Episode 8
· 01:02:04
I have this want to create, but then I also have this need to create. Right? So it can be a bit of a pressure, but when I'm in the zone, that's everything. It's that's why I cook. It's, like, almost, like, I feel like my mind is just always open and allowing something to pop into it, and it works.
Nate Middleton:And I really like it. And when I do have an idea, it's like the best feeling ever.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tasting Notes Toronto. I'm Alex Abbott Boyd. In this episode, I sit down with Scott Vivian and Nate Middleton, co owners of Beast Pizza in Toronto. Beast Pizza is honestly it's kind of a hard place to describe.
Alex Abbott Boyd:On one hand, it's an incredible pizza spot that has some of the best pies in the city. On the other hand, it's also a fine dining restaurant with innovative and creative whole animal tasting menu. It also has an incredible wine list and just a killer beer program that has over a 100 local Toronto beers. Scott and Nate were a ton of fun to talk to, from hearing about the time they offended an entire city by serving horse tartare to how they sneak in a little extra umami into their pizza sauce. The conversation really highlighted both of their deep passions for food and hospitality, the unique and innovative ways they bring those passions to life, as well as their dedication to empowering and celebrating the creativity of the whole Beast team.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Just a quick note that Scott and Nate mentioned a couple of the cookbooks that were especially influential for them. If anyone wants to check those out, I've provided links in the show notes. Also, if you've been enjoying the podcast so far, please do subscribe so you never miss an episode. Here's my conversation with Scott Vivian and Nate Middleton. Scott, Nate, thank you both so much for being here.
Scott Vivian:Thanks for having us.
Nate Middleton:Thank you.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Could each briefly say who you are, what you do at Beast, and how you came to be doing it?
Scott Vivian:I'm Scott Vivian, co owner of Beast, and I run the front of the house, taking care of the wine list, the craft beer list, managing the front, all that fun stuff. Retired chef now doing the front of the house and a great business partnership. I got into the industry because I love hospitality, and I love watching people's enjoyment when they eat a delicious bite of food or have a delicious sip of wine. It's I was hooked for life pretty much at an early age.
Nate Middleton:I'm Nathan Middleton. I run the back of house at Beast, So write the menu. I also cook the whole animal dinners and take care a lot of the pizza party stuff as far as the menus and silly videos and things like that. Partnered with Scott at Beast five years. Scott's had Beast for, I think, it's sixteen now.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Since 02/2010.
Nate Middleton:So have formed a relationship early on cooking through Scott. Scott, I look at Scott as the mayor of cooking. Kinda knows all the people. He goes out, shakes hands, kisses babies. And, yeah, we partnered five years ago at Beast.
Nate Middleton:And having looked back, it's been super fun. We're moving forward. Gonna open up another location too, which is amazing. And got into cooking. It was like one of my first jobs was a restaurant job, dishwashing at Jay's Bar and Grill in Stratford, Ontario when I was, like, 14, 13 maybe.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. So that's always been just a part of my life. I've moved around every position and then landed on cooking and loved it.
Scott Vivian:Part of her DNA. Yeah. It's ingrained.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Scott, when you mentioned that bug bit you pretty early on. When did you know you first wanted to be a chef, and how did you go about making that happen?
Scott Vivian:I I grew up in a household that took food seriously. Both of my parents are really good cooks, and having really delicious family meals sitting down convivially was always a part of my life growing up. So I just I gravitated towards restaurants during high school. And then as soon as high school was over, I knew by that time that's what I wanted to do. Didn't necessarily know that it was gonna be completely the cooking side because just like Nate, I started out whatever they would hire me to do.
Scott Vivian:So I think I my first job was as a busboy. And then when I turned 18, they trained me to work front of the house serving tables and stuff like that and then eventually bartending. It wasn't until, like, on the side started doing some dabbling with recipes and then did some caterings, like, for my parents and stuff like that and saw the reaction and people enjoying it that I clicked. And I thought, oh, yeah. This is actually this is the side of the industry that I wanna that I wanna do.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. And did you study any culinary schools?
Scott Vivian:I didn't even graduate high school. Yeah. School was never a thing for me. I learned working under chefs, and then I continued that education. Every night when I got home, I started collecting cookbooks and reading cookbooks and going grocery shopping for specific recipes on my days off and then testing those at home.
Scott Vivian:And, you know, there was a certain amount that I could learn from the chefs I was working under, but I also had a very curious bug to do stuff other than what they were cooking as well.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What were some of the early inspirations for you? Were there certain chefs or cuisines or even just cookbooks that really help stoke the passion for you?
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I think there was two that really stick out for me. One was Thomas Keller's French Laundry Cookbook. It was the first cookbook that I ever picked up that was really geared towards industry professionals. It's a bit challenging, I think, if you're a home cook, but the stuff that I saw in there was so inspiring and so visually beautiful that it was something that I was, like, really interested in with the base of French cooking and old school French technique.
Scott Vivian:And then another one by Rocco DeSpirito called Flavors. And that really I I would say that one was even more impressionable on me because it broke down each recipe and the flavor components, salty, sour, sweet, spicy, all those things with color coded dots. And so it really got my brain thinking on how to conceptualize a a well balanced and well rounded recipe or dish.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. Very cool. What was it like tackling the French laundry cookbook, not having gone through a formal culinary education? I looked at getting that, and I was reading the comments, and it was just like, oh, this is a great book if you've got four days to cook one dish.
Scott Vivian:So I got I got a
Alex Abbott Boyd:little scared away as just a passionate home chef, but clearly not you.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I think I had the at that point, I had the basic training down, but, yeah, it was definitely challenging for sure. Yeah. But in a good way. Like, I really enjoyed the challenge, and I felt like I was actually learning something.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. Very cool. And, Nate, same question. You mentioned starting out in restaurants at the very bottom. What was it about those early experiences that that got you hooked, and what was your path into the kitchen?
Nate Middleton:Yeah. I don't know. I don't think I really thought too much about it for a long time. I entered there and then swung from there to hotels to other restaurants. I was a host.
Nate Middleton:I was a bartender. I was a server. Did everything. I actually went to school for fine art. I like the idea of being super creative.
Nate Middleton:That's, like, how I live my life. Yeah. And I think there was I was working in a restaurant, and someone was talking about going to chef school, and it was like, so I could do that. Like, I could this could be something that I can embrace, and it could give me a lifestyle of creativity that I'm looking for. The potential to be free, kind of.
Nate Middleton:I think I embraced it, and I just, like, worked my first chef that I worked for in Toronto was Jamie Kennedy.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And, Scott, you worked at Jamie Kennedy too.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Definitely. We didn't know each other back then, but, yeah, we both worked for him.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. So I think I was lucky to start there. And then, yeah, like Scott, like, I'm I love cookbooks. Like, I have, like, cookbooks.
Scott Vivian:Right?
Nate Middleton:I love Yeah. I love the idea of understanding a lineage that exists and participating in it. If I'm lucky, I feel like I've tipped my hat to something on a personal level. I like seeing other chefs embrace it too and recognizing that. To me, that's super fun.
Alex Abbott Boyd:But yeah. What are some of the cookbooks and chefs that have really inspired you?
Nate Middleton:My my background's French. I did go to chef school as well. I went to George Brown. I went to the institute Paul Bocuse in Lyon, and I did a little bit in ETHQ in Montreal. I love all the classic French guys, Robuchamp, the Trois Groves brothers, the Rue brothers.
Nate Middleton:My favorite is Jean Louis Paladin. Cooking this season is phenomenal. It's not really something you would ever mimic. It's so out there, but it's super inspirational. What's one
Alex Abbott Boyd:of the dishes in there that inspired you?
Nate Middleton:There's so many crazy ones. Yeah. There's He has a sweet bread that is battered in fava beans. Interesting. Yeah.
Nate Middleton:It makes no sense. Even when you look at it, you're like, this doesn't make sense. Yeah. But it's beautiful. Yeah.
Nate Middleton:I just
Alex Abbott Boyd:Have you ever got to taste
Scott Vivian:that one?
Nate Middleton:I tried making it. Yeah. It's his. It's not mine. It's like his like, that's the thing too is, like, the older recipes, I think, that stem from a historical place.
Nate Middleton:I don't mind making those, but new like, recipes that are, like, chefs, like, so unique to them. Usually, it's just inspiring way of looking at food, and maybe I would interpret as that recipe is trying it with trying to batter sweet breads with something else or I don't know. Just getting outside of the box. I would I've never really tried besides that to mimic any of his other recipes because they're so far out there.
Scott Vivian:I think you get to a point too. I don't know if you experienced this, Nate, but, like, a cookbook becomes the spark that sometimes you need. You might not necessarily be looking at a specific recipe, but just the kind of going through the motions and reading a cookbook might get your brain churning, and then the creative juices start to flow. And it might not have anything to do with the actual cookbook that you're looking at, but then all of a sudden, all these ideas start popping into your mind and stuff like that. It's like it kind of alleviates that chance of having writer's block or whatever.
Scott Vivian:It's yeah. Just it's a really cool exercise to do that gets your brain going, and it's fun.
Nate Middleton:Totally.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So you mentioned Jamie Kennedy. The the wine bar was before my time, but I've heard it was a really important restaurant in the Toronto scene at the time. Could you share a little bit about what it was like working there and the impact that place had?
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I would say, arguably, it is probably the most important restaurant in Toronto, like, history. Yeah. It was an epicenter for all of the farmers that Jamie and Toby Namath, who was the chef there, had created these relationships with and really gave them a reason to come off the farm and bring stuff into Toronto. So the supply was there, but a lot of it was allocated specifically for the wine bar.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I even remember one of my first days there and receiving a order from a farmer, all the soil was still stuck on the vegetables. And I was like, you guys are paying for this. Right? They're like, yeah.
Scott Vivian:But it's Mark and the best kohlrabi that you could get in Ontario, so we just deal with it and wash it off. Yeah. And then on the opposite side, Jamie Drummond, who is the sommelier the lead sommelier there, approached the wine program the same way it was, like, low allocations on old world wines that if there was 10 cases coming into Ontario, he was taking all 10. I feel like anybody that came even besides the iconic jar wall and all of the decor and having an open kitchen and have essentially having a a kitchen bar and a bar back to back. It was where people in Canada came to see what was available and what was going on.
Scott Vivian:So it really sparked quite a movement of even at that time, nobody had heard of they didn't call it tapas, but it was, like, small plates and stuff like that, which allowed you to try Yeah. Numerous dishes and even larger groups eat through the whole menu and stuff like that. And the menu changed constantly. Every day, there was new dishes coming on and off.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Sounds like a really special space. Let's let's go back to 2010 and the founding of Beast. Can you walk me through what was your inspiration at the time? How did you choose the location? Can you tell that whole story?
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Totally. So after a year at the wine bar, I accepted a position as the head chef of their restaurant at the Gardner Museum. And then after being there for two years, they decided to close that partnership with the museum. I was offered a position within the company, but I just took it as kind of a reason for me to move on.
Scott Vivian:And at that point, I was like, I really had that itch for owning something. Jamie ended up getting into a little bit of financial trouble and actually put the wine bar up for sale and with some investors I was able to buy the wine bar from him. So I was I was able to take something that was really near and dear to my heart and and keep it going. I did my idea was like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna mess with anything. Like, this is it's it is what it is.
Scott Vivian:I can obviously put my kinda take on the food side of things, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it kinda thing. Unfortunately, didn't really see eye to eye with the partners slash investors that I had, and so that for me was short lived. But as that was happening, the owners of the time of the 96 to come see location where Beast is now, Amuse Bouche, Bertrand, and Jason were at towards the end of their lease, and they had no interest in continuing on with it. And they approached me to see if I'd be interested in taking it over. And I think because we had a relationship outside of the working in restaurants and stuff like that, we had a friendship.
Scott Vivian:They made it really accessible for me to do. So, yeah, I didn't look back. I scrounged up as much money as I could and slapped a bit of a paint down, and I think we took possession on May 31, and we had our first service on June 10. It was just I didn't have any more money, so We need to do this, and we need to do it fast. But, yeah, had a good small crew to start, and just like, it was trial by fire.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So originally, it was Beast was all about brunch and whole animal dinners?
Scott Vivian:Beast was like I let everything grow organically. Never I changed the menu every week. Brunch, we started Sunday brunch right from the beginning and never looked back because that area really embraced having a brunch spot in the neighborhood. Whole animal dinner started, I think, in year two when I was doing tasting menus, but it was somebody came in and said, cook for me. I would cook for them.
Scott Vivian:I So always had a bunch of stuff, extra stuff on hand so I could, on the fly, like, whip stuff up. But the whole animal dinners actually gave my brain something that was a bit of bit formatted that I could actually focus in on something specific. And the idea of the whole animal dinner was we're already bringing in whole animals and butchering them and using them for the menu, so why not let that kind of constitute what the menus look looks like. So it was like somebody booked a whole animal dinner, and they wanted wild boar, and I brought in half of wild boar. Whatever was left from that dinner then went on the menu, and it was a way to fill the voids of the menu changing every week as well.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. It's a pretty bold concept to do this whole animal dinner. What where did the idea come from for
Scott Vivian:you? I think it was that. I think it was the philosophy of making sure that there was no waste, you know, highlighting a specific animal so that people could see different preparations and cooking techniques within that tasting menu. And something that was fun for me too, working with animals like goat and rabbits and stuff like that that I'd cooked a little bit here from time to time, but really bringing in those whole animals and teaching myself how to break them down and experimenting with the the best ways to cook the different parts.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Could you run down a list of all the animals that you've done? What I also love to know what some of the the wildest ones have been.
Scott Vivian:And the base list was a wild boar for many years until it became unable to obtain cow, chicken, lamb, goat, rabbit, pig, elk, venison. All of that stuff came after when they took the whole animal dinners over. Mhmm. But I had the base menu or base offerings of any of those animals. And then as time went on, we started to develop a regular clientele of people, like, every month they would do a different animal.
Scott Vivian:And so they would challenge me to, okay, we've already done this and this. What do you have? They saw through social media that I was in Newfoundland doing a seal dinner at Mallard Cottage. Hey. Any chance you brought back any seal?
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Actually, I did bring back some seal. Can we do a seal dinner? Okay. I'd never even thought about that.
Scott Vivian:So, yeah, it was fun, obviously, like a horse, stuff like that. We always stuck within the realms of what was available to us. But for one offs, I was able to get bear meat. I was able to get beaver. So there was always, like, stuff that was, like, fun to throw in there, not something that maybe I could create a whole animal dinner, but fun fun proteins to work with that
Alex Abbott Boyd:I've never worked with before. How does beaver taste?
Scott Vivian:It's like a darker meat, so it has a more darker, gamey texture and feel to it, but, yeah, oily and fishy. Okay. Yeah. It's weird. Same as seals a very distinct flavor that is definitely it's a mind fuck where you're like, I'm eating something that lives in the sea that looks like something that lives in the forest when you look at the actual darkness of the meat.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. But then you taste it. I'm like, oh, it tastes like mackerel. It's so weird. I'm expecting venison, and it tastes like mackerel.
Scott Vivian:So it's yeah. That's wild. It's wild for sure.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Were there any guests that were either weirdly offended or weirdly just delighted and in love with one of one of these dinners?
Scott Vivian:I would say
Nate Middleton:Offended the whole city.
Scott Vivian:We did.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:That's true. Can't tell
Alex Abbott Boyd:that story. City.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. You know, no, you can tell. It's your fault.
Scott Vivian:We were both invited. This was before we partnered up. We were both invited to do a dinner at a restaurant called Cure in Pittsburgh. I don't think it's any longer, but I was traveling and cooking a lot at that time. And it wasn't for shock value.
Scott Vivian:I just was really proud of the fact that in Canada, we could serve horse meat legally, that it was there were horses that were raised for consumption. It wasn't like glue factory kind of stuff, and the meat was delicious. If you go back to what we were talking about, that old school, like, French style, that was always a protein that was used back then. So the fact that it was available to us and not available in The US and not even a thing in The US, I thought it would be really cool to bring it. I definitely didn't legally bring it across the border.
Scott Vivian:I wouldn't even say I brought it across the border, but it ended up across the border. And at the restaurant, I did a horse tartare course, which is I think I I could be wrong, but I feel like I read somewhere that horse was, like, the original tartare meat.
Nate Middleton:Yeah.
Scott Vivian:It was, like, lean and rich and didn't wasn't very gamey. Clean like, a nice clean flavor. Anyways, I did a horse tartare course. There was mixed reactions.
Nate Middleton:Well, day or the dinner was fine. The dinner was people loved people loved it, and the dinner was packed. It was after. The next day. The next day.
Nate Middleton:It was like a full on protest and made national news. And we were already back in traffic. You
Alex Abbott Boyd:know, scape, you flood the country.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I think what the restaurant that we did the dinner at, their social media team posted highlights from the menu the next day on Facebook. And that happened to be that the woman who at the time was the head of the Humane Society.
Nate Middleton:Humane Society. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:Happened to see this and completely lost her mind and started a petition to shut the restaurant down, got the news companies involved, and that became a whole thing. And even when we got back, the head editor of the Canadian Associated Press contacted me, and she had gotten wind of it. But from a Canadian side, wanted me to be able to because it was really like a lot of people were attacking the restaurant and attacking us for doing it. And she wanted to come to our defense because she loved horse and had eaten horse in France and was, like, excited that there was somewhere in in Toronto that it was available. And so she came on our side and allowed me to tell our side of the story.
Scott Vivian:And then once she released that, it got picked up by every national newspaper throughout Canada, and then Vice picked it up. Vice did an expose on the lady who was the whistleblower to begin with and found out that the head of the Humane Society of Pennsylvania was breeding dogs and, like, buying dogs from breeders and which is completely against everything that the Humane Society saw it. Everything flipped, did a complete one eighty, and the members of the Humane Society then formed a petition to get her to resign. She ended up resigning, and the story went away. So crazy.
Scott Vivian:All of a love of mercy. Yeah.
Nate Middleton:So crazy.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's absolutely wild. So I guess, in that story, you mentioned you guys were working together, but this was before Nate you became a part of Beast. So could you share how you guys first connected, and when did it click that you guys might wanna work together?
Scott Vivian:How did we first? I think it started first that the restaurant that Nate was working at the time we used to go to on Sundays after we were done with brunch service as a staff. We would go there and have drinks, and then we started to get to know each other that way. And then
Nate Middleton:I think it Then we went to Panama.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I don't think it was not contrived. We just, at that time, ran in the same kind of circle of friends. And we had a friend of ours whose brother was organizing a huge fundraiser for the Kiwanis Club of Panama. We happened to both be on that chef's list of chefs that they wanted to fly down, and then that became an annual trip.
Scott Vivian:And I think through that, the last a lot of other chefs started going, oh, let's bring Nada and Scott. And, yeah, that's how it started. And then we started doing pizza parties together. Yeah. And I
Nate Middleton:think I did a a beast and friends with Justin Severino.
Scott Vivian:The chef from Cure in Pittsburgh. And came up here, and then you guys did it. We I yeah. I originally started a chef collective in Toronto in the early days of Beast with some other chefs called the Group of Seven Chefs, and we felt that there was a huge hole in the Toronto media for promoting our city and what we thought was a special scene at the time. Young and early on, but still special, and nobody was talking about it.
Scott Vivian:We took it upon ourselves instead of sitting back and just waiting for somebody to write about us. We just we started reaching out. This was pre Instagram, so it have been through Twitter where we would reach out to chefs in The US and other parts of Canada who we thought were doing really cool stuff and invite them to come to Toronto. We would pay for their airfare, put them up in a hotel or an Airbnb, and then do a dinner with them. But part of that was, like, taking them out to eat so that they got to see other restaurants.
Scott Vivian:The obviously, in that chef collective, we all had our own restaurants, so trying food from all the different restaurants. And then eventually, at the end of the trip, doing one dinner so that not only our clientele got to try their food, but they got to meet people from Toronto and stuff like that. The Torontonians do travel, and if they're going to New York or Boston or Chicago or whatever like that, now they know a chef and they they know they've tried his or her food. And so, yeah, that that kind of started that, and then that ran for about three or four years. And once we all started to get a little bit too busy in our own personal lives, we dismantled the group seven chefs.
Scott Vivian:I still really felt strongly about the collaboration side of things. So I started Beast and Friends dinners, which was, again, bringing chefs from other parts of Canada and The US and then pairing them with a chef in Toronto who I thought was either like minded or had similar cooking styles or just thought that, like, these two dudes would have so much fun together, and then we would do a dinner together at Beast.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And did it work? Did you get the press writing about these dinners, and did it generate a lot of excitement?
Scott Vivian:Yeah. It stirred up a lot of I would say, I'm not gonna take a 100% credit for it, but I definitely anytime I would travel to go do dinners in other parts of the country or The US, Everybody was talking about Toronto and what the group of seven chefs were doing in Toronto. And I think that's what sparked interest of the David Changs and the Daniel Ballludes and then, like, the stuff that I did with Anthony Bourdain. I think that all of that was, I would say, a little bit credited to what we were highlighting, what this really cool thing that was happening in Toronto. Because back then, it was either Montreal or Vancouver.
Scott Vivian:Nobody really looked at Toronto as, like, a worthy food city.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. You just glossed over the Anthony Bourdain. What did you do? Did you get him up here?
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I think this was the first year of Beast, 02/2010. One of his PR people reached out, and he was coming on one of his book tours. And it was his first time going through Toronto, and they asked us to cater the VIP after party at Massey Hall. So we obviously immediately said yes, and that kind of sparked up something between the two of us where I had an opportunity when he was waiting to go on stage.
Scott Vivian:Like, they wanted some food for him before he went on stage, and I put together a little platter and brought it to him. And then he invited me to come into his dressing room to just to chat because he knew nothing really about Toronto. And we just had a pretty candid conversation, and I think that sparked some interest with him. And by the end of it, I was like, I would love to have the opportunity at some point to take you around Toronto because I know, like, on these book tours, you're just going from interview to interview, and then you do your stage thing, and then you're back on a plane somewhere else. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:He took it as, yeah, man. If I ever get a chance, I'll definitely come check you out. And then something clicked in my mind, and I was like, oh, sorry, man. This wasn't like for me, this isn't self promotion. I just wanna show you Toronto.
Scott Vivian:Don't honestly, don't give a shit. I'd be honored if you came to my restaurant, but that wasn't why I made that comment. It was really to get you to come to Toronto and see how diverse it is and what a special food scene that we have. And I think that resonated with him. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:And he was like, you know what? I'll make you a deal right now. If I ever have the opportunity to film in Toronto, you'll be the first person that I call. So two years later, I got the phone call. Oh, that's awesome.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I haven't seen that episode. Should I find it on YouTube?
Scott Vivian:Yeah. It's called it was there's short lived series that he did. It's called The Layover. Okay. And The Layover Toronto episode, we didn't do the whole episode together, but I was part of that episode for sure.
Scott Vivian:And he gives credit to the only reason why he's in Toronto is because he met me earlier. It was cool. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:It was a good, really fun, good friendship and relationship over the years.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Could we let's talk about the pivot into Beast Pizza, the pandemic, and and Nate coming aboard full time.
Scott Vivian:What was it like when the pandemic hit, and how did Beast Pizza come about? That year would have been 02/2020, so that we were just getting ready to celebrate our ten year anniversary. Obviously, the abrupt shutdown was a little bit of a eye opener, but it gave me an opportunity to finally stand back and evaluate what the the future of beasts look like. My partner was pregnant with her first child, so that really gave me an opportunity to be like, what kind of dad do I wanna be, and how does this look with my life moving forward? Because the way that it was pre pandemic, I don't think that would have been for me, it wouldn't have been, like, a sustainable way of living with a kid and a wife.
Scott Vivian:So the bodega thing was, like, basically a Band Aid. It was I know that I have to reopen. I know that I don't wanna spend a lot of money doing it because I don't know how long this is gonna last, but I have to do something because I have all these perishable ingredients that I can't bring myself till pitch them in the garbage. Like, I I need to and nonperishable stuff too. We had a pretty decent wine inventory, a lot of dry goods, and stuff like that.
Scott Vivian:So took all the tables and created a little shop, like a little like a old school, like, New York style bodega minus, like, the cat in the back and put together a little food menu. I had a cook of mine who was working for me at the time that was interested in creating a little menu with the classic bodega, like, egg Sam breakfast sandwich. And he was Jordanian, so he wanted to mess around with some Middle Eastern food, which I thought was really cool because it's always been my idea of not only empowering, but, yeah, just highlighting different ethnic cuisines. And then the bodega thing was going okay. We we've always had support from the neighborhood, and the neighborhood came through.
Scott Vivian:And there were people that were coming and shopping there three days a week because people would come in and go, oh, yeah. I have this Otto Langhi cookbook at home, and it calls for preserved lemons. I can't find preserved lemons anywhere in Toronto, and we have a whole table of jars of preserved lemons because they use them in cooking. Pomegranate molasses and all
Nate Middleton:of the yeah.
Scott Vivian:Just cool shit that you don't see in, like, the normal grocery stores. So it was people were really enjoying that side of things. And then being able to sell wine at retail prices, I was also part of a group of restaurateurs that pitched the ability for restaurants to sell booze to go with the purchase of food.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's impressive. Because you started bottle shops.
Scott Vivian:It was yeah. Myself and about eight or nine other chef restauranteurs that were part of this. We actually had an opportunity to, like, have a, like, a Zoom call, all of us with somebody who could make those decisions. Yeah. And so that went through, and that was a total game changer because now I can sell all this inventory that we have.
Scott Vivian:Like, people can come in. And for the first time in ten years of Beast, I was out front. I was always in the kitchen. So I had limited interactions with our longtime supporters, and now I get to see them. Albeit with a mask on, I was able to see and meet these people who've been supporting Beast for so long for the first time and just chitchat about shit, like life, the products that we have, wine.
Scott Vivian:And that was really for me. I always wrote the wine list at least, and I really enjoyed doing that. But this was the first time I actually got to talk to people about it and get excited about it. And people, they get, again, like, resonated with the clientele. Were coming in, and they were like, Florence Scott said we should drink this whatever.
Scott Vivian:Let's get it. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And then during that time, Nate being the huge supporter because he had been over the years was coming in whenever he could. And that's when we started the open dialogue about, you're not happy with what you're doing. I don't see this going on, obviously, for that much longer.
Scott Vivian:So is there an opportunity for us to partner and come up with something even more exciting?
Alex Abbott Boyd:We it's funny you mentioned Otolangi. I have two of those books, and I'm gonna be cooking our family Thanksgiving from one of
Scott Vivian:them. Nice.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. I love those cookbooks.
Scott Vivian:They're great. Yeah. And also, what a better way. I'm so over, like, many years ago, I've decided I'd if I don't ever have to eat turkey again for
Nate Middleton:the rest of my life, I'll
Scott Vivian:be okay with that. So, yeah, I've always been, like, the untraditional Thanksgiving, and what better than to cook out of an on a la carte. You cook cook an unbelievable Middle Eastern feast.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Are you cooking turkey? No. So we have a bunch of vegetarians in the family, and there's this mushroom lasagna where I buy, like, literally 10 kinds of mushrooms, and I shred them, and I roast them, and I turn them into this ragu, and I I build a lasagna with that.
Nate Middleton:It's Own it. I'm a little bored with it,
Alex Abbott Boyd:but my family won't let me. Oh god. They're just like, we have to have that everything. Damn
Scott Vivian:it. Why did that? I think he's so good. I thought it's I wanna cook the lamb recipe.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. It's crazy good. So what was what inspired the pivot into a pizza shop? Nate, was that something that that you were excited to do?
Nate Middleton:COVID was a dark time. We had a lot of time to talk, and it was really just Scott and I with our masks on and the bodega. And depending on the news, some there'd be some days where it would be really quiet. We had a lot of time to talk and
Scott Vivian:Maybe a bottle of masks.
Nate Middleton:Drink all the drink all the inventory that we had. Prior to COVID, we were throwing pizza parties around the city for Chefs With Heart, a charity that would raise money directly for intestinal failure. And so we were throwing pizza parties around the city at different pizzerias. They were amazing. Like, it was so much fun.
Nate Middleton:And I think that experience always had a pleasant place in our hearts. And I think during COVID, one thing that we noticed was pizzerias were super safe. Beast also is a very small space, and the idea of capitalizing on something that was heavy in takeout was obviously a plus. But, yeah, all those things, stars aligned, and we met our third business partner, Adnan, who is our investor. And, yeah, I think it was an easy choice once it popped into our head.
Nate Middleton:I was like, let's just do a pizzeria. Let's do a pizzeria but preserve what beast is. So we kept the whole animal dinner Yeah. Aspect to it. And the juxtaposition between you go in and into a pizzeria and have a six course tasting menu is the funnest thing on Earth.
Nate Middleton:And it's I couldn't be happier with that. That's what I do. You know?
Scott Vivian:I had to take the pretension out of fine dining. So you're having fine dining in a pizzeria. Yeah. Or at least some aspect of fine dining. The food for sure.
Scott Vivian:And then you're listening to, like, old school hip hop or rock, and there's people behind you doing shots of Jameson or maybe you're even doing the between courses.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. I feel like I wanna eat great food, but I want it to be more casual.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. I think it is disarming not to have the white tablecloth. It's a little more relaxing.
Scott Vivian:You can
Nate Middleton:come in. You're a part of the show just as much as the show was there for you when you're a diner, and I think it's a little bit of a stress relief going into a pizzeria. Yeah. He can relax. He can feel it.
Nate Middleton:Like, everyone's a little bit relaxed. They also are doing a whole animal tasting menu that might be whether it's high adventure, medium adventure, whatever, they're already coming in with an open mind. So to double down with it's in a pizzeria, it's a very relaxing experience. And there's a lot of great relationships. We've had so many great people come through for dinners.
Nate Middleton:They come through for multiple dinners. Yeah. Relationships have formed. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:And, honestly, like, the food that he's doing, the menus that he's doing, the creativity that he's doing, it's way better than it ever was when I was cooking. I'll go as far to take credit for the original concept, but what he's turned them into is something that I'm way prouder of than when I was actually cooking them, and I get to actually witness them. Yeah. Which is even more exciting for me, like, to be able to have that interaction with the customers. It's usually when we have a whole animal dinner.
Scott Vivian:If I'm at the restaurant, I'm the one serving them. So I get to actually have that direct interaction with the customers and see their reactions to every dish that he's doing. He's also I'm serving them, but Nate is having, like, conversation with them. And they're asking him questions, and they're right in front of the kitchen so they can also have
Alex Abbott Boyd:But it's like it's like you I've given you wine during a wine tasting in the restaurant. It's very accessible, the
Scott Vivian:kitchen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why so it's really so you could sit on the wine tasting.
Scott Vivian:So it Yeah.
Nate Middleton:I might not retain much, but I enjoy it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Nate, I'd love to know, for you, what are some of the most important aspects of making a great pizza? For example, I know that you guys do a three day fermented dough. For maybe pizza nerds out there, how is that different than a one day dough or, I say, a five day dough? When I make pizza at home, it's usually an overnight ferment. So what are you getting with that extra two days then?
Nate Middleton:Yeah. It's we're developing the flavor. We're developing the texture. Sometimes it's actually our dough depending on the weather. Beast is in an old house.
Nate Middleton:It's gotta be over a 100 years old, and the basement is its own ecosystem. And during the summer is so much different than the winter. So in the summer, sometimes our dough is actually better a little bit shorter than three days, we've learned. Coming out of the basement, we don't do a temperature controlled room or anything. But three days is the max.
Nate Middleton:After three days, it definitely will blow out. And then you have this harder chew. Just it just doesn't look sad. But we've learned It's just an ideal time. An ideal amount of time to age a dough.
Nate Middleton:And I would say it is the most important thing of all of the things in the restaurant is the dough.
Scott Vivian:There you go.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. And what kind of flour are you using?
Nate Middleton:We use Canadian flour. I we do a blend. I'm I've not made big changes to it, but inched a little higher in protein since the beginning. I don't wanna give too much away of our
Alex Abbott Boyd:dough recipe. Secret. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:That's a Blend of Canadian flours. Yeah. But we all you need to know.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. Blend of Canadian flours. But we had we did have a good amount of time to to work on the dough. Yeah. And so the recipe to me is a great recipe.
Nate Middleton:That being said, it really does come down to the person making the dough, which is crazy because you think it's a recipe. It should be consistent. But people really make the recipe happen, and we're really lucky we have a great dough maker, Diego, right now that's very consistent, which is, again, dough is the most important thing. And right beside that is consistency. Yeah.
Nate Middleton:And Diego is phenomenal. He's like the dough whisperer right now. So we're really lucky to have him and and have that recipe working for us, I think. I think our dough is good.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Brazilian city.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What about the sauce? I know you do some nontraditional things with this little kombu in it or mushrooms. How do you make a yummy red sauce?
Nate Middleton:Did I tell you that? Might must have told you that
Scott Vivian:Graham told me. Yeah. We put we
Nate Middleton:we make a garlic confit that we steep kombu in, and then we use that garlic confit in the sauce. We also use shiitake powder. Just stealing some umami, you know, secrets, getting the flavor up. Most pizzerias use samarasano tomatoes. Well, a lot of pizzerias use it as a pepperoni, which is a good pepperoni.
Nate Middleton:And San Marzano is a good tomato, but I don't ever wanna be the same ever. It's like a I hate being the same. So we use a plum tomato and with the kombu and the shiitake powder. And we use a different pepperoni. We use Venetian meats pepperoni, which is, like, super old butcher from Hamilton and has a history in the city of
Scott Vivian:supporting local. Yeah. It tastes delicious.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. We tried, like, leading up to the having a pizzeria, it's a fun thing if you get to taste it all and figure out which we like the best. And I think you're never 100% happy. I'm happy with the dough, but like I said, the weather things can change a little. So there are days where I'm like, but I think the pizza or pizza sauce, I'm happy with, but I wanna be happier with.
Nate Middleton:So we're always trying to figure out a tweak on the pizza sauce. And even the cheese too. Like, we've switched from the beginning. Now we use a high fat Australian mozzarella, but the potential to change that or even add something to it, a blend or something is always there. Like, the door's not closed on what the piece pizza is.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. But the consistency of the dough, I think, is the foundation that won't really change.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And I know you got some pretty wild flavors and toppings on the pizza. Where do the ideas come from?
Nate Middleton:For the wild stuff? Depends on which ones you're talking about.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I had one that had a pesto sauce with the burrata on top. That was really great, and I haven't had something like that before. Just a lot of the toppings are ones I haven't seen in other spots.
Scott Vivian:I think in bacon.
Nate Middleton:So I think in bacon?
Scott Vivian:I think
Nate Middleton:writing the menu, I wanted to represent the identity of Beast because there's definitely an identity that goes beyond Scott, but it's still part of Scott. So, like, the aloe gobi and brinjal pickle is tip of the hat to Scott. He's half Indian, half Italian. So I wanna make sure that was something
Scott Vivian:Me on a pizza. Yeah.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. Him on a pizza. Tongue on a pizza just makes sense. It's beast. Tongue is amazing.
Nate Middleton:Let's put tongue on a pizza. The burrata, I felt, was just Actually, the burrata, I probably just saw a burrata on a pizza. Was like, this is gonna make sense. Let's just do this. This is gonna be great.
Nate Middleton:We'll just do that. So I think the fundamental, the foundation of the menu, the mushroom pizza, the pepperoni, the burrata pesto, the tongue, the aloe gobi. Those were all things that I felt made a pretty good spectrum for for a pizza menu. And then Stepan Stew, our Pizziola, he can do whatever he wants every week. And if he makes a special that's all let's just put that on the menu, like the BLT pizza on the menu, which I think has been a part of me since before I was ever there is an open door to creativity, embrace food.
Nate Middleton:A lot of restaurants when you work at restaurants, you're feeling the same thing every day. Like, every day, you're cooking the same thing, and there's no real opportunity to explore. I think Beast has the ability to explore. We have a very consistent menu, but the whole animal dinners allow anyone at the restaurant can work on anything they're interested in. And stew is a lot he can do whatever he wants.
Nate Middleton:A lot of the pizzas are stew
Alex Abbott Boyd:as well. Yeah. That's great. Does that oh, does that bring in just some logistical problems for you guys allowing that creativity? Is that the reason other restaurants don't do it?
Scott Vivian:I think they're afraid too, and I think it's ego. I think two really two tell telltale signs of an accomplished chef, which I think Nate has both of those characteristics, is empowering your staff and not being complacent. And I think that is those are two things Nate will never be complacent. He's always looking, as he just described, to change things up and make things better than they ever were because the fact of the matter is, again, with ego, like, you can say everything's perfect, but that's not actually a true statement. May making things better and then also being uncomfortable enough in your own skin and your own talent to allow your staff to have a voice.
Scott Vivian:And I think a lot of chefs are afraid to do that because they want all of the attention to themselves, and they're afraid if they let their staff do it, then they're gonna get credit for something under their tutelage or whatever you wanna call it. It's a sign of a chef who's comfortable with where they are in their career and wanna let other people experience that as well. I think
Nate Middleton:it's important for retention as well. We've had cooks since we've opened. We don't do a turnover. I think it's allowing them to do what they want. I think a really good example is Stew's our head Pizziola, and then our other Pizziola is Yuri.
Nate Middleton:And Yuri is so fascinated with Koji and miso. So we've built her a koji station downstairs, and she makes koji. She makes miso. She makes Japanese pickles. She does all these things because she's super interested in it.
Scott Vivian:Mhmm.
Nate Middleton:And I don't ever wanna stop that. Plus, I now have Koji.
Scott Vivian:I now have made in the restaurant. Yeah. The verbiage, when he's talking about a course for a whole animal dinner Yeah. He can tip a hat to Yuri, and people get to try something that normally people would just open up a jar and slap on a plate or whatever.
Nate Middleton:And it's a beautiful thing. That fire just gets it just fuels it. And then you can see Yuri is very shy, so maybe the regular person can't see it, but I can see that it excites her when other people get to try her creations, which are not easy. Like, making Koji is no joke. I was with her at the beginning because I wanna make sure I understand what's happening, but she just took it and ran.
Nate Middleton:And it's It's a sense
Scott Vivian:of pride. Sick.
Nate Middleton:Right? It's amazing. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Like, I think that we have staff that are, like, proud to work at Beast. And I think that a lot of that is is the way that Nate manages the kitchen, allows them to show their creativity and make them feel important because they are. Like, if it wasn't for them, you'd have us two fat fucks, like, just having to actually work every day. Man, I'm okay, man.
Scott Vivian:I'm 48 now. I like to, like Nate said, shake hands and kiss babies and stuff like that.
Nate Middleton:I feel like the podcast just started.
Scott Vivian:The wine's almost finished. Yeah. Yeah. It's I don't know. I'm really excited what Beast Pizza is and what it has become, and I feel proud to walk into work every day because I know that people are coming into a place that, yeah, Nate and I created.
Scott Vivian:But, really, the key staff members that Nate's been talking about and Tan too. Shout out to Tan.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. We haven't mentioned Tan. She's the real beast. Yeah. For real.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What's her role at Beats?
Nate Middleton:She is everything that's not pizza. So she does all the salads, the pastas, the desserts, and everything. But for whole animal dinner, she really is my right hand and has really embraced it. She, like, crosses the t's, dots, the i's, so to speak. But can finish my sentence at this point.
Nate Middleton:It's like she's pretty impressive as a cook. I think the most impressive thing is that she's Vietnamese, so she's ESL. My background is French cooking, and I've unloaded all of this French stuff on her. Yeah. There's, like, French connection to Vietnam as well, but, like, I could see in the beginning it being overwhelming, and now she can make all the mother sauces.
Nate Middleton:She can do it. She might not have the confidence in another kitchen with a stranger, but I know what she's capable of. And as that confidence grows, she can stand at any kitchen for sure. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:The way you guys talk about your staff and empowering them, one definition of success that really stuck with me is you get to work with people you respect and admire. And it sounds like you've both created a successful restaurant in that sense that you really respect and admire the people that you've brought on board.
Nate Middleton:Yeah. We may work for them one day.
Scott Vivian:You know? And you
Alex Abbott Boyd:never know. Shifting gears just a little bit. One of the things that struck me with Beast is just how great the wine list is and the beer program. I find it's not every pizza spot that I can get some back vintage Alsatian Pinot Gris or something like that. What inspired that, and how important is it for you guys to have just a killer wine program and beer program too?
Scott Vivian:I think me stepping out of the kitchen, my brain still needed something. I needed some type of something to put that energy into. Yeah. And so putting that focus on the wine list and the beer list gave me that outlet to be able to do that. So I approach it with the same excitement as I did when I was changing the menu every week in the early days of Beast.
Scott Vivian:So it allows me and it a lot of it is also, like, Nate and I taste wine together. We get beer samples, and we taste beers together. So I definitely can't take all the credits. We both
Nate Middleton:I would say you could take all the credit.
Scott Vivian:I
Nate Middleton:taste the wines and I taste the beers, but I think he's being humble. His knowledge is impressive. And also, the only credit I think I could take would be sometimes I'm like, yeah. Buy the expensive.
Scott Vivian:We need more stables me to
Nate Middleton:get those back
Scott Vivian:vintages of Peanut Powerade, Alsacea, Peanut Powerade.
Alex Abbott Boyd:As someone who also sells wine, I appreciate those voice.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. It's just I don't know if I've ever approached because I like I mentioned earlier, like, I've always written the beer and wine list for the restaurant even when I was cooking, because who better to know what flavors to pair with the food than the person who's cooking the food. But to build a wine list that can both go with the pizza program and the whole animal dinners gives me a lot of freedom to to do some more exciting stuff. I think we we did collectively at the beginning want to have the approach of a low intervention wine list. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:It's just something that we were both really passionate about by dynamic farming and organic farming from all aspects of the restaurant. So why not have that also with the wine program? And then the beer list, if you were if we were doing this podcast maybe ten, fifteen years ago, I would say I've always only carried Ontario or Canadian craft beer. Sorry. Not only.
Scott Vivian:I did have about 50 on the menu at one time, but that was more for from a personal standpoint. But as the years have gone on, the beer industry, beer making, craft beer industry in Ontario and specifically Toronto is is has grown enormously. Impressed every day when a new brewery is popping up and they're bringing by samples for us to try. I feel the history of Beast has simultaneously grown with the beer industry. At the beginning, we maybe only had five or six beers on the menu because those were the only five or six craft beers that were available.
Scott Vivian:And now we have, I don't even fucking know.
Nate Middleton:Everything under the sun. A 100
Scott Vivian:different beers or something. I don't know. And it's just because I find a brewery that I like.
Nate Middleton:And some really good beers too.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. And I taste through their kind of quote, unquote portfolio or whatever they have brewing and canned at the time, and I'm just like, that's awesome. Yep. That's awesome. And then and to be transparent, like, are some breweries that are like, you're not getting the IPA side of things, which is obviously not an easy thing to do, but you make a killer Pilsner.
Scott Vivian:So being able to highlight what I think they do and they do very well allows me to instead of having 50 different breweries that I'm highlighting, I'm maybe taking, like, my favorite 10 or 12 Yeah. And then showing three of five beers that they do so that you can actually get a really good idea. And that's why we offer the beer pairings as well for the whole animal dinners, because I can do a progressive tasting to pair with Nate's dishes with beer, whether I choose to start with the highest alcohol ABV beers and then finish with the lowest, which is the complete opposite of most beer pairings. No. I just I think, like, why would I want a 10% beer at the end of this meal when I can enjoy it at the beginning Yeah.
Scott Vivian:And my palate won't be shot. The other fun part about that is that if I wanna show, I guess, in the wine industry, it would be like a portfolio tasting. I can do six courses with six pairings of all Godspeed beers because we have six different Godspeed beers and just pair those. So you can actually just taste all of the beers from one brewery. Again, paired with the dishes that Nate's doing.
Scott Vivian:So it's like a it's a win win for everybody. And then there's the story to tell about the relationships that we have with these breweries, and we've met the brewers or the owners, and we know why they're doing this. We know the back history, so it's an educational process as well because Yeah. People come in, and they're just like, I'll have a haya can. And I'm like, first of all, that beer is fucking nasty, so we don't care.
Scott Vivian:If you're looking for something, like, I again, and I don't know how you approach but the way I approach even wine is if somebody comes to me and they go they look at the wine list and they go, I don't know half of these grape varietals. I've never heard of any of these wineries before. Yeah. Recommend me a bottle of wine. And it's my palate is different than yours.
Scott Vivian:So I might be jazzed about one of the wines on this list, but before we have a conversation, I'm not gonna try to sell you on it. I'm gonna ask you the first question I'm gonna ask you is what do you like to drink at home? What do you gravitate towards? You Merlot? You like Pinot Noir?
Scott Vivian:You like okay. Now we can go through the list. And even if we don't have that grape varietal, I can find you something that's adjacent to that. And so I feel like that's one of the fun parts about coming into Beast is whether it's the food, the wine, the beer, whatever, there's a I don't wanna sound cocky and say educational, but there's just there's a there's an informative part about it, which I think can give credit to the fact that we have a lot of return business because we've made these relationships with our clientele who, even if they came three times in a week, they would get a different experience every time and always be positive.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I love that. How did you go about learning about wine? Just because you say it was just it made sense as the chef to be originally writing the list. I'll tell you, I don't I don't do many tastings with other chefs in the city. See, it's usually either the somm or a GM.
Scott Vivian:I think a lot of what beast was at the beginning was driven by not having the funds to do it. Like, I think that it was like
Nate Middleton:I had to do it, man.
Scott Vivian:I'm gonna cook the offcuts of meat because I can get it from the butchers for literally not there was times where, obviously, the market has changed, but I was like, I have never cooked veal sweet breads before, but they're only 99¢ a pound. So I'm gonna bring those in and teach myself how to cook them. And then realize that they're absolutely delicious, and then the clientele have eventually build up a trust and but, yeah, it was that approach to the wine list. I can't afford to hire a manager. Definitely can't afford to hire someone.
Scott Vivian:Hey. So I'm gonna be that person. I'm gonna I'm gonna learn on the job. I'm gonna a lot of the I feel like if we were to talk to some of the original wine reps, wine agencies that we dealt with, like, right from the beginning, like, we completely got into place for Beast Pizza. So the kitchen was closed off, and then there was just an opening on the side.
Scott Vivian:And I would be prepping during the day, and the wine agents knew to come in by appointment, obviously, and then just plop down a bunch of bottles of wine in the past, and then we would do a tasting. It was fun because then I would give them a spoon. Here. Taste this. I just made this.
Scott Vivian:So it was, like, a fun interaction, but I was out of necessity and not having really the finances to hire somebody to do it. And then I started to get more comfortable in it, and I started to realize I still can't taste the wine and go, oh, there's hints of tobacco and leather and stuff like that. I just taste it and go, this is a fucking really well made Damier Noir. Like, it's hits all the notes that I like in that type of grape varietal, and it's clean, and it's fresh, and it's earthy. And yeah.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Make it till you make it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:It's how I've always done everything. This is maybe a random question, but when I was thinking about Beast and the great wine list and the great beer list, it hit me how If you're really into beer, that's cool. And if you're really into wine, that's snobby, at least in in many people's perception. You can go just almost as deep in beer down rabbit holes and learn about histories and regions and styles. Like, why do you think that wine just suffers that that reputation that beer does?
Alex Abbott Boyd:Expensive.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I think price has definitely something to do with it. I think, luckily, I feel like the wine industry is changing for the better in that way, but I think there's still a little bit of that elitism. I think that there's still a certain side of it that's people feel is unapproachable and potentially off putting is not the right word, but, yeah, I just think that beer is beer. You probably had your first beer with your dad or something like that.
Scott Vivian:You sit on the couch and you drink beer. You can watch a sports game and drink beer. There's not a lot of people that are like, the Blue Jays games come on. Let's pop open a bottle of Chablis.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I'll do
Scott Vivian:that for sure. Yeah.
Nate Middleton:I was gonna say, I I would Yeah.
Scott Vivian:Break out the ruffles and caviar and and onion French onion dip. But it's a industry thing that I think for the most part is changing because now we're meeting wine agents like yourself who take the pretension out of it, and it allows it to be more approachable. And I think that, again, one of the positive sides for me besides the environmental side of things, the low intervention kind of driven wine industry is also taking a lot of pretension out of that. Yeah. I think just I totally agree with what you said.
Scott Vivian:Like, beer is definitely you can go down that rabbit hole for sure. But I think beer as a general umbrella is, like, way more approachable because of the macro breweries and the way that they have promoted and advertised. And you you watch the Super Bowl, you're not seeing Chateau de Chem commercials. You're seeing Budweiser commercials.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So after all this time in hospitality, what what keeps each of you excited about cooking and hospitality these days?
Nate Middleton:For me, it's creativity. I like waking up, approaching life with a creative mindset. I think the whole animal dinners give me that. It's a very fulfilling thing. So I have this want to create, but then I also have this need to create.
Nate Middleton:Right? So it can be a bit of a pressure, but when I'm in the zone, that's everything. It's that's why I cook. Yeah. It's like almost like I feel like my mind is just always open and allowing something to pop into it, and it works.
Nate Middleton:And I really like it. And when I do have an idea, it's like the best feeling ever. Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I love that.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. I don't cook anymore, but I still enjoy cooking at home. And now I cook for a five year old and a three year old and my wife. I also enjoy just really switching to that, like, dad mode of I don't know. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:I just I've always enjoyed live fire cooking and to be able to cook for my kids even if it's just, like, I'm making them burgers instead of ordering non Uber Eats or taking them to fast food burger place. I'm actually making them burgers so I can at least control the nutritional value of what they're ingesting.
Alex Abbott Boyd:No. I have a two and a half year old daughter, and, like, she as most toddlers, you never know what she's gonna eat. But, like, when she requests that I make her shrimp scampi or that she I just grab a can of sardines, it's so exciting. That's the
Scott Vivian:thing. That's the excitement.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That she actually wants to eat something with a little flavor in it. Yeah. It's so fun. Totally. So wrapping up, what's next for Beast?
Alex Abbott Boyd:What does the future look like? I know you've got a new location on the way. Right?
Scott Vivian:Shout out to Kitchener, Ontario.
Nate Middleton:Kitchener happening.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. The the next project where we signed the lease to in the bottom of a condo building where nothing has ever been in that space. So it's a full build out. So we're just waiting on building permits to go through and start construction hopefully in the next couple weeks, and then however long it takes. The renovation of that beast, even though I think partially because it was a pandemic, were supposed to take three or four months and end up taking eleven.
Scott Vivian:So I'm hoping that doesn't happen this time around. But, yeah, we're just going into it with an open mind and
Alex Abbott Boyd:Keeping the pizza or the whole animal dinner is coming out there?
Nate Middleton:Yeah. I'll do I think I wanna do one a month to start just to see if people are interested, which to me sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah.
Scott Vivian:There's already, like, a buzz. Like, I'm getting messages, like, once a week of people being like, are you guys gonna keep fucking animal dinners? How's that gonna work with Nate in Toronto? I think it's cool for Nate to you know, once it's up and running and we're comfortable with the way it's going and they can go back to come back to Toronto and focus on our Toronto location. I live in Kitchener, so I'll be focusing on the Kitchener location.
Scott Vivian:And then, yeah, for him to be able to come up once a month and do a ticketed whole animal dinner. I think it's fun and exciting for the region. And, yeah, we're like we've always taken the approach of we're not these we're not like yeah. We're from Toronto. We're gonna come and take over Kitchener.
Scott Vivian:It's because we're
Nate Middleton:not. I'm from Stratford. You're from Everywhere. Everywhere.
Scott Vivian:We're excited to submerge ourselves in the KW community and really embrace it and allow it to dictate what their idea of Beast is. And we obviously have a formula that we've created in Toronto, and you wanna stick to that as much as possible. But we always have an open mind of, yeah, if this doesn't work, then we'll try this. But the actual, like, concept of what Beast Pizza is and the the vibe that we've created in Toronto will definitely be replicated in the kitchen.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Can't wait to try the new location.
Scott Vivian:Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be fun. We're gonna eat some wine. We're gonna eat some The beer list will definitely be focused on the region.
Scott Vivian:I feel like we speak to what Toronto craft beer is very well in Toronto, and I wanna create that same thing in Kitchener because now I've been there for now just over a year. I've had an opportunity to try a lot of the different breweries out there, and there's some really special, awesome, amazing breweries that are brewing some really great stuff. And then the wine list think that when I go out to eat there, there's very few places that really focus on low intervention wines and exciting wine lists. So to just be able to bring that approach to it, I think, will be a lot of fun. And I think yeah.
Scott Vivian:I think people are excited because they just there's some good stuff there. They just need more of it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Yeah. Anything else you guys would like to add?
Scott Vivian:I don't think so. No? I think we covered We're in. Hold on.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Thank you both so much for your time. Thank you all for listening. Now if you enjoyed this episode, I just have a quick favor to ask. Please hit that subscribe button. I've got a ton of exciting interviews booked with the people behind some of the very best restaurants in Canada, and I would hate for you to miss an episode.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Producing this podcast has been a ton of fun, but it's also been a lot of work. Your subscribing is how I know that people are into it and that I should keep it up. And to the many of you who have already subscribed, thank you so, so much. Until next time. Cheers.
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