Rags To Dishes, RI's Favorite Food Podcast, Hosts A Downtown Pop-Up

PROVIDENCE, RI — As delivery trucks screech by on Broadway Street, Max Messier Richter sits outside with an iced coffee in hand, skateboard under his feet, and mullet on his head.

Messier Richter, one half of the podcast duo that makes up Rags To Dishes, along with co-host Dan Cotter, is a little stressed and a little excited. Credit it to someone with multiple irons in multiple fires. As it stood on that fall day, their focus was on their first Rags To Dishes pop-up menu.

The menu is part homage to their days working at a restaurant podcast listeners know as "The Establishment". At least 50 percent of the menu is inspired by dishes that they made when they were colleagues and fast friends at the South County restaurant that shall not be named.

Cotter calls the menu an "Ode to the Establishment".

"The dishes are our best recreation of some of our favorites from the menu of our old stomping grounds. There are some fun twists as well though," he said.

According to Messier Richter, the first 15 or so episodes were centered on his and Cotter's whirlwind time at the restaurant. They were young friends with similar interests in the bizarre world of kitchens.

"Max and I had a lot of similar interests, and we wound up working the same stations," said Cotter, "so I kind of took him under my wing, so to speak. I'm not sure I was fit to be mentoring anybody at the time, but I was young and dumb enough to think I could with Max."

For them, those first few episodes were partially therapeutic, partially a 20-something-year-old's idea that what they were doing, and the people they were around, could and should be in consideration for a Seinfeld-style sitcom.

"When we worked there everyone was always like 'this place is such a nut house,'" said Messier Richter.

As most of us who worked strange jobs with strange people can attest, that didn't come to fruition.

What did come of the podcast, however, is a place for others in the restaurant industry to come and share their loves and grievances and resilient hope about a culture that often prioritizes long hours and work weeks over personal mental health.

The podcast also offers a first-hand look into what goes on in the kitchens and dish pits of some of the most acclaimed, or, in at least one instance, formerly acclaimed, restaurants in the city.

"Having a place for people to come on the air and talk about what really happens behind the scenes at these businesses is very important," said Cotter. "In this awful corporate world we live in, we need to be totally informed about the businesses we support. Accountability is everything."

The hosts understood that the podcast needed to broaden its focus to survive. In doing so, they provided a place for people to get the same catharsis that they did from recording an episode.

"Honestly, I was just so sick of the service industry that, in a good way, this podcast is like therapy, because I can just bi*** about what I don't like," said Messier Richter, "and I want to hear about other people bi***ing about what they don't like."

"Everyone's bi***ing about the same s***," he continued, "it's not like, other people's problems are different from mine or someone else's. Just a different setting and different characters."

This form of the podcast has garnered a dedicated enough base of listeners that Messier Richter and Cotter are willing to fundraise. So, this pop-up is both the first menu for the duo, but also a chance to raise money for merchandise, which they'll sell to raise money for a better recording situation.

Again, the thing they say about irons and fires.

The menu will perhaps be somewhat of a giveaway to those searching for Easter eggs from episodes and the show's long-running bit. "Champagne chicken" is among their favorite dishes from a certain establishment in the state. Eggs Benedict is a callback to a specialty they perfected during their time working together.

The "dish pit spaghett", another homage, is dedicated to a co-worker who is said to have drank vanilla extract to get a buzz and take away the shakes.

But they've also taken inspiration from those later episodes as well. In an interview with James Mark, the esteemed chef of now-shuttered North and Big King, he shared an anecdote about the first week of service at his restaurant.

Messier Richter retold it to Patch:

"I have these two bottles of sake that I got from James that I haven't been drinking yet, and I was like, let's just serve the sake shots. I'm not a big drinker, I'm probably not going to drink them. And we talked about on our episode with James from North, the first weekend North was open they were literally just selling s**t out of their fridge. What do we have that we could sell?"

The Rags To Dishes pop-up is scheduled for Friday from 6:30 to 10 p.m. at Bolt Coffee's 61 Washington St. location.

View the full menu below: