Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Ron McKinlay: Pop-Up Dinners, Meat Cookery, and Life After Restaurants (Ep. 177)

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Ron McKinlay: Pop-Up Dinners, Meat Cookery, and Life After Restaurants (Ep. 177) · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chef's PSA and I'm your host Andrea Notara.
• 0:03
  Today I'm joined by legendary Canadian chef Ron McKinley,
• 0:06
  former chef at Canoe in Toronto. We talked about the reality of
• 0:10
  pop up dinners, the craft of cooking meat, dealing with
• 0:14
  Internet trolls, and the importance of mental health in
• 0:16
  this industry. I think you'll really enjoy this
• 0:19
  conversation. Ron's a legend.
• 0:21
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  Use the promo code Chefs PSA 20. You sent me a video DM with you.
• 1:37
  I think you're doing asparagus. You were doing some other stuff,
• 1:39
  some meat cookery, but there's some behind the scenes montage
• 1:42
  and you're like getting cancelled.
• 1:43
  Oh yeah. Fuck that was great.
• 1:45
  That would be a great show for you getting cancelled.
• 1:47
  I mean, it would be a natural fit, that's for sure.
• 1:49
  I mean, I'm surprised I haven't been, to be fair, but maybe
• 1:52
  bringing light to that, and maybe not the best career move,
• 1:54
  but it'd be fitting. Yeah.
• 1:56
  The chefs would find it funny. Well, the outtakes were good.
• 1:58
  It would be hilarious. Yeah, that would take for
• 2:00
  hilarious. Yeah, that's fun.
• 2:01
  It was a great dinner last night.
• 2:03
  Yeah, I'm glad you guys could come.
• 2:04
  I think it's, it's all well and good to see food on the screen,
• 2:08
  but when you can actually taste it and see it and see how people
• 2:10
  react to it and the energy in the room changes things, Yeah.
• 2:16
  But it was fun. It was great.
• 2:18
  It was a good way to get my food out after you guys to see it and
• 2:22
  taste it and. Yeah, for people that don't
• 2:24
  know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a huge fan of your cooking.
• 2:26
  Honestly, I, I think I've, I think I've said this and people
• 2:30
  might not understand if I'm being serious or not 'cause
• 2:32
  sometimes I'm, I'm fucking around and I'm joking.
• 2:35
  But if I so there's, there's chefs that I believe belong on
• 2:38
  Mount Rushmore, but let's be honest, they're not active.
• 2:41
  You know what I mean? Like a lot of these, chefs on
• 2:43
  Mount Rushmore probably haven't cooked.
• 2:45
  Well, that's why they're there, because that they did.
• 2:46
  Their thing, they did their thing, right?
• 2:48
  Yeah. But if I so when I say there's a
• 2:50
  Mount Rushmore of active chefs, people that are still doing it,
• 2:53
  I'd I'd put you on that. I'm a huge fan of I'm a huge fan
• 2:56
  of your food. Huge fan.
• 2:58
  I was excited that that we could do this.
• 2:59
  I was excited that you were going to come to a dinner in
• 3:01
  Austin. Well, it's all basically because
• 3:03
  of you anyways. Yeah, it was the it's it's who
• 3:05
  you know, right. And when we started talking,
• 3:06
  you're like, got to get you on the show, got to get you down
• 3:08
  here. And you brainstorm, got in touch
• 3:10
  with Kevin, who's awesome. Kevin's great and now I'm here.
• 3:16
  But your food was brilliant, it was beautiful.
• 3:18
  It was the the lamb was great, the tart, which I've been seen
• 3:23
  online for quite some time and I couldn't wait to try it or the
• 3:25
  feeling was amazing. Everything was super good.
• 3:29
  And I think what's really interesting about the way you
• 3:31
  let you cook is it's very high level.
• 3:32
  It's and it's cooking. It's not plating and not not
• 3:36
  that plating isn't important, but.
• 3:37
  It's no flavor first. Flavor first.
• 3:39
  Yeah. It's real cooking.
• 3:40
  It's technical. There's a lot of, there's a lot
• 3:43
  of steps to it. It's, you know, making the farce
• 3:46
  and then wrapping. Well, even that tartar dish was
• 3:48
  like the curing, the freezing, the roasting, the.
• 3:50
  Can you tell people where I was? Because that was probably, and
• 3:52
  I'm going to put a photo of it up in the podcast at least.
• 3:55
  Hopefully it's a good photo that I took last night.
• 3:57
  Yeah, but it was fucking delicious.
• 3:59
  Oh good, that was fun. It was a.
• 4:01
  Fun one, what was it for people? To there was a couple different
• 4:04
  elements one because like Kevin, think who who you've had on the
• 4:08
  show before. He tries to use only local
• 4:11
  ingredients from Texas as much. So there was a parfait on there,
• 4:14
  but without foie gras. We used beef liver that we
• 4:17
  barbecued to get that charred flavour on the outside.
• 4:19
  And then instead of normal butter, we used brown butter.
• 4:23
  And so it was like a roasted beef liver and brown butter
• 4:26
  parfait in the middle, but the beef itself was rump that we
• 4:29
  cured and then froze, baste it in like this miso glaze and then
• 4:33
  barbecued it. So you kind of get the best of
• 4:34
  both worlds. You get the chart outside, the
• 4:35
  cured inside, and then there's some acid elements there.
• 4:40
  And then all the fat we rendered out and brushed on those little
• 4:43
  burnt baguettes. So try to use all the flavor
• 4:45
  elements to bring it together. Pickled apple.
• 4:48
  And there was some pumpkin, like charred pumpkin and then a
• 4:52
  charcoal oil that kind of brings it all together.
• 4:55
  So there's like a lot going on. But it it see it works if you
• 4:59
  get the acid right. Yeah, it was, it was really
• 5:01
  delicious. I'd never had a tartar with a,
• 5:04
  with a like a parfait or mousse on top.
• 5:06
  It was, it was delicious. Then when you came to the table
• 5:09
  last night. So for people that are
• 5:10
  listening, because this will be a bit delayed, yesterday was
• 5:13
  like International Chef's Day, International Chefs Day, I was a
• 5:16
  good day for. It then, yeah, yeah, great.
• 5:18
  Yeah. National Chefs Day.
• 5:19
  So I had a table full of chefs we went to go try.
• 5:21
  Your food was great, the way we're going to celebrate and
• 5:24
  when you came to the table to drop it off, you're like, make
• 5:26
  sure you mix it up, taste everything together.
• 5:28
  It's really important. Make a mess.
• 5:29
  Make a mess. It was so good.
• 5:31
  It was so good. And it was one of these things
• 5:33
  that it was like, why has no one, at least I'm not saying no
• 5:36
  one's ever done it. I've never seen it.
• 5:37
  It's like I'm going to start stealing like when I do my next
• 5:40
  guest chef. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:41
  Yeah, I've been to that. Like who have you ever seen that
• 5:44
  before? I'm going to say.
• 5:45
  Well, I think the cool thing about that one as well is, is
• 5:47
  because they don't use fawn, I like using fawn times.
• 5:50
  It forces you to think differently as well.
• 5:51
  And that's when some cool stuff happens.
• 5:53
  And that way we're able to use beef in multiple different ways
• 5:55
  on one plate again. So the liver, the the rump and
• 5:58
  everything. So using a cheap cut and making
• 6:01
  it making it fun and special. One of the things that I think
• 6:04
  that you do is very interesting is that since you've left Canoe,
• 6:07
  so how long has it been now? And if I left on, actually my
• 6:11
  last service was Valentine's Day, so I went out with a bang.
• 6:14
  So since then I guess however many months that is 6-7 months
• 6:18
  now. And so now you go around and you
• 6:21
  do these dinners and. Kind of by default, it was never
• 6:24
  the plan. The plan was just to leave
• 6:25
  because it was time to go. I'd achieved everything and this
• 6:28
  just kind of started happening and it's kind of kicked off so
• 6:32
  I'm almost on a tour at the moment.
• 6:34
  Yeah, but you do a lot of them. Yeah.
• 6:36
  Yeah. I mean, yeah, a lot of people do
• 6:38
  two or three a year. Yeah, you got two or three a
• 6:40
  month, at least what it seems like.
• 6:42
  Right now I do for sure. Even when I was at Canoe, I was
• 6:45
  doing a lot of them because I also knew that it was a way of
• 6:47
  me of networking and meeting people and learning and getting
• 6:50
  my name out there because the company I work for great
• 6:52
  company, but they're not going to push me out there.
• 6:55
  So if I don't push myself out there.
• 6:57
  So I found it as a way of meeting people in it's opened a
• 7:02
  lot of doors for me in that regard.
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  And now this as well. Like all these dinners I'm doing
• 7:06
  is like network, it's networking and it's great.
• 7:10
  It's almost like staging in restaurants too, because you get
• 7:11
  to see how they run and they operate while I'm trying to do
• 7:13
  something eventually. But this is all learning
• 7:16
  experience. So good.
• 7:17
  I come and do the food, but I also get to learn how to do it
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  in a different environment and see the food that they're doing
• 7:22
  as well and how the operations run and this and that.
• 7:24
  So for me it's, it's like, almost like a starch, but then
• 7:28
  also something to keep my myself busy, keep momentum going and,
• 7:33
  and, and, and keep me in touch with what's going on.
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  And from a planning process of like if people wanted to learn
• 7:38
  how to do what you were doing, if there was a planning process,
• 7:40
  because you know a lot of them, do you do a new menu every
• 7:42
  single time or do you have do you do like your greatest hits?
• 7:44
  How do you How do you want? To see it depends depends
• 7:46
  sometimes like they the restaurant that talks to me or
• 7:49
  the chef that I that I know there or a friend of a friend.
• 7:51
  They might want to see a certain thing that they maybe seen me
• 7:54
  done before or sometimes not at all.
• 7:56
  Each establishments a little bit different.
• 7:58
  I mean, last night was more of a like a sharing kind of
• 8:01
  neighborhood concept done really well.
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  And then what next week I go to Philly and it's at provenance,
• 8:08
  which is tasting menu only. So, you know, really refined.
• 8:12
  Then after that I go to Seattle and I'm doing it at my my buddy
• 8:15
  Kevin's place in Seattle, who has beasts in Cleaver, the
• 8:18
  butcher shop there, which is it's amazing.
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  His patio and Cruz are like world class.
• 8:22
  He just opened a pub called little beast.
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  So we're going to go there and do like some like kind of
• 8:27
  refined English pub food kind of thing.
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  So it changes. It chops and changes every
• 8:31
  single time, which is great for me because it gets me out of
• 8:33
  routine and I have to think differently about where I'm
• 8:35
  going and how I'm going to do it and who I'm cooking for.
• 8:39
  So yeah, each one is a little bit different.
• 8:40
  Yeah, from from a planning and and logistics operationally how
• 8:45
  do you do you pack at home or do you?
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  Not now. When I was in the restaurant, I
• 8:51
  would bring some meals with me, But now also coming over the
• 8:53
  border with food is hard because you could get busted.
• 8:57
  And then if that's the case, you're going to get red flagged
• 8:59
  and you're in trouble. So these dinners, I'm coming
• 9:02
  organized with recipes, mesoplasts, sheets and like,
• 9:07
  just being methodical about what I get done each day leading up
• 9:10
  to the dinner. But that's pretty much it.
• 9:12
  That's wild. Yeah.
• 9:14
  Yeah. I mean, it's a it's a learning
• 9:16
  experience on my side. And also, you know, it's a
• 9:18
  lesson in delegation because you can't do it all by yourself.
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  So depending on where you go, you need to be very open with
• 9:24
  the team. Like I'm not coming prepped, I'm
• 9:26
  coming to cook. And if they're open to it, then
• 9:28
  it's great because their team gets to learn even more so.
• 9:32
  But it's, it's a, it's a lot for sure.
• 9:35
  So for people, if if you were if you were giving advice to
• 9:37
  someone how to be a good host, what should someone that you
• 9:41
  know a lot of people are listening to everybody.
• 9:42
  I want to do a dinner with Ron. What, what are what are some of
• 9:45
  the things that you're looking for that you say this would make
• 9:48
  you a good host for me? I mean, there's a few and it's
• 9:52
  changed since again, since I was in the restaurant.
• 9:54
  When I was in the restaurant, I had a job.
• 9:55
  Now I don't really. So I mean being respectful of
• 9:59
  what you want from me when I go there.
• 10:01
  And it depends. If it's a good buddy of mine,
• 10:02
  I'll go and cook. They look after the hotel and
• 10:04
  whatever. We just do it and we cook and we
• 10:06
  have friends. If it if it's not, or it's more
• 10:07
  of a business thing, then I mean, you know, getting paid for
• 10:11
  it because I'm bringing business to the restaurant.
• 10:13
  Yeah, that's important. But also just, you know,
• 10:15
  hospitality, being hospitable to the guy.
• 10:17
  Like you walk into that kitchen, everyone shakes your hand.
• 10:20
  They're happy to see you. They know who you are.
• 10:21
  They've done the research. You don't want a coffee.
• 10:24
  Do you want a water? Are you hungry?
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  Like, you know, just those basics.
• 10:26
  But it means a lot, especially to chefs.
• 10:27
  We're easily pleased, you know what I mean?
• 10:29
  Yeah. Yeah, and seeing that they've
• 10:31
  taken your recipes seriously and the miso plus that you've
• 10:33
  ordered and you know, they put the effort in you walk in the
• 10:35
  fridge as a section cleared out for you.
• 10:37
  These are things that when we were doing dinners at Canoe, we
• 10:39
  would make sure that when the chef came in, the team knew they
• 10:42
  were coming very welcoming and we'd bend over backwards just to
• 10:47
  make their experience that much better.
• 10:48
  The, the hospitality experience for guest chef dinners, I think
• 10:51
  is something that is, is critically important.
• 10:54
  And I know I when, when I was doing that, when I would invite
• 10:57
  guests to guest chefs to cook with me, it was something that I
• 10:59
  would say, OK, make sure, you know, make sure we have a helper
• 11:03
  for them. Like full time.
• 11:04
  They don't know. They don't know where anything
• 11:06
  is. They.
• 11:06
  Need a runner like a? Yeah, a full time, a full time
• 11:09
  thing. If we could get a prep, let's
• 11:10
  make sure everything's ordered when they come in.
• 11:12
  First thing that we're going to do is sous chef's going to come
• 11:14
  and say here's all your stuff, here's everything that we've
• 11:16
  prepped. Do you want to inspect it?
• 11:17
  Do you want us to? Change any of the cutting board
• 11:19
  set up, have containers ready to go.
• 11:21
  Like make their lives as easy as possible so they it's supposed
• 11:24
  to be enjoyable. That's for everyone.
• 11:26
  Right. And then, and then, hey, chef,
• 11:30
  we're going to take you to lunch or hey, you know, just it has to
• 11:32
  be thought through. Here's your water, here's your,
• 11:34
  this, that. Yeah, because there's nothing
• 11:37
  worse. And I've been in some of these
• 11:38
  situations before me personally. So have I.
• 11:40
  You get in and it's like you're fucking frustrated because they
• 11:46
  invite you to come and, and, and do a guest chef dinner or
• 11:48
  whatever and it's like, oh, you're on your fucking own.
• 11:51
  You're on your own and we're sorry we got service over here.
• 11:53
  Of course, figure out. I was like holy shit, I didn't
• 11:55
  think I was going to do all the prep for all 5.
• 11:57
  Courses and you can, you can always see what kind of
• 11:59
  restaurant has done these before and what haven't, you know?
• 12:02
  So that's the thing. But you also have to go and
• 12:04
  prepared for that. Yeah, you got to think about
• 12:07
  that too. So that's a big, the first day
• 12:10
  is always interesting. Yeah, always.
• 12:12
  But I mean, I've been also very, very lucky with the places that
• 12:14
  I've gone to, especially recently.
• 12:18
  They've all been fantastic. So yeah, I, I won't say who, but
• 12:23
  I'm talking to someone right now about doing a dinner and I, I
• 12:27
  think about this, it's like, OK, it's two nights, it's the same
• 12:28
  the other, it's a day of prep. And I'm like, that's a lot of
• 12:31
  work. Like it starts going through my
• 12:33
  mind. Like, OK, it's like 2-2 nights
• 12:35
  of dinners and OK in two different menus and OK, we're
• 12:38
  going to do a tasty menu one night and something completely
• 12:41
  different the next night. And I'm rusty and I haven't done
• 12:44
  this. Well, I've I've done it.
• 12:46
  And you have a team behind you. Yeah.
• 12:47
  No, no. Like I'm not coming in where I
• 12:48
  can have stuff backpacked and bags ready to go and I got
• 12:51
  here's my sauces ready to go, my purees.
• 12:52
  Whatever and, and every step takes extra four or five because
• 12:55
  you where the cutting wards where like where's your string,
• 12:57
  where's your tape, where's your, where your nine beans.
• 12:59
  Like you don't know, like you're so oriented, disorientated.
• 13:03
  Yeah, yeah, completely. And that takes a while.
• 13:05
  And then by the time you actually get it, it's the end of
• 13:07
  the service and you're probably going.
• 13:08
  You ever had a really bad experience?
• 13:11
  Really bad one. So I love the guys.
• 13:14
  They were in Iceland and I. Did you don't want to say their
• 13:16
  name? I mean, I'm going to say they,
• 13:18
  they know it was, it was crazy, but it was just crazy because it
• 13:21
  was like 3 or 4 nights and I got there, but, and it wasn't mainly
• 13:24
  because of them. It was the travel time to get
• 13:25
  there. So I was basically up for almost
• 13:27
  2 1/2 days straight by the time I got there.
• 13:29
  And then we ended up prepping in basically a school cafeteria for
• 13:33
  this event that we're doing on this small island in Iceland,
• 13:35
  which was still one of the best experiences I've ever had.
• 13:39
  But it was just, it was hard like to to do what you want to
• 13:43
  do at a certain level and pulling it off in that space was
• 13:47
  I wouldn't say it's a horrible experience because it wasn't it
• 13:49
  was great. It was just more there's it was
• 13:52
  frustrating because you're used to working a certain way.
• 13:54
  You just can't anymore. But it's again, you learn, you
• 13:57
  learn how to just adapt and get through it.
• 13:58
  Have. You ever had an experience,
• 14:02
  maybe not in the restaurant, but like doing a guest chef dinner
• 14:04
  where it's gone wrong and they're like, there is no
• 14:07
  recovery at this point, so we got to figure out what.
• 14:10
  Yes, what is it? And it wasn't so much me doing
• 14:13
  the guest chef, It was when we we've had guest chefs come with
• 14:15
  us and there was one guy that rocked up with just a suitcase
• 14:18
  and some fish in it. And I was like what the fuck?
• 14:20
  Is this like that's not even enough?
• 14:22
  That's like 3 fish, man. We're doing 100 covers.
• 14:24
  What are you doing? And then like we had to bail him
• 14:26
  out of the shit so we didn't look bad, you know what I mean?
• 14:28
  So as much as you can go to a restaurant, it can be difficult.
• 14:32
  You can have guest chefs come and they can make your life
• 14:33
  difficult too, because sometimes they don't want to work.
• 14:35
  Oh, they just send recipes and they expect to walk in and have
• 14:38
  it done. Well, and then the crazy thing
• 14:40
  is that sometimes this would get me so nervous if I was doing a
• 14:42
  guest chef dinner and they're like, hey, I'm coming in and
• 14:46
  then they check in and now they're in town and I haven't
• 14:49
  heard from them and OK, dinner's at yeah, when are they going to
• 14:53
  show up? I don't see any prep.
• 14:54
  And they said they were handling everything.
• 14:56
  And then they show up with a coffee like at 2:00 PM.
• 14:59
  Yeah, and, and, and some red eyes and you're like, oh shit,
• 15:01
  chef, are you going to be all right?
• 15:02
  Like, yeah, yeah, I got it And it.
• 15:04
  You got what? You didn't bring anything?
• 15:05
  Yeah. You fucking barely, Yeah.
• 15:07
  Jesus. But but I never get that because
• 15:09
  you work to the level you're chef now.
• 15:11
  You understand what you would think.
• 15:13
  You understand how kitchens run and how things work.
• 15:15
  And, like, I think it's disrespectful to show up like
• 15:17
  that. Yeah.
• 15:18
  You know what I mean? It's.
• 15:19
  Oh, absolutely. It happens.
• 15:21
  But like, those are those are guys that I don't have a beer
• 15:23
  with later. You know what I mean?
• 15:24
  Yeah. That's not it goes two ways.
• 15:27
  You know, you come prepared. I'll, I'll, I'll bend over
• 15:30
  backwards to make sure that you have a great experience, but you
• 15:32
  don't come prepared. Then you're making my life
• 15:34
  difficult. I don't want that.
• 15:36
  One of the things that that I think is important when you're
• 15:39
  not you, but in general when people are doing these dinners
• 15:41
  is so like you were talking about earlier, you're kind of
• 15:43
  doing a stash going into people's.
• 15:45
  Kitchen, I like to think of it that way because you and I think
• 15:47
  staging when you're a little bit older and your career is better
• 15:49
  than when you're younger, because when you're younger,
• 15:51
  they just look at you throwing a corn and you peel onions.
• 15:53
  When you've worked in stations and you've been in a senior
• 15:55
  management. When you go in the kitchen, you
• 15:56
  look at things differently. Look at the POS system.
• 15:58
  You look how they run the past, how they take their orders, how
• 16:00
  they, how their news on class sheets look.
• 16:02
  How do they do their, how do they do their, their recipe
• 16:05
  sheets? You, you look at all this stuff.
• 16:06
  How do, how do they relate with the front house?
• 16:08
  How's the, you know, are there? They have certain steps when a
• 16:12
  cook comes into the kitchen because we had a list of things
• 16:14
  you need to do. Like you come in, you shake
• 16:15
  everyone's hand, you look at each each one in the eye.
• 16:18
  So you know, it's you say hello. That's it's really.
• 16:22
  Important. You had to shake it and shake
• 16:23
  out policy. Yeah, 100% yeah.
• 16:25
  That's great. So did I.
• 16:26
  And you can test the temperature of a cook when they come in that
• 16:29
  way. Yeah.
• 16:29
  You know, if they're if they're not really looking at you, you
• 16:31
  can tell it's going to be a day. You can tell right away.
• 16:33
  Right away. And I I think it's just also
• 16:35
  it's like roll call. Yeah.
• 16:36
  You know. Everyone shakes in.
• 16:38
  Everyone shakes everyone. Yeah, everyone.
• 16:40
  Yeah, yeah. I love that.
• 16:41
  And I and I, when I've implemented that as part of
• 16:44
  kitchen culture anywhere I've worked, when people leave,
• 16:47
  that's the one thing they say that they always take to the
• 16:49
  next place is the shaking and shake others.
• 16:51
  Like that's the most impactful thing of professionalism.
• 16:54
  Yeah, and when you have and also like, it's great when they do in
• 16:56
  the kitchen, but then you get the front of house, come in a
• 16:58
  bit later and they just walk into the kitchen, don't say
• 16:59
  hello. And it's like you fucking
• 17:01
  joking. Like just say hello.
• 17:03
  Oh, you look busy. Well, I'm always going to be
• 17:05
  busy, but like, I can multitask. I can say hello and keep
• 17:08
  cutting. You know what I mean?
• 17:09
  Like that winds me up to no extent when when they don't,
• 17:12
  when they don't even pay attention to the the team.
• 17:16
  Yeah, I at that point that, yeah, that that's, that pisses
• 17:20
  me. Off one of the benefits of doing
• 17:22
  like you were saying, you're doing the STAJ, but on the on
• 17:24
  the flip side, it's also really cool for the cooks in those
• 17:27
  kitchens because they might not get STAJ with you.
• 17:29
  And so doing the exact right dinners.
• 17:30
  This is them, you know, it's, it's taking, you know, 8 to 10
• 17:34
  cooks. Harbor men are in the kitchen to
• 17:35
  be able to stage with you for the day.
• 17:36
  Well, also, and you can see if they actually want to learn or
• 17:38
  not because you go into some of these kitchens and they
• 17:41
  sometimes it's not against them. They're so in the shit they
• 17:43
  actually don't know how to take the time to see what you're
• 17:46
  doing because they're. So they're really, really busy
• 17:48
  too, but there's always a couple kids in each kitchen where you
• 17:52
  do these things that pay attention and they look and they
• 17:55
  ask and they're inquisitive and that's what they they should
• 17:57
  because they are. It's an experience for them.
• 17:59
  I'm not coming there just to cook for the guests.
• 18:00
  Yeah, you're in the like most of the guys that guys and girls
• 18:03
  that asked me to do these events.
• 18:05
  They want you in the kitchen so the team can see what you're
• 18:08
  doing. Yeah, so they learn too, right?
• 18:09
  It helps them improve they're. On both sides.
• 18:12
  You're leaving a little something with them.
• 18:13
  Exactly right. And taking something too.
• 18:15
  Yeah, exactly 1 of the things that I used to do and for people
• 18:18
  listening, I would encourage you to do this if you're doing guest
• 18:20
  chef dinners is, yes, it's for the guests, but it's also for
• 18:25
  the team. And so post dinner, what I would
• 18:28
  do is like, I'm just kind of thinking more recent memory, it
• 18:31
  would be like one of the sous chefs go make a bunch of burgers
• 18:35
  and milkshakes and then everyone eat together.
• 18:37
  Like post dinner, but sit down with the guest chef, the cooks,
• 18:41
  like I'll sit on the other end of the table, you guys.
• 18:44
  Kick their brain. Yeah, like I'll sit down with
• 18:45
  them, give them shit and make them laugh and like hang out
• 18:47
  with them and like, you know, smack them around a little bit.
• 18:49
  But like jokingly, right. Like, or sometimes not jokingly,
• 18:52
  like, yeah, they do something stupid.
• 18:54
  I'll tell them. But but that's the whole point.
• 18:56
  Like it's to get the experience of how that person operates and
• 18:58
  how they, you know, interact with people.
• 19:00
  It's it's a big deal. Yeah, we, I did a dinner with
• 19:03
  with the Roca brothers years ago and afterwards we had like
• 19:08
  family meals. So we all sat down.
• 19:09
  My team, their team, big, big family style table.
• 19:12
  And I remember I had, I, I sat next to Yuan Roca and I had a
• 19:16
  couple of my chefs sitting next to him and I was like, make sure
• 19:19
  you talk to him. And I remember I was so pissed
• 19:21
  because a couple of them did, but a couple of them like didn't
• 19:23
  say a word and they were talking to each other.
• 19:26
  And I was like, you're never going to sit next to this guy.
• 19:28
  No, but chefs at that age, we're all just idiots too.
• 19:30
  We don't, we, we're in the kitchen because we, we're not
• 19:33
  social, right? So you learn to be socialite
• 19:36
  probably later in your career. But until then, it's like going
• 19:39
  like walking into the cafeteria in high school.
• 19:41
  You know, you like, you don't know where to sit sometimes and
• 19:43
  it's awkward and it's weird. I get that.
• 19:45
  But also they're going to regret it later.
• 19:47
  Sit next to the pretty girl, let's talk to her.
• 19:50
  I wish I did that nice script too, but no no, I fucked that
• 19:54
  up. So something I think that's
• 19:57
  important, it's probably not talked about enough is a lot of
• 20:02
  times. There's this something for
• 20:04
  nothing world that we live in, the chefs and it's not
• 20:07
  everywhere. Sometimes it's guest chef
• 20:09
  dinners, but a lot of times it's food festivals.
• 20:10
  It's, you know, the local food and wine event.
• 20:12
  Then they call you up and say, hey, you know, can you give us a
• 20:14
  500 portions And you're going to get some ROI in terms of, you
• 20:17
  know, guest exposure. And a lot of times what you're
• 20:20
  paying for 500 portions and your time and the prep doesn't, you
• 20:23
  don't get the ROI. I didn't see a spike in
• 20:25
  reservations after that. Or can you come cook over here?
• 20:30
  Or can you come do this and somewhere along the lines people
• 20:36
  just expect chefs to do this for free.
• 20:40
  Somewhere along the lines, I think it's.
• 20:42
  Our own fault because we just, we're those guys that just like
• 20:45
  to do it, you know what I mean? And we just say yes to things.
• 20:47
  In. Understanding that we should be
• 20:50
  getting paid. For it right, right.
• 20:52
  It's our time, it's our resources.
• 20:54
  Exactly right. And if if you're making a
• 20:56
  profit, because a lot of times person that's inviting you with
• 20:59
  food, festival, restaurant, etc, you're making some form of
• 21:01
  profit. Yeah.
• 21:03
  And I get it. Sometimes you're on the come up
• 21:04
  and you're just glad to be invited.
• 21:06
  Absolutely. And it's important.
• 21:07
  It's an important thing to do. I agree, yeah, But then there's
• 21:10
  other times when you're at a certain level, you're
• 21:12
  established as a chef and it's kind of insulting.
• 21:15
  We should have some. It's insulting and it's just,
• 21:17
  it's just another part of the industry that needs to change.
• 21:19
  Yeah. And I think it's just it's
• 21:21
  become such a norm to do it. And again, like, you know, a lot
• 21:24
  of these dinners I do, it's it's a friend of mine I just want to
• 21:26
  hang out with. It's the only real way you can
• 21:27
  catch up with them because we're also busy.
• 21:29
  So we hang out in the kitchen for a couple days, do dinner.
• 21:31
  And that's, you know, keeping appearances and, and talking to
• 21:33
  your buddies and hanging out with them.
• 21:35
  But then there's sometimes when they ask you to do something,
• 21:37
  it's a lot of work. You got it.
• 21:39
  You got to go there. You got to you, you, you, you're
• 21:42
  working with the team, you're talking to guests.
• 21:44
  It's it's an experience that's you're bringing something to the
• 21:49
  restaurant or the event or whatever you're doing.
• 21:51
  Like you should be paid for that.
• 21:53
  Like it's years of craft that you've gone into you being asked
• 21:57
  and able to do something like that.
• 21:59
  It should be respected for sure. And I think it's not talked
• 22:03
  about a lot and that it's another thing that needs to
• 22:05
  change in the industry, especially with chefs now and
• 22:07
  restaurants. You need to diversify.
• 22:09
  You need to find different streams of income and, and, and
• 22:11
  all that. And if that's going to be it,
• 22:13
  then we should, we should get looked after.
• 22:16
  Yeah, 100%. How do you, how do you, how do
• 22:18
  you fix that problem? I mean, conversations like this,
• 22:21
  yeah, like getting it out there because I think chefs are also
• 22:24
  shit at asking, you know, they just.
• 22:27
  They're shit at asking. Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:29
  And then they'll just want to do it because they don't, they
• 22:30
  don't want to. I mean, even I've gone down that
• 22:34
  route to you almost feel like you're being like, like cheap
• 22:36
  asking for it. But at the end of the day,
• 22:38
  you're not like you're, you're sticking up for yourself.
• 22:41
  For one, you, you're respecting yourself, you know, and I think
• 22:46
  there's a lot of things that need to change in hospitality,
• 22:47
  but that is one of them. And and I think to make that
• 22:50
  aware is, is this talking about it and just making it more out
• 22:55
  there and normal that chefs think and or do expect to get
• 23:00
  what they give? Yeah, now, because I do a lot of
• 23:04
  public speaking and honestly, that's that's what I am best
• 23:09
  suited to do. I could just show up and talk.
• 23:10
  I talk for a living right now. I do when they throw in can you
• 23:14
  cook this, that and the other, it's like, well, I don't do my
• 23:16
  public speaking for free. Exactly.
• 23:18
  You know I'm I would never. Think that you would.
• 23:21
  Yeah. So why would I?
• 23:23
  Why would I do more? You know, the public speaking is
• 23:25
  maybe if I'm doing a leadership seminar, it might be 4 or five
• 23:27
  hours. I'm not cheap.
• 23:29
  Yeah, and if I'm going to do a public speaking event, if I'm
• 23:32
  going to be a keynote speaker somewhere, it's it's an hour
• 23:35
  worth of my time and some presentations, some slides.
• 23:38
  I'm not cheap, so why would I do it for free to come and work
• 23:41
  twice as hard for two days in a kitchen with no resources?
• 23:46
  And we're institutionalized then, like, it's just, it's just
• 23:48
  so ingrained in us to just do it, you know, And then, and
• 23:51
  also, we're, you know, we're idiots.
• 23:53
  We, we want to impress, right? Yeah.
• 23:55
  And you do a big event, you get, you get the Congrats, you did
• 23:57
  great. And you know, for us, that's a
• 24:00
  big deal. So I think, I think part of it
• 24:02
  is a confidence thing too. But it, it's, it's, I think it's
• 24:07
  important to, to more people to be aware of that.
• 24:10
  So when do you think it's fair to to say, yes, I'll do that.
• 24:13
  And then other times it's like push back.
• 24:15
  And should there be some sort of, should there be anything,
• 24:19
  you know, whether it's whether it's trade, whether it's, you
• 24:23
  know, we're going to, there has to be a something for it's not
• 24:26
  there has to be a something for something exchange.
• 24:27
  Absolutely. It's not a something for
• 24:28
  nothing. And it's situational.
• 24:30
  It could be like you're going to go cook at your buddy's
• 24:32
  restaurant and have fun and catch up.
• 24:34
  And then vice versa, you'll bring him and do the same.
• 24:35
  And you know, then then it's one for one, which is great.
• 24:38
  But if it's not that kind of situation, then I think if
• 24:43
  you're going to reach out to someone and ask him to do that,
• 24:45
  you should have a game plan of what you're going to offer that
• 24:48
  person. Don't don't just throw it out.
• 24:50
  They're like, hey, you want to come cook with me?
• 24:51
  I'm like, I don't even fucking know you.
• 24:53
  Like, I don't know you. Yeah.
• 24:54
  So unless it's a friend of a friend of someone I respect and
• 24:56
  whatever, that's cool. There's a connection there right
• 24:57
  away. Yeah.
• 24:58
  But if it's someone I don't even know and you're just saying,
• 25:00
  hey, why don't you just come cook?
• 25:01
  It's like, well, why? That's why.
• 25:04
  What am I like you? There has to be an ROI on it.
• 25:07
  There has to be. There has to be, you know.
• 25:09
  So it's, I think it's just, it sounded respect if anything
• 25:13
  else. Yeah.
• 25:14
  And that's one thing I think people miss completely is
• 25:16
  whenever you're asking someone for something like this is a
• 25:18
  very important lesson in all negotiation of life.
• 25:21
  The other person is always thinking, what's in it for me?
• 25:24
  I don't care who you are. There are some altruistic,
• 25:27
  selfless people out there that will just do it just out of the
• 25:29
  kindness of their heart. But even then, if it's always
• 25:32
  something for nothing there, there will be resentment, right?
• 25:36
  In some form or fashion. So ask yourself when you're
• 25:39
  going out and you're asking this chef, can you do this for me?
• 25:42
  Can you do that for me? Like what's in it for them?
• 25:44
  If there's nothing in it for them, you might want to rethink
• 25:47
  your ass. Well, also, yeah, and and ask it
• 25:49
  right away. Don't go down the road of doing
• 25:51
  all this and start organizing and talking about it and then be
• 25:53
  like, hey, like is there something in it or whatever?
• 25:55
  Like be directed at the beginning because it saves
• 25:57
  useless conversations. Yeah.
• 25:59
  And I don't like, I only need 4 words, not 20.
• 26:01
  Like I just want to get. Yeah, brevity you.
• 26:03
  Can just say it. Yeah, that's it.
• 26:05
  Yeah. There's a a a song by Wu Tang
• 26:08
  Clan and the jizz of the genius says he says, keep it brief,
• 26:13
  son, half short and twice strong.
• 26:15
  Yeah, right. So it's like saying half the
• 26:17
  words get the point across, get the point across, Shut the fuck
• 26:19
  off. But that's also important in
• 26:21
  kitchens. Like I don't need the chef there
• 26:23
  someone 23 they want and they said that they at this other
• 26:27
  restaurant and they do the steak different.
• 26:29
  It's like she want an up cook. They want they want the steak
• 26:31
  cook more. Yeah, so I didn't fucking say
• 26:33
  that. I don't care about anything
• 26:34
  else. Yeah.
• 26:34
  Like, I don't need kids. Really cute.
• 26:35
  Yeah. Like I don't need to know that
• 26:37
  like what they're wearing or like what they've been through
• 26:39
  today or anything it that's important, but like, not right
• 26:42
  now. Yeah.
• 26:43
  I just need, I just need to know what they want.
• 26:45
  And the more it was figured out or we won't, but it's a yes or a
• 26:47
  no. Yeah, Yeah.
• 26:48
  That's it. Yeah.
• 26:48
  Yeah. So you stand there like do this,
• 26:51
  like what do you need? Yeah.
• 26:53
  Do you fucking need it? And the more they mumble, the
• 26:55
  more I'm just getting wound up by it.
• 26:56
  Like, because, because now I'm, I got 20 other things I need to
• 26:59
  deal with. Yeah, like, just like fucking
• 27:01
  spit it out, man. Like, let's go.
• 27:02
  Well. There's nothing worse than.
• 27:03
  I don't know if they probably didn't do this in in where you
• 27:06
  worked, but I know I've worked at places where someone comes to
• 27:09
  me and like, hey, chef, they're sending this back and you know,
• 27:11
  there's this long as OK, what are they?
• 27:13
  And then the Cook's like, I cooked it right.
• 27:16
  I cooked it right. There's no way it's wrong.
• 27:17
  There's no way I cooked it wrong.
• 27:18
  Sure, bud. Like like, don't like.
• 27:20
  Yes, you cooked it great. You're amazing.
• 27:22
  But. They don't got to fucking you,
• 27:23
  got to fucking do it again. A medium well to them is is a
• 27:26
  medium to them. And you know what I mean?
• 27:27
  Like it's all it's, it's all different.
• 27:29
  It's all different. But that is, I mean, I would
• 27:31
  have been that too. I was that guy too.
• 27:32
  I did that. Oh, my God.
• 27:33
  Let me see it. Was it right now?
• 27:34
  Oh, I was right. Yeah.
• 27:35
  Like Chef, no, it's perfect. I I fucking know it's perfect.
• 27:38
  Yeah, but just shut up. Cook it up.
• 27:42
  Do you think, do you think now we should say, like now you
• 27:44
  don't have? Yeah, why don't you take it in
• 27:45
  the room and tell them how perfect it is?
• 27:47
  Yeah. Yeah, well, do you want to do
• 27:47
  that? No.
• 27:48
  Then fucking put it back on the grill.
• 27:49
  Exactly. But to your point, you know, we
• 27:52
  got off track on a tangent here, but to your point, yeah, you got
• 27:55
  to be up front. And I think that's a very
• 27:57
  important thing. I'm I'm, I'm much more that way
• 28:00
  now with business that I do is like, hey, just so you know,
• 28:02
  because people will say, hey, can you come, I'm just making
• 28:05
  this up. People will come to me and say,
• 28:06
  hey, can you come speak out or whatever I say.
• 28:08
  Just so you know, this is my business.
• 28:10
  This is how I get paid. I get paid for public speaking,
• 28:12
  leadership seminars, things like that, keynote speaking,
• 28:16
  whatever. I get paid to talk.
• 28:18
  This is my business. So I want to be upfront like I
• 28:20
  don't unless it's like for a charity or something that's
• 28:23
  like, but I'm not going to do this for free.
• 28:25
  Yeah, this is my business. And so chefs have to also start
• 28:29
  thinking about that like. Well, chefs have to be organized
• 28:31
  enough in their own thoughts to know that they have to do that.
• 28:33
  Like come, come prepared on your side as well.
• 28:35
  Now I'm doing dinners like this and I didn't think about it
• 28:38
  before, but now I have, you know, set things that I'll, I'll
• 28:42
  ask for right away that it's respectful to the business.
• 28:46
  So they know they're getting in and also in return, they're
• 28:48
  going to get something out of it.
• 28:49
  And same for me. And again, I think it's, it's,
• 28:52
  it's a big part of the industry that's it's just important, you
• 28:56
  know, like we chefs have just been yes men for a long time.
• 29:00
  Yeah, we're fucking great at that.
• 29:02
  Or not great at it because we say it all the time.
• 29:04
  But like, yeah, we say yes. And when we get it done, but
• 29:07
  like, you know, it's, it's, it's just changing the mindset and
• 29:12
  understanding. You are you are you.
• 29:13
  You know you are your own asset and you got to stick up for
• 29:17
  yourself. Yeah, no, I I agree this is an
• 29:19
  important conversation. I'm hoping that this
• 29:22
  conversation that we're having will spark more conversations
• 29:25
  because it needs to be. It does need to be had and it
• 29:26
  needs to just become not a question.
• 29:30
  Like it should be a normal conversation.
• 29:33
  Yeah, a normal conversation. Yeah.
• 29:36
  One of the things that, you know, going back to food, one of
• 29:38
  the things that I really like about the way that you cook and
• 29:41
  it's something that we've talked about, but I've also touched on
• 29:44
  another episodes, is that there's a difference between
• 29:48
  making something really beautiful That's, you know, like
• 29:51
  the garde Manger food, like a lot of garde Manger food, people
• 29:54
  got stuck in garde Manger where they focused on, you know,
• 29:57
  shaving vegetables and making, you know, beautiful oils and
• 30:01
  things like that. It's like, well, somewhere along
• 30:02
  the lines, you got to learn how to cook.
• 30:04
  And I have nothing against a crudo and I have nothing against
• 30:07
  a beautiful salad or anything like that.
• 30:08
  I, I, I find them delicious. But what you do is cooking And,
• 30:11
  and I'm not saying you don't do the other stuff.
• 30:13
  One of the things that I think you do exceptionally well is you
• 30:15
  cook, and I do feel like high level cooking technically is
• 30:21
  becoming a bit of a lost art over aesthetics.
• 30:24
  Yes, for sure, and that also has social media to blame.
• 30:27
  Yeah, for sure, But it but it is the thing and I think people are
• 30:30
  tweezer happy now too, which is never that's not my thing.
• 30:33
  I don't like tweezers. I got hands like I and I I.
• 30:37
  The food I do doesn't require tweezers.
• 30:39
  God's tweezer. Well, like, I mean, if these
• 30:41
  myths can make something look good, I don't need a little
• 30:43
  pinchers, you know, like, but also my style of food doesn't
• 30:47
  require that to dress to dress the plate.
• 30:49
  I understand it in different, you know, Alinea and stuff like
• 30:51
  that, like that style of food does denote using that.
• 30:53
  But for me, no. And cooking is is more than just
• 31:00
  putting wrong ingredients on a plate.
• 31:03
  There's a thought process as a background.
• 31:04
  There's the sauces that take days to make the meat
• 31:06
  preparation again. It takes a lot of thought.
• 31:09
  A lot of you got to be pretty methodical with how you're going
• 31:11
  to get it on the plate, make money from it and also reproduce
• 31:14
  it again and again and again. Because it's it's all good to do
• 31:17
  it for once. But if you have to do it Monday,
• 31:19
  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you got to have systems
• 31:22
  in place to roll over. You think about like back in the
• 31:25
  day when you were starting out as a cook.
• 31:28
  They put you on the garmage station where you might have a
• 31:30
  couple of salads, apps, cold apps, you know, whatever.
• 31:33
  But you graduated to hot food. Yeah, that's what you're always
• 31:36
  pushing to work or you would think you're always.
• 31:38
  Pushing you're striving to become the hot side cook or you
• 31:40
  know, the grill cook, the fish cook, whatever.
• 31:42
  But garbage was always the entry point.
• 31:44
  And what I what I see now is a lot of chefs don't graduate from
• 31:48
  garbage and they build their whole culinary identity around
• 31:53
  pretty food that that's that's flowers and a sturtiums, you
• 31:55
  know, and you know, squiggly sauces and stuff like that.
• 31:58
  It's like great, but. Do you know how to cook and they
• 32:00
  just hide the? Protein under.
• 32:01
  They hide the protein under. Yeah, precisely.
• 32:03
  Because the only protein they know how to do is probably in a
• 32:05
  bag or in a water bath and then seared and cut.
• 32:07
  It's not a braised, it's not, it's not been post, it's not
• 32:11
  done. You know, utilizing different
• 32:12
  ingredients on the plate and then wanting to show it off
• 32:15
  without, you know, covering it up.
• 32:17
  Yeah, and I think what you do is exceptional.
• 32:19
  And This is why I, I, I always recommend people watch you cook
• 32:22
  because there's so much going on, so much technique, so much
• 32:25
  precision butchery. But all these other things that
• 32:28
  you're incorporating, whether it's, you know, making a farce
• 32:31
  using the caul fat, you know, using the fat for something
• 32:34
  else, like there's proper cooking involved.
• 32:38
  Why did you, how did you develop that stuff?
• 32:40
  Because I feel like it's so unique for today's age.
• 32:46
  I mean, I was lucky when I went, one of my first real kitchen
• 32:48
  jobs was in Edinburgh for Tom Kitchen.
• 32:50
  And he, he was Pierre Kaufman's last sous chef at LE Tom Clair
• 32:56
  and Kaufman creates flavor and that's how he does it.
• 33:00
  You know, he uses every element in a very smart way, cost
• 33:04
  effective way as well by default.
• 33:07
  And that's how you create flavor and that's flavor.
• 33:09
  And, and Tom was, he was like just nuts about it, about flavor
• 33:16
  first flavor. The sauces took time.
• 33:18
  The, the butchery. We, we, we did everything in
• 33:20
  house. We had a gamekeeper, he would
• 33:22
  shoot and bring the stuff in in the morning.
• 33:23
  We're gutting hairs at 7:30 in the morning.
• 33:25
  And that's when you learn classical technique, but you
• 33:28
  also learn like why things taste good.
• 33:30
  And it's not just roasting a piece of meat and banging on the
• 33:32
  plate. It's days of preparation
• 33:34
  beforehand, using the fats to render and split sauces or, you
• 33:38
  know, putting the fat back through a farce or multiple cuts
• 33:41
  and, and learning how to use them all.
• 33:43
  And for, for me, I just, it's not even cost effective.
• 33:47
  It is cost effective 100%. But that's not how I look at it.
• 33:49
  I just look at it as like, it's going to be way tastier if we do
• 33:52
  this, this and this. Like get the process behind it
• 33:54
  and then bring it out and then you know what you're eating.
• 33:56
  Highlight it, respect it. What were some of the lessons
• 33:59
  that you learned specifically in that kitchen?
• 34:01
  Shut the fuck up and cook. Yeah, yeah, shut up and cook.
• 34:05
  I mean one. Own your mistakes.
• 34:07
  What was the Scotland? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:10
  Own your mistakes like and and you can't really say now like be
• 34:14
  a man, but like it was like grow, grow up.
• 34:19
  If you fuck up, say that you fucked up, we'll fix it.
• 34:21
  If you don't, you'll hear about it.
• 34:23
  But I think the biggest thing I learned there was how hard I can
• 34:27
  work. I work better under pressure and
• 34:30
  how to truly respect the ingredient and get the most out
• 34:33
  of it. Whether whether it was Woodcock,
• 34:35
  snipe, teal during game season or you know, the first of the
• 34:39
  season, asparagus coming through the doors or the scallops that
• 34:42
  we would shock in the morning. We respected every ingredient
• 34:46
  more than I'd ever seen before. When when you're developing
• 34:50
  dishes currently, what, what, how does your thought process
• 34:55
  go? Does it go more?
• 34:56
  These are the the the techniques that I want to showcase or or is
• 34:59
  it more focused on the ingredient?
• 35:01
  I wish I had a singular process, made my life a little bit
• 35:03
  easier, but. Let's just take a menu that
• 35:06
  you're working on now. So I would say usually it
• 35:08
  focuses on one ingredient and then how to maximize the flavor
• 35:11
  in it. So whether it's a vegetable or a
• 35:13
  meat, whatever I can do to bring out the flavor the best.
• 35:16
  And if that's different cooking techniques or different cuts on
• 35:19
  the plate, or even if it's a vegetable, you know, asparagus,
• 35:22
  you trim it down, you use the trimmings, you juicy, you cook
• 35:24
  the asparagus in the juice like you, you want that flavor to pop
• 35:29
  so much that no one knows how they did.
• 35:32
  They've never had that much of A one off flavor like that.
• 35:36
  Asparagus tastes like asparagus. It's crazy.
• 35:38
  Or the lamb. You know, you, you break it
• 35:40
  down, you use, you use everything and, and, and you all
• 35:43
  the trim and all those bits is, is how you get the depth.
• 35:46
  But I so I usually focus on either protein or vegetable and
• 35:49
  then work backwards and then I see what's in season and then,
• 35:52
  you know, kind of put those things together.
• 35:54
  But there's no real specific plan when I do it it.
• 35:59
  It might look like there is, but there really isn't I think.
• 36:01
  You're you're. You're more so cooking.
• 36:04
  Yeah, just cooking, man, which is great about these dinners now
• 36:06
  that I'm doing because I actually get to go in and I
• 36:08
  don't have like, you know, a huge team behind me doing bits
• 36:10
  and bobs like I'm in there cooking.
• 36:12
  I'm not, I'm not just like I'm touching everything.
• 36:14
  I'm feeling everything. I'm I'm, I'm tasting and it's
• 36:18
  it's it's fun to just do that again.
• 36:20
  How does that? Affect your decision making
• 36:22
  process when you're writing a menu because you one you're
• 36:25
  going in blind. You don't know the skill level
• 36:27
  of the people that you're going to work with, so you might have
• 36:29
  to do probably most of the heavy lifting.
• 36:32
  Yeah, sometimes it, I mean, look, you want to make instead
• 36:38
  of doing 10 moves, you want to make 3 and being smarter than,
• 36:42
  you know, smarter than harder and a lot of things.
• 36:43
  And then sometimes you got to also realize that they're
• 36:45
  bringing you there to see some of that stuff and you just got
• 36:47
  to suck it up and do it. And it's going to be hard.
• 36:49
  It's going to be hard. And be honest with them too.
• 36:51
  Like, hey, look, if I'm coming down, I'm going to need hands.
• 36:54
  If you want me there, we're going to have to do it.
• 36:55
  I'll have to come a day earlier, but sometimes you just do it and
• 37:00
  wing it when you get there and you figure it out and and a lot
• 37:02
  of times when you go into these kitchens, they have other things
• 37:04
  going on that's really interesting and you can grab
• 37:06
  that and use this and like. So also going in knowing that
• 37:09
  your menu is going to change and be OK with it.
• 37:11
  Yeah, because you have to just be able to adapt, which again is
• 37:14
  cooking. That's cooking I.
• 37:15
  Want to go back to asparagus? Walk me through, walk the
• 37:19
  audience through, I should probably say, what is your
• 37:22
  process for cooking experience? Because you mentioned a couple
• 37:23
  of things. You know, you clean them, you
• 37:25
  collar them, juice them or Yeah, yeah.
• 37:27
  What? What is if if you wanted to make
• 37:29
  exceptional asparagus right now. And the asparagus are great.
• 37:32
  I mean, no, it's not asparagus season, but yeah.
• 37:34
  I mean, yeah. I mean, you don't need much.
• 37:37
  I like for instance, we had all those like what's that word like
• 37:42
  armchair quarterbacks that like pipe up when I so I did a video
• 37:45
  and I was Frenching it. Because honestly, this is
• 37:46
  exactly where I was trying to lead.
• 37:47
  Out. Well, we got there in the end.
• 37:48
  You must be kicking my fucking foot under the table.
• 37:53
  Yeah, how do you handle the trolls for the asparagus?
• 37:55
  Well, I mean, I used to handle a little bit differently, but I'm
• 37:57
  I'm better now. But like, they see it and they
• 37:59
  just like, why are you doing that?
• 38:00
  It's pointless. It doesn't make it taste better.
• 38:02
  Yeah, it's a fucking 15 second clip, you Dick.
• 38:05
  Like I'm doing more after that. I just don't feel the need to
• 38:07
  tell you because 1, I don't know you, 2, I don't care about you,
• 38:09
  and three, I don't give a fuck what you think.
• 38:11
  I know it tastes good and that's how I want it to be.
• 38:13
  And yes, it takes longer. It does take more time if
• 38:17
  there's a reason. And, and, and like I said, you
• 38:19
  know, you take the little leaves off.
• 38:20
  Yeah. We dry them and we fry them.
• 38:21
  They become a crisp, fucking delicious.
• 38:23
  We, we, you call it coloring, I call it Frenching.
• 38:26
  You French them down. You take that.
• 38:28
  Or you can also buy some seconds asparagus, the ones that aren't
• 38:31
  pretty, they're cheaper. And we'll juice all of that
• 38:34
  together. And then you cook the asparagus
• 38:37
  in its own juice. It develops the flavor.
• 38:39
  Yeah. So you're maximizing waste.
• 38:41
  There's no waste because you're juicing it and you're putting it
• 38:43
  back in. Yeah, but these guys just say
• 38:45
  that because they want to cut corners.
• 38:47
  They don't want to do it. And that's cool.
• 38:48
  Don't do it. I'm not asking you to do.
• 38:50
  It how? How do you handle the trolls?
• 38:53
  I've seen you clap. Back a couple sometimes.
• 38:55
  Sometimes I'm I. It gets the better of me
• 38:58
  sometimes. I've also seen you be very
• 38:59
  professional with your answers too, by the way.
• 39:01
  Depends. Depends on who's in the post
• 39:02
  too. Yeah.
• 39:04
  But most, like now I just kind of like, sometimes I'll just
• 39:07
  delete it and move on. I just don't care.
• 39:08
  But sometimes it like, you know, I'll come home late at night and
• 39:11
  I'm like, all right, you chose violence today.
• 39:14
  Like I'm going to fucking go back at you.
• 39:15
  And I'm not. I'm pretty good at, you know,
• 39:18
  sing what's on my mind and putting it out there and and
• 39:20
  putting it in your place if need be.
• 39:22
  Sometimes they're right when they say shit too.
• 39:23
  I'm like, fuck, you know, I mean, you're not really errantly
• 39:25
  wrong. Like it was probably a Dick
• 39:27
  thing to do. And it's butter too.
• 39:29
  Like I use a lot of butter. Like fuck it, I love it.
• 39:31
  It's delicious. And they're like, oh, your food
• 39:33
  cost must be outrageous. Actually, my food cost is pretty
• 39:35
  good. Like it's very good.
• 39:37
  And the butter again, we reuse it.
• 39:38
  We roast meats in it, we keep it, we separate it, we split
• 39:40
  sauces with it. Like it brings flavor.
• 39:43
  It's just they don't know. Yeah.
• 39:44
  And that's what trolls are. Just trolls.
• 39:47
  Yeah, it's funny. It's funny to me when I see
• 39:51
  people troll you or other. Like sometimes I'll put a clip
• 39:53
  up of a podcast and people go crazy.
• 39:55
  Like they know what they're talking about.
• 39:58
  You don't even know who that is that's talking.
• 40:00
  And trust me, they do know what they're fucking talking about.
• 40:02
  I promise you they know exactly what they're talking about.
• 40:05
  And then I go to their page. It's like a fucking one year
• 40:07
  cook and. Micro herbs on a hot steak.
• 40:10
  For what reason? So just fucking Wilts, you
• 40:12
  idiot. Like it doesn't.
• 40:13
  Yeah. And it is always those guys.
• 40:14
  It is always if it was someone else that was like, it's like,
• 40:17
  I'm going to message like David Breeden or or or Dave Baron
• 40:20
  about like, Are you sure you want to do that?
• 40:21
  I look stupid, guys. Like, no, you you wouldn't do
• 40:24
  that. You wouldn't Like, you know what
• 40:25
  I mean? Like I'll give David grief about
• 40:28
  his shorts. That's about it.
• 40:29
  That's. That's but it.
• 40:32
  But it's true because you see a lot of, there's a lot of very
• 40:35
  opinionated people, There's strong, strong opinions and I'm
• 40:39
  not sure if they know why they have those strong opinions.
• 40:41
  Sometimes when I see some of the comments, I'm like, you know,
• 40:43
  they're, if they're critical, who hurt you?
• 40:45
  Yeah, well, not only that, but like, who told you that?
• 40:48
  First of all, why are you regurgitating that information
• 40:50
  like so unlowered? To like, speak up about it.
• 40:52
  Yeah, like don't. Yeah, and, and do you know who
• 40:55
  you're talking to, Meaning you know the chef, that you're on
• 40:58
  their page? I don't know who it was.
• 41:00
  It was someone talking about. I saw a video where this guy was
• 41:03
  watching chanterelles with a little bit of flour and flour
• 41:08
  with flour. So he coated the chanterelles
• 41:09
  with flour, OK, and then rinsed about and the flour took out all
• 41:12
  the the dirt. Sounds smart.
• 41:14
  Yeah, and fuck it. Well, what if they're gluten
• 41:17
  free? The comments and you shouldn't
• 41:19
  do that. Free.
• 41:20
  Then stay in your bubble. Like don't have it.
• 41:22
  And it's like, you should never who?
• 41:24
  You're never supposed to wet mushrooms in the I'm like you.
• 41:27
  Name a chef that doesn't get them wet.
• 41:28
  You're going to sit there with a brush and pay 7 hours of Labor
• 41:31
  just to go like this on your morels right?
• 41:33
  Sink them in water, wash them off, dry them properly, move on.
• 41:35
  Exactly. But but you know, these people
• 41:37
  is like, and I remember I I kind of got frustrated because I was
• 41:39
  reading all the comments because it was it was entertained.
• 41:41
  But then I just got pissed. And then I was like, this guy
• 41:43
  has two Michelin stars. Do you think he doesn't know
• 41:45
  what the fuck he's doing? Yeah.
• 41:47
  Do you think he does not know what he's doing?
• 41:49
  And he should listen to you who's still in culinary school
• 41:52
  in your profile picture has your.
• 41:53
  Living in his mom's basement, he just feels I showed him send
• 41:57
  like, yeah, you're an idiot. Yeah, just like, just shut up.
• 42:00
  Yeah, the people these fuck, I hate that.
• 42:03
  I mean, it comes with it though. You got to be OK with it, but it
• 42:05
  is what it is and it's not going to go away.
• 42:07
  So it's not that I minded the. Troll.
• 42:09
  Sometimes they're funny. It's not that I minded the troll
• 42:12
  in by the way, because I find I'm sometimes I talk shit too,
• 42:15
  so it's not that. What I mind is when you're
• 42:18
  attacking an extremely talented chef that you're like, you don't
• 42:23
  know what you're saying. That's what bothers me.
• 42:26
  It's like you are doing yourself a disservice.
• 42:28
  You're making yourself look stupid by attacking this person
• 42:31
  that's extremely talented. Like I respect this person.
• 42:33
  Yeah, I mean, there was one I was cooking at home and I put I
• 42:37
  had like a this D bone chicken hat and I folded it over.
• 42:40
  I was just like a brick chicken or something.
• 42:42
  And someone in the comments like, I can't believe you're
• 42:44
  doing it in that kind of pan. My chef wouldn't let me like I'm
• 42:46
  at. Home.
• 42:47
  Yeah. Cooking.
• 42:48
  Shut the fuck up, you. Want me to fire myself?
• 42:50
  I'm sorry I didn't have the right fucking kit to pull this
• 42:53
  off. Like, what's wrong with you?
• 42:54
  And then other guys like, follow me, will get in and start giving
• 42:57
  that guy grief. I'm like, guys, just stop.
• 42:59
  Like I'm getting notifications because you guys are bickering.
• 43:01
  I don't need that, you know? Yeah, Yeah.
• 43:02
  Yeah, but I used to enjoy it. You know, I'd find like the
• 43:06
  worst comment that I'd pin it. Oh, that I do that, that's fun.
• 43:09
  You gotta, I mean, at the same time, yeah, you can, you can
• 43:12
  ignore some. But like, also, I'm not just
• 43:15
  gonna sit there and let some guy say some dumb shit either.
• 43:18
  Like yeah, it depends. Well, you, you've done a good
• 43:20
  job. I've, I've seen you do this like
• 43:21
  you'll explain, like someone will say something stupid and
• 43:23
  you'll, you'll go back and say, This is why I do it.
• 43:25
  I thought, well, that's sometimes that's what I do.
• 43:27
  That's. After that's after writing
• 43:28
  something really bad, deleting it, and then being OK.
• 43:30
  Fuck, that's because I'm grown now.
• 43:32
  Yeah. Or or or a work in progress.
• 43:35
  Yeah, there you go. But, you know, again, back to
• 43:37
  getting cancelled, like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna put
• 43:39
  something that's definitely in my head, but I just shouldn't
• 43:42
  say it. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:44
  And and you know, I don't want to cuz I know I know.
• 43:47
  I was that person too, by the way.
• 43:48
  But then young cooks see that too.
• 43:49
  And then they think it's OK, you know, And you gotta, you ought
• 43:52
  to be realistic with where you are.
• 43:53
  If you have a lot of young cooks looking at you, which I do,
• 43:56
  which is still for me a weird, it's a weird thing.
• 43:59
  Like you don't think you're ever gonna be in that role.
• 44:02
  But if they see you clapping back at people, they're gonna
• 44:05
  jump on board. Cuz I think it's cool and like,
• 44:07
  it's not. So you got it.
• 44:09
  You got to remember who's watching sometimes too.
• 44:11
  Yeah, my saying is I don't argue with fools or idiots, and I
• 44:15
  don't reward bad behavior with my attention.
• 44:17
  So now now I've gotten really good at just bad.
• 44:20
  Sometimes I reward myself by giving, like giving it back to
• 44:23
  them too. Like it's, it's just they
• 44:26
  deserve it sometimes and. And you deserve to treat
• 44:28
  yourself. Occasionally, I mean, look, you
• 44:29
  know, I, I like a snack every now and then, you know, like, so
• 44:32
  I'll have that with, you know, some, some late night Chinese
• 44:34
  food and flick through the comments and give them some
• 44:36
  grief and move on. Yeah, it's, you know, fucking
• 44:42
  trolls. I can, I can spend a lot of time
• 44:43
  on that. Anyway, I'll stop.
• 44:47
  One of the things that I've had a lot of conversations with and
• 44:49
  you, most of what I do now is I talk to chefs, not just on the
• 44:54
  podcast, but like all fucking day.
• 44:55
  I talk to chefs what I do with chefs.
• 44:57
  PSA just, you know, whether it's social posts in the DMS or
• 45:01
  friends of mine or mentoring, whatever, I talk to chefs and
• 45:06
  one of the things that I know, but it's never talked about on
• 45:10
  the podcast, but I know for certain is there is a bit of an
• 45:16
  uncomfortable gap that a lot of chefs, a lot of very talented
• 45:19
  chefs are in. Very, very talented chefs.
• 45:22
  I find myself in that gap sometimes.
• 45:24
  A lot of my friends find themselves in that gap.
• 45:27
  It's when you leave a when you leave a restaurant or you're a
• 45:31
  highly successful chef and your restaurant closes and you kind
• 45:34
  of thinking like, or you're a chef employee, meaning you were
• 45:38
  the face but you didn't have any skin in the game.
• 45:40
  Yeah, under the. Corporate shadow right under the
• 45:42
  corporate shadow. And everyone just thinks so, you
• 45:44
  know, they they made it, but it's like, well, you didn't have
• 45:46
  skin in the game. And then when you leave, you
• 45:49
  find yourself in this limbo. Yeah, well, that's me now.
• 45:52
  Yeah, I know. I want to ask you about that
• 45:54
  like how is that process for you Aluminet?
• 46:02
  I mean, it's different. Look, the way I operate, I need
• 46:04
  a kick in the ass. So when I left, I didn't have a
• 46:06
  game plan per SE, but I know that I operate better like that.
• 46:08
  I didn't want a Band-Aid. If I stayed at that job, I would
• 46:11
  have, I would have not liked going to work every day, which
• 46:13
  isn't fair on me. It's not fair to my team, you
• 46:16
  know, So I left when I was still happy there, but knowing that
• 46:19
  I'd achieved everything I could. It's time to pull the plug and
• 46:22
  and sort it out. And I need that pressure behind
• 46:23
  me. But it is it's hard because once
• 46:25
  you, once you run like, you know, an establishment like
• 46:28
  canoe that I was at, people, people and yourself have
• 46:32
  expectations for your next move. And I'm not about to take a job
• 46:35
  that I'm not going to love or be able to pursue put like just
• 46:41
  keep pushing. I can't do that.
• 46:42
  I, I know I won't be able to do that.
• 46:44
  So finding that next job is hard.
• 46:45
  It is hard and, and I think it, it, it'll either make or break
• 46:48
  you as well. And if you can be patient to
• 46:50
  find the right thing and, and sometimes you can't like life's
• 46:53
  life, you need money, you need to do this and that.
• 46:55
  And I've been very lucky in terms of all these collaborators
• 46:59
  coming up to it bides me some time.
• 47:03
  It allows me to network and meet people and, and, you know,
• 47:05
  hopefully the right things happen and I'm looking to, to do
• 47:08
  something down the road, But it's an incredibly difficult
• 47:11
  situation because you don't know what's coming and you, you don't
• 47:15
  want to take a step back. So it, it, it put, it can put
• 47:21
  you in a mind space. That's, that's difficult.
• 47:23
  You know, it's, it's, it's also a bit of a mental game because
• 47:26
  you had the confidence of a, of a restaurant behind you before
• 47:28
  and you don't now you, you know, your aprons off for a little
• 47:31
  while and it's, it's, it's a weird, it is a weird space.
• 47:33
  The first month or so for me was an eye opener.
• 47:38
  Yeah, I realize what I'm not good with free time.
• 47:40
  Yeah, what was that like first month?
• 47:43
  It was it was hard in in a certain way I because I didn't
• 47:46
  I, I'm I didn't realize how used I was to a schedule.
• 47:50
  Yeah, and I think, I think chefs, you know, we all have
• 47:53
  ADHD in a way, even though it's not the cool, not the cool, you
• 47:56
  know, ones on on Instagram that everyone says they have it, but
• 47:58
  chefs 100% do because not everyone but I 100% do without a
• 48:03
  timeline and without a schedule. Your kind of like you said,
• 48:08
  you're in limbo. You just kind of got like days
• 48:10
  off. You're useless.
• 48:12
  But at work you'll always get shit done.
• 48:14
  You'll be ready for lunch, you'll be ready for dinner.
• 48:16
  You'll get the orders in on time.
• 48:17
  You'll go home, you'll be back early in the morning.
• 48:19
  Schedule, schedule, schedule. And without that, it was a
• 48:22
  whirlwind for me. I, I, I struggled.
• 48:24
  I had to basically turn my time into how I would operate a
• 48:28
  kitchen. I would make a list the night
• 48:29
  before of what I wanted to do the next day and I set up, I
• 48:35
  even set up my, my apartment like I would have.
• 48:37
  I, I set it up differently now because I was actually cooking
• 48:39
  at home again, which I never liked to do.
• 48:41
  So I set it up a way that I would have found out at the
• 48:43
  kitchen. I labeled everything.
• 48:44
  I've got everything in place and now I enjoy cooking at home, but
• 48:46
  I had to treat it like a kitchen because that works better for
• 48:49
  me. I need that.
• 48:51
  I need routine and it's better for my for my head space for
• 48:54
  everything. I'm just like a happier person
• 48:56
  when I have it. And then at the end of the day,
• 48:58
  you finish your list of stuff, you feel accomplished.
• 49:00
  And then you, you know, you sleep better at night as well.
• 49:03
  One of the things that I, I, I know and, and you touched on it,
• 49:06
  a lot of chefs find themselves in this situation.
• 49:10
  And I, and I talked with a lot of them.
• 49:11
  I found myself in this situation is when, when you're there and
• 49:14
  then all of a sudden you've, you've reached a certain level
• 49:17
  of status in your community or what, what's perceived status
• 49:21
  right from, from your peers and you can't just take the job at
• 49:28
  the local gastropub anymore. You know, you're, you're beyond
• 49:30
  that in terms of of talent and reputation.
• 49:34
  And passion too. And and.
• 49:35
  Passion. I love what you do.
• 49:36
  But then on top of that, but then you're like, but fuck, I
• 49:38
  need money. And you know, a lot of people
• 49:40
  have wife, kids, whatever and go, Hey, you know what, I, I
• 49:44
  know you were the chef here, but guess what?
• 49:48
  We need, we need to pay the bills.
• 49:49
  We're going to lose the house or, you know, whatever the case
• 49:51
  may be. And a lot of chefs, I know many
• 49:53
  chefs that I, you know, throughout my career that we're
• 49:57
  at the tip of the spear in the city.
• 49:59
  And then you don't know where they are anymore.
• 50:00
  Like they, they, they vanish because they, they, they hit the
• 50:04
  top and they left that they weren't the owner and they left.
• 50:08
  And then like whatever happened that?
• 50:09
  Should Yeah. And they they lose their
• 50:10
  momentum, they lose that public eye.
• 50:13
  And people forget. Quick man.
• 50:14
  Yeah, yeah, they people have very short memories.
• 50:16
  I've seen it, I've seen it happen to.
• 50:18
  I have a friend, without getting into his business too much, but
• 50:22
  he was tip of the spear globally, globally tip of the
• 50:26
  spear in the conversation. And then shortly after that,
• 50:30
  after a series of unfortunate events, it was like chef at a,
• 50:35
  you know, a place that no one would even think about.
• 50:38
  And and I'm like, do you know who you're working with?
• 50:42
  Like this dude, again, I don't want to say his name, but but
• 50:45
  this person's like a fucking gangster.
• 50:48
  You know, you know who you're working to and they're like him,
• 50:51
  that guy and like, yeah, that guy, that guy's a mother fucker
• 50:55
  and no one. Knows.
• 50:56
  Yeah, I don't think I mean with the way that the social media
• 50:59
  and information is now when we wanted to learn about chefs we
• 51:02
  had to do the research and read about them and get the magazines
• 51:05
  and get the books and get that. But now they don't need to do
• 51:08
  that. And I think that there's a level
• 51:10
  of information and and history and cooking that the young chefs
• 51:14
  don't seem to care about anymore.
• 51:16
  Yeah. And they don't know that.
• 51:18
  Yeah. Which is horrible.
• 51:19
  They're, they're, they're, they're chasing the, the the the
• 51:21
  now. And the clout and the and the,
• 51:24
  the pretty food on a plate and the and the fucking chefs taking
• 51:26
  selfies and like, I can't stand that.
• 51:28
  Chefs takes it selfies and what? Just like if I'm following a
• 51:32
  chef, I don't want to follow you for your face.
• 51:33
  You know, I want to follow you for your food, post the food.
• 51:36
  Are you hiding behind your, you know, your your good cheekbones.
• 51:39
  Like I don't, it doesn't do it for me.
• 51:41
  I don't, I, I always wonder about that when they only post
• 51:44
  pictures of themselves doing stuff.
• 51:45
  It's like, well, then are you not proud of what you're
• 51:46
  producing? Like I don't need people to know
• 51:49
  what I look like. Like look at a plate of food.
• 51:51
  If you can tell it's from me, then I'm done.
• 51:52
  Something right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:53
  Fair. But but I do, I do think it's
• 51:56
  interesting. So when I left cooking, there
• 51:59
  was the immediate flood of people like, hey, come work for
• 52:03
  me, let's open something together.
• 52:04
  And it was like, whoa, no, I'm done.
• 52:06
  Like, I'm literally I'm done. I don't want to cook anymore.
• 52:08
  And then I was like, OK, it's been a few months.
• 52:10
  And then when people would reach out to me to do something, I
• 52:12
  priced myself out deliberately. How much?
• 52:15
  You know, it's too much. Yeah.
• 52:16
  I said that because if they said yes, great, I'm going to get a
• 52:18
  fat paycheck. And if they said no, it's like,
• 52:20
  well, fuck, I'm going to keep chilling and smoking.
• 52:22
  Yeah, yeah, or whatever. But then the phone stopped
• 52:25
  ringing after a while, and then people forget about you and I, I
• 52:29
  realized. Whoa, that's a kick in the nuts.
• 52:30
  I went like, and it was like in four months, like the phone
• 52:33
  wouldn't stop ringing and then it just stopped.
• 52:35
  Yeah, yeah. People forget quick.
• 52:37
  Yeah, they do. And and it's like, well, what
• 52:40
  happened? I mean, that's something that I,
• 52:42
  I, I worry about all the time. You don't know, right?
• 52:45
  Yeah. And and if you're, you're trying
• 52:46
  to get catch the eye of an investor, even if that's what
• 52:48
  you want to do or what where however you want to go, if
• 52:51
  you're not staying relevant, you know, yeah, it's it's over.
• 52:56
  Yeah. Like it's harder for you to
• 52:57
  climb back up. And the only way to climb back
• 52:59
  up is probably starting lower again and doing it again.
• 53:02
  Yeah, that's hard. Super hard especially.
• 53:05
  And we have egos, man. Yeah, that's.
• 53:07
  Egos, right Hard on the ego of. Course it is.
• 53:08
  Yeah, that's probably the fucking biggest.
• 53:10
  And having our egos knocked back is good for us anyways, to be
• 53:13
  fair. But you know, sitting back and
• 53:16
  thinking about it and, and trying to figure out what that
• 53:18
  next move is, is a lot of sleepless nights still, still
• 53:22
  there is, I get asked all the time, what are you doing next?
• 53:24
  And honestly, I don't even know. Like I, I know I'm going to do
• 53:28
  something and I can feel it and I know it and the momentum's
• 53:30
  great and all this, but I don't have a 100% game plan.
• 53:33
  I don't. I'm just kind of going with it
• 53:36
  and backing myself and being confident and trying to enjoy
• 53:38
  this time as much as I can, which I'm doing.
• 53:41
  And then whatever happens next happens next.
• 53:43
  And I, I'm going to look back on this time as being an incredible
• 53:46
  experience. The amount I'm learning from all
• 53:47
  this is great. So.
• 53:50
  Yeah, I, I would say for me personally, you know, this time
• 53:53
  away from cooking has been beneficial for me to learn all
• 53:56
  other aspects of business that I didn't fully understand of, you
• 54:00
  know, being a solo entrepreneur. I'm starting media company and
• 54:03
  things that I do now it's. Completely out of your
• 54:05
  wheelhouse. Yeah, I mean, I didn't fucking
• 54:06
  know anything about marketing. I just knew how.
• 54:08
  I just knew about being a chef. I had ideas.
• 54:11
  Well, they don't teach you that in school, you know, like they
• 54:13
  don't, they don't teach a lot of the, they teach you how to cook,
• 54:15
  but at the end of the day, that's the thing that you're
• 54:17
  going to learn in the kitchen anyways.
• 54:18
  They don't teach you. They don't teach you the the
• 54:21
  nuts and bolts of a business or, or the struggles you're going to
• 54:25
  have with mental health, which is a big thing in the chefing
• 54:28
  world too, that no one, many people talk about it now, but
• 54:30
  it's fucking huge, right? Yeah, no one.
• 54:32
  They don't. Well, maybe they do teach you
• 54:33
  that in cooking schools now. I don't really know to be
• 54:35
  honest, but I can't imagine they do.
• 54:37
  They don't teach you about like movement, keep your body moving
• 54:40
  like you, you, you got to stretch, you got to be active.
• 54:42
  You got it because you're standing all day.
• 54:44
  The more active you are, the more stretched you are, the
• 54:46
  better your headspace is going to be, the better shift you're
• 54:48
  going to be. But the role models I had coming
• 54:50
  up in kitchens didn't do that, you know, and, and I think it's
• 54:54
  important to to set that example as well.
• 54:57
  You want longevity in this career.
• 54:59
  You got you got to be physically active.
• 55:02
  I I 100% agree. The the gentleman that you met
• 55:05
  yesterday, we, we talked about at length being physically fit
• 55:08
  in the kitchen. That's kind of his, his thing.
• 55:10
  You know, it's about keeping your body good so that you could
• 55:13
  have a longer career. But we didn't even think about
• 55:16
  that. No, because.
• 55:16
  He didn't have the example. Yeah, we, we didn't.
• 55:19
  And I, I, I have a a thing right now that I'm saying often is
• 55:22
  like being healthy is the new Swanier.
• 55:25
  I mean, it's it's it's also bragging rights.
• 55:27
  Yeah. Did you get up and go to the gym
• 55:28
  before, before work today? No, you like, you'd be like, why
• 55:32
  go to sleep, right. And yes, look, sleep's the whole
• 55:35
  thing. It is, it is a, it is an
• 55:36
  important thing, but I'd rather go, you know, not go out for
• 55:40
  like 3 or 4 beers after service like we all used to when we were
• 55:43
  younger. Yeah.
• 55:44
  And get up and get to the gym before, before I go to work.
• 55:48
  And sometimes it's not even getting to the gym.
• 55:49
  Sometimes it's going to the gym and just rolling around on a mat
• 55:51
  and stretching a bit and like, yeah, that 5 or 10 minutes of
• 55:54
  just movement before you go. I think it's super important,
• 55:57
  you know? Yeah.
• 55:57
  And not like I had in 2020, I had my hip read.
• 56:00
  I had like full hip replacement. Really.
• 56:02
  Yeah. What?
• 56:02
  What happened? I mean, I played.
• 56:04
  Sports for years and I think you know a lot of contact sports and
• 56:08
  a lot of long days in the kitchen and you just you know,
• 56:11
  genetics too there's something happened so my hip was done and
• 56:16
  you know when you're in pain for years you can't really walk
• 56:18
  properly you're not a happy person in the kitchen either you
• 56:21
  know like you can't let that aggression out you have no
• 56:24
  release. So after I had it done, it was a
• 56:26
  game changer for me. It made me stop, realize that I
• 56:28
  need to, it was a good thing to happen, to be honest.
• 56:31
  Made me realize that I needed to focus and, and make I say
• 56:35
  health, but like, I still eat like shit.
• 56:37
  I love food, like, you know what I mean?
• 56:38
  But you know, getting to the gym and and, and doing these
• 56:42
  practices that just make you, it makes you a better chef.
• 56:45
  Yeah, 100%. How are you now post hip
• 56:48
  replacement like mobility wise in the kitchen?
• 56:52
  Fantastic. Really.
• 56:53
  Way better, yeah. Wow, so definitely needed to be
• 56:56
  done. Well, there was no I couldn't
• 56:57
  sit like this for three years. Really.
• 56:59
  No, I had 10% movement in my right leg.
• 57:01
  Wow. I was just hobbling around
• 57:02
  everywhere. Yeah, wow, that's crazy.
• 57:04
  And and was that a combination of kitchen work and rugby?
• 57:09
  A little bit of both and not taking care of myself.
• 57:10
  Yeah, that's what I mean. It was a wake up call that I
• 57:12
  needed and it was, it changed everything for me.
• 57:15
  Yeah, yeah. I mean I I had my own issues.
• 57:19
  I mean my all. Chefs do, man.
• 57:20
  My back's still fucked up. Yeah, my knees are worse now.
• 57:25
  They they're getting perpetually worse.
• 57:26
  And it's like, man, I why didn't I think about this?
• 57:29
  Of course, because 20 to 30 seems like a long time. 30 to 40
• 57:34
  like that. And those are the years that it
• 57:37
  really, you know, 20, you could run into a car, you'll be fine.
• 57:40
  But when you hit the 30s, like you're not moving, you're not,
• 57:44
  you're gonna feel it tomorrow, man.
• 57:45
  You're gonna feel it. And I did.
• 57:46
  And it was, it was exactly the wake up call I needed.
• 57:49
  It was, I'm really happy about that because without it, I would
• 57:52
  have just kept doing what I was doing.
• 57:53
  I had, no, I had no reason to not because everything was fine.
• 57:56
  I thought everything was fine. Looking back at it now, it
• 57:58
  wasn't at all. But you know you live and learn.
• 58:02
  Yeah, I, I, I know I've seen this in my career where I've
• 58:04
  seen, I've worked with chefs and I've seen other chefs like they
• 58:07
  have something like a, like an injury, whether it's knee or
• 58:12
  whatever the case may be. And I noticed their career
• 58:14
  starts to unravels after that, that, that injury pretty
• 58:18
  quickly. Like you'll see them like, oh,
• 58:20
  they're a great chef. Oh, did you hear so and so had a
• 58:22
  knee injury and now they're on crutches.
• 58:24
  Oh, now they're on a scooter. Oh, now they're selling, you
• 58:26
  know, for Cisco or whoever, right?
• 58:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It happens.
• 58:30
  You, you see it happen and people don't take care of them.
• 58:32
  You mentioned something about mental health.
• 58:35
  Yeah. And, and Wellness.
• 58:38
  So what's your what's your take on it as far as brush stroke
• 58:42
  across the industry? But then what do you do for
• 58:43
  yourself? Well, I just recently did a
• 58:46
  course on mental health actually.
• 58:47
  Well, the downtime I had and more so I took it because
• 58:50
  because I want to realize when I can see it in other cooks when
• 58:53
  it's an issue. But for myself, I think the
• 58:56
  biggest thing for me is going to the gym and staying active.
• 59:00
  And it's also part of routine. It gets me out of out of the
• 59:03
  house in the gym into an area that's big and I, you know, I
• 59:06
  get a sweat and it's good for my head space.
• 59:08
  It also helps with creativity. That's probably the biggest
• 59:12
  thing for me. You know, I, I think, I think
• 59:14
  mental health in this industry is in any industry.
• 59:17
  It's a big thing. And it's a catch phrase nowadays
• 59:18
  too. It is.
• 59:19
  But I mean, they, you look at any kitchen, how many learning
• 59:23
  disabilities there are, like even getting them to spell
• 59:26
  something properly is hard, you know, so the kitchen is, is ripe
• 59:30
  for it. And the more that we can talk
• 59:33
  about and be aware of it and be open to just understanding that
• 59:38
  it's a thing and we just need to deal with it.
• 59:40
  We need to work around it and figure it out and see it
• 59:41
  happening before it does. And if we, if you know what to
• 59:44
  do, like, you know, there's, there's websites you can go to,
• 59:47
  there's people you can talk to and all this stuff, but you got
• 59:50
  to get what's in your head out somehow, whether it's through
• 59:52
  recreation, whether it's talking to someone, what you know,
• 59:55
  because if you don't, you're going to be sitting there
• 59:56
  chopping chives in your head all fucking day in the corner, like,
• 59:59
  and they're not good thoughts, you know?
• 1:00:01
  So yeah, our, our. Our instant needs to become
• 1:00:06
  better at being open to talking about that, too.
• 1:00:11
  Yeah, it's a big thing. Big, big thing.
• 1:00:13
  One other thing that I've noticed with what I do with
• 1:00:15
  chefs PSA is the, the, the young cook that comes across like we
• 1:00:21
  were talking about these trolls earlier, right?
• 1:00:22
  They, they come across very confident and they know it all.
• 1:00:26
  But behind the scenes what I've noticed is that that sometimes
• 1:00:28
  that person that's coming across very confident and knows it all
• 1:00:31
  is seeking mentorship. I've I've I've seen it so much
• 1:00:35
  now, especially and what I do is like they, they come across very
• 1:00:38
  aggressive and then when you when you when you talk to them,
• 1:00:41
  it's like chef, I'm looking for mentorship Chef I I really
• 1:00:44
  appreciate this that you do for me.
• 1:00:46
  It's like, wow, more people that I, I, I didn't realize how much
• 1:00:53
  mentorship is needed in what, in our industry.
• 1:00:55
  And a lot of people get into our business because they are
• 1:00:57
  looking for someone to guide them.
• 1:00:59
  And in culinary, you do need to guide lost puppies, man.
• 1:01:01
  Yeah, you do need a guide in culinary.
• 1:01:03
  Like someone, someone, someone took time for me when I was a
• 1:01:07
  young cook to help develop me. And I, I, I mean, that's why I
• 1:01:10
  do what I do now because I'm a firm believer in paying it
• 1:01:12
  forward. I just didn't realize the impact
• 1:01:16
  that it's making right now. And but again, it's you give
• 1:01:19
  what you you get to. Like these kids gotta put in the
• 1:01:22
  effort to get, they do get it back.
• 1:01:23
  And if I don't see that, I'm not giving it back.
• 1:01:25
  But when I do see it and I don't need someone to come up to, I
• 1:01:28
  think that's the worst thing you could say is like, I want you to
• 1:01:29
  be my mentor. Like, it's just weird.
• 1:01:31
  Don't say that. Just show up, ask the questions,
• 1:01:33
  do the jobs. And that mentor will naturally
• 1:01:35
  happen. Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  Yeah. Like anyone that's come under my
• 1:01:38
  wing at in my last few years, they just showed up.
• 1:01:41
  They wanted to learn, they wanted to do the job.
• 1:01:43
  And then the next time I do it, they're setting the station up
• 1:01:45
  for me. They're getting me this stuff to
• 1:01:46
  do it. They want to be involved.
• 1:01:48
  It's it's show by doing, not, not by saying it.
• 1:01:51
  Yeah, the second you say that, I know it's not really a thing.
• 1:01:54
  Yeah, you shouldn't have to say it.
• 1:01:55
  You just do it. Yeah, But a lot of times the
• 1:01:57
  mentorship that they're looking for is the mental health
• 1:01:59
  mentorship. They're they're they're looking
• 1:02:01
  for. They're not looking for the
• 1:02:02
  technical mentorship a lot of times.
• 1:02:03
  A lot of times they're just looking for like, I need someone
• 1:02:06
  to help fucking help me navigate this industry.
• 1:02:09
  Like, yeah, where should I, where should I go next?
• 1:02:11
  What am I getting wrong with my life?
• 1:02:12
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you, if you, if you
• 1:02:15
  have the balls to ask that question, that's a good thing.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah, but like, ask it properly, you know?
• 1:02:19
  Ask what? What do you need?
• 1:02:20
  Like ask the actual question if you don't ask it, I'm, I got so
• 1:02:25
  many other things going on. I'm not going to like try to
• 1:02:27
  filter out what's in your head, but if you need it, if you like,
• 1:02:29
  a lot of the Times Now people that have worked for me or
• 1:02:32
  Sue's, they'll they'll call me up and like, chef, can we have a
• 1:02:34
  coffee or can we have this or that?
• 1:02:35
  And I'll sit down with them and we'll talk about what their
• 1:02:39
  maybe what their next steps are or what, what's going to be good
• 1:02:42
  for their career or whatever. Because they put in the time
• 1:02:45
  with me to do that and I have no time, no problem giving it back.
• 1:02:48
  When you're talking about mentorship, one of the things
• 1:02:51
  that I think a lot of people look at right now, especially
• 1:02:55
  when you're a young cook, they're skipping jobs to go
• 1:02:57
  quicker because a dollar here more, they're going to give me
• 1:03:00
  $0.50 more. COVID, especially since COVID,
• 1:03:03
  yeah, it's gotten really bad. And I, I think a lot of these
• 1:03:07
  young cooks potentially could be doing themselves a disservice
• 1:03:11
  because you might go to that kitchen, but you might not.
• 1:03:14
  It might not be the best kitchen for you.
• 1:03:15
  You might be getting more money but learning less or no mentor
• 1:03:18
  you. Go work in a hotel for a big
• 1:03:19
  hourly job. But what are you doing just
• 1:03:21
  doing banquets all weekend? Yeah.
• 1:03:22
  Like cutting fruit. You're making more money now,
• 1:03:24
  but in 10 years you'll be making the same amount.
• 1:03:26
  Right, right. So how do you coach people
• 1:03:29
  through that? I just don't pay them at all.
• 1:03:32
  No, I mean, look, it is hard because yes, they do deserve to
• 1:03:36
  get paid a little bit more than than we ever did for sure.
• 1:03:39
  And I think that should be part of the business plan to to and
• 1:03:43
  it's, you know, restaurant industries fickle.
• 1:03:45
  It's hard, it's hard to make money and do those things
• 1:03:46
  properly. But at the end of the day, it's
• 1:03:49
  a craft. A craft takes time and takes
• 1:03:50
  patience. And if you if you want to get
• 1:03:52
  better at your job, unfortunately, it still is the
• 1:03:54
  case that you might have to just suck it up a little bit for now.
• 1:03:57
  You know, yes, paying cooks more and paying chefs more, let alone
• 1:04:02
  just cooks chefs to get paid more too, you know, but it's
• 1:04:09
  not, it's not a race. It's not a race.
• 1:04:12
  Like you don't need to be 25 year old with your name in your
• 1:04:14
  jacket like the 25. You should still be your head
• 1:04:17
  should be down and you should be learning and learning as much as
• 1:04:18
  you can. Because at the end of the day,
• 1:04:20
  you're only as good as as much as you know.
• 1:04:22
  And if you don't know that much, you're not going to be able to
• 1:04:24
  do much. You're still it's pretty low.
• 1:04:26
  And then you just keep that that circle going because then you
• 1:04:29
  start being the person in charge and you're teaching the people
• 1:04:31
  under you, but what are you teaching them?
• 1:04:32
  Because you don't know much. And it constantly just goes,
• 1:04:34
  it's a horrible cycle, right? And you see that a lot.
• 1:04:37
  So I think the biggest thing is if you are a chef that has
• 1:04:42
  people under them that want to learn and they see that they can
• 1:04:45
  keep learning from you, then you're giving them something and
• 1:04:49
  they're going to keep learning. That's great.
• 1:04:51
  Like you have to give that back to them, I guess.
• 1:04:52
  I guess the, the biggest thing is young cooks are just in a
• 1:04:54
  rush more than ever before. And, and now because of social
• 1:04:57
  media, there's a lot of techniques online.
• 1:04:59
  There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of videos of how
• 1:05:01
  to do stuff you have. The Grand App Chef.
• 1:05:03
  It's it's, you know, yeah, exactly right.
• 1:05:05
  But back in the day, you couldn't do that.
• 1:05:06
  So you had to suck it out longer, you know, suck it up.
• 1:05:09
  You had to stick it out longer in kitchens because the only way
• 1:05:11
  to learn in those kitchens was to be there.
• 1:05:13
  There was no, they weren't put notebooks, they weren't doing
• 1:05:15
  tutorial videos. They they weren't doing stories.
• 1:05:18
  They weren't showing the miso Plus, so our generation had to
• 1:05:22
  do time in the kitchen. And now I think there is more
• 1:05:25
  information and yes, they can learn how to, you know, do that
• 1:05:28
  dish. But do you know how to order
• 1:05:30
  properly? Do you know what to do with the
• 1:05:31
  trim? Do you know how to put on a menu
• 1:05:32
  then run on a special? Or how to how to write the
• 1:05:35
  recipe for it, Or how to write the meson plot sheets so that
• 1:05:37
  the team knows how to do it properly?
• 1:05:39
  Like that stuff you're not gonna learn on social media?
• 1:05:41
  Yeah, there's a lot that you can learn on social media and I
• 1:05:44
  think it's a very powerful tool. Even absolutely introduce AIAI
• 1:05:47
  could help with a lot of things, but you still there's something
• 1:05:53
  to like. Knowing how to make it once
• 1:05:55
  doesn't mean you know how to make it.
• 1:05:57
  No, I'm sorry. Knowing, knowing how, knowing in
• 1:05:59
  theory that you it's steps 1-2 and three doesn't mean you know
• 1:06:02
  how to do it. And you have to make something a
• 1:06:04
  lot of times before you realize like, oh, you know what?
• 1:06:07
  I thought I know how to make this.
• 1:06:08
  But now that I've made it 100 times, I realized that I didn't
• 1:06:10
  know how to make it in time. Oh, exactly.
• 1:06:12
  And then you look back and like, I could have done this so much
• 1:06:14
  faster, better, smarter than than I ever did before, right.
• 1:06:17
  And again, that's that's from doing a lot of it.
• 1:06:19
  It's just by doing repetition. A lot of the stuff I do now,
• 1:06:22
  they all these people ask how you do it.
• 1:06:24
  And I'm like, well, repetition, man, or like chef, what
• 1:06:27
  temperature do you use? And this, And I'm like, I spent
• 1:06:30
  years figuring this out, man. I'm not just going to.
• 1:06:32
  And I don't mind telling like friends and stuff about that.
• 1:06:33
  I don't mind sharing recipes and this and that all the time.
• 1:06:36
  But if I don't know you and you're asking me for this, at
• 1:06:39
  least ask be respectful about it.
• 1:06:41
  Hey, bud, you mind sharing the recipe?
• 1:06:42
  Like now I do like you're not going to get it now.
• 1:06:45
  Like at least be respectful. But it just takes.
• 1:06:48
  It's just one of those crafts that takes years, and it does.
• 1:06:52
  Yeah, and it's intuitive cooking.
• 1:06:54
  And I think a lot of people, when you see something on
• 1:06:57
  Instagram, you don't know what it tastes like.
• 1:06:59
  And you don't know what it tastes like this week versus
• 1:07:02
  last week. And you don't know what it
• 1:07:03
  tastes like when you adjust the acidity.
• 1:07:05
  And you don't know what it tastes like when you adjust the
• 1:07:07
  whatever the case may be. Or when was the tomato picked.
• 1:07:10
  You don't understand that. And you have to make it.
• 1:07:12
  And you have to taste it every single day.
• 1:07:15
  And you have to have that on your station.
• 1:07:16
  And you have to taste that dish every single day when you come
• 1:07:18
  in. You have to taste it when it's
• 1:07:19
  good. You have to taste it when it's
• 1:07:21
  bad. You have to taste it after you
• 1:07:22
  fixed it. You have to taste it when you
• 1:07:23
  couldn't fix it. And then and even if there's
• 1:07:25
  leftover, you need to know that after two days it ain't the same
• 1:07:27
  anymore, right? So figure it out.
• 1:07:29
  And what are you going to do with the, what are you going to
• 1:07:31
  do with it when it's not great? How are you going to?
• 1:07:32
  Repurpose it right. And that's what social media is
• 1:07:34
  not teaching you No, and and and nor can it really No, nor can
• 1:07:37
  it. You have to experience.
• 1:07:38
  You have to you have to learn certain things kinesthetically.
• 1:07:41
  Yeah, You know, I'll go. I'll give you an example.
• 1:07:43
  For the most majority of my career, when I made pasta, I
• 1:07:45
  always made it on a on a yeah with a.
• 1:07:49
  Oh, that fucking thing. Oh no, I'm kidding.
• 1:07:51
  Oh my. God, I made it with the.
• 1:07:53
  Like, like, I mean, it's impressive.
• 1:07:55
  It is impressive. But like, you know, I got 200
• 1:07:57
  covers coming in. Like, let's get a bit more done,
• 1:07:59
  you know, like. Yeah, majority of my career I
• 1:08:02
  always made pasta on a wooden table and then at home.
• 1:08:05
  Now when I make pasta, I'm making it on a on a marble
• 1:08:08
  counter. Yeah, and I'm realizing like,
• 1:08:10
  it's not the fucking same. No, it's not.
• 1:08:12
  It's not the same at all and I, well I've never made pasta on a
• 1:08:15
  marble counter until until I was at home.
• 1:08:17
  Horrible on a. Counter like that yeah, that's
• 1:08:18
  what the flour doesn't stick. There's no there's no texture to
• 1:08:21
  the surface right. Like you're just like playing
• 1:08:23
  with play DoH like and it's sliding around yeah no.
• 1:08:26
  And even the even the pastry like or the the pasta machine
• 1:08:29
  doesn't sit the same right. It makes me way more noise too,
• 1:08:32
  which is annoying. But I wouldn't know that if I
• 1:08:34
  hadn't made pasta 100 times somewhere else.
• 1:08:36
  I would just think the recipe is wrong, yeah.
• 1:08:38
  Right. Or this.
• 1:08:39
  I don't like doing this, right? Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  Right, exactly. And I think there's the
• 1:08:44
  kinesthetic, you know, cooking is, is it's it's it's multi
• 1:08:47
  sensory. And I think we're we're heavy
• 1:08:50
  dopamine visual cooks, chefs right now.
• 1:08:52
  Not just it was heavy dopamine in our lives like we need it
• 1:08:55
  right? Most of us are lacking it, so we
• 1:08:56
  figure it out in some other. Shape or form, right?
• 1:08:58
  Right. And I think it would, it would
• 1:09:01
  definitely behoove cooks to do like focus on your other senses,
• 1:09:03
  the taste, the smell, the touch, the taste.
• 1:09:05
  And the repetition of just doing it instinctively.
• 1:09:07
  Instinctively, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:09:09
  And when you've done something for a long time, it becomes Zen
• 1:09:13
  like because you could kind of zone out when you skim in stock
• 1:09:15
  or slice of mushrooms. And then that's when you know,
• 1:09:18
  like when you just want to sit on the pass and like trim
• 1:09:20
  chanterelles, right? You're like, that's a good day.
• 1:09:22
  Yeah, that's a fucking great day.
• 1:09:24
  Yeah, it is. Yeah, it really is.
• 1:09:26
  Yeah, yeah. And then you give him some
• 1:09:27
  cooking, he over cooks them and it's like, you fucking Dick, I
• 1:09:30
  just spent 4 hours on the pass cleaning those for you.
• 1:09:32
  You just got these beautiful chanterelles that are all
• 1:09:35
  trimmed and oh, oh, soy chef. Yeah, it's going to be a bad day
• 1:09:40
  for you. Can I, can we go sideways and
• 1:09:43
  just some specific cooking things that I want to ask you
• 1:09:48
  only because I was thinking about it because I saw a video
• 1:09:50
  today, Chris Young, who was one of the founders of Chef Steps
• 1:09:55
  post a video. I didn't read everything, but he
• 1:09:57
  says you don't need a rest or meet.
• 1:09:59
  And I was like, OK, this is a, this is a hot take from someone
• 1:10:01
  that knows what the fuck he's talking about, that you don't
• 1:10:04
  need to rest for me. And he goes into this big
• 1:10:05
  explanation why. And I'm thinking, OK, he's like,
• 1:10:08
  it doesn't lose juice, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:10:09
  I'm like, yeah, but you might say that and there might be some
• 1:10:13
  signs behind that. And I'm sure all these people
• 1:10:15
  that you know, with a science degree are gonna explain to me
• 1:10:17
  why I'm wrong. But I've not rested me and I've
• 1:10:20
  rested me and it's fucking different.
• 1:10:21
  I don't care what you tell me. Yeah, I, it depends on how you
• 1:10:25
  cook it. Yeah.
• 1:10:26
  Like if it, if it's hard and fast, it needs to relax, it's
• 1:10:30
  going to piss out. If it's a low and slow cook,
• 1:10:33
  then the proteins weren't, you know, hit hard enough to make
• 1:10:36
  the liquid want to piss out. So yeah, that's a hard 1.
• 1:10:41
  I don't know. I'd have to see it to believe
• 1:10:42
  it, but I've seen it and I don't believe it, you know, like,
• 1:10:44
  right. Yeah.
• 1:10:45
  Yeah. So.
• 1:10:46
  But in general, you're a rest your meat.
• 1:10:51
  Situationally, yes, for the most part I would say for sure.
• 1:10:54
  Yeah, so when when Dave Breeden was on, I know we talked about
• 1:10:57
  this 'cause you said you have a lot of similar thoughts, a lot
• 1:11:00
  around cooking meat like he does.
• 1:11:02
  What are some of your thoughts on it 'cause he does the. 1-2
• 1:11:03
  and mine's just better than his. That's what I hope he's
• 1:11:06
  listening. Yeah, I hope.
• 1:11:07
  Fuck, I hope he is. Where's the camera?
• 1:11:08
  Yeah. No, I mean, he was talking about
• 1:11:11
  like sous video cookery and and and and that and it has its
• 1:11:13
  place. And I'm very similar with him.
• 1:11:16
  I I don't, I don't like putting things in bags anymore.
• 1:11:18
  Yeah, not there's anything wrong with it.
• 1:11:19
  But also from a business perspective, bags cost money.
• 1:11:22
  Yeah, having someone stand in the machine is a waste of time.
• 1:11:25
  But also, you're gonna drop that in a water bath and you're gonna
• 1:11:29
  cook it for without a probe. And a lot of people don't have
• 1:11:33
  probes for water baths for four hours.
• 1:11:35
  Well, what temperature was it when I went in?
• 1:11:37
  Was it fright from the fridge? Was it room temperature?
• 1:11:38
  Like it's variables that you can't control.
• 1:11:41
  And he talked a lot about steaming and, and which is
• 1:11:44
  essentially poaching. And I do that a lot, a lot more
• 1:11:46
  than I ever did with a probe to a croissant.
• 1:11:49
  And I think it's gentler on the proteins.
• 1:11:52
  And it's been, it's a game changer for me for, for, for,
• 1:11:57
  for almost all the meats that we do.
• 1:12:01
  So I think it's just that you were just ingrained to think a
• 1:12:05
  certain way, and it's figuring out how to think outside the
• 1:12:08
  box. So do you do a a similar similar
• 1:12:12
  thing to him where it's then butter based?
• 1:12:14
  Not really, yeah. Because I mean, you have the
• 1:12:16
  croissant, it's ready, you have the the whatever doneness you
• 1:12:18
  want. And especially for our styles of
• 1:12:21
  service, like he was talking at the French Laundry and it can do
• 1:12:23
  big covers. You can't, you can't cook a big
• 1:12:26
  piece of meat by the time you actually need it and rest it.
• 1:12:28
  And the customer doesn't want to wait that long.
• 1:12:29
  But if you have the croissant done and ready and then all the
• 1:12:32
  cook has to do again, look, you're not holding their hands.
• 1:12:35
  But cooks aren't the same as they used to be.
• 1:12:38
  And we just have to find different ways of getting
• 1:12:39
  through to them. But if you only have to
• 1:12:42
  concentrate on the color, you're taking stress off the cook, and
• 1:12:46
  they can perform better during service.
• 1:12:47
  So that's being smarter than harder.
• 1:12:50
  And if they're having a better service, the meats coming up on
• 1:12:52
  the past better. My day is going to be better.
• 1:12:54
  Yeah. I don't have to lose my shit.
• 1:12:55
  I'm fucking time. How many covers?
• 1:12:56
  Like what was a typical night at Canoe?
• 1:13:00
  I mean, I could through the week and into the weekend.
• 1:13:03
  I mean a Thursday, Friday, we would do anywhere from in the
• 1:13:05
  heyday 160 to 220 covers tasting menu Ala carte and tasting Ala
• 1:13:11
  carte. So that's tough.
• 1:13:12
  And two separate not didn't derive from the Ala carte, it's
• 1:13:14
  a separate menu. So if you're the meat cook
• 1:13:15
  there. You're busy.
• 1:13:16
  You're busy and if you have to do and you have to switch brains
• 1:13:19
  like Ala carte tasting menu assuming right.
• 1:13:21
  So yeah, it does make. Sense but you work the sauce
• 1:13:23
  there for me. You you do that for a while, you
• 1:13:25
  can you leave with something. Yeah, you know how to cook
• 1:13:28
  fucking meat. Or you know how to take a bee
• 1:13:30
  sting. Either way.
• 1:13:31
  But like, yeah, you do. You learn how you learn how to
• 1:13:33
  multitask. You learn how to, you know,
• 1:13:35
  think on the fly, get stuff done and, and, and you're gonna be
• 1:13:38
  better. You're going to be better on the
• 1:13:40
  past after that because you can see problems happen before they
• 1:13:42
  happen. But yeah, but in between that
• 1:13:46
  and, and look, we did lunch too. We do 100 and 100 and, you know,
• 1:13:48
  anywhere from 80 to 120 a 130 for lunch, sometimes straight
• 1:13:52
  into dinner service. Plus we had two PDRS for 40 and
• 1:13:54
  50 people. And we did catering and stuff
• 1:13:56
  for the TD executives at the top of the bank.
• 1:13:58
  So there was just stuff coming out from all different angles.
• 1:14:00
  So if we had to solve the world's problems and, and help
• 1:14:03
  every cook out there become better meat cooks for, you know,
• 1:14:06
  100 and 2200 cover, what are, what are some practical things
• 1:14:09
  that you would advise to and, and let's say general, right,
• 1:14:13
  because we don't know what they're cooking, but some
• 1:14:14
  general meat cookery and in a restaurant setting, what are
• 1:14:17
  some things that people could do better?
• 1:14:19
  I mean, a lot of times they scramble on pickup, but when the
• 1:14:21
  order comes in, get your meat out, have them counted so you
• 1:14:23
  know how many are on order. So you can be smart about it.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah. The second the order comes in,
• 1:14:27
  you grab it, you get it out. Room temperature, it's got to be
• 1:14:29
  it's got to be fast, depending on if your chef's OK with how
• 1:14:33
  you do do the cooking. If you can get the quiz on
• 1:14:35
  before service and it's ready, it's going to be faster.
• 1:14:39
  And at the end, at the end of the day, if the result that goes
• 1:14:41
  to the customers better takes the stress off of them.
• 1:14:44
  Yeah, everyone's better service is better.
• 1:14:46
  It's more enjoyable. I'd rather have an enjoyable
• 1:14:48
  service. You know, I've had enough angry
• 1:14:49
  services in my life, you know, I don't I don't need that anymore.
• 1:14:52
  And, and just the repetition of setting up your section the same
• 1:14:56
  always tweaking, always trying to make it better, but being
• 1:14:58
  that mindset to always try to make it better.
• 1:15:00
  Don't just be oh, when I started on this section, this is how it
• 1:15:02
  was set up. Doesn't mean it has to be all
• 1:15:04
  the time, you know, think, think differently, think better.
• 1:15:06
  What what what what? How many steps can you eliminate
• 1:15:08
  from this service? Make it quicker?
• 1:15:11
  You know I don't want 4 movements, I want 2.
• 1:15:13
  And and if you're talking, OK, so they have the the perfectly
• 1:15:16
  cooked meat Rose, you're resting, slicing, serving.
• 1:15:21
  Yeah. And and and again, like there's,
• 1:15:25
  there's an old school thing I really like to do too, like on
• 1:15:26
  pick up or before as well. We we used to rest meats in
• 1:15:31
  rendered fat or oil. Yeah, what?
• 1:15:34
  What temp is roughly? I mean just.
• 1:15:36
  Hotter than just below. Yeah, yeah, we have to be about,
• 1:15:39
  I mean, I talk in Celsius because I don't use the imperial
• 1:15:41
  system Thunders We're we're modern in Canada.
• 1:15:46
  Yeah. Well, actually they don't do
• 1:15:47
  that either. I'm like, but I I like that.
• 1:15:49
  But usually just below blood temperature.
• 1:15:51
  Blood temperature is about medium rare, right.
• 1:15:53
  And that's how I know when I touched on my lip or yeah, when
• 1:15:56
  you touch it here. So I would keep it just below
• 1:15:58
  that. So it gives you that second to
• 1:15:59
  flash it, to not take it above a temperature.
• 1:16:01
  But when you start working like that, you're just you're
• 1:16:03
  touching the oil with your finger.
• 1:16:04
  You're getting used to the repetition of a temperature.
• 1:16:06
  You know what that is? That's too hot.
• 1:16:08
  Move it closer, get it on the heat, bring it back.
• 1:16:10
  You, you learn. You learn that what works well
• 1:16:14
  for that what meat, and each meat's different too, You don't
• 1:16:17
  want to have you don't have lamb, duck and beef in the same
• 1:16:19
  oil. Right.
• 1:16:20
  So do you have a specific fat for per?
• 1:16:22
  Sort of like duck and duck fat? I mean, it depends.
• 1:16:24
  It does depend. And also look, there's costs
• 1:16:26
  involved in that too. You got to be smart with it.
• 1:16:28
  But I mean, if anything in neutral oil, clarify.
• 1:16:31
  It's not so much for adding flavor to it because you're
• 1:16:32
  gonna take it out, you're gonna roast it anyways.
• 1:16:34
  So clarify about it. I mean, that would be great.
• 1:16:37
  But if you're thinking that you putting that in is gonna impact
• 1:16:42
  the flavor, you're wrong. It's more about relaxing and
• 1:16:44
  resting. And because oil isn't water
• 1:16:45
  soluble, they're not going to rest out.
• 1:16:47
  The liquid is not going to go anywhere.
• 1:16:49
  And it's a pretty old school way of doing it.
• 1:16:50
  But we even used to treat it almost like sous video where
• 1:16:52
  we'd be, we'd be doing all these different cuts of lamb and we'd
• 1:16:55
  literally on pick on pick up when the docket came in, we'd
• 1:16:58
  roast it, just get color and throw it back there because you
• 1:17:00
  know, it's about 50°. It's just going to sit and rest.
• 1:17:03
  It's just perfect when you come to when you come to pick it up.
• 1:17:06
  When when I worked, I I worked for a bit in Vancouver and when
• 1:17:10
  I first got there. That, that's home for me.
• 1:17:11
  That's, that's my hometown. Is it really?
• 1:17:13
  I'm from Vancouver. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:14
  So I was the Fairmont. I'm staying there in a couple
• 1:17:21
  weeks in. HH Van right.
• 1:17:23
  So I was the interim exec chef there for a little bit when the
• 1:17:26
  the chef there, I can't remember his name now, but he had
• 1:17:28
  retired. So they brought me in to to fill
• 1:17:30
  his shoes for while they were looking.
• 1:17:33
  I was American, so I didn't have a legal.
• 1:17:35
  I don't know if I could say that, but anyway, I was there.
• 1:17:38
  We let everyone in. Yeah, but I remember one of the
• 1:17:40
  first things, like all the cooks said to me, they're like, do you
• 1:17:42
  know what we call fucking ketchup here?
• 1:17:46
  I was like, what? American hollandaise.
• 1:17:48
  They would fuck with me so much, yeah.
• 1:17:50
  They're just fucking with you. Yeah, they were just.
• 1:17:51
  That's fucking funny. Yeah, that is pretty.
• 1:17:52
  Like American holidays. But yeah, I loved my time in
• 1:17:56
  Canada. I thought Vancouver is a great
• 1:17:57
  food scene when I when I was there.
• 1:17:58
  As a beautiful city. Yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed.
• 1:18:01
  It Chinatown there is the next level, yeah.
• 1:18:03
  Fuck yeah, taking the train to go to some casinos I don't.
• 1:18:07
  Remember how it was in Richmond? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:10
  Anyway, I forgot we were digressing.
• 1:18:13
  We digress. Fish cookery.
• 1:18:15
  Where do you stand on that? Are you a hot?
• 1:18:17
  Pan again, it's here in a fish or what you're doing.
• 1:18:21
  But if you had like general, because I I think someone that
• 1:18:25
  could cook a fish in general is like that's a high level of
• 1:18:28
  skill. Like you go, I go hot pan, you
• 1:18:29
  go hot pan. Yeah, I do, yeah.
• 1:18:31
  Especially if skin on I go hot pan.
• 1:18:33
  Yeah, but also there's look again.
• 1:18:35
  Variables, Sure. I mean, look, when we're busy
• 1:18:37
  for lunch, we can't cook out. We, we were sending out.
• 1:18:40
  Like if you look at the time frame we're sending a plate
• 1:18:42
  every 45 seconds out leaving the kitchen.
• 1:18:44
  We would, we would like say salmon, for instance, you have a
• 1:18:47
  nice piece of salmon. We would we would steam that
• 1:18:49
  before service, skin side down, flat on the tray, protein set,
• 1:18:52
  skin flat on pick up again. It's like the meat.
• 1:18:56
  You just have to worry about getting that skin crispy and and
• 1:18:59
  and giving it a quick base. But because the protein's upset
• 1:19:02
  in the skin, it's flat Perfect contact on the pan, you get a
• 1:19:05
  perfect skin every time. Really.
• 1:19:06
  Every time. Yeah.
• 1:19:07
  See, these, these are the kind of things I think people geek
• 1:19:10
  out on. It's funny because when David
• 1:19:11
  was talking about his poached, poached rest, I was a method.
• 1:19:18
  I started thinking afterwards I was like, I it wasn't the same
• 1:19:21
  thing, but I had he dabbled in that technique not like that
• 1:19:25
  similar years ago cuz I read in a Gordon Ramsay book where he
• 1:19:29
  talked about like poaching the chicken 1st and then pan
• 1:19:32
  roasting it afterwards. And so we tested in the
• 1:19:35
  restaurant like let's see how this works out where we poached
• 1:19:39
  the chicken and then roasted afterwards.
• 1:19:41
  It was good. I don't think I figured it out
• 1:19:43
  perfectly, so I stopped doing it.
• 1:19:45
  Like now. Yeah, fucking do something.
• 1:19:46
  Else, but it's less to concentrate on.
• 1:19:48
  You're worried about one thing, not two.
• 1:19:49
  Yeah, because you can get great color and undercook and
• 1:19:52
  undercook the piece of protein. Yeah, or you can have the
• 1:19:54
  perfect protein cook and fuck up the color.
• 1:19:58
  Yeah, there's especially now you, you really need to be smart
• 1:20:01
  about how you the amount of work you give to your cooks.
• 1:20:03
  Yeah. No, no, 100%.
• 1:20:05
  We were talking about this earlier, not on the pod for
• 1:20:07
  people come back and scrubbing, seeing where we set it, but we
• 1:20:10
  were talking about how tasting menus have.
• 1:20:14
  And I and I need to go back and Fact Check this, but I want to
• 1:20:16
  say tasting menus have evolved from a reasonably sized tasting
• 1:20:20
  menu to like a crazy size. And I mean, they're becoming
• 1:20:23
  more like, you know, about the performance, too.
• 1:20:26
  Yeah, which has its place in certain places, but also
• 1:20:29
  sometimes I don't want to sit there for four hours.
• 1:20:31
  I don't. I don't want to I don't want to
• 1:20:32
  be at dinner eating food and specifically eating food.
• 1:20:36
  I don't want to eat food for more than 2 1/2 hours and I.
• 1:20:38
  Don't need, I don't need wine matches for that many courses
• 1:20:40
  either, you know, like I'm fucking done by the end of it.
• 1:20:43
  Yeah, you know, I'm ready to go home.
• 1:20:44
  Yeah. And you lose attention, you lose
• 1:20:46
  focus, you know you're not as excited 24 dishes later.
• 1:20:50
  Some people look, some people love that stuff and you can see
• 1:20:52
  it. But for me personally, I don't
• 1:20:53
  need that many. There's a time and a place for
• 1:20:55
  sure. But I think a little bit of
• 1:20:59
  choice in a tasty menu goes a long way too.
• 1:21:01
  Cuz customers like, especially now, they like choice right now.
• 1:21:05
  So you can implement that. And also the team cooking it,
• 1:21:10
  they do the same repetition every time.
• 1:21:12
  And it's not cooking that is cooking.
• 1:21:13
  Yes, But if you have a bit of choice and you have to think
• 1:21:16
  differently and you, you're, you're right.
• 1:21:19
  You're in the zone then, because you always have to be attentive.
• 1:21:21
  It's not like you're just doing the same thing all the time.
• 1:21:23
  Yeah, you have two of these already got four of these on
• 1:21:25
  order. But tomorrow night it'll be
• 1:21:28
  completely different. So it it it makes you more zoned
• 1:21:32
  in during service. Yeah, I, I look at, like I said,
• 1:21:36
  I think about 2 1/2 hours is my attention span for dinner,
• 1:21:40
  depending on the company. But in general, I'd say 2 1/2
• 1:21:42
  hours. But I think 2 dishes that I
• 1:21:45
  really enjoy. Like when I, and I'm not talking
• 1:21:48
  about just in restaurants, just in life in general.
• 1:21:50
  You know, there's some meat on the plate, there's some starch,
• 1:21:52
  there's a sauce or gravy or whatever.
• 1:21:54
  There's some fucking bread. And you know, it's, it's a meal.
• 1:21:58
  And I, and I think like to some of the best plates that I've
• 1:22:00
  had, there was a lot not of us say there was a lot on the
• 1:22:02
  plate, but it was a, it was a plate.
• 1:22:04
  It wasn't just a fucking bite. Yeah, and when you think to the
• 1:22:07
  best dinners you've had, at least for me and for many people
• 1:22:11
  that I know, it's like when you think of the best thing you've
• 1:22:13
  ever eaten, it's usually a fucking plate of food.
• 1:22:14
  It's not like the fucking best. Thing I had Sunday roast all
• 1:22:16
  day. Yeah, the best thing I ever had
• 1:22:18
  it was this fucking sphere or this little tart with some
• 1:22:20
  caviar on it. Like, no, that wasn't the best
• 1:22:22
  thing. You.
• 1:22:22
  Ever had? No, no.
• 1:22:23
  It makes you think about how ingredients work together,
• 1:22:25
  right? But it wasn't Moorish.
• 1:22:27
  It wasn't something I want to have every day.
• 1:22:29
  Right. So I I think restaurants have
• 1:22:32
  sometimes lost the plot with that.
• 1:22:34
  Like chefs have as well, yeah, you know, and have let them,
• 1:22:38
  but. Well, your food I to the point
• 1:22:40
  like your food is that like you had lamb or salt?
• 1:22:44
  It was it was beautiful. Like it's a, it's a fucking
• 1:22:48
  dish. It's not a bite or two.
• 1:22:50
  It's like I want a fucking, I want a second bite.
• 1:22:51
  I want a third bite. I want now I want to have it
• 1:22:54
  with a little sauce. A.
• 1:22:54
  Little also sauce sauce making has been lost yeah.
• 1:22:57
  People don't know how to do it anymore.
• 1:22:59
  Not the way that I was trained or I look at a sauce.
• 1:23:01
  There's complexity to sauce. There's double reductions.
• 1:23:03
  There's multiple stocks. There's starting with vinegar,
• 1:23:06
  ending it with vinegar. There's, you know, utilizing all
• 1:23:09
  the trim to get the sauce. And sauce is a living, breathing
• 1:23:11
  thing. It changes every time you make
• 1:23:12
  it. Yeah.
• 1:23:13
  It's not a, it's not one recipes fits all.
• 1:23:15
  Yeah, fucking saucier, right? It's always the coolest person
• 1:23:18
  in the kitchen. I mean they're.
• 1:23:19
  Pretty cool man found. Saucy.
• 1:23:21
  I cook sauce for years. You know, like it, it's and you
• 1:23:24
  have to be because you have to be in control of everything.
• 1:23:26
  Yeah, You, you need to know when the meat's coming in.
• 1:23:28
  You got to be like on top of the orders, because if not, you got
• 1:23:31
  to be a couple days ahead. You got to be and to get to that
• 1:23:34
  level you need to do everything in the kitchen to get there.
• 1:23:37
  And so you have a bit of swag and a bit of confidence when you
• 1:23:39
  have that section cuz you probably deserve it.
• 1:23:43
  For people that don't know that follow you, you have the second
• 1:23:47
  best taste in music besides me. OK, it's.
• 1:23:50
  Challenge accepted. You have such a good like your
• 1:23:54
  song curation on every fucking post that you do, especially in
• 1:23:57
  your stories, is fucking great. Sometimes I'll just sit there
• 1:24:00
  and watch all your stories, just gonna listen to fucking music.
• 1:24:02
  It's fucking. Great.
• 1:24:03
  What's that song? Write it down.
• 1:24:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great. But you have an eclectic taste
• 1:24:07
  of of of good hip hop, good R&B. It's an old school Motown.
• 1:24:12
  Yeah, it's fucking great. Yeah.
• 1:24:14
  Yeah. I'm gonna ask you to create a
• 1:24:15
  playlist. Definitely No, I will.
• 1:24:18
  Yeah, 100% we can do it when this, when it drops.
• 1:24:21
  I've been asked so many times to do it too, which is cool.
• 1:24:24
  It's very cool that people are into it.
• 1:24:27
  I think like again, I I need to be forced to do stuff.
• 1:24:30
  So this now puts it out there. I'll have to, I'll have to get
• 1:24:32
  it done. Pressure.
• 1:24:34
  But yeah, I think music and food's important, man.
• 1:24:35
  It brings an energy to it. You, you post something and
• 1:24:39
  there's no music to it for me. I I need that.
• 1:24:41
  I need that. I think it's important and even
• 1:24:43
  in a restaurant, I think the playlist brings an energy to the
• 1:24:45
  room and I think it can change the experience.
• 1:24:47
  I think it's yeah, especially for 100%.
• 1:24:49
  For me, it's it's, it's vital. It's part of it.
• 1:24:52
  Yeah, in fine dining specifically, I felt like fine
• 1:24:55
  dining never had good music. I think now it's acceptable.
• 1:24:57
  It is. Go go see what Noah's doing at
• 1:24:59
  Oreo. Like he plays wicked music in
• 1:25:01
  the dining room and like it. Just it, it empowers the diet.
• 1:25:07
  It's just so good. Like the whole it, it, it's not
• 1:25:10
  stuffy anymore. Yeah.
• 1:25:11
  Because you're hearing music that you like and, and you know,
• 1:25:14
  that the chef likes it and it's like, almost like a connection
• 1:25:16
  right away. Yeah.
• 1:25:17
  Yeah. And I think I just really think
• 1:25:19
  music and food is, is, is important.
• 1:25:21
  I think it's a mix. And they're both crafts as well,
• 1:25:23
  you know, and crafts go together.
• 1:25:24
  Where do you get your good music tastes?
• 1:25:25
  This is just a product of the 90s.
• 1:25:28
  Yeah, probably. I mean, this music in my family,
• 1:25:30
  my grandfather was a musician. My mom was always playing music
• 1:25:33
  growing up. But I just kind of gravitated.
• 1:25:36
  I went to sound engine, sound engineering school.
• 1:25:38
  Really. Yeah.
• 1:25:39
  But I was on the computer looking at food all the time.
• 1:25:41
  I was like, you can't do this. I'm out.
• 1:25:42
  But I've always, I just, I just like music.
• 1:25:44
  I like, I like hearing it when I hear it.
• 1:25:46
  I know, like, I'm horrible with names.
• 1:25:48
  I'm horrible with this and that. But when I hear it, like,
• 1:25:51
  sometimes it takes longer to pick the music than it does to
• 1:25:53
  make the make the food. Like, I'll sit there for ages,
• 1:25:55
  really. I'm pretty anal about it, yeah,
• 1:25:59
  but I know when I know, when I hear it, I know it works.
• 1:26:01
  Yeah, your fucking music choices are good.
• 1:26:03
  Good. I have my hip hop playlist on on
• 1:26:06
  Spotify there for people that want it.
• 1:26:07
  I'll I'll probably link in the show notes.
• 1:26:09
  Too, But we can see who's is better.
• 1:26:10
  Exactly. We have people vote.
• 1:26:11
  We'll actually, we'll do a poll, right?
• 1:26:13
  Fucker, where's the cattle? You fucker is better vote for
• 1:26:15
  me. But yeah, your your place is
• 1:26:17
  good. But I like that cause a lot of
• 1:26:20
  people think I only like hip hop.
• 1:26:21
  I don't only like hip hop. It's just chef's piece has kind
• 1:26:24
  of become that. Of course, that's the brand.
• 1:26:25
  All right, I'll only put hip hop, but I I really like R&B
• 1:26:29
  90s, a lot of the 90s. And the stuff coming out of the
• 1:26:31
  90s and 2000s in New Zealand, I used to live there.
• 1:26:34
  Yeah. The hip hop there was fucking
• 1:26:36
  crazy good, really. And I still listen to it all the
• 1:26:38
  time now. Yeah, man.
• 1:26:39
  I'm starting to like like some some of the London.
• 1:26:41
  Rap Nate yeah, of course yeah, it's very good and they're going
• 1:26:43
  back to some old school stuff that it's coming back right.
• 1:26:45
  Thank God where it actually took skill, not a fucking.
• 1:26:48
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but the yeah, the New
• 1:26:51
  Zealand hip hop man, like there there's guys downloaded like
• 1:26:53
  Kinka, PC Scribe, they're all our age now.
• 1:26:55
  Yeah, back in the day they were killing it, man Che Fu.
• 1:26:57
  Like, I loved it. I loved it.
• 1:27:00
  And and like the Polynesian culture is big in music.
• 1:27:02
  So it's it's it was just ingrained in them and and you
• 1:27:05
  can see it. Yeah.
• 1:27:07
  Yeah, yeah. What was I going to ask you?
• 1:27:10
  I drew a blank. I I think I stayed up too late
• 1:27:12
  last night. I definitely did.
• 1:27:13
  Yeah. Well, when we wrap up the show,
• 1:27:15
  typically I, I, I, I give like, yeah, some quick questions.
• 1:27:19
  What's what's your all-purpose salt in the kitchen?
• 1:27:22
  Is it? Newfoundland Sea Salt Company.
• 1:27:24
  Not really. It's Peter and Robin, the
• 1:27:26
  friends of mine, They they have a, a sea salt company on in
• 1:27:29
  Newfoundland. Yeah.
• 1:27:30
  And they make it. They make it themselves.
• 1:27:32
  It's it's it's amazing. And also being in Canada, like I
• 1:27:35
  want to use Canadian salt and it's great.
• 1:27:37
  It's a family run business. What do you do for finishing
• 1:27:39
  salt? Same thing.
• 1:27:41
  Yeah, but they have all different salts.
• 1:27:43
  Oh, they do. Yeah, they do their own, their
• 1:27:44
  own sea salt, their own kosher, like you name it, they have it.
• 1:27:47
  So it depends on what I'm doing. The sea salt's great for
• 1:27:51
  finishing. The kosher salt's great for
• 1:27:52
  cures. And also, like at the beginning
• 1:27:55
  of cooking something, you want to use that as opposed to
• 1:27:57
  something that, you know, like a flake salt.
• 1:28:00
  But yeah, on the pass we'd have the flake.
• 1:28:02
  Do you do you finish on the pass with acid?
• 1:28:05
  Not so much on the pass. Usually.
• 1:28:08
  Sauces. Yeah, sauces will get finished
• 1:28:10
  with an. Acid you have a go to acid
• 1:28:12
  preference. Depends on the sauce.
• 1:28:13
  Yeah, yeah, I figured. But I mean, I'm pretty vital.
• 1:28:16
  Cherry vinegar. Cherry vinegar, Yeah, it's a
• 1:28:17
  general, general. Cherry vinegar is my.
• 1:28:19
  I like Cherry. 60% of the time, every time.
• 1:28:22
  Yeah, but I'd say so, yeah. What about kitchen tape?
• 1:28:28
  Do you use kitchen tape? Do you have a preference?
• 1:28:29
  Was it blue? Is it green?
• 1:28:33
  So we use blue because that's what we got, but it's harder to
• 1:28:37
  see. So I would use green if if if
• 1:28:40
  preferably. Yeah, I'm, I'm what's?
• 1:28:41
  Easier to see it's. Easier on my my my my eyes.
• 1:28:43
  We're all in a. Terrible light.
• 1:28:45
  I need it. If do you do something actually,
• 1:28:49
  I'm gonna skip that question because I think you've you've
• 1:28:51
  covered it. Like how do something unique
• 1:28:53
  that you do with food? But we talked a lot about meat
• 1:28:55
  and stuff like that. If you had a chef's PSA out
• 1:28:59
  there for people listening. So for the young cook, start or
• 1:29:02
  stop doing this in the kitchen. Calling everyone fucking chef.
• 1:29:08
  Does that drive you crazy? The only reason I'll tell you
• 1:29:10
  why I don't need to be called chef.
• 1:29:11
  That's not the thing. I don't need a title, whatever.
• 1:29:14
  But when everyone calls everyone chef, I'm the fucking chef.
• 1:29:17
  I turn my head every second because they're saying chef.
• 1:29:19
  I think they're talking to me. It winds me up to no extent.
• 1:29:23
  To no extent. And they're not chefs also.
• 1:29:25
  Yeah, you're a cook, man. You had mentioned earlier that
• 1:29:28
  you're bad with names. Or does it help?
• 1:29:30
  Like for me I was bad with names, so I call Edward.
• 1:29:33
  Chef names. I would call everyone chef just
• 1:29:35
  because of like. No, I didn't say mate.
• 1:29:36
  I didn't know their names, I just.
• 1:29:38
  I just say mate. Yeah, Name, mate.
• 1:29:39
  Yeah, that's it. Your mate.
• 1:29:41
  Yeah, that's it. Or I give someone a nickname.
• 1:29:42
  I like my nicknames. Do you?
• 1:29:45
  Yeah, Yeah. Last question, chef.
• 1:29:50
  There was a Mount Rushmore of chefs out there 4 so about for
• 1:29:53
  for Canadians, right? We have 4-4 people.
• 1:29:55
  Four people belong on route mount 4/4.
• 1:29:58
  Is there 4 chefs that you would say are the legends?
• 1:30:01
  So we're gonna, yeah, probably more than that.
• 1:30:05
  The first one is 2 cuz they're gonna be double headed.
• 1:30:07
  So I'm gonna slide next one in there.
• 1:30:10
  The Rue Brothers. Yeah, get them up there for me.
• 1:30:17
  Pierre Kaufman. I mean, he was my old chef in
• 1:30:20
  Edinburgh, was influential me and he was influential to him.
• 1:30:24
  I mean, he's the one that taught me how to stop Pixarters.
• 1:30:26
  You know, that's a big deal. So Roux Brothers, Kaufman, Adam,
• 1:30:30
  buy it. I don't think anyone would have
• 1:30:32
  listed him here on the show before.
• 1:30:34
  If you don't know who he is, he should.
• 1:30:35
  Yeah. Great.
• 1:30:36
  He owns a restaurant called Trinity, and Harry is his head
• 1:30:39
  chef there. The food that they're doing.
• 1:30:41
  Outstanding. And he's sharing a lot of it on
• 1:30:43
  YouTube. He is and the generation he's in
• 1:30:47
  cuz he's older than we are and he's embraced it and his food is
• 1:30:51
  phenomenal. I think one of the people that I
• 1:30:53
  went off on in the comments was criticizing him.
• 1:30:56
  Come on man, and he's a gent. I went and ate at Trinity last
• 1:30:59
  year and they were, it was one of the best dining experiences
• 1:31:03
  ever. The kitchen team brought me in.
• 1:31:04
  I went for beers with him after the service.
• 1:31:06
  Like Adam showed up specifically to come say hello.
• 1:31:09
  I mean, it helped that I went, you know, I went to lunch we or
• 1:31:11
  to dinner there with Brett Graham.
• 1:31:13
  That doesn't hurt. But yeah, his food is flawless.
• 1:31:16
  Legend. Absolute.
• 1:31:17
  Yeah, absolute. And he's become a friend.
• 1:31:20
  And yeah, the just the cooking he does is he makes it look so
• 1:31:24
  easy and that that kind of food is not easy.
• 1:31:27
  Yeah. So that's three.
• 1:31:28
  That's three. No, sorry.
• 1:31:29
  Fuck. I don't even know why I didn't
• 1:31:30
  think. Jesus Christ.
• 1:31:31
  Michelle Brau. Yeah, oh fuck yeah, legend.
• 1:31:34
  Michelle Brau. It's a good list.
• 1:31:35
  Yeah. Well, where can people find you
• 1:31:38
  if they want to continue to follow along?
• 1:31:39
  Reach out to you, see your food. I mean, the best for me is, I
• 1:31:42
  mean, I use it like my CVS, my Instagram.
• 1:31:44
  It just kind of shows what I'm doing.
• 1:31:45
  We're going and what I'm up to and all that and next little
• 1:31:49
  while I'm in lots of different places.
• 1:31:50
  I'm in Philly, Seattle, Chicago, Nashville.
• 1:31:54
  I'm cooking with Ryan Pulley in Nashville, at Iggy's, Providence
• 1:31:58
  in Philly, then I'm over to Seattle and then Chicago as
• 1:32:05
  well, so I'm going all over the place.
• 1:32:07
  And RW McKinley. Yeah.
• 1:32:08
  RW McKinley. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:10
  Awesome, this fun chef. Yeah man they for coming Austin
• 1:32:12
  food was great last night. Loved it.
• 1:32:14
  Yeah, I'm glad you guys had come and try it.
• 1:32:16
  And yeah, I'm excited. I got another couple days here
• 1:32:18
  so I can go and eat some barbecue and yeah, like, relax a
• 1:32:21
  little bit. Like I'm pumped.
• 1:32:22
  Awesome. Well, I hope you enjoyed the
• 1:32:24
  show, you know what to do and make sure you leave five stars
• 1:32:26
  if you're listening on Spotify or anywhere really.
• 1:32:28
  If you're watching on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe
• 1:32:30
  button. I'd completely revamped the
• 1:32:32
  chefs PSA store, shop.chefspsa.com.
• 1:32:36
  I advise you to go check it out. Just peruse, look around and
• 1:32:39
  maybe you see something nice that you like.
• 1:32:40
  Keep supporting the show. Go to chefspsa.com.
• 1:32:43
  You get books, obviously the merch, early access to episodes
• 1:32:46
  on sub stack and Spotify for premium members.
• 1:32:49
  We'll see you next week. Hit the porno music.