Gadgetory

what is wd-50 my intention when opening wd-50 was to have a place where I could continue my culinary education where I could dig a little deeper a lot deeper in fact and get a better understanding of the many things that make up cooking the physics the biology the chemistry of cooking to create a place where I could I could continue my culinary education which began many years before and to create a place where my cooks could continue their culinary education we could grow and learn together in these than you've been in there cooking for 22 years about 22 years I've been there in 20 yeah how many restaurants is uh have I worked out you worked at and that's a good question I'd have to go back and count but I started cooking I mean that's professionally I started working in restaurants when I was 11 so I'll in in and out of restaurant since I was a little kid when you open a restaurant do you feel like you're saying you keep deep a deeper understanding I do you feel like you've grown in leaps and bounds since you guys open or is it just more adjusting your original idea both I mean we've stayed true to our original idea but we've grown leaps and bounds meaning our understanding of cooking has deepened too greatly yeah what you know we know more today that we did yesterday and we knew more yesterday we did five years ago and more five years ago than we do etc etc and then you can go back like about I didn't know 30 years 40 years then you get to like the dark ages we're really nobody know what they were doing yeah and we've been cooking for thousands of years without really much of an understanding particularly in our own world as professionals there have been people outside of the culinary world outside of restaurants that have been interested in understanding food and food science and the chemistry that's behind all of that I mean Clarence Birdseye knew more about frozen food in 1919 than you and I do today so that's interesting that we can we can learn something from him and anybody else I mean we're always were you know we realized that we had to go outside of our discipline for the answers to our questions because he just still to this day don't really exist that much within our own field but there are lots of people out there that have some answers that we can benefit from something that's become ever ever present in many restaurants around the world is called an immersion circulator it's kind of like a tiny outboard motor it almost even looks like one that noise is a not a propeller but an impeller so it's taking the water in its heating it and then spitting it back out so it's heating the water to 82.7 degrees what do you guys all looking at any you cook whatever you want but you're controlling the water temperature down to a tenth of a degree so that allows very precise and accurate cooking and this is again this is something that's been in the lab for decades but it just fairly recently found its way into kitchens worldwide and it's become a very popular form of a very controlled cook you feel like they just said I don't know if you read this article Bert the lab ground burger yeah do you think that something like that is taking it too far that's not so interesting to me um I think that there might be some value in the technology of growing an animal that way I mean that I can't say what it is but I'm imagining it may be that that we could benefit from that I get it's almost like cloning sort of yeah um I'm not necessarily interested in a burger that was grown in a lab I mean I that's not compelling to me I like the idea of the cow and the life cycle that it goes through and how it you know how it lives on in it in the way you eat it you know once that animal is slaughtered it still lives on in a way in that you try to you know honor its various parts and cook them in responsible ways and serve delicious food I think at that point you're sort of honoring the animal the Beast I think it's a little disconnected and certainly kind of creepy yeah that your food could just be grown in a petri dish I mean there might be some value in being able to create food for people that are hungry or impoverished or something I don't know I'm just sort of maybe speculating how that technology could be useful but I don't I'm not looking to have our meat be supplied by a lab yeah that that's not that's not compelling to me it's a little creepy yeah you know and I know you mentioned that the name of saying a molecular gastronomist is not what you would consider yourself that the modernist cuisine is a more proper term imed oh really I'm not hung up on on the title but a modern cooking a modern American cooking contemporary cooking all of those things are fine with me the issue I have with molecular gastronomy is sort of twofold hey it doesn't sound delicious if it's a Friday night and I'm like you know you oughta God for dinner night you a long week I want you want to go have ty you're gonna go have pizza or do you want to get some molecular gastronomy like I mean there's no one's ever going to say molecular kasoor must be r going to go huh although I do think that there's a growing understanding in the in the the pop in that people understand when you seem like an astronomy like okay we're going to go for that kind of experimental thing however it not only does it not sound delicious it doesn't it doesn't disservice because molecular gastronomy is a field of scientific study practice by scientists so to call a mullet to refer to me as a molecular gastronomist that's like so you want to go have biology for dinner you know what I i we don't we benefit from the knowledge for the information that the molecular gastronomist can provide us and it's a group of people who are a group of scientists who want to have a deeper understanding of what's happening to a souffle when it rises and state when it grills and etc etc etc etc and as they begin to break that down and put it in a language that the lay person like myself can understand and we can take that knowledge and say okay now I get it this is what's happening in a souffle this is the temperature at which a steak will begin to get dry and I have that information and I can do with that what i want i can either intentionally make it dry or i can avoid that temperature how have the advancements in technology in in the field of molecular astronomy or just in general helped you evolve as a chef well insofar as we've gone outside our own industry and talk to other people whether it be molecular gastronomist food scientists commercial food processors etc etc those people bring knowledge information and equipment into the kitchen now the kitchen has always had a very positive relationship with technology kitchens are great places for technology to to be I mean think of a knife a stove a microwave a blender a food processor etc etc etc these are all all things that have become part of the repertoire of a cook so we've always had a very good relationship with technology and kitchens are have always sort of embraced the idea of an upgrade and and that has that continues today with equipment not only information but as you mentioned equipment that's come in to the kitchen that that maybe wouldn't have come would have maybe come at a slower rate but wouldn't have come as quickly had it not been for you know for the scientists things like commercial circulators rotary evaporators centrifuges these are all things that just increase the sort of the battery of equipment in a kitchen that a cook has access to how recent has it been that we've really seen like more and more of these tools in kitchens I'd say the last 15 years we've seen specifically equipment coming from scientific laboratories into the kitchen but again there's always been a relationship between the kitchen and technology we've always been eager to embrace things I mean think of like a handheld drill or handheld tool now we have handheld the hand blenders and things like that yeah you know that's just sort of a cross over that that technology handheld battery-operated that's been something that you know it's not hard for me to see that a carpenter is using a handheld drill and so a cook is using a handheld blender you know that that's a very simple sideway sidestep that makes perfect sense I wish I'd thought of it it's like a good business opportunity but um again I think in general kitchens have always been ready to say oh wow that's a that's a food processor that's great I mean I could chop this onion in five minutes or I could put it in the food processor and I could chop it in five seconds do you feel like the customer the the restaurant Gore has evolved over time and well I think yes I think absolutely i think that the the diner has always been interested in sort of the source of their food where their food is coming from you know that it's somehow farm responsibly but i also think there's even more of a dialogue a discussion of that i think for a long time it was just sort of presumed you had a nice restaurant they're using nice ingredients yeah sort of a Don't Ask Don't Tell kind of policy but you know the world is getting smaller and in the the access to information is getting easier and so people are are asking where's my fish from what what did my steak eat before it came to me not only a lot as well as how did you prepare it you know how did it get like this or you know there's there's yes I think the diner has become more sophisticated more educated more aware of the world at large and so they're bringing more knowledge to the table to and expecting us I think to intern keep up with that you you