My guest today is Danny Boome, internationally-acclaimed TV personality and Chef, known to audiences for his culinary work and dynamic personality. Today we’ll be talking about his new gig as host of Good Food America season two, and what he’s learned from visiting organic, sustainable, and healthy restaurants across America. Following the success of hosting two of 2013’s hit shows: ABC Daytime’s Recipe Rehab and Food Network/The Cooking Channel’s Donut Showdown – Danny has taken to the streets to take viewers on a culinary adventure across America (think: Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, but with far less calories and a super charming English accent) in search of the nation’s best organic, sustainable and healthy restaurants. Viewers will join Danny on his gastronomic journey each Sunday night as he discovers regional gems, native ingredients and the homegrown talent that keeps locals coming back for more. This season, the series will make stops at restaurants from Maine to California, and you can come along too. In addition to hosting television shows, Danny brings his passion for food and culinary exploration to homes, schools and lecture halls across America. He shares his fresh perspective and practical, no-fuss recipes and techniques through cooking workshops, courses and private lessons. As a former European professional ice hockey player, Danny is an active sportsman. Danny’s experiences on the ice, in the kitchen and traveling the country as a self-proclaimed “gastronaut,” enabled him to further promote the benefits of healthy eating and exercise by creating the non-profit organization, Better Fed. Danny started his culinary training in 1999 as a cook in Switzerland – 
doubling up as an au pair for a local family. He later trained at the acclaimed West Wind Inn in Canada and attended the Grange Cookery School in England. Good Food America can be seen on select satellite and cable networks as well as online at ZLiving, which allows you to watch on your computer or on any mobile device. Watch at go.zliving.com/tvshows/good-food-america
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
New TV Show Features Organic, Sustainable, and Healthy Restaurants
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Danny Boome
Date of Broadcast: October 29, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It’s Wednesday, October 29th 2014. The sun is shining here in Clearwater, Florida in a beautiful autumn day. We’re talking about one of my favorite subjects today, food and eating in restaurants.
I love to eat in restaurants, but the problem with most restaurants is that they serve not very good food and it’s prepared in some not very good ways. And so it’s sometimes difficult to find restaurants that are actually serving organic and healthy food, but there is more and more and more of them.
That’s what we’re going to be talking about today because my guest is Danny Boome. He’s an internationally-acclaimed TV personality and chef and he’s the host of a new show called Good Food America, which just started a couple of weeks ago.
If you don’t have that on your TV channels where you live, you can go online and watch it. It’s a great show. I’ve just been watching. There’s two episodes online right now. I’ve just been watching it and it’s great. It’s just that kind of show like if you’ve ever watched Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives where you go backstage in the restaurant and you get back into the kitchen and you watch the chefs. They explain what they’re doing and they’re creating all these luscious organic foods, sustainable and local. And it just looks gorgeous. You’ll find out exactly what were they doing. And Danny is the host.
Hi, Danny.
DANNY BOOME: Hi! How are you doing today?
DEBRA: I’m doing great. I’m so happy to talk to you because as I’ve said, going to restaurants is one of my favorite things. I have to admit, I do watch Diners, Drive-ins & Dives not because I love Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives, but because I like to go back in the kitchen and see what the chefs are doing.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was the whole sort of idea of our show because we wanted to do the health food version of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives basically.
DEBRA: And you did.
DANNY BOOME: But also, we wanted [inaudible 00:03:00] as well because we wanted to open the door, the pantry and the story a little bit more to the viewer because as you just said right now, when you’re looking – I mean, this show actually turned me into a home vegan and a vegetarian. I was actually a big carnivore before I started this. So when you’re going out and you’re looking for good, healthy food or even good, sustainable, organic food, it’s very, very hard to find. I actually find it really hard to find the people that know what to do with it. You know what I mean?
DEBRA: Right! Right, that is the thing.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah!
DEBRA: You can go to just a regular restaurant. Say if you’re a vegetarian, you can go to a regular restaurant and say, “Well, could you give me the vegetable plate,” but it tastes like nothing.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah.
DEBRA: I mean, I’m not a vegetarian. I eat meat, but I eat like grass-fed meat and things like that. But I remember, a few years ago, I was living in San Francisco for three months and I ate all my meals in restaurants and I could not find a sweet potato. I mean, San Francisco even has a lot of good, organic restaurants, but I couldn’t even find a sweet potato.
DANNY BOOME: Well, I’ll tell you what this is and this is what I found on the journey. Basically, what we did was (just to let your listeners know), we went to 25 states, 76 restaurants and around 18 different cities.
DEBRA: Wow!
DANNY BOOME: It was rather an amazing journey because what it was about was when I think of all of us that do the show, it was a case of, “Well, what is…” – and my fingers are right now in open air quotes – “What do we call healthy? Basically, what’s your interpretation of healthy food?” That was the first thing. And the second thing was, “Well then, what’s our interpretation of organic and sustainable?”
And some people are sort of like in the gray area. You’re edging on what is and what’s not.
And basically, I have to give the credit to our research. I really found people that actually understood what people wanted from the foo, but also really nice parameters of, “Okay, well, most of the restaurants we came across that would have a sweet potato or would have something would actually only…” – they would change their menu as seasonally possible. And then they also would procure their ingredients from a maximum of 100 miles. So your carbon footprint was low. There’s a relationship with the farmer or the fisherman or the butcher or the candlestick maker even to know where the food came from.
A lot of the chefs and the owners of these restaurants really put a lot of pride into it, but they also gave a lot of ownership to, say, the waiting staff or the servers. I mean, seriously, we went to a couple of places and everything was from around the corner like a potter would make all the plate and the artist…
DEBRA: Yes, I love that.
DANNY BOOME: …decorated the restaurant. And then the community would buy into that.
And I think when you say you’re going to places and you’re looking for these little restaurants, our show tells you where they are, but also, it also gives you some sort of ownership for yourself to say, “Oh, these guys have got the ethic balance that we want, but also there’s a really cool story like I know this plate came from Fred around the corner and each plate is individual or the trout was…”
I think one of the best places that we found was they got their trout or their fish from Detroit. And ironically, you don’t think of fresh water fish from Detroit, but it was from an urban garden. And these guys, it was the Detroit Christian Urban Botanic or something like that. I can’t remember what they call it. They ship the fish down and they would grow –there would be a fish pond in their warehouse. So it was sustainable.
DEBRA: Yeah.
DANNY BOOME: They’re just really cool, little stories that when I’m going and trying to find a really cool restaurant to eat, I want to know that. I want to know that there’s been a bit of care and attention put into the dish that’s in front of me.
And seasonality especially is where it all really does lie. It’s really becoming the heartbeat I think. It all regress back to understanding where our food comes from, but it also regress back to knowing well seasonally your pantry. We know that, “Let’s use what we’ve got and let’s not push the boat out any further in any other way.”
DEBRA: Well, that’s the way everybody used to eat before – I mean, if you go back, it used to be they grow their food in their gardens, they had a cow out back, they lived in village, they had their cottage gardens and people traded with each other. It wasn’t about food being shipped in from all these different places, the plates they ate off really were made by the local potter.
And so we’re just kind of going back to what’s natural. I think that it’s really incredible that these restaurants are doing that and setting these kinds of examples.
I wanted to ask you, first of all, where are you from.
DANNY BOOME: Well, my canny accent is from England. I’m from the U.K. originally.
DEBRA: I love England.
DANNY BOOME: But I’ve been out in the States for 10 years now. My beautiful wife and my beautiful son, we’ve actually just moved back for the winter. We were living in New York for eight years and we moved to Washington D.C. for the last two years. And then this winter, we moved back to Europe because we’re just opening our own culinary academy here.
DEBRA: Oh, great!
DANNY BOOME: Yeah, which is a really cool project itself.
DEBRA: Good, good. And how did…
DANNY BOOME: …because we’re doing a…
DEBRA: Go ahead, go ahead.
DANNY BOOME: Oh, sorry. Yeah, what we’re trying to do here in Europe is – well, I class myself as what they call a ‘gastronaut’. The idea is that I’ve developed what they call the ‘gastronaut academy’. It’s basically foodie adventures. And that’s what we’re going to be doing through Europe from January through to March. I’m basically taking people on a food tour, but with an extreme element.
I always say it’s like James Bond and Audrey Hepburn when they’re on vacation. That’s the vacation I’d like to go on – with a little bit of sophistication and a little bit of excitement. And then mixed up with food, we’re going sight-seeing, we’re doing these great, big detours around Italy, we’re going to great vineyards, like 16th and 14th century vineyards and wineries and then going to a couple of great [inaudible 00:10:11] restaurant.
So it’s going to be like Good Food Europe. You could think of it like that as well as Good Food America.
DEBRA: Wow! That’s really great. Well, we need to go to break in just a few seconds, but when we come back, what I’d like to talk about is I’d like you to tell us more about organic and sustainable and how those things are different and how they play out in the restaurants and maybe a little bit about what’s wrong with restaurants.
DANNY BOOME: Okay.
Debra: What should we be watching out for if we go to a restaurant?
DANNY BOOME: Okay.
DEBRA: So you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Danny Boome. He is the host of the new show, Good Food America. He also was on ABC Daytime’s Recipe Rehab. He was the host. He was the host of Donut Showdown on the Food Network’s The Cooking Channel. And so you’ve probably seen him if you watch cooking channels like I do. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Danny Boome. He is the host of the new show, Good Food America where he goes and visits back in the kitchens with organic, sustainable and healthy restaurants across America.
So I want to tell you how you can watch it. It might be on your local channel line-up, but the show is produced by ZLiving. If you go to their website, you can watch the show.
It’s got kind of a long URL. So just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for Danny’s description of it in today’s show and you’ll see there’s a picture of the Good Food America logo and right next to it is the URL. You can just click on the link and it goes straight to the page on the ZLiving website where you can watch the shows.
There’s a little trailer you can watch. You can watch a little bit of the videos. And then they’ll ask you to sign in for free. Just log in and you can watch the whole video. It’s just delightful. I am so happy that you’re doing this.
Although I have to say this is the show I wanted to do, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do this show too.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah!
DEBRA: I mean, if you were to say to me, “What would be your dream vacation?”, I would say, “Oh, I’d like to go travel around the country and eat at all the organic restaurants.”
DANNY BOOME: And the funny thing is you don’t really have to travel anymore to do it because there’s so many around you.
DEBRA: There are, there are.
DANNY BOOME: I’m going to say I am the luckiest guy for all the shows that I’ve done from The Food Network to ABC to ZLiving. I’m very lucky. I get to travel and eat and link.
The thing is, obviously, if it’s your passion and what you wanted to do [inaudible 00:15:38]. The movement is that I also think that it’s actually becoming second nature now. I’m really encouraged that if people want to see this type of show, they want to hear about the who, the what, the why’s and where to find the purveyors, the restaurateurs, the – It’s really nice. It’s not a fad. I think everybody is just very ‘word for the wise’ of where we’re going with food and everybody is actually marching to the same beat and that’s a really positive step.
And this show, I really do this – I mean, season one, we got Emmy-nominated. For season two, I hope we go for it again because people are very aware that this type of information is needed. It’s also entertaining.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. It is. And it’s luscious. Well, I’m not going to talk about what I’ve already seen until we get later in the show. Let’s just talk about – there are some very yummy-looking things. And I’ll also tell you what I had for breakfast later.
But tell us about what you saw in terms of what’s the difference between organic and sustainable. Let’s just start there.
DANNY BOOME: Okay! The broad explanation of organic is that when you look at, say, organic, if arable or animal, organic is that we’ve let the – say if it’s on an arable side, on the agricultural side, basically, the land has been left to run free for five years to become toxic-free. And then obviously, the product that’s been developed is grown or raised in a non-toxic environment. That’s what organic means.
Sustainable is more about the sustainability of life and the environment. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to obviously lower the carbon footprint and we’re also trying to be more – like renew energy, renew products, repurpose. But then also, time and sustainability, it’s trying to farm responsibility.
It’s very interesting [inaudible 00:18:00] about the trout farming in Detroit. These guys, they grow lettuce on the top of their fish tank and the fish eat the roots. They’re in these massive tanks. If you can imagine this massive tank with a bed of salad, a bed of lettuce on the top, the fish eat the root of the lettuce. Then basically, the fish poop and the methane of the poop run the filtration system and the energy. And then the water sprinkles back on top and feeds the lettuce.
So it’s this kind of like really, really cool…
DEBRA: It is a really cool system.
DANNY BOOME: …and that’s sustainability.
DEBRA: It’s a system, yeah.
DANNY BOOME: I’m a bit of a science geek as well. So that was like I walked in and I went, “Oh, my God! This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” But also, it’s very interesting how many restaurants serves this where they’re, “I’m going to go buy my product from this guy” because there’s not then a strain on the fisheries.”
I mean, fresh water fish, it’s not possibly one of the most common things that we look at when we buy fish, but there’s not a strain on the – and also then, you’re not talking like – I call it ‘[inaudible 00:19:17] farmers’ when you’re talking about [inaudible 00:19:18] farming because a lot of the fish these days, they can be farmed so they can be any color that you want because they put a food dye or a feeding coloring.
So you have to look out for real organic. So that’s where the organic comes from. What is this fish or what is this cow fed? And basically, that’s what we’re looking for.
So organic and sustainable lives in harmony in my respect, it’s what I generally think of. And when we are going to meet some of these restaurants, what you find is that a lot of the guys, they go and meet a farmer.
Basically, they go to a farmer’s market, I meet a guy and I go, “Hey!” There’s actually more of a personal connection, more of a personal rapport between the farmer and the chef than actually the chef needs.
And then it’s sort of like, “I like this guy. I like his vision. I like how he’s growing it. He respects the earth. He respects the animal. He respects that I need – you know, I’m going to put an order in for 20 [inaudible 00:20:20] pounds of potatoes a year. But I also know that that guy is really crafting the land.” I mean, it’s such a responsible thing.
DEBRA: It is.
DANNY BOOME: And that’s the strange thing with organic. I don’t think people understand the cost element. If you go to Whole Foods today and you look in conventional and you look in the organic, there’s always a price difference. But the price difference is actually that there’s a little bit more sweat that goes into that and because the chemical that they’re using, the feeds they’re using or the time it’s taken the land, sort of the hit ratio of gaining a good product is a lot lower than actually [inaudible 00:21:05] because they’re more of a cosmetic product.
So you’re looking at oranges. I mean, you’re there in Clearwater, Florida so you’re not too far away from some orange groves. You’re looking at a taste of the ownership of that. You’re trying to split [inaudible 00:21:24].
What they’re doing in Europe is this…
DEBRA: Well, wait. I have to interrupt you. I have to interrupt you because we have to go to break.
DANNY BOOME: Alright, alright. Sorry, sorry, [inaudible 00:21:31].
DEBRA: Well, the commercial’s going to come and start talking right on top of you if I don’t. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Danny Boome and he obviously has a lot to say, so we’ll bring him back after the break. Stay tuned.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Danny Boome. He’s an internationally acclaimed TV personality and chef and the host of the new show, Good Food America.
It’s actually season two of Good Food America. He’s travelled through the country to find restaurants that are organic, sustainable and healthy and taking us behind-the-scenes in the kitchens.
You can go watch him, watch the show. If it’s not on your local line-up, you can watch it on the ZLiving website. Go to my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and I’ve got the link right there. So all you have to do is just click through. Well, it’s kind of a long URL.
DANNY BOOME: It kind of is, right? We got to get a bit.ly on that.
DEBRA: Yes, something that’s easy to remember like ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. It’s very easy to remember.
DANNY BOOME: But I thought ZLiving.com was actually quite a catchy URL.
DEBRA: It is. But this one, it’s ZLiving.com/tvshows/good-food-america. Now, I bet you, nobody’s going to remember what I just said.
DANNY BOOME: Or they can just go…
DEBRA: So that’s why you can just go to Toxic Free Talk Radio and get it.
DANNY BOOME: Or you can just go to ZLiving.com and go search Danny Boome and I’ll pop up. So there we go, Good Food America.
DEBRA: Oh, that’s true. That’s true, yeah.
DANNY BOOME: Sundays at 9, right? Are we finished?
DEBRA: Yeah. Okay! So now, everybody knows how to get it. So did you want to finish your sentence or shall we talk about something else?
DANNY BOOME: No! Sorry, my train of thought was as we were talking about – sorry, I get a little bit (if you can tell) passionate when we start talking about organic, sustainability and everything.
DEBRA: Yes, you do.
DANNY BOOME: And what the interesting thing that I was just about to get into was that we pay a little bit too much attention to the cosmetics of how our products look.
DEBRA: Yes, talk about that.
DANNY BOOME: And so we sometimes go, “Well, that’s an ugly fruit. I’d rather have a pretty apple in front of an ugly apple.” They’re still an apple, but we’re tasting with our eyes. It’s the same thing. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just ugly.
What happens is that across the country – people don’t probably understand this, but say we go to an apple orchard and the apples are picked, those apples are graded from A to D. A obviously is then taken off to premiere supermarkets, B is then taken off to lower level supermarkets, then C is then put into things like pies and things like that and then D’s, they’re made into baby food.
And what it is, there’s nothing wrong actually with the apple itself. It’s just the “would people buy? Is it attractive enough?” And that’s [inaudible 00:29:36]. They basically put the cold medic and the organic. But actually, devalues the organic. The organic was ugly. It was ugly and oversized and not uniform-looking.
So if you can imagine a carrot, as we know, the carrot, well, sometimes the carrot will come out looking turnips or basically dog legs and things like that. So what it’s worth, they said, “Look, it’s still the same thing. But we’ll give you the ugly version for ¢5 cheaper on the pound.” And people just went, “Oh, okay.” That’s how they got organic in France.
So it was a case of, “Look, you can either have the conventional that is” – they actually make the conventional product more expensive just to say, “Look, this still is a carrot. Let’s start taking those off. Let’s start get moving ourselves away from the cosmetics because that costs us money. We’ll give you an uglier product, but it’s still the same thing and it’s a little bit cheaper.”
And that literally went off the shelves. The education process is, “Okay! It tastes the same. We can cook it the same. It just looks a little bit different.” It was kind of an amazing experiment. That’s what I’m trying to get to.
DEBRA: I love hearing that, yeah. I think that organic food tastes outstandingly better and I enjoy having it all look different. I like to go to the farmer’s market and I used to get my food from community-supported agricultural farm or organic farm that was actually down the street from where I live. I could go work in the farm and help put the baskets together and all those kinds of things and I love that.
I don’t care about how it looks. It looks its own unique way. Now, each vegetable is its own unique thing. Every carrot doesn’t have to look the same.
DANNY BOOME: Think of children. Children don’t realize. I mean, when you put something in front of a child these days, they don’t actually realize what is what because they’re losing that. We’re already three steps away from the next generation not understanding what is a leek or what is phenol or what is broccoli. They don’t know the difference, they just know it’s green.
DEBRA: Right!
DANNY BOOME: So that’s one step. The other step is as adults, we always think, “Well, it looks good and so that’s what we must buy because it looks the best.” But actually, it’s the color, it’s the dirt. That’s what you want. You want something that’s vibrant in color and a little bit of dirt on it because you know where it comes from. It shouldn’t be pristine and cropped and packaged. It should be loose and wild like my women.
DEBRA: Yes, yes!
DANNY BOOME: So that’s the way it goes. My publicist, if she’s just heard that, I’d be falling flat on the ground, but yeah.
DEBRA: She’s listening, Danny.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah. But no, that’s how we got to look at things. We go to remember that we used to run the land. We used to grow our own things in our back garden. It might sound like we’re beating the drum and I know I’m in Toxic Free Talk Radio, so everyones is on the same mindscape of what we should do with products. We just have to know that we can find it and that’s why we’re going to these restaurants. We can find it. These guys are doing the research for it.
They are introducing their customers to the CSA. They are introducing their customers to the farmers. So it’s not just, “Come and eat in our restaurant.” It’s also, “This is a Bob. He’s a great farmer. Why don’t you go down the road on a Sunday and buy your groceries from him or go join his CSA and pick up your weekly groceries or fruit and vegetables on a Wednesdays and get your share.” That’s the beautiful thing about this.
DEBRA: Well, one of the things that I think is great about restaurants, I mean I think if you look back in history, restaurants probably started because people were traveling and they couldn’t make their own food and so some enterprising housewife set up – I don’t know what the history of restaurants are, but that’s what it looks like to me.
But anyway, today, most people can make their food or buy take-out or whatever. But I think one of the great roles that restaurants are playing now (especially the restaurants that you visited) is that they are showing us a new way of eating – ”new” at least for our culture here.
By going to a restaurant and being able to see it and taste it and smell it, it’s not just like some strange, “What do I do with this food?”, that you see it in the store, that you’re actually seeing it in a dish, you’re tasting it and you’re saying, “This is delicious. Where does this come from?” and that having chefs set these new examples is really important.
We need to go to break again, but when we come back, I want us to talk about and give us some examples of some of the places that you visited and what you ate there and I want to tell you what I had for breakfast.
DANNY BOOME: Okay!
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I know I’ve said that twice. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m here with chef and TV host, Danny Boome. We’re talking about his new show, Good Food America. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Danny Boome, internationally acclaimed TV personality and chef and host of the new show, Good Food America on ZLiving.com.
You can just go to ZLiving.com and search on Danny Boome, search on Good Food America and find the show or you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and click right on the link directly.
DANNY BOOME: And if you’re on ZLiving and you want to know what Danny Boome looks like, I’m the chef who hosts Good Food America with hair. Season one, I have no hair. Season two, chef has hair. That’s me. So that helps.
DEBRA: I know! And there’s also a very cute picture of him at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.
DANNY BOOME: There is, yes! Yes.
DEBRA: Yes! Okay, so what I want to ask you – first, I’m going to tell you what I had for breakfast because I think that this actually belongs on the menu at some restaurant.
DANNY BOOME: Okay. I was going to say should I have been warned about this because I didn’t know you were going to do this?
DEBRA: No, no. But would you just listen? Yeah. I just want to share it with you.
DANNY BOOME: Okay, good.
DEBRA: So I had pumpkin pancakes…
DANNY BOOME: Ooh…
DEBRA: But they’re gluten-free pumpkin pancakes. They’re so easy to make and they’re so delicious. I want to tell everybody that they can make them. It’s very easy.
You can just take one egg or two eggs (however many eggs you want). For every egg, you just beat it up like you’re making scrambled eggs. For every egg, you’d put in two tablespoons of pumpkin puree and a little cinnamon and you could put it in nutmeg or any of those nice pumpkin pie spices with it. And that’s it.
So then you just take about two tablespoons of this battery, mix it all up. Take two tablespoons and make this little, tiny pancake. And it is so delicious. You would think that it would just be flat like eggs, but it pops up and it looks like a pancake and it tastes like a pancake. It actually has texture like a pancake. I was just so amazed because it was so easy and so healthy. I just think it’s the perfect autumn breakfast.
DANNY BOOME: Awesome!
DEBRA: Doesn’t that sound good?
DANNY BOOME: It sounds like you’ve got autumn in a pancake.
DEBRA: Yes.
DANNY BOOME: I’m just thinking fall is here and all those beautiful smells through the kitchen in the morning. I mean, you don’t need a famous Starbucks coffee during the week to start the morning off when you have that going on.
And also, as it’s gluten-free and as it’s pumpkin, it’s full of vitamins, it’s full of energy, antioxidants. And then, because it’s not glutened and heavy, it’s going to be really, really light and empower you through the day. And that’s the gorgeous thing about that. That’s amazing.
DEBRA: Yes, and I’m so…
DANNY BOOME: I went through a couple of places that served very similar things. I’ll tell you one place that you got to try on our journey. It’s a place called Green in San Antoni, Texas.
DEBRA: I’ve been to Green. In San Francisco?
DANNY BOOME: Yeah. Oh, no, no. These guys are in San Antonio.
DEBRA: Oh okay, different Green, go ahead.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah, yeah. Well, these guys are purely vegan/vegetarian. The funny thing is their claim to fame was their family – and you may have seen this on like [inaudible 00:42:23] Food or anything like that. Their family, the family in San Antonio that owned the café or the diner or deli, they have the world’s biggest cannabin. They went from serving basically coffee and donuts and Cinnibon to – they said they had a whole conscious point in their life where they wanted to live healthier. So they sold the business and they started this – basically, what I call it is a vegetarian/vegan diner.
All the food is organic and sustainably bought, but it’s diner food. So they still had [inaudible 00:43:01] and they still had pancakes, but they source everything and created alternatives. And some of the dishes, you won’t even know they were different. It’s just amazing!
But [inaudible 00:43:14] there’s a place like that at every corner you’ve heard. That’s the gorgeous thing when you’re on this food discovery.
DEBRA: If you’re really looking around – I mean, I know that when I go to a new city, I’m looking for – no, I’m not eating in the chain restaurants. I’m looking for these little kind of restaurants like you’re going to. I’m always looking for them. I look for them online before I go to a new city. And I’m sure going to be looking at your list. And so when I go to a city, I’ll look up those restaurants.
But it’s just so interesting. I get ideas about things to eat and things that I can make at home by going to restaurants.
DANNY BOOME: Absolutely, yeah.
DEBRA: That’s why I like to go to restaurants, I get inspired. And when you go to a restaurant, you eat things that you wouldn’t make at home.
So tell us about – well, I want to tell people about the kale burger. Tell people about the kale burger because they can watch eating-prepared on ZLiving.com.
DANNY BOOME: So that was a restaurant, Cedar Point in Philadelphia. And also, the one thing that you’ve just hit upon is actually just the simplicity of some of these dishes. It’s so quick and it’s so easy. You just throw it in a blender and make it there and then. It’s just the compliment that you have to basically build around.
But the kale burger was just really easy. If I remember, it was just cannellini beans, kale and egg and that was it.
DEBRA: Sage, sage.
DANNY BOOME: It was thrown together. Sorry?
DEBRA: Sage. I just watched it this morning, sage.
DANNY BOOME: And that. Well, can you imagine, I went to 76 different restaurants and each restaurant, we had three dishes? So you’re going to have to bear with me because sometimes, I’m going to miss an ingredient.
DEBRA: Totally fine, I would too.
DANNY BOOME: Actually, the hash was the amazing thing that they had there. They called it slame or hash because it was in a hipster area. I think it was really, really clever because it was beet root squash and sweet potatoes all sautéed together on a pan. It looked absolutely fantastic with a [inaudible 00:45:36] thing on the top. Ah, it was amazing.
DEBRA: Mm-hmmm, it looked really good. It looked really good.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah, but the kale burger was something that I’d never thought of either because it was like, “Wow! Kale is so versatile.” We all use it in salads and what-not, but actually, you then starting putting it into a burger and using it in that sense, now that is kind of cool.
DEBRA: I thought so too. I’m going to try that.
DANNY BOOME: Yeah, you got to. It really, really –
I mean, the interesting thing was Philadelphia, to say, as a city was one of the most [inaudible 00:46:10] cities I went to. My wife and I actually went the week after we had shot there. We were in D.C. We went to a concern. And the major thing was, we spent a couple of days, we spent a weekend there and the amount of organic, sustainable restaurants that were there, it was just so much easier to find.
DEBRA: Yes.
DANNY BOOME: It was so easy to find some of the really “clean” food as I like to call it. And that was just one place. That was in a [inaudible 00:46:44] neighborhood. When you went further into town in the Gayborhood, say that area in the gay quarter, there was veg.
That was like doing high-end – I mean, literally, high-end white tablecloth vegetarian/vegan food. Not one piece of meat was on the menu. And they were doing carrots six ways. I didn’t even know you can do carrots six ways. Obviously, my imagination has been stretched now since I’ve been to that restaurant.
But these guys, people are pushing the envelope. They’re playing with spices, they’re playing with their ingredients and it’s amazing what we’re coming up with.
DEBRA: Yes, so much so.
DANNY BOOME: Increasingly, I didn’t expect to find that – I mean, for that one weekend that Megan and I went to, we basically found 12 different restaurants that we haven’t even researched. We just stumbled across them. We weren’t even looking for them.
And that’s in Philadelphia, which is kind of a blue-collared town. But then we went to Colorado, we went to Denver and boy! We turn every corner and there’s an organic restaurant.
So the finger is on the pulse. It’s nice to know that you don’t have to look sometimes. That I think is my message on that one.
DEBRA: Well, I’m sorry to say that there are not many organic restaurants in Clearwater, Florida. [inaudible 00:48:06] to come down here. I mean, I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, so I started eating in Chez Panisse 30 years ago and Green in San Francisco.
And so when I first started becoming – I mean, I grew up on [inaudible 00:48:23]. But when I started becoming an adult and living on my own, I just started exploring food. And while the world was learning about all the things that were going on in Brookline, California with the food scene, I was right in the middle of that. I was eating in all those restaurants.
And when I came here to Florida where that hasn’t been going on and I started cooking the way I learned from eating in restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, people, they just fell over and then people introduced me as the best cook in Clearwater, Florida because just the difference the way people still think here in this part of the country is very different than in those cities.
I’m going to have to say that we have less than a minute left.
DANNY BOOME: No, that was the quickest hour ever.
DEBRA: I know we could talk for hours and hours about this subject and I know that you have plenty to say, but thank you so much for being here. I know you’re calling from England, yes?
DANNY BOOME: Yes, right. Yeah, yeah. I’ll send you the bill…
DEBRA: So is it the middle of the night?
DANNY BOOME: No, no, no. It’s like six o’clock in the evening, don’t worry.
DEBRA: Okay, good, good. Well, thank you so much. Do you have any – I can give you ten seconds, any final words?
DANNY BOOME: The gastronaut wants you to watch Good Food America on ZLiving, 9 PM every Sunday for an amazing food journey across America. Keep it organic and keep it sustainable.
DEBRA: Excellent! Thanks so much for being with me. And I’m going to be watching, so I think all of you should watch because it’s excellent, just an excellent, excellent show.
DANNY BOOME: Good.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
DANNY BOOME: Thank you. Bye bye.
DEBRA: Bye!
DANNY BOOME: Bye.
