Eli Sussman: The man behind the memes

By Brian Braiker

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The phenomenon of chefs-as-influencers is hardly new. You could track it at least as far back as when Julia Child debuted on television in 1963. (She was already 51 by the way.)

These days, on social media, they are a legion. You can’t open your apps without seeing some quick-cut video of a chef prepping one of their dishes or of David Chang microwaving something. But there really is only one Eli Sussman. A meme lord, a cookbook writer, a very funny guy, and a restaurateur with a few big hits under his belt, notably the contemporary Middle Eastern Samesa and Gertrude’s, a Jew-ish style diner in Prospect Heights about to celebrate its one-year anniversary. It’s very good.

“Neighborhood vibes,” he says of Gertrude’s. “I’m thrilled and proud and excited of what we’ve been able to do in the first year. And hopefully things will continue to be smooth and even out going into year two. It’s still hard.”

I first became aware of Sussman over a year ago, before he opened Gertrude’s with partners Nate Adler and Rachel Jackson. His Instagram account (where he has amassed some 79,200 followers) is chock-a-block with hilarious, if-you-know-you-know service industry in-jokes. There’s satire, and of course there are the memes. He goes out of his way to skewer more famous restaurateurs.

“I’m punching up if I’m going after the Daniel Humms, Keith McNallys, Grant Achatzs of the world,” he says. “These guys are huge. They’re world-famous. I hope that they can take it.”

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And now, he’s also launched a new video interview show called “Talkin’ In The Walk-In,” where he chats with his contemporaries inside restaurant coolers.

On the eve of Gertrude’s one-year anniversary, the man behind the memes joins us on “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast” to discuss the past year, his viral micro-fame and his own background growing up in the Midwest. We talk about culinary trends and his pet peeves about customers — and “The Bear.” And he gives us a personalized food tour of Brooklyn and beyond.

The following is a transcript of our conversation, which airs as an episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast,” edited for clarity. Listen in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.

So it’s 11 o’clock on a Monday. You’re not at either of your spots, are you? What’s your morning routine? Is Monday day off?
No, I stayed home today so that I could record with you at this time. Normally, I would be at the restaurant already. A normal routine for me: I wake up and then I get my oldest son off to school. I come home, I wake up my second son, get breakfast going for him and my wife. Then, I am usually out the door by 9:30 and I get to the restaurant and start working through my day at the restaurant.

So, you have to cook before you have to cook? You have to make breakfast for your family on top of everything?
I do a good amount of snack packs and morning eggs. It’s not very rigorous. But my wife does literally everything else because I am unfortunately at work all day long. So, I do a little bit of dad stuff in the morning and then I’m off. And I unfortunately usually don’t return until everyone is asleep.

Are your kids good eaters?
The younger one is a good eater. And he is still in the adventurous phase of being a very young kid. He’s 1-and-a-half. The 3-and-a-half year old is starting to get a little picky, figuring out things that he does and does not like. He loves coming to Gertrude’s and he only eats the exact same thing every single time. The younger one will try all different things off the menu. So, it’s a bit of a blend.

I’ve been wanting to get you on the podcast since right around when Gertrude’s opened. Been obsessed with your Instagram account, specifically the memes, as have a lot of people. About a year in, how does it feel operationally? Have you hit your groove? Are there still speed bumps along the way? Are you in a good place?
Well, it’s a restaurant, so there’s always going to be difficulties and challenges on a day-to-day basis. And anyone who works in a restaurant understands what those will be. That’s staffing, equipment, customers, things that are sort of a never-ending aspect of the hospitality business. There are ups and downs. As far as settling into being a neighborhood restaurant, I think that we are finding our groove. We’re coming right up on our one-year anniversary. We’re having a party on June 17th. But technically we did friends and family last year on the 23rd and 24th, so we’re very, very close to one year in. A lot of things are working really well, so I’m thrilled and proud and excited of what we’ve been able to do in the first year. And hopefully things will continue to be smooth and even out going into year two. It’s still hard.

What was the biggest surprise or surprising challenge that you’ve run into?
We’ve had a positive challenge and then there’s some negative challenges. The positive challenge is that it’s actually been consistently busier than we had modeled or anticipated. That’s a nice little humblebrag to kick off the show. But the truth is that we had hoped that people would come and that we would be a successful restaurant. We opened up for brunch and it has been really busy. And during the week, we have really wonderful, pretty full, robust dinner services. That’s an awesome problem to have. But what it means is that you need a lot of staff. And the staff works incredibly hard and they get tired. And you need to prep everything every day. And it’s just a lot of human hours go into making the restaurant go ‘round. There is so much behind the scenes that happens before somebody comes in and sits down in a seat. It’s a big operation.

Do you think you can attribute some of that or any of that demand or success to your internet following or your internet popularity or is it completely divorced? You’re shaking your head.
Not at all. I don’t see a direct correlation. I mean, is there very small percentage of people that know me as either the chef and owner of Samesa or from one of my previous jobs or a restaurant that I’ve run? Sure, a couple, a smattering here and there. The vast majority of people that come in, they live in the neighborhood. And I don’t think they’re really concerned or knowledgeable about who owns the place or runs it.

Most normal people aren’t.
Yeah. They’re just like, “I read about it online and I heard it’s a good restaurant,” or, “It’s in close proximity to my house.” And then, word of mouth is really what carries us. I think that that’s the most important thing. Sure, chef figurehead or an owner that is very forward-facing can be a positive benefit. But at a certain point, you just settle in to being the restaurant.

It was billed as Jew-ish comfort food from day one. I think you guys nailed it.
Exactly. Neighborhood vibes.

I reached out to you most recently because I followed the collab you just wrapped with Baldor, which is kind of hilarious and cool. I was at OurHaus in Red Hook, formerly GrindHaus, and the chef there had one of your “Peak Season” hats on, and I felt like I was in on a joke almost. For the listener, explain what Baldor is and the outsized role it plays, yet under the radar, for diners. And then, we can talk about the collab, which I think is great.
Baldor is a distributor. And you’ve probably seen their trucks all around town. They have these black-and-white trucks that are often parked outside of the restaurant or on the side of a street. Like any other food distributor, they stock thousands of products and restaurants order from them. They’re higher-end than some. There’s the Ciscos of the world and the U.S. Foods. Anyways, Baldor approached me.

They approached you? Interesting. 
So, I make fun of Baldor. I have used them at multiple establishments. Other vendors as well, but Baldor is who we get the most percentage of our products from. And so, I mock them a lot. For various things. The driver is late, they leave things off my order. Their whole website crashed like a year ago. And that’s what I do on the internet. I make memes about the hospitality industry. There was some low-hanging fruit there and I plucked that Baldor low-hanging fruit off the branch.They approached me and said, “We’d love to do a merch collab with you.” And I at first thought like, “Oh, they’re inviting me into the lion’s den to destroy me.”

To slaughter you.
Like that scene in “Goodfellas.” He walks in, he thinks he’s getting made and the whole room is covered in plastic. I thought, “What’s the motive here?” And basically how it came to fruition was, “We’re a little bit stale.” I don’t know how to say it in any other way. They were like, “We don’t really have much cachet. We’re just this company that people order from, but we don’t have a good relationship with them. We’re not really speaking to them.”

They’re not “cool.”
“And you speak to the chefs and line cooks and baristas and servers of the world. We want to get in front of them. How do we do that?” So, we came up with this merch collab idea. I came up with ideas. They have a designer in-house. We went rounds back and forth, and we made some merch. I’ve been seeing people wearing it. And it is pretty fucking cool to come up with an idea for a T-shirt and cross your fingers that maybe someone will think that this T-shirt is cool, and then a lot of people bought them. So that was an incredible experience, for me to use my Instagram to try to develop a product and a relationship and then promote it. It wasn’t something that I had really ever done before.

Did you make money off of it? You don’t have to say how much, but was it worth your while?
I was compensated for my time.

I think it’s funny that Baldor has an in-house designer. I can’t imagine someone going to design school and wanting to be in-house at a food supply company.
They are huge. They have several hundred employees. They put 300 trucks on the road every day. And someone’s got to design the email blasts and the website and stuff. He absolutely did an incredible job with everything. But for my money, the best piece of merch is the black T-shirt that has all the product on it. It’s in the ’90s hip-hop. Some people call it girlfriend T-shirt. The glowing hip-hop T-shirt that has five different pictures of a rapper and then it has this shiny rapper’s name going across the top of it. That shirt I think is just phenomenal. I love it. I wear it all the time. I’m very proud of the merch that we designed.

They came to you because of the strength of your Instagram account, @thesussmans, which is very funny. I don’t work in the industry. A lot of my friends do. When I get a joke, I feel like I’m on the inside, which I guess is the point. But you pull no punches, you take no prisoners. Have you gotten into any trouble with any lawyers with the Keith McNallys of the world or the Thomas Kellers who you poke fun of?
I don’t actually even know if I am on Keith’s radar. I assume not. He seems like kind of a scary psychopath.

He’s been super unhinged lately.
I’d like to remain sort of out of his line of fire, but I do rip on Keith because he really is just unfiltered on his Instagram. I feel like I’m punching up if I’m going after the Daniel Humms, Keith McNallys, Grant Achatzs of the world. These guys are huge. They’re world-famous. I hope that they can take it. Did I get a little back channeling from someone in the TK camp that maybe they weren’t that happy about it? Yeah, I did hear a little smattering of murmuring to lay off a little bit. But I think that it all is generally in good fun. I don’t think it’s actually that malicious. And if you are that big and that famous and that wealthy, I think that you should be okay with someone poking at you on the internet. You should be able to have a little bit of fun with yourself. René Redzepi told me that he thinks it’s funny.He’s DMd me many times when I’ve made fun of him. He has a good sense of humor. Say what you will about all of his business practices and all the negativity surrounding labor practices and hiring at Noma, but at least he can have a little bit of humor when someone pokes fun at him on the internet.

That’s an interesting insight. And I like that you frame it as punching up because that’s exactly what it feels like.
I’m not going to make fun of some random direct line cook that either worked for me or that I know. That’s just cruel. I’m only going to make fun of people that are either at my level or above. At least that’s how I view it.

And some of them are just jokey insider jokes or making fun of line cooks in general or customers in general. But now you’ve launched “Talkin’ In The Walk-In.” The first full episode dropped a couple of weeks ago with Jackie Carnesi, formerly of Nura, super lovely human. You just did one with Chef Luis Herrera. Is there a specific goal for this? Basically, you’re going these walk-in refrigerators in their kitchens? Or yours? And you’re interviewing them.
I go to their restaurant and then I interview them inside of their walk-in. The idea really came about because the two words rhyme and I couldn’t let someone else have this intellectual property that I think has tremendous upside. I love the idea of speaking to chefs, speaking to people within the industry about their personal specific experiences. I had a podcast on Heritage Radio Network for years, and I did about 150 episodes. Moving more into video was the natural progression. And I love the idea of just the closed space allows you to have a nice, intimate discussion. The constraints there are that it’s cold and that you are in sort of an awkward close proximity to each other. Not that there’s anything wrong with a podcast or Zooming, but being in-person with someone, I think it just changes the experience and the dynamic a little bit.

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I love “Hot Ones.” It’s such a great interview show. And it’s just him sitting across the table from people eating hot wings. And I thought, “What if I just stand with people and pepper them with questions? Could I get some insider baseball insight?” And I think what we’ve been able to do with the first two episodes is provide a good blend between fun and insightful and deep hospitality and chef moments that are going to be appealing to people within the industry, but also someone who just says, “Oh, cool, I like food and I’ve been to one of these people’s restaurants,” or, “I haven’t been yet.” They can watch the episode and they’ll think it’s interesting as well.

Is it sponsored? Is it the goal to get it sponsored? Or is it just for shits and giggles?
I would love to turn it into something that I can do long term, and so I’m definitely looking for sponsors for a season two. I would love to take it to other cities. I’m already getting a lot of DMs from people that say, “Oh my God, I would love to be a guest. I’m in San Antonio. I’m in Atlanta.” Everybody wants me to come to their city and do a “Talkin’ In The Walk-In.” I would love to. I can’t really afford to do that with someone coming on board to sponsor. I did have a clothing brand called EG send me some stuff from L.A. that’s sustainable made clothing. That is so dope. And I wear that in some of the episodes. And then, my friend owns White Bark Workwear, which is the aprons that I wear at work. They’ve graciously supplied aprons for every single guest and some of my clothing as well. It’s been a DIY. I made a deck. I tried to make sure that the chefs could get compensated, and they do. I give each chef a little honorarium for taking their time. They get an apron. And I’d love to do another season. I think that it has legs for sure.

You’re also doing something called “Expo Wars” coming up. What is that and where do you find the time?
Well, “Expo Wars” was an April Fools prank. So, that’s not real.

Did people buy it? Because I just saw it and I was like, “Is this a trailer?” I think I saw it after April, so I’m forgiving myself for not getting it.
I’m still hooking people with that one. That’s the beauty and the terror of stuff being on the internet: It lives on for forever. But basically, I know Andrew Zimmern well enough to ask him for one favor, which I used on Expo Wars. And I said, “Look, you’re really fucking famous and you’re going to sell this. If I just make it, people are going to shrug their shoulders. If you are in it, people are going to think that this is real.” And he said, “Yeah, I’m in.” Immediately, he was down. He’s a funny, funny guy. And he also has a really good sense of humor about himself. I’ve made fun of him before. And he was just like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” Basically, we filmed a fake trailer for a brand new cooking show, “Expo Wars,” which is a no-cooking cooking competition.

It was so ridiculous that I thought maybe it could be true.
I’m dying to make this show. I have to be honest with you. I would like nothing more than Food Network to be like, “You know what? We do need some counter programming to all the same that we put out there every single year, year after year.” And so, it would just be someone taking inventory as fast as they possibly, can and then reorganizing the spice rack as fast as they can, and calling the most convoluted ticket rail that possibly ever existed. You know the iconic “Bear” scene when they leave the printer on and he’s like, “Fire 35 chickens”? That mentality of just someone standing at an expo, but no food is being made and they’re just screaming the tickets out. What joy would that bring to me to have that be a real show on TV?

You mentioned “The Bear.” Obviously, huge fan base. Do you like it? Does it feel accurate-ish? Or, do you have problems with it? Or, all of the above?
All the above. I love it as a television watcher. I don’t feel the same anxiety watching it that a lot of people do. I think there’s some cathartic elements of it where it’s like, “Oh yeah, they did really nail that. I have felt that before.” It does feel a bit like they’ve consolidated 20 years worth of insanity into a very short period of time. I’m not sure all of those things always happen at every restaurant. There was a Saturday morning at Gertrude’s where I got a phone call at 7 in the morning and the grease trap was overflowing, the water heater had turned off, and two people hadn’t shown up yet, and our entire delivery was delayed by four hours because the truck broke down. So it’s like, “Okay, this is a horrible, terrible day for a restaurant.” So, those things do occur and there is a general psychotic manic energy that exists in restaurants.

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Because of the people who work there? And the job itself?
Yeah, of course. And just the nature of the business. You work so hard all day and then you finish the day and you look at the backend and you’re like, “Oh my God, we made $162 of profit today. All of that for that?” I do like the show. I think the acting is phenomenal. Matty Matheson [who plays Neil Fak on “The Bear”] is just the coolest dude. And the fact that he’s involved as an executive producer gives it a lot of credibility. I wonder if people in the industry would like it as much if Matty wasn’t involved.

Was he super well known before the show debuted? I’m not in that world and I had not heard of him, and then I realized he was a chef.
I feel like he was. He did a lot of videos online. And he was already kind of a popular Instagram person because he had this YouTube show. He’s just a likable guy. So, I followed him. And then I saw him starting to post about it cryptically, and then I saw a table read. I just thought that maybe he was making a movie about his life or whatever. But then once we started seeing what it was, and I’m from the Midwest, I’m into it for sure. I get the criticism of it as well. But is there anything that you can possibly do that a bunch of hospitality people aren’t also going to talk shit about? We are a catty, sassy, exclusive bunch, and we love to build each other up while simultaneously tearing each other down. So, that is par for the course with people that work in the hospitality industry.

Working in the media, I’m not familiar with that dynamic at all.
Media people are the exact same. They’re like, “Oh my God, great article. I loved it so much.” And then they turn their back to, “That person is a terrible writer.” It’s the exact same in hospitality. They’ll say like, “Oh my god, you got nominated for a James Beard. That’s so amazing for you.” And then two seconds later, you text your friend, you’re like, “They’re a fucking hack.”

“Their food is dogshit.”
Food is dogshit. “I went and let me tell you, it is terrible.” That is how people are.

You said you grew up in the Midwest. You’re from Detroit originally?
Suburbs outside of Detroit, yeah.

Were you a creative kid, media savvy? Because you’re obviously creative, not just in the kitchen, but online. You’ve got a brain that wants to make things. Was that always the case?
My mom would say that that’s the case. She’s a professional artist, and she’s a printmaker, and she has taught printmaking at a very high level, and has a lot of her work in museums and collections. We grew up in a house where her studio was in our house. We had printing presses in our house. And I used to sit on the floor of her studio and draw and hang out in there. She would give me a bunch of pieces of paper and we would make collages. A lot of that wore off on me. And we were the type of house that there was a lot of books around and we were always allowed to watch lots and lots of movies. That led to me wanting to be involved in creative things. And I came to cooking in a bit of a roundabout manner. But yeah, I think that folks would say probably that I was trying to be creative when I was growing up. I often was trying to be class clown. I like to crack jokes. I’ve always been a big talker.

You sort of alluded to this: You didn’t initially set out to be a chef. You went into the music industry in some way, or you wanted to be in the music industry initially, right?
I did, yeah. I thought I was going to work as a manager for bands. That seemed like the move to me. I did some internships at record labels in L.A. And then I ended up getting a job at an agency that represented all the record labels. So my original job out of college, I was an assistant in the radio department at this creative agency. And I wrote copy for radio ads and I also did guerrilla marketing things on the ground for various record releases. I was just like, “Oh my God, I live in LA. I get to go to shows for free all the time. This is the dream come true.” But then the food world just kept gnawing at me in the back of my mind. And I was cooking more and more at night and on the weekends and just thinking about doing it professionally. And my brother was doing it professionally in New York, and that is how I ended up coming to New York.

He recruited you? Was it Mile End, was your first real kitchen job? Was he involved in that as well?
No, he wasn’t. At that point, he was working at the Breslin at the Ace Hotel. And he basically said, “You should come to New York City. You are being so annoying asking me over and over if you should be a line cook.” And he said, “Just come here, crash my floor. I’ll get you some trails.” And I had a couple trails that he set up. I don’t even know if I knew what a trail was.

What is a trail?
It’s basically like a tryout. You go in for a couple of hours, you don’t get paid. Well, I hope now you do. I pay trails. But you go in, you work. And then if you do a good job, they offer you a prep position or a line cook position. So, Mile End was my first scheduled trail. Spoke to me in a very deep way. And they offered me a job. I’m pretty sure that I started the very next day.

You and your brother start writing cookbooks. You have a voice, you have a sensibility. How was that experience for you?
I loved writing cookbooks. I hope that one day I’ll be given the opportunity to do it again. It was cool. We were so much in the right place at the right time. And it had a lot to do with where we were working and the fact that we were brothers. There was just a marketable entity there, which was, “Look at these bearded hipster bros that live in Williamsburg.” And at that point, my brother was the chef of Roberta’s and I was still a line cook at Mile End. That was two super hot entities that were very much doing the things that everyone was crazy about at that time, 2011, 2012. We’re making pizza and pickles and smoking meat. And everyone in the world was like, “I want to make my own pickles. I want to learn how to make pizza.” So, they sort of tapped into us.

William Sonoma came to us and said, “We want to market ourself and our product to a younger generation. Can we utilize you as these avatars to connect with that audience?” Which is just how influencing works. These companies have a product and they want to sell it, and they find people that can generally connect with their audience. So, we wrote some cookbooks. I personally think that they’re all excellent cookbooks, that they are very usable cookbooks, which I think many cookbooks are not. These are not coffee table cookbooks. These are meant to get stained. I’m very proud of them. The first one sold really, really well. The second two, not so much. It’s really challenging to write a cookbook, and it’s incredibly challenging to write a cookbook while you work full-time at a restaurant. My brother and I just banged them out. We wrote three of them in four years.

They are great. And not only that, but you and Max opened Samesa in 2015. Talk about owning a place as opposed to working in one.
I definitely opened Samesa too soon. I should have worked at more places. That would be one of my major regrets. It’s not as fun to own something as you might think. And once the shininess of being able to make the whole menu and not have anyone check you, and you’re like, “Oh my God, I want to do this. Oh, I can do it. I’m the owner. Oh, I can paint this room any color I want. I can make the marketing materials look anyway I want.” Once all of that wears off, you have to operate it, and run it day-to-day, and deal with payroll and insurance and lawyers and everything. And it unfortunately stops being a creative endeavor, and then you just turn into basically a business person and an entrepreneur. And a lot of that is not fun. A lot of that is incredibly grinding and challenging. I’m not sure I really thought that through as clearly as I should have. I was really young when we opened Samesa. I think I was 27, 28, 29, something like that. I’m bad at math.
But it had a really good run. And we had it open in several locations. At one point, we had three of them. The pandemic happened. That kind of chopped our legs out from under us. And we ended up moving it to Rockefeller Center. And it was there for several years as a resurgence of Rockefeller Center, and then I very recently just closed it at Rockefeller Center.

It’s true that Rock Center has had a real resurgence. They’ve got a lot of high-end stuff opening there. Would you eat there or is it too Rockefeller Center-y?
I mean, I ate there every day for two years when I worked at Samesa. I have to be honest with you, it’s a very challenging exercise what they’re engaging. There’s a lot of boulders being rolled up a hill over there, and I was very much part of that. I’ll give you my PC, safe answer, which is that I really am so proud that they came to Samesa and thought that we were a dope brand that they wanted to open inside of Rockefeller Center. They gave us an opportunity to open there and that was cool. I will always relish that opportunity. It’ll be like a feather in my hat.

It’s just, the people didn’t come back to work. And then there was a writer’s strike. And it never really materialized in the way that we were told it would or that I envisioned it. From my perspective, I thought that that would be my business card to getting a finance person to walk by and be like, “Let’s open up 10 of these. Samesa is an incredible concept and you have everything dialed in.” Really what it ended up being was, we were just another spot in a food court.

It’s a high-end food court. It’s a client meeting spot. People are passing through. Are you good with spreadsheets? You mentioned that you made a deck.
I’ve been backed into having to do so many things that I am not good at, and one of those is Excel documents. I don’t really want to do them, but it is such a big part of the business to try to stay organized. I’m on a computer a lot and I wish that I wasn’t. But the truth is that, the instant that you make the turn from being a sous chef/CDC to being an owner, your computer time goes from several hours a week to vast majority of your life. I still expo quite a bit and I’m on the line and I’m involved in the day-to-day prep at the restaurant still. Because I love it. I love being around the cooks and being part of the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, of being involved in the restaurant. That’s what’s appealing to me. I like working with my hands. I like blasting the music and shooting the shit in the basement during prep. I really don’t want to be doing reconciliation of invoicing, but that is a part of the gig. I did sign up for that when I became a partner in a business. That stuff sucks and I hate it, but what can you do? Every part of every job is not awesome.

All right. Food tour of Brooklyn. Someone’s in town for the first time, they have a couple of days. What are the must-stop spots? Other than yours, of course.
Right off the top of my head, I am definitely taking them to Red Hook. If they have a couple of days, I’m going to Red Hook and I’m taking them to Hometown BBQ. I love Billy [Durney] and I think he’s a cool-ass dude and has a great story. They made it through the huge flood and then they opened and the food’s really good. I feel like that is a quintessential New York, Brooklyn experience to go down there. Then you go to Sunny’s. And then maybe you watch the sunset over the Statue of Liberty. That’s kind of my off-the-beaten-path touristy activity that I like to take people to do.

I think that it’s fun to walk around Williamsburg. I know that it’s so touristy, but I still think if someone’s in town for a couple of days, you just have to show them Williamsburg and go to the waterfront and spend time. And there’s a hundred places that you could eat there, but I’m probably taking them for oysters at Maison Premiere. If we’re sticking to the touristy stuff that you’re in town for, I’m also probably taking them to Anthony & Son Panini Shoppe, which is a place that I’ve frequented a thousand times and I love. It feels like a very Brooklyn experience to me with the blend of firefighters and old local Italian people in Williamsburg and then hipster people that are hungover and getting their sandwich. I’m taking them to Gertrude’s in Prospect Heights obviously.

I’m probably going to go to Bushwick. I feel like you’ve got to go to a bar in Bushwick to see what that scene is like. The Narrows, Pearl’s, places that I used to go seven, eight years ago. I think you’ve got to swing by the backyard at Roberta’s and get a piece of pizza. These are the quintessential touristy things, but I think that that’s what you do when people are visiting and they only have a couple of days. How did I do? Did I do all right?

You did. You nailed it.
I feel like in an hour I’m going to want to revise my answer and I definitely missed something. Oh, no! I’m taking them to Sunset Park and I’m getting them a bahn mi in Sunset Park. You put me on the spot and I panicked.

You handled it wonderfully. Grace under pressure. Having grown up in the Midwest and we’re talking about food, do you find the pizza debate, the Detroit versus Chicago versus New York, do you find that super tedious?
I do. But I am the wrong person to ask. I’m totally biased because I’m lactose intolerant, which means that I am not a pizza connoisseur. There’s definitely terrible pizza out there. That is for sure. But I think that even medium pizza is so good and I’m so satisfied with it.

And also, if you’ll make me a pizza that has meat and either vegan cheese or no cheese on it, I thank you for your service. There are a lot of pizza places that I love that will cater to me. I think Leo is super delicious pizza. I’m really down with them. My brother says that, for his money, L’Industrie is the best pizza place in New York. And he always hits that when he comes to visit. He’s been out of New York now for four or five years. When people come to New York and they say, “Where do I need to eat pizza?” I tell them, “If you want to wait in line for a super long time, you should go to Lucali.” Because everybody tells me that Lucali is amazing. I’ve never eaten there. I also send people to L’Industrie, because my brother is the biggest pizza snob that ever lived, and he says that it’s awesome, and I trust his opinion on it. As far as Detroit goes, I don’t like Detroit style pizza. And I’m going to get murdered when I go home for that, but—

I’m not a huge fan.
I like New York and Neapolitan style pizza. I want a thinner, crispier, more refined piece of pizza than just a massive deep dish glob of dough and cheese, and it’s just wet and soggy. I’m not down.

Carbs. I’m with you. I’ve only been to Lucali in Miami. I’ve never been here because of the aforementioned lines, but there you can get right in.
We don’t know the right people to get into Lucali.

I’ve got to call Jay-Z. I love your take on the industry and your jokes about the industry. There’s a guy that I’ve discovered recently, an Australian guy. He does this Instagram thing called Hospo Heads. It’s funny. It mocks clueless diners in a really smart way. People who don’t understand etiquette, the rules of engagement, that sort of thing. What’s the biggest thing that diners do that irritate you?
Probably when they do not know what they want at all. And so then, a server tries to point them in the right direction. They welcome that and then they are disappointed about the direction that they’ve been led. You either need to make the direction yourself or if you’re going to put yourself in someone else’s hands, I feel like you have to be content with the way that they’ve directed you. They’re always like, “Oh, I like everything. Tell me what I should order.” And then their food comes out and they’re like, “Oh, but I don’t really like garlic. Oh, I don’t eat onion.” It’s like, “Come on. You should have told us that at the front end when we had our first interaction.” Generally, diners don’t read the menu and they are really excited to get the food in front of them, and then a lot of them are really excited to then complain about what is in front of them.

I think you’re talking about my parents specifically. Anything you want to add?
You can find “Talkin’ In The Walk-In” on Instagram. It’s also on YouTube. And if you follow @thesussmans for the memes, I’m always cross-posting and trying to toot my own horn about the show. So if you don’t follow me yet and you want really awesome memes about restaurants and customers, you should do that. And you should watch the show because the chefs are amazing, and I’m trying to really hype them and their restaurants up, and they deserve that.

Check out this episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast” for more. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.