Dan Latham of Culinary Guide Shop

#28. In this episode, we are joined by Dan Latham, an exceptional chef, charcuterie expert, and advocate for sustainable agriculture and animal welfare. Dan is not only a crucial part of Meez's origin story but also the founder of Culinary Guide Shop, a consulting firm aiding restaurants across the Southern region.

Dan's culinary journey took root in the kitchens of New York City, where he honed his skills under the mentorship of Mario Batali at Po. Later, he ventured into running Mario's salumi shop, known as Studio L'Agusto, nestled within the charming confines of Italian Wine Merchants in Union Square. It was here that Dan and our CEO, Josh Sharkey, first crossed paths, planting the seeds for meez's inception.

Dan's trajectory eventually led him back to his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, where he embarked on his journey as a restaurateur and consultant. His remarkable achievements include James Beard award nominations and the esteemed title of Gourmet Mag's Best Restaurant in the South. Today, Dan is committed to assisting Southern restaurants in crafting sustainable, profitable menus while streamlining their operations.

In our engaging conversation, Dan and Josh Sharkey delve into the prevalent challenges faced by the restaurant industry, the intricacies of sustainable sourcing, and shed light on the current state of agriculture in the United States. Dan also generously shares his expertise on crafting exquisite salumi and passion for fly fishing.

Where to find Dan Latham: 

• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Where to find host Josh Sharkey:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn

In this episode, we cover:

(03:21) Dan's start in the metal business and his transition into food
(05:10) Dan's transition into culinary school 
(06:05) Dan's experience with The Food Network
(07:18) Dan and Mario's meeting leading to Dan's long relationship with Batali
(08:38) Dan's expertise in salami
(16:45) The difference in curing salts
(20:50) Dan's favorite salami cuts
(25:12) How the book, The Dorito Effect, inspired Latham
(28:00) Producers doing it well on an industrial scale
(32:43) Animal husbandry and sustainable farming
(44:48) Regenerative farming
(48:33) Dan's philosophy in restaurant consulting
(50:29) Common struggles restaurants are facing
(52:11) Fly fishing

Transcript

Josh Sharkey [00:00:00]:

Welcome to The meez Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez. The culinary operating system for food professionals. On the show, I'll be interviewing world class entrepreneurs in the food space that are shifting the paradigm of how we innovate and operate in our industry.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show.

[00:00:31]: 

My guest today is not only an incredible chef, a charcuterie expert, and an advocate and activist for sustainable agriculture and animal welfare, but he's also a big part of the origin story of meez. Dan Latham is the founder of Culinary Guide Shop. It's a consulting firm that helps restaurants around the South. And the name is inspired by his two passions, cooking and fly fishing. Dan spent a lot of time cooking in New York City. I worked for Mario Batalii at Po before running Mario's salumi shop, the Studio L'Agusto, which was housed in the back of this wine shop called Italian Wine Merchants in Union Square.

[00:01:05]:

The salumi shop is actually where Dan and I met. I would come to work there in the mornings for free before my day job at Tabla, and I would learn to make all types of salumi and charcuterie. And, you know, I had this little notebook where I would write the time that it took, and the temperature, and humidity, and of course the recipes, and ingredients, and every little detail about that type of casing that we used.

[00:01:28]:

And all of that was written down in this little notebook that I friggin lost. And that notebook that I lost is the catalyst that really created the idea for what meez later became. So I thank Dan. Not only for teaching me so much about salumi and letting me make mistakes and learn with him at the studio, but of course for being the impetus for what I have today with meez.

[00:01:51]:

So, Dan, thank you very much. Dan eventually left New York to start his first restaurant in Oxford, Mississippi, his home state. He's been nominated for James Beard awards. He's won Gourmet Mag Best Restaurant in the South, among many other awards. But he now helps restaurants across the South build sustainable and profitable menus and generally just helps them with their operations and helps them run really, really tight operations. 

[00:02:14]:

Dan and I had a wide ranging conversation where we talk about what restaurants are struggling with these days to how to source sustainably and what the state of agriculture is in the U.S. today. We go back in time a bit and talk about life as a cook in New York City in the 90s and 2000s.

[00:02:29]:

He gives some tips and insights about making great salumi, and we ended the conversation talking about fly fishing. Something that I've been learning a lot more about, and I think something that chefs definitely have a propensity to do. It's meditative, but it takes a lot of work, and he gave us some tips on how to start.

[00:02:46]:

I didn't realize that there's saltwater and freshwater fly fishing. So I'm stoked to get started. And generally just stoked about the conversation that we had. So as always, I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

[00:03:02]:

Welcome to the podcast, man. 

Dan Latham [00:03:04]:

Thanks. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. 

Josh Sharkey [00:03:07]:

I think Dan, there's obviously backstory with you, not just because of what you do, but a little bit of the origin story of meez maybe just for the audience. I know your background, but just share a little bit about what you're doing today.

Dan Latham [00:03:21]:

We'll probably dig a bunch into the past as well. I started cooking about 1997, 98. I know those years are kind of fuzzy, but you know, I was, I was a little bit of a career changer. I was in the metals business, meaning I sold titanium to airplane manufacturers for fan blades for engines. And one of the funniest things I sold a 900 pound block of titanium to the Tomahawk war missile manufacturer in Huntsville, Alabama, where they carved out the warhead.

All the circuitry and the whole thing. So I was for a long time, could never get out of my head that I wanted to own a restaurant. No idea. It just was, it was pervasive. Like never could get it out of my head. And I was leaving a missile cop. 

Josh Sharkey [00:04:00]:

Was there like a bunch of restaurants in your town, your family cook? What, why restaurants? 

Dan Latham [00:04:01]:

I tried to trace some of that back. My grandmother and grandfather were, grandfather was a war vet, drove a tank for Patton. He had a victory garden, my grandmother canned. And I mean, she had a room that looked like we could have survived till today. So it was. It's one of those places where just really a very humble upbringing, but that would be the first interactions with food and gardening and just kind of understanding how to take care of yourself or your family. And I don't know that obviously you had some, I've never done the psychoanalysis of it all in the sense of how it came together.

[00:4:34]:

You know, I, I do think about piecing it together in the sense of with my grandfather, who grew up in Mississippi and grandfather was kind of mid central Mississippi and a lot of farms, a lot of, you know, I remember having a pig stick when I grew up, like walking around pig farms and, you know, outdoor pig farms and not really knowing what the hell is going on, getting knocked over, stuff like that. Just a little kid. 

Josh Sharkey [00:04:54]: 

Were those like industrial farms around you? 

Dan Latham [00:04:56]:

No, these, just total local farms and my grandfather knew the guys and we would go pick up fat back. We'd pick up lard for the, for a cookie and things of that nature, just. Very small, no, not industrial at all. We're talking local farms.

[00:05:10]:

So, uh, those are early memories of food and just interacting with food. The path led me to this company was based out of New Orleans, the writer of college lived in New Orleans and this guy was an entrepreneur. He sold metal to all these big ship manufacturers, airplane manufacturers. We actually sold a lot of metal to the booster rocket manufacturer out in East New Orleans. So that was a big part of my early deal. Now, this guy had private tables at Commander's Emeralds, all these great restaurants. So, I started to kind of see this kind of way of life and, and was really more interested in that than what I was doing and just can never get it out of my head. So I was transferred to Atlanta to run the aerospace division. Was working with Gulfstream Boeing, this missile manufacturer I was telling you about, and I left a missile conference one day. I was like, that's it. I'm going to go. I'm going to go figure this out. I did my research, on different schools, figured out the night program at French culinary was probably the best way to kind of do a transition out of what I was doing into something else.

[00:06:05]:

Never really spent a lot of time in New York. My parents didn't travel. I went to New York on my own after college and just tried to research the school and try to figure it out. And that was it. I packed up like I was going to camp and sold everything off and got a one way into New York and enrolled in French culinary and then ended up in student housing down on Henry street in Brooklyn. That was the intro to it all. It happened pretty quick. I had a friend, Sarah Moulton at the Food Network. And so I was able to get onto her crew as a, which is a total rando thing. I didn't know, and I look, I didn't have cable. I'm not, you know, I'm not into, not into food TV at this time at all and not into food TV still today.

[00:06:42]:

But. But it was a great paying job. Freelance cooks at Food Network at that time you know, it was very flexible schedule. They paid pretty well. You could come and go, got in with those guys pretty early and that was my first gig while I was doing the night train training. I responded to an ad in the New York Times for cooks for a restaurant called Babbo. And so I walk in and I meet Andy, I think it's Andy Nusser, who ran Babbo for a long time and then moved over to Casamano. And Andy was very kind, but looked to me like I was crazy, like no, no experience like what those guys were pretty hardcore at the time. He was nice enough to send me on my way, told me to come back a couple of weeks, check in.

[00:07:18]:

So I did, I came back a couple of weeks, there's a guy sitting at the bar and I don't know who he is. And he asked me what I'm doing and I told him I'm looking for Andy and says, Andy's not here. And I'm like, he's like, well, what do you know? What do you want? What do you need? It was Mario. And so Mario looked at my resume and the first thing he saw is that I worked with a Boeing out of Macon, Georgia and his dad's a retired Boeing engineer. And we hit it off from there. We talked about building airplanes. We took a walk. He took me down to Po, showed me the dirt, showed me the dark depths of the basement and put me to work as a prep cook. It was a very fast and furious and, but I mean, an amazing education early on.

Josh Sharkey [00:08:05]:

So you, so you started at Po and then you went to Babbo after, after Po?

Dan Latham [00:08:10]:

I never cooked at Babbo. I mean, I was in and out of there. A lot of made all the salami for Babbo, but you know, Babbo had a very, they had it all wrapped up pretty. I was very intimidated by Babbo too. I got beat up at Po most of the time. I mean, running that place was a three man line and I was young and didn't have the great experience. I wasn't that fast. Like I got to run the line on at Po on Sundays, things of that nature, you know, so Babbo was off limits to me. I mean, I was more of a liability than I was an asset to those guys at the time.

[00:08:38]:

Now, the salami we made was very well received there, and that was kind of my in. Yeah, Studio del Gusto, uh, well, Italian wine merchants and Studio del Gusto opened shortly after Babbo. I think Joe needed a place to store all the wine. They had a huge wine cellar in the, in the basement of that place. I don't know if you ever went there, but... Well, you were there. You got to see the basement. 

Josh Sharkey [00:08:57]: 

Yeah, I think it'd be helpful to have some context here, because this is sort of where, sort of, the genesis of meez ties in a little bit. They created this studio for creating salumi and having private dinners in this really cool wine shop called Taiwan Versace in Union Square. And... I would love to hear like, yeah, how that came to be, how they ended up getting a salumi shop there. And also, yeah, how did you end up working going from Babbo to making all this salumi for all the metallic restaurants? 

Dan Latham [00:09:25]:

That transition’s a little gray in my mind, but I, I really believe that there was a guy named Sergio who ran the place and, you know, and he was the wine broker. He was a Sicilian guy that was very animated and I, I didn't read Joe's book, but I think he gets a better description than Joe's book. But nonetheless, Mario at the time had some momentum with Food Network. I know that Viking built out the studio with all the equipment. Salami production was based on Mario's dad retiring and wanting to open a place in Seattle, which eventually became Salumi, an amazing sandwich shop and cured meats shop in, in, in Seattle. So that was the R&D. Now how all that happened, I think Mario just had a vision. He wanted to make all his own salami for Babbo and for other concepts that were on the table. I think Lupa came next, and then... 

Josh Sharkey [00:10:12]: 

Oto and Eska were sort of quick to follow. 

Dan Latham [00:10:21]: 

Eska, yeah, and Pasternak, and that crew. But, how that was synthesized, I don't know. But, I do remember working with Mario's dad a lot on creating these recipes, and... 

Josh Sharkey [00:10:24]: 

Did his dad come to the studio to help teach you about the recipes? 

Dan Latham [00:10:27]: 

He was the one who engineered the whole room. It was the most complex... Humidifier and dehumidifier had ever seen me had a, it basically looked like I was monitoring nuclear waste or something at the moment. Remember that chart? I don't know if you remember, there was an ink driven chart on the outside that would track the humidity of the room, temperature of the room. And you had to and that was part of the HACCP plan. We had to keep that as documentation of what was going on in that room at all time.

Josh Sharkey [00:10:54]:

Yeah.

Dan Latham: [00:10:55]: 

So he set all that up. Now he was there every now and then to work with recipes and all, but you know, not a huge hands on. Valter Scarbolo. I don't know if you remember Valter, but he brought in his butchers from, from Udine. To where the Bastianich vineyards are and Valter Scarbolo is one of the, he's a character for sure, but he's, some of the most amazing just hard salami that I've ever had in my life. And so his guys came in and did most of the core training on how to do the production there. Yeah.

Josh Sharkey [00:11:23]:

I was going to say, I think by the time I got there, you were pretty dialed in, like you were running the whole shop. I think you were the only one I saw there most of the time in the kitchen.

Dan Latham [00:11:32]:

Oh, I had a pretty good crew there. You know, it was more part time crew that came in. We did all kind of different wine events. A lot of finance guys came in and would rent that room. A lot, and a lot of wine brokers are just people that were big into wine would come and rent the room, but mainly finance guys would come. And, Shut that place down, and have private wine dinners. 

Josh Sharkey [00:11:48]:

Yeah. 

Dan Latham [00:11:23]:

I was in charge of all the dinners and we'd have a crew that would come in and do service. I had a prep crew. I had one or two guys who would help with salami. But no, I ran the majority of that by myself for a long, for a couple of years. 

Josh Sharkey [00:11:59]:

Yeah. 

Dan Latham [00:12:00]:

Which was a great setup. It fit my personality pretty well. As a young, curious cook, the study of oil and wine, as I always say, is a pretty good way to go.

Josh Sharkey [00:12:07]:

I remember they just like, it's sort of a dream job. 

Dan Latham [00:12:10]:

It was a dream job, yeah. Besides dealing with some of the personalities on, you know, that. But some of those guys, Mario was always a very cool guy to me, Sergio Joe, or, you know, they were, they had their own things, you know, I mean, those guys are, they're pretty hard rollers as it is, and I just kept my head down, there was not much to it, it was just, it was, but it was a great job, it wasn't that day to day grind Of the restaurant as I've aged, you know, and kind of look back on owning a restaurant, running restaurants, being in restaurants, like the day to day of restaurants is complicated for me. Like, I don't know what it is, but it just over time grinds me out and I don't know, I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie. So I think that's a, it's not a very good match for my personality, but that was a great, it was a great place to be. 

Josh Sharkey [00:12:51]: 

Yeah. I remember the first day I got there, one, it was super overwhelming, but the salt and just so many of the things are curing. Lomo, and prosciutto, and coppa, and pancetta and all the different sort of bacterias and things. 

Dan Latham [00:13:04]:

That guanciale, yeah. 

Josh Sharkey [00:13:05]:

Guanciale, I was getting, I remember I would try to reproduce versions of it, at Tabla. I would say in the morning I would come work, for you, for free, learning how to make salumi, and then I would go work, go to tabla around, I don't know, 11 or something to start the regular job, and Floyd would let me like hang all kinds of random meats in the spice room and things like that. There's so much, so many things that you guys were doing that I don't, I didn't see anybody else doing in New York. How much of that training was from Mario's dad and from the team in Italy versus how much you just sort of learned as you were sort of iterating and testing over time in the space?

Dan Latham [00:13:44]:

You know, what was interesting is that those two camps were at odds, right? So Mario's dad was really being the engineer and having to develop a product that was going to be inspected by the USDA. You know, he was very. He was very adamant about curing agents and using, um, sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite. Well, number one it's required by the USDA and number two, it's the safest way to do it. We, on the other hand, working with the Italians, that's not part of the ingredient bank. Like that's not, it's kind of a no, no. Like the, you know, those guys from Udine come in and they've got great salt. They've got garlic, they've got white wine. They're, they used a little bit of powdered vitamin C. Which the color would kind of activate some and help, but that was it, you know, a little bit of pepper. There was always some, you know, fresh herbs that were involved, like when we would make the Lardo or put the Lardo under cure, but you know, that, that's pretty much it.

[00:14:35]:

There was kind of always this debate, you know, and it wasn't really a debate because Mario's dad was in charge of it. And, you know, so we had to use the pink salt in order to make it. So we always kind of had two books. We'd always have this group here that was fermenting with no, no curing agents and this one with curing agents. And, you know, it was an interesting way to kind of see how they would play out. Obviously the, you know, the salamis that we would ferment let's just say hard salami that we would ferment with the curing agents were always very standard. The emulsifications in the curing, you know, the, what I call the particle definition of the salami was always very nice. And, you know, you get, you get the great color and all of these things were, so it definitely has its place to just using salt and time. You, you could have some pockets you can, you know, that might not cure completely. So there was always kind of a variable, but for me, the flavor component of not using curing agents and, and just kind of the purity of it was always the goal.

Josh Sharkey [00:15:30]: 

Yeah. 

Dan Latham [00:15:31]:

You know, as I continued on and, and opened a place in Mississippi, I, I continued to use a little bit of curing agents because I had to, I had to conform. I had to. You know, I had a state inspected butcher shop where I made all the salami. So I was still under a state inspection and that was required as well. But, you know, I, with all my pancettas and guanciale and things of that nature, I never used it in the sense because it was always a long dry cure and I can manage. I could always manage the bacteria pretty well that way, just with salt. 

Josh Sharkey [00:16:00]:

You said they used really, really nice salt. What kind of salt did they use?

Dan Latham [00:16:03]:

Uh, you know, just great, just good sea salt, you know, like coarse, not super coarse, but just a really nice, you know, not even like, almost like a Maldon. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Maldon, I think it's kind of processed, it's bleached, something's, it's bleached out or something, but I do like the texture of it, something that would dissolve pretty easily, but the minerality of it all was, you know, those, uh, those kind of natural lacturian nitrates that you would find. And in that, that was the whole idea is this, the sea salt would allow you to, would have enough components of the, of the curing agents to do it. So that was, you know, some, some people say use celery seed or celery salts or some kind of components of that. And I've played around with that, but never really liked the flavor components of it, but just a great sea salt.

Josh Sharkey [00:16:45]:

For anybody that isn't aware of the types of curing salts, because you have Intercure number one and Intercure number two. Why would you use number one versus number two in terms of the curing salts if you're going to use, if you're going to use a curing salt? 

Dan Latham [00:16:59]:

Number one is a faster cure. Number two is a lot, it's like a, it's like a time release Tylenol is kind of the way I would describe it. You know, so it's a, it's more, it's a longer acting. 

Josh Sharkey [00:17:09]:

For harder salamis, right? Aged, 

Dan Latham [00:17:11]: 

Yeah. So if you need something to, yeah, the hard salami that might take two, two months, something of that nature to, to truly cure, you know, guanciale on the other hand could take six weeks to eight weeks to really kind of get the liquid out of, you know, to get the water out of the product and, and set it properly. But the, you know, that's the way I look at those, those two products. 

Josh Sharkey [00:17:31]:

And when they're using just naturals, like just using salt and no curing agents, is that always sort of inoculated with some sort of bacteria as well? 

Dan Latham [00:11:23]:

Well, there's never an inoculation really, it's, you know, the fermentation side of things, meaning hold it, you know, we would hold the product. Let's just say, you know, continuing down the road on hard salami, holding the product anywhere between 40 and 60 degrees for a day or two in order to really get the fermentation. Yeah. So yes. That. Using, so the Italians would never do this, but part of what Armandino Batali would use was the milk, it's like a dextrose or a milk solid that would ferment and that was kind of the lactic fermentation that would start and it would be part of that stage when we were holding it at a, like I said, 50 to 60 degrees for a day or two, you know, until we got to a certain pH and then we would be able to go hang it. And, you know that's a very particular using an auto sham or using some type of device that can hold that temperature properly in order to, to make it, you know, and if it got out of temp, you know, if it got too hot that it would cook it, if it was too cold, it would never really activate. So it was very, you know, it's always just this moment where you really, having to trust it. But the Italians would just leave it out, right. They would. Like we left out multiple, when they would be in town, if they felt the meat was too cold, they would just leave it out on the table overnight and just be like, we'll, we'll deal with it when we get back in the morning. Their ideas about it were radically different from how we understand things or not understand, but how we have to manage things differently in the United States.

[00:19:05]:

We had a pig farm up in Vermont, massive animals that we would, that they brought in and talking, you know, 400 pound kill weights, things of that nature. And these guys were very particular about the temperature of the meat when they wanted, when they were butchering it and, it was too cold when they first arrived. So we just left them, you know, we left these massive carcasses out on the tables overnight, you know, while we went to, uh, find the local tavern or whatever they wanted to get into that night. And then come back in and get back after it. Anyway, sidebar. 

Josh Sharkey [00:19:36]:

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot harder to do that in the city, especially like New York city.

Dan Latham [00:19:41]:

Right.

Josh Sharkey [00:19:42]:

It's a familiar environment, visiting, um. Yeah, we were visiting near Vermont like Pio Tosini prosciutto and they would just have the windows open and we would just have the air from the mountains coming in and blowing all the.. But I imagine that's probably why we don't make as much salami in restaurants as you're doing. 

Dan Latham [00:19:57]: 

Well, it's true. I think, you know, I think what was interesting to me, and, and this kind of goes back to that early memory of being on these pig farms is that, they're, the southerners have always cured hams and, but they're heavily salted and there's not a lot of deal. There's not a lot of, there's not a microclimate in the South, really. You know, you might find them in Kentucky and Tennessee up in the mountains in the Appalachian. So as I started down this path, I started to see the similarities of Italian and Southern cookery, mainly because of a regional the fact in the sense of the communities and, and everybody having their own kind of ways of dealing with work and, and you know, how they would curate or whether they did fat back or not, or whether they did salted bellies or it just, so these, these different ways and it's all preservation and all kind of sustenance and, and how to manage the lack of food in the, in the early days before the industrialized system was rolled out for us.

Josh Sharkey [00:20:50]:

Do you have any cuts or like that are your favorite to make or to eat? 

Dan Latham [00:20:55]:

Guanciale. I go back to time and time again, I can't get away from it. I mean, Bucatini Amatriciana is one of my favorite things in the world. And I just can't, I can't stop. It's one of those now my doctor, my heart doctor might tell you differently that I need to, but you know, it's, uh, 

Josh Sharkey [00:21:13]:

I think I actually learned how to make Bucatini Amatriciana from you one of the first weeks I was there. I remember you slicing guanciale and never heard what I didn't know amatriciana was. 

Dan Latham [00:21:25]:

Right. 

Josh Sharkey [00:21:26]:

Super simple pasta,

Dan Latham [00:21:27]:  

It is. 

Josh Sharkey [00:21:13]: 

But I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I ever saw it. 

Dan Latham [00:21:30]:

You know, people complicate it, but it really is just guanciale, grape tomato, and a little red chili flake and that might be an upper debate among some people as well. You know, I think some people add onion and garlic. It's kind of like what the interpretations of carbonara would be. 

Josh Sharkey [00:21:45]:

What makes a great guanciale? Like what  in terms of process and type, or type of pig? 

Dan Latham [00:21:52]:

Well, obviously fat content, but also making sure you have the right fat lean, lean content, or uh, ratios together, you know, so if you've ever cut open a pig jowl, you know that there's a, there's a large kind of, leaner portion in the middle of it. So trimming it properly to make sure it's also got all these nodules. I don't want to be too graphic, but it's got all these nodules and kind of, it's just things that need to be trimmed away. So one, making sure that you can get the big jowl that as long as it can be trimmed up and it's pretty lean and, it's not super fatty, but I think also just time, like let it, letting it really get to the point to where most of the liquid has come out of the tissue. We've really got a firm product. It's not, if you slice it and it's still rubbery and it doesn't have any resistance, so those are those components that for me are really important to make sure that that's just been dried properly. And, you know, it can go anywhere from two months at three months to really achieve the right flavor.

Josh Sharkey [00:22:49]:

Have you ever seen it smoked? 

Dan Latham [00:22:50]: 

Yeah, I have. Yeah. Don't know where, but I remember seeing that at some point. Yeah. It's a lot like spec, you know, the smoked prosciutto, but yeah, it has been now that would be a, probably a violation of many, many codes smoking guanciale for Amatriciana. But anyway, I don't think you can do that, but no, I have seen that and it would be, it's a good product for sure.

Josh Sharkey [00:23:13]:

What else do you use for guanciale other than Amatriciana? 

Dan Latham [00:21:16]:

Uh, carbonara, not pancetta. Not pancetta or bacon in the traditional sense.

Josh Sharkey [00:23:21]:

Are you still making any cured meats today? 

Dan Latham [00:23:22]:

No, I'm not. I many years ago, stopped, you know, just kind of after L and M's, which, we had our own, so we, we had our own curing room and had a, and then I had that butcher shop I was talking to you about. After that really just kind of started to transition out of that a little bit, my desires for it and, and just, kind of, I didn't grow out of it, but I just, the complexity of it, the, I think we were talking earlier about like, why don't more restaurants do it and it's space, time, education, knowledge, passive plans. It's, it's a complex deal. Now with St. Leo, what we're doing is we're dry curing bellies and pork jowls for seven days and then we're doing, we're slow roasting. So, it's a, it's a version that I like in the sense that it's a, it doesn't take up as much space. It allows the concept to have a unique flavor profile. When the belly they use for pizza, you know, the pig jowl that we use, I don't call it guanciale, but we call it dry cured jowl and we use it for the carbonara. We use it for different specials and, and for, for pizza toppings. So it allows the company to have a unique product without having to dedicate too much space or time or deal with hassle plans and. Uh, so that allows it, that, that's where I've gone. 

Josh Sharkey [00:24:37]:

So you cure it and then you're just like slow roasting it and then it holds pretty well?

Dan Latham [00:24:33]: 

Yeah, just so it gets, we slow roast it like 225 degrees for multiple, multiple hours. So it's super soft and gets a nice color and then, they're set and so they can, we've got a pretty good 14 day shelf life on them or even longer. And then we can just slice it when, when needed from that point, render out, render out the belly for pizza, render it out for the carbonara.

Josh Sharkey [00:25:05]:

It's almost like, like, like in the style of ham.

Dan Latham [00:21:13]:

A little bit. Yeah.

Josh Sharkey [00:25:09]:

Is it a wet cure or dry cure that you do on those? 

Dan Latham [00:25:10]:

Dry cure. 

Josh Sharkey [00:25:11]:

Gotcha. 

Dan Latham [00:25:12]: 

Yeah, just a good dry, dry rub. And that goes into some of the philosophy I use with consulting on trying to, how to create unique flavor profiles for companies and in different restaurants. Like thinking about what makes something unique, what makes a concept unique, what makes your food different. In this world today where there's so much static on the market and there's so many different things, you know, I think thinking about consumer behavior and what, what can trigger someone to think, wow, I've never really, what is that or what, what is that flavor? Or what is that technique on that, you know? So I think about those types of things a lot. I read a book called the Dorito Effect. Mark Schatzker? Anyway, Mark, what was his name? Anyway, the author of that. But the Dorito Effect had a huge, huge effect on my life in the sense of. He did a huge study on how synthetics were introduced into the food world. And not only does it follow a Frito Lay executive on creating the taco Dorito, but he goes into the story of how vanillin was created by the McCormick company, you know, and I don't remember the year, but there was a civil war in Madagascar where they were bringing all their vanilla out of, so they were, they were shut out of the vanilla market.

[00:26:21]:

So they created a machine that could mimic flavors in nature. And so they were able to create all the different synthetic, synthetic compounds for, for vanilla. And vanillin was born, vanilla extract. And there's not one piece of vanilla, there's not one ounce of vanilla in any of the vanillin. It was a pretty amazing way to, to mimic the flavor and, turned out to be an amazing product for them. Now the flip side is that it introduces us to synthetics and separates us from the plant world. At which the outcomes are, I think we're still in the middle of trying to figure that out. You know, I think we're seeing the outcomes of that now, but, and it's positive or not negativel. It depends on where you stand on that, but I'm, I'd like to live more in the natural world. I'll just leave it at that. 

Josh Sharkey [00:27:09]:

What's your take on synthetic casing versus natural casing? 

Dan Latham [00:27:10]:

I'm not a fan. I, you know, I think it has an application here and there, but I, I'm not a fan.

I think natural casings are the way to go. I think I've tried synthetic casings. For large format salamis that had its place, and they're easier to use. They're cheaper. They don't gross everybody out, but they're, yeah, they're just not, they don't breathe as well. You know, I never enjoyed working with them.

Josh Sharkey [00:27:37]: 

Yeah. I feel like the only time they're really helpful is things like hot dogs where, you know? 

Dan Latham [00:27:45]:

That's a good point. Yeah, for sure. That's a very good point. 

Josh Sharkey [00:27:48]:

Are there any charcuterie and I'm sorry, I keep jamming on all this charcuterie stuff. 

Dan Latham [00:21:13]:

Why not? Yeah

Josh Sharkey [00:27:52]:

I lost his notebook. I still have learned. I've tried to recoup a lot of this knowledge over time, but

Dan Latham [00:27:58]:

Yeah.

Josh Sharkey [00:28:00]:

I'm always fascinated by all the little intricacies. But are there any producers today that you think are doing it really well at an industrial scale? 

Dan Latham [00:28:07]: 

I really appreciate and love Paul Bertoli from Fra’ Mani. He's got a place in Berkeley that I just, I got an early intro to him and Through Bill Niman and was able to tour his facility really early on when they were getting cranked up and was blown away just by his, he's a master and he's a, not only a master at the recipe level, but what he's been able to do on a scale is very impressive. And the product is in my opinion, just super delicious and one of the best in the United States for prosciutto La Quercia and Iowa Herb Eckhouse, I think is another master. He was an old Monsanto guy and he spent a lot of time in Italy looking at the facilities we were talking about. And you know, I think he was able to really mimic what he did in his factory was mimic the four seasons of Parma with humidity and temperature. Now he doesn't have the mountain air coming through and those types of components of a microclimate, but he really, he nailed it. You know, he makes some really delicious food. Now he is also really particular about his sourcing and where his picks come from and you know, Paul does the same. So those two would be my American, my American heros. 

Josh Sharkey [00:29:18]: 

Well, Paul's book, Cooking by Hand, is, you know, it's that, sort of the gold standard for... 

Dan Latham [00:29:19]: 

Yeah. I mean... So, those are my two heroes in the salami world. I was able to tour Iowa. My first introduction to it all was Bill Niman, and I don't know if you know Bill, but Bill had Niman Ranch for a long, long time, and farmed her out, and…

Josh Sharkey [00:29:34]: 

He sold it, right? 

Dan Latham [00:29:35]: 

Yeah, he did, um... Private equity back in the mid nineties. And when he did sell it, he ended up in Mississippi with a couple of people, the Southern Foodways Alliance, and, you know, walks through the door at my butcher shop one, one day. And he was on a quest to look at and possibly revitalize Southern pig farms. And we hit it off and really just had a great time together and just understanding, you know, he was really the first guy that brought me into animal welfare and animal husbandry and, you know, Niman Ranch had an amazing protocol for feed and breeds and, you know, just a, he unlocked the whole world for me in the sense of how to understand what we're doing with animals.

[00:30:15]: 

He took me on a tour of Iowa and what, what I mean by a tour is that we got to see the whole gamut, the factory farms, the, the organic farms, and, you know, looking at the comparisons with massive scale, uh, like bacon and hot dog producers. And then people like Herb and La Quercia and then going out to see Paul, so, really we were in Iowa to see Paul's producers, but, and then made it over to Berkeley. But that insight was, It was life changing. And understanding what we are doing on scale with animal production and how, how are we going to manage? And this was back in the nineties. So where we've come today is even more complex. Yeah, Niman Ranch got sold. He's got a farm in Bolinas, California that, He built, he acquired it right in the 60s. He's from a grocery family like Minnesota or something, something like that. Anyway, he ended up in Belenus in the late 60s and started farming, raising a few animals, got in with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. A few of those types in the California scene at those times, it just really became well known for his, his attention to the animal, you know, and that, that really was his ethos and still is today.

[00:31:31]: 

The guy's just, you know, his unbelievable wealth of knowledge and just the kindest individual you've ever met in your life and, really knows what he's doing with when, when it comes to grasping animals. That trip in Iowa was one of those things when you think about life changing moments in food, that was one of them. And anyway, he's a special guy in my life. 

Josh Sharkey [00:31:54]: 

This podcast is brought to you by meez, the culinary operating system for food professionals. As a chef and restaurant owner for the past 20 years, I was frustrated that the only technology that we had in the kitchen was financial or inventory software. Those are important, but they don't address the actual process of cooking, training, collaboration and consistent execution. So I decided if it didn't exist, I'd do my best to get it built, so that the current and next generation of culinary pros have a digital tool dedicated to their craft. If you're a chef, mixologist, operator, or generally if you manage recipes intended for professional kitchens. meez is built just for you. Organize, share, prep, and scale your recipes like never before. And get laser accurate food costs and nutrition analysis faster than you could imagine. Learn more at www.getmeez.com

Josh Sharkey [00:32:43]: 

We learned a lot about animal husbandry and sustainable farming and raising these animals. Like, what are some of the biggest takeaways? And then what's... Where are we at today?

Dan Latham [00:32:51]: 

It's a huge subject. Let's start where, where I think we are today. I think that we kill a lot of animals for a lot, you know, we have factory farming and where we are today. And that is not a sustainable model in my opinion, I think it's run by huge corporate conglomerates and. But it's necessary in order to feed the masses. I've gotten to the point where I'm, I'm looking at, I totally understand why we have what we have and what we're dealing with and you know, what, but the dominion over animals and the destruction of it all and the destruction of the environment and what we're dealing with is, is pretty horrific. And if you've ever been into a major large slaughterhouse, you'll understand that it is not a sustainable model over time. I think it's been able to exist through subsidies and exist because the demand is there. What we have to deal with is consumer behavior. 

[00:33:39]: 

Now moving to a model of more regenerative practices and working with animals and going back to a more local agrarian world that we had before the industrialization after world war two is that it's complex, but the consumer behaviors are not there anymore. The consumer is, it goes to the synthetics. I believe that the consumer's been, not having been hoodwinked. They're not, they still have free will. They still have the choices to make on what they want to consume. But fat, salt, all of the above has created an addicted population that is really into fast, cheap meat. They don't fully understand what it goes into the whole production of animals and the slaughter of these animals. You know, we're killing billions of animals annually in order to fuel in my opinion, really bad diets and really, we're, we're in trouble with that. So I think that there is some place we're going to have to find some compromises between both camps. I know that I'm not, I'm not a perfect consumer and I know that becoming a perfect consumer is very complex. How do you get people to kind of change the way they think about consuming animals and meat? Um, you know, as I've aged, I don't eat as much red meat as I used to. And I try to think about that, but I also, my insight into it is very, very different. I've seen all of it and I know what it takes to raise them.I know what it takes to kill them. I know what it takes to package them and then move that, move it around. it's a pretty complex system, but 

Josh Sharkey [00:35:08]: 

Well, I mean, what are the biggest differences between massive scaled industrial farming, for example, of a pig and slaughtering that to, you know, the ideal state that someone like Bill Niman would recommend?

Dan Latham [00:35:22]: 

I think that when you understand how, in an industrial manner, how they're raised and how they're, it just becomes a number, man. You know, if you've ever been in a large pig facility, it's hell on earth. It's something very, very difficult to describe in the sense of, it's a visceral, it's a very visceral experience in the sense of like, it's not even real in my, you know, and it's hard to kind of explain here, but not only the smell, but The homogeny of the animals and sense of how everything's been bred to be the same, it's like Frankenmeat, man. I mean, it's like, it's very, very, I don't know if you've ever seen a load of chickens going down the highway, but you know, they're all very much, half of them don't have feathers. They all look like shit. They're all stressed out. You know? So it's this industrial system. It takes nothing into account of life or nature. It's just a number and it's just to get it through the system in order to get it processed, just put it in a bag and get it out to the market. Right. 

[00:36:19]: 

The other side of it is a very caring situation to where it's not the animal, it's the process, right? So it's, uh, the animals never leave the farm. Ideally, the abattoir would be close to the farm or on the farm. You know, there's a great example down in South Georgia here called White Oak Pastures where he partnered with Whole Foods. They built an abattoir on the farm now. It can't manage his capacity, so he has to use outside slaughter and that's where we get into this tricky situation of the bottleneck of slaughter. But when I go through the slaughter with his people in his group, I don't know how to explain it except that there's a care for the animal. There's actually a respect for that life. Everybody on that floor is attached to that animal and they know it. And so the community builds around this production model. And so they all understand it. So there's just a respect for life and a disregard for life on this side. So once you see the two operations side by side, It's real easy to kind of say, understand, in my opinion, we're in trouble. You know, we've lost this complete disregard for the animal and what it really means to take it from, from birth to life and consumption.

Josh Sharkey [00:37:34]: 

I've only ever seen the small scale things like, you know, righteous up organics up here in upstate and things. I've never seen one of these industrial barns, but terrified to see what it looks like. Do you think that there's more small scale farming happening? Is that growing or is it seeding? 

Dan Latham [00:37:50]: 

I do. I think it's very challenging. I think that, you know, by design, most of the slaughter was, the biggest bottleneck is slaughter in these, so there's a lot of people raising animals and that are really interested in regenerative agriculture. Rebuilding kind of the soil and rebuilding these communities around it. And that's all well and good, but until you go try to figure out how to get it killed and processed, and you know, we've been going down this path of we being my partner, I've started a new company called Able Pastors, which is animals benefiting local economies. And, and we're just dipping our toe into kind of like, how do we come more involved in working to help fuel this regenerative movement and really kind of think about how do we get back to more of an agrarian society with local slaughter and things of this nature. And we've been doing it for years, but the slaughter component is such a problem. It's not done effectively. It's usually very expensive. There's backlogs. The farmers just don't have the access. So you know, it creates these bottlenecks and creates this kind of really major price difference between commodity and local. That most of the consumers can't absorb. I think that there are more well intended individuals in the space that are really pushing to, to bring, you know, if you look at your local farmers markets, I buy from, from multiple different people. And the number one complaint is just backlog and slaughter, or this is happening because, you know, I think raising animals and, and being regenerative and these things are, they're not easy, but they're pretty well established on how to do it. And if you've got your, your mind around it, raising animals can be pretty easy now, then it just becomes this, we're just this bureaucracy of how to get product to market.

[00:39:38]: 

They're great groups. I think the Savory Institute with their new land to market initiative is really helping. I think that there are, we're starting to see more and more investments in regional slaughterhouses. So I think that we're onto something. I think it's just a very incremental type of change. It's like turning a tanker ship or something, you know, it's, it's just like very slow. You know, I've had my toe in this from the beginning from when I left New York and, and opened L and M's and had, we had multiple pig farms. I worked with Jim and Nick's big barbecue chain down in the South that we had pigs on farms across Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, working with the Amish and trying to make that work. But the slaughter was just, it's horrific. I mean, you're dealing with guys that just, you've got one or two guys that know how to do it. They just, it's very complex. It doesn't, they just don't have the right packing facilities. A lot of them are not USDA, so you can't move product across state lines, things of that nature. 

Josh Sharkey [00:40:36]: 

So, is there anyone trying to disrupt the slaughterhouse part of the equation? 

Dan Latham [00:40:40]: 

That's a good question. I don't know, right off the top of my head, I don't, I couldn't name, I think that there are collectives that I know of. There's one big group out of creating one in my neck of the woods at the Alabama Georgia border. There's a new slaughterhouse coming on board. So I think there are, I think there are a few people that are. And it's not only capital, but it's also government. You have to be well connected or with the right people in the USDA and these, in these communities in order to get it done. There are signs of life. I think that's definitely, it's going in the right direction. But again, the consumer behavior. If that changes and all of a sudden everybody's like, I'm gonna stop eating commodity chicken from whatever grocery store you want to use, then things could shift, right? 

[00:41:21]: 

So I think that's a bigger process or a bigger program, you know, that needs to be dealt with. And I don't know how you do it. Changing consumer behaviors is a fascinating study. I don't know, I don't know how we do it at this point to where, you know, food is super cheap. Convenient, fast food is rampant. You know, I'm not knocking fast food. It has its place, but, Does it? I mean, what are we doing? I think that restaurants have the ability to, to really be change agents because they're just on the ground. And that's the first point of interaction. And if we have incremental changes there, if most of these restaurants start to, I'm not talking fast food, I'm talking just got mom and pops. If everybody starts to have a little bit of a local spend that part of what I try to help restaurants do is dedicate a portion of the budget to local spend, whether it's weekly or monthly, whatever you can do to mainly vegetables. If you can get into buying ground beef or ground lamb, ground chicken, ground pork from your local guys, that's a good way to do it. Make a bolognese that way, or  just start with 150 bucks a week, whatever it is in order to create a local spend and start to build those relationships and get some of the money back into the community.

[00:42:36]: 

It helps, I think, talking about another, another group out of right south of Memphis called Home Place Pastures. They just built an abattoir on their farm and are really growing. They're doing well too. They're growing and getting momentum and, but man, you know, it's a, it's a beat down on those guys capital wise and trying to find the right labor to look working in a slaughterhouse. You think working in a restaurant is a beat down? Think about the slaughterhouse life. I mean, dude, you go into these large slaughterhouses and there's one person per muscle. I mean, you've got carcasses going around and there's tens of thousands of carcasses going down a line. You got one guy knocking out one muscle making a cut and it is, it's a horrific worksite. 

Josh Sharkey [00:43:19]: 

The idea of effectuating changes with something so scaled seems impossible, but I wonder if, the larger groups like McDonald's or even like Chick fil A had some sort of decentralization policy that they started to use, kind of like how Whole Foods does where, each region of Whole Foods is sort of decentralized and how it's run. And if McDonald's, I mean, they have a capital, they said, okay, just let's do a test market in Memphis and have a localized version of McDonald's where they're not using the, everything that's sort of standardized. 

Dan Latham [00:43:52]: 

What I see in that is you’ll see initiatives from especially I’ve seen it with Tyson, and I've seen it with Cargill. They're investing in plant based, they're investing in different types of products. Well, when I mean plant based, you'll see the Tyson's invested in plant based chicken nuggets, things of this nature. That doesn't really necessarily deal with the slaughter that we're talking about, but I do believe it's a lot like Shell investing in solar, right? They're having to really manage how they're perceived. I think if you're looking at ESG scores and we're talking about if capital is going to be available to these guys, they're going to have to get on board with some of the more modern ways of doing business. And I think you're definitely going to see that now, whether they want to invest in some local slaughter, I don't know, but it could be interesting in order for them. I think regenerative is a word. 

Josh Sharkey [00:44:46]: 

How do you define that? How do you define regenerative? 

Dan Latham [00:44:48]: 

Personally, it's a method that is used on farms. I think about it in the way that animals are used to improve topsoil. And so, it's a regenerative methods of working animals. It's a rotational grazing method that allows for the topsoil to be... reignited and into, into a point to where natural grasses and the natural flora can come back through the turning of the soil, the introduction of animal waste into the soil. It's just a constant working of the soil. Now you're allowing the soil to be worked. You're adding to the topsoil and you're regenerating natural, rebuilding the natural, whether it's Savannah in your area, whatever region you're in. Going back to White Oak Pastures, that farm went fully organic, meaning no pesticides, no herbicides in 1993.

At that point, they do it and they measure it in inches of topsoil. So they had, let's just say they had one inch of topsoil when they started. Today they have five, you know, so it's, what happens when you do that is you have water retention, you have the natural grasslands come back, you have, but the water retention is the most important component of this. And so, you know, we're, we're dealing in a world of climate hysteria right now in the sense of what are we going to do about it? Well, one of the biggest things is that we can. Use these animals to restore the topsoil properly in order to retain more water and have climate stability. 

[00:46:14]: 

That's the way I look at regenerative farming, is using animals in order to restore topsoil properly. That hooved animals have been on the planet well before we even thought about being here, and hooved animals were a major component of how to stabilize climate for so long. If you look at Allan Savory and his work at the Savory Institute, they've turned some very crazy, they call it the desertification of land. I mean, they've turned some crazy deserts into beautiful oases by massive herds of animals. And so animals aren't the problem, our processes are, and the way we're dealing with and how we're doing it. So I think about regenerative that way. I think it's a, you know, it's, it's using the life cycles, nature cycles, and, water, carbon, all properly in order to generate food. And if you can have a thoughtful regenerative nature to it, then we're in a better place. 

Josh Sharkey [00:47:07]: 

Yeah. Well, you, and you mentioned plant based, but curious, it's like there's been this over index on getting plant based products because of how industrialized animal farming has become? And if there was another end of the spectrum, like we're not going to be interacting with animals at all as it is really sort of food system. But I wondered if this was able to be improved and there was more regenerative farming and there was more small farms that we would actually find a nice place in the middle where there wasn't such a, to your point like this, almost like this war on eating meat.

Dan Latham [00:47:39]: 

Well, I think there is a camp that there's a war on nature, you know. I think that there's a lot of capital that's been invested in plant based and if plant based is really plant based, then yes, I can get on board. But when it's, when it's frankenfood and it's heavily chemically laden or just overly salted, it's, it's not, it's not the way to go in my opinion. There's plenty of ways to make a veggie burger with mushrooms and quinoa and different components, you know, lentils versus mass subsidized soybean, fermented soybean. 

Josh Sharkey [00:48:13]: 

I have to imagine when you're growing acres and acres and acres and acres of soybean that everything else, there's probably a bunch of pesticides that are killing everything else other than the soybeans. I want to sort of wrap up here with a little bit of like how you're helping small restaurants in your area. And then I want to touch a little bit on some fly flushing.

Dan Latham [00:48:33]: 

That's the most important, we should have started with all of that. My philosophy is... Simplify, I work a lot with startups. So if you're a startup organization and working with us, we're really about putting systems in place. So when you open, everything is costed properly. Obviously meez comes into play here and really has been a great tool for us on that. We hand over a suite of tools in order for you to operate your restaurant. So your inventory is all ready to go. Your menus cost is out. You've got a recipe database. It's functional, your vendor maintenance Is in place and so that's a big part of our startup tool we use and I want to hand it off to the ownership and to the, or to the management and. A lot of times we'll stay on board and, you know, like St. Leo, I've been there seven years, right? So we have a monthly retainer that we keep the recipe database up. We do six menu changes a year. Those are the core fundamentals. Now if you have a triage situation, I've got a team of chefs that can come with me and we can really help. So there's just kind of, those are layered services. Triage means like your food cost is completely out of whack. You don't know what's going on, your supply chains really been, you just don't know. Right. So we come in and kind of help organize all of those things. Get, get it into the right place. Those are the main functions. I think how, how much of this can you get into, you know, help people if they're interested in working more with local, help them get into the local farmer's markets understand.

[00:49:55]: 

Like look, running a restaurant and using local can be complex. You gotta be pretty flexible with your menu. You gotta kind of know what you're doing with the product. Things like pizza, hamburgers, those are great components because they, you can use a ton of arugula for a pizza topping. You can use eggplant for pizza topping, you know, so you can buy five pounds and go a long way on pizza. So it's an easy way to do it. That's the long and short of it, man. We're really about using data to help you with menu strategy. We look at a lot of your sales. We try to help just simplify and bring some calm to your chaos in a lot of ways. 

Josh Sharkey [00:50:29]: 

What are the biggest struggles that you're seeing with these restaurants when you come on board, like, are there any common themes around things that they have the biggest challenge?

Dan Latham [00:50:37]: 

Well, I mean, since COVID it's been labor and not just labor costs, but finding people that are interested in cooking and that have the curiosity. I think those early days in New York, we, I think watching Wiley Defresne, one of your podcasts, you know, talking about the crazy curiosity among cooks and that really resonated that I think, we all grew up in that time where we're all very curious and open learners and I think that's a big miss right now where, and we're not seeing that. So finding competent and, or just people that really care and want to learn something, obviously inflationary pressures have caused a major concern among a lot of these restaurants, especially fast casual, where the margins are already super tight on how to just really dial it in and get the kind of understand how to deal with it. Cause it's not just core food costs. It's paper costs. It's, I mean, everything across the board has been up for now for hell, we're probably in almost two years now. So those are the two main components that we really work on. 

Josh Sharkey [00:51:34]: 

Do you find that when you, when you start working with a restaurant that they have they're aware of their actual food costs?

Dan Latham [00:51:43]: 

Crazy enough? No, you know, it's not, it's kind of nuts to me, but not really not to the granular level that it should be. What I mean by that is like what everything on that play cost and the yield components of everything in that, and obviously that takes years and years of kind of just understanding what you're doing, but no, they don't. I think that's a, we've been able to save a lot of companies money in the sense of just by organization of the data and getting the menu price properly. Yeah. That's a big part of what we do. 

Dan Latham [00:52:11]: 

All right. On to fly fishing, because that's the most, that's one of the more important. I love it man,

Josh Sharkey [00:52:18]: 

I didn't know this, but I didn't realize how much you were into it. I didn't know that you changed the name of your business because, because. I want to hear about that, but I also want to hear how do you get into it? 

Dan Latham [00:52:30]: 

Alright so  I've always been a fisherman. You know, I grew up in Mississippi and just, yeah, I had access to fishing. I was always into it. And, you know, it's a big part of my life. When I lived in New York, I met a guy named David Collier, who had a summer house with my wife out in Amagansett. I had no business being in his summer house, I had, I was, let's just make it clear, I'm a cook in New York, I'm not, I don't have a summer house in Amagansett, I'm not, I'm not doing that. Now, I was able to go and hang out a little bit, and so I became friends with this guy Dave. Dave had a boat in Montauk, and it was an expert fly, caster, fisherman, I mean, unbelievable dude. And he needed somebody to help him with the boat. He didn't have anybody to fish with or go out and, you know, work, just kind of manage the boat. I was like, I'll do that all day long. So any free time I had, I was running to Montauk and meeting him and man. There's during the springtime and there's a little place right outside of East Hampton Harbor, there’s a beach called Sammy's beach where I first learned that the striped bass in April and May come in and they eat little sand eels and you can fly fish for them.

[00:53:30]: 

And so, I got on the bow of that boat, started figuring out how to do it. He taught me some basics on casting, presentation, just kind of terminal tackle, all of this stuff and I was hooked. I never looked back and from that day it's been a crazy passion, a crazy... It's a practice in a lot of ways, but also a crazy pursuit. So the fly fishing world breaks down to this. You've got saltwater fly fishing and trout fishing. I do both. I prefer to kind of the bigger game and the bigger tackle for saltwater. I think like you were talking about different show, you know, at the time, like click, you know, Cherry Heffernan, you know, those two were the main guys that I would see. Out there now, I think, Chang’s into it, I think there's a lot of different chefs and we should figure out how to put this into the meez community and figure out a…I don't know what it is about chefs and the fly fishing, because it's all the terminology, the technical side of it, all the knots, all the, with trout fish and the entomology, the, with the bugs and, and, you know.

[00:52:24]: 

Why I changed the name of my company was, I was using all these great guides and their local knowledge and their local, um...Insight to the environments resonated with me on how, what we do and inside restaurants and inside the industry. And so I really felt like Culinary Guide Shop would be a great way to, to kind of have a nod to both. Right. And so I really appreciate what those guides do and how much time they spend in these environments and they know all the little things about, right? So I fish a lot in Louisiana and it's a huge marsh, it's a huge fishery. And so these guys know very much about like particular times of the year, like the migratory patterns, where are they spawning, what are these fish doing? And hey start to really kind of study that and they understand it. And that really resonated with me. So it never ends, man. Once you're in it, it's a lifelong pursuit or it is for me now, 

[00:55:19]: 

How do you get involved? How do you start? I would say that, finding a guide that you, so first of all, if you want to do saltwater, you, you're an amazing place. You can fish anywhere on Long Island. You can go, I mean, during the, during the fall, Brooklyn, there's a great dry bass run that comes through Brooklyn. You can go out and I've got a good number of guides I can hook you up with and you just got to go out there and cast and eventually hook one and then figure it out. You know what I mean? It's just, it's practice, practice, practice on that stuff. A lot of the guides have, they've got all the rods and all the gear that you don't have to. You don't have to gear up early. You can work with a guide to do that and then figure out kind of it. 

Josh Sharkey [00:55:57]: 

Yeah. I didn't even realize it was saltwater. When I think of fly fishing, I think of like creeks and upstate.

Dan Latham [00:56:04]: 

Yeah. And that's, that's, that's a huge part of it. It really is. I'm just not that I'm not really into, I'm just never that I haven't really been into that. I am now I do some trout fishing, but I don't, I'm telling the saltwater, the saltwater fly fishing for me is the way to go. It's just, it's look, bigger tackle, bigger fish. I like that component of it. 

Josh Sharkey [00:56:26]: 

Well, I'm going to hit you up with those guides, but for those of us that can't hit you up, how does somebody get started with fly fishing? 

Dan Latham [00:56:34]: 

Well, I think, decide where you want to go. Saltwater fly fishing is a big job, but I think if that's something you want to pursue, then like I said, go find a saltwater guide and go and tell them, be honest with them. Like, Hey, I'm, I'm a newbie. I need to learn how to do this. And yeah, they're going to. They're going to take you out and you're going to learn how to cast and you're going to hopefully try to get into a situation, especially where you are there's, in the fall, the striped bass just all pot up together. There's massive run. So if you can get close and if you can cast, you can catch one, you know, then you can kind of figure out how to line management, but you know, what are you doing with the rod and all of these components? And eventually you'll end up, you know, into a knot. Now, if you want to start with the trout fishing, the same thing, go find a place you like and. Find a good guide and just start, 

Josh Sharkey [00:57:17]: 

What do you use as bait when you're doing some trout fishing?

Dan Latham [00:57:19]: 

You’re using flies and mimic, whatever the hatch would be that day or grubs or nymphs, or they're, they're, it's just, it's all different flies based on what's happening with whatever it's regional, but it's also just kind of what's the hatch of the day.

Josh Sharkey [00:57:34]: 

Yeah and for those, for the stripers you're using the sand deals?

Dan Latham [00:57:37]: 

At certain times of the year, yes. If not, it's basically like bait fish patterns. So anything looks like a little minnow of some sorts, things like that. But yeah, and then you get into fly time. 

Josh Sharkey [00:57:48]: 

How often are you trying to fish?

Dan Latham [00:57:49]: 

I fish as much as I can now. I don't think the saltwater I can do probably like five to 10 days a year right now, something of that nature, but you know, I've got access to bass ponds. And so I try to fish as much as I can. I mean, if I'm in a place where I take my, like the rods are in the car. 

Josh Sharkey [00:58:05]: 

That's awesome. What's, what's fly time? 

Dan Latham [00:58:06]: 

Well, it just, now you start to get into your whole, you know, you're tying your own flies and you're, so you're tying, you know, I tie all my patterns for that mimic shrimp or bait fish. You can try crab patterns for certain things. And so you're basically just, you're sitting at your desk and you've got a little dice and all your, all your components, the feathers and synthetic materials, and you're tying the flies. So it all becomes, it becomes one. So one with fly fishing, it's tying all your knots. It's creating all the terminal tackle, meaning tying your backing to the reel, your fly line to the backing, all your leaders to the fly line. So, creating all those connections and then eventually figuring out how to tie your fly. Soyou're a hundred percent self sufficient in how it all works, right? It just becomes this crazy, like hobby, passion, whatever you want to call it. I mean, it's just this never ending pursuit. It's a practice in the way I think about it.

Josh Sharkey [00:59:07]: 

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it seems just, it just seems so meditative. 

Dan Latham [00:59:08]: 

Yeah. And so when you're trout fishing, you're out and trout don't, there's an old saying trout don't live in ugly places. And so, you know, you're out in the woods, you're out in the mountains, wherever it might be and it's really never ending. Now I would say that just be prepared. It's like, it's a never ending kind of deal. Sometimes it really works out and you catch a lot of fish, sometimes not, you know, it's, you just need to be prepared that it's a lifelong pursuit. It's not just this moment in time where everything's going to work out and the weather's going to be great. And you're, you know, you're catching fish all the time. Like you have to, I think being an angler or being a fisherman first really helps because it, If that resonates with you, then this is just an extension of it. it just becomes more, you know, it's just more detailed. 

Josh Sharkey [00:59:50]: 

Are your kids fly fishing? 

Dan Latham [00:59:51]: 

They like to fish. They're not into fly fish. One likes to fish. They're not into fly fishing. It's just, they're getting old enough where I think I'm going to try to get one of them to, to try. I started a fly fishing tournament down in Venice, Louisiana every December, the first weekend in December. And this is our third year and it's just a, it's a tournament among friends. I'm trying to grow it into a bigger, and maybe that's where the chefs can all come. We can put that on the meez community. But it's a place where like minded people can come together, really like to fish. And I'll try to get my kid to catch one this year on the fly rod. The coordination and understanding of how the rod works. And it's just, it takes some time on that. 

Josh Sharkey [01:00:35]: 

Yeah. Are there any good online resources for learning more?

Dan Latham [01:00:38]: 

Yes. There's tons of information. I think if you want to learn, Orvis would be a place that has fly fishing schools all over the country, you know, the. I've not ever used one, but that could be a good place to kind of start, especially in New York, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, there's some great trout fishing in that area. And then the saltwater side where you are, I mean, you're two and a half hours from one of the greatest fisheries in the world, which is Montauk. Really unbelievable. When you look at Gardner's Island and Shelter Island and Plum Island and those areas around the tip of Montauk, I mean, unbelievable fishery. All right. Well, we'll leave it there. So yeah, let's get it on the community. I'd love to do that. If we can get a group of people to go. 

Josh Sharkey [01:01:18]: 

I'm going to, I'm going to hit you up about that. 

Dan Latham [01:01:20]: 

Yeah. There's something, there's something about chefs. Like I think this has been on my mind for a while. There's something that must drive chefs to it. I don't know what it is, but it's something about whether it's all the technical side of it, the entomology, or if it's just the, it's just all the knots and all the little things that have to be dealt with with life. There's something about it, but I'd like to get a group together with a group of chefs. Yeah. And maybe it's down in Venice cause you know, the big part of it is cooking at the end of the day. 

Josh Sharkey [01:01:48]:

Yeah, I mean, what, what better than that? You know, catch some, hopefully catch it. 

Dan Latham [01:01:52]: 

Fresh striped bass the day of, you catch it, it's one of the most delicious things in the world.

Josh Sharkey [01:01:57]: 

Oh yeah, man. It's really good. 

Dan Latham [01:01:58]: 

Hey, I really appreciate having me. 

Josh Sharkey [01:01:59]: 

Yeah, this was awesome.

Dan Latham [01:02:00]: 

Yeah, thank you for the time. 

Josh Sharkey [01:02:01]: 

Thanks for tuning into the meez podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Artmir by an old friend, hip hop artist Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast.

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