Inside Food Safety Ep.4 | LIVE from New Orleans | Bocuse d'Or, LRA, IAFP & the Future of Hospitality

Walk-In Talk Podcast - Carl Fiadini

In a live episode from New Orleans during major food industry events including IAFP 2025 and Bocuse d'Or 2026, hosts Carl Fiadini and Eric Moore discuss the critical role of food safety in high-stakes culinary environmen

Key takeaways

• New Orleans’ 200+ year-old infrastructure leads to daily boil water advisories and plumbing failures affecting food safety.

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) It's New Orleans. It is the LRA 2026, Bocuse d'Or, 2026, and the IAFP 2025. What does that mean? I have the chef, Poullard, I mean Mr. Louisiana, Mr. New Orleans, in the house. And I know this because we've been walking around all over the city. and I know Pooch a little bit he's part of the team like we're you know we're bosom buddies but I saw people in cars drive by and literally call the guy out like people like randoms that is pretty amazing thank you sir then of course we have Mr. Eric Moore the food safety specialist the expert at Testo North America trusted partner with Walk and Talk Media and this is inside food safety, New Orleans edition. I have to tell you something right now, this is going to be pretty badass. Let me start it with this. I, today, got to be on stage at Bocuse filming the best chefs in the world and how lucky am I for that. Honestly, this is one of the ones for the books for me. We got to film the Lagasies, father and son, Daniel Boulud. Like there were so many people that we actually got Paul Jean-Paul, oh my God! There's so many. There's Remy of Bay. It doesn't end. It was such an amazing time. Wow, I'm really kind of taken aback. And I mean that sincerely. So Pucci, you kind of put this together for Walk and Talk with what we're doing at large And I want to give you the The proper Thank and flowers for that. So when we're talking about relationships and we're talking about where Walk and Talk Media is today, and we're talking about Testo North America, and of course Eric Moore is right here in the flesh. We're staring at each other, eyeballs and everything. By the way, welcome to New Orleans and welcome to the show. Happy and honor to be here. Let's recognize Mr. Aaron Sharp, who was supposed to be here, and, you know, got diverted. This was his idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is a wealth of great ideas coming out of him. It's pretty awesome. It's really encouraging and excited. He's got energy. He really, yes. You know, it's a combination of energy and foresight, and it's a scary combo to have. Passion and grit, too. He's got some passionate great, Roger. He's just a good kid. 100%. Let's start food safety. There's several shows happening right here in New Orleans. There's a lot of food handed out. There's a lot of industry folks just walking around big, like, Michelin stars and James Beard recipients and all of it. They're all here. The force behind all of the culinary really is food safety. That's where, that's what people care about today. That's like, in my opinion, is the number one past culinary. like, hey, what does it taste like? The number one thing is, is the staff knowledgeable? Is the food coming from the right places? You know, all of that, it's really where it is. Pucci, you are a decorated chef. We have all of your peers and all of these people here at the show. What's food safety mean to you? It means everything to me. I mean, if we can't regulate how food is prepared, held, stored, then we shouldn't be selling the food. In a culinary city like New Orleans, it's been around here doing the first restaurant, first cocktail, first appetizer, invented brunch, all of these different things right here in this city. I mean, it's paramount to make sure that everyone doesn't leave this city. sick, hopefully not dead. You know, and everything has to be tested. I mean, what better brand and testo to help you do those things. Eric, New Orleans is an old city. It's an old, old place. That could have its challenges. Absolutely. I mean, from a physical, you know, physical structure perspective, absolutely, you know, the places where a lot of amazing things happen in kitchens here, those are old spaces, right? It's hard to maintain those old spaces, you know, keep them sort of up to code, quote unquote, air quote, if you will. but also, you know, functional, efficient, and, you know, it's not really easy, buildings that are 200 plus years old, trying to, you know, make, jam things in there that, you know, from modern technology into these old, old structures, it's, it's challenging. And then to have to work there, right, is even more complex. You don't forget, you actually, they have to produce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At a top tier level as well. Yeah, awesome competition here. You know, the funny thing about Louisiana, especially with New Orleans, it's not a funny thing, it's an awesome thing, is that, shout to chef Jean-Paul, who'd mentioned that, you know, you can go to these soul food places that are on the corner, but they have lines around the corner because people come here for New Orleans just to experience that culture and food, the culture through the food, and within that, so it doesn't matter, the Michelin Stars, what have you, everywhere she performed, you have to make sure that everything is held properly, cooked properly, all the above, sanitized properly to keep people coming back. Yeah. All year round. And then you have this place that we're in, the convention center. It's one of the largest convention centers in the United States. It's over a mile long. We walked it. It's over a mile long. No, we walked it. I can tell you because I'm a sweaty mess. My Zadic is killing you. It's so big. And I'll tell you, going on probably almost 15 years ago, I used to come here on an annual will be actually like once or twice a year when I worked for Aramark. They were the food service management company here and massive trade shows or a show would come in. And the biggest one that we ever did was for Microsoft. We were doing 10,000 person plated meals three times a day, right, for five straight days. So just think about that, right? In the main production kitchen is all the way at the, what I guess, that's the north end of the hall. I think they use... It's in Hall A, essentially, right? I think they use the actual global parallels, like to, you know. It was, I'm telling you, it was absolutely astounding. So,