Refreshing the Chug's Diner menu, Mario Cristobal's Miami homecoming, and gold chicken wings
Mike and Nick didn’t do any planning for this episode, so it’s all over the place. We talk about changes that are coming to the Chug’s Diner menu, Mario Cristobal’s being hired as the University of Miami’s football coach, boxing’s renaissance, golden chicken wings, what kind of lettuce belongs on sandwiches, and more.
In the Patreon-only extended cut: Mike takes lightning round questions and we talk monsters, pizza chains, hot PB&J, and Jacques Pepin’s fried eggs.
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Transcript
Michael Beltran: [00:00:00] I'm just listening. And one guy like, " know what, let me tell you. I was at this, I was at this place, this place, I paid 400 bucks for chicken wings. And he's like...
Nicolás Jiménez: you said, 400 for chicken wings?
Michael Beltran: 400 bucks, 400 bucks. And he was like, " you paid 400 bucks for chicken wings?" That's what he sounded like. And I was like, and I'm like, "Let me tell you... these chicken wings, these chicken wings. They take these chicken wings... they dip them in gold."
Are we actually recording already?
Nicolás Jiménez: Now we're recording. We may have to change the batteries a little bit.
Michael Beltran: Oh, this is the least shocking thing I've heard all fucking day.
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah, get ready.
Michael Beltran: I know that we're recording a podcast and I'm not totally completely sure about what.
Nicolás Jiménez: No. So to give people a little bit of context, we, um, we came into this episode expecting to have a guest, uh, for reasons that were outside of that, person's control.
Michael Beltran: Sure. Sweet person. Wait, you know,
Nicolás Jiménez: I never met him. Seems like.
Michael Beltran: He's the fucking best.
Nicolás Jiménez: He said it was an honor to have been invited.
Michael Beltran: That's a stretch.
Nicolás Jiménez: I was, I felt more honored to have him on.
Michael Beltran: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's a hard, no hard stretch. Yeah. And anyone would be honored to be on this fucking shit show.
Nicolás Jiménez: We're here now, uh, with no plan whatsoever.
Michael Beltran: Zero fucking plan.
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah. Um, so
think,
Michael Beltran: okay. I love it.
Nicolás Jiménez: I'm just going to shoot from the hip here.
Michael Beltran: Shocker.
Nicolás Jiménez: Just cause I'm, I'm thinking like what have we talked about recently. By the way, you're listening to Pan Con Podcast. I'm here with Michael Beltran. I am Nick Jimenez.
Michael Beltran: Right.
Nicolás Jiménez: This is the podcast, uh, that we do.
Michael Beltran: Podcast for the people.
Nicolás Jiménez: The podcast for the people as everyone calls it. Um, shout out to Monopolio for these beers. What does that, what does that shit say?
Michael Beltran: I don't know.
Nicolás Jiménez: What does that, what it, hold on. You gotta check it. Listen.
Michael Beltran: Fuck me. God damn. We can never, we can never do [00:02:00] this like normal, absolute fucking poop show.
Nicolás Jiménez: Thing that I was going to come out with just because we had discussed this somewhat recently.
Michael Beltran: Okay.
Nicolás Jiménez: I ate at Chug's. I didn't eat this, but I did want to discuss it further.
Michael Beltran: Sure.
Nicolás Jiménez: Chugs for those who are uninitiated as Michael, Beltran's uh Cuban American diner.
Michael Beltran: Wow. We did that together, huh?
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah.
Michael Beltran: Super cute.
Nicolás Jiménez: This is the cutest thing that's ever happened.
Michael Beltran: Right.
Nicolás Jiménez: So you recently posted a picture of a masita salad.
Michael Beltran: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Nicolás Jiménez: So it was striking to me.
Michael Beltran: Yeah, fuck us.
Nicolás Jiménez: Oh yeah. None of this matters.
Michael Beltran: None of it matters.
Ariete staff member: I was worried about the job
Michael Beltran: No. Yeah, I know. Fuck me. Right. The dog is really what matters. I mean, it's Peaty's show.
Nicolás Jiménez: Isn't it?
Michael Beltran: It is.
Nicolás Jiménez: So.
Michael Beltran: You want to, you want to ask me about like the, the masita salad.
Nicolás Jiménez: So my overweightness relates to the masita ... I saw the masita salad and I thought, listen, it's not like there are, you know, diet plans built around masita de puerco or pork belly, but this, it felt like, as I told you, it filled a little bit of a void.
Michael Beltran: Yeah. I'd say when you said that, it was kind of interesting to me. Like, I don't know what you mean by that.
Nicolás Jiménez: What I meant by that was that I think that there are not too many places that I personally can go on the Chug's menu for like straight protein and vegetables.
Michael Beltran: Sure. Yeah. So, you know, like, I think now we're at like the three and a half month mark. So it's time to start revisiting the menu and like, see what works, what doesn't work, what should evolve? What are we missing? What did we miss the mark on? And like overall, like, are we having enough fun with it? You know? And I don't, like, I think in some places we're not having enough fun with it. I think a lot of it's kind of like structured and I wouldn't say like boring.
Nicolás Jiménez: Oh baby.
Michael Beltran: Yeah. Tom. Oh yeah. Thanks Tom. You're the fucking man. What would I do without you? [00:04:00] We're not sponsored by them, so we gotta kick them out. Um, uh, yeah, get him another, get him another. I don't know what it is, but get him another, whatever the cheapest brown thing is. Yeah. Put it in red solo cup. Yeah, please.
So I think it's like, I think it's time to really like revisit the menu a little bit.
Nicolás Jiménez: Okay.
Michael Beltran: It's interesting. Cause I worked on the menu for like almost two years and we're four months in. It's like, all right, let's trash it. And let's start from scratch.
Nicolás Jiménez: You had almost from the beginning though, been talking about how you wanted to commit to it for roughly a quarter, right?
Michael Beltran: Yeah.
Nicolás Jiménez: So you're. About there or past there.
Michael Beltran: Yeah. And I think like really Chug's biggest struggle, and we've known it since the beginning, was going to be dinner, you know, like people go for breakfast and lunch. Cause that's what it was before. A lot of people don't know that it's open for dinner.
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah.
Michael Beltran: You know, I have some plans to address that overall as a company, but, um, I think starting with the food is like number one. So anyone who's from south Florida, I think is pretty familiar with Yakko-San and Yakko-San does like a crispy pork salad. Uh, they do a crispy fish salad too. And this is kind of like a, this is like the least Cuban thing on the menu. I would say. I mean, other than the like meatloaf and like the pancake, which aren't very Cuban either. You know, this is like an homage to that fucking crispy pork salad. It's got like a fish sauce, little, um, red onions tomatoes, uh, frisee, bunch of herbs, lots of acid. It's delicious, super easy. Um, I don't know. And I think we're going to start exploring other things like will a tuna melt sell? Should we have it to the melt?
Uh, we've already like gotten rid of a couple of things. It's like, people are kind of like pining for the old medianoche, which is shocker because when it was on the menu, not a lot of people ordered it. So the fact that I hear a lot of like, where's the medianoche? Where's the medianoche? I'm like, I don't know. That's [00:06:00] fucking weird because when we had it, like maybe we sold just a couple a day, you know, so, but it's, it's just revisiting and it's like refreshing and it's like, where can we be better? And where can we improve?
And like, I don't know for me too, I want the chefs there to have a good time and have fun with it. The ones that actually give a fuck, uh, which I would say the majority of them there do and you know, how can we just continue to be an interesting, fun place to eat.
Nicolás Jiménez: I wonder whether do you think that the, and I'm not saying this just because it's called a medianoche, but do you think that people asking about the medianoche, is related to it being more of a dinner spot now, like maybe people for whatever reason want medianoches later in the day.
Michael Beltran: I don't know. I mean, are you a medianoche eater?
Nicolás Jiménez: I can't remember the last time I had one.
Michael Beltran: I would say that it's my favorite sandwich. I never order it because it's super indulgent and it's like super rich. But, um, I it's my favorite sandwich and I'll eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah. Why don't you tell people what a medianoche is, for those in Salina, Kansas.
Michael Beltran: It's really just a Cuban sandwich, but with different bread. Essentially it's just like a really sweet buttery potato bread, but it's, you know, we cook it in that like loaf form, but the makeup of it is ham roast, pork, Swiss, pickles, mustard. If you want to get sassy, put a little mayo in there.
Nicolás Jiménez: If you want to get sassy.
Michael Beltran: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It's, it's really just a Cuban sandwich with bread.
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah.
Michael Beltran: I think it's superior than a Cuban sandwich. But like...
Nicolás Jiménez: I'm not a Cuban sandwich person, period.
Michael Beltran: Me either.
Nicolás Jiménez: I'm, I'm not a pickle and mustard person. That's my issue.
Michael Beltran: Whoa. You're not a pickle person?
Nicolás Jiménez: Nope. Not at all. Really. Don't like pickles. I'll eat them if I'm trying to be polite to somebody, but I'll never opt for pickles. Or like if somebody tells me in the lead up to my ordering a thing, "the pickles are really important to how I see this sandwich." I'll leave them on there just to experience it the way they wanted it the first time. But I've never enjoyed a pickle.
Michael Beltran: Man. And I love pickles. Yeah. All [00:08:00] kinds of pickles.
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's other things I do like that you don't like.
Michael Beltran: Like what?
Nicolás Jiménez: I prefer for my lettuce, not to be shredded.
Michael Beltran: In a burger?
Nicolás Jiménez: On any sandwich.
Michael Beltran: But why?
Nicolás Jiménez: Um, I it's a texture thing. I like the one big solid crunch. Now, if it's like shitty wilted lettuce. Yeah. I'll take like nice shredded lettuce over, but I think it's tough to be that like impact and even like the sound of that like center or whatever of like a nice thick piece of lettuce, whether it's a burger or a ...maybe, but I mean, you know, unless how many burgers look really fucking
Michael Beltran: Chug burger looks put together.
Nicolás Jiménez: Yeah. I guess. But you know.