Rahm: Oh god you guys are horrible with these favorite things. They are all great. All great. Of course I love New York. I’ve been to New York; I’ve lived in New York for a small amount of time. Austin was awesome; Austin was one of my favorite cities. But I really had a fun attachment with Chicago for some reason. I really loved it! Chicago was a lot of fun, it’s unbelievably clean. I couldn’t believe it. It was remarkable to see such a big city that was clean; and the amount of culinary talent that is packed into one little city with the art. There is something called The Bean that is a giant metal ball in the center of the city that I just fell in love with. The amount of just culinary. Culinary, culinary, culinary. The time I got there, we were filming there happened to be a food festival going on. It was just two days long and it took that long to get through all the booths; and the amount of variety of culinary booths. Like everything from fried chicken to, of course the Chicago hot dog. The Chicago deep dish pizza, my first time I ever had it and it really is that great, but I piled it on with meat of course! I could keep going, I really like Chicago.
So, as a fun question, is there anything that you would like to try that you have not tried yet?
Rahm: Wow, I’d like to; but I have almost tried everything. I haven’t tried everything, but like a different type of cuisine? Hmm. Well of course I would love to. God, that’s a hard question what would I love to try. That is a tough question. What would I love to try? Bird, you know bird cooked in broth. Of course, every culinary wants to try one of those but it’s just not nice. I’ve had foie gras. You know what I would love to try, real goose foie gras. But you know you get the duck foie gras in America. I’ve never had the real goose foie gras in France, never. Or, there is a region of lamb in the Normandy. It’s called the Normandy lamb. The lamb graze on the grass during low tide, and then at high tide the grass is saturated with salt water but then the tide goes down again and the lamb get to graze on the salt-rich grass. They are just saturated in salt and they actually become a little ditzy because the salt content is so high, but the flesh, and the meat, and the actual lamb itself is so delicious because of their diet is salt rich grass that it is absolutely phenomenal and it’s only in Normandy. Isn’t that neat? I read it about it and I always wanted to try it. Can you put that instead of foie gras?
What do you feel it is that will have Meat and Potatoes stand apart from other food shows?
Rahm: You know Food Network does love the travel shows. People love travel shows and travel shows are fun because you get to check out all the different stuff and everybody has meat. I think what I want to do is just separate it by giving it my own fun, charismatic flair to it. Making it different and educational, definitely tasty, and I want to surprise people. I want to surprise you. My goal is to make it be as different as possible by just being myself. By trying to make the show as different as possible. Does that make any sense? I went back and forth but I want to make it as fun as possible and I want everybody to watch it with me so I’ve gotta make it different.
You said that this show is educational, what do you want to teach your viewers?
Rahm: Maybe the history, I want to teach them you know different cutting methods, different braisng methods. Why we do this, why we don’t do this. Where our food comes from mainly. A lot of viewers see food you know meat. I don’t want to say meat constantly like meat, meat, meat. But a lot of culinarians and people that are buying food that is already butchered and it’s kind of like already in a cellophane package, maybe in a box. I want to get it from where this particular cut comes from and where this particular cut is used because as this animal uses this muscle a lot then you need to braise it. This muscle isn’t used at all and that’s why you need to cook it medium rare because it will dry up and be kind of taste less. That kind of stuff.
And you said you want to surprise your viewers, what kind of surprises would they have in store?
Rahm: You’re going to have to watch! No I could give you some hints. You know I dance with some ladies in Austin, Texas to some country music. We had this big feast at a place called Papa Cristo’s, a wonderful Greek restaurant where I belly danced a little bit, you know I went to salt cave at David Burke Steak House and saw for my first time a bacon candle. It’s a candle that is made out of bacon fat that you pour over the scallops. I rode a bull! I rode a mechanical bull. I could keep going on and on, but there’s not going to be any surprises of the show. I have really been put on the edge and I’ve really lived on the edge to make the show. People are like “Are you really going to do that?” Sure I am going to stuff this whole hamburger in my face and have fun with it who knows. The main thing is have fun, be myself, be spontaneous. If you want to ride the mechanical bull try to last eight seconds and I did it.
