Frankly Speaking w / Frank Olivieri owner of Pat's King of Steaks

0:15 Introducing Frank Olivieri and His Mother, Ritamarie Hi everybody. This is Karen and this is. 0:17 Speaker 2 Sherry. 0:18 Speaker 1 And welcome back to What's Your Curveball podcast. We are so excited today. We have some special guests that are in my old. 0:28 Speaker 2 Mirror Neck in the woods, yeah. 0:31 Speaker 1 So Jerry, why don't you introduce our Well, I want to guest. 0:34 Speaker 2 Today, Frankie to introduce everybody. So Frankie's sitting here. We're at Pat's Cheese Steaks, the original Pat's Cheese Steaks in South Philadelphia. He's sitting right in front of. 0:44 Speaker 3 Me. So I'm Frank Oliveri. My mother, Marina Marie Barbara Ann, is joining us today as she just rolled her eyes. 0:50 Speaker 1 Yeah, she just rolled her. 0:52 Speaker 3 Eyes, she figured. She figured she could sit in and Fact Check me today. 1:01 Speaker 1 She is the official fact checker. 1:04 Speaker 4 Doing that for 61 years. 1:07 Speaker 3 Fact checking me for 60. 1:09 Speaker 2 How close are you guys really? I mean, I, I feel the love in this room. It's amazing. 1:14 Speaker 3 She hates me. Oh God no. 1:15 Speaker 4 I know. 1:16 Speaker 3 She loves to hate me, yeah. 1:18 Speaker 4 I love Dave now. I don't. He's he's precious. Yeah. How? 1:21 Speaker 2 Many children. Do you have 3/3? 1:24 Speaker 3 Wait three, you have more kids? 1:27 Speaker 4 Well, of course you're the one with the spoon in your. 1:30 Speaker 3 Yeah, I was. I'm the one. Well, actually, Mom, it wasn't the silver spoon that I was born in my mouth. It was Platinum. It's getting straight. Silver's for pikers, Platinum's for real kings and Queens. 1:40 Speaker 2 That's true, alright. 1:41 Speaker 4 I have three children. 1:42 Speaker 2 He's. 1:42 Speaker 4 He's a middle child, yeah. 1:44 Speaker 1 Well, I love middle I. 1:45 Speaker 3 Have a daughter? 1:46 Speaker 1 I have a daughter. 1:47 Speaker 4 Middle boy Frankie have Danielle, Frankie and the baby's lady. Lady's 55. 1:53 Speaker 1 She's still the baby. Baby. Isn't that the truth? The the bottom one is always the baby. 1:57 Uncovering the True Story of the Original Philly Cheesesteak Yeah, but before we go into your history, which I am so excited to hear because I'm so newsy and I just love to talk to people about their. 2:04 Speaker 2 History and thank you for sitting down with us, both of you. 2:06 Speaker 1 Yes, this is. 2:08 Speaker 4 Fun but. 2:09 Speaker 1 Why should people listen to you today? Like what? Why? Why should our audience listen to you? And what are they going to get out of it? Like I'm. 2:16 Speaker 3 So what? Why should they listen? Well, because I have so much to say, all right? And it's like if you're in a restaurant industry and you know what FIFO means, FIFO is first in, first out. So the first thing in my head is usually the first thing out of my mouth. And there's no restriction, there's no censorship here. 2:32 So and I, I say it like it is and not prepared. I'm prepared to say what I'm prepared to say. And what I do say is what I say behind your back is what I say to your face. 2:42 Speaker 1 I love that. 2:43 Speaker 4 He usually gets that from his Muller. 2:45 Speaker 1 Right, that's the genetic I. 2:50 Speaker 3 Didn't get the pony, I got the bad heart valve. 2:54 Speaker 2 No, it's one and a pound. 2:56 Speaker 1 Should we start all the way back at the beginning? Like #1 how did this Pat's cheese steaks on this corner ever? Like, how did it come? How did it become? 3:06 Speaker 3 So the story that we've been told over the years and the story that we've been telling is that my grandfather Harry and his older brother Pat, had a hot dog stand across the street and they were selling hot dogs every day. And so, you know, in Philadelphia back in the day, you know, north-south, east, West were trolley cars. 3:23 This neighborhood in particular had a bath house across the street. No one had indoor plumbing so people would ride the trolleys over here and didn't have a refrigeration except for the Iceman. 3:31 Speaker 1 Can I interrupt you? What years? 3:32 Speaker 3 1930 Oh wow, 1930 OK, so people would shop fresh at, you know, the world famous Philadelphia, you know, Italian slash whatever it is market now that's over probably 130 years old. It's the longest continuously running Italian market or market open eared market in the country. 3:50 Wow, wow. And so they shop fresh every day. So they get off the trolley, grab a hot dog, go shopping, get back on the trolley and go home. So every day this one cab driver, his last name is Schwartz. I actually met his daughter, his his grandniece in famous deli. 4:07 One day I had a Pat steak shirt on and she said, Oh my God, my great great uncle was the guy that had the steak sandwich from Pat and we did some fact checking and it turned out to be it actually was. So, so the guy comes up and so Pat's in there and I'm had a lot. I had a lot of coffee this morning. 4:23 I've been up since 3 o'clock 11:00 now. So one day Pat got tired of eating hot dogs for for lunch every day with my grandfather and he sent my grandfather to the butcher that was right down the street over here on Passionate Ave. to get any trimmings he had. 4:42 So they cooked it up on the grill. Onions were the condiment. And of course we're Italian. He had a loaf of Italian bread. He made a sandwich for himself, cut it in half to give half to his brother Harry and a cab driver. The cab driver came up and said, wow, looks really good, what do you have? He said, well, it's my lunch. He said, well make me one. 4:57 He said, well, I don't have enough for my brother and myself, but since you buy hot dogs every day and you probably paid for the sandwich, I'll give you half. You broke the sandwich, you have gave it to the cab driver and the cab driver said forget about hot dogs, this is the sandwich you should be making. And that was the invention of the Philly steak sandwich. 5:13 Oh. 5:13 Speaker 1 My. 5:14 Speaker 3 God, yeah. And then as time went on, winter came. He moved into the building over here, which in the back was a produce stand, The front was a bar, and the second floor was a restaurant. And Joe Butch was the owner of the building, said Pat, come upstairs. Pat's not have any money. 5:29 So when you start making money, then you pay me. So he was serving the steak sandwiches in the restaurant, in the bar, but in the back where we have the sinks now with booths. So believe it or not, more people came in to eat the sandwiches than they did to drink. So the bartender who ran the bar said, listen, if you're drinking, stay inside. 5:44 If you're eating, go outside and they started serving the sandwiches outside and then eventually Pat took over the bar, took over the produce stand and and that was that. But and then, you know, as some time went on, the lore is that one of our employees, Cocky Joe, put some cheese on the sandwich. 6:03 Pat saw it, said, OK, if you're eating it, you got to sell it. And that's what happened. And that's how the cheese steak was invented. So it was just kind of like, out of like boredom eating the same thing over and over again do. 6:12 From Pat's Original Influencer to Family Business Succession You know where the cheese steak originated from. 6:16 Speaker 3 Yeah, right over there. That was it. Yeah, right over there. 6:18 Speaker 2 That is it, yeah. That's why you say the original because a lot of people say king of original. 6:24 Speaker 3 Well, no, Pat Pat just dubbed himself the King of Steaks because he was like, bigger than life. 6:28 Speaker 2 Absolutely. 6:29 Speaker 3 He was so Uncle Pat. Let's see what we're doing here. Pat was the original influencer, yes, so before anybody. 6:37 Speaker 1 So Pat was the original? 6:38 Speaker 3 So Pat was the original influencer. So what he did was he would take his sandwiches to like the Earl Theatre or places and take pictures like for instance like Batman when Humphrey Bogart. 6:47 Speaker 1 What? He'd take pictures. 6:49 Speaker 3 With all these movie stars that he would meet and he would get the pictures blown up like gigantic. I have them somewhere. Let me put put away. We had hundreds of them at one time, but my father just had them up under in a room and condensation blah blah blah. Anyway, so he would take the pictures to places and take photographs and then bring them back. 7:07 And Pat, everybody wanted to see who Pat was hanging out with. This photo in particular is so Pat sees Humphrey Bogart and says, let's take a picture. So Bogey has always had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. So Pat said, I'm going to take a great picture. So Pat pulled out his 38 and gave it to Humphrey Bogart and he had it in his hand, right. 7:24 Speaker 1 Here, yes, so in his hand. 7:26 Speaker 3 He has the cigarette in one hand and he has Pat's 38 caliber bullet gun in the other. 7:32 Speaker 2 Hand. 7:33 Speaker 3 But he has pictures of Lucille Ball. Al Martino again. 7:37 Speaker 4 You go across the street, you'll see. Yeah, we, we just had them all redone, you know, because we remodeled the building. So we had all the pictures, all redone and frame. But we're going to. 7:49 Speaker 1 Actually, you're going to take all those pictures. 7:51 Speaker 4 Actually, the original pictures that we had that were big ones are in California. His wife and my aunt Evelyn had all those original ones, but we had all these. You can't imagine the people that he knew. 8:05 Speaker 2 Oh my God, yeah. 8:06 Speaker 3 I mean, he has pictures of everybody from Victoria Damone, Tony Bennett. 8:10 Speaker 4 He's got friends with. 8:11 Speaker 2 Victoria Damone too. Victoria Damone, Yes. 8:13 Speaker 1 So how did it go from that to to you guys? And like how? How did it trans my husband? 8:22 Speaker 4 Like my husband Frank went to, he got out of school and he used to work here in the summer. In fact, when me and my mother would get on the trolley, because we both lived in the same neighborhood, we would get on it. 19th and Snyder, my, me and my mother were going to the market to, you know, the Italian market. 8:41 Frank would be on the, on the trolley with us. I mean, I know my husband since we were 11. That's the whole thing. So that he would be going to work with his with his real fancy pants coughed up. He's going over here to make steak sandwiches over whatever he did. 8:57 I don't I don't know what he did back then. And then when he got out of high school, I said to him one time, you want to laugh? I said, what are you doing to Pat's steaks? You're so smart. You never even studied for a test. Why don't you become a go become a lawyer or something? 9:16 But he chose Pat's steaks. So that was the beginning of my husband's whatever that stinks. And then of course, my son, that was the whole story. He wanted to go to Cordon Bleu in France. And being this stupid old Italian grandmother mother, I said, oh, you want to go to France? 9:35 But you know, And then he, he like, he came here to work. 9:40 Speaker 3 And he's making. 9:40 Speaker 4 Money and he's buying cars and he was living the life and he said forget about Cordon Bleu and here he is talk. 9:47 Speaker 2 About that, yeah. 9:49 Recalling Memorable Visits from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama Now many, many people have walked through these doors or stood at your doors and have gone inside your business. What is the most, I'd say, memorable experience of pets that stays prominent in your mind that could keep rolling around that is just it means so much to you like. 10:09 Speaker 3 I mean, they're, they're, I mean, I've been here a long time. So there's so many different experiences. I mean, when, for instance, if I just were to pick one off the top of my head, like when Bill Clinton and Al Gore originally campaigned here, they campaigned between Pats and Gino's and we kind of had a relationship. 10:28 And he got my cell number and whatever he was in town, he would call. It's like, Frank, it's me, Bill, I'm on my way over. And thank you. Yeah. So. 10:43 So that was that was thank you. I could do a really good dog too, so that he would call like he would call ahead of the Secret Service. Like I, I knew he was coming. The guys would show up and like, you know, Mr. Clinton's the president's like, yeah, I know he called me. 11:00 They're like, what? Oh, my gosh. So and then, you know, we had we had the honor of like we always would say that any president or any candidate that would come to pat stakes by and large won the election. Oh, wow. And I knew the day that I had the guys, we had the guys from The Deadliest Catch here. 11:21 And then Secret Service showed up and it said Senator Obama's on his way over. I'm like, OK, he's definitely winning because Hillary Clinton was in town someplace eating a cheese steak. And so he came and I talked to him at the window. My dad sat down with him and I talked to Michelle for a while. 11:38 And my mother has a great picture of Michelle and the kids and she and like, like white beaters and flip flops. And it showed up like that. 11:45 Speaker 4 She came for lunch one day. The kids were small. They had just came from that trip. She took them to Europe and then she wanted to take them to Philadelphia to see all the historical things in Philadelphia, because this is where it all started. So the kids were outside and she wanted to know if the owners were there and somebody said, oh, they're just getting ready to leave because she remembered us from from when he was on the, you know, on the payment campaigning. 12:11 So she was, she had flip flops on T-shirt and jeans and the kids were sitting there real miserable. And I said, you know, you just came back from Europe, you kids, I mean, smile a little bit. So of course I had to test the sandwiches before they got. 12:27 Speaker 2 There. 12:28 Speaker 4 And then she took a picture with me, you know, me and Frank and send it to us and then send us a letter saying how upset he was President Obama, that she didn't bring him back cheese steaks. And then we have have the picture at home. 12:45 Speaker 1 And the. 12:46 Speaker 4 And the letter, my in fact, my daughter, every once in a while, the my oldest daughter sometimes will post it on Facebook. The letter and the picture. Yeah. 12:55 The Truth About the Pat's and Gino's 'Rivalry' So that was, you know, that was big deal. 12:58 Speaker 1 And you mentioned Gina's, but how did that even come about that they moved right there? Like what was that? 13:03 Speaker 3 So if you look back at the original Rocky movie 1976, you see you would see that the church was across the street where there are apartment buildings now across the street you there was our family had Pat's 48 Flavors and adjacent to that was Mike and Carol Steaks. 13:19 And this building was owned by the Vigilante family, which was cousins of Mike and Carol Steaks. And on the corner where we prepare our meat and our commissary was called Joe Steaks. So Joe Steaks was owned by Joe Vigilante and Joe Vento worked for Joe Steaks over here. 13:35 So what they told me, my parents, my dad and my grandfather told me that we then my, we never owned the building of where we were. We had a 99 year lease on it. My mother and father bought the building in 1980, but they weren't going to build the the they called, still called the new bridge, the Walt Whitman Bridge in 1957. 13:55 So they were going to enlarge Patchogue Ave. and they were going to take away Pat's, the island for eminent domain. So the Gino's building was condemned and for sale. But at the time, Uncle Pat had the South Philly Bar and Grill across the street where he had a restaurant inside there. 14:10 That's where he had the big pictures. So my Uncle Pat and then kind of like all over the place with this. He was also the manager of Harold Johnson, who was a light heavyweight champion of the world. So Uncle Pat had a gym up there. So we trained fighters at the restaurant downstairs at the steakhouse over here. So they decided to build the bridge. 14:28 So my grandfather and Pad and my father didn't buy Gino steaks. And Joe Vento, you know, the story was he went over there with $6 in his pocket and opened up the place. And as soon as he, like, went over there, he put like the best sandwich in the world. They didn't even sell a sandwich yet. 14:46 So he went over there. So but the thing about it, the ironic thing about it is nothing so ironic. But my mother and father and and Joey, Vento and Eileen, they all knew each other growing up. 14:58 Speaker 4 Yeah, Joey Vento and and Eileen and I, we, we used to travel together when we were 11-12 years old. In fact, her, her sister Diane still lives a dockside with me and we sit down and talk and laugh about all the things. And there's no rivalry. 15:14 We were all friends. 15:16 Speaker 3 Yeah, we're all friends. 15:17 Speaker 4 We were on, we were on Doctor Phil one time because Doctor Phil thought that there was some kind of rivalry going on. And then it was, it was a crazy day. So all his customers were on his side and all our customers on our side. And Joey walked across the street and gave me a big hug and kiss. 15:35 And his customers were going, wait a minute. And I thought there was a rivalry here. And then I need screaming from across the street. She's waving to me. And then they thought that was they thought, what? Wait a minute, wait a minute, what's going on? And then we got a phone call at night and it was producer from Doctor Phil because his wife was after we were talking and I said, oh wow, I live right on 2nd and Locust. 16:00 She said, oh, we're filming tomorrow. But on the what is it the? 16:04 Speaker 3 Constitution Center. 16:05 Speaker 4 Yeah, Constitution Center. I said, oh, maybe I will go over. Oh, she said to come up, we'll just give you tickets. So she picked that up and we got a phone call and producer said we would like to have you on the show with with Gino states. 16:21 So Joey said that he won't do it unless Frankie does it, we said. 16:26 Speaker 3 Frankie My. 16:27 Speaker 4 Dad, I said. I said, all right, call me back. So I said, Frank, we want to go on Doctor Phil, I said, with Joey, and I didn't. He said, yeah, OK. I said, because Joey's not going to do it unless you do it. So we we called her. She called me back, and we did it. I want to tell you what a riot. 16:43 It was so funny. What? 16:45 Speaker 2 Year is this, in fact. 16:46 Speaker 4 If you get on YouTube, you could find it on there. Yeah, it's hilarious. Yeah, look it up. 16:55 Speaker 3 But they both take a bite of each other sandwiches and they spit them out. 16:58 Speaker 4 I yeah, it's like. 17:00 Speaker 1 I want to say that that to me is the heartbeat of South Philadelphia. Like, that's really about camaraderie. I mean, you might have some, you know, friendly competition and all of that, and then whatever the media wants to make of it. But that's what makes South Philly so special. 17:17 Speaker 4 As long as I could remember. I'm frankly, you know, because he always spoke to Joey. 17:22 Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm nice to call him Uncle Joey. 17:24 Speaker 4 Yeah. It was always like, are you, do you want to do this or should we do that or are we raising the prices? Are we putting this in or I don't want to put that in. We always had in South Philly. 17:39 And I know what my son does. Somebody calls him and says, Frank, you got any extra cheese? Frankie gives it to them. Frank, you got extra onions? Yeah, come down and get them. You got bread. Everybody sticks together. 17:55 Nobody. No. 17:56 Speaker 2 Very. 17:56 Speaker 1 Good heart. 17:57 Speaker 4 Nobody, but I mean, it's the whole everybody. 18:00 Speaker 1 Yes. 18:01 Speaker 4 But nobody knows that John John's a pork roast pork. You know how many times he comes in here with roast pork sandwiches with a bag? 18:10 Speaker 3 Yeah, like when I was watching the news all morning and I think it was on Fox News in the morning, I was watching and John's roast pork. Someone broke into his place and shimmied down his event and then he had a, a, a jar with like 12 or $1500 in it today was given to the Leukemia Foundation, Cancer Foundation. 18:30 So I saw it and, and my wife Nancy, I saw it. I'm putting my pants on and my wife Nancy said we're going, that's I'm going to the store to write a check. 18:38 Speaker 2 Oh wow. 18:39 Speaker 3 So I dropped it off to him. He's like, I can't, like I can't believe he did. I'm like give the give the check to the Leukemia Foundation. 18:46 Speaker 2 Wow, like that's a beautiful thing. 18:48 Speaker 3 But I, you know, but there's, you know, other things that I, there's other things that I won't pay for, though. 18:52 Frank's Philosophy on Quality and Consistency in Business Yeah, allegedly, like a miracle. There's a miracle that I won't pay $100 for. 18:59 Speaker 2 OK, Yeah. 19:01 Speaker 3 We'll get to that later. 19:02 Speaker 1 So how did it get transferred into? 19:04 Speaker 3 You're lost. You're lost about that one. I won't pay $100. Is he? Jesus Christ, come off the cross. 19:11 Speaker 2 He. 19:12 Speaker 4 Says that your father. 19:13 Speaker 3 No, our friend down on S Broad St. said that. 19:19 Speaker 4 Yeah, well, that's a whole lot. 19:22 Speaker 1 How did it get turned over from your generation into your generation? 19:27 Speaker 3 Well, I had to wait till everybody died or bought or get bought out. That was legit. Like it was really, it was just a, a transitional kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, I worked here. I've been here since like I'm 18. And, you know, my sisters were here, were partners in the business and they're not partners anymore. 19:42 And, and my dad and mom retired, so I bought them out and, you know, and, and it's just natural succession. So it's it's like one of those things you just need to continue to legacy. 19:52 Speaker 1 Right. So if you were in business and you failed, would you go back? Would you try it again? 19:59 Speaker 3 Absolutely, yeah. I mean, if I woke up tomorrow morning and this wasn't here, I would find something else to do. Not necessarily cheese steaks. It could be something different. 20:07 Speaker 2 Would you go back to the original, like let's just say this business failed. Would you do it again in the same business? 20:15 Speaker 3 In the same business, I could probably I could replicate, I could replicate this business. It's not hard, but it's not rocket science what we do here. It's just a matter of like my father always told me, if you're not prepared to give the food that you're making that you're selling to the customers to your family, then you shouldn't. 20:34 So if if you if you go by that and you're putting out, you know, the best, the best quality food that you can do. And we try. Listen, I've eaten a million steaks here. I've been here all my life eating a million steaks. So out of a million steaks, Yeah. Were there steaks that I ate and I threw in a trash cross. 20:50 I didn't like them. Absolutely not Every cow's happy to die, you know what I mean? So they're going to find some you're going to find. You're going to find a cow that's like, listen, I'm going to be a little obstinate today. This is. 21:02 Speaker 1 Going to be my new favorite thing, but not every cow's happy. 21:05 Speaker 3 To die. Not every cow's happy to die. I mean, like I'll take at birth. It's time off. I'm listen, I got some unfinished business up. Sorry, numbers up #42 come on, let's go. It's what happens. 21:18 Speaker 4 And I always say it all depends on who's making the sandwich. 21:22 Frank's Take on Influencers and Fellow Cheesesteak Makers Sure it is. It's very it. 21:24 Speaker 1 Says consistency matters in any business. 21:26 Speaker 2 What do you write about all these influencers that are coming by in there? Oh, just somebody with a camera and they do this thing. No it all. 21:32 Speaker 3 I think I put out a video, it got 8.3 million views and it was specifically geared towards influencers. 21:40 Speaker 2 Is that when you were chopping? 21:41 Speaker 3 The Yeah, like chopping the meat. And you know what? Listen, I had to explain to you men every cheese steak person in Philadelphia except for maybe 1 calls me. And when they saw that video were hysterical laughing. 21:57 They chopped their meat. I got a phone call. I called Danny from Angelo's. I've been buying pizza from Danny's since he was in New Jersey, his place and I called him. I'm like, what's going on? You were in the hospital because I'm stressed, cat stressed, I'm stressed. I said what's the key? Because but I'm a little upset with you. 22:13 I'm like, why? Because of the video goes no, fuck the video. He said it was hysterical. He said. I went home and I wanted to pat steaks and I had to get a Gino steaks because you don't deliver an Uberries out the black. 22:24 Speaker 2 1. 22:25 Speaker 3 I said we got my number, call me. I would have dropped it off to you. I got my friend Nish from Da Rossi's calls me at 9:00 at night. Frank, I'm the Cape. What's up? He said, Can I come over and get some onions? Yeah, whatever you need. Come over and get some onions. Like that's the kind of person like Gino and I have pictures of Gino and I and Tony. 22:44 Look, we're all friends. Steve the Prince of steaks. I get on the phone with him. It's like, I just love the rhymes. I remember Steve the Prince of steaks. Steve is the best. I love him. When I was a kid, he. 22:55 Speaker 2 Just opened. 22:55 Speaker 3 Up in wild. Yeah. So when I was a kid, I would stand inside making sandwiches and Steve would be outside with a legal pad, a stopwatch at a pen. He's writing down his weight. So my father come out. What the fuck's that guy doing over there? I said, I don't know. He's been here for like an hour. 23:12 He goes, tell me, get the fuck off the pavement. I'm like, he's he's drinking a soda. All right? When he finishes the soda, get him off the pavement. This is what your husband used to do to me, right? He come back out like an hour later. Make it right. 23:27 My father, I got plenty of stories about it. Say come my father would come out, you would hear his keys. He had like 10,000 keys on a chain and only one worked. And he probably didn't know which door it worked because we never closed. So he we didn't lock the door. 23:43 So he come back out. He said this fucking guy's still here. I said he just got another sandwich. I can't tell him to leave. And then he would Steve tells the story. He would come, he would write down and he duplicated bar store the way it was then when he opened up his places and he is the. 23:58 Speaker 4 Nicest guy. 23:59 Speaker 3 Yeah, he's the nicest. He's Steve is, he's, he's aces. He's like. 24:04 Speaker 1 I think he's opening up on 611 up in Warrington. 24:06 Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. 24:07 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I just passed. 24:08 Speaker 3 That I'm supposed to have dinner with him. I, I, I try to get together with him for dinner in Florida, he's in Aventura, I try to get together with dinner for here. He's it's just. 24:18 Experiencing Cheesesteaks in Florence, French Laundry, and Beyond I have a question for you, for both of you actually. When you go to other cities and they dub it as a Philadelphia cheese steak and it tastes nothing like a Philadelphia cheese steak, are you like, are you for real? Like what? How do you respond to that? 24:34 Like and why? What do they think? 24:37 Speaker 2 Very good to. 24:39 Speaker 1 Make a good exactly to make a good Philadelphia cheese steak. 24:42 Speaker 4 I'll answer first. Yeah, I never eat another. I never eat a cheese steak any place else but in Philadelphia. OK, I never I'm in Florida all year. In fact, there's a there's a what's called AL's Princess Steaks, or what is. 24:58 Speaker 3 AL's AL's original AL's Philly steak. It's in Del Rey. 25:02 Speaker 4 Del Rey and I passed by it and he's they duplicated everything we had out there, you know, with the, you know, the, you know, the ketchup and the mustard and the Peppers and all that. And in fact, the kid that was at the window, he was from 15th and Chunk and he got the job out there and I still didn't need to pick up a sandwich. 25:23 No, I won't. I thought that. I don't. I just feel that it's not going to be like ours. It's not, you know? I mean, I've done it when we were down the shore and Brigantine, we would go to Reno's. They made a good cheese steak, the White House. 25:41 I would always get a cheese steak at the White House. OK. But other than that, because I knew what I was going to get, I don't really venture to. 25:51 Speaker 2 Like you're born and raised in South Philly and then maybe go open somewhere. Could you duplicate that as you know? Would you eat there when he's born and raised in South Philadelphia and went to another. 26:03 Speaker 4 City. Yeah, another city. 26:04 Speaker 2 I don't. 26:05 Speaker 4 Really think there's anybody I know there are friends of ours that have opened up steakhouses in like on the other side on the West Coast. A lot of you know, a few people. I don't I can't get names on top of that, right, But I know that and somebody else just opened up over here. 26:23 Do you know it is? It didn't. 26:24 Speaker 3 Pete Bull was been selling. Pete was done selling in Florida. Pete was one of our managers. 26:28 Speaker 4 Yeah, like on the West Coast, I've seen few of our friends. Yeah, I know that open up. I don't know, I just. 26:34 Speaker 2 When they come, they come a little close or. 26:37 Speaker 4 I don't know. I I don't go to the West Coast, M1 East Coast. 26:41 Speaker 3 I think for, for me, I've had the last cheese steak that I ate that wasn't in Philadelphia, was somewhere else, was recently in Florence. My, my wife and I went to Florence. We were in Italy for four weeks and we stayed at the, the Portrait, the Ferragamo hotel for three weeks. 26:57 And we had been there like 5 months before that. And the, the people are just so generous and so beautiful there. Said that they, they closed all, all the staff at the hotel, closed the bar restaurant down at the Ferragamo at the Portrait Hotel. 27:13 They said we're closed and the chef get they made cheese steaks for me at the hotel. It was, I have photographs of it. It was incredible. So to get honored like that is pretty awesome. To go back a little further, I was out in California and I was doing a little thing. 27:32 I was doing something in Petaluma. That's another that's another show. We could talk about that on another show. All right, Part 2. All right, Part 2 is a good that's I have I have so much to talk about and I have a lot of coffee and nobody wants to So so we we went to this one restaurant called single thread and I can't remember the town, but they Google you. 27:54 So it was like, Oh my God, I can't believe you're here. This guy over here works here is from Philly. And then we ended up at the French Laundry the next night. French Laundry, Thomas Keller's restaurant. It was like, like, it's like the pinnacle of restaurants to go to. 28:13 So I'm sitting facing a wall with another couple that we know from California who her grandfather lived next door to you in Jupiter. The guy from Atlantic Healthcare or something. That guy. So the waitresses come out the service. 28:28 I'm sorry, excuse me. The servers come out and they're like, this is a special course in the kitchen. They made a cheese steak for us. I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. So one of the chefs there was from Broad and Dickinson and he's like, I saw you were coming in. 28:44 He said how to make you a cheese steak. So they made brioche rolls, caramelized onions, Wagyu beef. It was like, and homemade cheese whiz. It was crazy good. It was just such an honor to to have that. And I've had them in like a sale. 29:00 So we take, we take, we write catamarans and we go to the BVI and one of the islands we want to, there was a Philly cheese steak on the menu. So I got to try it. I mean, come on, I'm in, I'm in BVI, I'm in like, you know, middle of British Virgin Islands. I mean, taste it. It was pretty good. 29:16 I mean, like I had some good ones. I've had some bad ones. I mean, the first cheese steak that I ever had in the city of Phil in the in the state of Pennsylvania, besides from our store was from Steve Prince of Steaks. That was the first one that ever tasted. 29:33 Yeah, Steve's the best. And then but when, you know, we grew up summering in Brigantine, my ex was from Brigantine. So I was always in Brigantine or, or Atlantic City, Margate Vatner. So when I'm there, I mean, I love the White House Sacos Dinos. 29:50 I mean, they're to me that's like comfort food and cheese steak there. Like I get like I get my Turkey and provolone or I get my salami and provolone and I get a cheese steak because I have to have it and I'm like but. 30:03 Speaker 1 What do you think other chefs and other people think makes a good cheese steak? Like what is that special ingredient in your mind? 30:12 Speaker 3 Well, I, I hope that no chef or no person or no shorter to cook thinks that mushrooms and Peppers on a silly cheese steak is a good ingredient or are good ingredients because in my mind I think it's an atrocity to put mushrooms and Peppers on it. 30:31 Although we do have them, people ask for it it. 30:35 Speaker 2 Buries the flavor. 30:36 Speaker 3 It is I think, I think for if you're using a quality meat, if you're using like some of our, some of our competitors don't use rib eye, they use a different cut of meat, which is fine, which is fine. I mean, it's, listen, the basic ingredients, onions, meat, cheese, bread and any combination thereof. 30:56 So it's a matter of, like I said, not every cow's happy, not every part of the cow's happy, you know? So I think if you just stick with the main ingredients, it's like, you know, you can go to Barkley Prime and get the $165 cheesesteak and get the split of vouv. 31:14 It's great. It's a great thing. It's fun. I always get it every time I go there just for the hell of it because I have to eat it. 31:20 Why Philadelphia's Water and Bread are Key to a Great Cheesesteak It's so rich and just like. 31:23 Speaker 4 No wonder now you're blaming me for your heart. 31:25 Speaker 3 Valve no, wasn't but I I don't know. I think, I think if you're just listen, I think the key ingredient that I think you can't really get in other places, although I've made cheese steaks when I work for the department of tourism in Montreal and Toronto, that gets in Montreal and, and Canada are are you know, where the 51st state, maybe, maybe not. 31:53 Like I said, not every Canadian is happy about that. So I've had grape bread up there. So we're actually doing a restaurant takeover next month in Los Angeles. Again, it went in West Hollywood where I have a woman out there who baked bread for Joe Padilla, the Pizzeria Padilla. 32:09 And Joe Joe's amazing, he's an amazing pizza Pizzaioli's. I love Joe And so she baked bread for him. So she baked bread for us. We did a restaurant takeover at this Benjamin place, and we did, like, 300 sandwiches. So we're going out next month to do it again. So if you find a Baker that can bake in a similar fashion to what we have here, Yeah. 32:30 I mean, like, I always tell people that the bread in Philadelphia is so unique because the water's so dirty from the school. But, you know, you can bake, you can have good bagels anywhere. It doesn't necessarily have to be the New York, the New York Water, Right, Right. 32:42 Speaker 2 Now Frank sits down. He wants something from here. He's going to have a cheese steak. Me. Yeah. You're from Pat's? 32:48 Speaker 3 OK. 32:49 Speaker 2 OK, Frankie, sitting down, he's got his cheese steak. How does he eat it? There's there's a method. 32:54 Speaker 3 So my method is inside out. Take the inside of the bread out because I like a ratio. I like a I like a sandwich. It has a ratio. So I love a gigantic corned beef sandwich from cats or or from famous or wherever. Yeah, but I think it's obnoxious to have that much meat in the sandwich. 33:11 I'm listen, this isn't my, this isn't my last meal. 33:14 Speaker 2 Right. 33:15 Speaker 3 Not my last meal. It's like I don't like I don't need to go to a restaurant and have 4 lbs of spaghetti on a plate. I think that's. 33:22 Speaker 2 That's the name, not This isn't my. 33:24 Speaker 1 It is. That's so American. Yeah, that's such an American thing. 33:28 Speaker 3 It. 33:29 Speaker 1 Is like more you want more. 33:31 Speaker 3 Like I need bang for my buck. OK, well, having 14 lbs of meat on a sandwich to cut open and the cheese is dripping out of it. So for me, we keep our meat flat. We try not, we shave it a little thinner because people, I, you know, I said in my, in my recent video that people don't have teeth anymore. 33:48 They can't chew. I think my mother and I are the only two people left that actually write in script. You know, everybody else is we're going to be we're going to be like a species of thumbs since from piping. OK. And so I like my meat flat. I only like a little bit of meat, little bit of onions and a little bit of Cheez biz. 34:08 And my sandwich is wrapped. I get a cherry, a whole cherry pepper. I bite the pepper. I bite the sandwich because my mouth is actually watering right now. The vinegar from the pepper opens my palate and makes me ready for the the the the the richness of the sandwich. 34:23 Speaker 2 Is that written anywhere? Bite the pepper. 34:25 Speaker 3 I've said it so many times. 34:27 Speaker 2 But is it written anywhere? No. 34:29 Speaker 3 That's right. OK, I'm. 34:31 Speaker 2 Serious, I would like to follow your instructions and do it just like that and get that feeling because when you said them like. 34:38 Speaker 3 Yeah, it's, it's just, it's, yeah, the chopped Peppers on the sandwich, like you get it, the White House and Dino's and Sacco's. It's great because it's in there. It's omnipresent all over the place. But there's just something about and then like when you get all the way down to the end of the sandwich and you get to the end and you're there, you're there and you've got that end of your sandwich in your hand. 34:59 Wait, right now, like here is, here's a shameless plug. Here's a Ritchie's hoagie right here. 35:06 Speaker 4 OK. 35:07 Speaker 3 So when you get down to the end of the sandwich and all the grease and the onion juice and the cheese was gets to this part and your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your husband, your sister, your brother, whomever is standing next to you and you give that piece of the sandwich to them. 35:24 That's love. 35:24 Speaker 1 That is love. 35:25 Speaker 3 That's love. 35:26 Speaker 1 This is that is this. 35:28 Speaker 3 Is the best bite in the sandwich in my opinion. What do I know? Wow. 35:34 Speaker 4 I only usually I only got my sandwiches with just onions and I don't like a lot of meat in my sandwich. Say no, yes, not a lot. I've got it like he does. We've got the bread. Well, I I like American, but now I'm hooked on the Cooper Sharp. 35:49 Speaker 3 Cooper Sharp. 35:50 Speaker 4 And I get it from Joe Perry and Joe Joe Perry. What's his name? Frankie Perry. Frankie Perry down Wildwood. 35:55 Speaker 3 You know Frankie, Frankie steaks. Yeah, we go. 35:58 Speaker 4 Back and forth, you know, and he says it's, it's an ferocity that you have, Cooper Sharp. And then one that text, I emailed them back or whatever, and I said, don't be mad at me, but I like Cooper Sharp and it sends me a heart. Yeah, it sends me a heart because I do. 36:14 I like the Cooper Sharp, but I always like my sandwich plain. I'm not like it and I don't like like sauces and stuff. My husband used to put we used to have relics. We. 36:26 Speaker 3 Still have the. I love the. 36:27 Speaker 4 Sandwiches. My husband always put relish on the sandwich with the hot sauce. Everything works right. 36:33 Speaker 3 So here I'm going to show you something like now when I am somewhere else, I get a whole rib roast like that. OK, this is this is my house and at the shore and this was the whole boneless rib roast. 36:48 So I had, I, I brought some sandwiches down for some friends to make, but they couldn't make it over. She's my friend. Kim is a beekeeper. I'm taking a beekeeper course because I like bees and I like honey. And so I got this whole rib roast. So this whole rib roast was $675 for this rib roast. 37:05 It was like 27 lbs. And here's me cutting it, you know, but I'm not a chef. So. And then we get to the sandwich part. So I made so like do I do I like a semolina roll? Yeah, absolutely. 37:20 So this is the sandwich I made and it's not chopped. It just fell apart because I I had to slice it on a gravity slicer and it was wasn't frozen. But that's the sandwich I made for my friends. It was so rich that literally I could only have like 3 bites of it because it's when you're using quality product that has Cooper Shark on it too. 37:39 And you? 37:40 Speaker 4 Took home from the shore last week. 37:42 Speaker 3 Yeah, that was that was a whole pursuit, though, I took. 37:44 Speaker 4 Home No. 37:45 Speaker 3 No, the Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 37:46 Speaker 4 Yeah, that was good. That was so bad I didn't have it, but everybody said it. 37:51 Speaker 3 Was so that's what I make for myself. 37:53 Speaker 1 The bread makes. 37:55 Speaker 3 The bread makes it listen. 37:56 Speaker 2 You could have everything you could. 37:57 Speaker 3 Put like anything on a flip flop, if the flip flop's prepared right, and eat it seriously. Or you could put a flip flop on really good bread and go the other way. But that's the whole for me. 38:10 Debunking Garlic Myths in Italian and Italian-American Cooking It's the whole kid. 38:10 Speaker 4 That's what that's what the problem is in other states. The bread like Florida's bread, they do make like a they'll make like a French loaf. They do make a good French loaf, but they the bread out there is horrible in Florida. 38:26 Oh my God, I'm going to switch. 38:27 Speaker 2 Things up a little and I like Italian food, right? Right. I need your opinion. I need you to debunk me, but Italian food to me tastes like garlic and when you're having Italian food you should be able to taste. 38:39 Speaker 4 The food. 38:41 Speaker 2 Everywhere I go it's garlic, garlic, garlic, garlic. OK, help. 38:44 Speaker 3 Me with it. Let me stop you right there. Because Italian American food tastes like garlic. Like Italian food doesn't taste like garlic. OK, so as a self-proclaimed chef of chef and Pizzaola and my other plaques are home and all that, all that bullshit beekeeper. 39:02 So in, in Italian and Italian cuisine in Italy, when they, when they cook a pasta dish and, and then by and large onions and onions and garlic don't go together. That's something that doesn't happen in Italy together in a dish. So they, there's a great podcast, another podcast, a great YouTube guy I follow and he doesn't talk and he's in a restaurant like at the beach somewhere in Italy. 39:26 And he's got a camera on him and he's just there flipping pasta and he's like, it's like 5 minutes of hell in the kitchen or 30 minutes of hell in the kitchen. Garlic goes into the oil, pecorancino, parsley stems. It's flavored. The garlic comes out and goes away. 39:42 That's the way it is. 39:43 Speaker 2 Yes. 39:44 Speaker 3 Because you want to flavor the garlic. You don't. Garlic is it is is an enhancement to the oil. It's not a component of the of the of the of the recipe. 39:55 Speaker 2 Right. So then you feel me, because a lot of times you'll go to, like here in town, Yeah, you'll go to. 40:01 Speaker 4 And all I taste is. 40:02 Speaker 2 Garlic and I can I say Mel it when? Yeah, I don't mind. I don't mind garlic, but I don't want it you know? Infused is fine, but I don't want it garlic on top of. 40:11 Speaker 1 You, I think it goes back to what Frankie said, is that it's the proportion of. 40:14 Speaker 3 Yeah, so the only dish that you should actually taste garlic in ever is not an Italian dish that was invented by a Spanish person in Tijuana. You know what it is? 40:26 Speaker 1 No. 40:28 Speaker 3 It was invented because he didn't have anything left in his kitchen. Caesar salad was invented by Caesar and Tijuana. Really. 40:34 Speaker 2 All right, how? 40:35 Speaker 3 About that. Not an Italian dish. His name was Caesar. So yeah, he had, he had anchovies, he had garlic, he had olive oil, he had an egg and he had Parmesan cheese. 40:45 How Gold Belly Saved Pat's King of Steaks During COVID Wow. 40:46 Speaker 1 Can we go to a little bit of current history of five years ago when the pandemic hit? How did you guys survive? What happened? How'd you get? 40:56 Speaker 2 Through all of that, did you paint the little? Did you paint the little feet on the sidewalk? They. 41:01 Speaker 3 Were so stupid so right before that I'm going to have to give Nancy credit for this because my my wife said there's a guy calling you from this thing called gold belly and and I'm like, I don't want to ship steaks out I'm not doing that because my dad always like ingrained in my brain and my DNA. 41:20 You can't do that it's not going to work it's not going to work and so she said there went a ship steak. So we started doing R&D on it. They came down. We made a deal with Gold Belly probably 6 to 8 months before the pandemic. The pandemic hits. 41:35 Speaker 1 Excuse me, Gold Belly is he's going to ship your steaks. 41:37 Speaker 3 Gold Belly ships damages like if you want a babka from this place in, in Brooklyn, they'll ship it to you overnight. You want Cat's Deli in New York, they ship it to you overnight. Do you want a White House hoagie? They ship it to you overnight. So Gold Belly was, was our lifesaver because we stayed open because we were outside. 41:56 We didn't have anything to do outside. So we kind of deemed ourselves, what was it essential essential workers because we were feeding the people that were stolen, the street cleaning stuff up. You know, we were donating states to the police or anybody was working out there. We took care of them. 42:12 So Gold Belly basically saved our business. So we went from selling like, you know, delivering probably 2-3 dozen Gold Belly, you know, packages a week, which could have been a four pack, 8 pack or 12 pack to literally making clothes. No, no bullshit. close to 10,000 sandwiches a week packing them because we had no business. 42:33 Nobody was out. The only people that were coming down here were people that were like, you know, doing like they were coming. People have people coming down from New York like we're we're from New Jersey. They would drive to drive car clubs. We met in the parking lot. 42:48 You're the only place that's open. We drove down from Newark or we drove down from Queens to come get sandwiches. So our refrigerators were chocked full of steaks. We were sending out like 10 like 10,000 a week. That's insane. So it was. 43:02 Speaker 1 Insane. 43:02 Speaker 3 It was insane and it and truly Gold Belly saved our business. You know, to this day we still sell a lot of gold bellies, not nearly as many as we were selling then were. 43:11 Speaker 2 You having like masks on with all the heat are you doing? 43:13 Speaker 3 Masks. We had masks. 43:15 Speaker 4 They were actually. They curfewed us at 6:00. 43:17 Speaker 3 They tried to, but yeah. 43:19 Speaker 4 Yeah, you know. 43:21 Speaker 2 It's bad. I don't know how you do that heat like that. Eat chefs and cooking. 43:25 Speaker 3 But but fortunately, through the winter, we were OK and in the summer was a little difficult. And you know, and then we had, you know, we had an infinite supply of COVID tests. So we were, everybody was getting tested daily. 43:41 Everybody was coming in, coming to work and leaving Work was tested. I don't know if it was just wasting tests, but totally. 43:47 Speaker 2 Because you're going to get it. 43:48 Speaker 3 Anyway, yeah, we had a couple. We had a couple employees that, you know, had had gotten it, gotten it from a family member at home, and fortunately only maybe one or two people were affected at work by it. You know, I didn't get it until later. You never got it, did you? 44:03 Speaker 4 No, Daddy got it in the last nursing home he was in. Yeah. And, and it's so crazy because I think, I think they asked me if he should have a COVID shot in the second one he was in. And I said, yeah, give it to him. You know, I figured a nursing home better get him a COVID shot. 44:20 But then I was with him on a Monday and I sat with him. We were kissing, I was hugging him, sitting next to him. And then I didn't go on Tuesday. And then I went back with my grandson Frankie on Wednesday and they said you can't go in his whole his section has COVID. 44:39 And I think he only maybe had a little cough and runny nose, but I never got it. And I was like all over him, you know, I was in there and and no, I mean, I think I got lucky. I got a flu shot. 44:57 Well, I got I got 2 in Florida because my friends were saying they were crazy. You got to go, you got to go. So I had my driver take me up to the, it's the stadium up there near Miami. And I got, we got our first shot. 45:12 We got, we happened to get a phone number and I got on the phone, somebody answered it that minute. So I got the first shot, the second shot up there. And then when we came home, Frankie got me appointments over at Target at CVS and Frankie and I got them there. 45:28 And then our last shot was in Florida at Walgreens where we our house in Florida, he got the shot. We got the shots on Monday. Tuesday I got up deathly sick with the last shot and I will never get another shot. 45:47 No, no, I got a flu shot this week, she said. So they asked me if I wanted to COVID and I said I don't think so. 45:54 Speaker 1 Right, you know it's all in. 45:56 Speaker 3 Mystery. Yeah, I'm pretty much done with that. I mean, I got it once, my wife got it twice. I. 46:00 Speaker 2 Wanted the one and done. I wanted the J&J, you know, Yeah. But I was, I really didn't want to get it. I was, I was torturing myself, but I had to. I was flying. I had to get it. And I hate it every. 46:13 Speaker 3 Night I do know that the trackers at me because when I walk by certain things that lights up. Oh. 46:17 Speaker 4 Yeah, the thing. Yeah. You know what? My daughter I remember. 46:20 Speaker 2 I'll be surprised. 46:21 Speaker 4 My granddaughter's friend, My granddaughter's best friend was getting married here. She got married, but then they had the reception after. That's what happened with my granddaughter Jay. She was supposed to get married May 9th. COVID hit. She got married on the beach. 46:37 I couldn't even go because she couldn't park on A1A and she got married. And then she, she works in the hospital, she works Boca Regional. I couldn't even go to her house after because I was afraid. We're afraid. 46:52 So anyway, she got married. She her wedding was cancelled three times. Finally got married May 9th and March 19th a couple years ago. But my other granddaughter, her best friend, was getting married and that you couldn't go to the wedding unless you had covic shots and my youngest daughter got one or two. 47:12 She was so pissed off two days before, 3 days before the wedding, they said, oh, you don't have to get the COVID shot now to go to the wedding. My daughter, All I can tell you about this baby sister, she was off the wall. Off the wall. 47:28 She didn't. And you know. 47:30 Speaker 1 So that was like a foresight to go into the the delivery. 47:34 Speaker 3 Yeah, the delivery was great. So it was great. And then we and, you know, we're really, I'm really good friends with Michael Solomonov from Zahav and I, you know, initially when, when we started doing it, they're like, you need to talk to Michael. You need to talk to because we had went through Israel on a food tour with Michael and they're like, call Michael. 47:53 Michael, you interested? No, no, I don't, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. And then all of a sudden I was with him. I actually, we were at his restaurant, Laser Wolf in Fishtown the night before he had it closed. He's like, I have 300 people I need to lay off. 48:08 And he had the yurts outside of Zahab. 48:10 From Zahav's Lamb to Frank's Vegetarian Jokes He was serving people that way. And then he called me, said Frankie, what's that guy's phone number? And it was the same thing for him. He was sending out. You're go to Sahab and have his lamb. It's to die for. It's seriously ridiculous. And he was. 48:24 Speaker 1 Going to believe this, but I'm a vegetarian. 48:26 Speaker 3 Oh OK, that's OK. I was a vegetarian once. It was the worst 6 minutes of my life. I'm. 48:34 Speaker 2 A part time vegetarian. 48:36 Speaker 3 You know, I'm a vegetarian too. You know, cow's eat vegetable. Fury of transitivity, Yeah. 48:42 Speaker 4 My daughter, yeah. My daughter. Yeah, he's. 48:44 Speaker 2 A comedian? Yeah. 48:46 Speaker 4 Yeah, he's hysterical. No, he's yeah. Yeah. His older sister will say. You know, on the other hand, my brother is really funny. Yeah. 49:00 Speaker 3 Hysterical. 49:01 Speaker 4 Yeah, he's hysterical. He is. I mean, he used to do things when he was a kid and we sat at the dinner table at night. It was always something. Yeah, he would sit there and say his pair in one. 49:13 Speaker 3 Bite. 49:14 Speaker 4 And then we will have to watch him almost choke on this pair. 49:17 Speaker 2 Yeah. 49:18 Speaker 4 Oh yeah, he was hysterical. 49:19 Speaker 2 I want to tell you something. You're forgiven Frankie and tell you why you're forgiven because back in When I forget what year do we open up Anadon de Spa and Salon in Doylestown? 49:29 Speaker 1 1999. 49:30 Speaker 2 We invited you to our grand opening. 49:32 Speaker 3 And I can come you. 49:33 Speaker 2 Could you? Did not. I was so mad. But it's OK. 49:36 Speaker 3 I'm sorry, what year was it? 49:38 Speaker 2 You couldn't make it 99. 49:40 Speaker 3 1999 Oh, I was, I was, I was in my I was still at my destination wedding. There you go. I was in hell for 28 1/2 years in my first wedding, my destination at the first destination wedding ever. Yeah, 99 was a bad year. 49:56 Speaker 2 Sorry, I can't come. I can't be there as well. 49:58 Speaker 4 OK, well, it wasn't allowed. 50:00 Speaker 3 Yeah, it wasn't allowed. My ex-wife didn't let me out tomorrow. 50:01 Speaker 4 Breathe. I mean, it's a wonder he's still breathing. 50:05 Speaker 3 Please, you look at all the photographs that she has in the basement of me and the kids, the kids that don't talk to me anymore because they're with her, that's another story. Oh yeah, There's only one thing to say that it's called lifetime alimony. So anybody who's listening, don't get married in Jersey, don't get fucking divorced in Jersey. 50:24 Of course, there's a thing called lifetime alimony, which lets you, your spouse, whomever if it's your husband or your wife, stay home and just wait for a check. 50:35 Speaker 2 It's. 50:36 Speaker 3 Fucked up. What person, what human being would sign a bill that says yes give this person. Not that my ex was, but you know, this person is banging the the Amazon guy give her money for the rest of her life. 50:52 It wasn't her. My my ex-wife wasn't, because all right. 50:54 Speaker 1 So that's a marriage lesson. 50:55 Speaker 3 That's a marriage lesson. Seriously. 50:57 Lessons on Business Partnerships, Family, and Societal Perspectives Let's hear a business lesson. What would you tell someone else? Like you're a younger self? It's starting out. Yeah. What's a lesson that you learned that you can't live with that? Like it has to be if somebody else would start doing you. 51:11 Speaker 3 Or both of you, we can, we can go, we, I think we could probably do this together because there is, there's a lot of things that kind of happened and then happened again. And, and I'm not saying it's for bad. I'm saying that like if you get involved in a business with your cousin, your partner, your, your, your family member, anybody, anybody doesn't necessarily have to be a family member. 51:37 Make sure that everything in your partnership agreement is stipulated and written down and you understand. And somebody smarter than you understands it better than you do to explain it to you because you have like a, a person like my Uncle Pat who would just tell us brothers. 51:54 Oh, yeah, you're all partners in the business. And then one by one, when brothers would not be in the business anymore, they were like, well, we were partners in the business. Where's our share? Like no. 52:03 Speaker 4 No, to what we would have to we, we had an experience with, with one of one of our uncles who was just, and he probably told me he was a partner. And then when he passed away, then the children wanted, they wanted money for their for their mother. 52:20 So of course it always there was always my mother-in-law said, and I'm going to just whip it out to them that this business was the ruination of the owl fairy family. It was a family curse. And I'm married 65 years next week. 52:39 And for 65 years, I've seen everything that you could freaking imagine having in this family. And I tried to protect him from everybody, OK? 52:54 I tried to protect my son because I didn't want my son to be in the same position as his father because my husband has dementia and it's not from whatever depression and alcohol, because it is freaking business with his family, with his sister and his father, OK. 53:15 And I didn't want that to happen to Frank. 53:18 Speaker 3 Yeah, my protect yourself. Protect yourself because when someone, because when somebody that you love comes to you and says can can you, can you just sign this here? Uh huh. And you're like, Oh yeah. Well, what is? Oh, well, you know, Mom doesn't have anything in her name, so we're going to give her all the properties that you and I bought together and and when we die, you're going to get the properties back. 53:43 Just make mom feel like she has something because the $10,000 in pennies I take from the business every week and put in her account, it's not enough. So you sign it and you give it to him. And then somebody comes and says to you that he knows it works seven years later and says, you know, there's something not right about this. 53:58 This looks like it was Xeroxed onto this thing that was done 15 years ago. So. 54:05 Speaker 2 Yes. 54:05 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. 54:06 Speaker 4 Did I tell? Yeah. 54:07 Speaker 3 So wow. 54:09 Speaker 4 I could tell you. 54:10 Speaker 3 So he learned. So that person learned from his older brother, who was the guy that worked at the Radio Flyer sled company, which was my Uncle Pat. 54:16 Speaker 4 Yeah. 54:18 Speaker 2 There's going to be a Part 1, so. 54:19 Speaker 1 Trump Part 3. So the lesson is just really have everything. 54:23 Speaker 3 Listen, have it look at like, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to go into business with someone, make sure that you're, you're, you can work together because you can, you can ruin a business, you can ruin a friendship, you can ruin a family by not having a good understanding of what the boundaries are. You need to have boundaries and boundaries are a big thing that you need to have with, you know, socially and stay in your lane kind of thing. 54:45 Like, listen, everybody needs to do what they're good at. If you're, if you're good with running the back of the house, sit down in the back of the house. If you're good at working the cash register, stay at the cash register. If you're good at advertising, advertise, come together as a group and and come to an agreement by consensus, not because you, oh, I have more percentage in your, where I work longer than you or whatever. 55:05 Everybody needs to like talk to you need to talk. And that's one thing that we don't do anymore as a society. I don't get off the soapbox, but we're having a conversation. We're sitting here, we're looking at each other talking. Like when I talk to younger kids, they're like, they're like, they don't even have eye contact. 55:21 And the conversations can't last this long because they can't. 55:24 Speaker 4 They can't concentrate. 55:25 Speaker 3 They can't concentrate, they can't have their their opinions are within, you know, 17 characters or less Yes, and it's important what you have to say and it and and to be a a good talker, I need to be a better listener. 55:41 And my mother and I have opposing views politically, OK, but she listens to me. I listen to her. I learn from her, she learns from me. We don't agree and we all. 55:49 Speaker 4 Get along. We all get along. Yeah, that's what I, that's how I feel about it. Like I had a friend who just passed away and he said to me, well, I can't believe you're a magnet. And I said to him, well, it don't if that doesn't mean we're not friends. 56:06 You have your you think one way, I think another way, maybe whatever I think of the person that I'm that I consider a good guy. You don't, but that's your opinion we got. Everybody's got to have an opinion and not be nuts over it. 56:22 Absolutely. 56:23 Speaker 2 It's just that this is a movie. We don't control it. It's. 56:26 Speaker 4 The whole world. 56:27 Speaker 2 Well, that's what. 56:27 Speaker 4 I tell, that's what I tell my daughter. That's what I tell my little daughter. She goes to me. Well, she'll, she'll go in on spill bear, whatever. And I go later. Look, listen, I'm going to be 86 next week. You cannot control the government. 56:45 You cannot control. 56:46 Speaker 3 The world. 56:47 Speaker 4 You're just the person in the midst of all these people. How are you? You. Yeah, You could go nuts and go free. You'll. 56:55 Speaker 2 Never know the truth. 56:56 Speaker 3 Listen, as somewhere, as far as I'm concerned, I'm not saying this should actually happen, But if someone proposed the idea of an independent person or persons buying a wood chipper with an infinite amount of gasoline to run this wood chipper and maybe park it in City Hall right by the Potomac River and have and have a sign here that says all senators and congressmen free lunch, go through this door and they walk right into the wood chipper. 57:23 Because you know as well as I do they're all corrupt. They'll come in with holes in their shoes, and three weeks later they're wearing Louis Vuitton. OK, you know, oh, I don't want a windmill because, you know, I might own coal mines. Or, you know, you know, my son might need $2.3 billion in Bitcoin. 57:43 And I'm not divorcing myself like Jimmy Carter did from our businesses or look at this mansion I have up in Chappaqua or here or there. The other thing or like, hey Mitch, hey Mitch, it's me. Nancy. Don't look at page 14 and I won't look at page 22. 57:58 We're going to pass this bill, okay? And they both get prey raises and they got Lifetime, you know, money for them pensions and they got lifetime like the better, like the best healthcare in the world where I got to fight to get medication over here from fucking Blue Cross and Blue Shield because I'm going away for three weeks. 58:16 I can't get my medication because it's it's not time. How's it not time? What's the difference? Right, right. You give it to me now or you give it to me them same fucking money. How much money are you going to make on the $1400 that's in the account for three days? You're right. 58:30 Speaker 4 You're right, it comes down to how we're being controlled. 58:33 Speaker 3 Follow, follow. Do you know what I'm really waiting for? What I'm really. Let's let's look up at the sky right now. I'm looking, let's visualize the sky. It's night time. You see all the stars. See all the stars flickering up there? The light that you see from them stars happened millions of years ago. 58:51 So you're actually saying like if a million years from now, somebody could see this in the telescope, what's happening right now? OK, so all those stars have at least 10 to 20 planets around them and moons and all that fun stuff. Could we be that arrogant to think as a human species that we're the only planet all this that there's some form of, you know what? 59:12 I cannot wait until they open up the doors at Area 54, whatever that is, or the fucking spaceship lands. Because all the stuff that you're giving money to this one, giving that one, I'm tax exempt because I'm the church and all I want the fucking Martians to land over here. 59:30 Speaker 2 An alien on my podcast you. 59:32 Speaker 3 Should have an alien on your podcast. I'm going to interview the alien. 59:37 Speaker 4 Thinks the same way I do. He thinks the same way I do. I've always said it. It can't be. We're the only people around in this universe. 59:48 Speaker 2 You'd have look at all those. 59:49 Speaker 4 Stars out there, There's got to be something else out there, you know what I mean? 59:54 Speaker 1 And you know, going back to your side, your side, your side, it's all opinions because we really all don't know. It's like, no, no, we're coming here to interview people from Pat Steaks and I'm a vegetarian. Well, here's there's three all get along. 1:00:06 Speaker 3 There's three, there's three opinions in this room. There's there's there's a Republican, a Democrat and there's an Independent. There's chopped meat, flat meat and no meat. Exactly. 1:00:18 The Story Behind Pat's 'Veggie Special' and Business Decisions And on that note, can I tell you it's a great way to she? 1:00:22 Speaker 2 Would eat a cheese steak. She would get all the fixings yeah. And put it on a piece of bread that's. 1:00:28 Speaker 3 Oh yeah, we sell them here. Oh, you do. It's called the veggie special. It's basically like having sex without the orgasm. 1:00:35 Speaker 4 I mean, we make a veg, we make a veg. Oh good. Yeah, we've been doing it for. 1:00:40 Speaker 3 Years. Yeah, we've been doing it for years. We actually make a chicken sandwich too. We. 1:00:44 Speaker 4 Have we could tell you the funniest story is is that my husband would never put Peppers in and. 1:00:51 Speaker 3 Mushrooms. 1:00:52 Speaker 4 And ISIS, I always have courage, Frank. Frankie could tell you I always encourage my son to do better and do more and but my husband was always like, if it's not broke, don't fix it kind of thing. Yeah, it. 1:01:04 Speaker 3 Was a pain and everything was broke and he never fixed it. 1:01:07 Speaker 4 Yeah, he could tell you stories you would not believe. So we finally put the Peppers and we finally, you know, he. OK, so now Joey, Joey Vento calls my son up. 1:01:19 Speaker 3 Oh, so Joey Vento calls me up. He says, yeah, I always had to go there. I know you're trying to end this, but there's so many stories. So he would always call me over for something. So he called me over. He says we didn't want a coffee like no thanks, Joe. So have you ever been in there? You could deliver the new heart surgery under the grill. 1:01:35 So clean in there. OK, my place is clean, but you can fucking open heart surgery under there. Next time I need an operation, I'm going to call Doctor Joseph Bulgaria and we're going to do it across the street because he's probably cleaner than Jefferson Hospital. So he says you want to call? 1:01:51 If I'm like, no, I'm OK. I said what's up? Because I'm thinking about getting rid of the mushrooms and Peppers. I hate mushrooms and Peppers. I hate when the people come and order mushrooms and Peppers. I'm getting rid of the mushrooms and Peppers. I'm like I, I, he says some other stuff that I can't say. I said, all right, Joe, I need to go talk to my parents. 1:02:10 I'll be back. I'll talk to you later. I come back over, my mother says what happens? He wants to get rid of the mushrooms and Peppers. She said, what'd you tell him? I said, I got to talk. I got to talk to you and Dad. Not that I did, but I decided to get out of there. So next day he sends the guy over because he would never come on a payment. 1:02:26 So I went across the street. Walk in. Hey, Frank, call him. I'm OK. Joe, what's up? He goes, what do you think about the mushrooms and Peppers? I said, Joe, let me show you something. Come over here. Look out the window. You see, you see that? You see that thing over there goes, yo, what is it? I'm like, that's a Porsche Turbo S convertible, he said. 1:02:43 Yeah. I said the fucking mushrooms and Peppers bought that for me. Are you fucking crazy? I said. I'm getting rid of the fucking cheese too. We're going back to steaks and onions. I said great, I'm going to call England and I'm going to Rolls Royce tomorrow. 1:02:58 Speaker 4 He was serious. If he walked across the street, when I would walk across the street, they would say to him across the street is common. Was that for two days? 1:03:16 Speaker 1 OK, so. 1:03:18 Speaker 3 I did this interview yesterday from with this guy from Berlin, Adrian. He was in Philadelphia talking about the effect of the Rocky movie in Philadelphia for those places that were a part of the movie, which Pats was one of those places. And I had a kind of a funny anecdotal thing that I said to him was something about where in the world we're we're we're in a special place in the world now where you can eat a cheese steak. 1:03:43 You could take Ozempic and lose weight and take Viagra and have a hard on all at the same time. I said, so that's the best thing in the world. Like you can literally sit down eat a cheese steak while you're losing weight for the direction. It's like this is the best time to be alive. 1:04:00 Speaker 1 What else is there I mean? 1:04:01 Speaker 3 You're familiar. Like if I had a heart attack right after that, I died with a cheese steak in my belly. I was losing weight with the heart. With the heart. 1:04:09 Speaker 4 We have one of the comedians, what was his name? Fisher Remarks. Yeah, Fisher Remarks was on his way to the hospital when it went hard. He was. 1:04:16 Speaker 3 Coming up Coming up, 9th St. 1:04:18 Speaker 4 My wait, he had to have a cheese steak before he went. 1:04:20 Speaker 3 He made the ambulance, he made the ambulance stop and got a cheese steak on the way to the if I'm going to die, I'm going to die with a I'm going to have steaks in my stomach. He would tell the story on stage. 1:04:30 Frank's Critique of Social Media and the 'Chopped Meat' Debate Wow, that's the name of our podcast. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die with a patched cheese steaks. Wait, I wanted to say. 1:04:37 Speaker 3 Something so you want to talk about social media today the. 1:04:39 Speaker 2 Social media thing. It's just that everyone's a an influencer, everyone has something to say that's. 1:04:46 Speaker 4 What he? 1:04:46 Speaker 2 Said you got a lot to say. Can we can we talk about what's going on in the social? 1:04:50 Speaker 3 Media, sure. I mean social media to me, I think is, I think it's a detriment to our society in a lot of respects because people are like putting on makeup and they're like, oh, front of the Eiffel Tower, I'm here, I'm there. I'm the other, I'm the, and you come out of a restaurant and there's women dancing in front of a phone. 1:05:07 It's it's hysterical. Or walking around like where you're in Italy, there's people like walking around and like, why go to Pinot Pinot paninis, which is amazing. In Florence, the guys got to run down the street now and everybody else is starving because of, you know, they're going there because all the influencers want to do is like, they want to go there. 1:05:27 They want to take a picture, they want to post it because they need that. They need that affirmation. That's that people wanting to do what they're doing. And that's how their people are living vicariously through other people taking pictures of a cookie or the inside of a cheese steak or not Rushmore. 1:05:43 And it's it's so it's so deceptive in a lot of respects because it's not real. And I think that people and people don't understand. And my recent post wasn't geared towards any of my friends in the cheese steak business, whether my friends talk to me or not, whether whatever the situation is. 1:06:07 And, and I'm not talking about them specifically when I talk about the chopped meat. I've been talking about chopped meat before Other people had cheese steak places in Philadelphia before they were even in that business, right. You're. 1:06:19 Speaker 1 Not for chopped meat. 1:06:21 Speaker 3 I'm not for chopped meat. I mean, that's not our recipe card. Our recipe card, our recipe card says flat meat. My father always said flat meat, flat meat because his father said flat meat, flat meat. And my great uncle said flat meat, flat meat. If they said chopped meat, I'd be like, hey, chopped meat, I'd be like with the biggest flag possible. 1:06:39 But that's not my recipe card. I'm not trying to make a dull Rossi's cheese steak. I'm not trying to make an Angela's cheese steak. I'm not trying to make a Skinny Joey's cheese steak. I'm trying to stay true to my recipe. Nothing against my, my friends in the cheese steak business. I consider all the peace, all the cheese state guys in Philadelphia, my friends. 1:06:59 I'm, I'm on a like when I put my video up and I was talking about the chop meat, my friends who chopped meat in the business were like, this is fucking hysterical. Oh my God, the train sound with the spatula, 'cause you know when you walk by, you know when you walk by like the boardwalk in Wildwood, you're Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding like you're looking for the tram car. 1:07:18 You know what I mean? It's that's what it is. So for me, my thing was against the influencers and I'm sorry if I heard somebody stealing just an influencer or that's what they're doing. I don't know what people do. I don't know people, whatever. I know people, but I don't know some people. 1:07:33 Yes, But if you're going to, you're going to come to my restaurant and you're going to say, wait, call him back. So who? Who was I referring to living in the basement? 1:07:51 Speaker 2 Oh yeah, that's that's one of the things that you had mentioned on your video, so I wanted to clear that up. 1:07:56 Speaker 3 So when I mentioned that in the video, for me, I've been talking about people living in their basement for the last 25 years. And for me, I have a picture of a person who's just living in their basement with a computer, like like a, like a hacker in the basement who does stuff on his keyboard. 1:08:14 And because he hides behind his keyboard, that's who I'm talking about living in their basement. And for me, like when the influencers that I know personally, I don't know all the influencers personally, but I know of influencers, but they come over here like, oh, I'm an influencer and they have a camera in their hand. 1:08:30 They're like, OK, and who are you influencing? I'm influencing all these people. And I, if you give me a free steak sandwich, I'll tell them to come to your store. I'm like, how about if you just give me $18.00 for the sandwich and you go sit down and fucking eat it, You know what I mean? Like I don't, I've never gone to somebody's like I've, I've picked, you know, gone to people's restaurants. 1:08:51 I've never sat in a restaurant and said, oh, the, the food's great here and put it up. I got a job. Go get, go get an education, go get a job. Get out of your mother's basement. So if I, if I struck a nerve with somebody who was actually living in her basement and they got upset because they, that's not my fault. 1:09:08 I don't know. I don't know anybody personally who lives in the basement. It's a generic statement that I've been saying for 20 years. 1:09:16 Speaker 2 Yeah. 1:09:17 Speaker 1 So. 1:09:17 Speaker 2 Then there are people on social media who are beating you up literally right now. What do you what do you say to that? 1:09:22 Speaker 3 What do I say to that? Yeah, the people that are beating me up on social media, Yeah. Are people that are home or they have an opinion or there's sheep following a trend. OK, so sheep following a trend. I have one guy who said to me when I put the statement, when I put the statement up, he said to me, I would never eat the cheese steak from your place because it tastes like shoe leather. 1:09:44 And I my response to him was, I am so sorry that you grew up so poor that your mother had to feed you your shoes. And his response to me was we were so poor. She only fed us the recipes, which was the paper. 1:10:00 I thought that was fucking brilliant. So if you're going to come at me, I'm going to come back out at you. And that's what it is. It's banter. I don't like your policies because you're a Republican. I like your policies because you're a Democrat. But you know what? We can all go out and have a drink together. So I had another guy. 1:10:14 Speaker 2 Thank you for saying that. Yeah, it's the truth. It needed to be. 1:10:18 Speaker 3 Said yeah, we can all go out and have a drink together. 1:10:20 Frank's Unfiltered Responses to Online Criticism and 'Rat Steaks' Absolutely. I had dinner with I had dinner last night with people that have opposing views to me like I sat down with them I I cooked for them. Yes, we sat down, we had conversation. If I'm not a. 1:10:30 Speaker 2 Defriending people. 1:10:32 Speaker 3 If I'm not a, if I, if I don't listen to what you have to say, I don't, I can't learn what I'm doing wrong or what I'm doing right or you vice versa, right? So I had another guy who said, could you please send me some free cheese steaks? 1:10:47 I live in Alabama and I'm the only person in my county that has teeth. I thought that was fucking hysterical. And there's another person like, you know, people like your steaks suck. And OK, my steaks suck. I don't. Sometimes I don't like vanilla ice cream. 1:11:03 I like chocolate ice cream. Sometimes I like my steaks, sometimes I don't. But but why do you feel need that you need to put it out there on the for the world to see? Like I don't like, I go to a restaurant. If I go to to if I go to like Berkeley Prime and my steak's tough, I'm not going to go. 1:11:19 Oh my God, I had the worst steak at Berkeley Prime last night. Of course, Steven, stop your steaks suck and hang up on them. You got people to call me, your steaks suck and hang up on me, but they're too fucking stupid to realize I got caller ID and I got nothing. I get up at 3:00 in the morning because I love drinking coffee at 3:00 in the morning and what do I do? 1:11:39 I got my notepad but their fucking phone number on it and I start calling them at 3:00 in the morning. Your opinion blows. Your opinion blows and they send me to voicemail. I'm going to call you all day long until you call me back. 1:11:51 Speaker 4 I had somebody, I put something on there one day to thank. Boy, you could all all the steak people could thank Pat Alviri for your steak, for your steaks, Tony. 1:12:03 Speaker 3 Luke says it. 1:12:04 Speaker 4 And yeah. And you know what this kid got back at me? I, I happen to go on and I don't go on Instagram. I don't go on all that. I just say happy birthday. I don't even want to know when somebody's birthday. That's all you see. My grandchildren, my great grandchildren, my nieces, my nephews. 1:12:19 He sent me back a thing this long and I see and he's got his picture on there and I seen his picture someplace else but I couldn't get back on. 1:12:28 Speaker 3 This. 1:12:30 Speaker 4 You know what? I deleted his whole thing off of my. 1:12:33 Speaker 2 Phone. 1:12:34 Speaker 4 Because I'm only telling you the truth. That's the truth. 1:12:39 Speaker 3 You know what I say to people? Know what I say to people? And and I say this, your cheese steaks suck. Your your place blows. Dirty rat steaks. This. I heard rat steaks. We had employees that went through the the Mummer's Day parade. They came out like rat steaks, Anthony farts. 1:12:54 And they're those guys. They dressed up like rats. And yeah, it's been fucking done already. It's OK. Rat steaks. Oh my God, You made a nursery rhyme. You're fucking smart. So, so I say to them, OK, my stakes suck. OK, your opinion is valid to you. 1:13:10 Where's your 95 year old business? What family contributions did your family make to Philadelphia and the world proper? Does anybody sit down and say, oh, this is this is Louise, this is Louise Sandwich that he made originally and we're enjoying it in in Sweden? 1:13:30 Well, no, because Louis still living in his fucking mother's basement in front of his computer, probably jerking off while he's playing Dungeons and Dragons. 1:13:39 Speaker 2 Pinball machine. 1:13:41 Speaker 3 What? 1:13:42 Speaker 2 I love your pinball machine. 1:13:43 Speaker 3 Everything's for sale, even the business. 1:13:47 Speaker 2 Well before, before we close, I wanted to say listen. 1:13:51 Speaker 3 Feel free to edit anything out here. 1:13:53 Speaker 2 You are here for one reason, one reason only. I love your heart. You've always been good to me. You always pick up the phone for me. You always answer my texts. You are a genuine, kind human being. And I want to say thank you #1 for being who you are. 1:14:10 Thank you for making this young man. Because if it wasn't for you, this wouldn't be here. And thank you for being on our podcast. I sincerely mean it from the bottom of my heart. 1:14:22 Speaker 1 And I just want to say that I feel like that the heart is what makes a good business person. That's why you have to have heart. 1:14:30 Speaker 3 Listen when I shake your hand and look into your eyes and say congratulations. If you need anything, call me anytime. I'm not saying it just to hear myself say it. Let. 1:14:39 Speaker 1 Me. Shake your hand. That's awesome. 1:14:40 Speaker 3 You need anything, you call me. I can't sleep tonight. Call me, I'll read your story. 1:14:44 Speaker 1 Listen, I'm going at 3:00 in the. 1:14:46 Speaker 3 Morning because I love coffee. 1:14:47 Speaker 2 Too. I'm on the same page or two. I get up early too. I love coffee. 1:14:51 Speaker 3 I roast my own beans. I roasted my own beans. I roasted 5 lbs of beans yesterday. I. 1:14:56 Speaker 4 Really perked my coffee in a stove. 1:14:58 Speaker 1 That's awesome. 1:14:59 Speaker 2 I. 1:15:01 Speaker 4 Haven't. 1:15:02 Speaker 3 Cowboy Coffee. 1:15:03 Speaker 4 Yeah, I haven't been drinking coffee for a couple of mornings because I think I make it so strong, like my spoon sticks like that. 1:15:10 Speaker 2 What's your? 1:15:12 Speaker 3 Favorite coffee? Oh, I make my own. Oh, what brand? Like brand? Oh, I've hired Nicaraguan raw beans and I roast them. I have a genie roaster. 1:15:19 Speaker 4 And I roast beans and I use the vultures to black silk. Very nice. 1:15:24 Speaker 2 Yeah. 1:15:25 Speaker 3 Very nice. So listen, I have you. 1:15:26 Speaker 4 Could tell when you're not drinking. 1:15:28 Speaker 3 It I have, yeah, my coffee is very specific. It's 22 grams of ground coffee and, and, and the espresso machine, yeah, brewed between 25 to 32 seconds for that specific time. 1:15:45 And I yield 2044 grams of finished product by weight. So basically 22 grams of coffee grounds yields for a shot a little bit less than a shot glass of coffee. 1:15:58 Speaker 1 Wow. 1:15:59 Speaker 3 That's that's what I drank. 1:16:00 From Roasting Beans to Frank's Perfect Espresso Shot I drank two of those in the morning with a cappuccino with old organic horizon milk because it's the best 1 the foams. 1:16:06 Speaker 4 I had tea this I had tea this morning, but if I had the black silk I would have probably been off the wall worse than him. 1:16:13 Speaker 3 They literally had, I literally had a coffee at 9:00 last night, a cappuccino last night, the same way I woke up at I got up this morning at 3:30, but I started journaling at 4:00. So I made a coffee at 4:00 because the machine goes on automatically and then fly turn it on early when it takes like an hour to warm up. So I've had two since then. 1:16:29 I think I have this one too, which is like dishwater. 1:16:32 Speaker 4 I could, I could. Oh yeah, our coffee. We used to have the best. 1:16:35 Speaker 3 Coffee Lacus they sold out to private equity that's. 1:16:38 Speaker 4 Why we had we used to sell Lacus coffee here. We had the best coffee customers in the morning. We were can. 1:16:44 Speaker 3 You please check your pay. 1:16:45 Speaker 4 We had the urns and then the urn broke and then they would come down and and service it. So then we had to buy those other. Then we had something else, then we had something else. Then he had a cappuccino machine. We've tried everything. But see the coffee that you have, that Mr. Coffee and all that. 1:17:03 Speaker 1 Crap and. 1:17:04 Speaker 4 We got that across the street and I come, I drink it, but I go, Oh my God. 1:17:08 Speaker 1 This I. 1:17:09 Speaker 2 Think we can? All great world coffee. 1:17:12 Speaker 1 Sounds here, yes, yes. 1:17:14 Speaker 4 And I never really drank coffee because when I was a kid, a young kid, my mother had company and I had a cup of coffee and I was so definitely from it. And I always drank tea all my life. And then my husband used to find me the Nest Cafe, like the instant coffee and I start drinking that. 1:17:32 And then I don't know, I started to get, and I always bought like the Mr. coffees and all. I won't even, I put a Kerek. I I got rid of it because it still don't come out soon enough, you know right? 1:17:45 Speaker 1 I drink espresso, Nespresso. Yeah, yeah. That's good. 1:17:50 Speaker 3 But. 1:17:52 Speaker 4 My perk? Coffee, Sophie. In the morning. In fact, when I'm down to Florida and the valets come up to deliver something to my apartment and I open the door, they go. Your apartment smells the best out of everybody's apartment in the coffee because they smell the Burke coffee. 1:18:09 Yeah. What's his name there? Damian. Damian. 1:18:12 Speaker 3 Damian So now everything that I've said about living in the basement, they're going to like, take that and mom with it. 1:18:16 Speaker 2 Probably. Oh well, probably because that's what people like to do. 1:18:21 Speaker 3 All. 1:18:22 Speaker 1 Publicity is good publicity for you. That's true. That's. 1:18:25 Speaker 2 True. But listen, every name you mentioned, we got a lot of you know, attaching to do here. You got to help me with that and give me all these names once I send them to you, because you've mentioned a lot of names and we want to give credit. 1:18:37 Speaker 1 Anybody you want? 1:18:38 Speaker 2 To give credit, people. Yeah, yeah. Anybody you want to give credit to on this podcast? 1:18:41 Frank's Closing Message on Kindness, Words, and Business Legacy But is there anything that you want to leave our audience with? Any anything else? 1:18:47 Speaker 2 He's coming back. We're going to sit here and do this again, but what do you want to say? 1:18:52 Speaker 1 In closing. 1:18:53 Speaker 2 In closing. 1:18:54 Speaker 3 In closing, OK, is it, are we alive? Yeah. Oh. In closing, what I would say to everybody is be kind, be gentle with your words because your words have impact on people both positively and negatively. And just as badly as a, as a negative impact could have on someone's business, a positive, positive words can also hurt their business too. 1:19:20 Because if you have a business that you're, you're restricted about where people can park, where people can get to, they get overwhelmed. You need to be, you need to be cautious and, and conscious of the words you use. If you if you're negative with your words just for the reason of just being negative for your words or because something doesn't appeal to you, it doesn't doesn't mean it doesn't appeal to everybody. 1:19:44 You have to understand that people own businesses and they have people who rely on them for an income and a livelihood. So for instance, we have 27 employees that work for us and I'm responsible for not only myself, my family, I'm responsible for the livelihoods of the 27 families that work for me. 1:20:06 And to have to have words, you need to be cautiously aware of the words and the impact of your words. We're not. We've been here for 95 years. This isn't something we're going to do this for the season and then move on to something else. I'm not going to be selling tasty cakes next year. 1:20:21 So it's not like, so you need to be, you need to be aware of your words and you know, it's just be kind like and it's just, it's just. 1:20:31 Speaker 1 So simple. No? It's. 1:20:33 Speaker 3 Not it's not hard to be kind. It's not hard to be generous. It's not and it's just remember, it's just cheese steaks. That's all it is. And I understand how passionate we are in Philadelphia. You know, we're we're passionate about our sports, we're passionate about our food, we're passionate about our neighborhoods. 1:20:49 Let me come on. What other what other city throws snowballs at Santa Claus? I get it. We're passionate people here in Philadelphia, but it's just cheese steaks. 1:20:59 Speaker 4 You know, I've always had people say to me, oh, your your rivals with Ginos or what? And I always that the my philosophy is there's enough to go around for everybody. 1:21:12 Speaker 1 That's wonderful. Be kind and there's enough to go around for everyone. 1:21:17 Speaker 4 That's right. That's. 1:21:18 Speaker 1 Two wonderful last, we're not. 1:21:20 Speaker 2 Going to edit anything we're to keep all this in. We're not. This is my. 1:21:23 Speaker 4 Real. 1:21:24 Speaker 2 This is real and raw. I like. 1:21:25 Speaker 3 Everything listen. 1:21:26 Speaker 2 You're real, right? 1:21:27 Speaker 3 Listen, you're real. I'm not. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here until I'm out here. And this is something that I'm doing and this is something that I've been doing all my life and I just didn't get. I didn't get here because somebody said, hey, hey, Frank, here's the keys to the business. Go run it. Frankie worked here. 1:21:43 Frankie worked here 12 hours a day. And then sometimes in the nightmare, you didn't come in. Frankie. We worked double shifts. I sent my parents to my sisters and I sent my parents to Hawaii on their 25th wedding anniversary. I worked. I was sleeping upstairs on the onions because the nightmare you decided you didn't want to come in, have it, go home, shower and come right back. 1:22:02 Speaker 2 And you got to do what? 1:22:03 Speaker 4 You got to do, you know, like, like he said that he was born, you know, a millionaire. Well, I hate to tell everybody, but we weren't millionaires when I got married, my husband made $56 a week. I made 99 every two weeks from back in 1960. 1:22:21 So if he, they claimed that my son came in as a millionaire, he did not. We were millionaires when I was raising my kids. You know, my husband was a saver. He knew how to save his money. He never, he never wanted to buy properties, which I was not happy about, but he knew how to save his money. 1:22:42 OK. 1:22:42 Speaker 3 He was on the board of directors of the bank for 20 years. 1:22:45 Speaker 4 Yeah, my husband, my kids never wanted for nothing. We always did things in our means. Frank and I never went on a vacation. We put our kids through private school because that was my goal. 1:22:58 Speaker 3 We did go on vacation once. Remember, we all went to Disneyland together. 1:23:02 Speaker 4 Yeah, we did. We went to we went to Disneyland. 1:23:06 Speaker 3 Yep, that was a fun trip, wasn't it? 1:23:08 Speaker 4 And I have to tell you, if you asked and I want you, if you ever talk to Joey Merlino, Skinny Joey, ask him about our trip to Disney World. He loved it. We had so much fun. 1:23:24 There was all South Philly there that there was all South Philly it. 1:23:28 Speaker 3 Was a blast. 1:23:29 Speaker 4 It was a blast. And he was with us. Yeah, yeah. 1:23:35 Speaker 1 Yeah, Oh my God. Thank you guys. So you're welcome. 1:23:38 Speaker 4 Thank you. Thank you. 1:23:39 Speaker 1 We are going to just. 1:23:46 Speaker 4 Hope that you you got the drift that we're not out to beat anybody. We're in business. We're we don't have anything to say about what anybody has. God bless. You won't open a business, knock yourself out. 1:24:01 But they have no idea what it entails. 1:24:04 Speaker 1 It's blood, sweat and tears and can you? You can never give up. 1:24:08 Speaker 4 You know, we went just through, we went through our own little thing over here. You don't have that on date. 1:24:12 Speaker 3 I do, that's all right. Leave it on 'cause you know it's like. 1:24:15 Speaker 4 We. 1:24:16 Speaker 3 Went through a whole thing this is. 1:24:17 Speaker 4 B Roll, we were, we were sued and for people that 'cause their own demise. And it was awful. It was awful. 1:24:28 Speaker 2 We can go there if you like it. 1:24:31 Speaker 3 Maybe when, Maybe on another episode. 1:24:33 Speaker 2 I'll say another episode, that's what I mean. 1:24:35 Speaker 4 But nobody. 1:24:36 Speaker 2 Know Part 1, Part 2. 1:24:37 Speaker 4 Part Nobody knows. I think it's so easy to run an outside business. You got a. It's not easy. 1:24:43 Speaker 3 It takes a lot to own 100% of the business. 1:24:46 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, it does. Yes. All right. I love, I love all of these inside scoops. 1:24:57 Speaker 2 We are going to end it with this month's sponsor, Marie's Flower Shop in Wildwood Crest for all your floral designs for all your flower needs. 1:25:08 Speaker 1 Thank you and this is grey eyed glances and something to live for. Thank you everyone for listening and thank you guys for pets. 1:25:15 Speaker 4 You're welcome, it's very enjoyable. And tell me what to do with this yellow that I got in my ear since you do this stuff. 1:25:28 Speaker 2 Classic.