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ANTHONY STRONG: Ironically, I'm at my happiest when I show
up here at the crack of dawn after leaving work at 1:00,
1:30 in the morning.
And I'm in the kitchen and I'm surrounding by all my cooks
and all the food.
And we have a list a mile long to get through, problems,
around every corner.
It is so much fun to attack something like that.
It's such a beautiful process.
My name is Anthony Strong.
I'm the executive chef for Locanda Osteria and Bar, in
San Francisco, in the Mission.
I guess my interest in food started when I was a kid
growing up in Iowa.
And I'd weed my grandmother's tomato garden.
And then she'd make me BLTs with bacon made at the Dubuque
meat packing company nearby, where the whole family worked
at some point.
I moved to New York, worked at Le Bernardin, and then moved
out here because I just really, really wanted to cook
in San Francisco.
I just fell in love with it.
It was exactly everything I was looking for.
As a cook, I think it's important to have a certain
set of parameters that are guiding your cooking.
We're trying to give a Roman restaurant and food experience
through the lens of the Bay Area--
slightly interpreting dishes, but really making it feel
Roman to the core.
Last night, we went out to Lers Ros, which is my favorite
Thai food in the city.
Do want to meet us there, or should I swing by
and pick you up?
My conundrum with Lers Ros is that the menu is so huge, and
I haven't been able to dig all of the way through it yet
because I keep finding favorite dishes that I want to
order over and over and over.
Sweet.
So far, we've got deep-fried quail in garlic sauce.
We've got grilled pork shoulder, and we've got
chilled duck salad with lime and peppercorn dressing.
And spicy and sour soup soup, with pork spare ribs.
KAREN ROGERS: No.
ANTHONY STRONG: This is so good.
And they chopped the thing up, deep fried it.
KAREN ROGERS: And we're all having some of it, right?
ANTHONY STRONG: Oh, yeah.
KAREN ROGERS: This one.
ANTHONY STRONG: Guys, I'd like to introduce
everybody to Caleb.
[LAUGHTER]
ANTHONY STRONG: Caleb is the gentlemen lovingly drinking
soup broth out of the spoon.
CALEB ZIGAS: This is awesome.
ANTHONY STRONG: Caleb runs La Cocina.
They are some of the biggest heroes of
the local food scene.
It's a non-profit business incubator, basically, geared
towards Mexican women.
And basically, they start food businesses with their clients,
rent out kitchen space, and give them all the guidance and
infrastructure and assistance that they need to start their
cookie shop, taco truck, restaurant, catering business.
La Cocina has given birth to so many
businesses in the Bay Area.
And they are very important to us.
CALEB ZIGAS: San Francisco has a customer base that wants
that kind of authentic food.
And that we've been lucky enough to find really
talented, driven women who can bring that kind of food in a
way that people want.
So, I think San Francisco's a place for it to start.
I think it has a lot of meaning here.
And I think there are other places where it would make a
lot of sense, too.
ANTHONY STRONG: And they're some of the best
cooks I've ever met--
CALEB ZIGAS: The best.
ANTHONY STRONG: --in my life.
We are going to Suppenkuche, the most badass German food
and beer in the city.
The one thing that I miss about New York, and I crave in
San Francisco, is late-night dining.
I love late-night dining scenes.
I love having a bunch of cooks, restaurant people, from
around the city coming in and digging the food and drinking
and having a good time.
So we've got weinerschnitzel and roasted potatoes.
And then over here, we've got jaegerschnitzel, which is a
weinerschnitzel covered in mushroom gravy with spaetzle.
We have this, which is already kind of destroyed.
It's their house-made pretzle, with this insanely dense
cheese stuff.
I don't really know what that is.
But it's absolutely incredible with beer, sausages and mash,
and grilled lamb chops.
RUSSEL OLSON: [INAUDIBLE]
ANTHONY STRONG: Thank you, sir.
ANTHONY STRONG: Now say "prost" and make eye contact.
KAREN ROGERS: Prost.
ANTHONY STRONG: Prost
ASHLEY BELLVIEW: Prost.
MALE SPEAKER 1: Prost.
MALE SPEAKER 2: Prost.
ANTHONY STRONG: I love San Francisco.
It's a great place to be a cook.
I love it.
We just basically survive on vegetables and hippy love.
We have drum circles pretty much every night.
ZACK SWELME: We have to before a service.
ANTHONY STRONG: And that's what San Francisco
is really all about.
It's great.
What I love about being a cook in San Francisco is that
there's such a great democratization of the food
culture here, and the food community.
You're able to get an insane tasting menu, beautifully,
beautifully prepared multi-course dinners, and then
you can walk two blocks away and get one of the best tacos
of your life for $2, or a burrito that's the size of
your arm, and it is absolutely delicious, and made by people
who are loving what they do.
We're going to Locanda, in the Mission, the restaurant that,
apparently, I run.
We're going to make BLTs because I want a BLT.
Is that cool?
Hey, welcome to Locanda.
KAREN ROGERS: [LAUGH]
ANTHONY STRONG: BLTs a la Locanda.
Being a kid from the Midwest and a very working-class
background, I've never really believed in
anything like luck.
It's always been very important to me from the start
to pound the pavement and pay dues.
And I've always believed that the harder you work, the more
luck you have.
Create your own luck.
In the restaurant and cooking world, it's cool that there's
space for so many of us.
And we can all be so different.
I love the fact that there are people that are great at being
on TV, and looking and talking great, and shooting from the
hip with the question and answer thing.
And I love and respect those people.
And I also am really appreciative of the fact that
there's space for guys like me that are just really good at
getting underneath the dishwasher during a Friday
night service and fixing it.
[LAUGH]
I'm definitely invigorated by how competitive and ruthless
the restaurant industry is, and how tough it is to make a
plate of pasta happen on somebody's plate.
And then how tough it is to make a buck on it.
It's a blast.
It's a constant challenge.
And I wouldn't trade it for anything.