[PULSING MUSIC] VO: This program is brought to you by the members of WCNY - thank you!

VO: The William G Pomeroy Foundation helps people celebrate their communitys history by providing grants for historic markers and plaques nationwide.

Information about Pomeroy Foundation grants and partnership opportunities is available at WGPFoundation.org Bear Creek: gourmet burgers, craft beers, custom twists on classics and desserts.

More on Facebook and Instagram at BearCreekRestaurantInc Feed the bear!

[BEAR ROARING] MATT: Spatchcock Funk in the house -- our house, and your house too.

You know where the party's at?

Wherever you're at.

We're gonna teach you how to throw the best parties, the best dinners, the best get-togethers.

All you need are the people that you love, and we'll take care of the rest.

Spatchcock Funk.

Dope food, strong drinks, great stories.

[instrumental hip hop music] MATT: Like Curtis Jackson said, "We in the club, y'all."

As social animals, we all need to feel a sense of belonging, some kind of kinship, baby.

For validation, friendship, we all deserve to be seen and heard.

Now, being around a set, crew, your friend group, man, that's what keeps us engaged.

Happy, alive.

Sometimes, we form these groups over a shared interest, and in this case, the magic American elixir, known as Bourbon, dog.

So we roll deep with our friends over some good old brown liquor.

Now, if you don't drink, there are other reasons to circle up the wagons.

Just avoid that dysentery on the trail.

So remember, the people though, they're the most important ingredient.

Now, we met these cats across different walks of life.

Some former work friends, former teammates, even some former co-defendants, but we ain't here to talk about that.

We're proud to call ourselves a member of a great bourbon club.

Now, we're gonna wrangle up the crew, wrangle up some killer bourbon for a night of dope food, strong drinks, stories, stogies, and all sorts of trouble.

This is 100 Proof People.

[instrumental hip hop music] [instrumental hip hop music] MATT: At the Funk, we got a thing for smoke.

Cigars, the sticky icky, a campfire, the smokey eye makeup girl.

And we are gonna infuse that into a killer bourbon cocktail for some killer people for this killer party.

So let's just jump right into this thing.

We've got a shaker with ice.

We're gonna put into that two ounces of good bourbon, you know, Kentucky whiskey, baby.

1 ounce of sweet vermouth.

And the magic ingredient, bitters.

Two to three dashes, but don't go too hard on it because it'll make the drink too bitter, and we got a thing about bitters around here, so we like to take care of them.

Once that's in there, we're gonna take two of those dark luxurious maraschino cherries in it.

Then... [ice shaking] Now we've got a big ice cube because Manhattans should be done over big ice cubes.

This basically with the more surface area means it melts slower, so you keep the drink really strong.

So we're gonna strain it over there.

Yeah.

We got our stack of cherry wood chips, our drink, and then we're gonna garnish it with two more of those beautiful cherries.

And now it's time to fire it up.

Get our glass dome over the corner and really fire up this smoke.

[torch burning] Smoked Bourbon Manhattan.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

So for bourbon club, we want to come correct.

So we're hitting up a local joint owned by Paulie, Glazed and Confused, to get some round donuts, that we're gonna chop up, and turn 'em into crostinis.

[upbeat trumpets] MATT: Yo Paulie, what up, dog?

PAULIE: What's up, Matt?

MATT: Yo, so we're making crostinis out of donuts that go with bourbon, dude.

PAULIE: Love it.

MATT: Old-fashioned style, you know what I mean?

By the way, man, what do you do with all the donut holes?

PAULIE: Oh, that's so funny.

There's no holes.

Come on, we're in production - let me show you.

MATT: Smells so good!

PAULIE: Yeah, right?

So we mix 10 pounds per batch.

Go right in the hopper, right into a soy flex, which is like a really high-end oil.

MATT: Yep.

PAULIE: It's veggie, soy, old-fashioned hand cut.

MATT: Yeah, just dropping them right in, man.

Drop it like it's hot, yes.

PAULIE: We get about 35-40 per cut.

One minute on each side.

MATT: Fresh all day long.

Oh my God, when you get home, do you smell like this, and people are like, "Yo, you smell good."

PAULIE: These guys bring donuts every day.

>> WORKER: Every day I bring donuts home.

PAULIE: Yeah, every day.

>> WORKER: Every day.

I pass 'em out too.

PAULIE: It's our drug of choice.

MATT: Yeah, mine too.

PAULIE: Donuts.

MATT: Donuts.

So when you go through, if you have any broken ones in here, do they go to waste or... PAULIE: Yeah, so believe it or not, so they don't go to waste.

We'll end up having a little doggy bowl for dogs coming in, we dip them in peanut butter, natural peanut butter, so we give them away to dogs.

MATT: Oh, now I want to be a dog.

PAULIE: Exactly, right?

MATT: That is awesome.

>> WORKER: He helps the homeless more than anything.

PAULIE: But we feed the Samaritan Center every day.

MATT: Oh, wow.

PAULIE: So if there's anything left in production, we bring them over to Samaritan Center daily.

MATT: That is incredible.

>> WORKER: Every day.

PAULIE: Literally every day.

MATT: I did not know that, that is so awesome.

PAULIE: It's the only way for us, like we'll never hold them over, we start fresh every morning.

So if there's a couple dozen left, there could be none if we sell out, but if there's as much as eight dozen, slow day, raining, we'll bring them all to the Samaritan Center every day.

MATT: Wow, that is so awesome.

What a great thing for the community.

All right, man, this is awesome.

Let's grab these donuts.

PAULIE: You got it, man, let's do it.

[instrumental hip hop music] MATT: One of our favorite things to pair with bourbon is red meat.

Or maybe one of our favorite things to pair with red meat is bourbon.

But either way, we are making the bullhorn crostini.

It's called the bullhorn crostini because like a bullhorn, it is loud and proud.

This is a delicious, tasty little morsel that has a combination of all these flavors.

But the star of it actually is besides using Kobe beef that we're using today, the real star that we got from from our boy Paulie, are donuts.

[bleep] Now that we're done horsing around, we're going to take some horseradish and make a killer horsey sauce.

So we take half a cup of sour cream, 2 tablespoons of horseradish.

Try to get it without the liquid in there.

2 teaspoons of mayonnaise.

1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

And 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.

Stir it up and we're going to let this sit while we're making the rest of our dish so the flavors really meld well together in the fridge.

We're going to make a basting oil to make our donut crostinis.

Now a basting oil you can use on grilled salads, you can use for anything.

It's good for dipping in bread too.

But what we're using here is extra virgin olive oil, AKA EVOO.

But we also call them extra virge here or ex virge, like I'm an ex virgin.

But this is not an ex virgin.

Virgin olive oil versus regular olive oil, right?

Regular olive oil is heated and refined.

Extra virgin olive oil means it's been cold pressed and it's unrefined - so that's what makes a difference.

So as soon as you put stuff in it, you've infused it, it's no longer extra virgin.

So you got to be careful around virgins.

So we've got about 2 cups of that stuff in here.

We're going to throw in around 2 tablespoons of Italian seasoning.

We're going to put in 2, maybe 3 cloves of minced garlic and a little bit of garlic salt, maybe a tablespoon or so.

And just whip that together.

And this is good for a couple of days, just let it sit.

But after it sits for a few minutes, you're going to be good to start basting.

All right, this is ready.

It's going to sit out room temperature for a little bit.

And we are going to start making the base of these crostinis.

So when you get a donut, right, a crostini is typically something that's been heated, usually it's bread with olive oil, something like that.

But we're using donuts because the sweetness with the saltiness and the horseradishy bite pairs so beautifully with a sip of bourbon.

So what we like, Paulie's are great because they're very thick.

So we're going to take one of those, get a good serrated knife, and you're going to cut them about a quarter to a half inch thick.

[light background hip hop music] We got these beautiful donuts sliced up.

Take a cookie sheet, heat your oven up to 375, and lay them out across the sheet.

If you have ones that split in two, that's cool, make a little teeny bites.

You're going to baste the top and then flip them and baste the other side.

[light background hip hop music] Now we put these in the oven for eight minutes and then flip them for another five minutes.

The donuts are done, then flipped, crispy, tasty.

Now the beef we're using for this instead of a tenderloin is actually - we got deli sliced.

This is American Kobe beef, so the best, rarest, tastiest you can get is the way to go.

So we're going to take some of our crostinis, we're going to lay them out.

Then we're going to take one of our slices of beef and we're going to kind of pile it high.

About a third of a slice on each one.

And this taste, get all the salt, acid, fat, and heat because we're going to take some of our beautiful horsey sauce, a little dollop on each one.

And then for some more taste and some color, we're going to top them with some fresh cut chives.

Now we're just going to make sure everybody's going to be safe and healthy, so let's see how we did.

[crunching of matt eating] Sometimes, you got to grab the ball by the horns and punch that in the mouth.

[instrumental brass music] MATT: You know what pairs well with bourbon?

More bourbon.

We're going to make one of my favorite dishes of all time.

This is bourbon chicken, a classic Chinese American dish, but actually it's not found in China and originally it's not made with bourbon either.

It was called bourbon chicken because there was a Chinese American restaurant at the tail end of Bourbon Street in the great eating city of New Orleans.

So the locals just called it, yo, you gotta get that bourbon chicken, it's so good.

So people just took it from there.

So what we're going to do though is serve it over some rice.

Now at the Funk, we don't go basic with just regular white rice.

We're going to fire things up a little bit with this rice too.

We're going to put in 1 pound of long grain white rice.

Then we're going to put in 1 cup of chicken stock.

Always replace water with stock when you can to add some cool flavors into it.

Then we're going to add in 1 cup of an amber beer.

The beer gives it another nice layer of flavor.

1 teaspoon of garlic salt that my dad made actually.

1 tablespoon of butter.

1 tablespoon of Cajun seasoning - little more of a salty flare in it.

And then for some color and some cool looks, we're going to put in 1 tablespoon of dried parsley.

Then we're going to heat this baby up until the butter melts and we get it to boil.

Once we've got the rice boiling, we're going to cover it.

We're going to reduce the heat to low and a simmer.

But I'm going to move it because we're going to use another burner.

So put it on low, and you want it to simmer for 15 minutes.

But keep checking on it, make sure it gets nice and fluffy how we like.

Now we've got our rice going.

We are going to take a couple tablespoons of EVOO, AKA extra virgin olive oil, and heat it in a pan over medium heat.

We've got one pound of a diced up chicken thigh that's cut into bite-sized pieces.

Get that in the pan and brown that chicken up good.

So while our chicken is browning, we're going to make the sauce.

We've got 1/2 cup of soy sauce.

I know we said the original version didn't have bourbon in it, but this one does.

Put 1/4 cup of that good old brown liquor up in there.

Put 1/4 cup of tightly packed brown sugar and 4 cloves of crushed garlic.

And then we're going to whisk that up.

[meat sizzling] We're going to add our sauce and we're going to stir it around and let that go for five minutes.

We're really going to thicken the sauce up.

Now we've let it go for five, six minutes and what we're going to thicken the sauce is we're going to add a cornstarch slurry.

It's equal parts cornstarch to water.

Stir that up and you're going to help thicken your sauce.

And you can keep adding more as you go.

We do a tablespoon of water, a tablespoon of cornstarch at a time and see where we're at.

We just want to get a little bit more thicker, but the flavor, we gettin' at it.

Yeah, we got this.

Cajun-y, buttery beer rice that's good enough to eat on its own, but that ain't how we rollin'.

Now comes the star of the party.

This beautiful bourbon chicken with that thick, shiny, beautiful sauce.

Yeah, that'll do it right there.

We also top it with some green onions or scallions, depending on what part of the country you're from.

All right, let's get some rice, some bourbon chicken.

[light electronic music] [ bleep], that's good.

[instrumental hip hop music] MATT: A great bourbon sometimes tastes the best when you've got something sweet in your mouth.

So a great dessert is something that we love to pair with bourbon, especially if it's got some salt in it and something really complex.

So this dish here are s'mores egg rolls, and we just want s'more of them.

They are gooey, crispy, chewy, salty, and fantastic.

And we're dipping them in peanut butter whipped cream.

So let's start with the whipped cream, that way it can chill while we get those egg rolls going.

Now we put a metal mixing bowl and our beaters from our mixer in the freezer.

We also kept our whipping cream really cold.

So you want to keep that cold because it's going to keep the whipped cream from falling apart on you and not really getting the way we want it to.

So we're going to add in 1 cup of heavy cream, the heaviest cream you can find, like heavy metal cream, y'all.

Get that up in there.

We're going to add in two tablespoons of confectioners sugar, that good old powdery goodness.

Then we're going to put in 1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract and a dash of table salt.

Then slowly start mixing it.

[mixer whirring] You're going to keep doing it for about five minutes until some stiff peaks form, like a mountain range.

[mixer whirring] Now we're starting to see the peaks form.

What we're going to do is we're going to add in peanut butter to your liking, but we're going to add in maybe 1/4 cup.

Then we're going to get back to beating it, and beat it good.

[mixer whirring, Hip Hop music beneath] Mmm, that just smells great, it looks great.

Like, this is bikini level whipped cream.

So we're going to put this away and start getting the egg rolls going.

For the egg rolls, we've got egg roll wrappers, and these can be used for a bunch of different things, but keep them refrigerated.

You can find them in the produce section usually of your grocery store, so we're going to use egg roll wrappers.

Take your egg roll wrapper and you want to have a point towards you, towards you.

Then take a small amount of your mini marshmallows, small amount of your chocolate chips.

Now the graham crackers, you've already crushed them, but crush them again with your fingers.

You don't need a ton of it because flavor goes pretty far, but you don't want any sharp edges from the cracker because it will rip open the envelope.

So like an envelope, we're going to roll over and tuck the end in under the stuffing.

Then we're going to fold the sides in with a nice crease.

Make sure we're tucking the inside in.

Now the top of the envelope, we're going to take that cornstarch slurry and we're going to make a seal.

So we're going to coat that exposed part so it adheres to the rest of it.

Roll it over.

Now we've got it nice and tightly sealed.

Then we're going to coat it in flour.

And then we're going to put it in the freezer overnight, and this is critical.

If you don't freeze it, what happens is it'll still cook and taste great, but the marshmallows will basically disintegrate into thin air.

So a frozen one will cook faster.

Look at these golden beauties.

Like you're walking down the beach, there's tan people laying everywhere.

So once they come out and the oil is off them, you're going to take a combination of cinnamon sugar.

So it's 4 parts sugar, 1 part cinnamon.

That's how you make cinnamon sugar.

And we're going to hit it on top of that.

Yeah.

Don't be shy, we're not shy around here.

Get our fingers in everything.

Got this whipped cream with the peanut butter.

Let's airplane this thing.

[crunch of egg roll] A taste this good deserves another glass of bourbon to wash it down.

[hip hop music with vocals] MATT: I love this group so much, because we always have fun and something crazy comes out of it.

But sometimes bourbon is a jump off, I mean, I've used it for like hair gel, I met this girl once, she had this perfume, it was like bourbon perfume.

How have you made bourbon useful before?

LISA: I'm going to say that I try to not be useful when I'm drinking bourbon, but... [laughter] There was a time recently I got into stand up comedy.

It's like a midlife crisis, I guess.

And I just needed a bit of that liquid courage.

I'm going to say it's not liquid courage, it's liquid charisma.

MATT: Ooo, that's our new distillery, liquid charisma, man.

LISA: I know, but please, he knows my contact information.

[laughter] KRISPIN: It's the copyright.

MATT: That's my term now.

LISA: Okay, all right, fair enough, but it did help me.

MATT: It did, okay.

LISA: Yeah, because I went into this really confident, a little cocky maybe.

They're like, "Yeah, I got 10 minutes."

I'm like, "Okay."

And I wrote down everything I thought was funny, like that could be a bit and it was like three minutes and seven seconds.

MATT: Share the story though, because a few of us were there and you destroyed it, man.

It was like mic drop central right there.

ALEX: Did you actually drop the mic though?

We don't like that.

LISA: I didn't drop the mic, but I almost - they tried to rip me off the stage, so I guess that's comparable attention?

I don't know.

ALEX: Yeah, that's comparable.

KRISPIN: They dropped the mic on her.

MATT: No, yeah, it's in the same neighborhood.

ALEX: They would have rather you dropped the mic and just walked off the stage peacefully.

LISA: Yeah, I don't know.

MATT: The crowd wanted her on there.

ALEX: Well yeah, it was all friends and family.

LISA: And people I teach in the gym, and so there's a whole topic I had to avoid.

I couldn't make jokes about a whole certain, you know, how people work out, and I've seen that for 20 years.

ALEX: You're like, this person at the gym.

LISA: No fodder on them.

MIKE: How much did bourbon play a role in writing the jokes?

LISA: A lot.

Alright, so once I realized I was four days out and I had nothing, me and the bourbon and the flashlight had intimate moments on the deck because I was like... KRISPIN: So much flashlight.

She was out here for like the entire day talking into her microphone.

LISA: But I did it.

I did it, and I did it, and I was 21 minutes.

And then I guess, I don't remember this, but the producer was trying to pull me off the stage.

KRISPIN: You don't remember.

>> LAUREN: No, she definitely was.

KRISPIN: With the light on.

MATT: Waving it, off!

But the crowd though wanted more from you.

KRISPIN: The crowd was loving it.

ALEX: Did you not see the producer waving at all?

LISA: No, I didn't see this.

Like the Titanic didn't see the tip of the iceberg.

No, I literally didn't see it.

ALEX: The Titanic didn't see the tip of the iceberg, it just hit it.

LISA: I was in the zone.

The people want to laugh, Alex, so I made them laugh.

MIKE: Lisa doubled her timeslot and it still wasn't enough.

[ laughter ] KRISPIN: Double plus one.

MATT: We got friends in low places, but we're getting a little high too because this bourbon is turning us up in all the right ways.

So good drinks are only good if you're sharing them with good friends, and that gets us right in the feels.

That's what this is all about, right?

There's a special feeling we can't put our finger on it, even when you're trying to put your finger on a cherry in a bourbon Manhattan.

But you know the thing - like you just plain belong.

Like when you walk in and see your friends and you just feel right again.

You just smile because you know you're in the right place because you're with the right people.

It's great friends you're with, in the good times and bad times.

Because it's the bad times that make the good times so good.

So if you raise a glass with your crew on great days, you better make sure you pour 'em together and pour 'em out to commiserate the bad ones too.

Speaking of pouring, I need to fill my cup with the people that always fill me up.

So to nights we'll remember, and friends we'll never forget.

[hip hop music with vocals] VO: The William G Pomeroy Foundation helps people celebrate their communitys history by providing grants for historic markers and plaques nationwide.

Information about Pomeroy Foundation grants and partnership opportunities is available at WGPFoundation.org Bear Creek: gourmet burgers, craft beers, custom twists on classics and desserts.

More on Facebook and Instagram at BearCreekRestaurantInc Feed the bear!

[BEAR ROARING]