#2 - Pop Tarts and The Cajun Popeye (43:09)

Restaurant Reality Show

Sam Knoll: [00:00:00] Cool. Well, let's see. I just wanted to get you on and go through a little of your story, a little of our history, you know, Kind of get the, uh, the Rick Marcel background here.

Rick Mersel: [00:00:17] Yes. Sam, I'm telling you what happened. Okay.

Sam Knoll: [00:00:22] You still there? Yeah. How many years have we known each other now?

We're 35.

So Sam,

Rick Mersel: [00:00:27] when did, how long, when did you start off the Academy?

Sam Knoll: [00:00:30] I started in eighth grade. So that was what? 80. Two 83, I think

Rick Mersel: [00:00:39] 74.

Sam Knoll: [00:00:42] No, that's not right. Yeah.

Rick Mersel: [00:00:45] Yeah. So I know you're for about 39 years.

Sam Knoll: [00:00:47] 39 years. Yeah. Can you, we're coming up on 40 years. I didn't.

Rick Mersel: [00:00:53] God, wait a minute. All right. That's it. We're done.

Sam Knoll: [00:00:55] I know.

Geez.

[00:01:00] Rick Mersel: [00:00:59] Almost 40 years.

Sam Knoll: [00:01:01] Yeah.

Rick Mersel: [00:01:03] Yep.

Sam Knoll: [00:01:04] Yep. So it's a, you're smart. You got out of hat. Well, you don't have as much gray as I do. Um, you know, yeah. Here's, this is, uh, this is a

Rick Mersel: [00:01:15] haircut. Thanks to my wife.

Sam Knoll: [00:01:17] There you go. Cool dude. Well, you know, I'm, I'm doing this book, which is. I'm going to break into to our thing here.

But, um, um, I had this idea to do a book that was kind of sharing stories from friends who worked in restaurants, bars, and food service. And I know it's not what you're doing now, but I know you worked in restaurants, you ran a nightclub. You, you know, you've, you've had numerous businesses and even your current business that you run now.

You know, as has got the nightclub element.

Rick Mersel: [00:01:58] Yeah. I've always been surrounded [00:02:00] by food. Never really involved in food directly except.

Sam Knoll: [00:02:03] The South

Rick Mersel: [00:02:04] Carrollton deli in new Orleans where I was head sandwich. Boy, I could definitely tell you stories about

Sam Knoll: [00:02:10] that. That's why I pulled you in. Okay. What do you want

Rick Mersel: [00:02:14] to hear a couple of those stories right now?

Sam Knoll: [00:02:16] Yeah. All right. So,

Rick Mersel: [00:02:18] so, so I was, I was in new Orleans. Um, it was, it was towards, I guess the end of the, the, uh, end of the summer and I was bored, so I figured I needed to get a job. So they had the South Carrollton deli. Uh, which is located at the end of st. Charles, uh, at uptown square, I believe it was, or there was another, it was next to chameleon grill, which is a, uh, which is an institution in new Orleans anyway.

So I told the guy I had experience, um, my experience was eating deli sandwiches. Yeah, exactly. Not, not making them, but, uh, the head sandwich, boy, it was my job to steam, the [00:03:00] meat. So, so I was gonna take the meat, take it over to the steamer, put it on the steamer, close the lid. The meat would be steamed. I'd put it on a sandwich and then I'd throw the cheese on.

Which would slowly melt and then all the condiments and lettuce and all that stuff. Well, my big breakthrough moment was I decided I was going to put the cheese in the steamer with the meat so they could meld together. So I think I invented that also

Sam Knoll: [00:03:30] would have all the restaurants do that now. You know,

Rick Mersel: [00:03:33] I think that was me.

The other thing I invented was, so we had this guy who was from California. So you had avocado, he had sprouts, he had eggs. This is stuff that was not typically on sandwiches back then. Now it's totally standard stuff, but no one saw an avocado in the eighties. Um, they just didn't exist. There were only in Mexico.

So this guy had avocado sprouts, eggs and stuff. So I decided [00:04:00] I'm going to put all this stuff together in a pita. So it was sprouts. It was avocado, it was egg, it was onions. It was cheese. So I think I had been at the California sandwiches as well.

Sam Knoll: [00:04:12] And, and, and in the Peter,

Rick Mersel: [00:04:15] in the piece,

Sam Knoll: [00:04:18] you we've talked about how long we've known each other. When we were kids, we ate pitas. Now, I don't think you can find them.

Rick Mersel: [00:04:27] You're forgetting. You're forgetting that I have in exotic wife who has PETA and NA and all that kind of stuff, we just don't, we don't have wonder bread in our house.

Sam Knoll: [00:04:37] Well, no, we don't have that either.

Rick Mersel: [00:04:39] So, so, but I did, so I invented the, uh, the melted cheese and pastrami sandwich and the California peanuts. So thank you.

Sam Knoll: [00:04:47] Nice. Well, this was a perfect person to talk to,

Rick Mersel: [00:04:53] right? Exactly. You have a sort of a celebrity

Sam Knoll: [00:04:56] in a sense. No one knew it. Sandwich [00:05:00] celebrity.

Rick Mersel: [00:05:02] You're going to get a lot of that.

Sam Knoll: [00:05:03] Right. It's all good.

Dude. Once this airs, then people will realize the level of celebrity that I had brought on, you know,

Rick Mersel: [00:05:12] is there a national

Sam Knoll: [00:05:14] sandwich award?

Rick Mersel: [00:05:15] For excellence in sandwich, I should win like the, uh, the legend award.

Sam Knoll: [00:05:20] I don't know if there is, you know, I, there was, there was a piece that came on and I forget which TV show it was, but there was something that came on not long ago, where they were looking for the best quote kind of sandwich in the country.

And one of the finalists was, um, she had, now I'm going to forget the name of it. It's a place that makes chicken biscuits down on Franklin street was timeout.

Rick Mersel: [00:05:47] Had like

Sam Knoll: [00:05:47] one of the best biscuit, one of the best sandwich options out

Rick Mersel: [00:05:51] there. We'll see. Yeah. Can you shut the door please? I need you to help me to forget [00:06:00] 10.

So the kids are in virtual school right now. Um, so, so, um, I didn't invent the best sandwich. I laid the groundwork for everyone that came after me.

Sam Knoll: [00:06:12] Well, that works.

Rick Mersel: [00:06:13] So I was kind of like the little Richard of sandwiches

Sam Knoll: [00:06:17] to put it into music terms. Nice. Well, here's another thought then. Um, how about this other story that you wrote?

And I forget what was the title of that one?

Rick Mersel: [00:06:32] It was, um, pop tarts and the Cajun Popeye. Yeah. And when I say Cajun Papa, I don't mean the chicken. I mean the sailor man.

Sam Knoll: [00:06:41] Right? Do you want tell that story right now? Different than this'll be different than I noticed the shirt. It's nice shirt and the hat

Rick Mersel: [00:06:50] too.

Sam Knoll: [00:06:50] To line. There we go.

Rick Mersel: [00:06:52] So I wore, I wore my new Orleans garden, one purpose, cause I figured we'd be talking about the story. So, so I [00:07:00] grew up literally grew up eating Kraft, American cheese and little squares. I would. You know, pull the plastic off. I would drink Coke. I would eat Doritos. My mom would make meatloaf spaghetti, maybe some chicken every now and then.

So it was a very generic, vanilla, uh, culinary existence that I had. We did not have a whole lot of, um, exotic foods. So I decided. That, uh, I was going to new Orleans cause I wanted to be nine hours away from my sentence friends that was at Vanderbelt. We can tell that story.

Sam Knoll: [00:07:35] We're going to hold off on that story.

That'll be another call. Okay.

Rick Mersel: [00:07:40] So I get to new Orleans and, and, um, it's pretty exotic place for what I was used to. So I was trying to feel my way around and then a buddy of mine who was in my dorm. He's from. The new Orleans area. So he said, Hey, listen, there's a little applause [00:08:00] in Laplas Louisiana. There is a andouille sausage festival.

I had no idea what andouille was. I never really eat sausage. My mom's actually Jewish. So we grew up kosher meat. So there was never any kind of, it

Sam Knoll: [00:08:13] was no sausage in the house.

Rick Mersel: [00:08:15] No kind of Porky sausage at the house. And, but he also told me that. But if the Marshall Tucker van and the Charlie dangerous man would be playing.

So that's why I agreed to go. I thought, Oh cool. There's some good music. I dig. The devil went down to Georgia. So off we went, we get there and. I want you to picture the South end right now, because it has not changed at all. When we get there, all it was was motorcycles, Harley, Davidsons, pink, Confederate flags for miles.

So, you know, we're from the South, but we're not from,

Sam Knoll: [00:08:49] not from the real South. Virginia Beach is,

Rick Mersel: [00:08:54] this is the deep, deep South. So, so we pulled up even buy you. There's [00:09:00] there's the trees with the malls all around there's these Confederate flags. There's these motorcycles, you just smell gas in the air. You smell horrible colon from the bikers.

Um, and you started smelling some food kind of in the background. It was completely muddy. I think it's always money there because it is a swamp. Yeah. So, so, um, off, we went to this festival and I was very hungry. I did not eat, um, Practice that day. Cause I figured I'd eat all this festival food. Now when I'm thinking festival food, I'm thinking hamburgers, hot dogs, maybe a corn dog, something right.

Sam Knoll: [00:09:38] Standard standard festival

Rick Mersel: [00:09:40] festival fair. It's it's a, you know, it's a music festival there weren't music festivals.

So I figured, you know, That's what I would have to eat. Well, you go there. We went to the, the back of the field and there's these food. This, there was not a normal [00:10:00] food insight. This was the buy you people ate crawfish and the alligator and the egg, you know, Buddha and sausage, which is blood sausage in what looks like.

It looks like a condom. So all this stuff was really scary to me. So now I'm in panic mode, I'm starving. I'm a little bit scared of my surroundings and I need to be carrier. Right. So I need to eat. So I looked down at the hand and I see some rice. I was like, okay, there's some rice I go over there. It's a jambalaya.

Um, I am. Kind of concern with jambalaya is because that word is a little strange, but then it looked like rice with hot dogs in it. I'm like, okay.

Sam Knoll: [00:10:48] And it what's funny is back then even no one here was really big on what jambalaya was now. It's like every day.

Rick Mersel: [00:10:55] Yeah. Yeah, no, everybody knows it. I didn't know what the hell.

But I figured like [00:11:00] your rice with some, what appeared to be hotdogs in it. Okay. I'm starving. I'm going to eat it. So I started eating it and I was like, yeah, this is really good. It was, you know, it was kayak and it was Cajun spices. It was even okra, which I had never seen or heard of an okra back then.

This is 1986. So okra didn't exist back then. I don't even think it, I don't even think the plant was invented yet.

Sam Knoll: [00:11:21] People, people who knew what okra was, were kind of afraid of it. It seems slimy

Rick Mersel: [00:11:25] and alive. So here I am with rice. What appear to be hot dogs, okra, and some Cajun spice as well. It's pretty good.

So I'm sitting, I'm sitting on a picnic bench and this here comes the cage and Papa. I never no picture Popeye. The sailor man. This was the Cajun version of that guy. Exactly him. He comes up to me and goes, I didn't write this in the story, but this is what he actually said. He goes, boy, you know what you eating?

I said, yeah, it's Shambala. It's rice. He said, Oh no, it's a boy. That'll [00:12:00] make you rake women. That'll put lead in your pencil. And I'm looking at Scott, like, who the hell is this guy? What's he telling me? I was like, it's jambalaya. I just got it over there. He goes, Oh boy. He goes, you see that meat in there?

And I said, yeah, he goes, you know what? That is. And I looked at the booth and said nutrition or nutria jambalaya. Well, nutria in my head was nutritious. I'd never heard

Sam Knoll: [00:12:23] the word before.

Rick Mersel: [00:12:25] And he goes, he goes, boy, you know what you eat? I said, no. And hold on a second. I don't to show you his, his body language.

So he said, boy, it's a swamp rat about yay. Well, right then I realized the hot dogs in the Jamba live was really rat meat.

Sam Knoll: [00:12:43] In that sense, it was, it was new Orleans rat meat. It

Rick Mersel: [00:12:46] was Ratna. It was, it's a swamp breath. If, if anyone's watching this right now, go Google up on a nutrient is

Sam Knoll: [00:12:53] exactly.

Rick Mersel: [00:12:54] So what it is, it was, it's a swamp rat.

That's from Venezuela, I [00:13:00] believe. And they brought it up to new Orleans to study it. Our hurricane blew through destroyed the lab. These nutrient actually got out into the swamp. They're not indigenous to America and now they're all over. But, you know, 30, 40, 50 years later, they're all over Southern United States.

So it is it's swamp bread, similar to a muskrat. They're very dangerous. They actually are very aggressive, but I ate one of those and I actually think I continued any, after he told me he was a rat,

Sam Knoll: [00:13:33] it tasted good. You know?

Rick Mersel: [00:13:36] So after that, I'm no longer scared of crawfish. I'm no longer scared of oysters.

I'm no longer scared of alligator. So now I've become a Southern Louisianian the Cajun, uh, by you, by you person. And I was able for the next four plus 40 years to now enjoy real Cajun new Orleans cuisine without [00:14:00] being squeamish about it. Cause I figured what can be worse than eating a rat?

Sam Knoll: [00:14:04] I guess here's here's the question.

I wonder if you could. I mean, you're certainly not going to get jumbled. I with nutrient.

Rick Mersel: [00:14:11] Oh, I'm not going to get it anywhere ever again. That was a one and done.

Sam Knoll: [00:14:15] Okay. So in other words, you're not going to look for that again. I mean, it was good, but I prefer my jam a lot

Rick Mersel: [00:14:21] with andouille sausage. Now, now they actually had jambalaya with andouille sausage at this festival.

I didn't see it, or if I did, I didn't register because I saw the nutrient and I thought, Oh, I'd rather have nutritious

Sam Knoll: [00:14:36] or at least be better for me.

Rick Mersel: [00:14:38] Right. So, so, um, and then my second thing that I had to get used to, um, was sushi. Um, so there was no sushi in 1986. I don't even think the first sushi restaurant was in new Orleans until later on in the eighties.

And so buddy of mine took me to that or actually on, uh, a, a buddy of mine invented [00:15:00] this thing called gourmet on the go, where you could order from restaurants and they would bring the food to your house. Obviously, this is that. Um, now the difference between now and then, and I actually worked for this company was there's no cell phones and no GPS.

So you had to bring a giant paper mask

Sam Knoll: [00:15:21] with you, you folding that as you're driving

Rick Mersel: [00:15:24] and right. And it wasn't one small territory. It was the entire city and suburbs of new Orleans. So, so to get a food. Yeah. If you know st. Charles fine, you know where that is, but to get through, to like, Mettery, it took an hour and a half, two hours, cause yeah.

I wouldn't find a place. No. A good story about that is, um, st. Charles, if you don't know, new Orleans are giant mansions. Yeah. So, so there's lady ordered from gourmet on the go and. Um, I brought the food to her house. It was a lot of food. So I get there. She has me come into [00:16:00] her kitchen. I think she ordered soup and she ordered stuff.

I put it in pots for her turn on her burners, basically set this food up in her kitchen for her as I'm leaving. So I was there for 15, 20 minutes as I'm leaving. She, she goes like this way, I guess. So she puts something in my hand and says, thank you. So I feel it's paper. And I'm like, I know that this woman gave me a ton of money for helping her out.

I wait until I get my car. I opened my hand up. It's a $1 bill. That was my tip for the old rich woman on st. Charles in new Orleans. Nice. Now this moment is long gone. Because she was about 90 then, so I can't go back and cursor, but all right. So anyway, one of the places in Gore mainly goes to sushi place.

So I would go in there and I'd bring people sushi. It was, um, there was actually, I think, a Chinese restaurant with sushi. So I decided [00:17:00] one day to go ahead and try it. And I thought it was pretty disgusting, but I kept going. I kept going back.

Sam Knoll: [00:17:09] It was just

Rick Mersel: [00:17:10] two in a roll,

Sam Knoll: [00:17:11] but people kept

Rick Mersel: [00:17:12] wanting to go to have sushi and became pretty popular, like in 89, 90, and all the girls wanted to go there.

So I started going there and getting used to it now probably 80% of the time I go out, I have something wrong. It's either

Sam Knoll: [00:17:27] it's

Rick Mersel: [00:17:27] either your sushi or it's carpaccio or it's

Sam Knoll: [00:17:32] it's at any restaurant now. Yup. Now here's another thing. The first time I had sushi was with you really? Yeah. At, um, Shogun restaurant.

Rick Mersel: [00:17:45] It's funny

Sam Knoll: [00:17:46] Virginia Beach,

Rick Mersel: [00:17:48] right? So that's what did it now? You know, what, if you cook sushi, it tastes just like fish.

Sam Knoll: [00:17:55] Yes, it does.

Rick Mersel: [00:17:57] I didn't know if you knew that or not.

[00:18:00] Sam Knoll: [00:18:00] I I'm down. I'm down with...