Blue Hill at Stone Barns

We also tested them ...

We had a taste panel from the chefs at Stone Barns, at Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

They all voted for the real organic ones-

Mm-hmm

We always were even biodynamic in some senses of it.

then we create all this stuff that doctored everything up and now we're going back to it and saying how great work because we're going back to the way it was in the first place and when we talk about burgundy we'll talk about that in a second uh we'll talk about the same same concept but at your alma mater when uh dan berger spoke not dan berger the author of the third plate spoke he said that alanda cast had come to the blue hill farm and had sat just for lunch, spread some butter on some bread and tasted the butter and asked him if the butter was hand churned.

He said, yes, chef, of course.

And then he tasted again and he said, the milk, the cows that made the milk that made this butter, did they graze in the fertile part of the farm? He said, absolutely.

And he was in Indonesia, in Bali, before he returned to Nashville and opened Iggy's.

He also has had stages under Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns outside of New York and with Mark Vetri in Philadelphia.

And he's a lovely guy.

As a first-time owner, he and his brother, Matthew, have worked hard to create a welcoming environment for his guests, of course, but also for staff who are paid well and work only four days a week.

Just, again.

You went to Dan Barber's place, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, right?

Yes.

So Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Stone Barns is a Rockefeller property that's all into regenerative agriculture.

And then Blue Hill is the restaurant there.

What's this agriculture thing you speak of? I know.

It's called the cows, the grass.

But our general manager, a guy I still think taught me a lot in a very short amount of time, was a guy named Franco.

And he had been the general manager at Blue Hill.

which is now pretty super famous.

Like Dan Barber has set himself up as one of the best chefs in America and Blue Hill Stone Barns is a destination, three Michelin star restaurant.

You know, he's a genius.

But at the time they had kind of, they were probably four or five years into their run and they were on everybody's list.

And Franco had a pretty regular dialogue with me and the other bartenders.

where he was of the opinion the thing Blue Hill fucked up on their comeuppance was as they got more famous they started treating reservations and treating international dignitaries and celebrities as more important than the neighbors and that with with a certain amount of tables and a certain amount of whatever the restaurant was always going to have to do the restaurant's business but that our job as the bar was to know who the locals were make sure every time they came in they felt important and that when our when our riding the top of the newest hottest shit in New York wave ended, that the locals still felt comfortable and still wanted to come in.