JEFF MICHAUD: Did you get my text?
JEFF BENJAMIN: Which one?
JEFF MICHAUD: We put the picture of the morels.
JEFF BENJAMIN: The what?
JEFF MICHAUD: Do you get it?
Look at it.
You've got to look at it.
It says the first of the season morels.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Oh my God.
Did he see it?
MALE SPEAKER: No.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: dude.
MARC VETRI: First of the season morels.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: the season morels.
That is the funniest thing I've ever seen.
JEFF MICHAUD: Get me set up for pip pot pie.
Give me the container, give me the pot
pie, give me the dough.
My name is Jeff Michaud, and I cook at Alla Spina restaurant.
Alla Spina is our Italian gastropub.
We're known for our craft beers, whether they're Italian
or from Europe or local.
And then we're also known for our fun twists
on Italian bar food.
Ready for the pot pie magic?
This is pot pie 2012.
That half a bowl?
Way too much verona.
Ask him what he thinks.
MARC VETRI: The [INAUDIBLE] is nice with the verona.
JEFF MICHAUD: My partners Marc and Jeff go [INAUDIBLE]
Italy every year, we take a couple trips.
So we started visiting these Italian bars and we saw some
that had crazy graffiti all over the walls.
And the Italian beer movement was
really starting to develop.
So we came back and like there's nothing really in the
States that's like this.
So we had to do our version of Italian gastropub.
We'll be a trendsetter for the States.
MALE SPEAKER: You want one of these.
I'm going to tell you, you want one of these.
JEFF MICHAUD: As far as our clientele goes, they
love what we do.
They look for that as kind of off the wall weird stuff that
we got going on.
We kind of wanted to do a little twist on a hot dog.
So we made a Mortadella hot dog.
Same filling that you would make Mortadella with, except
we stuff it in sheep milk casings.
I don't care who you are, Pepperidge Farm hot dog roll,
it's the only way to go.
The most important thing about a hot dog is to have that snap
when you bite into it.
Some of the highlights on the Alla Spina menu are the veal
breast millinae de Hogie, and we do our Italian version of
poutine with guinea hen bone [INAUDIBLE] on top and
mozzarella curd.
And we do a whole pig's head.
We use a lot of pig here, everything but the oink.
Did you get my text today?
MARC VETRI: Yeah.
JEFF MICHAUD: Did you open up the picture?
MARC VETRI: Yeah.
JEFF MICHAUD: Ready?
You're killing me, dude.
Last night to go out, I picked Steve Wildy and Jeff Benjamin.
Steve Wildy is the beverage director of the whole company
and Jeff Benjamin is one of the owners.
We always get together.
We go out and have a drink every now and then.
And we have some cool late night spots
that we like to hit.
JEFF BENJAMIN: Is that like "Cash Cab"?
MALE SPEAKER: What is the best barbecue in Philadelphia?
JEFF MICHAUD: Percy Street.
I think it's one of those hidden gems.
Like when you come in to Philly and then don't expect
to find really awesome barbecue joints
and they do it well.
They don't do the Southern style where they rub it with
the barbecue sauce.
They do it with the gyro, the Texas style.
MALE SPEAKER: What'd you do?
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Fox 29 News, brand new mandolin,
sliced the tip of my fucking finger off three
seconds into the show.
Dude, it looks like half a clove of garlic on the other
side of the mandolin.
MALE SPEAKER: Maybe they'll start using mandolins for
brises now.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Oh my God.
You'd feel no pain, they'd be so fucking sharp.
JEFF MICHAUD: Me and Michael have known
each other for years.
He actually, before I moved to Italy, he took my spot at
Vetri and we worked together for about two
years before I left.
He was my bitch.
Thousands of dollars spent on labelling.
Your chicken, how long's it cook for?
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Chicken smokes, I believe, for under
an hour-- probably about 45 minutes.
JEFF BENJAMIN: Just smoke, and that's it?
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Smoke, and that gives it a glaze, and
then right on the charcoal grill.
They don't ever do this in Texas, but we finish all of
our meat on the charcoal.
So it gets the woodsmoke, and then a finish on the charcoal.
[BURPS]
JEFF BENJAMIN: Nice.
JEFF MICHAUD: He said I had to burp it to get the
flavor of the beer.
Did you smell it?
STEVE WILDY: [INAUDIBLE].
JEFF MICHAUD: Steve Wildy is a vegetarian, so that spot he
thought was going to be a little bit of an issue.
But they have a lot of side dishes that work for him, so
he had a lot of options.
STEVE WILDY: I always think that a chef's very immature
and maybe inexperienced if they take that route--
I just don't serve vegetarians, I don't do it.
Because they're missing out on [INAUDIBLE].
JEFF MICHAUD: Bourbon, all right.
Now we're home.
JEFF BENJAMIN: Now we're home.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: I'm driving.
JEFF MICHAUD: This is awesome.
ERIN O'SHEA: Good.
JEFF MICHAUD: The best turkey ass we've ever had.
ERIN O'SHEA: Nice.
JEFF MICHAUD: Turkey ass is like the little butts on the
end of the turkey.
She chops them off and smokes them for hours and they get
really tender and they're moist.
I've never had that before, it was awesome.
He said hey, Jeff, check out the first
of the season morels.
ERIN O'SHEA: Oh, shit.
JEFF MICHAUD: You look at it first, you're like looking at
it and you're like, damn.
When we finish up at Percy Street Barbecue, we grab Mike
Solomonov and Erin O'Shea, we hop in the van and we headed
to Pub & Kitchen.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Let me help you out, dude.
JEFF MICHAUD: Oh, sorry.
I'm like oh, whoa!
Oh, sorry about that.
Pub & Kitchen is a local bar.
There's a lot of industry people that go there.
Johnny Mac is the chef and he's worked with some really
great people.
James Beard is great, food and wine is great, having chefs
eat your food at midnight is even better-- then you know it
really matters.
He has one side of it which is burgers and regular bar food
that you would get anywhere.
And then the other side of it has a little more refined
stuff like rabbit [INAUDIBLE] and the whipped goat butter
that we have with the nice blanched vegetables.
JOHNNY MAC: Some nice, fatty Rhode Island skate wing here.
I always like to cook skate the way I cook pancakes.
You let it cook until it just kind of starts to
bubble on this side.
And then you just baste it, flip it, kiss it, take it out.
This is solid late night food, man.
Pickled meat, some nice grains, a little bit of
vegetables, a good piece of fish cooked in butter.
Really simple, really easy, not rewriting anything here.
Fine dining in blue jeans.
We turn the music way up at night, we turn
the lights way down.
Just trying to make good food for friends.
JEFF MICHAUD: Did you get my morel picture?
JOHNNY MAC: Yeah, looks delicious.
JEFF MICHAUD: Can you feed me an oyster, Michael?
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Are you ready?
Slowly.
Whoa!
MALE SPEAKER: It puts the oyster in the mouth.
MALE SPEAKER: Put the fucking oyster in the mouth.
JEFF MICHAUD: Mike's a lot fun to go out with.
He just likes to enjoy life and you get a lot of
laughs out of it.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Blows me away when people go to
restaurants and then shit.
I'm like, really?
You're going to shit in my restaurant?
JEFF MICHAUD: Wow.
Beautiful.
We brought over a plate of asparagus with prosciutto
gelee and this fried egg on top.
And when I hit that egg, it shot all over Michael's nice
velvet jacket.
Ready?
JOHNNY MAC: Yeah, get the money shot on that.
EVERYONE: Oh!
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Oh my God, how did you do that, dude?
That was perfect.
It's on the bandage, too.
That's fucking so pornographic, bro.
JEFF MICHAUD: We were getting ready to leave and then
everybody was asking where's Steve?
Where's Steve?
And they said he's in the bathroom.
And so we grabbed the camera and went downstairs and
basically I kicked the bathroom door in on him.
Open all ready!
Yeah!
JOHNNY MAC: You're on munchies, man!
STEVE WILDY: You're going to need a body bag, Johnny!
JOHNNY MAC: Well, locker room humor, it never gets old.
JEFF MICHAUD: You ready?
When we left Pub & Kitchen, we added Johnny Mac with us and
we all headed back to Alla Spina for
some late-night munchies.
STEVE WILDY: Is anybody else freaked out by the ease with
which Johnny flipped open the men's room stall door?
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: He was like, it's just
like the rest stop.
JEFF MICHAUD: We planned to cook some of the food at Alla
Spina that really makes us who we are.
JOHNNY MAC: I'll pull an espresso in a minute, dude.
JEFF MICHAUD: It's something I like to eat late at night.
After a couple of beers, you always want some fried stuff.
So we did some fried pig tails with a fennel agrodolce which
is a sweet and sour sauce.
It's almost like a version of a chicken wing, except it's
done with pig tails.
We did some awesome fried snails in a beer batter with a
garlic and parsley tartar sauce.
These are extra large burgundy snails.
And the show stopper's always that big pig's head.
We brine for about four days, it comes off
about a 30 pound pig.
After it comes out of the brine, we score the face, we
pour the agrodulce over it, we roast it in the oven for 20
minutes, 30 minutes.
It's gets all nice and charred and caramelized.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: You can make this one squeal.
[SQUEALS]
JEFF MICHAUD: All right, guys.
ERIN O'SHEA: What are you looking at?
Oh, shit.
JEFF MICHAUD: The cheeks are falling off, the neck's
falling off.
There's people that eat the eyes, that crack the skull
open and they go for the brains.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Thanks, Jeff.
It looks fucking awesome.
ERIN O'SHEA: Here's to that.
Thank you.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: It's normal for you to stick
your dick in my mouth.
Totally.
JEFF MICHAUD: Did you get some snails, Johnny?
JOHNNY MAC: Yeah, but I would like some more.
JEFF MICHAUD: Cheers, guys.
Thanks for coming out tonight.
MICHAEL SOLOMONOV: Cheers!
Woo!
JEFF MICHAUD: When you get to that point, it's like you're
just eating because it's there.