try to find where these people were and put our company in front of them. It was pretty wild.

SPEAKER A

So when you're looking at that kind of thing, did you end up going down the opportunity of selling out of the area?

SPEAKER B

Well, what we determined after it took us longer than we'd anticipated to get going, was that the costs were. They'd grown like, everything's more expensive now.

SPEAKER A

Absolutely.

SPEAKER B

No joke.

SPEAKER A

Well, and you can look at some of the national companies that went down the meal delivery route. Yeah, that you saw names, and now you don't see names with some of the large scale stuff, because scale is. Can be immensely rewarding, but it can crush a business super fast.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, well, we learned a lesson from another company here, real eats. So they won the million dollar prize for the first year of the grow New York competition, and they used sous vide technology to seal their meals. They weren't vegan or plant based, but focused on New York state products and generally a higher quality product. And they grew a lot quickly.

SPEAKER A

I remember reading about that. And they went aggressively fast.

SPEAKER B

I mean, they were a little ahead of us when they applied to grow New York. I think they were five or $6 million in sales annually, were already shipping down the east coast. But they purchased an 80,000 square foot facility in Geneva, former top space, and hired 160 people, raised $25 million, all this stuff. And then just one day, they were gone. It was a real wake up call. For us. And we were fortunate to be able to speak with their, their executive team and they told us, you know, it just, the economics of it were upside down. By the time you discount the products to compete with the other companies that are in the space, you know, you're, you're down the line, several orders before you're making any money off of them. And then your corrugated costs go up, your food cost goes up, you know, raising wages, everything, it just, to us, it just didn't make sense. So, yeah, we kind of turned a quarter turn, had to leave part of the business behind. And now we're focused on some different things. Paulie is going to be making some sauces for us soon, which is awesome.

SPEAKER A

I love that.

SPEAKER B

Going to be cool. I brought some of our granola bars. This is sort of the test phase, but we're getting ready to launch another sort of iteration of that.

SPEAKER A

Nice.

SPEAKER B

You know, with an eye of getting in, in retailers, not just here, but hopefully nationally eventually. And. Yeah, I mean, there's. It's always something new, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER A

Like you can't, you can't just stay still and you can't because maintenance is great and there's nothing wrong with maintaining and, you know, nurturing the clientele that you do have, but especially when, you know, you're somebody who wants to be trying different stuff and, you know, hey, maybe this is the angle that's going to be exciting. That entrepreneurial mindset doesn't leave you when you gain a stability of a base.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. And if, you know, if you're not growing, you're dying.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. So on that note, we're not going to die, but we are going to take a break and we'll be right back. And we're back with the second half of our conversation with Ryan Jennings from sweet pea plant based kitchen. What's the website again, Ryan, so people can check it out.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. Sweetpea.

SPEAKER A

Plantbased.com dot so we were talking about the journey of sweet pea and, you know, getting towards today where you've got a lot of different options and continuing to grow. But you mentioned a term in the first half that if you're in Rochester, you actually might have heard of this because rochester is kind of a hotbed for this terminology. But can you define whole food, plant based diet or eating versus terms that have now become buzzwords where it says plant based or vegan or whatever? What's the ethos behind whole food, plant based and what's the differentials?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, so, I mean, plant based is pretty self explanatory anything that's, you know, derived from plants, oftentimes that means that it's an ultra processed ingredient. So like a protein powder from whatever soybeans has had, like everything else stripped away from it nutritionally except the protein, so that, you know, you can jack yourself up that way. Vegan just means that no animal products. I like to say that whole food plant based. What we do at sweet pea is beyond vegan. So everything's derived from a whole food, minimally processed ingredients, no preservatives, no oils.

SPEAKER A

Let's talk about that for a second. That was always the one, like when I did my looking into all of that, that was always the one that struck me as odd with general studies around, you know, benefits of oils and other things. And although a lot of the ethos does ring to me as being, yeah, you know what, eating more real foods. And I'll say real because like I'm, I've been now vegan for over three years. Going on, going on almost four. Yeah. And yeah, I do use, I do use some substitutes, but it's not like the main ingredient. It's usually just like a lot of traditional chinese style cooking where I'll use it as an accent to the rest of a dish. But that was always something that struck me as odd, that no oils was a part of the whole food plant based ethos.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So there's a couple of big reasons why we don't use oil. The first I want to just say is we're not preaching here.

SPEAKER A

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER B

Our approach at sweet pea is to meet people where they are. We try to deliver the most nutrient dense, delicious meals that we can to them to help them in whatever facet of their life they need them for. And you know, we do give counsel on the types of oils that you should use if you're planning on using them and just try to give people information. But oil is a particularly calorically dense food. So like a tablespoon of olive oil is like 180 calories or two tablespoons rather.

SPEAKER A

Yep.

SPEAKER B

So since we don't use that, we can give people a lot more food, which fills them up, which provides value within the meals. The other thing is it's kind of, it's considered a highly processed food. I wouldn't say ultra sure. So during the oil making process, you're stripping everything out of it except the fat. So you're removing all the nutrients, all the sorts of good things that are in there, but it has its benefits. You know, you can't fry anything without oil, we don't fry anything. But, you know, and it does help with textures. It helps with certain things, but, you know, as a cook, as a chef, it's also something that, you know, helps in the creative process with this. I mean, I just. I also celebrated my 40th birthday last year in October, which means that I've been doing this for 25 years.

SPEAKER A

Oh, wow. Yeah. You started early.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, no, I mean, it wasn't always pretty, but I mean, my first job was at Wegmans when I was 15, but I worked in, like, the seafood department back when you used to do a lot of cooking in the individual departments there. So, you know, 400 fish fries on a Friday night and, you know, all of the prepared food and all that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, I went on to the Wegman central kitchen after that, where we made all the soup, sauces and mashed potatoes for all 68 stores at the time.

SPEAKER A

Oh, boy.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, a lot of garlic.

SPEAKER A

There's a couple. There's a couple potatoes going through there, huh? Yeah.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot. And then, and then I went, and that's what I didn't really want to do.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

And that's when I ended up going to FCI.

SPEAKER A

So when you're talking about, you know, going back to the, you know, cooking, so I'm kind of intrigued. From a cooking process.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

You know, when you're cooking without added oils to things, that doesn't mean you. You're not using some ingredients that are higher in fat.

SPEAKER B

No, you just want those to be sort of like the, the top of the pyramid, and we have a kind of a different thing. So you want it. The basis of it is dark, leafy greens. Then after that it's other vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fruits, and then, you know, the top that you want to kind of be using sparingly or nut seeds, avocados, things that are a little bit higher in fat. And, you know, everybody's different. You know, somebody who is actively trying to lose weight would probably want to avoid more of those things. But the other thing is, like, you need some of the fat in there to balance out some of the other things so that you get the proper nutrition from things. So.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, and there's a lot of. There's a lot of local. Yeah, there's also a lot of local information out around this. I know there's Rochester. I believe this is off the dome, so I'm probably going to get some words wrong. So I think it was a gentleman runs Rochester lifestyle medicine.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. The doctor. Barnett and Carol Barnett. Yep.

SPEAKER A

Because they do, they've done a lot of publicity and a lot of stuff around that. So there's a lot of information out about it. So if it's something that intrigues you or you're looking to try and you'll work through things, one, obviously having pre made meals would be beneficial and easy for you, so look into that. But all I can say for somebody who's gone through the process, and when you say somebody was a food person that went into this, your partner, I mean, you know, my background, I am a voracious food person and problematically nerdy about just about everything I go into. And I went that way, you know, three, four years ago because I was, I needed some, I need an element of control in my life that I was looking for. And, you know, the research I had done had. It was tough for me to. It was tough for me to not make the decision at that point because at some point, if something's that true in my head, it's hard for me not to go down the road thing.

SPEAKER B

A lot like Mike, you know, once he had the information and he tried it and he knew, you know, the feeling in his body from the change, it's just something you can't forget.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. And it was because mine ended up being both health, because I certainly wasn't, not that I'm a small guy now, but it was, it was a bigger guy. And, you know, I definitely had some, some health issues. And it was also, it was hard for me not to make the choice from a ethical and moral decision as well, because that goes into classic veganism versus. Yes, versus a purely health decision. But it can be one, two, or all three that drives you in the direction of trying something like this, of course.

SPEAKER B

So you're advertising to yourself, right?

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

Filling your head up with all this stuff. So, I mean, like in business, if you have a marketing strategy to try and bring in new customers, you got to touch them 5678 times before where they're going to purchase from you. So, you know, just in your own life, when you're thinking about making a change, you know, there's like the initial thought process, there's sort of planning around it, there's trying it, the fits and starts that go along with it, so it makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. And then it's also the, I am, I know I need to do this, but then I forget and then I hate myself every day.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, you beat, you beat yourself up, Chris.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, that's the constant cycle.

SPEAKER B

Oh, I know all about it, buddy.

SPEAKER A

It never stops. You know, it's amazing.

SPEAKER B

I'm still thinking about the one crappy dish of pasta I served Mark Cupolo in 2008.

SPEAKER A

Oh, God, those moments, they never get out of your head.

SPEAKER B

High and low. Have you ever talked to him?

SPEAKER A

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

I mean, I've had him on once. I mean, we've been. You know, we've been friendly for a while. Need to have him back on again, because I. I mean, I love. Yeah, I love how deep into it he is.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Mark's Ryder Dyer.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

One of my favorite chefs anywhere.

SPEAKER A

There's something about that. Like, hey, you know, we're not. We don't do everything. We do what we do, and we do it the way we want to do it, and that's how we do things.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

There's something about the attitude that really rings true to me, as you know. And again, no shade on places that have expanded a lot and have lots of different diverse restaurants and everything like that. I mean, those. Those kind of. Those organizations define Rochester dining in many ways.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

Swans from SCN and the Swans. And obviously, you know, you know, Dan Martello and Chuck and.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

And Mike. Mike calbries.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

And then, you know, Jeff Chang. Like, those. Those. Those four kind of define Rochester food in many ways. But there's something to me about just like, hey, Mark does his thing. He does the way he wants to do it, and he doesn't do it the way he doesn't want to do it.

SPEAKER B

No, not at all.

SPEAKER A

And I say that specifically both ways.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. No, I mean, I count myself as fortunate. We didn't work alongside each other, but my first stint at Max was when he was at the chop house.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

So we had to talk a lot, you know, call over, see what we had, because we were, you know, a lot of food went kind of back and forth, but, yeah, had some of the best meals I've ever had at that. At that restaurant.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, I remember having.

SPEAKER B

We were just there the other night. It was wonderful.

SPEAKER A

It's been a very long time since I've been there, but I do remember having. Yeah. The more you. The more you dine out and have been in a serious diner. I think it would be a great way to describe sometimes what people like us do. If we're going out to eat, we're going out to dine. We wanted an experience, but for me, the service was never the thing I cared about that much. I just wanted to be blown away by the food and something there. But that was one of the places where I went in and just, you know when a server reads your table perfectly.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. I'm thinking of an experience I had there right now.

SPEAKER A

And those, those are the things like. Yeah, because anything below those kind of experiences, I don't really notice service. If it's mediocre to lower, it doesn't really hit me. If it's good to really good, it doesn't really hit me. But it's those moments where you get that exceptional thing where somebody reads a tape like, oh, this guy wants to talk about details. Let's dive into that. I'm gonna bring him this, into this.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

Those experiences are so much fun.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, no, I mean, I think back, this was probably. Yeah, this is quite a while. It's probably twelve plus years ago. But we went to, we went to Rocco. It was me and three of my friends. And we never really got to go out a lot because I was working in restaurants at the time. So, you know, there wasn't much. I didn't get to be a professional diner after I left restaurants.

SPEAKER A

Still a serious diner, though.

SPEAKER B

Oh, very serious. Just not going out that often. But we, you know, we ordered, it was one of those nights. We ordered everything on the menu. We had a few bottles of wine, all sorts of cool stuff. And Lizzie Clapp, petite poutinery boss there, she was serving there at the time. And I just remember she was so wonderful. Yeah, she's still so wonderful.

SPEAKER A

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER B

Lizzie's the best. But we, I just remember at some point, like, I got some of something on my shirt and she just noticed it from across the room. And then quietly there was just like a little dish with club soda and a towel and she just like slid it right in there. I was just, I think by the end of that evening, like, we were all just so blissed out. It was like perfectly dark in there. Oh, yeah, it was great. Hey, so wonderful.

SPEAKER A

Shout out to Lizzie. Shout out to Markupolo.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. Shout out to the whole, the whole crew over there.

SPEAKER A

Absolutely. Yeah. Because there's a great aside. I mean, that's the kind of stuff I love about, you know, this, the history of being around for a decent amount of time now. Yeah, it's weird when I talk to, you know, talk to the old guard, talk to, you know, Mark and talk to, you know, Keith Myers from Flower City.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

You know, people who were in this way, you know, a decade or more before we were.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

You know, I wasn't in kitchens, but I've been around for a hot minute now.

SPEAKER B

Sure.

SPEAKER A

And weirdly, I was looking, I just looked at your LinkedIn to see, hey, where did he start? And one of the first, like, nice dining experiences I had in Rochester was actually one of those, one of those eye opening moments I had before I dove into this stuff was at a place you were working at the time. And this was Bomba Bistro.

SPEAKER B

Okay.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, probably. I saw you were there in like, 2006. Was probably. Probably 2006. 2006 or 2007.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

So I, when I ate there the first time, and it, it was one of those things that changed, like, kind of changed my ideas of what food was.

SPEAKER B

That's great.

SPEAKER A

And you, you were there. That was one of your first gigs here in town, right?

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So I got back from New York in summer of 2004. Yeah. So 20 years ago and was looking for a job. I had planned to stay in New York, but roommate living situation, whatever fell through.

SPEAKER A

Such as New York.

SPEAKER B

Such as New York. And just, I was here and I knew I needed to get a job. I've been bouncing around. I almost ended up working at Mario's.

SPEAKER A

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER B

I mean, how shame in that game.

SPEAKER A

No, I mean, you know, people want to eat. People want to eat red sauce and somebody's got to serve it to him.

SPEAKER B

Exactly.

SPEAKER A

Somebody wants giant brunches on Sundays. Somebody's got to serve it to him.

SPEAKER B

Exactly. Chocolate fountain. But I knew I wanted to work at the riobamba. That's what it was before the bomba bistro. And I'd gone in there a couple of times, I'd gone to Tuvine and whatever, hans kind of blew me off. But I walked in the back door of the Riobamba one day, and the chef de cuisine at the time was named Brian Antonor. And I walked in the back and said, hey, you know, here's my cv, here's my, like, I brought my final project from culinary school so they could see, you know, because it was pretty involved. You know, you create a whole menu, cost it out.

SPEAKER A

Oh, sure, sure.

SPEAKER B

Recipes, pictures and everything. So, I mean, I, it was a reason, for example, of, you know, where I was at at the time. And, you know, I wasn't some, it wasn't going to be my first day, and I was just lucky. He's like, yeah, we need a poissonnier. Can you start tomorrow? Or maybe there was like a day in between it and there was a phone call, but it was really pretty much that quick.

SPEAKER A

There's something about kitchens. If they have a need and you're, you're a body that has some skills.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, well, I probably wouldn't have even needed skills because we hired some people after me that. That didn't have much of anything.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

But, yeah, I started working there, and at the time, I, you know, no, not to speak. I'm not speaking down about anybody else, you know, before or since. But I. I still think it was the best restaurant that we've ever had.

SPEAKER A

In Rochester, I strongly recall, you know, and again, it's hard because, you know, when you have those moments, sometimes it's the.

SPEAKER B

I love so many restaurants, and I. Oh, absolutely. Restauranteurs. But I just think, you know, the chef owner, Jay Cohen, had been the longtime sous chef for David Boulay. Rest in peace.

SPEAKER A

Legendary american chef.

SPEAKER B

American chef. Complete genius. And at that time, it was the highest rated restaurant in the history of our country. So, like, four stars in the New York Times. We didn't have the Michelin guide here yet, but perfect scores in Zagat's. And so, I mean, he was running the show with David through that whole time. And the Rio bomba was supposed to be sort of like the petite boule. You know, they had the iconic arches installed in the dining room, and a lot of the cuisine was based on things that were there. Yeah, I started as the poissonier and then eventually became the tournaut. So working all of the stations of the kitchen, it was one of the only kitchens in Rochester then or now, that had a true french brigade system.

SPEAKER A

I was gonna say there. Yeah, it'd be vanishingly few.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, well, I mean, nobody has a kitchen set up like that, right? So, like, in the kitchen, there were four. Not to get too far into the weeds here, but there are four french tops, so large iron plate with a heat source in the center. So you're sliding things in and out closer to the heat to control it there. Separate pastry stations, separate, you know, bread stations, separate garmage coffee station. You know, different bar program. Man, the garmage station at that place was brutal for a period, a period of time, volume. Oh, man. So we had. And so, like, there was always a tasting menu, and plus, the. Everything was available a la carte. We changed the menu eight times a year.

SPEAKER A

Whoo.

SPEAKER B

But I just remember the spring menu. So it probably been spring of 2005. We had, like, a cured lox dish with a spring vegetable salad. So we had to have the asparagus, the fava beans, double shucked peas, double shucked edamame, artichokes, pickled ramps, like, all of those things, plus a cured thing. And it was getting rolled up and, like, stacked up, it was still kind of a stacking time for presentation back then.

SPEAKER A

It's so, so much fine vegetable work.

SPEAKER B

Oh, my God. All of that stuff. And then we had. There was a caesar salad on the menu, but it was in, like, the parmesan crisps. So you had this, like, cylinder of this parmesan tweel.

SPEAKER A

Oh, and you had to have it hot and formant.

SPEAKER B

Exactly right.

SPEAKER A

Oh, God.

SPEAKER B

So to make these things, you mix the parmesan with some different ingredients. You put them on a silpat, a nonstick baking tray, and pop it in a hot oven. You can't forget about it, because then you torch it, and you ruin the silpat and everything.

SPEAKER A

And it's so fast to burn parmesan.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER A

In an oven.

SPEAKER B

And, yeah, parm's expensive, but then you're taking a metal cylinder and putting it on there and then rolling it up, you know, with your bare hands, just, like, singeing yourself.

SPEAKER A

I was gonna say, how many. How many people, like, ruined their entire hands on hot parmesan?

SPEAKER B

I mean, still, even now, ten years out of kitchens, like, I could go grab a cast iron skillet out of the oven, probably be okay.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

But, yeah, there was that. We had these candied nuts for the bar. Like, the bar snack were candied nuts. That took, like, 4 hours to prepare. I needed to have four quarts each of Brunois diced cucumbers and concussed tomatoes. So Blanche peeled tomatoes, like, all that stuff. Oh, man, it was a lot. And then at the end of the night, like, Jay was working, like, the entrement station on the fish station, and he'd just look at me in the end of the night and just kind of wave his finger between the two stations, signaling, like, you got both of these? But, you know, I learned a lot, and the quality was, you know, was impeccable. I got to establish some relationships with vendors that I still use today, like full moon farm. They only supply a handful of restaurants in Rochester and sweepie and grow, you know, some of the finest produce that you'll find anywhere in the country.

SPEAKER A

Well, there's. There's something about those relationships. You've grown over a real length of time.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

And it's not about the one or the other. It's about, you know, you know somebody. Right. You know, you know how they operate. You know, you can trust what they're doing and that. Yeah, both sides are going to make mistakes, but at some point, you know them.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

And, like, you know, there's something like, I love the opportunity to get to know the farmers that I buy from. You know, I've got places at the market now bought from years.

SPEAKER B

Sure.

SPEAKER A

Like, you know, knowing Phil over at Fisher Hill Farms, like, what a. What a delight to know him as a person and to know that I've been out to his place, and I know that, hey, if my wife wants to buy a chicken and use it at home, that I know the chicken was treated decently and it was raised decently. I know if I'm buying stuff from him, I know he did a good job, and that matters. Again, it's just like we were saying before showing up and knowing somebody.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER A

Does matter. That's the thing. Like, you know, knowing that you're involved in something like this, like, I know that if somebody's gonna get into this, they're gonna get something that they're going to enjoy. And kind of what I wanted to finish off with, you know, we dove into some history. We'll do this again. Not zero times in ten years, because I think we have a lot of things to talk about.

SPEAKER B

No, I feel like we could keep going here for a while.

SPEAKER A

But what I kind of want to finish off with is something that I absolutely love about eating vegan, personally, is how much variety that is out there. Instead of focusing on the things that I don't have. I love. Love focusing on the deliciousness that is out there and how many cuisines are. So there's no modifications, really needed to eat amazing food with real. And we're not using the term authentic because that's not where we live in the world when it comes to food. No, it's about respecting the cuisines in the way that you're preparing them. Let's talk about a couple of the. Let's talk about a couple dishes on the menu that tie into other cuisines that you just love preparing. You feel super strong about.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So one example I use a lot because it covers a few different cuisines. So it's ostensibly an italian preparation. Right. So we make a bolognese with lentils.

SPEAKER A

Sure.

SPEAKER B

But so what's a bolognese? Right, so it's usually ground pork and beef, something that's cooked over a long period of time. You've got milk in there to help cream it out, some tomatoes, some aromatic vegetables, and then, you know, a nice amount of pecorino or parmesan cheese to finish it.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. A little bit of, you know, thyme and basil or something. A little bit of herbs.

SPEAKER B

White wine. Yeah.

SPEAKER A

But it's not like, you know, it's something like that's gotten romanticized, but it's just a braise. It's just a stew.

SPEAKER B

It can be, like, super delicious, or it can be, you know, a gummy mess. Yeah, depending on who's making it. But so we make our version, and to sort of mimic the bite of the cheese that we would be missing that we can't use, we puree some sauerkraut into the sauce. So we're using, like, eastern european technique there. And then to get the umami that you would get from a nice, long simmered braise, we actually make a dashi. So a kombu and dried mushroom broth from Japan.

SPEAKER A

So talk about kombu for a second.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, so we're talking about seaweed, dried.

SPEAKER A

Seaweed, and a certain variety that is, it's a little bit more robust in texture. But if you're pulling it out of the package, we're going to talk about MSG for a second, because this is one of my favorite topics in the world.

SPEAKER B

Oh, it's got such a bad rap. And it's all just a bunch of racist people who wanted chinese restaurants to fail.

SPEAKER A

Oh, does that drive me crazy? But if you pull. If you pull kombu out of a package, this is a big sheet of not thick, but it's. It's a robust piece of seaweed.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

There's white powder on the outside of it.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

Which is basically salt and MSG.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

Which is occurring. One of the most delicious things that you can possibly eat. So if you still have that in your head, please try stuff that is high in glutamates, because they are delicious.

SPEAKER B

They sure are.

SPEAKER A

And perfectly safe for the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people. So please don't shy away from them. They're delicious.

SPEAKER B

And you can also, especially if you're somebody who's sensitive to sodium levels, using things like that, you get more. You know, you pack a big punch with that stuff, so you. To get a nice flavor. But, yeah. So I think that bolognese dish is a good example of what we try to do, like, drawing on different cuisines to kind of make combinations so that the food that we're making isn't a mimic of the dishes that they're based on. It's clearly its own thing. But we find ways to incorporate those different cuisines to get that final outcome. We do the same sort of thing with, like, we make a carbonara, but again, we use, you know, cashews and tofu and you know, we make our version of guanciale with mushrooms and use the sauerkraut method there as well to get the cheese punch.

SPEAKER A

Oh. So are you, uh, are you lactic fermenting the mushrooms to drive in that.

SPEAKER B

Direction, or, uh, the cabbage? Yeah.

SPEAKER A

Oh, the kids. So you're doing that with the cabbage. So for the mushrooms with the guanciale, is that more of a salt cure or.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, so, um, we. We brine them in Tamari, fennel seed, rosemary, the things that would, you know, black pepper that we usually go into a guanciale and use it for that and kind of dry them a little bit so that they get a little bit of that chew.

SPEAKER A

That sounds great. I love that idea because there's. There's no end to the deliciousness you can drive with. With using these kind of ingredients. And I think that's. That's kind of where I wanted to head with it, is you shouldn't have to feel like you're sacrificing anything to eat this way.

SPEAKER B

That's the whole point of our company. It's why we started doing it was because somebody felt like they were sacrificing and we needed to find a solution for them.

SPEAKER A

Cause, like, those. I love those decisions, though, like. Like using sauerkraut one. It's a great health product.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

But you know what sauerkraut is? Sauerkraut's fucking delicious. Sauerkraut is so good. Especially good sauerkraut. Not commercial nonsense, but, like, really good sauerkraut.

SPEAKER B

I didn't like commercial nonsense.

SPEAKER A

Oh, I do, too. It's great. I can eat piles of it.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

But it is a truly delicious product. And using it in those ways is one respecting what it is, which is just a delicious fermented product. It's not just a topping for things like, why aren't people cooking with it? It's delicious. The Hungarians know what they're doing.

SPEAKER B

They sure do.

SPEAKER A

The poles knew what they're doing. The eastern Europeans understand the sauerkraut's delicious, and you should cook with it.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, beyond that, we have our version of Dan dan Main, the Szechuan dish.

SPEAKER A

So one of my favorites.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So instead of using the ground pork, we. We use seitan, and we work with grass fed vegan butchers here in Rochester. They make us our own oil free seitan that we use for that with, you know, Sichuan peppercorns and, you know, a bunch of other aromatics to make it. And it is. I think it's one of my favorite things that we've come up with. It's pretty close to the real thing. That's really one of those things that we were trying to mimic.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

Because especially with Seitan, it really does come off as the meat texture. And, you know, again, we're using that mushroom stock and the dashi and things to impart more umami to it, but.

SPEAKER A

Because it also lets you the benefit to. So it's one of those materials that, like, I find challenging. As a, as somebody who eats vegan, I'd say 99 plus plus percent of the time is, I don't like big blocks of it.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

But when it's in small pieces and it's cooked hard and flavored, well, you know what? It is wildly effective. It's wildly effective when it's used with intention and not just like, man, you know what would be great? Just a giant block of Saitan that is, like, deep fried and called chicken. Like, no, it doesn't taste good. Good. It's great for what it is. But if you're saying, like, hey, I put a big slab of tofu on this thing and I seared it and it is this, I'm like, no, it's a delicious piece of tofu. And that's a great thing in of itself. You can't just substitute, but with intention and technique, you can take something like seitan and, like, it's a perfectly, perfectly quality ground protein to use in that dish. Because, you know, what's not important? The flavor of the protein in that dish. Everything else matters way more.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. It's also got, I think, sometimes even a better texture than ground meat because, like, if you braise, you know, pork for a while or ground pork, anyway, it's chewy and dried out because you've broken down all of the, you know, all the proteins that are holding everything together.

SPEAKER A

Oh, and I remember it gets dry.

SPEAKER B

So, I mean, usually when I'm doing something like that, I prefer to kind of cook something whole and then chop it afterward. Because you get a better texture.

SPEAKER A

Oh, yeah. Because you get a little bit of tender in the center, too.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

Because that just reminds me of, you know, when I did eat meat, when you think, wow, you know, one of the most foolproof things about barbecue is pulled pork. Right? You got all the fat and connective tissue in a pork shoulder. You know, it's really hard to mess that up. And then you go to some places and you're like, oh, my God, it's so easy for people to mess this up. Like, well, you know, it would be great to cook this in. Let's just throw it in a big bucket of flavored water and cook it in a crock pot. And then you get this awful stringy nonsense.

SPEAKER B

And they usually cook it too, too high and too long.

SPEAKER A

And it's stuff like that. You're like, wow, I really thought it was hard to mess stuff up. And then, man, people, there's a way for us. Oh, so, no. So I love that we got to talk about a few of the dishes like that because one, that's how I love to cook at home. I think it's very rewarding. And the important thing to know about this and a lesson to take for cooking at home, regardless if you're cooking whole food, plant based, vegan, vegetarian, or with meat, is to cook with intention, to cook with a reason, to season for a reason, season to what you like and think about the steps that you're taking because you're going to get a better result. Doesn't mean you have to follow recipe like all the things you described. No, those aren't recipes that exist in that form. There are directions you can go. There's lessons you can take from books, you know, do some reading, do some research. But if you understand why things are the way they are, you can make changes. You can use lentils and a bolognese. You can use seitan in Dandan noodles and make something that is, you have that rings to tradition, that carries these flavors that are punchy and exciting that want you to go back for more. But you can do it in a way that satisfies you both mentally, physically and otherwise. You don't have to have 6oz of animal protein on your dish. If you choose to use animal protein, you can use less. You can cook it smart and make your dish delicious. And if you don't, you don't have to. You can make something delicious at the same time.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, no, absolutely. And yeah, I just think back to what was great. Chef Dan Barber, blue Hill at Stone Barns, he wrote that book, the third plate. So just kind of rethinking what should be on your plate and how much of everything and, you know, making sure that there was some sort of whole grain, some sort of vegetable, hopefully a fermented product, something that's, you know, the using regenerative farming practices and then a little bit of the protein from the animals that you want on the farm to make, you know, to make that all complete. So, you know, like a whole braised carrot with like a braised beef sauce. On it. Something like a little bit in there, too.

SPEAKER A

So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And speaking of stuff that makes sense, where can people reach out and learn more about sweet pea plant based kitchen and all the products you make? So where can they go find that? Where can they order?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, so everything's through our website, sweetpeaplantbased.com. there you can find if you have additional questions, there's ways to get contact directly with me. I'm still answering the phone and answering the emails and doing all that stuff. So I think it's important to be connected at that level with our, our customers. And I enjoy that part of it, too. But yeah, sweetpeatplantbased.com orders are due by Wednesday every week for pickup and delivery on Sunday. And then you can also check us out in some local retailers. Our granola bars are available at Redbird Market in Fairport. Polly's wife and partner there, Ryan and her mom, have that great little shop out there.

SPEAKER A

It's fantastic. So many New York state based products in there. It is a really cool store, especially if you're already on the east side and you're close to Fairport. It's a great local market to go to.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, wonderful. And, you know, just take a walk on the canal on Saturday morning and pick up some fun stuff. We're also at Midtown Athletic Club with the bars, so you can get one to, as you're gearing up for a workout, strong cafe, Highland hospital, a handful of other places and a lot more hopefully over the course of this next year. Then, of course, I mean, I don't do, I'm terrible at social media, but we have, we have the things, you know, we got Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. So you can check us out there. And one more little plug. I do need to for. I have been teaching a cooking class to benefit a tremendous local charity, interval. They've been around for 25 years. They're founded by doctor Tim O'Connor and doctor Ralph Panino to surgeons by trade. And what they do at interval is collect and redistribute medical devices and equipment. So things that like a scalpel in this country has an expiration date on it. Nothing wrong with scalpel. And they really.

SPEAKER A

You're saying the scalpel doesn't have a best by date?

SPEAKER B

Shouldn't necessarily. Well, it is what it is to a point. But, you know, they really need those things in the developing world and disaster areas and war zones. So that's what interval does, is collect these things and get them there. So when I was working at Max, Tim and Ralph were great customers there and we always supported interval. And we started doing a monthly cooking class in the eight dream and Max, we come up with a different theme each month. And Tim has a very impressive wine cellar and is the master of ceremonies, so he selects wines for the evening. I spend the day at max preparing all the food and then go out there and cook in front of our guests as the kitchen team executes the dinner there. It's a lot of fun. This one in May is sold out, but we've got some room in June. So they are interval.org. so I encourage everybody to check them out, see what they're doing. Incredible charity. I mean, they're one of the good ones. I think something like 95% of the money that comes in goes out the door to help change people's lives. So, you know, we donate every year. They, after the earthquake in Haiti, they built school there. So one of the things that my wife and I choose to sport every year is that school there. And there's different opportunities for everybody. Interval.org dot. It's a lot of fun. It's a fundraiser, not a fundraiser. You get to meet cool people and there's great wine. It's not plant based, but we are. We try to be accommodating for folks who do have dietary restrictions. But, yeah, check us out.

SPEAKER A

And I've. I've had the pleasure of, you know, working with. Working with an organization, a raise a glass foundation.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

That has. That has donated a lot to interval done with spirit judging over the last probably, you know, five, six years.

SPEAKER B

Yeah.

SPEAKER A

And, you know, getting to learn about them as a charity, you know, that is, like you said, that's the kind of place that's doing the work, which, regardless of, you know, what organization is, regardless of their beliefs, if you're out there doing the work and benefiting people who need to be benefited, that's something that's worth talking about and worth supporting. So reach out and, hey, go, go grab one of the cooking. Cooking experiences and go out for that and support a quality local organization.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, no, they really are incredible. And the cooking classes are a lot of fun.

SPEAKER A

Absolutely. Well, Ryan, thanks so much for coming over. Before we close out, make sure you go to lunchadoor.org to check out all the other shows on the Lunchadore podcast network. We have over ten shows and probably another five coming this year. It's really exciting time to be doing things in Rochester. If you have a show, you want to talk to me about reach out@stromia.com or if you're interested in advertising on Lunchadore, reach out to me as well. A lot of opportunities to be on shows that are doing things to make Rochester a more positive place for everybody in town and for food. About town, well be back next time. That was a bad outro. We're gonna do it, and we're gonna go.