[00:05:16]
And then, um, there was a moment when I really wasn't trusted when, um, up in Sinclair's book. The jungle came out and then nobody trusted burgers anymore. They're like, no, stay away. That's, that's only, only an idiot would eat a burger, but it still was underlying. It was always there. It didn't go away for 20 years.
[00:05:29]
It survived, um, as just wage earner, you know, blue collar food served from like a questionable, like truck or like a, like a cart outside of a factory. People wouldn't do that. Uh, and then all of a sudden, 1921 specifically, White Castle changed the whole attitude of, um, uh, the attitude towards the hammer for people when they cleaned up their act.
[00:05:48]
That's what White Castle, white signifying, you know, cleanliness and castle signifies strength. And, um, they built this brand, people could, anybody could trust a hamburger at that point. And that's when the hamburger had this huge resurgence, or a surgence, it surged all the way through the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, fast food model in the 60s and the 70s.
[00:06:07]
And then the freezing methods and the garbage came in and the hamburger just was completely decimated. And it was seen as garbage again. It was seen as like, no, it's not an old timey hamburger, you can go get an old timey hamburger at an old timey place. But is it safe? Blah, blah, blah. It's just the image of the hamburger went completely down.
[00:06:22]
Um, and it really was the latest resurgence that put the hamburger back on the map again. So we're seeing, it's almost like a VH1 storyteller's story, you know? The rise, the fall, the rise again of the hamburger.
[00:06:34] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. You've probably been in this, I guarantee you've been there, this place in New Haven, Louie's Lunch, right? Of course, yeah. Is that supposed to be like the, like the oldest or the birth? You always hear these, all these stories around, what's the first one?
[00:06:47] George Motz:
I don't know. So, right. They were also, they were in hamburger America, the film. I put them in the film because at the time we all considered that to be the one, the ones who invented the hamburger, the ones who had the oldest hamburger in America.
[00:06:58]
The second part was true. They'd still have the longest continually operating hamburger restaurant in America. Now at 124 years, they've been serving hamburgers for 124 years. No one else in America can say that consistently, but what happens with the internet and all this kind of stuff, we're starting to see as we start to like scan old newspapers and everybody is like trying to put everything on the internet.
[00:07:19]
So the internet is just enormous. And one thing we discovered is that every couple of months we have an earlier date for the arrival of the hamburger. We don't know when it was invented, but we're starting to see mentions in the newspaper. I had the oldest one I have right now is the Reno. Reno, e Reno, Nevada Evening Gazette, which goes back to I think 1892, April, 1892, and there's a mention of a guy serving hamburger sandwiches at his bar to get people to, to come and, and drink more
[00:07:49]
Makes sense. Louis, the Louis's lunch claim is two in 1900, so it, this is eight years before that. So we know that they didn't invent the hamburger.
[00:07:56] Josh Sharkey:
What is that machine they use? It's like a crazy machine they use to like, uh,
[00:08:00] George Motz:
Right. It's actually, it was, it's an old, old timey steak broiler. Um, it's, it's, it's gas that goes in left and right and goes, it cooks from the sides.
[00:08:09]
Uh, it's also, it's, it's, uh, the, the steak or the hamburger is captured in this sort of like weird, it's almost like one of those things you use for making, for grilling fish, you know? It's like, is that a grate that sandwiches the fish inside and that slides in sideways into this, into this oven, this side broiler and cooks it, um, all the juice drips down, all the juice, the fat, unfortunately.
[00:08:33]
Um, and you end up with this, this cooked piece of beef, or in this case a hamburger. They still, they've been doing it the same way for years. Somebody asked me like, why does everybody else do this? I'm like, because it's kind of a ridiculous way to make a burger.
[00:08:44] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. And it's also
[00:08:45] George Motz:
They just do it because that's the way they've always done it, you know? Yeah.
[00:08:48] Josh Sharkey:
I've seen a bunch of your shows, and Every time I see one, I'm like, there can't be any more types of burgers. And every time I see you have some other new version of a burger. One, how the hell do you find all these different versions? I didn't even know. I bet most people have no idea that there's all these different types of burgers.
[00:09:08]
Is it just traveling? And then also like, what, maybe just like for, I'm assuming, you know, most people that listen to this show are restaurant folks, chefs, you know, restaurant operators, that kind of thing. But like, I also like. What are some of the types of burgers that we probably don't know of?
[00:09:25] George Motz:
I mean, I keep learning about new ones, I think, literally once a week. I don't know about a new one. What's surprised you, like, lately? Lately? Oh, I found this burger in Detroit called the Original Marcus Hamburger. And it's the weirdest combination of, um, it's a hot dog bun. And these guys make these burgers that are in the shape of like a long, flat hot dog. It's almost like imagine like a long, rectangular hot dog.
[00:09:48]
Uh, but it's a long rectangular hamburger that goes into a hot dog bun perfectly. And no one really knows why. They were just trying to be different, you know, whatever it was like 60, 70 years ago. I just discovered that race just as over the summer. I couldn't believe it. And I'd never heard of them before and the burger was excellent.
[00:10:04]
It was so freaking good, you know But I just I keep learning more about histories and what i'm learning also is that it's not just about the regional burger Like oh, here's the green chili cheeseburger in New Mexico. Here's a butter burger in Wisconsin But i'm actually starting to put the pieces together.
[00:10:17]
I'm actually beginning to I know so much about the hamburger, but it's a lot of disparate, you know, separated knowledge. And what's happening, I've noticed is that I'm, I'm, I'm starting to draw lines and parallels between different burgers in the country. Perfect example is that one of the oldest sauces in America is something called comeback sauce.
[00:10:36]
Now in America, we know comeback sauce is like a, now it's like a, it's like a mayo based. Barbecue sauce, called comeback sauce. But in the early days, which would have been like the 1940s, thirties and forties, it was actually a hickory smoked barbecue sauce with a tomato based barbecue sauce. So it's, it's like a barbecue sauce.
[00:10:53]
If you've ever been to the apple pan in LA, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a hickory smoked sauce that is on the burger. It's like a, almost like a hickory smoked ketchup in a way, but it's way better than ketchup. And I realized that if you, people know the Apple Pan, people know the place called the Goody Goody in Tampa, people know a place called, uh, Johnny's, uh, serve something called a Theta Burger.
[00:11:12]
And, but they don't know until I did the math that they're all these places are connected. They're all connected. And there's a huge history to it. So, I, I have so much, I just, I keep, the point is I keep learning. How are they connected? Like, what do you mean when they, when you say they're connected? Well, they're actually connected literally through family.
[00:11:27]
That at some point, I did the math, well, I didn't do the math, I did the math with a, a writer in Oklahoma, who figured out that the same family that opened up this one spot, what's called the Dolores, is gone now. They actually made this sauce, and they made it in a restaurant. Somebody had the great idea to open up a hamburger joint in LA, which is the Apple Pan.
[00:11:44]
Not even, it's a long, it's just, it's two ways, so, it's so complicated, it's unbelievable. But they ended up Bringing the sauce there, made it very famous locally in L.A. Then another place opened up in Tampa called the Goody Goody. It's basically the same sauce. It's changed over the years, but it has the same lineage.
[00:11:58]
And then this place in Oklahoma, which still has the same sauce. They're all connected. There's no end to this burger knowledge. It keeps going on and on and on. Truly amazing.
[00:12:06] Josh Sharkey:
So is it really American? Like it had to come, somebody had to have brought this here from another country because we're American, right?
[00:12:13] George Motz:
That's true. So it didn't start as, it wasn't native, native to this country. Uh, it came in as, it was ethnic food in the beginning. It was an ethnic German food. That's another reason why it probably wasn't embraced in the beginning. Cause it was seen as like, you know, the Germans brought it over, you know, these German immigrants brought it over.
[00:12:28]
And the same way we might look at like a taco today or even like, or pupusas, you know, like, well, I'm not going to, I'm afraid of ordering a pupusas. I don't speak Spanish. You know, there's like, there's certain things that keep Americans who eat, you know, very standard foods. away from ethnic foods. You know, oh, my Indian food might be too spicy, you know, and it might make me feel sick or something, you know.
[00:12:48]
Until you take that leap of faith in food, you probably are somewhat, uh, you know, timid, uh, about, about approaching things. That's probably the same thing that happened to the hamburger 150 years ago. People saw it as something that was ethnic. Not for me. I'm going to stick with my regular, you know, good old American diet.
[00:13:04]
Which is funny to think that the hamburger at some point was not an accepted American food. The reason that it became totally American was because when it came to the U.S. from Germany, it was actually served on a plate. It was something called a Frikadellen, and it was a, it was a hand pattied, uh, piece, a bunch of ground beef.
[00:13:21]
You said Frikadellen? It's called a Frikadellen, yeah. It's like a descendant, it's like an early version of the Frikadellen, which is something that you can still get in Germany and Denmark and some of the Nordic countries, but it's basically just, it's a hamburger. It's ground beef, usually has some kind of spices inside, um, and it's served on a plate with gravy, uh, or served with onions, basically.
[00:13:41]
But there's no bun, so when it came to the U.S., it came through the port of Hamburg, people had to leave that at the port of Hamburg to get to the U.S. When they were, when they were leaving and when it arrived, when they arrived in the U.S. they found that Germans before them had brought with them the Frickadelon, but they couldn't call it the Frickadelon in New York, so they called it steak in the style of Hamburg, which was Hamburg, Germany, and then of course, one thing led to the next, it became known as a Hamburg steak and, um, I believe, and this is, I've done all the different histories again, I put the, I've done the math and, and, uh, looked at all the different histories that I've, I've read and seen out there.
[00:14:12]
I believe that as Germans started to migrate West, uh, and, and find land because they wanted to go, they wanted to farm and, and, you know, make their lives better. They also went to state fairs in the Midwest and at state fairs, they, you know, you'd go and buy livestock and look at equipment, but you also had to eat somehow and a lot of places served ethnic food because there were ethnic Germans there.
[00:14:32]
Uh, and sure enough, there was the Hamburg steak or steak in the style of Hamburg, and it was served on a plate. And we don't know who invented it or when it happened, but we do know that the hot dog, hear me out, the hot dog predates, you know this Josh, the hot dog predates the hamburger by eight years.
[00:14:51]
And can you imagine if you're having the other ethnic German food, the Frankfurter? And you're selling a, you know, a hamburger steak on a plate with a knife and a fork. And you see a hot dog walk by and you're like, holy shit, that's a, it's portable. We can make it portable. Why don't we? And then so we know that over the span of like two or three years and all these state fairs, transient state fairs, you know, transient food stalls started to serve their hamburger steak on bread.
[00:15:22] Josh Sharkey:
And that's how it became American. Makes sense. There's actually a really good, I don't know what you call it, I think they call it a hamburger. So Momofuku Co. in, in New York, they do this. I dunno if you've had it, it's like a burger, but it's in a hot dog bun. Yeah, yeah. It don't have it. I think there's guran or two.
[00:15:37]
Maybe it's insanely good from the shape of a, it's in the shape of a hot dog, but it's in a Yeah, but it's a burger. Yeah. And, uh, you can get at the bar co. And I don't know if they have it at the really, really good, I think maybe it's like short rib and something else, but maybe they got it from there.
[00:15:53] George Motz:
They probably got it from Marcus. I don't know, because I don't know who would go to Marcus. The place is between two huge graveyards in the, in East Detroit.
[00:16:00] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I'll have to find that. It's the only thing, man. Does your son, is he like as into hot hamburgers as you? Or is he like, dude, dad, can you just chill out on the burgers for a minute?
[00:16:10] George Motz:
Everyone says the same thing. No one is into hamburgers as much as I am, but he definitely, he gets it. He's trying to understand. He does like it though. He likes, he likes the burgers I make. He does say that I make the best burgers, which is good. Good start.
[00:16:21] Josh Sharkey:
That's good. Did you teach him how already? Yeah. So I want to like learn a lot about this, this restaurant because first of all, it looks like it's slammed all the time.
[00:16:31] George Motz:
It is not all the time. Not all the time. I don't want to do people think they can't get there.
[00:16:34] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, you will.
[00:16:35] George Motz:
Don't come on a Saturday. Saturday is insane.
[00:16:38] Josh Sharkey:
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[00:17:44]
So I got a bunch of questions for you because I've seen in some of the videos, right, you, you portion scoop the burgers, at least in your videos that's at home, right? Which I was like, oh, that's genius. You don't have to pre-portioned the burgers. Do you do that at the restaurant too? Do you actually like, oh yeah, you just have it in a, in a big mass and then you scoop them to order?
[00:18:00] George Motz:
Everything we do in the restaurant is based on hamburger history. So I like to tell people that we don't, we haven't invented anything. We haven't done anything unique. Everything we're doing is totally un-unique. It's totally normal and not original because what we're really doing is we're trying to make sure that we are doing things that.
[00:18:18]
We're tried and true. Uh, and still to this day, most places that are over a hundred years old are doing the same damn thing. Why would you change a thing? I've learned from them. Everything we do, the way we cook the burger, the way we serve the burger, the way we wrap it up, the way we, you know, prep the burger ahead of time by scooping and portioning in balls.
[00:18:34]
These are all things that I've seen at places around America in all of my studies and travels in the last 20 years.
[00:18:40] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. It does seem like, what was the one I saw, I think it was actually, it was you and like a super fan. I forget. And, but you were, he, he made it pretty well. And then you had all these sort of nuances that, um, so even some of it was like, that's pretty smart.
[00:18:53]
Like steaming the bun by the second. It seems like, yeah, there's this traditionalist piece of, of what you do, but then you definitely have been iterating on how to make it perfect over time. Yeah. Are there like non negotiables of, of, of a good burger that you have? Oh yeah, absolutely. What are they for you?
[00:19:08] George Motz:
Well, I mean, I, you know, this is a whole lot. I don't even know where to begin. I always tell people that if you're trying to make a great burger, don't. Don't use too much creativity.
[00:19:17] Josh Sharkey:
That's like, yeah, honestly
[00:19:18] George Motz:
I mean, Hey, you can go do whatever you want. You can put freaking, you know, Mac and cheese on there, but it's going to be awful and it tastes terrible.
[00:19:26]
It's not going to be good because you know, you, the problem with the Mac and cheeseburger, perfect example, it's a bit of a stunt that is this total stunt. I know the guy who actually invented it and he said it was a stunt and he doesn't really like the burger himself, but people say, look at the burger.
[00:19:37]
Ooh, cheeseburger. Ooh, you know, cheesy Mac and cheese. And they think of them separately until they'd put it in their mouth. And they go, Oh, it's not what I've known. I've done that. I don't want that in my mouth at all. It's terrible. It's terrible. The combination of textures and flavors. So I would tell people to just to think about what somebody else would have done before you think about the place that makes.
[00:19:56]
You know, 10,000 a week in middle of nowhere. I've been doing it for 75 years. Take a page out of their journal, you know, out of their playbook. Keep it simple. Keep it very simple and don't try to reinvent the wheel too much.
[00:20:10] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. I mean, for me, it's like, you got to get super. Hard sear on the burger. You gotta have a little crustiness to the toast of the bread.
[00:20:17]
And, and then, you know, like, don't melt the cheese too much. Well, you're, you're only talking about one type of burger though. Yeah, I know.
[00:20:23] George Motz:
Every type of burger out there has some weird sauce.
[00:20:26] Josh Sharkey:
I know, I think that's why we're Smash
Burger, but. Yeah, I know. There's also so many kinds of burgers. I mean, we, so, you know, at Bark, we would buy a whole sear.
[00:20:32]
I remember that. Sometimes we would get the ribeye to uh, this butcher shop in Chelsea Market and the rest we would just take and it would be like everything, you know, the short rib, the brisket, the shank, the, you know, the chuck, and all of it would get, would uh, get ground into the burger. I don't know if that was a good idea or not, it tasted good and then we stopped doing that and it actually didn't taste as good.
[00:20:50]
But I think you use, you know, And maybe you have like a custom blend or something, but tell me about like your, your thoughts on the blend.
[00:20:56] George Motz:
So nothing custom. It's we use a 75, 25, uh, straight chuck primal. That's it. Chuck is perfect for a burger. And it only because it's the one piece of the animal that you can put into it.
[00:21:07]
You can take a full 20 pound chuck. Put it in the grinder, comes out the other side, put it through again, one more time, and you end up with the perfect hamburger meat. The ratio is perfect. I mean, you don't have to add any fat at all, usually. That's why chuck. You know, if you use any other cut of the animal, it's either going to have too much fat, not enough fat, or it's going to be a part of the animal that doesn't really taste good in a burger anyway.
[00:21:28]
Chuck is perfect for a burger. That's why most places use chuck. It was sort of a poo pooed beef cut for many, many years, unfortunately. Only because it was inexpensive.
[00:21:37] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:21:37] George Motz:
And now, since everybody's caught on to the, the, the, the beauty of Chuck, it's now, of course, of course, the prices have skyrocketed.
[00:21:44] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. So, Hamburger America, the restaurant, not the show, is a smash burger, right? The style, right?
[00:21:50] George Motz:
Yeah, we have two burgers on the menu. They're both smash burgers. Well, one, one is straight classic, we call it the classic smash burger. It is old school. It goes back to the beginning of time. It goes back a hundred years.
[00:22:00]
Uh, it's a burger that was literally just put on a surface, smashed thin. Mmm. Um, usually seasoned with nothing more than salt. We use a little bit of like a special, like, we use, we use Lowry seasoned salt. Just give it a little bit of a punch, a little boom.
[00:22:12] George Motz:
It's again, it's just something I picked up from some, a bunch of places in America. We use seasoned salt on their burgers. And it just gets just a little bit of a wow, a little bit of like just opening up, you know. Um, we serve it on a buttered toasted Martin's potato roll, uh, with American cheese. We use a really, really good, uh, really good American cheese. We use something called bun guards.
[00:22:32]
Bun, I gotta write that down. Bun, bun guards. I don't even pronounce that right. But it's, it's, I mean, it's like, somebody the other day was like, wow, this cheese is so good. I'm like, it's actual, it's real cheese. It's, but it's really good American cheese. It's very, it's like the mildest, mildest cheddar you could ever dream of, basically.
[00:22:46]
It's so good. Um, and we just keep it very simple. You know, just, it's, it's seared pretty hot on the flat top. A little bit of seasoned salt. Great American cheese on a toasted bun, and you're done. We serve it also all the way, which is where we put, uh, like a little tiny, a tiny bit of diced raw onion, a small swirl of mustard, and two pickles.
[00:23:07]
And that flavor profile is very, very old school American, 20s, 30s in America. Uh, the mustard pickle onion, also known as MOP, mustard onion pickle, MOP. We use French's yellow mustard. Stuff I've seen out there. I've nobody, I mean, there's some places that I know that use spicy mustard that are old, but I'd prefer to use the classic, you know, good old French's yellow mustard and that flavor profile is kind of perfect.
[00:23:28]
We did, I did a, um, we had Neil deGrasse Tyson on the show and we're trying to figure out what burger will we make for him that we were talking about what, what burger would you want to preserve for the future, future generations? Like what would be the ideal, the platonic ideal for the cheeseburger in America?
[00:23:43]
I said, let's make him the classic smash all the way. And tell them that this is the burger that we should somehow if you get like Send it into space and tell other, other cultures, other worlds that this is an American hamburger. That's the one he took one bite and he was like, wow, that's really good.
[00:24:00]
And he ate the whole thing on the show. I was so happy. The other burger we have in the menu is something called the Oklahoma fried onion burger. And it's, it's a smash burger, but it's not smashed as thin. Um, as the classic smash. There's no lacy edge on it or anything. Um, and it's very little by our, and actually on the second side, we basically just take a lot of thin sliced sweet onion and press it into the portion ball of beef.
[00:24:22]
It's an equal size onion to beef basically ratio. Oh, wow. It gets sort of smashed and, and, um, uh, commingles with the beef. And this is then begins the one of them, one of the greatest food science experiments of all time, I think second only to mayonnaise where the onion ran and you start to render the beef starts to render and you have this crazy commingling of onion juice and tallow, flip it over straight kosher salt to flip it over.
[00:24:50]
The whole thing starts to steam. And then you put the buns on top of that, that arrangement with the cheese and the whole thing becomes a steaming mass of flavors, which is unmatched, you know, somebody in Argentina. I was cooking in Argentina and they said we believe that your burger has magic. As it's not magic. Yeah, it's just science.
[00:25:12] Josh Sharkey:
So you use kosher salt for, for that one and then you use Lowry's for the other one. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And then do you, um, do you sear it and then season it or you season it right away or?
[00:25:23] George Motz:
No, we actually, we, yeah, it's true. We actually sear it first. Yep. Um, and then we, we season the side that's not flipped and then the flip side gets, you know, you know, 30 seconds of the commingling of the, that beef, that rendered beef with the lowries really makes it go boom.
[00:25:37] Josh Sharkey:
Yep. Yep. And so you said sweet onion is like a Vidalia, a Vidalia, a Walla Walla or something?
[00:25:41] George Motz:
Well, we, yeah, we try to find, yeah, Walla Walla in the, if we're out, if I'm cooking in the West, but in the restaurant we use sweet onion. Yeah. Um, some of our best onions come from Peru, you know. Peruvian onions are the best onions in the world, I think.
[00:25:51]
Um, and I wish we could have them all year round. We can't because of the markets, the way they're moving. Uh, so a lot of time we get, uh, sweet onion from the U.S. or we were getting the six, six months out of the year, we're getting sweet onions from Peru. The other six months of the year, we're getting it from Mexico and parts of America.
[00:26:08] Josh Sharkey:
You don't eat like that soggy, like the soggy bottom of the bun? Yeah. How do you prevent that?
[00:26:12] George Motz:
Well, if you're making, if you've got a lot of beef rendered going on, it'll just soak the bottom of the bun. The way we do is we, for the classic smash, we toast them, we have a uh, toasting, um, it's a huge toast that we use.
[00:26:26]
It's a butter wheel on it. Basically it's buttered and then toasted. Big upright things. We took that out of the Shake Shack playbook. We used actually the same ones they used. Yeah. For many years. Toasting is the best way. You create a, as remember Josh Ozersky used to say, you need to toast the bun to create a prophylactic barrier for the heel of the bun.
[00:26:48] Josh Sharkey:
We did the same thing with the hot dog bun. You know, the, the, you know, toasting on, on both sides. You must slice them pretty thin. Do you use like a meat slicer to,
[00:26:57] George Motz:
I can't say what we have is a secret. Um, people have kind of figured it out now, but, um, we have a fairly expensive machine that does it for us, not for us.
[00:27:05]
We have to sell to load the thing up, but it's, if you're a chef and you've got a lot of equipment in your kitchen, you know, we're using.
[00:27:11] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I gotcha. In the old days.
[00:27:12] George Motz:
I used to use, uh, in the beginning I used the mandolin little Yep. You know, which you lose your fingertips on that one. Yeah. So I moved to a, um, I bought a, an expensive deli slicer and the deli slicer.
[00:27:23]
Yeah. I mean, you're talking about each onion, uh, medium sized onion. It was, uh, 120 pumps to get for one onion. Yeah. Yeah. That was, it was six 60 ti 60 pumps for each, each onion. And then, you know, back and forth, 120. So it was, it was incre it was so much work. Now we're not doing that anymore.
[00:27:41] Josh Sharkey:
They make automated ones of those, but they They don't work. The water, and, and also it's like too much water comes out of the onion.
[00:27:47] George Motz:
Oh, because you automate, yeah, they do make automated ones. This is true. Um, but we're still experimenting with, if Right now we're going through 12, 1,200 pounds of onions a week right now. It's insane. And that's only one of the, we sell both the burgers equally.
[00:28:01]
So that's really for the burger sales gets 1200 pounds of onions.
[00:28:07] Josh Sharkey:
It's got, did you ever, did you think a decade ago, you're going to have a hamburger restaurant in New York city?
[00:28:12] George Motz:
Hell no. I was told it's only restaurants are for idiots. You know, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If you're not a restaurateur, you don't open a restaurant, dude.
[00:28:22]
I mean, it's like, There's so much work, and there's so many things that I didn't know about until I got involved. And a friend of mine came to me, and he said, Your product is so good, you need to open a restaurant. I was like, Ah, everyone tells me that, only, only idiots open restaurants. He said, No, you need to go find a restaurant group that wants to work with you.
I was like oh hey, that's a good idea. So that's how I found the guys that I'm working with now.
[00:28:43] Josh Sharkey:
Oh, I didn't realize that.
[00:28:45] George Motz:
Yeah, so I work with the Schnipper Brothers, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, great guy. Yeah, just. Top notch guys. It's, I mean, they're, I'm a trustworthy guy. I'm an, I'm an honest guy.
[00:28:54]
They're two unbelievably trustworthy guys. Uh, we had them checked out as a friend of mine who's in the meatpacking business was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna check these guys out.
[00:29:03] Josh Sharkey:
Uh, you mean like, you know, above, above board checked out, right?
[00:29:05] George Motz:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. It's hard to say.
I don't really know what she was going for, but she came back, she said, I found some stuff on the, I don't know, I said, I just want to let you know, I did some research on these guys and we found nothing. These guys are clean. They're clean as a whistle. Well, I mean, you remember the spots, right? The schnippers,
[00:29:22] Josh Sharkey:
Do they still have any of the schnippers
[00:29:24] George Motz:
They still have, uh, three locations, one, two, two locations.
[00:29:28] Josh Sharkey:
There’s one in the, like, New York Times building, isn't there?
[00:29:29] George Motz:
Yeah, so that was the original location. This is actually why I wanted to work with them. It's a good point because, you know, When these guys, when I started talking to this other friend of mine, who's the financial guy, but opening a restaurant, he said, find, find a restaurant group.
[00:29:41]
Uh, I said, I actually, I know the Snippers brothers and I thought to myself, yeah, you know what? These are the guys I want to work with. These guys are pretty gutsy. They sold their very successful company, Hale and Hardy soups back in the day, whatever that was like 12, 13, 14 years ago now. And they took the money and they opened up.
[00:29:58]
Their first location in the freaking New York Times building. I'm like, of course I want to work with these guys. These guys have guts, man. And so I went to them and I said, I don't, I don't think it's you guys. You guys are huge. I need someone to open a small burger stand. Can you think of anybody who'd want to, who'd want to work with me on it and be my restaurant group?
[00:30:15]
And they were like, we'll do it. We'll definitely do it. And I was like, no, no, no, I didn't mean you, but yeah, you, you're serious. You want to get involved with this crazy? And they said, yeah. They said, we're looking for something, you know, new and different. Yeah. And, uh, we think you got a good brand.
[00:30:29] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:30:29] George Motz:
And they were right.
[00:30:31] Josh Sharkey:
Well, I mean, I think that's, you know, it's one of the most underrated or underestimated pieces of, of running a good business. I mean, obviously you have to have a great product, which Yeah, clearly you have, but storytelling is really important. You know, you know, for any business and for a restaurant, particularly, especially in New York, there's a million burger restaurants, you know, like why, why this one?
[00:30:52]
And it's so clear, like everybody knows you and more importantly, everybody knows how much you love burgers and they know all this background of burgers. So you're getting, you're not just going there to eat a burger. It's like this whole. Right. More than experience, you know, like you're just feeling it was like you're getting this history.
[00:31:05]
You're learning something fun. You're kind of wacky when you're there.
[00:31:11] George Motz:
A little kid today asked me, what's the most fun thing to do here? What's the most fun you get thing you get to do at the restaurant? I said, honestly, I get to talk to everyone at the counter. I get to stand here and make burgers and talk to everyone at the counter.
[00:31:23]
What we did was we designed the restaurant so that If you're working at the counter and the griddle, we, we built a griddle into the counter basically. So I'm always facing forward, always looking at everything that's going. I can see the street, I can see the park across the street. I can see people who are coming in.
[00:31:37]
Hey, how you doing? Good to see you again. Come on, grab a seat, grab a stool right here. I get to talk to everybody facing forward. I refused or designed this restaurant to have, uh, my griddle be on the back wall. Everybody has this design of, Oh, we got to put on the back wall. Cause that's where the hoods are.
[00:31:54]
And I said, I refused to have my back to my people for the rest of my life. And so I said, we need to figure this out. So, Oh, it's, it's expensive. It's complicated. It's like, I don't care. This restaurant is not about, you know, saving money just because, you know, Well, we can't figure out how to do this, but let's figure it out.
[00:32:12]
And we actually did. Took us a long time, took a lot of different brains, and uh, we ended up, we managed to make it happen. So, the most fun I have is I get to be there and watch people get excited about hamburgers and ask me questions. The, we have one whole wall, when you walk in the restaurant, there's just a huge piece of hamburger history.
[00:32:29]
It's just, it's, uh, there's a hundred photos in the wall with each one has a caption. And, uh, describes, you know, little pieces of hamburger history. Yeah.
[00:32:37] Josh Sharkey:
I feel like you could, you could open a living burger museum. Where, like, you could actually go eat all the burgers, you know? We did! What? Really?
[00:32:46] George Motz:
That's what it is, basically. Think about it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You walk in, and you know you have the two burgers on the menu, but We have some, we have one of the most unique LTOs in the, in the restaurant business right now, where once a month, and literally, like, faithfully, uh, once a month, we change the third burger on the menu, it's called the Monthly Burger Special.
[00:33:05] Josh Sharkey:
I saw that. Yeah. It's a Theta, right? It's a Theta burger, right?
[00:33:08] George Motz:
No, right now we're doing the, we're doing the Doodle Burger right now, from the Eggie Doodle in New Haven, which is important because the Doodle closed 16 years ago, so all of a sudden, all these, all these Yalies are coming in and eating the burger and tearing up.
[00:33:21]
And they're thinking, I haven't had this burger since I was in college in the 60s or the 70s. And people are tearing up and feeling very emotional about this burger because it means a lot to them. Because we got it right. We got every detail of the Doodle Burger totally correct. Right down the little, um, the uh, there was a sauce they had.
[00:33:37]
Red Relish. We got the Red Relish right, but we also put the Red Relish in a small paper ramekin. The right size, the exact size to use a doodle. So you just take the thing, you squeeze it onto the top of the burger. That's so cool. And that's what you would have done. Is it pepper relish? It's like a pepper relish, yeah.
[00:33:52] George Motz:
And it's just, it's a straightforward, you know, B&G, it's a, you know, store a shelf, you know, shelf stable product. But it's the exact same stuff they used. And our job is to reach one of these monthly burger specials to actually get it as accurate possible and get in the right stuff from wherever that was from or whatever they're seeing.
[00:34:09]
She's the same bun. And we, we, we do that as to sort of add to the provenance of the, of the moment is we always start every month with a press conference and we fly in whoever that person is, whether it's from the Theta burger, we brought in Rick Haynes from Oklahoma city, brought in Jack Keller from Keller's drive in in Dallas.
[00:34:26]
And they come in, they're there for a press conference, we make the burger with them at the counter. Awesome. And then we take a picture with them out front, and then we put up a, you know, they sign the card, they put it on the wall. Every month it changes, and it's gone, the Doodle Burger is gone at the end of this month.
[00:34:40]
Yeah, and there's so many of these when you see I mean at least I could from looking at all your shows There's so many of them that you can do this for a long time. We've got I've got the next three basically three years planned.
[00:34:51] Josh Sharkey:
It's nuts. By the way, the Theta burger. What is that Johnny sauce?
[00:34:56] George Motz:
There you go. This goes back to the original thing I was just talking about that's the same sauce That's that freaking sauce that went to the apple pan and then went to the goody goody in Tampa. That's this is the sauce It's the comeback. It's the original comeback sauce.
[00:35:09] Josh Sharkey:
Oh Gotcha. Okay, cool. What's what's next month's burger?
[00:35:14] George Motz:
I can't tell you what we're doing. We partner with somebody important to do a very, very special burger. And I can't tell you what it is, but it'll all make sense on October 2nd. But the next burger after that is going to be the steamed cheeseburger from, um, from a Ted's in Meriden, Connecticut. And we're actually borrowing.
[00:35:31]
We're going to borrow one of their huge steaming cabinets and put it right in the front of the restaurant. What's that burger about? So the steamed cheeseburger is from the factory times in the thirties and forties. I'm sorry, the fifties in Meriden, Connecticut. Meridian was known for its, they had 24 hour factories pumping out mostly silver, like silver and like clock factories up there and furniture factories, but there were tons of, there were many factories and lots of factory workers.
[00:35:56]
And they all had to eat all shifts. And some guy came up with the idea, something unique, just to keep the, keep the burgers warm, I guess. Uh, he steamed them in the somehow steaming contraption where you take beef and you press it into like a small tin. The tin goes into a steaming cabinet. It's just, it's just powered by, by like a stovetop.
[00:36:11]
Yeah. Yeah. Water. And it's a steaming, basically a steaming cabinet. Almost like a smoker, but made with steam. You put these burgers and they cook for about 15 minutes in this, in almost like a little block. A block of gray matter, and you put that in a bun. And what they also do is they take the same little holder for the beef and they put cheese into it, cheddar cheese.
[00:36:30]
And the cheddar cheese becomes this like sort of molten goo. And you pour the molten goo over the block of beef. And it's it is fantastic.
[00:36:38] Josh Sharkey:
That sounds really good.
[00:36:39] George Motz:
Crazy, crazy burger.
[00:36:41] Josh Sharkey:
This is like I mean, this is going to go on for forever, man. It's not going to go off for a while.
[00:36:47] George Motz:
I have a great crew to have been for the great crew. I was actually very afraid that I, I'm going to start changing this burger up every month. People are going to be like, what are you doing, man? And they actually get very excited when we post the SOP for each burger, the standard operating procedure for each burger. They all gather around and then they take notes.
[00:37:03]
And some of them actually like take notes, take photos. They all, all the cooks want to make sure that they're going to get it exactly right. I walk away and I guarantee I can spend 24 hours, 24 hours after we introduce the burger. Everyone in the restaurant understands the SOP and can make it perfectly every single time.
[00:37:18] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I bet a lot of that is because the why behind it is there. You know, like you learn to make something just because someone showed you how. It's very different from like, Hey, here's the history behind this thing. Here's why it's cool. Here's why it's important. Here's who like invented it. It helps. I bet that helps them remember it and get excited so much more.
[00:37:33] George Motz:
They also see that they see the fans coming in. They see people coming in going, Oh, I'm so excited for the doodle burger. Oh my God. I haven't had it in 16 years. Or, wow, I can't believe I'm from Oklahoma and this burger, I get this burger here in New York, that's amazing. So, but so my, my employees, my crew, the kitchen crew sees this happening because it's, we're all facing forward.
[00:37:50]
It's very, I mean, we're an open kitchen and they get very excited about it, I think.
[00:37:54] Josh Sharkey:
I bet. You know, in New York, you have so many people from other, other places that, you know, you have an endless supply of people that'll get excited about that. Are there plans to scale to more locations?
[00:38:03] George Motz:
That's a great question. Uh, Ooh, look at the time I had to run. I can tell you, there's not really a plan yet, but I can't tell you there. We're we'd like to, the party line is I would like to do this from a ready, you know, I I've done everything when I was ready and I, I'm, I move a little slower than everybody else and I try to explain it to them like it's not.
[00:38:22]
You know, I don't need to rush into anything, you know, I've, we've got something great going. If this was the only place we had, I'd be the happiest guy in the world. Which means we're going to move at a very, very deliberate pace to get the, if we do another location, choosing the right location takes a long time.
[00:38:36]
But we do have the plan. We do have the, we have the template now. And I just told someone in the restaurant today, someone said, if you're going to replicate, if you were going to replicate, what would it look like? And I said, you're looking at it. It would be exactly like this. The only thing that's odd, the difference between our location now and any place else we would go is that the, if you've seen it, the, there's these huge windows in the front of the, right, right where the counter is.
[00:39:02]
And from the outside, at dusk, my restaurant actually looks like Nighthawks, the Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. A version of it. And if you stand across the street at dusk and look in, it gives you chills. It's like, oh, we actually kind of created, uh, you know, a living piece of, uh, very important part of American art history.
[00:39:22] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:39:23] George Motz:
But it's real. You can walk in and get a real burger. Uh, and it's not so sad looking.
[00:39:27] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah, it's gorgeous. You have this restaurant, but you have a bunch of other stuff going on as well. Like, what else is taking up your time right now?
[00:39:34] George Motz:
Well, I'm trying to finish my sixth book right now. My editor is not so happy with me, but she's fine.
[00:39:42]
I have promised to get it in pretty soon. It's become a real beast. I mean, this, I, you know, writing books are, are one thing, but I'm actually writing a book or doing research on the road. I finished all the research, but I'm just now trying to put all the pieces together. I've got. Thousands of pages of handwritten notes and photos all over the place.
[00:39:59]
Once it's all comes together, it'll be a beautiful book again. It's the, it's the fourth version of hamburger America, the guidebook, but it's a beast is now it's, we're up to 225 restaurants, 225 great hamburger joints that you need to go to. Uh, and it's been a while, you know, like I've been on the phone, try to update the restaurants.
[00:40:16]
And, um, I found out that, um, it was, uh, one of my friends died. I didn't even know from a hamburger place. She passed away very young, about the same age. It kind of threw me, I was trying to write last night and I couldn't, I had to stop writing. I was so thrown by it.
[00:40:29] Josh Sharkey:
That's crazy.
[00:40:30] George Motz:
Yeah, but I had to, I had to make this update, so how's it going? Still the same bun? How's so and so? Like, oh, they passed? Oh no, uh, you know, we only open on Saturdays? What's going on? You know, it's all the information is constantly changing.
[00:40:43] George Motz:
This guidebook. That's going on. We're also, uh, I've been traveling a lot because I keep getting, you know, we're still backed up from the pandemic.
[00:40:51]
I was traveling like a crazy person before the pandemic. Now I'm in a restaurant, people want me on the road again. It's been very difficult, you know, been very tough, but I've been, I'm having the greatest time. We're planning another, um, European tour. Uh, we're going to be in Europe, uh, next summer. So that, that takes a lot of planning.
[00:41:06]
We're, last time we did four or five, I can't remember, geez, four or five stops, five cities. We're going to, now we're going to increase it to eight or nine. Uh, including Iceland and do like a Northern Europe or European, a European tour.
[00:41:21] Josh Sharkey:
You had like a food film festival too.
[00:41:23] George Motz:
Yes. Uh, the food film fest, uh, after 16 years, finally, um, we had to stop during the pandemic because we were the most unsafe pandemic moment ever.
[00:41:33]
And we're going to fly chefs in from around the world and sell food film that somebody else made. Bring in the filmmaker that served food to an audience. No, I'm not going to. Now, the Food Film Fest, unfortunately, it'll come back someday.
[00:41:44] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it was awesome.
[00:41:47]
I remember going to, I think we sponsored, we were one of the sponsors at one of them.
[00:41:49] George Motz:
Yeah you did. oh, that's right, you did, you were doing, you did, you did some, you did some stuff with us. I love that. It was, it's a great event. It's, it'll come back. It's just, it's been, every time we, every year we get further away from it, it's harder to go back. And I've always told my producer, Seth, You know, unless you want to do it, it's not going to happen.
[00:42:03]
So, and he wants to do it. He just promises he's not working with me. He's also managing my, a lot of my business now. So
[00:42:08] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, brutal. When is the Smashula back in stock?
[00:42:12] George Motz:
Wow, Josh, that's a great question. People have been asking the same question. I'll give you this much information. So it's been, it's made by, it's not made in America anymore.
[00:42:23] George Motz:
Um, I didn't want to go to China. I wanted to actually still go to, I wanted to have it made in a small metal factory.
[00:42:30] Josh Sharkey:
Oh, sorry. And for anybody who's not, who might not know, we should tell them what it is though.
[00:42:34] George Motz:
I'm sorry. So the Smashula, uh, is a, I realized that I was smashing burgers and every, every tool I used to smash burgers started to bend.
[00:42:41]
And so I went to a friend of mine who was a metal worker. And I said, can you do me a favor? Just take the smashula and just put like an angle on it. So it doesn't bend anymore. It keeps bending. And when I went back to pick it up two weeks later, he just made me a whole new smashula, uh, spatula. And I was like, dude, what is this?
[00:42:56]
It was the same shape. And he said, ah, I just made you a whole new one. And I was like, whoa. So it was serious. I mean, it's a serious, actually I got the prototype right here. Hang on a second. This is the original smashula right here.
[00:43:07] Josh Sharkey:
He branded it too?
[00:43:10] George Motz:
No, I did, I did that later on.
[00:43:11] Josh Sharkey:
What's the handle on that?
[00:43:13] George Motz:
So it's actually, it's a BMX bike handle. That's awesome. You can see, I mean, I stopped using this thing years ago, but it had a beveled edge, see that? Kind of a slight bevel. Everything's changed now, but it's a little bit smaller. But it weighs, it weighs a pound. Yeah. You can't bend this thing at all. He said, if you don't want it to bend, I'm just going to start from scratch.
[00:43:33]
And he did. We started from scratch. He made this beautiful piece of piece of equipment. Um, you can use it as a weapon. If you had to, you're in danger. Well, it's key. You know, you got to, like, if you want, I did actually, I was, I was, I was almost hit a attacking seagull with this cookie. I was cooking food and wine, you know, why in the food fest in Miami and.
[00:43:51]
Had to like, fend off attacking seagulls who were trying to eat the burgers right off the griddle. But the Smash a la for years was made in the U. S. and it got too expensive.
[00:43:59] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:44:00] George Motz:
I mean, we'd sell them, we'd sell them for Right now they're sold, they're 2. 35 with shipping in the U.S. But it's, it's a handcrafted, it, each one of these takes five hours to make.
[00:44:08] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:44:08] George Motz:
Five, it's five to seven hours depending. And then you also, it comes with a, a velvet pouch that it goes into, and your own. We have now, we have, we stopped using the BMX handles. Grips, we never use the actual, uh, we have a, we have a grip made and at a factory in Missouri. We're now having them made at a metal shop in Argentina.
[00:44:27] Josh Sharkey:
Nice.
[00:44:27] George Motz:
And they're still made one by one and they're beautiful. They do a great, great job. And I was just in Argentina. Which means, I brought a few back. They're coming soon. Oh, you brought some back. Coming soon. I actually brought a few back. I just threw what I could get in my bag.
[00:44:41] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:44:42] George Motz:
And then there's more coming. So, it's hard to say. But they're coming back. So we, we're now working with another shop down there, who is very excited to work with me. And we're going to make sure that we get these things back as soon as possible.
[00:44:54] Josh Sharkey:
Nice, man. So good to catch up. I can't believe it's been this long. I know, dude. Wow. It's amazing to see everything that you've done since the last time I saw you.
[00:45:04]
I think we only talked about probably one, you know, a small fraction of everything going on for you right now, but it's amazing, man. Congrats. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. And I'm going to come to the restaurant at some point when I, you know, I get to say like once a week, but I have not Come on in.
[00:45:19] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I will. When is next like trip for you, like out of the country or wherever you're touring to?
[00:45:25] George Motz:
Uh, the next trip I'm taking my son to go look at Oberlin College in
[00:45:29] Josh Sharkey:
Ohio and then maybe some burgers. That's for
you man, I'm, I'm 15 years away from that, my kid, so. But the next big trip.
[00:45:36] George Motz:
I don't know, it's that we, uh, I've got an LA trip planned in January.
Um, a couple of the small stuff going on, yeah, but thank God, I mean, I'm local for the next, oh no, I'm not sure, I'm going to Austin. I'm cooking in Austin on the. It's mid November, uh, at, um, at, uh, Matt, Matt Hyland's new, uh, Matt Hyland's wife's new restaurant. Nice. It's called Zoe Tong. I'm cooking there for two days in November.
[00:46:01]
I'm going to New Orleans to visit my daughter, my daughter's at Tulane. I'm going to visit my daughter at Tulane in November also, so. Man,
[00:46:06] Josh Sharkey:
Your kids are like, you're, you're almost done here.
[00:46:10] George Motz: Don't remind me. I'll be an empty nester.
[00:46:12] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. This is awesome, man. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into the Mee's podcast.
[00:46:21] Josh Sharkey:
The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z. com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
[00:46:42]
Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.
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