GUEST: Toast (Ceremony / Skin Like Iron)

Toast joined me at Flaco's in Berkeley before heading to band practice with Skin Like Iron.

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Q: Are there any foods that are not allowed or are discouraged in the tour van? Either because they are messy or smell bad or whatever…

A: No. If you could see and smell our van you would understand that neither one of those things is a concern. We’re split right down the middle between vegan and…McDonald’s. So if there were rules starting to get put on stuff we’d start to have problems so everyone does whatever. We already have the messiest and smelliest van ever.

Q: Are there any foods that you used to love growing up or at one time in your life but can’t stand anymore?

A: Lamb… chicken nuggets… any kind of meat but that’s too easy of an answer. It took me a couple years after I stopped working at Baskin Robbins to like ice cream again. Other than that I can’t really think of anything off-hand. My grandma made a lot of Armenian food like a lot of lamb…dolmas. And I still like them…I don’t like lamb…but the dolmas I get anywhere else are not as good as my grandma’s. They never will be.

Q: What kind of interesting food experiences or situations have you been in while touring abroad?

A: [Thinks…starts laughing] We were in Japan and we were there for a week…. Like five shows…and after the tour I stayed two days later by myself just kind of wondering around Tokyo seeing some cool shit. The whole time we were there the vegan half of the band was starving. I lost 10 pounds while I was there between that and Korea. There’s just nothing to eat.

I had this little card with me that said in Japanese that said ‘please don’t let me eat this, this, or this… I can’t eat this… I can’t eat this’ and I would go to places and show them that and they would just kind of laugh. 7/11 there has a whole bunch of food…which I guess they are starting to do more here. Not like taquitos but like a grocery store. So… everything is in Japanese and I can’t read any of it so I would get a whole bunch of stuff that would look ok…. It looked like it was vegan… I would bring it up to the register and show them my card. Any vegetarian who has been to Japan will tell you all that you are eating is inari and these little peanut better sandwiches they have.

So after two weeks between Korea and Japan I’m just starving. The last day I was there by myself I had heard there was an M-Café in Tokyo… there is one in L.A. on Melrose… and I decided to go there. I take the subway there, take the train, I try to find it, and it closed down…shut down because of course fish is in everything in Tokyo…or in Japan. It just didn’t work there I guess. And that was my last stop before flying from Tokyo to SFO which is a 14 hour flight and I was like ‘Fuck…I have 26 hours of travel with no real food… what am I going to do?’ and as I was walking around I saw this place with a huge sign in the window that said ‘Vegetarian & Macro’…macrobiotic.

So I walk in… looking like this huge mountain man skinny freak because I’ve lost even more weight there. Huge beard…which no one has there, tattoos…which no one has there, long hair…which no one has there, and I’m a foot taller than everyone else. Every head in the restaurant turns around to stare at me. There’s one table.. picnic bench style…like family style seats with all these 30 to 60 year old Japanese women who all look at me like I’m holding a bloody axe. You know? Like the worse ‘what the fuck is that guy doing? There is no way that he means to be here.’ And they all just put there heads down and keep eating. So I sit down with all my bags between these two women… kind of like Shaq would be at this table… trying to squeeze in. They’re just kind of looking at me and talking to each other and I obviously have no idea what they are saying. The woman turns to me and says ‘you know… this vegetarian.’ And I go ‘yea’ and I show her my little card and she freaks out. They all start yelling about… the chef comes out and shakes my hand and she is translating for everyone for me and they are like

‘how long you been vegetarian’

‘uh... about ten years’

‘aaagggghhhhh!! No fish?’

‘no… no fish’

The chef made me this special thing and I ate with these women who are pouring me tea and touching my hair. It was cool… it was like an oasis of non fish in an otherwise fishy land.

So yeah I would say that’s a pretty good food story. Oh yea and Ross ate a reindeer burrito in Alaska.

Q: So when your not on tour with Ceremony and now Skin Like Iron what are you doing?

A: I run a screen-printing shop based out of Oakland called Arctic Ink. I have a webstore that I try to maintain but I’m usually busy printing other stuff so I kind of let the webstore slip in case you were wondering why I haven’t restocked that shirt yet. [laughs] I do a lot of printing for bands around here, I do some small businesses and other stuff for touring bands coming through that run out of merch. That keeps me pretty busy.

Q: As a vegan do you actually cook a lot at home or do you just find places to eat?

A: I’m lazy. I’ve been cooking more at home lately… but I’m pretty lazy. My kitchen kind of sucks at my apartment so that has a lot to do with it. I find places to eat because I enjoy going out to eat. The other night I made macaroni and cheese at home. Not like a box…I made it. I made a good gnocchi the other night. I make food but generally…

Q: Mostly pasta?

A: Those are both pastas aren’t they? [laughs] No… I made pizza once. I make food but I get lazy and food seems to be the go-to social activity and I end up doing that a lot.

Q: Tell us about the dish you have named after you at Souley Vegan in Oakland.

A: I stole that from someone. When they first opened I went in there and they had the crispy tofu sandwich and bbq tofu sandwich and it said ‘crispy bbq sandwich’ so I asked ‘what’s that?’ and she said some guy comes in he orders both of them so [they] just put it on the menu. So I said…

‘cool…you should name it after me.’

‘oh…what’s your name?’

‘Toast.’

‘How about the toasty crispy bbq sandwich?’

‘Sure!’

‘Alright I just need a picture of you eating it’

I just thought ‘ah fuck!’ because I’m not too big on spotlight, self-promoting stuff. I don’t like people knowing who I am so I had to kind of think about it and thought ‘wait…that’s the coolest fucking thing…to have a sandwich named after me.’ So I did it… obviously… and now there is a picture of me on the wall at Souley Vegan. I’m trying to get a cinnamon role named after me.

Q: That’d be awesome. Where at?

A: There’s a place called Cinnaholic. I’m working on that…that’s my next one. Maggie Mud maybe… this ice-cream place in the city [San Francisco]. I can get something there hopefully… probably not. If I could just take over every vegan place and having something named after me I think that’d be cool. Not that I’m like very egotistical or anything… but… [laughs]

Q: any upcoming tours that we need to know about?

A: Ceremony is playing January 7th in Santa Rosa with Sabertooth Zombie and All Teeth for their record release and we’re playing a one-off in Seattle. Been turning down a lot of stuff. There’s school, there’s real life, there’s work… so were not as inclined to jump in the van and go play some random show in the middle of nowhere like we used to be. It used to be like ‘sure let’s tour…why not? We’ve got nothing to do’ but not we’ve got serious girlfriends and like I said school and jobs that require us to be closer to home.

Oh yea… February 25th in Oakland at The Metro… Ceremony playing the Wolves & Thieves record release show. Also, Skin Like Iron has a new record coming out in the Spring on React Records that I’m excited about.

Q: What did you order to eat this evening?

A: What did I order here at Flacos Vegetarian Mexican Comida? I had the soft taco plate with an additional taquito. I didn’t get the salad I got extra rice and beans instead. I didn’t get the salad because usually it’s really hard to eat. Its like a spinach salad but the leaves are…I don’t know its very difficult to eat so I don’t really fuck with it. It [the food] was very good. I love Flaco’s. Flaco’s might be one of my favorite places in the East Bay for food. It opened…I think over the summer and its an all vegan Mexican place. There are no burritos…it’s more traditional Mexican food. It’s really good… and I like it. They’ve got these great sweet breads…they’ve got horchata… its wonderful.

Q: If you didn’t have to worry about staffing or money, what would be your ideal restaurant? What kind of place would you open?

A: Wow…it would be all vegan. It would be me imposing my Nazi-veganism upon the world. There would be ice-cream…it would probably be an amalgamation of all my favorite places. There would be some stuff from Souley Vegan, There’d be stuff from Flaco’s… It would like the Voltron of Bay Area food. Gotta get some milkshakes from Saturn’s. There’s all kinds of stuff. A sandwich from Ike’s I could throw in there…ice cream from Maggie Mud. Ice cream from them…and a shake from Saturn’s. I’d get some pizza… Flaco’s taquitos for sure. It would just be a mix of everything. I wouldn’t want to have a specific place in this fantasy world where I ride a unicorn to work.

Q: Anything you want to leave us with?

A: I don’t know. I like my cats. I want to say hi to them… Cookie, Marshmallow, and Jam.

Q: Much love to the kitties?

A: Love em’.