The B Team Podcast
Talking all things Business, Bentonville, and Bourbon. Hosted by Josh Saffran, Matt Marrs, and Rob Nelson. New episodes every Thursday!
The B Team Podcast
Ep. 40 - The Wolf of Wok Street: The Story Behind Wu Zhao
Vincent Lim, the "Wolf of Wok Street," invites us into the world of Wu Zhao, a Chinese restaurant inspired by the remarkable story of China's only female emperor. Discover how a chance encounter on Instagram led us to Vincent, bringing his culinary expertise all the way from Sydney to the charming town of Bentonville. Together with Catherine Zhang, we unravel the rich tapestry of flavors and stories that make Wu Zhao a unique addition to the local dining scene.
Join us as we explore the tantalizing menu crafted by Vincent and his dynamic team, including the celebrated general manager, Adam. Experience the anticipation of signature dishes like Zhao fried rice with crab and scallops, and the distinctively seasoned spicy squid. Our conversation unfolds the creative process behind these culinary delights, all while overcoming the challenges of a makeshift studio setting and preparing for a fully operational kitchen.
Finally, Vincent shares his passion for culinary perfection with a focus on training staff and crafting an innovative menu. Witness the collaboration between Vincent and Catherine as they aim to blend savory and sweet elements, creating a memorable dining experience for Bentonville locals. We toast to the camaraderie and creativity behind Wu Zhao, eagerly awaiting the restaurant's opening and the delightful experiences that lie ahead.
Welcome to the B-Team Podcast. I am your host, josh Safran, with my co-host, matt Morris and our permanent guest, rob Nelson. We're here every week to talk to you about all things Bentonville, bourbon and business. The B-Team Podcast Be here. Welcome to the B-Team Podcast. I'm your host, josh Safran, along with my co-host, matt Marr. It's good to have you back in a hat. I didn't recognize you without the hat on the last episode. It's hat day. It's hat day. You didn't get the memo. Nobody told me we should have brought a hat.
Speaker 2:We should have brought a blue hat. I like those hats. He's got to go have a pet in there with those Well.
Speaker 1:I don't, I do need a blue hat, where's?
Speaker 2:the one. Do you have a blue hat? No, I don't, I'd like one. You're pimping around town.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Sounds like.
Speaker 3:Done.
Speaker 1:Well, we're here every Thursday on all things Bentonville, business and bourbon, and we had Barry in on one of our first episodes. Pretty exciting, yeah, back in the old studio.
Speaker 4:Back in. You guys are moving up. This is pretty awesome, yeah, bougie Jesus.
Speaker 1:And we talked about it Bentonville, bougie Blue and downtown Rogers and some of the stuff and you teased us a bit about some new stuff going on and we said, come back when you have more on the new stuff coming on. Yeah, pretty exciting stuff. And today you brought in the masses. We brought in the masses. Why don't you do some introductions for the?
Speaker 4:group in the room, yeah, so I mean we kind of threw it out there before what we were doing, but we went from with Blue being more seafood. One of the things I've always wanted to create my favorite food in the world living in San Francisco and then moving to Bentonville was Chinese food, and so our concept off the Bentonville Square was always going to be Chinese. In the beginning we called it Eka, but the name of the restaurant is called Wu Zhao. Spell it Wu Zhao, w-u-z-a-w-z-h-a-o. And what is Wu Zhao? Wu Zhao was the only female emperor of China in the history of China. She was the only female that was ever the emperor A history lesson and she did Her age when she was there. It prospered, she did incredible things. So that's sort of the direction we went, and today I've got two incredible people that we were just by accident not accident, but by luck that we got them to come, and I'd like to just give a little bit of story To come to work for you or come to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Come to work, we feel excited. Forget if they work for you or come to the podcast, because come to work, come to work, we feel excited. Well, forget if they work and we're excited.
Speaker 2:They're on the podcast and I think I'm gonna work with us better.
Speaker 4:I like the name better and so how, how I met, um the wolf of walk street, which is right here, mr vincent lim, believe it or not all the way from sydney, australia, and his partner is with him today, catherine Zhang. And I'll just give you a little brief introduction on these two and how we met, because it's important. When we were looking for somebody to be the face of Wu Zhao, I was telling my wife Allie I said, man, if we could bring in just an incredible Chinese chef or somebody who could execute what we want, and it would be really cool if we could bring in a celebrity chef that was well-known. And this was about a week before. We're laying in bed one night and she pulls up. We're laying in bed one night and she pulls up Vincent's Instagram and she showed me these videos that he was doing and I said to her I'm like that's the guy we need, that's him right there, and she's like Jesus.
Speaker 4:You know he's in Sydney, Australia, you know he's not going to come to Bentonville, and so she.
Speaker 5:Instagrammed him.
Speaker 4:She Instagrammed him. Yeah, he had a DM to him and lo and behold, he didn't answer right away.
Speaker 6:Shocker, how many followers, do you?
Speaker 1:have. Sorry, my bad. How many followers do you have?
Speaker 6:At the time, I think it was at around a million. So yeah, that was a while back. So, yeah, when Barry mess around a million, so yeah, that was that was a while back, you know.
Speaker 4:So like, uh, yeah you know, when barry messaged me, it was just lost in the sea of messages. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so and um, and anyway. So four months later, um, he gets a ping back to my wife saying, hey, listen, you know, uh, he's answering our call. And I said, well, get his number. And so I got his number and he just answered the phone and he didn't know anything about Bentonville, Arkansas Did you even know where it was on a map.
Speaker 6:No, no idea. You know, to this day I tell people hey, we're going to do a restaurant in Arkansas and everyone's like where's Arkansas? Yeah, is that America?
Speaker 2:So I sold him on.
Speaker 4:Arkansas. I sold him on Bentonville On the phone even before you came, oh yeah. Oh, I had about 20 minutes on my first phone call with him and, trust me, I was selling the whole time and he didn't know where Bentonville, arkansas was. I told him about the concept and then I sent him the next few days the concept and then he was checking out Bentonville just through the internet and stuff. Yeah, and he's like man, this place is really cool. And what he said to me he said your concept is very, very strong.
Speaker 1:And then we talked some more. Don't say very. You didn't say very, very right, I don't want Barry's head to get in the way. It was okay, he asked everything.
Speaker 2:Look honestly.
Speaker 6:I think it was a very strong concept For me. Yeah, he adds everything. Honestly, I think it was a very strong concept, you know, for me to fly halfway across the world to come over here in the middle of nowhere um, you know that I didn't even know about. I think it's a. It was a pretty solid concept. You know, he had this vision and I think that vision it required a little bit more and I I always want to do more. You know, like in sydney, we've done so many restaurants and pop-ups between me and Catherine that when Barry reached out, it was like a challenge. You know, like I want to do something new and something exciting and he's so passionate about this project that it makes me want to, like you know, jump up and down with him.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Like just to celebrate, but you have to be getting tons of DMs asking you to do stuff all around the world, like what resonated specifically with Barry and this place in Bentonville look like you know that's the thing, like when he DMed me.
Speaker 4:He loved Bentonville. When he came over he was like man this place is awesome.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it was cool. You know, like, when he sent me a message, the only reason why I replied to him. That's why I think there's a little bit of fate, a little bit of destiny in this right, because when I saw his messages, I was stuck on a cruise ship. I was doing an event for a big cruise ship and we were doing private dining and there was one bit of the sea where we didn't have reception. I was like, oh, maybe I'll go through the DMs, you know, finally check, you know up to date, delete the ones I don't want to see.
Speaker 6:Then I see this guy's message and I was like, hey, this is kind of interesting. I was like I'll entertain it. You know, not much to do, messaged him and, yeah, that was like what. Four months afterward it had been said, yeah, so that went through, hopped on a phone call and I was like, okay, all right, let's try it. Right, let's take a risk. You know like I didn't get to where I am today without taking risks, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity. After you explained everything to me, I was like let's do it and that's why I came here.
Speaker 1:So awesome, and so are you living here full time.
Speaker 6:No, so I'm living in Sydney full time, but we're kind of all over the place, so we're doing like little restaurants and pop-ups and stuff like that. Just prior to here, we were in Singapore, we were in Singapore, we were in Malaysia, we went to Vietnam, but yeah, just everywhere really at the moment, like that's what social media has kind of done for us, like it's kind of gone global, so we're able to do a lot of things that we've never done before and, you know, just be at different places, learning new things every single day.
Speaker 1:My son who's 18,. You story from Barry and Blue he introduced me to you because he was historic, from Barry and Blue. He introduced me to you because he was Dad you've got to see these videos. He's got millions of Instagram followers, so you impressed my teenage son, which I can't even impress my son, so that was really cool. And then this other young lady now, which was really cool.
Speaker 4:And when Vincent said, hey, listen, I'm bringing my partner, and he said you might know her. She won the Netflix series season two, just desserts. And at the age of 19 years old. She took, she beat everybody, and so this is Catherine Zhang, and she's also part of the team. She'll be designing our desserts at Wu Zhang, wu Zhao, and that's exciting.
Speaker 1:She's done. So you guys are a package deal. You guys are working with Barry together.
Speaker 6:Yeah, so in Australia we do business together. We created the world's most TikTok crate and we do a couple of events throughout the year and I just thought when Barry gave me this big request to create this menu, to build this restaurant with him, I was like, hey, I've got the perfect person for this. Yeah, to do the desserts. When I came to benville I rode around on my electric bicycle and I was like hey, there's there's not many desserts.
Speaker 6:Right, you have that ice cream shop down the road. Um, I think there's a coffee place that does a little bit of cakes and stuff like that, but I was like there is no place that does desserts like we do it and I thought that was the perfect opportunity. Pitched, uh, katherine to barry. Yeah, barry was like next flight bring katherine he's like yeah, yeah, the plates are booked, you guys are both coming.
Speaker 4:Her desserts that she creates are from that brain right there and she doesn't. These are just incredibly. Just the true desserts are amazing. That's all I can say.
Speaker 1:Give me your best dessert. Just tell me what's your specialty.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean, we had a pop-up. Actually, we have a shop in Australia and a food truck that we usually do. It's called Karepu, which, as you explained before, was the world's most tiktok crepe, so it's kind of like a japanese style crepe, but we kind of elevated it, made it really nice with like all these different toppings and it's it just looks really pretty, and so that's kind of like our signature come on, you gotta show them a photo how can the audience go and see all the desserts and stuff?
Speaker 6:Yeah, so our desserts is on Crepe, Crepes, K-U-R-E-P-E Crepes.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you'll be able to find all that Right in front of the camera, if it decides to load.
Speaker 6:On that Australian internet. So here let me. Why don't you scroll so I'll show you how crepes look like this.
Speaker 5:So they're like Japanese style. They're amazing, very fun, and we kind of just do like a lot of pop-ups. Yeah, store in Perth, yeah.
Speaker 4:There you go Wow.
Speaker 5:So this one is our watermelon pink star. This is like our most popular one.
Speaker 4:And that's going to be on the menu. Here we can't say what's going to be on the menu. Oh sorry, we can't say what's going to be on the menu. Oh sorry, Wait till we open. Her desserts are going to blow you away.
Speaker 1:Do you have an opening date yet? Wow Soon, before the end of the year, end of December, maybe I feel like a big holiday party.
Speaker 4:Big holiday.
Speaker 1:I see a New Year's Eve party for sure. And then you hired new teams as well. I didn't know you were working with these guys. These are good people.
Speaker 4:I've been trying to get Adam for a long time when Adam came available. I'd reached out to him a couple months ago to come into the Blue Group and to be the general manager of all the restaurants. I didn't know this until yesterday. This is exciting. Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, very exciting. He's more than you know he's worked with in LA. He's worked with some huge talent Mary Jo Blige, robin Thicke so he's this is nothing to me, I've got Barry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course he's, moving up, try saying that.
Speaker 4:So we're exciting I just you know for me to be partners with our group, all these people here. We have an extraordinary team and it's exciting to. We're just excited to open the doors and get rolling.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be honest and no offense to Lynn's Garden.
Speaker 5:Lynn's Garden is the.
Speaker 1:Chinese place in town and so it's like the place, and I don't know if you guys have been in there, but it's not. It's not this band's room it's pretty awkward though. So Lindsgaard is an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Have you been in there before? Yeah, and so you go in there and it's like 20 bucks and you fill your plate up to here and you're sick for like four days now. Yeah, yeah yeah, the food, and I'm from New York, so we need some good, authentic Asian food. Oh, I'm dying to try the food.
Speaker 2:Well. I'm kind of excited about the desserts now no desserts tonight.
Speaker 5:No desserts today, mary's keeping that tight lip.
Speaker 4:Until we open our doors.
Speaker 6:So, vincent, what do we have here today? Okay, so today, this is the Zhao fried rice. Okay, this is our signature fried rice that we're going to do for the restaurant. It's still in R&D, I think we. So what's happening here right now is I'm still finding all the ingredients, so there's specific ingredients, right, like, I'm very particular just in terms of soy sauce. Right, I can't just use any soy sauce. If you want to create that authentic flavor, I've got to find that right soy sauce. So you get that right smell, that right fragrance that you know, as soon as you guys walk into the room with the plate, you can smell that fried rice. Absolutely, right, yeah, I'm still missing two ingredients in that, but right now, this is the zao fried rice. It's got crab, it's got, uh, scallops in there, so we've got dried scallops, we've got prawns, eggs and it's in a dark xo sauce. Let's try it man.
Speaker 4:What do you think? Yeah?
Speaker 6:let's do it. Yeah, so the next dish here. This is my, a very popular dish that I've had in my restaurant for a number of years. It smells so good yeah, this is a hot and spicy squid.
Speaker 6:Oh, it's. Essentially it's a salt and pepper calamari. Yeah, but we've got a very special seasoning. I've got my own brand of MSG. I've got my own brand of MSG. I've got my own Yum, yum. So we've got Yum, yum in there. You try it. It'll be very different from anything you've had before. But yeah, essentially this is some good. It looks so good.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it smells incredible. I'm going to hold this one out.
Speaker 5:Thank you.
Speaker 6:That squid was fried about 45 minutes ago and if I've done it right, it should still be crispy.
Speaker 1:Sounds very crispy From the sauce that comes with this. Did you mention what the sauce?
Speaker 6:is oh sorry, the sauce is a spicy mayo. Sorry, matt, you didn't grab a little bit Spicy mayo. Okay, yeah, it's a spicy mayo with a little bit of tobiko in there, so fly for sure.
Speaker 2:I'm going to just dip this in there, guys. Yeah, it's a spicy mayo with a little bit of tobiko in there, so fly for sure I'm going to just dip this in there, guys, sorry.
Speaker 6:Yeah, go for it, man, that's how you're supposed to eat it. We don't need to beat around the bush.
Speaker 3:No, not at all.
Speaker 1:Not at all. So this is squid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really good.
Speaker 1:So a one out of ten was one being terrible. This is like a 12. Thank you. The spice, the taste, the crunch, I love the spice.
Speaker 6:Oh my God, yeah. So these recipes right now. You know, because our restaurant's not fully built yet, the kitchen's not completely ready, I've had to cook this out of our studio. So, you know, I don't have the proper equipment and everything. But once you have all the wok burners in there, it should go from a 12 to about a 14. Should we get better than this? Yeah, I hope so, I hope so. That's the goal, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, and if it's amazing, and it's 45 minutes ago, you made it, yeah, that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:The fried rice very light like very super tasty.
Speaker 4:Barry, those are your shrimp from the loop. Yeah, these are wild shrimp from the ocean. Number one prawns.
Speaker 1:That's unbelievable. So these are going to be appetizers or are these going to be main dishes?
Speaker 6:or we're not that far yet.
Speaker 5:Sorry, appetizers, what do you?
Speaker 6:guys call appetizers veins in america, is that, first course, yeah, um. Well, that would be a main, the squid would be a main. So how I see it is, you would order something like this that's like crispy and fried and a little bit spicy. Then you would order something that's like a pepper steak. That's sizzling, you know. So you got a little bit of sauce that goes with your rice and you order like a lemon chicken. That's, you know, a little bit tangy, a little bit crunchy, you know, and then all the squid I've ever had.
Speaker 4:This is absolutely amazing. I'm serious. Have you not had the best? No, this is the first time I've cooked it for them, I've had something similar. You know, this is completely different than anything that I've ever eaten in squid. Wow, it's not a heavy fry, it's like a lighter. It's amazing, yeah, the flavors that you bring out.
Speaker 6:So everything I try to do Wow, because Chinese food is very oily, right, I want to be a little bit more health conscious when I'm frying, right? So we fried a very, very high temp on this wok burner, which goes almost like 300 degrees. So then when you fry I don't know if you know much about oil, but when oil is hot it's a lot thinner. So when it's thinner and you fry, there's less oil that gets kept in the squid, so it comes out more, so you won't taste the oiliness and you won't really feel sick. The next day.
Speaker 2:That is amazing, yeah, really really good. I mean if this is the not as good as you could do, I can't imagine what it's going to be like.
Speaker 4:He's cooking other dishes for us that will just blow you away. I mean, when we open our doors, it's going to be something.
Speaker 1:So how are you going to decide on the menu? I mean, it sounds like you've got a ton of choices.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, he's taken some of his classics that he's created. We've got a little bit of flavor of seafood in it, but he essentially has created the menu. It's got his name all over it, and so when you taste some of these dishes it'll blow. Has created the menu.
Speaker 1:It's got his name all over it, and so when you taste some of these dishes, it's going to blow you away. Are you going to be here part-time and then?
Speaker 5:are you?
Speaker 1:going to train the staff on how to recreate all the stuff that you're brilliant, 100%.
Speaker 6:So my restaurant that I had in Sydney I had for seven years, and how I would run it is I would make sure there's certain things in a chinese restaurant that must be perfected.
Speaker 6:All right, the stuff need to be on top of those certain things and when those things are on, they're on top of, like, for example, chinese stock that's one of the really big ones the batter for all these like, uh, prawns and squid and everything, and the marinades for the beef. Once you have that down pack and they understand it like how I would understand it, they should be able to cook exactly like how I cook. So you'll be teaching, training, shopping. I'll be teaching and training. So I'll be here like probably eight times a year Just trying to make sure that everybody knows exactly what they're doing. And you know we'll have somebody here that's constantly managing the place to make sure that it's always on point and a lot of times, because I've been in the industry for so long that if barry would have just sent me a video on how the food is cooked, I'll know what they're doing wrong, what they're doing right.
Speaker 2:I won't even need to taste it interesting, yeah, so. So, and then will the menu be changing all the time, or will it kind?
Speaker 6:of say. I'd say so because we have a lot of like right now. I'm only putting in about like five percent of the dishes I'd like to put in um my restaurant. Previously I had over 300 items on the menu so yeah, but that's with me cooking in there, you know. I mean, so it's like cheese cake, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like I'd like to, you know, always rotate it. Like you know, we've got special dishes right now. I cooked it for barry last time.
Speaker 6:He really enjoyed it, which was like a black pepper lobster yeah, the white pepper lobster noodles yeah, that's uh, that's one of our signatures and I think it's gonna still have dreams about it.
Speaker 1:It was that black pepper lobster noodles yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:So it's got a burn, um, it's got a burnt butter. Oh my god, what am I saying? It's got a burnt butter like egg noodles down the bottom, which is pan fried, and then you've got the uh pepper lobster on top.
Speaker 4:So I gotta give you crap you've written these two from halfway around the world there was a, there was a lot of luck and and there was, there was faith that brought us together.
Speaker 2:So, boy, it's got it. It has to like, have revived you because like, oh, you've done this your whole life selling this and now you're tasting this stuff and you're like absolutely.
Speaker 4:It's made the whole you know creating of Wu Zhao so much easier, so much more exciting to know that, that they're on our team. Yeah, he's part owner in the company. He's. You know he loves Bentonville, his plans. You know he doesn't have to come back as much as this, but we've had talks. He loves Bentonville. He said listen, you'll see his face around here quite a bit. He'll be connected. We're trying to get him to buy a house.
Speaker 2:Trying to get him to buy a house here, the right deal comes along, I'm going to be putting it in. Usually you don't. I love that you're doing the desserts because usually with most you know Asian-style restaurants or Chinese restaurants you never really have Like a lot of the stuff looks good but it doesn't taste good and it's real super basic. So I think you know you said it there aren't a lot of places that have really good desserts that you would just go to just get dessert with these style desserts.
Speaker 4:A lot of the restaurants, even some of the big-name restaurants, famous restaurants you go in and a lot of the desserts are like you see, the same things.
Speaker 2:It's like an afterthought instead of what you have. Blame the.
Speaker 4:Mavica, when we see that doors.
Speaker 6:That's actually the main reason why I partnered together with katherine. Um, I find that a lot of chefs around the world right, they'll be very good at like, uh, you know, the savory stuff right, they'll focus a lot on the mains appetizers on trays. But the desserts they'll put out a cheesecake or mousse right, just for convenience so that the kitchen can push it out. But the big difference part it, catherine, is that she'll put a lot of thought and effort into the dessert and I'll put a lot of effort and thought into the savory side, right. So when we mash together a lot of times when we do something it's nine times out of 10, it's always working because we just have that chemistry. It works throughout realism, you know that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 5:That makes me except right there, what he just said, I have goosebumps.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, let's get this door open. Yeah, because a lot of times when you have two chefs, they're competing against each other. You guys are like, you mesh well together and you compliment each other instead of trying to make your own name.
Speaker 1:I think that there's a lot of cool new restaurants that are opening and I've been to many of them and it's like, oh, it's really good, but there's always but a but. If you have this talent with you and the location that you guys have and the food that we tasted today I saw on Instagram on the dessert, this is a home run, barry, this is an absolute home run, I mean, and if somebody said to me, hey, we're opening another Mexican place, I'd go good luck, there's a Mexican place or a barbecue, is it right? There's a new barbecue place opening right next door to you. It's like, all right.
Speaker 4:This concept is so unique, so strong with what they bring to the table. There's nothing like this here, nope.
Speaker 2:No, this is food that I don't know many people that wouldn't like to out like this is.
Speaker 3:It's just that food that you always yeah absolutely somewhere you're like oh I, I know I can find something great here, and then you taste it and it's well, like you're talking about him getting revitalized, like him selling me on this place, he was just so excited about explaining everything and telling me about everything and, like I could, I could just see the passion that he had. Yeah, he was like this is just going to be incredible. And then once I met these two and we went over we were going over the menu yesterday I was just like this is going to be like my moment.
Speaker 1:Well, I've known you from. I remember from Blue, when you went to AOA and then you did the one on the lake and then you did Detroit and you to Aoi and then you did the one on the lake and then you did Detroit and you were always excited, but I've never seen you like this.
Speaker 4:I've never seen you like this.
Speaker 2:I'm waking up at 536 trying to get this place open. You know why? Because he's not going to be back there in the kitchen.
Speaker 4:I'll be delivering a lot of seafood to him. We're partnering up with a couple other people, like with the pork um. Rowdy out at the bear hollow, he's got the specific pork. This, uh, this. It's almost like iberia from spain, um, but it's the highest quality pork you can get, and they're raising them just 25 minutes north of town, so there's some pork in the dishes we're using that um you know it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's that's so smart, because that's that's what everyone wants now, you know they want local stuff.
Speaker 4:Yep, and stuff that's the part of the pork is called the meal meal foot pork.
Speaker 1:Yeah is what it's called so again, it's outside of your seafood which will local, like everything else you can try and do, homegrown. Yeah, I mean we can get a table as best as you can.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, I love that. Yeah, I love that. I mean it's for farm to table, ocean to table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you got one of.
Speaker 6:I mean the best location where he has. Think, um, you know, using all this like local ingredients and you know, see the table farm to table, right, plus all the sauces that we use right, that we're we're using high quality stuff, we're using premium soy, we're using premium. You know like everything is literally premium oyster sauce that's like extracted and has very little like uh, salt content. You know, when you combine the two together, it can't be bad you know, like it's.
Speaker 6:it's, you know, when you're using a, you know, 10 plus and a 10 plus joint together, it's definitely going to be good, you know, and that's the thing.
Speaker 1:So a hard question for you. The new restaurants coming in I think they're struggling with. I want to cater to the South Northwest Arkansas so I don't want to price like big cities. Yeah, but you have people with big city expectations when they go into the restaurants. Have you started thinking through how you're going to price this menu as compared to other things that you're doing right now?
Speaker 4:Yeah, Me and Vincent have talked about that quite a bit. He'll explain it too. But extremely reasonable, super high quality at reasonable prices, and that's right from Ben.
Speaker 1:See, I think my opinion, and just from the restaurants I go to if the quality is good and the serving size is good, I don't think you should get too caught up in pricing. I think people will pay. There's a couple of restaurants that have opened that the pricing was high, but it wasn't a large quantity of food. Other ones that opened up, trying to be premium and then priced it I think too low so, but it wasn't a large quantity of food. Other ones that opened up, trying to be premium and then priced it I think too low. So I think you could push the envelope You're going to get some good-sized plates.
Speaker 6:Yeah, that's the thing I'm trying to understand From Australia. Right, like everyone's serving little portions, I come over here, order a fajita and I'm like holy cow, I'm going to feed my whole family.
Speaker 1:And that's what people down here are used to a massive portion, and so they go to these bougie restaurants and they're getting a $60 plate with like one bite each.
Speaker 6:Yeah this ain't, for me, not worth it. Right, like it tastes good that one bite tastes good, but $60 is a lot of money for one bite, yeah, yeah. So you know, like we've talked about that quite a bit, actually trying to understand that right balance, because the thing is like with Chinese food, you want to make sure that the whole table has a bite at least. Right, like you can have a little bit here, a little bit there, instead of, like you know, oh wait, there's only four pieces of prawns on there. What's the other two going to eat? Right? So we're very conscious of that. We're trying to, you know, like just make sure that we have enough.
Speaker 1:I love that. My favorite Chinese food dish growing up was the poo-poo platter. Are you familiar with the poop platter?
Speaker 6:I have no idea what that is. I surely know how to be Chinese that must be an.
Speaker 5:East Cove.
Speaker 2:It sounds terrible.
Speaker 1:So they bring out egg roll and shrimp toast and all these little things. And then they'd have a fire and you kind of cook your own at the fire. Barry, clearly that's not in the thought process.
Speaker 2:Hey, don't do the poop. That sounds like a costume. We're just.
Speaker 3:That's not in the thought process, I don't know. Hey, don't do the poop, that sounds like a cosplay.
Speaker 1:That sounds a little like you're just brainstorming, we're throwing ideas out.
Speaker 3:We're poo-pooing the poopoo platter, I don't think my name's going to have poo-poo or anything around.
Speaker 1:I'm out. I'm out. I can't go. No poo-poo platter. I.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the biggest thing to me was seeing what he's bringing in these giant walks. I mean, you should see the equipment that's coming in. He's got this dim sum steamer, dumpling steamer. So he's got a dim sum. I don't think you've even mentioned that.
Speaker 4:You haven't even mentioned that dim sum, but it was funny because the best walks that are being made from this company out of Los Angeles. And about five weeks ago I call the guy and I tell him who I'm involved with and he's like, oh, the Wolf of Walk Street You're doing these are being made for him. I love it, Vincent Lim. And I'm like, yeah, he said, listen, I've got Gordon Ramsay's walks that we're making and he goes normally. We're on about a 10 to 12-week turnaround time. We got our walks in three weeks.
Speaker 1:Hold on, did he get bumped ahead of yeah?
Speaker 4:Sluts oh man. We got our walks in three weeks. These walks are unbelievable. They're the best walks made in America.
Speaker 2:Now is it going to be to where, like, can people watch them cook, or how is that going to be?
Speaker 4:So we've got something very unique, which we didn't say too much about, that nobody really is doing. So we'll have dimsums being made where you're in the restaurant. When you walk in, we'll have an individual lady sitting there making fresh dimsums all day long right there. And so we've got the same company that made this incredible wok made us the dimsum steamer. So of course he kind of clicked me. He told me exactly what he wanted. He wanted 14-inch this and that and everything else, and maybe he wanted a little bit more overboard.
Speaker 6:I was like, yeah, one 30-inch will be enough, and this guy comes back with two. I was like, yeah, one 30-inch will be enough, and this guy comes back with two.
Speaker 2:I was like, okay, why not? And then the desserts is that something that'll be interactive, or will that be yeah?
Speaker 6:yeah, always, always. So every dessert that we ever come up with, it's always interactive, right?
Speaker 5:Because that's what makes it fun. Social media and everything right now is 100%.
Speaker 6:So we do a lot of things that's very interactive. So like, uh, in sydney, for example, we've done a glow-in-the-dark dessert, glow-in-the-dark, glow-in-the-dark. So we've done, like, desserts that are, um, that was super viral right when we first opened our dessert store actually. Well, yeah, for the first what three months we had a six-hour line every single day yeah, it was crazy, it was too much right, so we opened like I think we we kind of passed the legal limit, or what time you can open yeah, we were training until 5 am in the morning.
Speaker 6:Yeah, we're not on five. Right, like it's crazy, you know. So, yeah, I think it'll be. It'll be super fun. We're gonna make it very exciting. You know, whether it's like it catches on fire or like you know there's something that you can do to it, to instagram it or you know, on the whole town talking about it, you know, I mean like that dessert is going to be that that thing where you have that amazing meal, you, and then you're like, hey, you know, let's have the dessert to finish it off, but that dessert's gonna be something that you're going to remember.
Speaker 1:Well, I think a lot of the restaurants here. It's like I don't have room for dessert. Show me the menu. I think people hearing me hold on, they're going to leave some room because it sounds like what's going to be here is going to be one of a kind Of course.
Speaker 4:I mean when we were doing menu planning yesterday and Catherine was just talking about desserts, the things that she's created and the things that are already going in her brain are absolutely incredible, and so it's going to get open faster.
Speaker 2:What are you talking about? Why did we take him away from eating? You could have been there. You could have been there hammering we could have eaten all this while you were out.
Speaker 4:Come here at 530 and see me, I might be sweeping the floors. We're doing flooring, all right.
Speaker 1:Barron, biggest question, yeah, what's the bar menu going to look like?
Speaker 4:The bar menu is going to be incredible. So we've got 35 different sakes, many different types of bourbons. Of course, got to throw the bourbons in there. We'll have extensive tequila, but we have a 25 foot bar and a lounge, so it'd be exciting.
Speaker 6:Come on, you ought to tell them about the tree.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so not just the menu, the desserts, and it's exciting, but we also, when you come in there and you see the whole design of the restaurant, we've got two trees going in. They're coming next week inside the restaurant and then the— these are living, live trees. Well, you'll see. And so what we did is so, when I went out to Eureka, out to the quarry, out there, some of the incredible stone that you see in all the old buildings came from this quarry, out by Eureka, and so the guy who's his name is Joel, who's one of the artists, but he takes this rock, this $700 million, some old rock from the bottom, this creamstone. So the restaurant will have trees, it'll have rock from the quarries and Eureka, and the feel of this whole restaurant is going to be really something.
Speaker 2:I'm excited. You're going to feel like you're back in New York, we're all going to get a Christmas present. Maybe you can help. I hope so.
Speaker 1:I just hope we make the cut for the VIP opening party. Yeah, yeah, yeah, make sure we get an introduction. I don't hear from Barry, unless he needs to be on the podcast We'll need.
Speaker 6:Yeah, you know, like you know that's the main thing I like about Barry. Okay, Like I've done, I've worked with lots of people around the world, okay, and like Barry will sacrifice tables that can make money and put a tree in the middle for the vibe and the ambience of the restaurant. You know that's something that not a lot of restaurant owners can do, you know, like they want to fit in as many tables as they can to make back the money as fast as they can, right, but Barry's going for the vibe, he's going for the energy of the place to make sure that everything is in sync. You know, and that's that's the reason why I hopped on board with him.
Speaker 1:There is nobody in this town that will, if this was you guys with Bob Smith and be like, well, I'm sure you guys are amazing, like this combination with him and what he's done and who he knows and the way he thinks about people. If I call Barry and say, barry, I need a favor, we're doing something for a charity, he goes tell me how much shrimp you need, and when he just does that, and so you're working with a first-class individual. And now we've brought Adam on board. There's no flaws in this program.
Speaker 1:This is going to be a grand slam home run.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Josh. I just can't wait to open it. That was sweet I just got butterflies.
Speaker 3:Anything you guys want to plug.
Speaker 1:Anything you guys want to plug Anything. You want to plug Any of your followers, anything on your Instagram page, your TikTok.
Speaker 6:Yeah, well, I mean, if you guys want to follow us it's Catherine with a C dot desserts. You can follow on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, what else.
Speaker 5:Pretty much it, that's it.
Speaker 6:And for me I'm the same. I'm on all the platforms. My username's DimSimLim, d-i-m-s-i-m, l-i-m. And yeah, we've got a book coming out and we've got our seasoning online.
Speaker 1:That's not only for Seth. We're excited to have you. I don't know how you pulled it off to get him here like.
Speaker 2:I said luck and fate, I mean, I feel we'll ask you to have him with us thank you but, it's like you guys. You make some amazing food and I can't wait to try that. I'm a little disappointed we don't have any dessert here to finish. Well, you'll have to wait until we open Barry's, like don't even make anything. I can't find anything on fire in the studio.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys. It was a pleasure to meet you, barry. Thank you for coming back, adam. I'm glad you're part of this too. Well done, cheers, cheers, wooz out, wooz out.
Speaker 4:Wooz out Welcome Cheers.
Speaker 3:Cheers, cheers, cheers, welcome cheers.