Pork Chops Plus The History of King Cakes with Food Maven Matt Haines

Prepare to have your culinary curiosities indulged as we embark on a savory adventure with none other than New Orleans-based author and food journalist Matt Haines. Our palates will travel from the crispy crunch of Chef Jeffrey’s country fried pork chop to the colorful creativity of a Miami Beach-inspired dish that’s sure to bring the sunshine in. Along the way, we’ll tease your taste for Asian cuisine with an exquisite miso sake chop and a citrusy tribute to the Juicy Crunch tangerine.

Our session with Matt isn't just about tantalizing taste sensations – it's a cultural voyage through the history and evolution of the King Cake, from its ancient Roman roots to its current status as a Mardi Gras icon. Discover how the cake's hidden figurine can lead to jovial obligations and listen in as Matt shares his own journey from classical trombonist to a King Cake aficionado. His book on the subject is the first of its kind, and his passion

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:05

Hello, Food Fam. This is the Walk and Talk podcast where you will find the perfect blood of food, fun and cooking knowledge. I'm your host, Carl Fiodini. Welcome to the number one food podcast in the country. We are podcasting onsite at Ibis Images Studios, where food photography comes alive and I get to eat it. Alright, first things first. Last week we did a remix on the fabled Monte Cristo. My goodness, I was not disappointed. I had dreams about that sandwich for days, literally, like even today. Hallucinations, I don't understand. Be sure to check out our Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook to get eyeballs on the beautiful. Be you to full photography by John. You'll find the handles in the description. Alright, so what do you call a pig that knows karate? Yeah, that's right, a pork chop. Okay, okay, okay, On with the menu today. Obviously, we're still focused on pork, and that is the pork chops baby. I'm excited about trying Jefferson's take on the classic country fried steak, which is, of course, in the pork chop form. He's got three other elevated, badass dishes that he's going to get into Peninsula food service. Thank you kindly for supplying the proteins for today's production.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Chefs in the central Florida area. Peninsula is the largest distributor of Creekstone Farms beef in the Southeast United States, Complete with a fully staffed butcher shop to help you solve your kitchen inconsistencies. Check out their dry age program too. You won't be disappointed. Chefs seriously like Orlando, Tampa, Sarasota, get on the phone. Our guest this week is New Orleans based author, food explorer and writer, Matt Haynes. You've seen his content in national publications such as CNN, New York Times and Zagat. He's the author of the big book of King Cakes and the little book of King Cakes. Matt Haynes on deck, Jeff popped a clutch slammed to that pre-shift baby. Let's get the dish explanations out for the audience Almost perfect with that Almost there.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Look at that silent John came through with it.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Don't judge me. There's a bunch of judging, bro, Just like me. That's all we do here. You know what? Next week you read this. Let me see how you do it.

Speaker 2: 3:23

I'll mess it up, yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:26

But I'll be, I'll own it. You have a new nickname. It'll be Stumble and Jeff, Probably All right. Okay, I love you baby. So what do I do? Man pork chops.

Speaker 2: 3:34

I mean, you got the big game coming around the corner so I still wanted to stay on track with that. And there's, you can do, I guess, three of the now two of the four I did. You could definitely do on the grill, one of them you got to do in the fryer. But man, there's nothing like taking that country fried steak and doing something really nice to it and just having that. You know, marination of buttermilk and some of the ranch packet dressing, if you want to call it that, just get in there and let it marinate for two days. That buttermilk permeates that meat. It was so tender it was just unbelievable. Then he had a little bit of the Herico Ver instead of doing it the regular wax green beans and then elevating the mashed potatoes up with a little bit of the roasted garlic and a little bit of sour cream Herico Ver, so that's otherwise known as a French green bean.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Yes, just for the people out there.

Speaker 2: 4:22

Yeah, so the other three that we did, one I did. I wanted to get a little bit more Asian ask, so I did some miso sake, black garlic and I pureed that up. And then I had a totally forgot about these in the back of the refrigerator like everybody else. They were fermented cherries that were fermented with bullet bourbon. So I added some of the liquid to that and some of the cherries for a different tang or a little bit of flavor profile there. And then we did a rendition noble juicy crunch tangerine I can't stop talking about it.

Speaker 2: 5:01

Yeah, no, quentin does that farm, they do a fantastic job and there's only 45 days, and then you can't get them. So every time I'm going to certain markets I'm finding them and making this beautiful marmalade. In its got basically vanilla, bourbon, cardamom, tangerine, the juicy crunch. I rendered that down, or cooked it down for about almost an hour, got it really nice and thick, glazed the pork chop that way, put it with some fennel and or some of our listeners might call it fennel and then fennel and apple, granny Smith apple for tartness. That was a little slaw, no mayonnaise. Did some pecans crunched up in there too for some texture. And then I did a blue masa, corn flour, corn bread, and then I infused that with some font, or actually white cheddar cheese from England, the white coastal cheddar, which is one of my favorites, but I didn't do it normal. So when you see these beautiful shots that John did, I have this mold that was like a syndical ball and it has little divots in it and we filled those divots with the marmalade, then some fennel tops gorgeous shot. I can't wait for you guys to see that.

Speaker 2: 6:14

And then, lastly, I paid homage to a really, really great family that got me started Teddy Andriosi, teddy Falco. They were an uncle and nephew duo. They own pastinage down in Miami Beach, north Miami Beach, right past 163rd, and when the state widened the road they had to sell their property. And then he moved up to what was never. On Sunday in Daniel Beach that became Casa Bella, they used to have a dish called veal capuchosa, and veal capuchosa was this end shop veal chop, and they pounded 11 daylights out of it. Flour, egg, breadcrumbs, veal capuchosa, yeah, and it was just little, little little kianti, and we would drop that into a fryer, literally cooking about five to seven minutes, pull that out and then we topped it off with arugula, tomatoes, olives, onions, celery, garlic, salt, pepper, aged balsamic and aged really nice extra virgin olive oil. I haven't made that dish, man. It's got to be three, at least six years. I haven't made that dish. Well, you're going to be making it again.

Speaker 1: 7:25

It was, it was. It was John's favorite Besides the orange.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Well, yeah, I mean, it hit the mark for me. There's, there's, there's so simplistic.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Well, you know what I mean You're. We're talking about Jeff here. Yeah, Simple.

Speaker 2: 7:38

Yeah, simpleton, no kidding, at least I'm not a cretin.

Speaker 1: 7:42

That's true, that is true. So listen on, on one of our socials, a miss Robin McDonald reached out and she said, wow, that that Monte Cristo right. And she actually was asking for the recipe on how to do the creme brulee, you know, for the, for the batter, for the bread. And I just wanted to bring that up and, and you know, put her name out there for for doing that, because I just feel like you know we're we're finally coming into a place where there's a lot of activity surrounding the food Right, and I want to remind everybody that we do touch a lot on the restaurant life and what goes on in the industry, but at the end of the day, a foodie is a foodie is a foodie and you know, it's just great that people are participating and I just love it. Thank you everybody.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Here's another one to add to that, and we talked about it yesterday. A friend of mine called me and we had a very interesting, interesting conversation about the podcast. I don't know if he told John or not, but Daniel chef, daniel Ramos, he had a restaurant in Delray. It was a sausage shop that made bone marrow broth and all this and it was doing great and a little bit of disagreement with his partner broke off. And then he's now growing. He's a farmer. He's growing herbs and other different produce for a select few chefs in West Palm, and he was just telling me how it was. How to get into something, involved in something is why I was saying you'll listen to podcasts. He started listening to ours and it was incredible to listen to how we impact the listeners out there that are actually really listening to us, and he's loving everything that we're doing with the farmers too.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Well, you know what I probably? I think I met chef before you know, way back when. Daniel yeah, I want to say I'm certain of it.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Yeah, I think we had there's two guys that were involved with the ACF Palm Beach. There was Daniel Diaz and Daniel Ramos. I get like two of them confused.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Well, here's the here's the here's the deal. All right, you people, right, Chefs, non chefs, whatever Reach out every now and again, you know, throw a post up or a like or whatever. I know there's a lot of listeners who they listen to, but they don't participate. Participate, you know, it helps us in gigantic ways. So just, we appreciate everybody for tuning in and following along.

Speaker 2: 9:59

I will wait before we get to the guests. I will say that this stuff that we're doing with the retro remixes, with the hungry man that I toasted my God, yeah, oh, for sure, that's it, because we get the most responses out of that.

Speaker 1: 10:10

Yeah, you know what we got to do. What is it that you're going to want you to do? Figure out how to do a bacon toaster strudel. How about that? That's not hard, I don't care if it's hard or not. Make it your way because delicious, I just want to have that. It's just before, before I have a doctor's appointment. You know, check me out. I want to do before then this way, because I'm probably going to get locked down. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 10:36

Like you know, I was called for a TV show that was going to do a centric bacon, a centric dishes.

Speaker 1: 10:42

Yeah, I know you. I don't know how many times you told me about it already. You think I forgot? Yeah, but I'm not.

Speaker 2: 10:46

This. What are you going to do? Bacon that's not been done before I'll slap you. What are you talking about? They wanted the bacon as the shell of a taco or the bread of the grilled cheese.

Speaker 1: 10:57

That's been done before. So do it again. It's bacon. What are we talking about here? Now I got to do something, get a hand up, man. You know well it's me. Figure it out. I got a chemist to my left man, it's true.

Speaker 2: 11:12

The mad scientist and the chemist, that's right.

Speaker 1: 11:18

All right, okay, okay. Yeah, we have a in in house guest who's just listening not on the show today, just listening but he did a great job on that video. How about that? When are you going to post that? He's still working on it right now. No the one you showed me yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:33

Oh, you still haven't that yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Evan is actually still doing like some color correction and he's, you know, making sure that he's making sure you look good. He's slimming me out and everything. No, he's making sure that you know all the sponsor logos are, you know, proper big and you know that whole thing. Anyway, all right. So, with that said, let's usher in our guest today, mr Matt Haynes. The author. Mr Matt Haynes, how are you doing, sir?

Speaker 3: 12:06

I'm doing great. How are you too?

Speaker 1: 12:08

Man, you know, if I was any better? If I was any better, I don't know what I would do with myself.

Speaker 2: 12:12

How about that?

Speaker 1: 12:13

Oh man, I wish, I only wish I was in Mardi Gras right now. Say what.

Speaker 3: 12:17

It's getting started. I can hear it and see it outside my window right now. People are starting to are dragging their kids and little push cards down the street toward the parade that's starting a couple hours. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Is it actually a parade today?

Speaker 3: 12:30

Oh yeah, yeah, there's parades, gosh. There's parades Tonight, tomorrow, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, monday night and then all day Tuesday. So it's the last kind of stretch here.

Speaker 1: 12:43

You know, I mean that's gotta be amazing. I never did Mardi Gras but I did do New Year's Eve in New Orleans back in 92. And it was just like wall-to-wall people having like the best time ever. It was a pretty amazing experience. It was cold, but you didn't notice it and it was really. You know, john was like you were there, we were there. Yeah, that was really great man, that was a wonderful experience. I have to assume Mardi Gras is like New Year's multiplied.

Speaker 3: 13:13

Yeah, probably in times like 15, I love New Year's here but a lot of people have this idea that Mardi Gras you know, you see all the, you hear everything about the, you know throw me some beads and then lift up my shirt or whatever. But that's like a very specific, small, if you're down in Bourbon Street kind of situation. But, like up where I am, it's like a miles long block party where people are definitely drinking a little bit too much, but not a lot of too much, and people are grilling out on the neutral ground and stuff. It's really fun, it's awesome.

Speaker 2: 13:40

What area do you live around in New Orleans or?

Speaker 3: 13:43

lower garden district so close to, like you know, magazine street of. People are familiar with that Kind of in the border of lower garden district in Uptown. For those there's a few blocks. For me.

Speaker 1: 13:54

For the record, I'm getting to an age now where you know people should be throwing me the beads because yeah, nobody wants to see it.

Speaker 1: 14:02

But I'm getting to that point now I gotta start doing some push-ups or something. All right, Me too, Exactly All right. So, Matt, why don't you, can you do me a favor, Just for the audience? Why don't you do like a, you know, airplane view of of who you are, what you got going on and how you landed in New Orleans and how you I don't know how you you fell into the world of King Cake.

Speaker 3: 14:26

Sure, I would be happy to. So I am from New York originally, which people in New Orleans kind of gasped like why did this guy from New York create this book about King Cake? I've been here for 15 years though. But yeah, I was a classical trombone player was my background for a long time and ended up doing arts administration, which then turned into, more generally, nonprofit management, went to grad school for that, and I kind of was splitting my life between teaching these marching bands in Asia I am a Japanese national marching band champion Nobody asks to know that, but it's a fun fact and then I was going to grad school for nonprofit management. I ended up getting an internship in New Orleans 15 years ago. I thought I'd be here for two months and then ended up staying here. I am, like I said, 15 years later and not involved in writing, not involved in King Cake at all at that point. Now I'm I kind of 15 years later.

Speaker 3: 15:28

I split my time between writing books about King Cake and right now I'm working on a book about po-boys as well New Orleans famous New Orleans sandwich and then also being a journalist, and so I've written some articles, a lot of food articles. So I wrote one about Mardi Gras food traditions for the New York Times. I write a lot of travel stuff for Momi Planet and Photos I bring it for Zagat and CNN and all sorts of stuff. So that's kind of how I split my time. But you asked about you know how I got into King Cake.

Speaker 3: 16:03

For a lot of people who are not from here they can maybe relate that King Cake doesn't seem that impressive on the surface. It's kind of like what is this weird looking cinnamon bun sort of? And my first eight years or so in New Orleans I was, you know just, I'd see it on the parade route. You're going to go out to the parade, you're always going to have a table there, there's going to be beer on the table, there's going to be fried chicken on the table from Popeyes and there's going to be some King Cake. And the King Cake is the least impressive thing a lot of times if it's coming from a grocery store or something like that. And so I was like what is this? And then one year I got invited to a King Cake party. Which is this idea?

Speaker 3: 16:43

that everyone brings their favorite variety, and then, whoever brings the best one, there's a vote at the end and they are crowned champion and get a prize. I am a very competitive person, so I wanted to win. I didn't know what was the best King Cake, though, so I just Googled it and I found a top 10 list from a local food writer here Again, this is before I was writing, and so I just put those 10 onto a spreadsheet and figure I'd try them, but then I noticed there was another article just below that that was like top 25 King Cakes, and those 25 were different than those 10. So I was like, oh shoot, I guess I have to eat these 35 King Cakes now, and pretty soon. My list was over 140.

Speaker 3: 17:20

And I tried, in the end 88 that season, which is basically all I ate for six weeks was King Cake exclusively and managed not to gain too much weight, and then I left to go hike the Appalachian Trail shortly after that, which doesn't sound like it's related to King Cake, except for those six months. Everyone gets a trail nickname, and some of them would be like I don't know, jack Rabbit or Roadrunner or something that sounds fast, and my trail nickname was King Cake, and so literally for six months I was just called King Cake. And then I got back to New Orleans and started writing, and every year when I wrote about King Cake those articles did better than anything else. And so I figured maybe I should write a book about this, and it turns out nobody had written a book about it before. So that kind of gave me the courage to give it a whirl, and that's how the big book of King Cake came to be.

Speaker 1: 18:13

So, just before we get into any questions or anything, the fact that you did six, I can appreciate and identify with six six weeks of eating nothing but King Cakes and you would need a six month sabbatical. You know walking odyssey to do? Better watch it, because that's what your doctor is going to tell you.

Speaker 2: 18:34

He's going to tell me that.

Speaker 1: 18:35

He's going to say look, I don't know who this Jeff guy is, but you stay away from nine months to go on the Appalachian.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Trail.

Speaker 1: 18:42

Stay away from him and start walking Like, just don't stop, just keep walking into, hit water, right, and I get, I get you, um, right. So the King Cakes by the way, I'm before meeting Pooch River, I had never heard of a King Cake. I had no idea what that was. And so that that's point number one. And when, when he started talking about, hey, you know you should talk to Matt and you know he's doing this with the book and and I started looking into you a little bit, the photography is beautiful. These King Cakes are amazing looking. I mean, I'm thinking that they all taste a little different because they're they're all made differently, even though there's a similar build to them. They're all different and it's it's, it's seemingly amazing. So that's point number one. And and then point number two is I've never had a Pope boy that I liked and I and that hurts a lot of I I've always had, I've never been happy with any of them. Looking at at I'm gasping, I know it's listen, I'm disappointed.

Speaker 2: 19:46

You should have seen my face. Everybody's passing. That's what you should have seen.

Speaker 1: 19:49

I I've been unlucky, I've just been unlucky, but I will tell you, I saw images, you know, from what Matt was kind of doing with these. Wow, man, I mean I'm, I want to actually have some not with me, jeff, but I'm going to show you some and I want you to reproduce because they're, they look phenomenal, phenomenal, and I want to change my mind, right? All right, matt, all right. So talk about the differences in these cakes, man, and kind of. And you were going to. Okay, there's a couple of things that we're going to talk about, folks. Number one Matt's going to do a little touch and go on the history of King cake, which is actually fascinating, and and also he's got and he's going to explain it. But when he started his search in King cake, he realized that the stories of the people who actually, you know are, are baking these cakes are remarkably interesting. So he's going to get into some of those and the history, and Matt, go ahead and take it away.

Speaker 3: 20:50

Yeah. So I think probably I should probably start with this at the very beginning, like some people might be listening and being like what is a king cake? Like what are you even talking about, carl? Yeah, and so I'll start with. A king cake is eaten during what we call, in New Orleans, carnival season.

Speaker 3: 21:07

Carnival season goes from January 6, which is the 12th night of Christmas, and it lasts all the way until Mardi Gras day, or a fat Tuesday, and some people call it 12th night of Christmas, 12th night or epiphany. So that's the starting period, and then that Tuesday or Mardi Gras that ends the season and it's a moving day based on when Easter is. It's the day before Len starts and, and you know so, during this window of time, new Orleans is, for large parts of this, is almost completely shut down, but you can't even drive around the city right now and people are eating too much and drinking too much and and we have people are eating these cakes skin cakes and they are ring shaped. Imagine they look like they're oval, not circular oftentimes, and they are much bigger than a donut. You could probably get like 32 pieces out of it. So they're pretty decently sized and they have oftentimes a brioche dough, or maybe could be a cinnamon rolled dough or a pastry dough, and cinnamon is the main flavor nowadays inside the cake and then there's an icing on top, and then on top of the icing is oftentimes purple, green and gold sugar, and those purple green, purple green and gold are historically the colors of Mardi Gras. People always wonder what they, those colors, stand for. The crew of the main crew that kind of introduced the city to those colors, crew of Rex, they say that purple is meant to be royalty, gold is meant to be power and wealth, and green is meant to be faith, and so those are the three colors of Mardi Gras, you see, and people are. Right now I can look out my window and I see a three year old being dragged down the street in his stroller with a purple, green and gold shirt on right now. And so the colors are everywhere.

Speaker 3: 23:03

And so this cake has a little probably most famously has a little plastic baby hidden inside the cake. You don't know where it is, and as the party is going on, whoever gets the slice with the little plastic baby is crowned king or queen of the party. So there's a good look and it's kind of meant to be. You know prosperity and good good fortune and stuff like that. So your crowned king or queen of the party and you're also responsible for for bringing the next cake to the next party or like so, truly without exaggeration, 90. Or more percent of classrooms in southeastern Louisiana on Fridays well, somebody will be responsible for one of the kids brings a king cake into school. Whatever kid gets the baby inside that cake, it gets a crown. It's crown king or queen of the classroom and then their parents are buying the next cake for next Friday's thing.

Speaker 3: 24:00

It's in every you can go into a New Orleans office where you go into the break room, you'll find three or four king cakes in there. It's throughout all of Carnival season. Every party you go to is gonna have king cakes. We have. I think they say that more than about a million king cakes are sold in New Orleans every Carnival season. There's places that now pop up where, like little king cake hubs, where they'll have 40 different bakeries, bring their king cakes to one central location so that you it's like a king cake mall, basically, like king cake mania is growing every single year. So that's basically the tradition as it stands now and then we can kind of move on to where that idea came from.

Speaker 1: 25:26

But that's what I was just gonna say, cause to me this is fascinating, cause this is something I've never heard of and it's such a like a million freaking king cakes.

Speaker 2: 25:35

But and you said you were telling me- you know what they do for lent they don't eat cake.

Speaker 3: 25:41

Right now.

Speaker 1: 25:42

So you were mentioned. You mentioned that this goes all the way back to Rome.

Speaker 3: 25:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it starts all the way in ancient Rome. So a lot of people here think it goes back to France cause we were settled by the French originally. But thousands of years ago in ancient Rome they were celebrating the Saturnalia festival, and so the Saturnalia was a multi-week festival around the winter solstice. So December 21st was kind of the central point and what they were celebrating is that. So on the winter solstice it's the longest night of the year. Basically the sun rises the least high in the sky on that day, which doesn't sound worth celebrating, but basically they're acknowledging that, hey, we made it through the worst, the worst, the longest nights behind us. Springtime is off in the horizon, but it's coming. Because winter, you know, back then you're afraid of starvation or freezing to death, and so, hey, we got something to look forward to. Now the past is behind us. Every single day, from here on out, the sun is gonna rise a little bit higher in the sky and the days are gonna last a little bit longer.

Speaker 3: 26:47

And the Romans literally believed that this was like the return of the sun. Return of the SUN, which is interesting because Christianity. They talked about the return of the sun SON, probably not an accident, and so they would have this festival, and people who are familiar with Mardi Gras might recognize the way that they celebrated back then. They would celebrate by dressing in colorful costumes, they would parade in the streets, they would, schools and courts would be closed. They'd eat too much, they'd drink too much, and then they had this cake that was round like the sun and golden like the sun, and instead of a baby they had a fava bean hidden inside the cake, and whoever got that fava bean was crowned king or queen of the Saturnalia festival. And instead of buying the next cake, they were actually oftentimes sacrificed to the gods. So it was a much higher stakes to get the bean than it is now to get the baby. So, yeah, so now you.

Speaker 1: 27:46

First of all, you get the baby now it's like you're a hero. Back then you get the fava bean and now you're getting thrown into a volcano or something.

Speaker 2: 27:52

With a Qantian liver being eaten.

Speaker 1: 27:54

Yeah, wow, my God Right.

Speaker 3: 27:56

Wow. But New Orleans, some people, they don't want to have to buy that next cake. And I remember back when I worked in an old job. I walked into the break room and there was a guy just stuffing the baby back into the cake because he didn't want anybody to know that he had got it. And that is, if you're in Louisiana, and that's probably the most shameful thing you could possibly do, and I want to be like do it. It could be much worse. You could have been sacrificed to the gods. Just buy the next cake, it's okay. Wow.

Speaker 1: 28:20

And then yeah, they're serious. You want to talk about like a subculture?

Speaker 2: 28:24

Well, I could. I worked with a girl from Louisiana, christie Shaw Bear, and I remember we were in Palm Beach and she bought somebody shipped the king cake and I got the baby and boy.

Speaker 3: 28:37

I didn't hear the end of it.

Speaker 2: 28:39

Oh, you got to buy the next one, chef, you got to do. I'm like, all right, whatever I need to do, that's fine. But I had already heard about it because I lived in New Orleans. But yeah, king cake is just one of those things, man it's. You know, when you're describing about Rome and the ancient history behind the king cake and everything, it almost sounds like in Venice too, when they did the mask and the carnival from them as well. But it's a little bit different, and so I guess that's where it kind of stemmed from the Romans, all that whole stuff with the carnival.

Speaker 3: 29:06

Yeah, absolutely yeah. So many things stemmed from the Romans. And then, like, when Roman Empire obviously expanded from the British Isles in the West to Bulgaria in the East and they brought all their traditions with them, and so this idea of, during the Saturnalia festival, having a cake with something inside it got reached to all these places. And when Christianity eventually took over Rome and Christians smartly decided, rather than getting rid of those pagan customs, that they'd merged their traditions with them, they put on top of the biggest Roman festival of the year, saturnalia, they put their biggest festival of the year, which was the birth of Christ. And you know, historians will say nobody's 100% sure when Jesus was born, and so they had room to play with when they were gonna celebrate his birth, and they just put it right on top of that Saturnalia festival.

Speaker 3: 29:55

And we think now of Christmas as being this, you know, one day or Christmas Eve and Christmas day kind of event. But we also know that there's the 12 days of Christmas, and so the 12 days of Christmas, on the 12th night, christians believe that the three kings found baby Jesus and presented their gifts to him, and Christians around Europe commemorate that by eating a three kings cake or a kings cake, and now we call it a king cake, and so a lot of Louisianians think that New Orleans or Louisiana is the only place with a king cake. That you can look at many eight, 10 different countries that I could think of off the top of my head around Europe and Mexico as well that have a version of this king cake, or cake of kings, depending on the language that it's being translated from.

Speaker 1: 30:46

That's pretty amazing. That's under Constantine right. That would have been the emperor of Constantine yeah.

Speaker 3: 30:53

Wow, yep, as the ideas started to spread and turn into a kind of a Christian thing, and I was mentioning the shape of it, being kind of ring shaped and oval with space in the middle, and a lot of people think, hey, maybe that's because it's meant to be a crown and we have colorful sugar on top, but a lot of other countries have, like, colorful candied fruit on top, which maybe people suggest that could be jewels of the crown, for example, and so, yeah, it's all meant to celebrate these, the three kings.

Speaker 1: 31:20

And all of these king cakes are made differently. Is that correct?

Speaker 3: 31:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I've got a lot of photos in the book, obviously that kind of show. But yeah, I mean there's some similarities because they tend to be in colder. Obviously Louisiana is not cold, the places that have a decent winter, and especially in Europe that's the case and so there's a lot of times there's kind of like either brioche with a little bit of like some sort of liqueur inside it or a fruit cake with some icing on top of it, but they, yeah, there's differences, but most of them are ring shaped and all of them have something hidden inside it. And then there's that idea of good fortune If you get that something inside it and then hosting the next party or bringing the next cake, or something like that.

Speaker 1: 32:07

But is it actually good fortune or is it looked at? Not Because you said the one fella like stuffed it back in?

Speaker 2: 32:14

He just didn't want to buy it.

Speaker 3: 32:16

Yeah. So I think that nowadays, like people get, kind of the biggest thing that people think is of now is that you have to buy the next cake, and so maybe that doesn't feel very lucky. But there's this whole other component that definitely when you talk to like little kids, they want that baby so bad, because that means they're getting the crown, they're the king of their queen, they're being celebrated in special, and so I think as we become adults and we have to get the paper things, maybe people see it as less fortunate.

Speaker 2: 32:47

Or the real thing is you're bringing dessert, so people come together, so you're sitting around the table.

Speaker 3: 32:53

You know so it's all about family, yeah, and you get to bring your favorite cake and introduce that to people too, which is a nice thing.

Speaker 1: 33:01

So what are the most unique cakes that you've run across? Bacon.

Speaker 3: 33:07

Yes, there's so many, and so the big book we started. There's a lot. When you guys mentioned earlier what can you do that's different with bacon, I thought of like three or four different king cakes that exists that have bacon in it, but there are God, it's endless. So the way the big book of King Cake is set up is it starts with very traditional Louisiana king cakes and then gets pretty wild by the end, and so I had mentioned earlier that cinnamon is a really common flavor, and then, basically over the last three decades, every baker is looking to put their own little twist on what a king cake can be, and sometimes that's ingredients from places that they came from. So, for example, a Honduran bakery that's putting guava and cream cheese in their king cake, and also might just be ingredients that are important to that business or something. And so, for example, the Audubon Insectarium here puts has a cricket king cake that they make.

Speaker 3: 34:00

That's hilarious and, yeah right, a lot of people say that it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't my favorite either. Japanese restaurant makes a sushi king cake. Let's see, there's a woman who's got a Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2: 34:14

Stop back up. Sushi Like raw fish? Is the top of the rice or is it like a dessert?

Speaker 3: 34:21

So they make kind of a mold rice into an oval shape, big oval shape, and then they put some like crab cream cheese filling in the middle of the rice and then it's beautiful. What they do, the topping is, I mean, what they try to keep as close to the three colors as they can, but they just put all sort of different kinds of sushi or sashimi on top with different sauces and stuff like that to make it look very, very beautiful.

Speaker 2: 35:30

It's a really nice looking cake, so it's like a ring of sushi, then, right.

Speaker 3: 35:34

Yeah, it's like a ring of sushi, exactly right, a big ring of sushi that one person probably shouldn't eat by themselves. But Well, I can get behind that Of course you can. I agree it was delicious, especially after eating like hundreds of cakes for this book. Anytime somebody put a savory king cake in front of me, I was so. I was so forward. It was awesome because I had something to break up. That sweetness was very helpful.

Speaker 1: 36:01

I envy you. I really do. This is what you're doing is like right up my alley. So Write a book. I'm gonna write. All right, so we're gonna do a book. There's gonna be a walk and talk book and it's gonna be about all the different.

Speaker 2: 36:16

We already have an editor, so I know yeah. He was shaking his head. No, not that one. I have another one that can lay it out into the book form too.

Speaker 1: 36:23

Well, that's what he does. Yeah, but he was shaking his head. Oh, did you stop doing that Rank amateur, All right. So All right, matt, let's reel it back in. You made the jump when you were putting your book together and you told me you know, I'm looking at all the it's gonna be photography forward and it's all these beautiful pictures. But then you realized, wait a minute. Something that's even more interesting than the beautiful photography and artwork is the stories behind the people who actually are making these things.

Speaker 3: 37:00

Yeah, I was blown away. I really had no idea. I'm a journalist so I know there are interesting stories. I did not connect how the cakes were so closely tied to the stories of the people who made them, and so one example I can think of off the top of my head is there's probably one of the most well-known king cakes in New Orleans now. It's from a bakery called Dang and it's a. They won a James Beard award. They are this Vietnamese restaurant, and in fact today I went there to interview them for a different story unrelated to king cake, and so I was there at about eight o'clock in the morning and there was it's going to sound like I'm exaggerating there were 150 people in line down the major road that they're off of, waiting in line to pick up their king cakes. That's how popular their king cakes are, and so they make I think it's something like 4,000 of king cakes per day that they're selling.

Speaker 3: 38:05

And so I asked Ms Huang Tran the Ms Tran is the woman who owns Dong Fang and I asked her to say how'd you come up with the idea of your king cake? Because they're a little contentious. Some people say no, they can't be a king cake because the shape's not completely. It's not completely connected and round. And other people say, oh, you know, there's cream cheese instead of sugar icing on top. That can't be a king cake. But I, how'd you come up with this idea? And her response was longer than I thought it was going to be. It was.

Speaker 3: 38:37

She said that you know, her and her husband and two kids were in Vietnam during the Vietnam War and her husband was a was a fighter pilot in the South Vietnamese and he was shot down during the war and ended up in a prison camp and and then he managed to escape and got back to his wife and kids and said, hey, we got to get out of here now. And so they loaded everything they could grab onto a ship going toward Malaysia and on the way to Malaysia, pirates got onto the ship and took everything that that they had and everything that the other passengers had, and they ended up in Malaysia in a refugee camp for a year with basically nothing. And at that point they learned that one of their friends from Vietnam had made their way to New Orleans, where there was this growing Vietnamese population, what we call New Orleans East, so kind of lay out in the eastern part of the city and he was able to sponsor them to come to the U? S. And so they got back on a ship a year later and made their way to New Orleans. And again Ms Tran said they had nothing at all except for each other, but they needed to make money.

Speaker 3: 39:48

And so she was a seamstress back in Vietnam and so she tried her luck, kind of helping to show things for people, and made a little bit of money, but not enough to get by. And then she remembered, you know, she's like Okay, well, my parents owned a cafe and I learned a little baking there. So what if I don't see anybody making like these, you know, vietnamese baked goods that we all love so much? So what if I started making those and bringing them to farmers markets? And she did that, and she was able to save up some money and opened up her bakery, dong Phong, in 1982. And she said you know, we're a bakery but we have no interest in making king cake. And then a lot of places are making king cake, but she's like it's not part of our culture. Why would we do that?

Speaker 3: 40:29

And so then fast forward a couple of decades when her grandkids are going to school and at school, like I was saying before, every single Friday there's a king cake and one kid's responsible for bringing that cake. And then not Vietnamese students they were bringing king cakes like really well known, popular cakes from like places like Randazzo's and Gambino's and hey Dells. These are all king cakes that people love here. And then when it was their turn to bring a king cake out in New Orleans East, there was nothing except for like a grocery store king cake. And so they bring them and they felt kind of embarrassed. And when they expressed that embarrassment to their grandma she said you know, like why, why don't we make a king cake that reflects our community's tastes and that our community can feel proud of? And so she made this the Brioche dough that they use for so many other of their kind of very popular treats. And she says they send, like you know, tens of thousands of Brioche products out around the city and the state every week. So these are like well known products.

Speaker 3: 41:29

And so she started with that dough and then, because they didn't like, said we Vietnamese people, we don't like you know, super sweet sugary icing. And so instead she decided to do a richer, more savory cream cheese on top. And and she said she was having a hard time making her dough bend because you know it's a different kind of dough bend the way you need it to. And she remembered, as a seamstress, that if she cuts slices into the fabric it would help the fabric bend. And so she did the same thing. She cuts slices into the dough and it created these ridges as it bakes and people always wonder, like, why does Dong Fung's king cake look so different? What are these ridges for? And people think they're by accident. But none of it's by accident. It's all just a reflection of her own story and her family story, which I think is so interesting.

Speaker 1: 42:14

That is incredibly interesting and you know you always have to leave it to to a grandmother to be guilt tripped into. You know doing stuff for the kids. You know what I mean and it started and it just so happened. It started this whole, you know, cultural shift. You know with the, you know with the population there in New Orleans. I mean that's, that's pretty amazing and and and what you and the conversation we were having the other day. It just seems like there's an endless amount of stories like that.

Speaker 3: 42:47

Yeah, it was the most. I I feel so thankful to have learned this lesson. That like it sounds like something maybe I already knew, but to really see it in practice, that everybody has a story like truly nothing, it does nothing exists, there's not a story behind. If you'd ask the right questions, and so, as I started to realize that and I asked better questions to the bakers, you realize that, okay, dong Fung, that's a pretty good story.

Speaker 3: 43:09

But all 75 of the bakers, they have reasons why they use certain ingredients or why they use no filling, or why they. Because it's because it's either nostalgia to the king cakes they love growing up or it's the opposite, or it's they. This one Cuban baker, she said her, her aunt in Cuba would, for special occasions, make these like these amazing octopus dishes. And so this woman here she has a pop up, and so she said one time a month she wants to make an octopus dish for customers. And so during carnival season she makes this elaborate kind of terrifying looking but delicious octopus king cake, which, of course, would never exist and a lot of New Orleans would be like that's not king cake, but I don't know. To me who cares. It's like this incredible story and it's a part of her, and it takes the tradition to a place that it hadn't been before. That doesn't mean that it should replace those, you know, those traditional king cakes, but it's fun to have all these different varieties and all these different stories.

Speaker 1: 44:09

So you've had, you know, hundreds of, perhaps even more than that types of king cake Do you have? I mean, is it possible to even have a favorite like a top five or even a top three?

Speaker 3: 44:25

Yeah, I've got. I do have a favorite of top five and a top three, and I knew when I did my first interview a couple of years ago. I'm like people are going to ask this and so I have to decide if I should avoid the question or or just be honest. And I decided to be honest because obviously I'm not saying my tastes are better than anybody else's. I just have preferences, like everybody does, and so I don't know if people agree with me, but I do have. Would you like my top one, my top three or my top five?

Speaker 1: 44:48

Three go, three baby.

Speaker 3: 44:50

Okay, three is the hardest one. Actually I shouldn't have included that, I'll do three. So tarteen is my number one. It's cinnamon cream cheese, so relatively basic as far as the kind of fillings you can have. They've got cinnamon cream cheese inside and the she just puts a lot of it in there.

Speaker 3: 45:08

And it's great, kat, if you're in New Orleans, go there for anything, even if they don't have king cake. Just get to tarteen, because everything they make is so delicious. But our king cakes. She puts enough cinnamon cream cheese that as it's baking it kind of expands out and busts through the dough and you get these like caramelized cream cheese cookies almost that are so good, and she ships so you can get, you can order it, and it's not an arm and a leg to ship and order a tarteen king cake either. So that's one. A number two, I think, would be a chocolate king cake from Bitter Sweet Confections. And so Cheryl Scripter owns Bitter Sweet Confections and she said she grew up her and her sisters would make these, would make chocolates for, and she would love to make these chocolates and then they would present them to their parents and see their reaction. She said her dad would always have this outsized reaction and be like, oh my God, this is the best chocolate I've ever had. And so she said that gave her so much self-esteem and she decided to become a chocolatier as she got older and the chocolatier in New Orleans probably going to make a delicious chocolate king cake, and so that's a great one.

Speaker 3: 46:14

And then my number three. I would say tough one. You know, there's a place called Norgeos, an Italian grocery, and they said one day they decided they want to make a king cake that was reflective of their community, and so they made a cannoli king cake. So it's got a lot of their own homemade cannoli filling inside and then on top they put the different things you find on top of a cannoli. So, like the, you know, sprinkles, chips and pistachio on the top of it, and it is delicious as well. Yes, please, and they have sandwiches there I can get behind that.

Speaker 1: 46:49

You know I've had so much. You know, being of Italian heritage, I've had my share of cannolis and I almost don't want to eat them anymore. Like people the what? Yeah, I really got like I just kind of burnt out on cannolis man.

Speaker 3: 47:03

But I want your time card. There's a good way to do it.

Speaker 1: 47:05

Right, Well, that's what I'm getting at Like. That sounds like a perfect reintroduction to it. You know, you understand, like you've had your. It's almost like you've had your fill. I had my fill, I don't know.

Speaker 3: 47:18

Yeah, I am from Long Island originally and so, while I'm Jewish, my family, I think we thought we were Italian, some sort of weird like Long Island Italian, and so we ate a lot of cannolis and I honestly I mean, I think that the filling is great, the shell is okay, it feels like it's just there so that you can hold the filling. Personally, that might be sacrilegious to somebody, but to me, the king cake. Now putting the cannoli inside the filling inside the king cake, it's an upgrade, I think.

Speaker 1: 47:47

Okay. So I want to be really clear. It is because of the shell. I just don't. It's remember I mentioned before putting sugar on the ricotta. I'll do that any day, any old day. Well, that's just part of a cannoli. I get it. I love that part. It's the shell. I'm over it. Just put the stuff in a dish.

Speaker 2: 48:06

You know better. It'd be, a twill would be better because it's lighter or bacon, a bacon shell.

Speaker 3: 48:13

Yeah, if I'm by myself at my house, I'm probably just eating that stuff with a spoon of its here. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 48:17

That's what I'm saying Matt, you're picking up what I'm putting down here. That's what I'm talking about. Just give me this. It's like Nutella. Nutella's great. I don't need to spread it on bread, I don't need to dip a spoon. Give me a spoon, give me my container and leave me the hell alone. That's where I'm at with Nutella.

Speaker 3: 48:32

I guess if we're in public we have to. We can't just eat it with our hands or whatever.

Speaker 1: 48:35

Yeah, hogwash, we have to grin Hogwash. Eat it like you eat it how you want to.

Speaker 2: 48:40

That's why they have the Nutella with the breadsticks on the counter Publix. When you're walking checking out, you think and you can eat it without your fingers, right?

Speaker 1: 48:49

Right, right, right. So let me ask you this when you're so, you have your top three, how often are you updating this list? I mean, it seems like, because it doesn't seem like this was like a short stint in King Cake, you've kind of immersed yourself in the King. Cake so does that mean, that your choices change?

Speaker 3: 49:12

I mean are you updating?

Speaker 1: 49:13

When was it last time you did a refresh on this list? Just asking.

Speaker 3: 49:17

Yeah, I mean, I think about it a lot. It's tough, so I definitely have some that I run into every year that I hadn't had before. Just last night I had to. I think this will be funny because it's so insane that this even exists. We do these like cheese, wine and King Cake pairings now, and so I try to get a lineup of five King Cakes that then a you know experts on cheese and wine will then kind of pair with other things, and I try to at least mix in one that I haven't had before. But it's tough.

Speaker 3: 49:49

I have events almost every single night that is somehow King Cake related, and there are just some that when I'm telling their stories, I know their stories and I know what their King Cakes tastes like, and so they're kind of I'm going to be introducing them to 40 new people. They're like safe bets. But then also, like what you're saying, like I don't get to then try as many new ones as I'd want to, because every year there's dozens, there's many dozens of new King Cakes that pop up. The number of King Cakes is growing, like the year that I did a hundred and or I had 140 different King Cakes on my list, which was five years before I did the book. That's like now. There must be a thousand different kinds of King Cake in New Orleans.

Speaker 1: 50:32

What's the? What's the? What's the dollar spent every year on King Cakes? Do you know?

Speaker 3: 50:38

I am not. It's a great question, but I am not sure how much I mean we could. If we're saying there's a million King Cakes being eaten in the New Orleans area and let's say that you know, there's going to be some grocery store King Cakes that are probably in the 19 or $20 range, but then most of the kind of better ones are going to be like 35 to $40 range. So I don't know if we want to say 30 times yeah, it's a whole lot of money, I think like and remember it's flour water, yeast Right.

Speaker 3: 51:11

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 51:12

So the people who make the Canole King Cake. They say I this kind of got me thinking, is it? I mean, obviously inflation is happening, but then on top of that, also as King Cakes are becoming more, as there's more unique varieties, and those unique varieties are more like connected to the stories of those individual bakeries. If you're making a Canole King Cake because you're a place that has kind of famous Canoles, then you're probably using really good ingredients and you probably want that to reflect in the King Cake as well. So you're probably less willing to cut corners. The way that may be a grocery store is it's making like 30 different kinds or something like that, or mass produced, right, exactly, right, yeah, and so maybe, maybe that's why the price is driving up a little bit more. I mean, that might be part of it at least. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2: 51:57

It has to be really difficult to find a different one that's going to stand out in a place, especially in Louisiana and New Orleans, because there's so many great restaurants there Is that. Could that be possible?

Speaker 3: 52:10

Yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of people, like there's one place that does like I couldn't even rattle off the ingredients right now because there were so many, but it was kind of like Labna is on there and stuff. It's like this Middle Eastern mishmash of stuff and people are excited about it. I haven't got a chance to try it yet, I've don't. No doubt it'll be good.

Speaker 3: 52:27

Everything this restaurant makes tastes really good, but, like, I think in that case it's the wild ingredients that make that King Cake interesting, whereas, like I've noticed, though, my favorite one that I found this year for the first time and my favorite one that I found last year for the first time the two different cakes, both of them was because, wow, these bakers are just really, really good and they just haven't to move here recently or open to bakery recently in New Orleans, and so I think that's something that can separate people too. Sometimes it's just like, wow, the quality of this is so great. So, yeah, that helps them. That's a different way, I guess as well that it can stand out.

Speaker 1: 53:06

So does this mean every restaurant in town makes their own? Every one of them does right and restaurants and whatnot. They kind of produce their own special King Cake.

Speaker 3: 53:19

Not every single one, though. I just get a talk at that university in New Orleans and their food department they brought King Cakes that they had made. So that university is making their own King Cakes, but I think there's a lot of. I'd say most restaurants do not make their own King Cake. There are plenty that do but, and I think there's room like I'm looking right now outside of my house at a hot dog place. It'd be pretty funny if there was a hot dog King Cake but they don't make one. For example. I'd say every bakery certainly is making or 95% of them are making their own version of King Cake, and then many restaurants are as well.

Speaker 1: 53:54

Well, I'm going to. I'm challenging Jefferson here to produce a King Cake.

Speaker 2: 54:01

I've already thought of one. I thought about doing like a Patissue and a ring. It's like an egg, claire, almost yeah, and piping it and then baking it off that way and then filling it in, so yeah, but I've already started like the brain started going.

Speaker 1: 54:16

How long is this going to take?

Speaker 2: 54:19

Patissue doesn't take that long.

Speaker 1: 54:21

Another word no, no, no.

Speaker 2: 54:22

Like I'm not doing it today.

Speaker 1: 54:23

No, not today. Can you? No, no, okay. So I mean, obviously we're on a time crunch.

Speaker 2: 54:32

Well, I go out of town. I'm in Austin for Fat Tuesday, unfortunately for me not being in New Orleans, but I'm back on Thursday. So if we do shooting on Friday, I can probably finagle.

Speaker 1: 54:45

Okay, we're going to mess with this, and where are you going?

Speaker 2: 54:48

I'm doing Austin. I'm going to go to Cater source. I'm actually doing two presentations one on plant-based barbecue in the heart of Texas and I'm doing another one on mental health, so it's going to be a good one.

Speaker 1: 55:01

They're going to probably run you out with pitchforks and torches.

Speaker 2: 55:05

The one I did two years ago in Orlando is fantastic.

Speaker 1: 55:08

In Orlando they're embracing of such a thing, I mean the belly of the beast man.

Speaker 2: 55:13

That's what I want.

Speaker 1: 55:13

That's why I want to do it All right, all right, well, make sure you represent.

Speaker 2: 55:17

Trust me I will. Yeah, is Turkey and the Wolf doing anything as far as the king cake? Because I mean that dude is just, he's out there, I mean in a good way.

Speaker 3: 55:25

So that's the Molly's Rise and Shine is one of his other restaurants. They're the one that I couldn't remember the ingredients, that's kind of this wild group of ingredients that it's kind of this one with like all of these mid-eastern qualities to it. But if you go to or I could just do it go to Molly's Rise and Shine on Instagram, you'll find it, I think, and it's it's probably the wildest of the year, I think which is unbranded for him.

Speaker 2: 55:47

Yeah, but also he's just a really cool dude oh yeah, oh yeah, and it's yeah.

Speaker 3: 55:53

Some of my favorite sandwiches in the city are from, are from him.

Speaker 2: 55:56

Yeah, there's also a Maniche Head Tava. That was a really good, great restaurant I know at Close. Recently his uncle owned saffron. Is anyone out there doing that's from a different culture that you didn't expect. Like you said, a Vietnamese, but you know in Japanese any other ones that's kind of out there that you've seen?

Speaker 3: 56:12

Yeah, I mean like there's I think I mentioned earlier, there's Honduran king cake with this guava and cream cheese. It's also a great story.

Speaker 3: 56:21

He said like you know they were just like let's, let's, let's just see if we can create our own king cake and I hope people don't get too mad at us for for being a little too crazy and he made it and it got in the news and he said one day he opened up his bakery door and there was a line around the building for people waiting for his guava cream cheese king cake and it was really nice. He said that for years he had been enjoying Mardi Gras, but this was the first time he felt like he was really a New Orleans, because he was kind of adding to the celebration a little bit, which is a cool thought.

Speaker 3: 56:51

That is actually really cool, yeah, and then let's see who else is doing. There's so many. There's a Brazilian woman making her own version of king cakes. This year there is a launch, jaya, from a Saba. He makes a Bapka king cake and so he grew up eating Bapka in Israel. He loves that tradition, like those traditions from home, but he also has fallen in love with New Orleans and the traditions here and he said rather than creating like just a traditional king cake and competing with those, he said, why don't I just create one that kind of merges these two parts of my life?

Speaker 1: 57:26

I'm thinking, Jeff, I think you need to do a matzo. No, you need to do a matzo ball.

Speaker 2: 57:32

No, no, no.

Speaker 1: 57:36

The baklava I definitely would do.

Speaker 2: 57:38

baklava, sure, that one, that is a brioche. And then and it's really it's, I think about it you get cinnamon in the brioche and it's pretty much hits.

Speaker 3: 57:45

and now you're in you know braided, but no, that's genius Jeff, look at, look into a galette which is a galette D, and then R O I S.

Speaker 1: 57:56

Would you comment on it? It's like a French version of king cake.

Speaker 3: 58:01

Oh, it's like that. That is like a very popular French version of king cake. You see it definitely in Montreal. You see some of them in big cities around the U S two that have a French bakery and that's their version of king cake and it is. They're very, very delicious and I bet there's some like fun takes you can do with that, and so the most common one would be I'm in frangipan inside there, but people are kind of messing around with different ideas as well, and a chocolate one recently that was awesome.

Speaker 1: 58:30

Well, so let me all right, let's when you how do we find your book?

Speaker 3: 58:38

Good question, so you can go. The one way that I love is you can go to my, my website at wwwthebigbookofkingcakecom. That's one way, but you can also get it at a bunch of bookstores and would your Instagram handle. Oh, sure, act, the big book of King cake. And at Matt Haines writes W R I T E S.

Speaker 1: 59:05

Matt, I think we're going to have you on again after after Mardi Gras and let's, we'll reconnect and we'll catch up, and I want to thank you for being on the show today.

Speaker 3: 59:15

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'd love to talk more.

Speaker 1: 59:17

Absolutely. I want to just do a quick thanks to you know, putra Vera. Again he comes through in the clutch with these, these great contacts and terrific interviews. John, as always, you're fantastic, mostly.

Speaker 3: 59:32

Jeff, I mean.

Speaker 1: 59:33

I know he's awesome. I mean listen. I appreciate everybody coming out. Evan, thanks for coming out today, man hanging out, we are out.