Interview with Anthony Falco

May 03, 2021

Interview with Anthony Falco - Incredible Bags

Transcription of the video:

[00:00:02.190] - Eric

Hello, hello, welcome back to I guess we're calling the program where we're Lloyd and I've coined the term we're doing reverse interviews with some really great people in the pizza industry. So we've had John Arina, we've had Mike Bausch. I think Lloyd's talking to Pete LaChapelle this week, which should be cool. But I've got right here some questions from the you're on the other with this guy. So Anthony Falco. So, hey, welcome. How are you?

 

[00:00:27.900] - Anthony

I'm doing great. Good morning. How are you?

 

[00:00:30.900] - Eric

I'm good. I'm excited to kick my Monday off by talking to you. This is.

 

[00:00:36.510] - Anthony

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

 

[00:00:36.510] - Eric

I just I just want to jump right into this. This it's interesting because a guy like you, a guy like John Arina, you probably been interviewed a thousand times. Right. And we we ask a lot of the same questions because it's the same because we all want to know and came up with the idea of, well, let's ask them what they want to tell us, because I'm sure you walk away from interviews sometimes and think, you know, why didn't you ask me about how come I didn't need Captain Crunch as a kid?

 

[00:01:03.750] - Anthony

Yeah, no, it's I appreciate the opportunity to do that. It's a really good idea.

 

[00:01:08.250] - Eric

So I just I'm going to I want to go down your list. And the first question you said, what's your favorite memory from your time traveling internationally? So what is your favorite memory of that?

 

[00:01:18.450] - Anthony

Yeah, that was the first question. Just because, you know, I mean, I miss the international travel. It's since the pandemic. It definitely is cut down. I mean, I've had one trip internationally. It was a lot of paperwork, a lot of testing. So it was a little a little different than normal. But, yeah, thinking back to my pre pandemic life, it's just thinking it's just I had some really amazing experiences and I consider myself to be an extremely lucky person. I'd say like there's like two top ones for me. Like one was when I first flew into Lisbon to do the project. They're called Lupita, which is just an incredible pizzeria run by an incredible chef Ferrara and picked me up from the airport. We went to drop off my bags and then we immediately drove out to the outskirts of Lisbon to visit this flour mill. And like to me, this this job, like the thing that has been the most incredible part of it is to go meet the producers, because even if you're just a chef who's just by yourself and you're making every pizza by hand, I mean, you're still never doing it alone. You're always relying on your producers, farmers. And so we went to this small mill and they had on the site, it was like the guys like, you know, great great great grandfather was the first. And there was this for like three or four hundred year old windmill. And it was. And so we got a tour of how that worked, you know, and and there's like an upstairs area where you could sleep because, like, when the wind was right, it was like time to mill, no matter what was happening.

 

[00:03:03.510] - Eric

No matter what was going on, that was production time.

 

[00:03:06.210] - Anthony

Yeah. And there's these like these Clay Gord's all along the sails that would whistle and the different tone of the whistle would let the miller know, like the speed that was going and whether it was right or not for whatever they were milling, whether it was like wheat, corn or barley or whatever. And the the owner, Palillo, he was just like super passionate about all of this. And he gave us this whole tour of this like one hundred year old windmill. And then then we toured his modern mill where he's got like robots and he's got a modern stone mill set up. And just like producing incredible flour, he was showing us all this. And like after about an hour of walking to this mill, I mean, I had literally flown like a red eye, gone to the hotel at some point. I mean, I barely remember at some point I just was like. I just walked, turned and walked away, went to the car and sat down and fell asleep.

 

[00:04:09.400] - Eric

Yeah, I bet.

 

[00:04:10.630] - Anthony

And when I woke up we had like six. They were loading the back of the car with flour and we had like six different bags of flour to try like eighty five to forty five. And we had all these different flowers to try and we took them back and were able to make an incredible product with locally milled flour, which is always my goal is to try to leverage whatever local ingredients are where I am internationally.

 

[00:04:36.040] - Eric

Right. That's very cool. I was going to ask you, talking about you haven't traveled internationally and I follow you on Instagram. I like to watch your stuff. You have a very good eye for, like art and cool things as you're out. So I appreciate your Instagram or what you do, but you flew and it wasn't too long ago you flew. And I'm like, there's literally no one in the airport. I don't know where you were at, but there was nobody there. Is that an off time or was it just like there just nobody there.

 

[00:05:05.110] - Anthony

No, I mean it's international travel is down, you know, incredibly, you have to get a business visa to travel and it's just the majority of kind of leisure travel is not happening, you know. So like, yeah, this is my business, you know, I mean, I there's a lot of people in this business who worked in kitchens throughout the whole pandemic. You know, I've I've been able to do a lot of my work is remote, like designing kitchens and menus and things like that. So, like, I've been able to do a lot of work remotely. But, you know, at some point I still need to be in the kitchen with the other chefs. And so I've had some clients here in the United States Open. And so I've spent, I don't know, maybe like ten weeks total in the in a kitchen. And it's just that I have to travel to get to the kitchen. So it's like I'm not there every day, like a lot of these people have been. And, you know, everyone's, I think, trying to do their best to stay safe and to just earn a living, you know, keep the lights on, keep the kids fed. You know, that's that's what we're just trying to do, you know.

 

[00:06:11.950] - Eric

When do you think you're going to get back at it again and travel and start traveling again? Or do you have a plan for that? What's your thought process?

 

[00:06:17.800] - Anthony

I mean, it's it's a case by case basis. So it's we're just we're just trying to see like as our restaurants are opening, if I can be there and I had my client in Mongolia opened during the pandemic and that we had to just do completely, there was no option to get there whatsoever because they closed the entire country to car train, plane traffic whatsoever. And so we just did that all through Zoom. Zoom training, you know, so it's just me. And they had multiple cameras. And I would be like, put your fingers here.

 

[00:06:54.010] - Eric

That's got to be just almost strange, right? Like, I guess you adjust to it.

 

[00:06:58.570] - Anthony

Everything is strange, man. Yeah. Like what do what is what is this world. What is happening. Right. Right, right, right.

 

[00:07:07.480] - Eric

I want to I want to move on. I love I love this question because I think it speaks volumes to maybe who you are that and I don't know how old you are, but I just turned fifty one and I'm constantly reading because I think that's how you get better. And one of your questions is what's the best book you've read.

 

[00:07:22.660] - Anthony

Yeah. Thanks. I'm, I'm forty one for the record. And you know I, I love reading. I mean I, I read books but I also then listen to books on tape which I really like for like going out on a walk or something like that. But it's actually two books that have really stuck with me in the last year, and it's called There's fourteen ninety one and then fourteen ninety three is by Charles Mann and it's essentially fourteen, ninety one is a catalog like a current up to date catalog of pre Columbia America's from a biological, anthropological and archeological standpoint. You know, I mean, I think what most people's understanding of what was happening in the new world is totally, you know, kind of off like it was heavily populated. There was they were there was a lot more, you know, cultivation of the land, I think, than a lot of people think. It was really eye opening. And then fourteen ninety three about basically the modern world that we live in. And the Colombian exchange, which it was based on the work of another scholar called Ecological Imperialism and the Colombian Exchange. And it's just to me, it's really interesting, like to, you know, forty ninety three talks about Mexico City basically being the center of this new world. And I mean, Mexico City is one of my favorite cities in the world. And you think of, you know, before 1492, there's there's no tomatoes in Italy, there's no chilies in Thailand, there's no chocolate, you know, anywhere else in. The world besides Mesoamerica and just how the modern world we live in is really has been shaped by the moving around of these biological kind of plants, animals and germs.

 

[00:09:21.400] - Anthony

And it's just it's it's it's a beautiful book. It's tragic. It's eye opening. It's. And as for someone who travels it like that's the part to me that's like the best part about my job is like I love history and I love to be able to see in real life kind of learning before I go to a place to try to read about it and learn as much as I can.

 

[00:09:46.640] - Eric

That's cool. Protip and I got this from my boy, Brian Monahan. I'm in a mastermind group with him. I was the guy that was downloading audio books. Yeah. The Audible app on Amazon. Right. And he's he one day said, hey, you know, you can just go to your local library. So I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tulsa County Library. They have an app and you can download books for free.

 

[00:10:07.670] - Anthony

Yeah, my wife is she she gets movies, books like she's like the big librarian library system in the United States is like we're we're extremely lucky to have it. It's a really cool thing.

 

[00:10:19.460] - Eric

So that's everyone's pro tip of the day, so.

 

[00:10:22.760] - Anthony

Yeah. And then the last one I just read, though, that's like in the last couple of years. But then the one I just read over the pandemic was I would listen to it on audible was the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind, which was really a mind blower. I mean it was just super, super cool about the Bronze Age collapse and this like kind of really interesting theory about like the bicameral mind. This like it's a theory about how, you know, how pre Homer, like from the if you look at the Homeric epics like that, people didn't really have consciousness like that they were hearing the gods were actually voices that they were hearing in their heads. They were instructing them what to do. It was it's a it was a really amazing book. And it apparently. What is this, the book, the cyberpunk book that I'm reading is was heavily influenced by it. I'm sorry

 

[00:11:23.400] - Eric

I think compared to what you're reading, I feel like I'm where I'm reading, like Pop-Up Books, you know, like just, you know, like I mean, I did way too cerebral for me. So.

 

[00:11:32.420] - Anthony

I just I, I really like nonfiction. It's just it's like to me that's just really what I like to you know, I didn't I'm self-taught and probably everything I've done. So it's just it's like. Right. Yeah.

 

[00:11:45.590] - Eric

Well, I think it just shows, like I said, just shows that you're you're a guy that's still trying to get better every day. And and I think sometimes we hit a certain point in life where we just kind of like we know everything or we think we know everything. And there's so much more to learn. And and I have a twenty three year old son and we talk all the time about what are you reading, what are you listening to. And and I think, yeah, I love that you have a question down here. I love this question too, because I'm really curious to know the answer. What's the most important thing to know before you decide to open a restaurant?

 

[00:12:14.960] - Anthony

OK, that's great.

 

[00:12:15.980] - Eric

Like a million dollar question, right?

 

[00:12:18.140] - Anthony

Yeah, it is. And it's something that when people contact me, I don't I think this is this is pretty important because it's like it's it's a huge part of. Any success I've had in this business as a consultant has been is is squarely on the shoulders of the people of my clients. Their success is my success and I'm really just there to help them. I mean, I'm there to facilitate it and to help them. I am painfully aware of all the mistakes that I've made in my life.

 

[00:12:53.920] - Eric

And y'all are right.

 

[00:12:56.040] - Anthony

Yeah, but I mean, it's like it's it's something that it's my that's my whole business. So it's like I have to know, like that's what I do is I basically kind of help people, like you're about to open a restaurant and a restaurant is basically a room where things go wrong all the time and you have to fix them.

 

[00:13:14.320] - Eric

And you just won the Internet with that. And that's that's very true.

 

[00:13:20.050] - Anthony

And I feel like I'm just there to help you kind of like anticipate some of those things that will go wrong, whether they be mechanical or human or other acts of God. And and so one of the first things I ask most of my clients when when they. You know, they want to get started with me, it's like, why do you want to open a restaurant? And there's there is a right answer and there's a wrong answer. The wrong answer is, I think I have this great idea and I'm going to make a bunch of money. Like that's the wrong answer, because this is there are a lot of better ways to make money. There's a lot I mean, almost every other business is a better way to make money. The right answer to open a restaurant is because you you are in love with something you know, you're in love with. Food, you're in love with pizza, you're in love with wine, you're you love to serve people, which is is a very at the end of the day, that's what we do, is we serve people and we all I think the pandemic has kind of shown we're all very lucky to have this this job because people don't have to eat at restaurants ever. I mean, you have to have car insurance, right? It's like you just out of. Yeah, yeah. So like they're basically just sitting there waiting for you to pick one. Right. And it's like, you know, after you sign up with the car insurance, know, no one is going to say, wow, I loved that car insurance. It was like, it doesn't happen. It never happened. But like when you make a food that's nostalgic, maybe something that reminds them of their childhood or something and it reminds them of their country that they came from, or if you you're from another country and you come here and you make something that you loved and someone else responds to, it opens their eyes to that. I mean, it's an emotional thing. And people choose they choose to spend their birthdays. They choose to spend their anniversaries with us. And so you have to do it from a place of love. And then the other thing is you owning being a restaurant owner, it's not a job. You have to it's like it's like the Ottomans. They had this thing where, like, if you were the sultan, like you, you can't just that's not a job. You have to have another job. You have to be either like an architect or a scientist or a doctor or something like that. And then you apply your knowledge to being a leader of this thing. And so you have to have something else. Like you either have to know about wine, you have to know about food. You have to be a carpenter to build something. You have to know how to fix electricity. Like you have to know how to do something. Otherwise you're just going to end up all your profits are going to go to other people who know what they're doing and you don't. And they are going to take advantage of you because of that. So you have a skill that you can apply to the business and then have love in your heart for the business.

 

[00:16:23.960] - Eric

I love that. I love that. I think you're you're totally right from the standpoint if you want to open a restaurant to make money.

 

[00:16:30.620] - Anthony

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or have rich parents.

 

[00:16:34.520] - Eric

Well, that's that's another good way to do that. Right. No doubt.

 

[00:16:37.910] - Anthony

People always ask me, why don't you have a restaurant.

 

[00:16:42.050] - Eric

Yeah. Yeah. Because you don't have rich parents. And then there are other ways to make money, right.

 

[00:16:46.860] - Anthony

Yeah.

 

[00:16:48.110] - Eric

We we are involved with a lot of what we call the backyard pizza in the boonies and they have rock boxes and yeah, they do it and they make some gorgeous looking pizza. Amazing. I see. So I mean there's a group out there called the the Pizza Tribe, and there are these backyard guys all across country and an amazing pizza. And and one of your questions, what advice would you give to people making pizza at home? And I instantly thought of some of those guys because it was. So what would be your advice for those guys?

 

[00:17:22.110] - Anthony

Yeah, I mean, it's I mean, it's revolutionizing, right? I mean, what's been happening, I think it's a huge, huge part of what's happening. Yeah, I mean, huge respect to Tom Gosney for with Rock Box and then Uni what they're doing. And then I've been really involved with Breville, what they're doing with the and I don't have a backyard. I live in New York. So this is kind of a good option for me. Right. But yeah, I mean, being able to access those high temperatures, it just really shows you like that you can do it at home, which is really amazing. My advice for them would be, you know, to when you have a recipe from someone you trust and it works, you know, just start messing with it, like try to break things, you know, like try to really mess around, like, you know, when someone says, like two and a half percent Salt, like see what happens when you do 2 percent see what happens when you do 3 percent like there's no oil. See what happens when you add oil. See what happens when you take it away. Like just throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks like. Did you ever play civilization, Sidmears Civilization when you were like...

 

[00:18:34.570] - Eric

I don't know what that is. What is that?

 

[00:18:35.780] - Anthony

It was like a PC game where you start a civilization and then you go to war with others.

 

[00:18:41.280] - Eric

I think I remember that. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

 

[00:18:44.490] - Anthony

I was obsessed with that game, but basically you start and there's this whole world, but you start and the whole world is dark and you have to move your little settler's around and start revealing the darkness to know where the continent ends, where the islands are, the rivers are and all this stuff. It's like if you just stay where you are, you're just you're going to have this darkness all around you. So, you know, just and so the only reason that stopping you is fear. Fear of messing up your fear of like making a pizza and someone saying they don't like it. So just let go of your fear and just do like try anything, try everything and see what happens, you know?

 

[00:19:21.270] - Eric

Yeah. I love that we we tend to live our lives in fear of just rejection and a lot of things. And we we get up every day. We carbon copy our day to day to the next to the next to the next. And we don't change it up. And sometimes that message needs to be said to a lot of people, what are you cooking when you aren't making pizza?

 

[00:19:42.540] - Anthony

Currently, I'm doing a lot of tacos, so I have a really great local butcher next to me called the Meat Hook, so I've been getting some grass fed steak from them and doing steak tacos. I do like traditional. Like Tex, Tex, Mex, Beck's tacos, like I do, like a kind of side of taco with just like some diced onions and cilantro and I make like a turn into your salsa, which is in the cookbook. Pizzas are coming to your salsa.

 

[00:20:15.130] - Eric

We're going to talk about that next.

 

[00:20:16.810] - Anthony

So get an early plug in there.

 

[00:20:19.610] - Eric

Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm good.

 

[00:20:21.440] - Anthony

And then I'll do like a Tex Mex style taco with a flour tortilla. Got a really great I get really great or like organic flour tortillas from this place to come and and I make refried beans from like local organic upstate New York farms. We get these refried beans are great. And I throw like pork fat and onions and chilies and stuff in there and throw those in the freezer and so you can have a bunch of portioned out beans. I just pull them out. I go to the butcher, I get the steak, chop it up, throw some salsa on there. I mean, momma mea.

 

[00:20:58.880] - Eric

Nine thirty here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm now hungry.

 

[00:21:01.310] - Anthony

So while you're lucky because you got you got some breakfast taco options there...

 

[00:21:07.760] - Eric

We have a lot of breakfast, I in fact, I'm already thinking about going to see my boy Pablo assents is Mexican today. That sounds delicious. Yeah. You want to talk about your book, see your book, Pizza Czar is coming out, I think May 18th?

 

[00:21:20.570] - Anthony

May 18th.

 

[00:21:21.410] - Eric

Order it on Amazon, you know, other places, which is on your website. And I'll yeah, I'll post that here. Let's talk about the book.

 

[00:21:30.320] - Eric

I mean, this is obviously years in the making

 

[00:21:35.090] - Anthony

3 years yeah

 

[00:21:35.510] - Eric

Did covid help you be to just sit down and go, I'm finishing this. Yes.

 

[00:21:39.740] - Anthony

One hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, you know, my wife, she's my life partner and business partner. And when we were after the initial just terrible being terrified. Yeah. And you know, like everyone else in the beginning, we we never left New York City. We never left our apartment. You know, we stayed here in the city. We locked down and we just decided we're like, all right, well, let's start finishing it. I mean, there was the need to kind of figure out my business, which was in shambles and kind of put that back together. But it was a great opportunity because I was traveling so much that the book was really just kind of trickling out. Yeah. So we really just banged it out. We got all of the manuscript done and then it's like the recipe testing was happening simultaneously. And then we ended up we scheduled the photo shoot. You know, there's a lot of photos. I took my camera all around the world for the last three years. I had took like a thirty five millimeter camera with me and took some there's a bunch of those in there which I'm really proud of. There's some illustrations which I did which are in there. And then we scheduled a photo shoot here in our apartment towards the end of the summer and. Yeah, we got it all done, like, but the recipes themselves are a culmination of not just the last three years of working on the book, but the last 13, 14 years, whatever it is, I've been making pizza professionally and then there's a lot of stuff in there growing up. You know, the food that I was really heavily influenced by was my dad's family, the Sicilian American farmers from Texas to my great grandmother. She would make her kind of version of pizza, which was like really a kind of descendant of the Vecchia from Sicily. Yeah. I like my philosophy on using trying to use local ingredients they're trying to use as little chemicals or processed foods as possible. There's only, I think, one recipe that has sugar in it, which is like my pickled jalapenos. There's no vegetable oils. It's really all just real true fats, like extra virgin olive oil, pork fat, beef tallow. So it's a lot of just by overall philosophy, all in one book.

 

[00:24:16.490] - Eric

How many recipes are in the book?

 

[00:24:19.140] - Anthony

It's almost one hundred recipes and techniques, and so it's 4 major dough styles, so we've got you thin and crispy. We've got your Neopolitan-ish, which is really geared towards those backyard pizza makers and with these new new fangled high temperature ovens. Yeah, and then I've got the pan pizzas. I've got the Sicilian grandma, which is kind of a catch all, you know, Sicilian grandma, Detroit, whatever for Coccia like Porchetta Vecchia, it's all kind of a you know, it's an all in one there. And then I have the butter crust pan pizza, which is kind of my omeje to 90's Pizza Hut style pan pizza.

 

[00:25:01.830] - Eric

What have you tried the have you tried the Pizza Hut in Detroit. I don't know, have we ordered it and tried it and you know, when you it's OK, right? If you've never had a Detroit to you, you try it. You're like, oh, this is OK. Right. But if you have, like, the three one three in Austin or, you know, the guys at County Rosso, so are doing Thunderbird Pies. Yeah, that looks really great. Right. You try that and then you try the Pizza Hut crash and burn. But that's a different story. This book right over my shoulder up here is Unsliced by Mike Bausch, which got into talking about you guys are both doing keynote speeches at Pizza Expo this year. And I know you guys have talked. Are you excited about that? Looking forward to it. You already kind of kind of going around in your head on what you want to talk about.

 

[00:25:53.160] - Eric

What what does that process look like? I know what the process looks like for him because I talked to him on a regular basis. What's it look like for you?

 

[00:25:59.840] - Anthony

Well, yeah, first of all, it's great talking to Mike. So, I mean, that's one of the cool things about being asked to do something like this, is it brings you together with people that you didn't know in the industry. And I had a really great talk with him, really inspiring story. And just someone who's just really doing a great job there in Tulsa. So, you know, he seems to have more of a plan than I do. I'll have to say that that I you know, I don't know. I was like, I don't know what to say. I mean, I really just. I'm working on it. I don't know what to say. I really I want to keep the thing that people people message me all the time from from all over the world, and they will just tell me that I inspired them. You inspired them to make pizza home, inspired them to open a restaurant or just inspired them like, hey, you could get fired from your job and have and something new can come along. I mean, like, I feel like my I'm constantly just messing up my life and then being given chances and opportunities to kind of rebuild something else with it. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that's something is just like to to never give up. Don't be afraid to keep being. You try to inspire people, I mean, I'm I'm now. You know, I'm in a different I'm at a crossroads here with my career and I have I have a lot of really cool opportunities to to not just go out there and make money, but to really help people. And so I'm going to touch a little bit on that some of the projects I'm working on in that area. And, yeah, you know, I mean, it's just I. I don't know. I should probably figure that out.

 

[00:27:56.840] - Eric

You know you know you know you know what comes the good thing that comes from screwing up in your life. You learn. And you're obviously a guy that's trying to learn and reading, but you learn the most from screwing up. And so I think it's it's I think it's OK to say I have screwed up and I've learned and I've gotten opportunities from it that you learn in the process. The people that just go to work every day and sit in a cubicle and they never screw up in their life sucks and it's boring and they never learn much either. So. So if I want to I want to ask you one last question that's not written down here. What are you insecure about?

 

[00:28:34.990] - Anthony

I mean, you know, I think everything I mean, I think that's like if I've had any kind of success, I mean, it really comes from, you know. Feeling insecure about having only a high school education, like not of of not feeling like I know the right thing to say, of not having, like an impeccable resume of restaurants that I've worked at. I mean, just being like. Someone who is yeah, I mean, I'm insecure about everything, and I think that's like if I've if I've been successful, it's because I, I show up and I'm like every day I'm like, man, I should probably do a really good job so that people want me to stick around. You know

 

[00:29:24.240] - Eric

You do good. Yeah. Well you don't want but I've maybe I'm very I don't know what the word is but that's, that's something, you know, the insecurity is a great motivator and it's a great driver and it's and you just said I show up and once again back to my twenty three year old son who has his first job out of college. I said, you know, we talked about this last Friday at lunch. It is amazing how if you show up, you're ahead of like 90 percent of the people show up to be early. You are early for this today. I was early for this show up. Be early, have a great attitude, have some insecurities. Not a bad thing if I had no insecurity. Heck, I was insecure about talking to you today.

 

[00:30:04.860] - Anthony

Yeah

 

[00:30:07.160] - Eric

But if we don't have insecurity, I think there's probably something wrong there as well.

 

[00:30:11.760] - Anthony

Yeah, absolutely. Overconfidence is I mean, look through history, you know, I mean, that's, that's the killer. I mean, it's like you got to do your homework. You've got to know what you're going into. You cannot be guessing. You've got to be like, that's the art of war is like you've got to know your your intelligence, you know, got to know what you're walking into. Like, you can't just be like, hey, I'm the best. I'm going to just like cruise in here and it's going to be just W after W, you know, like I you know, I call my wife probably in the middle of almost every one of these consulting jobs. And I'm just like, man, it is just not going well, I guess, like, you know, I mean, everybody wants to be the international pizza consultant until they're the international pizza consultant and. Right. Everyone's looking at them in the restaurants about the open and the dough is not working. And, you know, there's no dishwasher. So you're in there working with, like on your feet. Forty years old, scrubbing everything. And like, you know, it's it's a it's a little more glamorous, so. Yeah, yeah. That's the other thing. It's like I'm in these exotic locations and it's like, well I'm just in a kitchen like where most of the time I could be anywhere in the world. I'm just in a place trying to find where the third pans are like. But in the end, you know, I mean, it really is it's it generally is always very rewarding. I make great connections with people from all over the world, like working class people, just good people. And, you know, I mean, it's it's an honor to be able to just do this job to have fallen into this, you know, and I hope I hope I can keep it up, you know?

 

[00:31:53.840] - Eric

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been fun. His books coming out May 18th. You was a eighty three, May 18th yet.

 

[00:32:02.850] - Anthony

And and a bookshop.org is a great place to go to because it will give a portion of the sales to the local independent bookstores. So I think that's awesome. Amazon obviously is nice and everything, but bookshop.org, check that one out.

 

[00:32:17.880] - Eric

That's I'll put that in there as well, because I love that I'm all about supporting local and supporting independent and bookshop.org to write it down. Hey, thank you so much. Everybody look for him. I always want to go backwards and look for him and me at Pizza Expo. We'll be there. Mickey Mouse will be there, hopefully. Hopefully this National Restaurant Association just canceled their show this year.

 

[00:32:41.460] - Anthony

Yeah, I'm getting my vaccine in a couple of days. And so we'll go through both of those jabs and then hopefully that starts to help and we can all move forward and do these fun things together. But either way, we'll just roll with the punches and just keep doing what we're doing.

 

[00:32:58.140] - Eric

Yeah, I'm a friend. I will talk to you soon. Thank you, my friend.

 

[00:33:01.790] - Anthony

It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.