Amena Brown:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another new episode of HER with Amena Brown.
Matt Owen:
Yeah!
Amena Brown:
And Matt is here in the living room with me.
Matt Owen:
Okay!
Amena Brown:
Because we have a few more road stories that we can say publicly. Some of the road stories we do have, they just will not make this podcast.
I will give y'all a little plug right quick though that we have been making bonus episodes from these episodes on my Patreon. So, shout out to my Patreon supporters. We really appreciate you all. Our Patreon supporters, in addition to just helping support my creative work in general, specifically are supporting us, helping make this podcast continue to be accessible so that we can provide transcripts and things like that from the podcast, which you can find in the show notes. Second plug.
Matt Owen:
Show notes.
Amena Brown:
You can find the link to the show notes in the description on whichever podcast player you're using. If you don't remember any of that, the show notes are also on AmenaBrown.com/HERwithAmena.
So, if you want not quite the dinner party versions because there's three levels to road stories. There's the road stories we tell y'all on a podcast. Then if there's a little more scandal, we just put it behind the paywall on Patreon. If it's super scandalous and/or involves naming names...
Matt Owen:
Catch me in the streets.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, we don't really put them things on recordings. So that way y'all know if y'all see us at a dinner party, we have a few entertaining things.
Matt Owen:
If it comes back up and I'll be like, "Did I say that? Hm, I don't remember."
Amena Brown:
"No, not me!"
Also, this reminds me, this has nothing to do with the podcast, but right quick, this reminds me of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that we watched where Larry David was talking about the importance of being able to be a good middle at the dinner party, right?
Matt Owen:
That is important. That's a difficult thing.
Amena Brown:
I don't know if you remember this episode.
Matt Owen:
Everybody can't do it.
Amena Brown:
Where you have, especially if you have a dinner party where everyone's actually sitting all at the same table and you've got the people who are on the end, but the people who are on the long side of the table that are sitting in the middle, y'all have to go back and actually watch this Larry David episode if you like that kind of thing, but I always think about us when I think about the concept of the middle because I feel like we're both people that you could totally sit in the middle of the row of people that we may or may not know at a dinner party. And first of all, we have lots of stories that we can tell and lots of questions we can ask to get other people talking.
Matt Owen:
Yep. And we don't have to tell stories if somebody else is telling stories. That's a whole nother skill. I'll be like, "Wait, hold up. I'm the one who be telling a story. How are you going to tell a story when I tell... You got a story? That's Cool. Tell your story."
Amena Brown:
That's a really good point you made, babe, because I think especially when you are, by nature, a performing artist, I think people assume that means that you have to be the ham. I really don't know why ham is the term that... Did you grow up hearing that? It'd be like, "Oh, so-and-so's a ham"?
Matt Owen:
I did. I did and I love ham, so I always took it as a compliment. I'm like, "Ham it up."
Amena Brown:
You were like, "That person must be delicious. Right on."
Matt Owen:
Oh yeah. I'll take another slice. You want you another slice of this ham? Let's go.
Amena Brown:
But even though I became a performer, I did not actually grow up being a ham. I was more withdrawn and subdued. But I think you made a great point there, babe, that part of being a good dinner party guest is having a good story on-hand to tell, but not having to tell it.
Matt Owen:
See, I think that in my 20s, I was totally a ham.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Mm-hmm.
Matt Owen:
I didn't know how not to be on, I didn't know how not to perform. Oh, there's anybody here? If I know you or not, oh, we putting on a show. Every picture I've seen of myself from 19 till about 23, 24, I'm just doing something crazy. I'm not smiling regular. I'm not just in the picture. I'm like gum under a shoe or something. I don't know, man. I'm just making up some weird... Whatever the weird thing, I just would get around people and it would just explode.
And then I think as I got older, I started to understand, hey man. You start to become more aware of yourself, I think. You know what I mean? And aware of those around you. And for everybody who was around me at that time, I can understand. I might have been a lot. I might have been a lot. There's pluses and minuses to being aware of yourself and what's going on, kind of like what we were talking about.
Just a second before we hit record, I had some headphones on and I said, "Let me take these headphones off real quick so I don't talk like I have podcast voice" because when you put the headphones on... What'd you say they said to you?
Amena Brown:
They told me my first time in the studio, I put the headphones on, they were like, "Can we get another take?" Because they said I sounded like a smooth jazz radio host.
Matt Owen:
Can you give us a taste?
Amena Brown:
I think it probably sounded something like, "Well, in my life, when I'm thinking about certain things, when I really contemplate the meaning of life," which is really not what I would sound like, conversationally.
Matt Owen:
Nah.
Amena Brown:
You would never do that if you were talking with your friends or hanging out or whatever.
Matt Owen:
Just being regular.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. It can be easy in podcast space to get to that voice, so we try very hard here not to give you that. Plus in the living room, we don't have use for those voices.
Matt Owen:
I also do think that with the advent of camera phones, we are all much more aware of ourselves than maybe we were at one point in time. And probably some for the better. Some things, it'd probably be good to be aware of. You know what I mean?
Amena Brown:
Right, that's true.
Matt Owen:
Know some things about yourselves, some tendencies or whatever it is, but now it's like, "Oh, I got to hold my chest and tuck my chin in this weird way and smile this weird way so you don't see." Man, I'm 44 years old. I'm going to be 45 in September, but let's just keep this thing going. I'm just going to be the age I am and talk the way I talk.
Amena Brown:
Exactly.
Matt Owen:
And anyways, I did take the headphones off though because...
Amena Brown:
That's true. No headphones here, everyone. We're both headphones-less.
Matt Owen:
This is not a smooth jazz podcast coming up on the eights.
Amena Brown:
I don't know if there's such a thing as gravel jazz.
Matt Owen:
Gravel jazz!
Amena Brown:
I don't know what this would call it that we're doing, but it is not smooth jazz.
Matt Owen:
Oh, yeah.
Amena Brown:
So today in our road stories epithets that we hope to give you all, we wanted to center on the food, which honestly, outside of the fact that we were getting paid and we were on the road, and I, like anyone, enjoy getting paid, I miss that part of the road, although we are now getting paid just to not be on the road as much. I miss that part, but I do miss the food part more because we got to travel to some cities and eat really, really good.
First of all, I feel like it took me some time professionally to get to a point where I felt that I could ask for a better travel schedule. So I feel like my first few years on the road, everything was chaos. But that felt kind of rockstar for a little while, you know?
Matt Owen:
Yeah. Because you had to get up and go. You had that early morning flight, you get up, catch that flight, you fly in just in time to do the sound check, go out there, do your thing, got to catch a quick nap before you catch that early flight back. You're in and out. Yep.
Amena Brown:
Everything, everything. So I think that felt rockstar for a little while until it didn't, until it started feeling like... Especially once your road schedule started filling in more, and then for us, because we weren't artists, whether we were solo artists when we did our solo things or when we traveled together performing, we both were both/and artists.
We have some artist friends that they never do gigs in the morning, ever. All their gigs are at night. Whether they're in a band or they DJ or whatever their art is, their things happen at night. So you don't see those people before noon or 1:00 PM. They don't take gigs at that time.
But both of us have had the experience in our artistic lives of having to be both/and artists where we had to do night gigs, and sometimes the next day had to be up in the morning for some nine-to-five, could be a corporate gig. We had to go. I mean, I know that's happened when we were on the road. You had to do a gig out of town, then you had to fly back in because you had a corporate client in Atlanta. You had to be there for their setup. We did conference world, right?
Matt Owen:
Conference work where you are DJing at eight in the morning.
Amena Brown:
Yikes.
Matt Owen:
And you're stepping up to your turn turntables and somebody's looking at you like, "Don't you dare. Don't you dare mmst mmst mmst me at eight in the morning."
Amena Brown:
Please don't mmst me.
Matt Owen:
I am not here for your mmst mmst mmst.
Amena Brown:
People don't want to be mmsted. First of all, this is the truth of it. When you're in a corporate environment or in a church environment, these two groups of people, it's rare that these people want to mmst mmst at all, not to mention in the morning, right?
Matt Owen:
Oh, man.
Amena Brown:
But when Matt is DJing in nightlife, people came to a venue, a bar, a place to have a good time. They mmst me till the cows come home. But we would go into some other spaces where they indeed did not want to have a good time specifically.
Matt Owen:
No.
Amena Brown:
So I think a part of the lesson that I feel like I learned that I had to start doing when I was traveling by myself and then that we had to incorporate when we were traveling together was realizing just because the gig is at 10:00 doesn't mean that we need to let them book us the 6:00 AM flight and be up at 3:00 AM so we can get to the airport by 4:00 and slide right in. I think we both have had to learn how to give ourselves more margin and time, start flying in the night before, start giving ourselves a little more time.
So at first, we were doing that for our own sakes as an element of self-care, but then it also turned out to be more fun in some of the cities we went to.
Matt Owen:
Right, yeah.
Amena Brown:
Because then you didn't just breeze through Chicago, for example, and miss out on all the food that's there.
Matt Owen:
You're enjoying a city. You're getting to know a city by its food and by its art and whatever the scene is there in that city, yeah.
Amena Brown:
I think one of the things that I miss the most about not being on the road now like we were pre-pandemic is I missed the traveling. But I think what I figured out now that we've had... We've done a little bit of traveling for gigs and otherwise, but I think what I realize now is that I miss the traveling, but maybe not all of the hustle and bustle of the gigs as much. And so that did kind of bring to my mind, and I think we've tried to practice this a little bit more now when we travel, actually going places just because we want to go to that city. Even if we go there and have some meetings or something, but we want to actually enjoy the city and not feel in a rush.
So we wanted to run down for y'all a few of our favorite food cities that we've traveled to. I do want to start with Chicago, which-
Matt Owen:
That's my favorite.
Amena Brown:
To be fair, you all have heard some tales about Chicago already because we told y'all in a previous episode about a not-so-great trip to Chicago. But I think we alluded that we were going to come back to you, Chicago, because that trip did not go great, but we had a lot of other subsequent trips that went amazing.
Matt Owen:
Yeah. More than made up for itself, for sure.
Amena Brown:
First of all, Chicago pizza. I hear you, New Yorkers. I hear you grumbling in the background. I hear you being like, "Is it pizza?" I've literally heard one of you New Yorkers say to me, "Oh, you had Chicago pizza. You mean lasagna?" And I'm not fighting with y'all. I'm not fighting.
Matt Owen:
They're not wrong. Kind of.
Amena Brown:
I'm not fighting with y'all about that. I'm pretty much telling y'all that I am eating the pizza in Chicago and New York. But we going to talk about Chicago pizza first. New Yorkers, we're going to get to y'all. Okay? Don't worry about it. We'll get to y'all because I'm not giving no votes today on who got the best pizza?
Chicago pizza, it's delicious. It's delicious. Lou Malnati's? Delicious. Giordano's, we also had. I feel like there's another one. Oh, Gino's East.
Matt Owen:
Yeah, that was the first one we went to.
Amena Brown:
Oh, okay.
Matt Owen:
That was the first one. And then Lou Malnati's, that was the one that I learned the hard way that it's not Illuminati's Pizza because I was walking out the hotel and I asked the guy at the door, I said, "Hey man, which way to Illuminati's Pizza?" And boy, they had a good laugh at me.
Amena Brown:
That was pretty funny.
Matt Owen:
Yeah, they got me.
Amena Brown:
I was like... Because you said it to me one time, and if you're hearing "Illuminati's" really fast, your brain replaces it with what you're assuming it is, which is Lou Malnati's. So I think you said it to me and I was like, "What did he just say?"
And then y'all, the other thing y'all can't see because we're on audio right now, is my husband has a very good straight face also. I feel like over the years of our marriage, he's learned to alert me or let me know when he's being funny, but I'm pretty sure through at least the first two years of us being married, there was a lot of times that he was being funny and I did not know he was being funny because he was straight-facing me.
So in the moment he said "Illuminati's" the first time, I looked at him and he didn't look back at me like he was saying anything funny to me. So I was like, "I think he meant to say something funny and he just letting it lie with me." So when we got outside the hotel and he said it and they were like, "What'd you say?" I was like, "Oh my gosh. I thought he was playing."
Matt Owen:
You know, I also, being the Southern man that I am, I do have a bit of an annunciation problem. It's just one long word with no syllables, nothing in there. And so I just might have just slammed it all together. My bad, y'all. Lou Malnati's is delicious.
Amena Brown:
Delicious. Love that, love that.
We also have had some friends, shout out to our friends who live in Chicago, we had some friends actually send us Chicago pizza because there's one of the pizza restaurants there that you can ship it to friends that don't live there.
Matt Owen:
Yeah, that's incredible.
Amena Brown:
And it came to us frozen and it was a little personal one and all we had to do was put it in the oven. Y'all. Yes, yes to Chicago pizza.
Matt Owen:
Technology at its finest.
Amena Brown:
I went to Chicago. I think we went to Chicago a couple of times and only ate the pizza, never had time to both eat the pizza and the hotdogs. So we finally were able to make time to go to Portillo's. And y'all know that I went a lot of years without eating hotdogs because of what we discussed about food poisoning in a previous episode. So y'all know it took me some years to heal up from that before I could even approach a hotdog. So that's probably also why we went to Chicago but didn't eat hot dogs.
Matt Owen:
Right. That makes sense.
Amena Brown:
But one time we went and we got there early enough before the gig that we had time to eat two meals because once you get in the building, especially if you are there for a conference or for a church thing, once you get in the building, you're pretty much stuck with whatever the food is that they have here.
Matt Owen:
Yeah. Whatever the craft services table is, whatever.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. And Matt using craft services there is him being very kind to some of these places that we were. This food here, this ain't what you want. When you're in a food city, you're typically not getting that at the event.
Matt Owen:
Nah.
Amena Brown:
So we came in early, got our Chicago pizza.
Matt Owen:
Baked chicken with the kind of painted on brown [inaudible 00:16:22]
Amena Brown:
Listen guys, no. Y'all know what them green beans look like. Y'all know when I said them green beans, y'all know. Y'all know what they is.
So we went to Portillo's and I have to say, even honestly the Chicago hot dog I had that gave me food poisoning was delicious.
Matt Owen:
It was.
Amena Brown:
It did not give me any indication that it was going to make me sick like that.
Matt Owen:
Nah, that one snuck up on us because it was great.
Amena Brown:
So we went to Portillo's and I felt really had the true experience. I mean, the little poppy seeds on the hotdog bun.
Matt Owen:
Amazing.
Amena Brown:
I'm going to let y'all know that Chicago hotdogs inspired me to buy celery salt for my own house. Do y'all understand? Matt and I actually did a date night one night where we tried to make Chicago hotdogs at home.
Matt Owen:
We tried it.
Amena Brown:
We did a date night in. I specifically-
Matt Owen:
We did okay.
Amena Brown:
It wasn't so bad. I mean, part of it is you ain't got... It's the same to me as Philly, which we'll get to in a minute, but it's the same as trying to redo a hoagie. It's like some of it is the bread that is native to there in Philly. And I do think the hot dogs in Chicago are the same. But we tried it. But that celery salt? I put that shit on everything.
Is there any other foods you can remember? Because I know we're going to talk coffee in a second, but any other food that you can remember from Chicago? I don't know why-
Matt Owen:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
Yes?
Matt Owen:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
Okay?
Matt Owen:
Okay. First of all, I don't know if you want to talk about the Girl & the Goat.
Amena Brown:
Oh, we do need to talk about the Girl & the Goat. Okay, okay.
Matt Owen:
But before we talk about the Girl & the Goat, the first time we couldn't get into the Girl & the Goat. We didn't understand the level of what type of reservations you needed to make, so we had to go to the Little Goat Diner.
Amena Brown:
Come on. Come on and bring that, yes.
Matt Owen:
And I've still got a picture somewhere of this sandwich that I got from there. It was a burger that had lamb on top of meat, on top of pork. It was three or four-stacks high. It was... Still to this day, that might have been the best thing I've ever ate in my life.
Amena Brown:
I am so glad that you brought this up because that's one of the things I love about Chicago as a food city is that you have some, I don't know how to describe it, but because to me it's still... We're always joking about the word gourmet. I think in Chicago, all of the food could be considered gourmet, but you have what would be considered your street food that you could eat in Chicago, your pizza, hotdogs, tacos, things like that that, that are typically not breaking the bank for you, but they're amazing. But then in Chicago, you also have some really amazing chefs who have restaurants there and you're getting to experience that.
I want to shout out Stephanie. Stephanie, I think, Izard? I'm trying to confirm if that is correct, but I know her first name's Stephanie and I know I found out about her from watching Top Chef. Shout out to any of you who are Top Chef fans listening. And so she was on my list for that reason because I think if I'm remembering right, she was the first woman to ever win Top Chef.
So we were very determined and we were like, "Oh no, we can't get in the Girl & the Goat," because apparently at that time, you had to have reservations way, way, way in advance. And then we were like, "Oh, well, I guess we can go to the Little Goat Diner," and boy!
Matt Owen:
Was not disappointed.
Amena Brown:
Oh, Little Goat was delicious! I think we actually went back to Chicago and went to the Little Goat Diner on purpose after that.
Matt Owen:
Yeah, that sandwich was that good.
Amena Brown:
It was so good!
Matt Owen:
I'm still thinking about it.
Amena Brown:
Also, the french fries were-
Matt Owen:
Yeah, it's like duck fat or something.
Amena Brown:
Either soaked in beef fat?
Matt Owen:
Maybe that's what it is.
Amena Brown:
Or they were cooked? Whatever it was, y'all, normally I would not necessarily ask for anything that was soaked in beef fat or whatever fat it was, but I'm going to tell y'all right now, that french fry threatened to change my life.
Matt Owen:
Let me tell you, I'm really full right now because Amena woke up this morning, decided she wanted pancakes because she's had to deprive herself of some good food. So we went out and got pancakes this morning and she could only eat one, so I ate the other two. So I'm over here full, but I would eat that sandwich and those fries, full as I am.
Amena Brown:
Boy. Okay?
Matt Owen:
Amazing.
Amena Brown:
It was so delicious.
Y'all, I'm not going to talk about this very long, but I'm going to tell you, when you get in your 40s, you start having to go get your checkups and get all your blood work monitored and then your doctor come back and be like, "Blood sugar's a little high." So now y'all, y'all know how much I love carbohydrates and I'm basically having to monitor right now in order to help my blood sugars get to a healthy level. I'm having to monitor the carbs that I eat. Y'all, I don't want to monitor that. I just want to eat as much of them as I want to, hence why we are talking about these food cities so that I can live vicariously through our past lives that we had.
Matt Owen:
Oh man, we used to go in and just whatever it was...
Amena Brown:
Enjoy all of it. Please.
Matt Owen:
All the M&Ms in the green room.
Amena Brown:
Okay. All the brownie bites because there was always a little brownie bite in the green room somewhere.
Matt Owen:
Always a brownie bite.
Amena Brown:
From Kroger somewhere, Publix.
Matt Owen:
Coke, remember drinking a whole can of Coke?
Amena Brown:
Oh man, a whole can of Coke, y'all. With a bag of chips and a cookie.
Matt Owen:
What?
Amena Brown:
Man, that was the time.
Matt Owen:
A bag of chips.
Amena Brown:
Also, we ended up back in Chicago close to my birthday for a gig and we still weren't able to get reservations. We tried to get reservations again for the Girl and the Goat and weren't able to get reservations, but I did enough internet sleuthing to discover that if you were there when the Girl & the Goat opened, that they had a certain number of seats that were like first come, first serve. So imagine, y'all, that this restaurant opens at 5:00 and I think we got there at 4:30 and there were already people in line.
Matt Owen:
Yeah, yeah.
Amena Brown:
So we were one of the last people to get the first seats. They had bar seats and then they had a long table that was kind of out on the sidewalk, but sort of their sidewalk patio. And that was my birthday dinner that year that we got to eat at Girl & the Goat. So shout out to Stephanie, yo. You did that, honey. Big shout out to Chicago. That brings me to... Yes?
Matt Owen:
I do have another Chicago edition.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Because yes.
Matt Owen:
This might just be a Chicago episode.
Amena Brown:
Okay.
Matt Owen:
Because we haven't even gotten to the coffee yet.
Amena Brown:
Gotten back to the coffee yet.
Matt Owen:
But I just got to make an addition, that steakhouse we went to.
Amena Brown:
Yo!
Matt Owen:
Uh-huh.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, we do have to talk about this. Maybe this is a Chicago episode because I have forgotten about the good times.
Matt Owen:
And we haven't even gotten to... Chicago also has a food truck scene. Remember the food trucks?
Amena Brown:
Yes, that's true.
Matt Owen:
Oh, but that steakhouse.
Amena Brown:
Gibson's.
Matt Owen:
That one.
Amena Brown:
Gibson's Steakhouse. I feel like in a previous episode, I told y'all about some times I met celebrities. I think I did at That Time I Met a Celebrity episode and I talked about meeting Tasha Smith. So for further background on that, we will put the links to that episode in the show notes. So if you haven't listened to it, you can go back into the archives and listen to this.
But in short, we got a gig in Chicago for... This is another Valentine's Day because we've told y'all a couple of other road stories that were near Valentine's Day. We had a Valentine's Day in Vegas. So we got booked for the suburbs of Chicago on the 15th, I think, of February. So we decided to fly in on the 14th. And our plan was to go... I still think we couldn't get reservations to the Girl & the Goat, so I think we had made reservations for a special prefixed menu they were doing at the Little Goat Diner.
Matt Owen:
I think you're right.
Amena Brown:
Okay. So I randomly ended up getting upgraded to first class and only one of us could sit. And so Matt was like, "You go."
Matt Owen:
Yes, enjoy.
Amena Brown:
So I ended up sitting next to actress, director, comedian Tasha Smith, who is just a wonderful person as you meet her in person, and obviously, she is a hilarious and artful person in all of the work that she has done over the years.
So I meet her on this flight. We have a wonderful chat, a wonderful Black girl chat about what her 40s are like and things that she's learning in her professional life. And I'm just there soaking in all the information.
So right as we're about to get on the plane, she puts her number in my phone and she's like, "It's Valentine's Day. What are you and your husband doing?" And I was like, "Oh, we were going to go eat at this restaurant." She was like, "You need to come eat with me." And she was like, "Ask your husband. Ask your husband."
So as soon as we're exiting the plane, she's like, "Ask your husband and text me." So y'all, just the weirdness of you've met a celebrity now, and she put her number in my phone and was like, "Just text me." That whole thing had me like, "Huh?" So by the time Matt and I meet up after we get out of the plane and I'm like, "Hey. So I was sitting next to Tasha Smith on the flight and she said she wanted us to go to dinner with her on Valentine's Day." And Matt was like, "Oh, yes. Absolutely, yes. We going to cancel them other reservations."
Matt Owen:
Cool.
Amena Brown:
Because he was like, "In what other lifetime are we going to get to sit and have Valentine's Day dinner with Tasha Smith? In what other life?"
Matt Owen:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
So it was kind of snowy and cold.
Matt Owen:
It was, you're right.
Amena Brown:
And we were staying... I feel like we must have been staying not far from where that place was. I really can't remember now, y'all, what we were doing.
Anyway, she gave us the address for the restaurant, which for those of you that aren't from Chicago, Gibson's is an old-school, classic, really, really great steakhouse in Chicago.
Matt Owen:
Pictures of all the celebrities covering the wall, lots of Michael Jordan pictures on the wall. Yeah.
Amena Brown:
And it was packed obviously because it was literally Valentine's Day. Okay?
So we walk in there to hang out with Tasha and two of her friends. And y'all, first of all, the slight anxieties that you have when you're eating with people who are not in your tax bracket.
Matt Owen:
I don't know. I can run, I can jog a little bit, but I don't know if I can run like you.
Amena Brown:
It's a lot because when you're with people who are outside of your tax bracket, there's a lot of ordering without money considerations. There's a lot of them being like, "Oh, you have to try this." So when the waiter comes, you didn't get a word in. They were like, "Oh, we going to have this and this."
Matt Owen:
"We're going to get a bottle of this."
Amena Brown:
"Let's try this. Oh, they have to taste that." And they'll ask the waiter, "Don't you recommend such and such?" And the waiter will say, "Oh, yes." They'll say, "Yes, and those." So before you know it, five or six dishes got ordered, all of them-
Matt Owen:
"Um, so we going to... I'm kind of..."
Amena Brown:
You're looking forward to trying it but you're like, "Uh..." So Matt and I just look at each other and I can tell by the look in our eyes, we've just decided.
Matt Owen:
We all in.
Amena Brown:
If this whole thing gets split evenly among us, this is what we're doing.
Matt Owen:
Go for it.
Amena Brown:
This is our time for a treat.
Matt Owen:
It's an opportunity.
Amena Brown:
Okay. So Tasha is mainly vegetarian. She's pescitarian sometimes. So we had a little bit of seafood dishes. But you ordered a steak, right?
Matt Owen:
Yeah because it was a steakhouse. And I'm pretty sure I... Because usually, I like to find out, when you're with vegetarians... But she did invite us to a steakhouse. You know what I'm saying? So there was some conversation about it. It's cool. She's doing it for these reasons, whatever.
So yeah, I was like, "Uh, steaks." And you know, growing up, you grow up. Shout out to the Sizzler, people growing up going to Sizzler
Amena Brown:
Come on, shout-out to Sizzler.
Matt Owen:
And then there was a certain time of my life that you upgrade to Longhorn. You're like, "Okay, Longhorn." And then I lived in Dallas for a while and they had some nice steakhouses out there, you know what I'm saying? So you end up at some steakhouses, eating some pretty decent pieces of beef, you know what I mean? And stuff. And you kind of learn the difference between this cut and that cut. And you're like, "Okay, I kind of got an idea," and I got to the place where I know that you order the steak medium.
Amena Brown:
It's that.
Matt Owen:
Or if you're at a really nice restaurant, you go ahead and go for that medium-rare, or if you're adventurous, I am, go for that rare. So I've kind of crept down the line of learning how to order, but I wasn't prepared for this place. They brought out some pieces of meat and you got to go, "Oh yeah, I'll take that." You're looking at these very thick cut, very... It looked like a little wood thing full of just art pieces. And you're like, "Oh, that's beautiful," without all the way understanding. I asked a few questions and tried to navigate my way through it, but I was like, "I'll take that one."
That was my first experience of something like that. But you know, you try to act like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's common. Yeah. Cool. Oh, you brought it out to me? Yes, I will have that one. Thank you. Normal things."
Amena Brown:
Definitely try to act like you've been places. It's very hard to act like you've been places when you're someplace where you ain't been.
Matt Owen:
You know, I still keep a thing in the back of my head as the voice of my mother in the grocery store going, "Don't you embarrass me."
Amena Brown:
That's it.
Matt Owen:
That time when you're acting up as a little kid and you're asking for all the toys in the grocery store or whatever, the candy, whatever it is, and she's like, "Stop. No. Don't you embarrass me." And you're like, "Oh." And so I just keep that one little voice in the back. Sometimes I don't listen to it, let's be honest. It's there.
Anyway, so ordered the steak, turned out to be the most delicious piece of... It was a fantastic experience, but what was funny even about that was that here it was, what at the time, would've been the most expensive piece of meat I'd ever purchased in my life, and it was so big I couldn't eat all of it in one sitting so had to bring it back to the hotel. Once we get back to the hotel, the level of hotel... Well, I mean, most hotels don't have a full fridge, it just had the little mini fridge.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That is what's funny about the level of hotel because the nicer the hotel, the less they're going to have a fridge and a microwave. A lower star hotel would have-
Matt Owen:
A fridge.
Amena Brown:
The little fridge and the microwave. So we got back and got to fit your brontosaurus sores steak you got from Gibson's and then Tasha's friend that was with us, it was her birthday dinner.
Matt Owen:
Right, that's right.
Amena Brown:
So she wanted all of us to order cake and the cake was diner size, like if y'all have bitten into those diner-size pieces of cake.
Matt Owen:
It was a multilayer piece of cake. Huge.
Amena Brown:
Yikes. So imagine us going back to this room, and I don't remember what you did with that steak in the morning, or if you just ate it cold.
Matt Owen:
I remember.
Amena Brown:
What did you do?
Matt Owen:
No, I remember because I remember first of all, putting it in that mini-fridge and being like, "Even the amount of piece of meat left is still more costly than this fridge it's sitting in." And I know that I put it on a little... I think I put it on a napkin. I might have put it on a couple napkins because I didn't want to put the styrofoam, because it was one of those styrofoam... You can't put that in the microwave. So I put that, but then I remember I put it back into styrofoam and used plastic utensils to cut because I didn't even have a steak knife.
Amena Brown:
Boy, boy.
Matt Owen:
But man, it was good that next day too, the cake, everything. And we had to eat it because we were flying out the next day.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, I think that's right because I think we were, wherever we were staying, we were going to go to the gig because it was like a chapel at a college or something. And then right after that, we were flying out, so we weren't coming back to the hotel. So I just remember us scarfing down cake for breakfast and you eating your steak. I forgot that you warmed it up on a napkin. That's hilarious.
Okay, well this gives us a good space to talk about coffee. So let's talk about coffee in Chicago. What were your coffee discoveries?
Matt Owen:
Growing up, coffee was always my dad's drink, so I was never into it. I was more of a sweet tea and Kool-Aid man myself. And so I remember-
Amena Brown:
Something about "Sweet tea and Kool-Aid man myself" is hilarious. It sounds dignified. It sounds like if someone's like, "Oh no, not merlot for me. I'm a cabernet."
Matt Owen:
See?
Amena Brown:
"I'm more of a sweet tea Kool-Aid man myself."
Matt Owen:
But if you say it confident and with a straight face and don't let nobody know you're joking, they're like, "Oh, that's slick." Then they run it back in their mind, they're like, "Wait."
Amena Brown:
They're like, "Wait a minute. What?"
Matt Owen:
"What'd he say? What'd you say?"
So anyways, I remember in my 20s, friends started getting jobs at Starbucks. So you're there, let me try it. Okay. And then you're going to the late-night diners with your friends because you're old enough to stay out and all that stuff. So I got to where I was pouring the sugar, all the sugar in there, all the milk, all the everything.
And then the more we were traveling, the more I started tasting really good coffee. And Chicago was one of those cities. Intelligentsia is a wonderful coffee roaster in Chicago that I started seeing it more and more. When I would see that logo somewhere, I'd be like, "Let's go."
And most of those coffee shops started getting into the... They are more of what you would think of as the snooty coffee shops, which still to this day, there's a couple of industries where you're typically not going to come across someone who's excited to see you. One being audio tech, sound, people in the... They're running sound for live events. And I get it, you got a lot of things coming at you. I got you.
So I've learned over the years, I'm going to be as nice to you as possible and as warm to you, and I'm going to have as much conversation as you want to have because you got a lot going on. And usually, personality-wise, you gotta keep it moving, bro. And so cool. I will. Because I'm an extrovert. I talk to everybody. And the other people, service industry, I've learned that about would be coffee baristas.
Amena Brown:
Nah, player.
Matt Owen:
I don't understand that one as much. Maybe it's all day long, you're on your feet, you're tired. I'm sure there's a reason. But it seems to be that it's especially the better of a coffee spot it is, the less of a conversation it is. Don't you walk in here talking about no venti grande-
Amena Brown:
Oh, you will be shunned right now. I have been shunned in a coffee shop asking for a tall.
Matt Owen:
Do not.
Amena Brown:
The barista literally just stared at me until I embarrassed myself. No!
Matt Owen:
Do not walk in there and order a macchiato.
Amena Brown:
No.
Matt Owen:
And wonder why it is not big like the macchiato is at Starbucks. Why is it so small? Because the macchiato is actually... But you learn those things and I am pretty sure that those Intelligentsia coffee shops were the ones where you walk in and you basically, you have a few things you can order and there's not really modifications.
And so I think walking into those coffee shops and ordering just coffee, I started learning, oh, that's what coffee from this region tastes like. Oh, that's what coffee from this region tastes like. That's right.
And then flash forward to us going to the Dominican Republic that time and we're up in the mountains and planting coffee beans and seeing how it's done and drinking, how they made it in that big pot. And it's amazing. That whole journey of just getting to where now I just really love coffee. It's part of my daily, the one thing in my day that's probably the same because everything in my day could be totally different from one day to the next, but the one thing about most of my days is I'm going to start out with a good cup of coffee, and Intelligentsia, yeah.
Amena Brown:
Shout out to that. Let's do a quick round of coffee city shout-outs, and then we going to come back in another episode and tell y'all more about some other cities, but other cities that you can remember, cities or places because some of the places I'm like, "I can't remember the exact cities we were in always," but some other places you would say deserve the coffee shout-out. We talked about Chicago. Where else?
Matt Owen:
Portland.
Amena Brown:
Portland, Oregon deserves the coffee shout-out. Stumptown.
Matt Owen:
Mm-hmm. I will say DC.
Amena Brown:
Yo!
Matt Owen:
I found some really good coffee in DC along the way in the DMV area. I will say of Texas, Austin.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, agreed.
Matt Owen:
Austin.
Amena Brown:
Agreed.
Matt Owen:
Atlanta has really become a great coffee-
Amena Brown:
Yeah, that's true.
Matt Owen:
I mean, Portrait? Whoa. I really love their work.
Amena Brown:
Perc?
Matt Owen:
Perc.
Amena Brown:
That's good coffee too.
Matt Owen:
Perc is one of my favorite spots. If you going to meet me and grab a cup of coffee in the ATL, we probably going to Perc. You know what I mean?
Amena Brown:
Yo, Hodgepodge in Atlanta is definitely-
Matt Owen:
Hodgepodge.
Amena Brown:
Urban Grind.
Matt Owen:
Urban Grind! On the BeltLine now.
Amena Brown:
So many things.
Matt Owen:
That's what I'm saying. Now you can't not say ATL.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Matt Owen:
Already said the Dominican Republic. But when we went to Costa Rica, I know it's not a city, but when we went to Costa Rica, that's where I really fell in love with the pour-over, which is my... I use a Chemex now and the pour-over has become my go-to coffee now.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. And for a while, I was traveling back and forth to Rwanda a lot with an organization I was partnering with there.
Matt Owen:
Yes, oh, cool.
Amena Brown:
And so Matt never got to go with me, but Rwanda is a huge location to be getting amazing coffee, just amazing farmers out there, amazing coffee roasting. So when we would be getting ready to go to the airport, our friends that were with us from the organization would drive us up to where this particular coffee roaster was and we would get the bag when it was still warm. I would bring it home like that to Matt because I'm not... I'm on the other side of the coffee situation where I'm like, "Yes, I would like a little bit of coffee with my raspberry swirls and whip and whatever graham cracker stuff." I want all the other stuff with a little bit of coffee.
Matt Owen:
Can there be less coffee in my cup?
Amena Brown:
That's my vibe. So I would bring home those coffee beans for Matt.
So my hope is that as we continue on in our life, that we can go to most of the coffee epicenters in the world and get a chance to travel around and taste coffee, as far as where it's grown there, as well as being able to taste the places that have really innovated into how coffee is brewed and how it gets made and the flavors and all that. So that's on our travel bucket list.
Matt Owen:
Yes, it is.
Amena Brown:
Love to see it. All right, well we got some more food stuff to talk about with y'all, so come back next week and listen to us regale you with other amazing food things to do when you travel.
Matt Owen:
Next time.
Amena Brown:
See y'all soon.
HER With Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.