00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X. So we're on the woods, kind of in your classic like close to town, down by the river, people walking dogs, beer cans, laying here and there down by the river. Spot someone running some kind of what is he doing like that kind of spot, some guy driving some screws into something down there building a stand. Unclear if he's on his own land or not. Uh. And we're in what what I would regard as the foraging off season, and are with Brody Henderson and in chef Michael Hunter. I don't know if you disagree or agree with foraging off season. By that, I mean, um, folks that like to I find that your general folks that like to hunting fish a lot, have a couple wild edibles they know about, the number one being Morrel's. I would agree, So in the springler for Morrel's and then that ends, and then you kind of act, there's nothing to do until you can maybe go pick a berry in the fall, and that's like the season. So I would put this firmly in the off season, mean the berries aren't ready, and the Morrel's are gone. The Morrells are gone, all like the prime edibles, I would say, are gone, easily identifiable, easily identifiable. But there's a whole slew herbs and little plants that are not really you know, choice, but they're still kind of fun to look for. And do you tell people just up front. We're going to do this in a greater detail later, but tell people up front, like about your restaurant and what you're like, your your food philosophy. So my restaurant the name of restaurants antler Um, and we just want to incorporate all things wild into our menu as much as we can. So we rely heavily on forgers um that that sell us wild mushrooms, wild plants. We do a little bit of forging ourselves. Um. We only sell wild sustainably caught fish, and we sell farms game meat just because we can't sell actual wild game meat. So we just want to embrace, you know, the outdoors and share that with our customers. So that rule is the same as it is in the US and Canada for Newfoundland where they get a little leeway and they're actually allowed to sell wild game. Oh can you buy it from them? YEA, well I think you can. It's dying in. I don't know if you can actually purchase a stake to take it home. Um, but I think it's only certain animals moose. I don't know what else they're allowed to do. Some ducks and peasant, upland birds and stuff, but the big one is moose. They they have more moose than people in their province. So it was, and I think it was. It was allowed through tourism. It was. It was one of the um sort of pushes to get people to go to Newfoundland. You when you walk out, dude, I gotta know what that dude is doing when you walk out. Yes, he put up the trees. Now, when you walk out this time of year, like, looky, you're at a disadvantage because you're from a couple of thousand miles away. So this is not like when you look like, oh yeah, I'm gonna tear just place a new one. I don't I have no idea what we're gonna find and just awesome dandelion. We saw some daniels. So right now, like back home, when i'm you know, walking my dog or taking a hike or fishing along the creeks, I'll find stinging nettle, which is incredibly high and iron. So a lot of people make stinging nettle t A lot of people put it in pastas um. You can make a soup with it. Um. So that's a really neat one. It's really neutral, kind of like spinach doesn't have a lot of flavor, but it's it has more iron than spinach. I think it's more iron than any plant. Stinging nettle um, So that's a neat one. So yeah, gloves like you must um. And so staying nettle water crests along the creeks is kind of neat um. And it's really spicy. It looks the leaves are smaller than the stuff you can buy in the star um. But it's really really hot and spicy. While ginger is out right now, it's a really neat one. Um. It's not actually in the ginger family, but it just tastes like ginger um and it's a root you kind of there's these heart shaped leaves everywhere. You gotta dig it up um, and it has has more of like a floral flowery taste, but it still has that ginger heat. Um. And we use that in screams um and desserts because I'm like, just tease with it. Um. But that's a neat one um elst we got sumac staghorn sumac um. It's different than Middle Eastern sumac, who still has that lemony taste to it, so that that's sort of almost all year. I think summer is sort of the best time to pick it because then into the fall and spring, um, it's kind of eaten and chewed up by bugs and worms and stuff like that. Um. That's one of the things we have here is you might still find it out. It's getting little bit late as oyster mushrooms which get ripped up by worms and then the dried saddle which gets wormed up. But we saw daniline, there's mint wild onion. Does that to look around? Yeah, I've never actually looked in this spot. Yeah. Cool, So we'll see. Let's see what we can find. Who'd find some mushrooms and alby ms, little brown mushrooms. There's a neat one that's old shaggy mains. Yeah, we have those. Yeah, so those are those are like golf course masters. We're just randomly around those are Those are super tasty? But those aren't these. No, we get shaggy mans because those a little bit later. Always in disturb places like and ship. I find those just in grassy fields, people's backyards in the city and stuff. It's really funny inky caps. Yeah, this is wild rose. What doesn't have a so when later this will have a hip on? Yeah, we're right now. We're doing a rose hip ice cream. Yeah. Okay, so we don't have a patio, so our restaurants still closed, so we're doing all things takeaway. So we're doing a line of wild ice creams right now. Yeah, so we're doing a rosehead. We're doing a wild mint and chip chocolate chip. Um, your wild blueberry, and then a strawberry wild ginger. You're here. Is there anything to do with horsetail? I've never heard anybody eat horse tail. I don't know. I've never heard of it. We have horse I've heard of horsetail, but it looks different than that. Yeah, we have a handful of kinds. This kind they call scouring rush. It's good for scrubbing pots. I think the horsetail I'm thinking of it looks almost like a sparre day. I've heard you can like pickle that there is a stream here very near here that has watercress, but it's a private property place. We caused. We tried to catch a beaver for a guy. Never thought it all this, They had watercress in it. All this dandylon would actually be good unless you're worried about people's dogs. But I don't care about people's dogs. Don't have there's no flowers on them, so before they flower, they're not as bitter. Oh I think your post flower for here? Oh really, he's already flowered. Yeah, they flower early here. So Michael, do you ever eat um? You know, like dandelion is an interesting one because everybody has it. Everybody's sort of kind of aware that you can eat it, But why is it not more popular. That's a horse hill too, Yes, so that's the ones that we I see more of that in the Cretaceous. These were eight feet tall. I'm not saying this was, but this is an ancient kind of tree. Yeah, I know that, man, that's crazy. Dinosaurs known on them. So uh, any's dandelions, Like, why how came they never took off? Maybe because it's just too common. They're in everyone's backyard. Um. It's also it's not exciting. I think unless you like that bitter kind of repeati flavor, it's not really your thing. So they're better you're saying that before they flowers, or less bitter or less bitter before they flower. I didn't want that. Marsh marry Well is another one that's really neat. Um. It grows and swampy creek kind of stuff. Um, and it's really bitter, like you're like rappini as well. But that one you have to actually blanch. Um, it's not you're not supposed to get the wrong. Yeah, that is a bitter green man. I'm gonna try it before it blowers. Last year's right. Yeah, there's wild rose. So how do you when you do rose hips like that? What do you do with them? So we'll we'll simmer them with the custard. So we'll we'll simmer them with the milk in the sugar and then with them into the eggs and it we'll let them kind of soak in the custard and then cure it and strain out the seeds. I was in Argentina and they had jars of jam that they were making from rolls hip, but just seemed like a painstaking process to get all that those seeds. Yeah, they got all the outer shell off. Someone want to just spend hours a yeah, I like to like boil them and then like crush them up or put them in a blender and then just strain out. In September, you'll find grouse with their crops to stiff rose hips and the seeds are like stones, like they're not even you can't even chew on them. See this right here would be good or else? Yeah, like big cotton wood, these aren't big cotton woods. Especially damage cottonwoods down stumps. It's not a hard and fast rule, but there's typically grass, you know, just be like a kind of shady, kind of a little bit of sunlight, yep, mixed. I would snip around and there for sure I was looking for him. One of the guys that I was working for came in off his mountain bike because we used at this restaurant I worked at was across the street from a huge provincial park, and he came in with a handful of mushrooms and said, here, check these out. And I was. It was seventeen or eighteen at the time, and I was just like totally fascinated by Oh, like you can actually go into the wild and pick stuff you like. And then uh, he told me sort of where to find them, and I went across the road of my lunch break and came home with three pounds of it. Was it was, it was awesome, and we came and we told him we featured him for dinner that night. It was really really cool. Yeah. And those those are because those are black morels and um, I found him on this like ceedar hillside, just like kind of sandy mossy soil, um, and they were just everywhere. They're really neat. When I was reading your bio with your cook that's coming out, uh, I don't realize how early you got started cooking. Yeah, it was really bizarre. I Um, I was a thirteen year old kid, and I wanted to uh make some pocket change. You buy skateboards and uh stupid T shirts it said the profanity and stuff my mom wouldn't let me buy, and uh, I just wanted my own money. So I wound up. I rode my bike to this local gas station. I applied to pump gas and the guy say, didn't need the help at the gas station, we need help at the diner. So that's I'm in, you know. And it was so, you know, started washing dishes. I would fry the hash browns and butter toast and it was one of those like greasy spoon diners with a lineup out the door on the weekends. And uh yeah, I would bike there at six thirty in the morning on weekends as a kid, and it was just one of those things. I just I cooked at home a little bit. Um. I grew up single moms and my mom will work late and she would call me and tell me how to start the chicken and stuff like that. So I just already knew a little bit about cooking and I loved As a kid, I would like always hungry, always like just into food, and we'd go to a party and there'd be like oysters or lobster and the things that I wanted to try new stuff. So food is always a really big thing for me as a kid. Um. And then it just stuck. I worked at a golf course in the summers all through high school. Um, and then when the golf course would close in the winter, I wound up working at this little kind of fine downing country in and that's where um it was like my first real culinary mentor to say, and then you know, he we we made everything from scratch, so we'd make bread, we'd make pasta, we'd make the all this you know in house chacuters and salamis and stuff like that. Um. And that was the fascinating thing for me, was the pressure of preservation stuff, so how people would survive before they had a fridge, you know, and like there's all this trendy chacuteri stuff people are doing, but it's really just old school, like it's not and it's nothing new, you know. Same with hunting and fishing and forging, like it's it's not new, you know what we're doing. It's it's it's just forgotten about. That's the interesting about charcouder is it Now a lot of it seems like all these extra weird things you're doing to end at a product, and you lose some of the fact that like, well, no, this is all like ship people came up with some stuff didn't rot like calling. So now like to make a batch of con feed then turn around and eat it that night. People have probably been like no, no, no, no, too much work out. That's like for way later. Man, when there's nothing to eat, we eat that exactly. It's like yeah, and its yeah, I always catch myself doing that, man is And I have a thing too, like, uh, just for instance, the day we call some lake trout, and I usually have a thing where um, first and first out in the freezer management. But so we like I come them with these lake trout flats like I'm gonna freezing. Yeah, I'm like, well, hold like like so I'm gonna put this in the freezer and take some other ship out of the freezer and eat that to reinforce my policy. Or I just eat the damn fish. It's here right now, Just eat the fish. Even like literally caught myself in the freezer door going to like put this stupidest thing I've ever done now, Yeah, I'm gonna say this for later, stard him crowing, Um, I mean, did we get u a very short woodcock migration? Oh you do? Yeah? That was cool. Yeah. That's the thing I missed from growing up is we didn't put a ton of attention into it, but we would get them. They're tasty little birds. Yeah, the whole Uh do you know cooking them with the guts? Yeah? Did you do that? I've never done that? Was why do people like to eat woodcock guts? So I think it's just the fact that it's I think it's one of the only birds. Every time they fly, they dropped their bowels, so there's no actual ship in their intestines. And I think it's just has that like kind of depth of flavors just different. Did you enjoy it? I thought it was interesting. I don't know if I would really do it all the time, but it was It's sort of like a delicacy. Flush it off because he just they just eat worms. Many and old cookbooks you'd read about eating the guts on woodcocks, but I never knew what. I couldn't even picture what they're talking about. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know you know how they discovered that, um, But it's just it's one of those like sort of European delicacy kind of things. Do you guys call them timberdoodles? Where you are? No? I never heard that you ever see their flight their mating flight. No, well, I know that they're hard to shoot, like their no, they go like a way up in the air like it's incredible. It's it's incredible. We would get them and they would just come through very briefly, but now and then he'd walk into a little kind of like wet asp in the area and just be like bombing out. You hit the migration. You go back a week later, like now I'm gonna get them there all gone. I remember my first one, like, holy cow, that tastes like liver. You know, it's like it is now, I think I'd appreciate it more, but it's not a good one for introducing people. Yeah, yeah, they're funky. Would you get him in the growing up? Yeah? And you were you in Michigan as well? Pennsylvania northwest from Pennsylvanianiard Lake Erie. Actually just Google because I want to see how far it was, And it's only like three and a half hours to drive from Toronto to Detroit. It's kind of meat. Yeah, I guess I knew that. Ye yeah, Usually, like I'm more I drive to the States more through Buffalo um and Needing the border for me eas only an hour and a half. We used to drive up to Toronto because you could drink there when you're Yeah, I drank. I drank underage in a Canada bar. Yeah yeah, that's early. Yeah. I would let my kids do that. Uh yeah, you know I lived. The reason I knew that when I said I do that is I lived in Sue Saint Maria, Michigan, which is sister cities of Siux, Ontario, and there was a lot of kids up there. It would go to school and stuff in Toronto and they were always bouncing back and forth. That's a hunting fish in Paradise. Yeah. Yeah, that river is unbelievable. Man, that's a great fishing river. You guys got a lot of beavies where you live. We do. Yeah, they can be a bit of a problem. So we can't hunt them. We are only allowed to trap them same year, unless there's like you're in Colorado, the hunt them causing like damage on your property, then you can shoot him. We had a farmer call us, uh we hunt during its property. He wanted some help getting rid of theaters. Same here there it's a fur bear. Yeah, so you can't hunt it. Here's the thing they voted trapping out in Colorado. So what state then like, okay, I'm fine, it's just then, it's just then you just hunt them yeah, and said so they're great. You know you've done about the beaver sausage you guys may Oh yeah, uh, we did up how many pounds we do spicy Italian beaver something the tail? Oh yeah, I got a couple of my freezer. Yeah, road and sausage. Man, we just put our muskrats in there. But it was gonna be a road in Medland. That's one thing I haven't eaten at his muskrat. I want to try it, so a friend of mine. He So there's a there's two different kinds of trappers license. There's like a recreational one where you don't have to have a registered trap line. That's what I'm gonna look into. Yeah, we don't have that. I know you guys have that system. We don't have a registered trap. You have to fill your quota and actually take the first auction and report your earnings. And it's it's very uh if you don't have to have a registered one. What happens when two dudes are like here like do it honor system now? And then they do it differently, like like for instance, there's a real famous horricon marsh in Wisconsin. Um, real famous like very value able, high grade muskrats, and they divide horrorcon marsh up and then they auction off the auction off the rights. But in general it's just like honor system. So it gets it gets ugly. Yeah, even like at the level eye trapped, it would get ugly. People are getting fights. I remember being at a fur buyers one time and I was young in the fur buyer saying to another guy on the phone talking about open day muskrats, and he goes, anybody fox, would you shoot him? Know he was joking Jesus man, I hope I'm not trapping that spot. But now I later got to know it again and realized that he was just having fun. But when you're young and half scared of other trappers, you know, do you recognize that I don't know what that is? A stick? It's like a fungus. Yeah, black man, the girls on Cherry, Yeah, we had some friends like always heard about shi on a stick, but it was real. You guys get cattails, Ye, cattails. You can actually eat the shoots in the spring are you pulling? That's like the root, not necessarily just above the root there's like you peel away the outer layer and there's like a nice white kind of like yeah, so you can pickle those. I've taken those and pickle them. That's pretty good, man, pickle cat tail shoots are neat um. And then I've actually heard of people making they dry them out and make flour with it, which I thought was really really interesting done that. I've heard of that as well. A bit laborers for me. But right there, yea, yeah, like those mat looks like it might that yours. Here's cat tail who wants to get wet. Yeah, yeah, we wouldn't grab that. Bro jump bridge. Yeah, bears, call Brod your colleague. He's gonna go over and use that bridge. Uh, you know, we just do a cat tails and we were little, as we'd like to know, we'd like up the head and gas and then like that on firing run around And one time we were doing that with the fire chief's kid, and uh, he got real mad, the fire chief. I would imagine it's unbecoming on the fire chief's kid. Make can't deal torches. What I'm doing is I'm curious. Now, this is a good crayfish creep. Yeah, I haven't seen any raccoon leavings of crayfish claws. And I smell mint. You smell it right here where I'm stopping. That's where I take a whill get spots for a right by the creeks. It's reeks of mint. I just can't find it. Someone's in it. Maybe Crean's in it. Yeah, I got stirred up somewhere overpowering mint odor. Right now? You smell on top about now? Do you do? You guys smelled or is it just me? You'll smell mint right now? Phantom mint smells are in the sign of COVID? Are they No? But dude, my mint patch in my garden. I gave away about a bushel of mint last night. I think that they're star stepping in. Are you guys stopping on mint? I don't think so. I don't see any. I just got like two big strong whips of it. God, I can't find it. Oh there you go, old right there? Where isn't this mint? This guy, Well, that's not a mint. Oh no, that's not a mint. Damn it. Bill? Are you walking on mint? I don't think so, Michael. Do some boarders have the same urge as some hunters to jump a fence like that one over there and go on to private property. If you know those morals somewhere, I don't think. Well, I was tearing me up there it is, I found it, but oh yeah I found it at that It was abounded a couple more but under your left arm. No is it right in the water. No, it's just right above the water. And I can really smell it. Now, someone was smart they dig that up and bring that home. See that looks different than my mint. So we get there. There's a see that when the leaves are sharp and jagged. Yeah, but that's an odiferous mint. Man, No, ho is that not? It doesn't smell like mint, doesn't taste damn it. That's not the manor because where is it? I thought that was there with the red the red stock in the green leaves experiment. No, that's not it. You just said you can smell it real good. Yeah, this is a bizarre. It's just thick and there's a lot of it. Wrong. Oh, I thought for sure that I was doing. I looked at it, except that purple is stemp still birds? Whatever can you find the mint? Do you guys? Smell it over there. I don't smell anymore, but you're smelling you got whip off. No, not that I feel like i'm smelling it right now. I don't think it's all I think it is on that side. Damn it sounds of bitches, that's us. It's so strong smelling. We can't fun sitting down here, my nose down on the ground smelling a bunch of ship. It must be really small. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Enough yet I feel like that happens a fair bit. Like there a day we were not the other day, but a little while ago. We were getting mushrooms. We got a few, several kinds of good mushrooms, and I kept smelling mint and was sort of like like making a half it's attempt to locate it. It didn't locate it. I couldn't tell where the smell was blown in From's not find it, Phil because I did that. It was really pouring the coals to the ground. They were there. Should keep walking a little bit. We found all kinds of ship. It's like a major discovery. You wanted the meal? Okay, Now that we're sitting here in our beautiful studio, um, do you kind of see what I'm saying about, like, at least from my perspective about the off season. Oh, totally yeah, because the yeah, the berries are in, the lush rooms are gone. Yeah, it's not like a hot mushroom time. It kind of starts, you know, gets summertime, but you can still tell there's like a ton of possibility. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's it's it's kind of like hunting, you know. It's it's every time you go out, you're not gonna come home with with you know, the trophy, let's say. Right, So it's for me, it's it's, uh, it's just good to get out there and be in country and hang out with your friends and you know, I hope to find something interesting. But what what it did reinforce is that outside of the big marquee things that people know like picking you know, wild blueberries, wild strawberries, whatever, h and picking the really nice mushrooms, that there's these two sort of ubiquitous wild edibles. Yeah, like dandelion greens and cat tails. Dandelions and cattails. It's like forging one o one, you know. I mean like like you're out in the woods starving whatever. Dandelions and cattails. Man, it would be a bitter a bitter meal. But because you can make it work, so later you're gonna um. Brody here he's telling me that you guys are gonna like cook something. Yeah, so I've cleaned up the cat tails. We'll use the cattail hearts, and I'm gonna do a little dish with a venison loin and uh a spice ash recipe from the cookbook. So the I've only ever pickled bulls, What are you gonna do with them? The I think I was just gonna saute them in a pan a little olive oil. You gotta clean them really well. They get down to the soft stuff. Yeah, I just peel out the outer layers sort of like the last kind of foot of the cat tail. Uh, you know, not not the frilly stuff on top, but the like the twelve inches of the meaty stock at the bottom. Just cut that off and then peel the outer layers of the green stuff and you get that white heart. Do me a favor, though, to do something with the damn dandelions. We could definitely, like billions of dollars are spent trying to get rid of d lines. I feel like you have to go and do a little need little bitter little salad, you know, a need little trick though, is um garlic and chili flakes really kind of take away some of that bitterness. So if you pick enough of them, um, it's like spinach like wilts to nothing. You know, steam him or blanche them first, Uh, squeeze out the excess water and then saute it with a little butter, garlic and chili flakes, and it really just takes away a lot of that bitterness. Like repini, same thing, rapini and um. The one thing I mentioned, marsh marygold is a good one too for to treat like that. You know. I had a little surprise, a negative experience where the lettuce in my garden this early for us is still early for gardening. Uh didn't bolt, Okay, it's early. Bitter is really interesting bitter. Wonder why that is? Dude, I never Yeah, and I had one of those seed blends. So it's like eight kinds of just really just don't know what's It's like, I feel like the shitty kind did real well in my garden, and all the good guys. It's like, you know, it's like a thousand different kinds of scenes. You just throw it down and take what you get. Not a good approach man. People. The bitter mix, Yeah, it was like, yeah, here's a mix of a bunch of stuff that won't germanate except for the super bitter kinds will be all over the place in your garden and your kids like won't like the sal it with that behind us again, Chef Michael Hunter, I hate to do this to you. Man. You probably had to tell the story so many times. You gotta tell the story. You gotta start out just for context. You gotta tell. I want the story about you know, when you got super in the news the vegans, Yeah, the vegans, because this will probably like people will be like, oh, I've never hearing about this. Yeah, that was not something I ever expected was going to happen opening a restaurant. Um, so that was when you opened, No, that was it was actually two years after we opened. Yeah, so it wasn't right when we opened, but just not one of the like opening opening and running restaurant is hard enough, and that was that was probably the most difficult thing I've had to endure as a chef, in a business owner and just as a as a person. Because they were they were trying to shut us down and uh, you know, basically just attacking us. So this is like it gets people like where you're at. So my restaurant and Learner is located in Toronto. We're just sort of out of downtown. We're in this little pocket called Little Portugal. And we had a chalkboard sign out front where a tiny little restaurant were forty five seats and was that your Was that your first restaurant, the first restaurant that I owned. Yeah, that's what I mean. So I know you've been in the restaurant biz for a long time. But so we had this chalkboard sign up front that said Venison is the new Kale. Dude, I had a really nice Kale cell last night my garden Kales kid ask Kales awesome. You know chef do you know? Uh? Jesse Griffiths. I don't. He's a chef of Texas. Okay, he does a lot of game. I look him up. Oh you should you guys be like you guys, be like nuts on a dog. He makes this really good Kales out not called texted him to be like, how do you make that ship? I made mine. It wasn't as good as his anyways, it wasn't even kind of like even close to his. I don't get it, but so Venison was the new Kales what what did it? And the cyclist rode by, and she was ahead organizer of a group, like a grassroots organization. I think they they have a couple, but it was Pig Save or UM I forget the actual name of Pig Save. So they would protest slaw our houses and that was there an animal rights group Peter funding um type thing. And the organizer of this group rode by on her bike and was offended and well, how do you know that happened? That's what they basically wrote on their site. And then they had they had interviews, so that that's how we found out exactly how it happened. UM And just one night, I think it was in November, they showed up and we actually got tipped off by a large corporation that they also target. I'm not going to name names, but so they this corporation has their own security division that just handles these vegan groups because it's interesting, they try and hurt your business. So we actually got tipped off and they said that this group's coming that. Here's their Facebook page. Um, their Facebook page was private, but they had sort of some intel. I guess they have some fake members of the group. So we got wind of what was happening. We didn't really think much of it. We just said, okay, business as usual, let's just trying to ignore it. And um, they sent us a letter of sort of their demands, which were they wanted to have a meeting with us to change our menu, and they wanted us to put their slogan, uh you know, one of their slogans in our window. Oh, but they got a guy to give in and do that too. They've got many because they're really they're relentless, like they'll take they you know, they take photos of your children and put them online and just they just do terrible stuff. Really we had uh, yeah, we we They eventually stopped because a couple of them got restraining orders because they slipped up. That sounds illegal, Yeah, so were they do you know if they were targeting your restaurant because of its connection to wild game? So they said that we were lying to people because you know, we were hunting and serving the game meet ourselves and that's not something we've ever, you know claimed that's totally illegal. Um. You know the thing with the game farms is is I want to sell game because I love to eat it. It's the only way I can. Um. And a lot of these these little game farms, their little family run operations, and I know the farmer, and we know what they eat, and um, you know how they raised and we can go visit the farms if you want, and um, you know, it's just a really great way to do business for us. So, um, they call it the humane meat myths. So they were going after small businesses that were farmed a table also because they say that, um, you know, it doesn't matter how the animals raised. Meat is murder. So they say that people are tricking the consumer when they say it's a healthier alternative if farmed the table. Yeah, that that's a that's a plausible argument. I can understand it. I don't know. I mean, if like I could see someone hitting on the idea that, Um, wait a minute, I don't think you should ever kill an animal. And sure, if you're nice to it, like you're still killing it. I mean, I can definitely see someone arriving at that. Yeah, but you know that animal has a better life than than you know, some of the alternative that'sh but but there are arguments floating around out there that I don't get how you arrive at them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean I was like, I don't I don't have to have the opinion to understand how one might get there, right yeah. Um, And it was just baffling to us the way way what happened. So we actually wrote them back once and said, listen, you know we we actually already have a couple of vegan dishes on the menu. Um, you know, vegetarian food and like foraging and just wild ingredients is something that we're really passionate about. Uh. We invited them to take them foraging when you know, if they were interested and just have a dialogue. And uh, I think they wrote back something kind of nasty and they didn't want to have They weren't into that. Um, so we just stopped. When you wrote them, do you mean you like wrote a letter? I think it was an email. He was over emailed that one. So they said to you, they come to you say we're gonna show up, protests the ship out of your place unless you change them. And imagine by change the manu they mean like full and why are they out at your place and not out of armies or something? Well funny, not that I'm hacking on armies. I don't know what Arbies does. All those accidentally out at the butcher shop across the street because I think I said in an interviewer and I said, there's a butcher shop across the street, and then they went and protested them. So I felt bad. But like seriously, like there's like the meat morgue like across the street, you know, slaughtering more stuff than we are. Yeah, I've seen the Okay, so keep telling the story. So I like the deal where they put the sticker in the window. That's bad. I would not want that sticker. The sticker basis says like assholes working here. It basically meat, meat is murderer. I can't remember. It was just bizarre their slogan. So we just said, okay, let's ignore this and then I'll just go away. So it didn't go away. It was so then they were protesting us once a week, how many people five to ten would show up. It was totally lame. What group? What was it Peter or was it no? So they called themselves. It was a grassroots grass Toronto. But there was like several little The only one I can think of his pig saved because one of them just actually got run over by a pig truck. Um, what's interesting. Yeah, they're protesting us, so it wasn't total like weirdness. I got checking their mail and got hit by a pig truck. I would find that to be like the only reason I'm thinking of it because it was just in the news that but one of their groups was pig Safe. Um, and he jumped on from a pig truck. Yeah, they were protesting. They wouldn't move, and I guess the chuck stuff the pigs eat them pigs with you. My dad always said, you lay there long enough that pigley um. And eventually I just got fed up. Why I would always leave because I knew I was going to do something stupid if I stuck around. So five to ten people like hey, banging on our windows, huge signs, screaming at our customers coming in and out, and I was bad for business or good for business. In the beginning, it was bad, and so I would have gone in there. I was almost said, I wuld have gone in their guns ablaze and as as as a suppression guns. I would have gone in there and head dinner. Yeah yeah. So I eventually I had to be there one night I forget someone was sick or away and I had to work, And because it was just so upsetting, I didn't want to be there when they were there. Um, what night of the week was Thursdays? They picked Thursdays, Thursdays or Friday's um. And so we we get whole dear delivered once a month. We generally get one to two animals that would last us a month, um, and we break down our own stuff. So I went down we had a delivery that morning. I got so upset. I saw customer come in, uh visibly on a date and the woman was almost crying because she's being screamed at with a megaphone. Murderer like f you, um, you know, just horrible stuff. So this woman I saw coming was like almost crying, and I just said, okay, enough enough, and I went downstairs, chopped off the whole back leg of a deer, got a red cutting board, I think, got some like sanitizer and stuff so it would be safe if I got called, like the if the case the Health department called. I had like safety stuff around me, uh, and I plunked the leg down in the front window and started to just joint and butcher the back leg in front of them. And uh, that was sort of my protest back, like, you know, you're going to offend me in my window. I'm I'm just gonna offend you, excuse me right back and from within your window, within my window. And I had every legal right to do it, but they filmed the whole thing, and and the police came in to talk to me because I said, you know, they're they're calling the health department. I said, that's fine, I'm within my rights. They said it yep, okay, And then you know, they kind of had a chuckle with me because they're they're on our side. They were taking police resources away from the city to be there because they're there to keep the peace. Um, and you guys never called the police when that We never called the police on them. They were there, um to keep the piece because they would bang on our windows and do stuff that is illegal when the police weren't there. So I butchered this deer leg in the window. They filmed the whole thing. I go back, cook up a piece of meat in the kitchen and come back and I ate it in front of them. That was my post. How did it become like a major, like international news story. So they filmed this whole thing and they sat outside with this big sign meat is murder as I'm hacking up this good Smith's album. Tho man the shot the cover shot is cool. So and they so they posted this video footage to all of their mainstream vegan sites and it started to blow up and go viral around the world, but not in the not in a good way, not where you being the hero. You became the hero. We became the hero after a weekend of being the devil. Um. So are like Google ratings were getting attacked, our Facebook where anywhere where you could rate our restaurant was being attacked by vegans giving us one star reviews. I got rotten food and everything you could think of. Um. People started like just dig it into my social media, pulling pictures of my family, putting them online. UM just oh yeah, just like attacking you in every way they could online. And then when the mainstream media got it was so this happened on like a Thursday Friday, So all weekend. This stuffs like floating around the webs and we're just kind of shipping their pants like we're screwed, like I screwed us. And then the mainstream picked it up and wrote like a really positive piece for us, saying that, you know, we're sticking up for our business. You know, these people have no right telling us what we can and can't serve um. You know, we care about our ingredients. We you know, try and serve ethically stuff, ethically source stuff. And it was really positive towards us, and just the general public opinion was all in support of Antler, and then it's it just went viral. I have no understanding that was that was, and we were nervous about talking about it because it was. They protest us still once a week for eleven months. They tried to close our business, I swear to God. So it was it was emotional, man, it was stressful. They continue to protest, they continue to put and then so because because it went viral, they got a lot of support on their end too. So these protests of five to ten people turned into a hundred outside a little forty seater restaurant. So it sucks. It was not fun like afterwards, Its funny. Eventually, why did they eventually quit? I don't know, they just stopped. Did you put you did you put the sign up? They wanted now we refused. I said no, like, no way in hell. My business partner I was actually considering it. And my business partner was the one who actually said, like, no, f and way are we doing anything to help you know their cause or support what they want? So that was That was good for me to hear because I was kind of thinking I was getting tired of it, you're getting ready to capitulate. Yeah, it was. It was emotional, like it was hard so because we care so much about what we're doing, and it's it's our life's work, it's our passion um and then to have people trying to physically shut you down and hurt you, it was tough. It's funny how people attack. This happens in a lot of facets of of life where people are more inclined to attack something that leans in their direction, like there they when they look at a spectrum, like listen that there's a thing I hate. So they hate like like they don't like animal abuse, they don't like violence sort of animals Okay, so that's a spectrum. Oftentimes, when someone doesn't like a thing and the thing is part of a spectrum, people want to attack the thing that has the most adjacency to their position. Not always, but often, like like the same way that I imagine, like you take someone who whatever, you take certain Christian denominations, right, and you'd be like, so they like they don't like evil, right, so you think they would be like hyper focused on devil worshippers, but they'd be like, they'd be like hyper focused on Mormons, very very similar, right, But like I'll be like, why are you not mad at devil? I would think that you'd be mad about devil worshippers in your town, not people of the Mormon faith in your town, who sort of are like like very in line with what you got going on, don't deserve it, you know, but but like they can't even begin to deal with the devil worshiper end of things. And so you get something close and so here you have like a restaurant, this sort of thing. You're like leaning into ideals of sustainability and leaning into ideas of animal welfare, and so then they're faced with like, let's go after the guy that seems there kind of talk about some of the things we're trying to talk about and make an example out of him. How dare you sort of be right? Yeah, yeah, we we have the same problem. It's when we were wait, like I always thought we'd get like like our company always we'll get attack from the left. Yeah, that's right. Like I'm like fairly conservative, always anticipated that would get attack from the left. We attack like from the right. Like you know, you you go on TV with everybody's carrying guns around, and you spend a career making shows where people have firearms, and you promote firearm usage and put it you know, but it's like I got a feeling these people don't really like guns. They don't like guns enough for me, and and and so then you become you know, it's just bizarre. Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's wild. But also it's like there are many ways to agitate for change. It feels like this is kind of like a I don't know, a manipulative relationship totally. We're not the ones that make the laws around because we we actually agree with a lot of their beliefs, Like I don't I don't think slaughter houses are typically a great place for animals to be um, you know, and it's it's illegal for the farmer to slaughter of the animal himself and sell it directly to the restaurant, so all animals have to go to this not so great habitat of where they have to spend the last days of their life. So there are things that we agree on, but they should be protesting the government to change the laws to make slaughter houses a more humane place. I guess that's not fun. It's a lot more fun to go out from a restaurant trying to destroy someone's job. And you know, because we because it went I rall. You know, for every hundred you know supporters we got, you know, they got maybe two. So like their movement grew at the same time, even though it was all negative for them in the mainstream media, um, you know, they gained a bit of support for their their groups. So I think that's what you know, fueled them for so long. It's because they were they were milking it. They were getting all kinds of attention when no one had heard of them before. I'm surprised they didn't respond to your your email back, you know, your outreach for so they actually did start responding and at that point, you know, we had to hire a PR crisis person to help us deal with it UM and then so they advised us just to not talk to them at all. That's what those people always do. Yeh. Next time you want to go call a crisis management place, don't and just be like, I'll tell what they'll say. Don't engage. Yeah, well it was good because they did steer us in the right direction with some things they did. They know it was a friends company that I knew, so they you know, it was pretty affordable for us, UM. But they gave us some really good advice because I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to argue with them and try and get my point across. But did you ever have a sit down because they would just publicly post wherever we say, and they twist things, They cut things out, they twisted. They would take pictures of our restaurant at like five o'clock before we had any customers and be like, our our movements working, itler's empty and it's like, well, yeah, we're not open yet, like or it's like there's like you know in between, you know, we have diners come in at five six o'clock and then another rush of eight. So you know there's this weird time when tables are flipping that you know there's half or half full. So they'd post these photos say Antler's Antler's losing business on a Saturday night. You know they're only half full. They partially Do you feel that they partially hated you because you embraced it, like you called it antler and like do you kind of like brace the connection with animals rather than having to be that It's like you have a clown with red hair and he sort of is the face of the Yeah, like well, it's like, you know, a nice clown. He's nice to kids, and they don't talk about what they're serving in there. Yea. Yeah, like a little even if there's not an actual connection to hunting, there's like the idea that they we're promoting it, Yeah, and that you enjoy That might have been what piste him off. Did you get to the same group of people show up over the course that you got to know, Hey, John and Mary, how you do I wouldn't talk to them because I just knew the stuff coming out of my mouth wouldn't be friendly. And I just knew, you know, but it was the same core group of the same corese same like five people, the organizers. Yeah, and especially the ones because they were the ones taking pictures of my kids and I could see that they were posting them and stuff. So there was one guy that that's like, if I got within three ft of him, it would have been ugly. It's just like, I'm not going anywhere near this. Um. Yeah, but that's next level low. Yeah, And it's yeah, just incredibly frustrating, Like I didn't have the tools to deal with what you know, facing them would be like. So I just knew, don't go near them. So it eventually fizzled out. It just fizzled out. You know. Um, did you did your did your restaurant maintain the momentum? Um? We did. We definitely saw like a spike, you know. Um, we were getting phone calls from all around the world. People are emailing us from all around the world, like literally, people sending us the articles from New Zealand, from South Africa, from Singapore, from England and Russian like it was. But it was just bizarre, like I had, you know, you see about these stories and things going viral and then when you experience it yourself, is just just bizarre. Yeah, you have you have a cookbook coming out. I tell about the cookbook, but then my question is that you did that. Did this whole thing sort of put you in a position where you got to do a cookbook or do you think would have done a cookbook anyways? No, So the cookbook was actually what started the restaurant. So, um, I was working. You know, I grew up working as a chef as a as a young you know, teenager, and started way young. I got started thirteen and a diner. Yeah. I wanted to grow up poor, not poor. I started up and down. You know. I grew up a single mom, and there were there were a lot of times she had her own business, so there were good times and bad times. It was you know, not it wasn't very stable. Um, but I just I wanted to have my mom. I wanted to buy skateboards and T shirts and you know, stupid stupid stuff as a kid that your parents would say no to, so you had to go get your own cash. And I liked it. I really liked having money, so I thought that was cool. Um, And I liked the work, and I was very food motivated. I love to eat as a kid, so I found it really cool learning how to make stuff. So did you ever do any kind of schooling or anything around cooking? I did, Yeah, so I I did. It's a it's a formal trade apprenticeship. So I did my apprenticeship trade, got my red Seal certification, went to I went to college a community like not a community college, but a college for trades. Um and yeah, I got my got my chef papers, uh in my early twenty so just career career chef. Yeah. And what really motivated that was, Um, I had my daughter really young. So I had my daughter when I was nineteen and uh that that'll date. Yeah that out bro. So that was really my drive in your own restaurant in your early thirties, man, Yeah, yeah, it was was wild. So working your ass off. You had a kid when your nineteen kimen I was nineteen, and that just motivated, Like I find it does one of two things. Either motivates you or people run. And I chose to stick around and stick with it. Um and yeah, I think you know, my daughter like saved my life in a lot of ways. Like I was, I had a hard teenage kind of growing up. I was troubled youth kind of kid, and having having a kid really focused me into having an amazing work ethic, just being a solid dude, you know, because I wasn't really solid before. That's interesting that you want to feeling that way. I mean, it's typical, but that's a young age to hit that. Think the older you are, the more likely you'll hit that feeling. Yeah, because I meet some people now and then that don't get that feeling. Yeah, the kid having does not not help, does not necessarily make one lean in. Remember my buddy Buddy mine Mo, one of old camera guys. He talked about having a kid, and he said like it made him want to get up in the morning and get like a fedora, you know, and get like a briefcase, like put your hat on in the morning and march out the door, you know, with your briefcaseer the world man, you always like, That's what he felt like he ought to be doing. I'm like a lot of people don't feel that way. Yeah, you know, I I didn't have a dad growing up for the most part. My dad moved to l A when I was very young, from where he moved from Toronto and Toronto l A. Yeah, when I was like three or four. What was he doing? Why do you do that? Uh? He married, he married a woman down there. I think it was just he himself had like alcoholism problems stuff like that, so he, I think, just wanted to start a new life. And I have too, two half sisters in the city as well. Um. Did he wind up having anything to do with you? Yeah? So I would go visit and see did he write you after he saw the article? No, we've we're actually we're very close now. Um. You know I'd go visit him on the summers and stuff as a kid. Um. But yeah, So I think a big part of it was I I didn't I didn't want to do that to my kid. I wanted to really be there, um is what it was what really motivated me to work hard. Um, so that's great. You know when it was so when a lot of my friends were partying when they're in there in twenties, I was working. And that's I think that's why. Um, you know I was able to open a restaurant when I was thirty because I was so focused. So you're you're getting ready to tell us about how the cookbook led to the yeah the cook Um. Wow, we got off track there, so it's all stuff I needed to know. So I was, I was, I was. I was passionate about food and I had um started hunting and foraging in my late teens. Family friend and guessed this now, UM took me out turkey hunting, and because I was cooking professionally, UM, we went turkey hunting. It was still to this day one of the best turkey hunts I've ever been on. I I was so blown away by the flavor of wild turkey because I had something to compare it to, you know, like with with deer, you don't grow up eating farmed deer, whereas you know turkey. I have turkey at Christmas and Thanksgiving and all these holidays, so it was like eating turkey for the first time. It was this is like, Wow, this is what turkey is supposed to taste like. And that other crap that we've been eating from the grocery store, I don't know what that is anymore, Like that's just garbage. And I think as a chef you try and source the most amazing ingredients possible. So for me, it was okay. I don't want to eat that other ship anymore. This is what real food is, is this wild food. And the more I got into hunting and learning about wild foods and and foraging, the more interested like my friends and family became and they wanted me to teach them or take them or talk to them about it. So the idea of the book was really just I wanted to teach people about hunting and foraging, um, because it's something that I think has just been lost in our culture. When did you start working on the book. I think I was twenty. We've been working. I've been working on the book for and I say week. My my business partner got involved. Um. I think I was eight. Started working. I went and bought a camera, and I had worked for a famous chef at the time, and he handed me a cookbook and I thought, Okay, if this guy can do it, like, why can't I do it? The chef Scott Connin He's out of New York, but he he had opened and Telling Your restaurant in Toronto. He did a cook book, He's done a few. Yeah, So I worked hard. Well. I just thought, you know, like Scott was a down to earth guy, and I related to him on a lot of levels, and I was like, okay, like, you know, this guy inspired me. It was like he's got a book. I can I can do a book. And one of my sister actually touched me. She's like, you're like the hunter chef because it's our last name. So and I was like, that's a great name. So I traded the name and just I'm gonna write this book and teach people about this because everyone's asking me anyway. I was so passionate about it, and I was like, this is gonna be you know, I want to inspire other people to eat better and eat healthier and learn more about this. Um and then uh, you know, I started talking to my family about it and this is what I'm this is what I'm doing and working. I'm gonna work on this book. I bought a camera. I like photography anyway, UM, my sisters, it's a weird connection. But my sister's husband's step mom said to me, she said, oh, my my son is is taking cooking classes and he's a documentary filmmaker. And I had met him occasionally at family events and she's like, he's a photographer. You know, you guys should talk and then UM, we talked and he was telling me he was taking cooking classes for fun at a local college. And uh. Our our deal was he'd helped me with the photos for the book, and I'd teach him how to cook. Uh. And that's that's how the book started. I was seven years ago and you guys, so we got sidetracked. Now we we started taking photos for the book, and then we thought, okay, let's let's do some parties. So we we do some parties for these food photos. We wanted to make all this food for photos, and then we had we had all this food kicked line around. So we're like, we'll have a game dinner with our family. So we started in these game dinners. And then we thought, okay, we'll have we'll have a game dinner um and sell tickets to it just to pay for some of the expenses. UM. So what we've wound out find because I knew you couldn't sell game in a restaurant, but I wasn't really sure the laws like you can't sell game period. So I got I got a visit from the Ministry of Natural Resources saying that you know, we can't really do this, UM. And I had to prove that we didn't really make a profit because we only did one that we sold tickets to and we kind of got in trouble. So um, so we we promoted that we call it the Illegal Dinner because we were doing out of this condo and not a restaurant. And uh, a large paper bought a ticket and they wanted to write a story about it. And I thought we'd get this little blurb, you know, and in this big paper, and we ended up getting like this two page spread with photos and this right up about this dinner we were doing because it was so different. You know, no one does got you a visit from that got me a visit from the Ministry of Natural Resources. Came to visit and then we you know, they were very very nice, but I had to provide receipts and and uh, you know, we because we we bought rentals, we had to rent plates and tables and chairs and you know, we did this little dinner for fifteen people. We had to buy a lots at the time, you were just ignorant of the rules, but I was. I was ignorant of the rules. Like there's because in Canada, there's there's at least in Toronto. There's two laws. There's there's the Ontario Public Health where you can't sell meat that hasn't been through a slaughterhouse. Um. And then there's the wild game laws, which I was unaware of, that you can't sell game for profit. I don't like, you know, even to your neighbor, you know whatever. We have a we have a very similar suite of laws down here. So now you know, interesting thing about talking about like when talking you know, I don't know if this I don't know if this is a reciprocal, but many people in the US view Canada's being like it's almost like a fact simile. Yeah. And then when you're talking about the rules earlier, talking about like gun laws, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right. It's different countries, very different. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of the game laws are really similar. Yeah, the gun laws are totally different. We could spend a quite a quite a while talking about that too. Um. We started getting all this pub listening around this book that we're doing, and this this this idea of wild food, and and um, the restaurant where I was working, they they said to me, they said, hey, you know, we don't noticed this article in the paper said we don't really want to be involved in this, Like if you do stuff on your day off, that's fine, but like we don't want to be mentioned in these articles. And so we kind of thought, well, you know, this week I got, I got I'm confused the restaurant where you were working. I didn't want it to be known that you worked at that restaurant, not because they didn't want to be associated with hunting, because they have They even said we we don't want vegans protesting our restaurants. They called it, they called really they just had a feeling. They just said, we don't want Peter outside. So they just said, if you're if you're, if you're doing this hunting and foraging, fishing stuff like that's great, but like we don't, we don't really want to be a part of it. And that was a big thing that was hard for me as a chef because I wanted to serve game dishes in the restaurant um and you know, they didn't really want to. So a big part of Antler was just me being able to cook what I wanted to cook without anyone telling me no. So when you go to when you go to do a restaurant. Um is that Uh, Like financially man, that's risky, right, It's it's very risky. I think it's like restaurants fail within the first year a business. What causes that. It's it's a lot of mismanagement of money, and it's it's a lot of there's you don't need a licensed to open restaurant, like you need a business license, but you don't have to actually, you know, take a business course or or be licensed as a chef. You don't have to have like a chef license. I do because it was my choice to go and get it. Um. But like if you want to be a hairdresser a barber, you have to go to school and do safety course and get a license to be a barber. Whereas the restaurant industry, at least in Canada, it's it's it's a little different. Um. So there's a lot of people that are just going and opening restaurants because I think it's a good thing, our idea to do, and they don't necessarily take the business courses that go along with it, I think. Um. And but when when you hear about the failure rate on restaurants, is it because they're assuming that every seat is going to be full all the time, or some of them so mismanaged that even if every seat was filled all the time, you still wouldn't be Okay. I think it's a little bit of both. Um. And you know, it's you're dealing with product that can go bad. Um, You're you're dealing with like a party scenario. So if people are are treating it like their own personal party, having their friends over and drinking and giving away free food. Um can be the case. A lot of it's it's just like managing of the business itself. So we actually learned that we actually have to overbook our restaurant because the amount of people that don't show up. So because we're so small, you know, if we if we fully book ourselves at you know, we say we were going to do two turns a night, so flip the table twice. So say we book eighty people, Well, if twenty of those people don't show up, that's a huge lack of sales that we could have had. So we actually have to overbook and taking account because stuff happens. People get sick, or they forget or whatever it is. Um, So people don't show up, So you have to account for that. Um, there's and there's tons of stuff like that. Um, theft, it's huge, you know, because you're dealing with food and booze people like to eat and eat and drinks from employees employees, and you got robbed three times in one year. That's been a problem. Um. Yeah, like the old fashioned, old fashion smashing the window, run in and grab as much stuff as you can and run out. So there's that, you know. Unfortunately it doesn't happen a lot. Uh, And they didn't really steal very much, but that, you know, that did happen. When does the book come out? October six? It's a good looking book, Thank you, thank you. Did you have the recipes all figured out when you started and when you're twenty seven or was it a working problem? It was a total working progress. And things change even even up to like you know, the very last date I had to get stuff into the publisher. We're like, okay, we're gonna tweak this and fix that, and they're still like, you know, another fifty recipes that now I'm like, oh, I want to put that in there, and it's it's too late. How many did you get in there? There's a hundred recipes. Yeah, so we're really excited. It's it's i think four main categories. There's fish and foraged, there's small game, large game, and then there's a dessert and cocktail section, which is really cool. It's really fun. Yeah, tell people some of the kinds of things you serve at your restaurant. So we like to incorporate all things wild, you know, things that you find in Canada in the United States. So, um, wild mushrooms is a big part of that. Chantrell's morals, black trumpets, um. You know, if I go foraging, take those pheasant backs we spoke about in Shaggy Mainz and and some of the other other kinds. Um, and you buy that from you'll also you'll buy mushrooms from professional pickers totally. And that's the industry look like like here's kind of like they just show up, yes and no, Like some of them show up and I'm a little sketchy around those people. But um, a lot of times we'll get emails or there's some big are ones that are more well known that I've used for years. Um and uh, you know, they picked themselves and they also buy from pickers. So because they're in Ontario. We buy BC mushrooms. Um, and it's it's an interesting market and it's it's uh and it's the stuff. The thing is, stuff is expensive, and there's there's no there's no rule against someone um like just Joe Blow, like just any dude off the street can show up and bang on your door sam els and you can buy them and serve them in some in some places it's not like I've heard of other states and provinces where uh, they cannot go to a farmer's market and buy food. They have to buy it from a licensed supplier. We don't have those laws where I am, but so I hear they do exist. But do you do transactions like that I have in the past. Yeah, some people have shown up and they've had beautiful ramps are also called wild leaks, for instance, And they said, you know, these are huge patches at my cottage. Are you interested in they're beautiful? And I said, yeah, sure, you know, here's a hunter bucks or fifty bucks and what we got this bushold of ramps. So it does happen. I turn around and put them on the menu. Turn out we have to clean them and shop them up and all that stuff. But yeah, we're turning. It's it's I I love those ingredients because you can't find them in a store, and they just taste so much different than anything you do find in a store. So it's even even some of the mushrooms are things you can buy in the store. When you buy them or you pick them yourself, there's more of a connection to it. But they're just fresher. They taste better when they're like two or three days old versus the store. You don't know how long it's been in there. Also, my kids about this the r day because the difference between the strawberries you grow and the ones you buy. I don't understand what goes wrong? Why are they huge? Well? Yeah, yeah, why are the ones in the store like the size of an apple and taste like nothing? Like I don't get like if you told me how is it easier to grow on that tastes real good? Like if you told me to grow like a shitty strawberry, I wouldn't know where to begin. Yeah, I mean, anytime I've ever grown them, like growing up I had him, I've had them at a couple of houses where he started strawberry patches. They always are good but like, what is it? How do you why is it so hard to make a bad strawberry? And why are there so many bad strawberries for sale? But what you're saying, like even things you can get in the store is good. Tomatoes are the same way. Well, I mean GMO like you have. I don't think like Arctic fish combine like introduced to strawberries to make shelf life longer. It's it's yeah, I mean GMO being that you can do that to wind up having strawberries that live forever, and they're probably like you know, I've heard if they go, they gas them, they do all kinds of things to make them turn red. And you know who knows. You gotta wonder if hydroponic stuff hasn't fed, like not being in the crop rotation, like if they're just playing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again in that same soil, Like how's it gonna taste good? Yeah? I don't know all the above, man, God, strawberries taste when you make yourself though, anything that you have in your own guarden, you like, it's you know, you pick a straw like tomato, like you said, and it's warm from the sun and then you cut that up and just put salt on it. It's amazing, It's incredible. You know. So I think, you know, as as a chef, that search for the purest ingredients is really what led me to hunting and foraging and fishing. What do you do for fish in your restaurant? So we only sell wildfish, um, and it's only from uh, you know, Canada. Um. And so we you know, we're lucky we have the Great Lakes. Uh. So there's perch, there's whitefish, um, you know, rainbow trout, and then um, you know, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. So we have you know, um, Arctic char um, you know, halibut, salmon, rock fish, um, you know crabs. You guys will still perch? Yeah, I love perch. What do you do with the perku either fry it or you know, you know, two or three filets for an order kind of but I like I like frying it. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Spot prons, I love spot prons. They're incredible. Um. And what do you guys do with the venison you have in your restaurant? So we do a couple of different things. Event we do one is really fun. We put it in our burger meat. We do a mix of that of of of weld boar, bison and deer. Um. We do these venison patties which are really cool. What do you put for fat in there? Um? So for the burger it's the it's the boar, the farms boar. It's kind of fatty like porkum. The meat still different, like the meat is very dark um. But and then a kind of like it turned into a signature dish we do. We do venison two ways. So we do a stew with the neck and the shanks and stuff, and then we put that we pair that with a steak from one of the primal cuts um. And then for that the steak we do an ash spice which is really kind of flavorful um sweet spice. We do cinnamon and star and niece juniper uh cloves and then we toast those till they're super dark and black um. And then we grind nose up and then put them through a sieve to get all the large chunks out and this really fine black powder um. And then we hence the ash, hence the ash, and we roll that uh you know the steak in that and then just here that nice and rare, so it's it's cool and you cut it, it's got like a black line and then red and then that goes on the stew um. It's kind of neat. So because we, like I said earlier, we we buy a whole deer, so we get all these off cuts. We have to figure out something to do with what do you what do you want to buy a whole deer from a deer farmer? What is the cost of that there? I think it's like eight bucks a pound or yeah, he he charges eight a pound. Um when you're saying deer, are you saying red deer? We're buying right there. So they're bigger, they're about it where you know, clean y. Yeah, yeah, they're they're very similar in size. So we're getting those deer there anywhere from a d fifty pounds and they'll charge you like eight a pound for that. Yeah. We gotta break it down, including the bones, so there's a lot of and then we make stock with the bones. And you know, we don't waste anything, so we use every little scrap of it. It's really neat. Earlier we were talking about we got on the subject of of restrictions that you deal with in Canada, and we talked about emerging gun laws, like you're kind of vocal about this, right, I'm very vocal about it because that it's affecting me personally, and the gun laws aren't doing anything to help crime, which is which is a problem because that's the thing, like a thing that people are aware of. I think that, like, you know, talk about this sort of like perception of if you're in the US, you have a perception of locals on people who are aware, like, oh, Canada, you know they're gun laws. They suck. But what is it? So like, what can you Let's say you just want to Let's say you're a Canadian citizen and you want to go out and just buy Um, you want to buy a rifle. You wanna buy a d rifle, put a scope on it, bolt action rifle, put a scope on it. Um. Do they make that difficult? Yes, it's difficult. You have to do a safety course, which I think is a good thing. Um, But after you do that safety course, you like my wife just waited seven or eight months to get our license. In the mail, it's always supposed to take forty five days. So there's like a forty five day mandatory waiting period, which, sure, maybe that's a good thing. You're piste off. You just do your safety course. You have a grudge or something, and that you have to wait for five days to go buy a gun. You get so mad at someone. Yeah, you go down and take your safety course. So like, I think you gotta right, you gotta put a note on your fridge, stay mad at Bob. So I think you know, there are some common sense of like a safety course. Sure, that's a good thing. I think everyone that owns fire should have to take a safety course. That wouldn't fly here. But because what the problem is that once they passed those lots, like, we don't have a right to own firearms in Canada. So I think that's no that that's what you're saying, Like you wish that you had an equivalent of the Second Amendment. That's the problem because so they never like codify it anywhere that to some extent, you know, so it's a privilege. There's no opening, there's no like, there's no sort of foundational understanding. So in no situation can you roll down to the gun shop and walk away with one No now once you have your license, your non restricted license, you can okay, Um, like pistols and and a RS well airs have just been banned. So but what what we because I still I want to get to that, but want me through the first Like do you get a rifle, you have to do a safety course. It's involve proficiency. No, well you have to handle some dummy firearms that have had the firing pins removed. So safety, you know, work in the action, loading, unloading, you know, dummy bullets. All wants to take to do the class. It's a weekend course like to it's kind of going to hunter safety exactly. And then they're like you are now a safe person and they hand you and they mail you a thing. They mail you a thing you know eight months later that course, like does it cover long guns and handguns or is it specific? So that is specific to long guns. Um, so that's anything over eighteen inch barrel I think is eighteen and a half inch barrel, So that's you know, your shotguns and your bolt actions, you know, break action stuff like that. They just show you they have the different styles of firearms on the table and they should they teach you how to work them. And unload them and all that stuff. Um, And you know, I think that's a good thing. Um. But where where the issue is is now they've created all these new laws and they're taking away people's property that aren't part of the problem of what's going on. So, you know, we have you know, you know, gang shootings in the cities, and these people aren't following rules. They don't have licenses, they don't go into stores and buy guns. But that's the perception for people that don't own guns, Like when COVID hit, gun stores are actually posting that people are going to gun stores trying to buy a gun because they're worried about looting and and and being unsafe, and then they get laughed at by the store owners that say you need a license, and they're like what they weren't even people don't even wear it, Like it's just the perception that, you know, to get a gun, you just go buy a gun in Canada, and that's not the case. So criminals, uh, they're not like, dude, I'm fixing the committed crime, but I'm waiting for my yeah, waiting for a license. Yeah. So that's that's where I take issues, because they've recently banned over different firearms in Canada and criminals they're not going to get in the license, they're not registering these guns and they're committing committing the crimes, and it's it just sucks. And I'm personally losing some some weapons that i've or firearms that I've hunting hunted with, Like you'll need to go down and hand them over. That they haven't worked out the details yet because this is so new. It happened on March, but that's in two years. We have a two year amnesty where we can either hand them over or they're going to grandfather them, is what they've spoken about, but it's not there's no details yet. How with you owning a restaurant, is that is that your primary like livelihood? Your restaurants your primary livelood? Um? How tied in? Like let me give you, uh, McDonald's. I don't know the first thing about the CEO McDonald's. Okay, I don't know what he thinks about anything. Okay. I think the most people say to say, most people to go to McDonald's, um will go there with no knowledge of what McDonald stands for politically. Uh. In fact, people will startily talk about getting an attack for various things. You know, we'll always here from people on social media, like I can't believe you would you know, associate with such and such because they're not this person, They're not program enough Like who made your phone? Like you're typing this on a phone? Tell me about CEO of the phone company that you're using? Like are they do? They do they pass your muster? Right? So do you find that people? Um? Do you find that people will suss out with your restaurant like, Oh, here's a person who's vocal about gun rights and then reward or punish you or here's it. Like is your sort of social media self like very different from your restaurant self. I try, I definitely keep it separate. But what you know, is it risking for you to engage in cultural I think yes, it is for sure, And it's something that my my my business partner is very concerned about. So like he's like x n A on the Yes, I've had several chats. Um, so yeah, Like you know, I try, you know, the opinions expressed or my own like that's on my Twitter, So has nothing to do with the business, because there's there's there's a lot of other people at the business that run the business. You know, it's not it's not fair to punish them because, uh, you know, I'm I'm in Canada, pro gun, let's say. But um, you know, but the big problem is is our judicial system and they're not punishing these criminals that are committing these crimes like someone's caught with a gun in there. So let's talk about restricted guns. So that's pistols and and and semi automatics with a shorter barrel. So in Canada, for me to transport my pistol, or for for me to use my pistol, I have to have a separate license, which is called a non restricted gun license. And then the only place I can shoot that pistol is at a gun range. And then if I want to transport that pistol, I have to have a trigger lock on it and then in a locked case, so it's double locked and the ammunition is separate. That's our laws for pistols. So we have people walking around the streets of Toronto with pistols in their pockets that aren't double locked and loaded, and they get arrested and they make bail and they're out on the street in two days or twenty four hours, they're on bail walking around again. That's why I think frustrates a lot of people about when you get into the gun controlled debate, Is it seems that the same um, the same sort of political persuasion that would favor restrictions on firearms. Not seems it's like this is like generally true an individual inclined toward restricting access to firearms probably not even probably like is inclined towards not punishing crime as as Yeah, it'd be like I want to make more things illegal, but do less shipped to people who do illegal things. It's unfortunate. And the other thing is unfortunate is you know, I have these views about guns because I'm a hunter and I use guns, but so that I'm I'm like a far right extremist all of a sudden, Like my wife got chewed out at like a family party by like one of someone's neighbor. Oh, your husband is he's so right wing? All of a sudden, It's like, I'm not necessarily right wing. I have some right wing views. I have some left views as well. Like I'm that's you confused, it's you confusing for you it's like I'm I'm I'm pretty middle road with a lot of stuff, and um, yeah, and it's just funny because because I'm a hunter, because I have these views about guns, now I'm this right wing extremist all of a sudden, and I'm like, well, it's not really true as far as save a pig goes you are, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's it's just yeah, it's I know, it is a little bit painful like that, and it's it's winds up being a thing. I don't think it's going away anytime soon. This idea that, um, there's all these litmus there's like these litmus tests, and depending on a person's sensibility, they they all have varying litmus tests, but they'll take like your stance on X and then extract lay out from there to make a bunch of judges about how you feel about a ton of things. And differently we use different limus tests. You know, you could ask someone a question, like you could ask someone a policy, you know, like a policy question. Your answer to the policy question, um would then indicate, uh, you know that you're a racist? Are not a racist? I thought we're talking about like a specific policy question or that, like, how do you feel about firearms if you're like, if you like sort of look at the legal structure and you're uncomfortable with restrictions on firearms that they want to then sort of like neutralize your voice by painting you into some kind of like radical element where nothing you say can be trusted because you're radicalized. Uh. It's unfortunate the degree to which he's starting to happen. I'm sure it's always happened a bit, but it seems to be happening more and more and more. Now you become, Yeah, you become it's more likely to be that you'll you be crucified for some um portion of what you think, but crucified on a wide scale level. Made Yeah, made to pay in a lot of like made to pay in a wide way. I find myself running the other direction of it, man, and trying to be more u h. Even things that I'm like personally that I feel really strongly about, um, you know, land issues and conservation issues and habitat issues, right. Uh, even when I hear someone that would that would say something that violates my like deeply held feelings about it, and I'd be like I would normally think like, that's a what you just said is evil. I will now assume that you're evil and everything about you is evil. I know. I'm like, oh, I'm it, man, don't do to this guy what you would hate to have done with you. You know what else say? I think the government should give all that land up, no one should ever go on it ever. Again, I'm like, all right, man, you know you're probably a good guy, so let's let's talk for a minute about that and not commit the same thing that I hate. That's a good point, that's very mature. Well, I don't know. I'm halfway to ninety. The fact that I eventually got to a point where I would like try to attempt to engage with people in a debate the way that I would like them to approach me. It's hard to be a nuanced thinker, I think. You know, it's you know, it's like, well, it's not encouraged politically, definitely not at all. But you know, do I do I judge you to be on my side or not? Are you a threat to me or are you safe for me? Based upon whatever my own individual calculus is of that, And I think that really undermines all of us. I just got a a friend of mine emailed me an article late last night. It's in the it's in the papers now that the Museum of Natural History of New York was like, oh, you know, we're taking down our Theodore Roosevelt statue. And the statue and question is Theodore Roosevelt. He's like up on a horse sort of you know, it's like very virile, conquering hors thing, and too sort of behind him walking is a Native American on one side, and I don't know if it's an I should say an African American someone of African descent on his other side, kind of walking walking behind him while he's up on this horse. And you look at it sort of like he's leading the chart, I whatever know, leading the charge. I look at it in my initial like I go through all these things where I look at him like and I was pissed right at first, because because I'm thinking, well, how now are we gonna now? Are we gonna throw out the father of American conservation? You know? Are we done with that now? Like he was so contextually, he was so ahead of his time that most politicians haven't caught up with the guy a hundred and twenty years later, like a real controversial putting his neck out for wilderness in Wildlife. And so I'm like, are they really gonna piss that away? But then like read the article, which is not what I initially didn't read it until then I got all mad. Then the next day read the article. It turns out they're going in and naming in the museum. They're actually naming extra ship after Roosevelt. They're doubling down on Roosevelt. They're just saying this particular statue is problematic, Like this depiction is problematic. Do we think that the man is problematic? No, in fact, we're gonna go name more ship after him. His father was like a founding member member. He has this like great history. But you gotta get down to the bottom of the article to get there. But I was already too piste because the headline. But Roosevelt also has some things you got a question too, things that viewpoints that he held, you know. So Lincoln, well I get that. I'm just saying you're never You're never brody, You're never gonna kill them all. Oh, I know, I'm not saying we That's not my goal. I'm saying that people are just more aware of sure that this is way beyond the scope what we talked about. We can go back to real quick. I want to go back to food. I want to go back to food, but real quick. Man, Um, I I'm gonna choose my words careful here. I get very uneasy around um applying a modern lens in all cases to people who, to individuals who, especially individuals who at the time we're beginning to poke holes in in question the thing that they're not being condemned for, and in the position in front of the natural History Museum. The Natural History Museum isn't called the the colonialism Museum. It's about a commitment two conservation. I feel like if I was at if I was involved in that debate, I'd be like, oh, I don't give a ship. Take that one down. Let's put up a different one of the same person there, like it's it's not, it's not I don't care about like this particular you know what that statue. Don't know if you call this cren that was made by the guy who carved the buffalo head Nickel. Oh no, I didn't. I was James Fraser. He did the buffalo head nickel off of buffalo in a in a in a um a buffalo in his zoo in New York. People were real disappointed with his nickel, but he, um yeah, it's kind of like he thought that everything was like a shitty looking, morose looking buffalo. But um yeah, the same sculpture that did this, this Roosevelt statue in question. It's like, I don't maybe I'm naive or whatever. I'm like juvenile, but I don't like I need certain I think that like certain heroes are helpful to have. Sure, I sit on the board of the theatore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership was puts it puts its ass on the line all the time, you know, for wildlife and habitat. So now is it like, uh are they bad? No? And I don't think I was ever saying I don't think talking to like behind you there's you know, optics that are being exposed these days that people are question. Here's here's part of a press release. Um So, while the statue is meant to celebrate Roosevelt as a quote devoted naturalist and author of works on natural history, the statue also quote communicates a racial hierarchy that the museum and members of the public have long found disturbing. So I understand how folks who disagree UH see the Native American and African man flanking Roosevelt as um modeled in a position that's subordinate to him. And I can also understand how folks might see them as proxies for people of color today. UM. You know, symbols can be very powerful UM. You know, like the if we look at the origin of the word monument, it literally means calling to mind, like something, something that reminds. So I recently heard this UM interview on NPR with a historian. He was addressing Confederate statues and he offered up what I thought to be a unique idea UM in addressing them, and he was saying that he thought the statues should stay where they are, but come with UM. I think his wording was come with a footnote of epic proportions. UM. So what I took that to mean was that there are some kind of an additive process. So you keep the statutes where they are, UM, and either with a placard or you know, you can take a lot of artistic license in representing something additive to the statute to put it in context, um, and to kind of address its place in time, um as we see it today. Yeah. Or here's another fix. Have someone make his compatriots on bigger horses them with put him on pegasus like winged horses that are way bigger than Roosevelt's horse. I don't care. I'm just so reluctant to uh, the number of the amount of people who have been inspired by him and what he did, The amount of people have been inspired to engage in the environmental battle and to engage in wildlife conservation have been inspired by the image watch the How much damage are you? Like, how much damage are you inflicting to people's understanding? I'm not the guy to make up these I'm not I'm not the guy to like to answer this question. Were what we were talking about earlier? You know, it's like picking one issue, like you can't whatever the guy was like, he was still a great conservationist, right, Like that's a fact. Yeah, but man, be where the teeter totter? No, that's not the word I'm looking for. What's it called when something swings that comes back? But where the pendulum? Uh, you're gonna move away? You're talking about moving away from where you live now, I don't know. I gotta have to consult my wife with that one. But it's it's hard because I'm just too hot in Toronto. I mean hot, like politically hot. It's it's getting a little politically hot. Uh. You know, we do have our sights on on BC where where she's from. Um, it's it's a mecca for hunting and foraging and fishing out there. Lots of friends there, and you know, it is a dream to to open a restaurant there one day. If you've factor in the trouble with the vegan protesters, the animal rights protesters, issues around firearms and stuff that you might get in trouble for. Do you find that has generally been advantageous to be too self identify as a hunter and to be vocal about that from a business standpoint or do you feel like you would have especially kicked ass if you hadn't been so vocal. I don't know, like I've I think I was just raised uh to you know, be yourself. And I just like I cook what I want to cook, I say what I want to say. Um, you know, and I you know, in terms of food, I just hope people enjoy it. And you know your customers are the critics. Um. You know with with food, UM, but but my voice, you know, I I do my best to try and keep it separate from the business as much as I can. UM. But you know, we we do get a lot of hunters that come uh to talk to us about hunting. And we had a lot of guys that come and say, you know, I've never had a deer steak taste this good? You know, you gotta give me the recipe for the spice or whatever. That's cool. You know it's hunters will come and bring me hats from like their ducks, Unlimited Chapter or whatever it is, and it's it's cool. You know, we get it. We certainly get a connection with a group of people we may not have had a connection with if there wasn't the hunting aspect to the business. Who came up with the idea to call it antler um That was a group decision, so there was Originally there was supposed to be three partners wanted up backing out because they were having a baby. I didn't want to risk it. Um, But my my business partner, Jody Shapiro, and I and another friend we had a you know, big whiteboard and three hundred names on there and we're just you know, picking and choosing and and did you guys ever consider like big huge antler. Yeah, we I forget some of the earlier names. We've actually got some photos of the names, like there's but there were some funny ones. Um, but antler was supposed to just represent also like a shed antler on the ground and we actually have on on the restaurant wall when you walk in. It was from antlers would be different, Yeah, it's just from Jody's cottage. Well, there was a place called Antlers in the up I've I've researched and film. Do you have a do you have a bunch of like mounts and stuff? There's only one. So we didn't want it to be like super Hunting Lounge. You just wanted to be like Cabin in the woods. Still, so there is a there's my first buck eural mount that I did myself on the wall above the chefs table, and then there's the single antler when you walk in. Um, we we have a couple of new editions. There's a black duck. Now my friend shot he was moving and he was like, here, take this I get, I don't want to move it. Um, So we have his it's this beautiful black duck mount um on the bar above the bar, and then uh what else, there's a couple of like some pheasant feathers I think tail feathers coming out of ase somewhere. But it's not it's not like super in your face. We shoot things. How much does it cost? Uh? You probably know this in U s dollars? Like what's it? Costic goal eat in your restaurant? Uh? It varies. So like we have burger that's you know, eighteen bucks or something like it's it's not uh you know, it's it depends what you want. Like you can have uh, you know, a burger and a beer and leave for you know, under thirty bucks. If you want our bison rebuy those things are a bit more pricey. I think that's like forty five bucks. Um, because the games have is also a bit more expensive than the running run of the mill um or even like nice beef are are the bison is always more more money just for me to even buy it. So do you feel like your restaurant is also a place where people come in and ask you questions? About game and hunting and learn a thing or two, you know, like a lot of uh people eating game for the first time. Like we had chicken on the menu when we first opened, like just in case someone on the date didn't want to eat here, you know, and we just end up eating it all the time. So before it went bad because no one ordered it, you know, people were coming to try new things. Um. And then we have a lot of fish too, so people aren't into red meat or game. They have fish, so um, and that's something I love and I we joke around it all the time. I wish I could sell more fish. And then I was like, you know, hurting on the service one day to being like you know, guys, why can't you sell the fish? And there like I don't know, dude, you named your restaurant antler, Like I can't help you. Man. So we have a couple of fish dishes, but I would love to do more. But it's just not what people are coming for. Do you guys do any like butchering classes or anything? Like we're too small, Like I would love two people do ask me all the time. Um. And it's like I also have two kids and and my wife and it's it's you know, it's hard now finding that balance between you know, being a chef and having a family. You have a second kid after the one that you have in your nineteen or two more, Uh no, I have two kids. So but yeah, so my son was just born six years later, so there's six between them. Yeah, oh that's not bad. Yeah, when you get time to hunt and fish on your own. So now, just because we we wanted to, we open the restaurant, and it really we stopped working on the book. So we thought, okay, we'll have the restaurant, will be like a playground to shoot the book. And that was totally not the case. The book is real front and center through so and and you know, we we had to hire more stats. Okay, we've gotta get this book done. And then we hired it's called like a cheft cuisine, like a head cheft or run the place. So now he he's really in charge of the menu. Um, you know, he there's a couple of things that are kind of signatures that don't leave. But um, for the most part, it's you know, it's his menu. He'll he'll come to us with new dishes and you know sometimes I'm a part of them. Sometimes I'm not um and that that was really uh for for us to be able to finish the book. But also I get to spend more time with my family now and uh and focus. So there's other things, you know. I'm working with some outdoor brands now, um, some hunting companies stuff like that, which which I love. And I just think, like the older I'm getting, the more time I want to spend outside. And it's it's a really hard struggle for me. You realize your time outside is running out at a certain I miss it and I get I get edgy if I don't go into nature once a week or something like. I'm just um. And you know, I want to pass this on to my kids now, and I want it's really important for me to teach them about and fishing and and now I'm bringing them out into the field more. And my my daughter has their licenses. Uh, you know, my son is itching to get his hunting license when he's twelve. And it's it's uh, it's it's really cool. Do you uh do you want your kids going to to be in chefs and going to restaurant business or do you use against doing that? No, it's it's whatever makes them happy. Right Like, if if they want to take on the business or or get involved, h you know, that's great. If they don't, I totally support whatever they want to do. Um, because it's a tough business. It's really tough, and it's uh it's backwards. You know, you're working when everyone else is off. So it's it's it's tough to have a family, it's tough to see your friends. Um, you know, because it's sort of the backwards industry. There's a lot of drugs and alcohol abuse and stuffing that within the industry, and it's a it's a tough one and it's the financial reward for the amount of hours you put in doesn't pay off for a very long time. Um. You know. People see chefs on TV and they make tons of money, and it's like, yeah, there were they're also been chefs for their entire lives, you know, and you're as an apprentice. You make minimum wage at best, and you can't make a living off that, you know, So it's it's a it's a it's like I didn't start making a decent paycheck. He was like a ten year mark for me where I made absolute ship for a long time. And then you know, after ten or fifteen years in the business, I actually got like a decent paycheck. It was like wow, like I'm actually I'm getting it was my first head chef job, and it was like, whoa, that's similar to be a writer. Yeah, you know a lot of people you got you stick with it for a decade, yeah, before it turns into anything like if you're good. Yeah. A lot of people stick with a decade never but very few people launch. It's like it's a long commitment. Man. It seems like that's common in the food world and anything that touches on art. Yeah, soil exactly. Art. It's like it's a total artists type of of lifestyle. So it's it's tough and yeah, so I support my kids and whatever they want to do. My my daughter's uh, he's taking interest in environmental sciences and or political yeah, no environmental stuff. And she's looking at a university where um they have a strong like environmental program. So well, man, I hope the vegans leave you alone. Thank you. I gotta ask before you go, I gotta ask about that. You have to notice that Steve, I was noticing that looked like turkey feathers. So I got a turkey wing. What are we looking at? I got deer in my antler. That's the coolest tattoo I've ever seen. Let me get a better look. I knew it was Turkey's a turkey wing. Oh, you did the whole wing. And then my wedding band has antler in it, which is neat. And then uh, I got the first buck I shot in tattooed on my neck. I got mine on the water bottle, but it wasn't the first one I got, So lose that bottle. You're not gonna lose that. Let me see that buck again. So it's actually funny. It's like a seven pointer antler's broke, So it's kind of funny. It did your wife like that? I think she does? Yeah? Did you ask her? H Yeah, I think she likes it. Yeah, I had it before I met her, so I'll say say, yeah, I wonder what she's I wish I she was here, So next I love like I flew in and this this this state is beautiful, So you're definitely gonna have to come back with her and spend more time. So next time, she's really she's into the outdoor lifestyle. So good, she should get along with everybody here. Good. Well, thanks for coming on, man, thank you so much for having me. I hope they people leave your restaurant alone. Well, this is good for business. I don't know, well, you know, should come back. They have left us alone. But you know what the funny thing was, we were getting vegans coming in for dinner to support us because they said they didn't want because we have vegan stuff on the menu. Like it was. It was just so bizarre. Yeah, like I feel like you should that should be applauded. Yeah, we welcome everybody. And that's that's something else I want to say, like, you know, whether you eat kosher or halal or vegan, like whatever you eat, like you're welcome and that. That's what was so bizarre for us was we didn't understand why they singled this out. But yeah, I'm glad you survived. Thank you for having me. That's how I took note to you and those old as now but that's when I was like, wow, that's interesting, and thank you for your you know, your quote in the back of the book. Oh yeah, if nothing else, buy the new book. Tell people the name of the book. We haven't done that. The book is the Hunter Chef to tell people to buy buy the book just to read my blurb. Yeah, never mind. Yeah, And that's so October six coming up. But the pre sale link is I'm going to go up the Hunter chef dot com June twenty nine. Are there way better blurbs of mine? Uh? No, I was. I was very honored by what you wrote. So thank you very much. Yeah, it was very just gonna put my blurb on the outside of the inside of the boat. I don't have any say where off the cover. It's not good from what I saw, your blurb gets like bumped when I saw you're actually I think your quote is on the back cover, like on the outside. Yeah. Good yeah, because if they put on the inside, then you're like something went wrong. Someone wasn't happy. Yeah, So thank you very much. And it goes on sale, goes on sale June twenty nine, the Hunter chef dot com. There's a pre sale link, you know, Amazon, Oh, June June twenty nine, the pre sale link goes up, Oh, the pre okay, but the bookships the bookships. October six is the main release date. The Hunter Chef just season just to Rhanto season. You gotta send me a bound one, Okay, I had the one unbound? You got a digital copy? No, no, no no, okay, no no no, I did. I didn't like it. Sent me an unbound one. Really, Okay, this is hard for you to picture. I need to, but I'm not. I'm not like creative enough. I'm not imaginative enough to you got a bunch of loose pages. Yeah, I can't when people want to send digital like I have to, like I have to. I don't like reading on Yeah, I can enjoy it, but I can't, like really, I gotta just for something like that to like give a quote for the book. I was like, I just need to see the damn book or like kind of like a version of the book. It can't be just me scrolling through pdf files. Yeah, that's weird. I don't feel like I'm there. Man, he kindle stuff that's weird, and they else brody, No, I'm good films for Coming Hill and said nothing. Phil got it, got his hair cut. He did. I like him a lot. Better speak softly and carry a big Sticky's teddy, old teddy bringing it back all right, Thanks, ma'am, thank you,