Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / David Breeden: Survival, Resilience & The Unlikely Road to The French Laundry (Ep. 166)

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David Breeden: Survival, Resilience & The Unlikely Road to The French Laundry (Ep. 166) · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chef's This is chef's PSA. I'm your host, Andre Natera.
• 0:02
  Today I'm joined by legendary chef David Breeden.
• 0:05
  From the Appalachia to the French Laundry.
• 0:07
  That includes nearly two decades between Per SE and 13 years as
• 0:10
  the French Laundry's chef de cuisine.
• 0:12
  Chef David now leads guest driven hospitality.
• 0:15
  In this episode, he reflects on mentorship, legacy, loss,
• 0:19
  ingredient respect, and what comes next.
• 0:21
  This is a very powerful one. Stay tuned.
• 0:35
  Chef, it's good to see it's been too long.
• 0:40
  First of all, thanks for being on.
• 0:41
  I know we've been trying to get this done for quite some time
• 0:45
  and I have so many things that I want to talk to you about.
• 0:48
  And it's like, where do we begin?
• 0:50
  But I think 1st and most importantly, the big question
• 0:56
  I'd start out with is like, how does someone go from Appalachia
• 1:00
  to being the executive chef at arguably one of the greatest
• 1:03
  restaurants in the world? Yeah, it's a good one.
• 1:07
  You know, being a native Appalachian, that's a very.
• 1:11
  That sounds very important to me.
• 1:13
  Yeah, that is that. It's in my, this my, in my DNA,
• 1:16
  my heart and my soul. I never thought I would leave,
• 1:21
  but I fell in love with cuisine at some point.
• 1:25
  In a very roundabout way, I was very fortunate when I was young
• 1:42
  to be to be raised in an agricultural environment.
• 1:46
  I had, you know, huge garden in my in my backyard where I was
• 1:51
  raised with my grandmother. My community is agricultural
• 1:55
  based. At one point I lived on a dairy
• 1:57
  farm. We would put away the vegetables
• 2:02
  after they were harvested. We would can.
• 2:04
  We would make marmalades. We would make jams, jellies,
• 2:09
  Pickles, preserves. A couple notable ones, My
• 2:12
  grandmother's, my grandmother, Betty Breeden.
• 2:14
  Betty Jo Breeden's Chow. Chow is incredible.
• 2:16
  I still serve it to this day. On on all of my menus that I do
• 2:21
  and her blue ribbon Pickles are served worldwide through that
• 2:25
  influence. So I I grew up around food.
• 2:27
  We celebrated food. So I was in love with food.
• 2:30
  I was in love with communal dining.
• 2:33
  Sunday suppers were a very important thing.
• 2:36
  Sundays after church, my whole family would come together at my
• 2:40
  grandmother's house and we would prepare a meal or my grandmother
• 2:45
  would prepare a meal much, much like potluck.
• 2:48
  Maybe my aunt would bring her famous cherry cherry cheesecake
• 2:53
  pie type type like thing, you know, or a crisp or crumble or
• 2:57
  whatever you want to call it. And my uncle would bring this
• 3:01
  southern style pickled shrimp, which was incredible.
• 3:03
  And we would have it every week and we would sit around the
• 3:07
  table and celebrate the meal and we would celebrate the dishes
• 3:12
  and we would celebrate the communion with each other.
• 3:15
  And to me, that's how I entered my love for cooking.
• 3:20
  I had no idea where it would go or how it would go, but I knew I
• 3:25
  love to eat. Of course, I was a little fat
• 3:27
  kid in the corner, like just munching away.
• 3:29
  And, and I really enjoyed the civility of everyone, everyone
• 3:34
  at the table because away from the table, everyone would, you
• 3:37
  know, every little different. So that's kind of how I got into
• 3:41
  it in a way, my pursuit for cuisine.
• 3:46
  So at what point do you do you say I want to be a chef like
• 3:49
  this is this is was it early on like when you were at the table
• 3:52
  thinking about it like I like this or was it later on?
• 3:55
  Did you just, I guess a better question would be, is this
• 3:58
  something that you chose or did it choose?
• 4:01
  You OK? That's, that's that's a great
• 4:03
  perspective because, yeah, I didn't.
• 4:05
  I had a familiarity with cuisine, with Mother Nature,
• 4:08
  with the earth, with, with cycles of life, with cycles of
• 4:12
  growing agriculturally. At some point I was just very
• 4:18
  familiar. And that was my biggest asset
• 4:23
  going into chasing my profession was understanding the ebbs and
• 4:27
  flows of Mother Nature, of life of, of harvesting, processing
• 4:34
  chickens eggs, slaughtering the pigs in a smokehouse, the the
• 4:40
  spring house, you know, the wild watercress that grows up through
• 4:43
  the spring. We would cook like crease, we
• 4:45
  call them Creasy greens. What was Creasy greens?
• 4:47
  Creasy greens are like basically the wild watercress and a few
• 4:51
  other greens that you would harvest.
• 4:53
  They're very fresh, very beautiful, very vibrant.
• 4:57
  We would wilt them with a bit of bacon, a bit of onion, bit of
• 5:00
  vinegar, much like we would call hot spinach salad.
• 5:03
  You know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:04
  Hot bacon salad that that, that was Creasy greens that started.
• 5:07
  There was no spinach. We didn't really have that
• 5:09
  because we would harvest the wild, the wild lettuces.
• 5:12
  So. So there was a familiarity of
• 5:14
  sorts. It is certainly regionality that
• 5:18
  really resonated with me. That's what I knew.
• 5:21
  So as I started to go towards man, that's actually, it's not
• 5:30
  cooking that started, it was skateboarding, right?
• 5:32
  That started everything. So I was an avid skateboarder
• 5:37
  and I was blessed to be pretty good, pretty aggressive, pretty
• 5:41
  wild. And I was like chasing my
• 5:45
  skateboarding dream. I was going to be a professional
• 5:48
  skateboarder. That was like #1 I am going to
• 5:51
  do this. And I would actually remember
• 5:52
  watching on Nickelodeon in the very early 80s, Skate Master
• 5:57
  Tate in this television show. And there was a 30 minute show
• 6:00
  that come on once a week. And we would all like gather
• 6:02
  around someone's house who happened to have television, but
• 6:06
  not even everyone had television and watch Nickelodeon, Skate
• 6:09
  Master Tate. And they would be these dudes
• 6:12
  from California. You know, there would be music.
• 6:14
  We surf in the bowls and skate in the bowls and like all this
• 6:17
  stuff. And it's like, OK, I'm going to
• 6:19
  be a skateboarder. I'm going to be a really good
• 6:21
  skateboarder. And I picked up a skateboard.
• 6:25
  I meant to bring it actually my one light.
• 6:27
  That's right. We talked my original.
• 6:29
  Yeah, I I bought a a re recast model of it, the three
• 6:34
  production of the first one. But I worked in restaurants
• 6:43
  washing dishes, chasing my skateboarding dream.
• 6:46
  So that's kind of how I started going down that route and
• 6:49
  through through that. At some point I realized I'm not
• 6:55
  going to be a professional skateboarder.
• 6:57
  And I had travelled the country skateboarding, yeah, semi
• 7:01
  professionally at that point and really aggressively, but
• 7:04
  pursuing that. And I always feel back on the
• 7:08
  kitchen because when I was in the kitchen, I hadn't pay
• 7:13
  schedule, food, uniform, mentor, whatever it was.
• 7:19
  But at this point I was only washing dishes and.
• 7:23
  How old are you at this time? We're kind of we're kind of
• 7:27
  spreading this through a few different generations.
• 7:31
  In the beginning, my culinary portion under my culinary
• 7:35
  awakening was pre 12 years old. OK.
• 7:41
  About the time I had 11-12 years old, my whole world went to
• 7:44
  shit. It went totally radical.
• 7:47
  And at this time I was also skateboarding, but it was very
• 7:50
  infantile in that in that process.
• 7:55
  But so as my home life began to get really rocky, really toxic,
• 8:03
  really scary, I leaned into my skateboarding because I found a
• 8:09
  brotherhood through skateboarding.
• 8:10
  And, and anyone who is a skateboarder will know you can
• 8:13
  go anywhere at any time. And if you've got a skateboard
• 8:17
  and you've got a a modicum of talent, you can hang with the
• 8:22
  crew, you're cool. You can just settle right in.
• 8:25
  Much like cooking. Yeah.
• 8:27
  So then this a similar thing. I think girls like
• 8:29
  skateboarders. Right.
• 8:30
  And that was always. Yeah, Yeah.
• 8:31
  Of course. Yeah.
• 8:32
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:33
  You know, I had my Mohawk and my, you know, it's funny.
• 8:36
  We used to dress like cholos. Yeah.
• 8:37
  So I was in East Tennessee. Yeah.
• 8:39
  And one of one of my favorite bands was Suicidal Tendencies.
• 8:42
  Yeah, and we the heavy metal band with cholo dress, right?
• 8:45
  Yeah, yeah. And we would.
• 8:46
  Dress like cholos and we had like our plaids and we had our,
• 8:49
  you know, top buttons and we had, you know, like the whole, I
• 8:53
  mean we look like cholos, but we had never, we had no clue.
• 8:55
  It. Was like a caricature, like we
• 8:57
  had no clue what it was. Yeah.
• 8:59
  You know, have you seen the half flipped up?
• 9:03
  Yeah, yeah. Have you seen in Japan?
• 9:05
  I think Japan and Thailand like I have.
• 9:06
  These these cholos that are, yeah.
• 9:08
  Like but they they just are in it for the low rider culture.
• 9:11
  Yeah, not the gang. They got all the they got all
• 9:13
  the tattoos. He looks just like meters.
• 9:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.
• 9:17
  No, but that's cool. Yeah.
• 9:18
  They all have Barber shops, right?
• 9:20
  Yeah, yeah, they all have Barber shops.
• 9:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Virgin Mary's on the.
• 9:24
  On the car, I totally yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:28
  My guys, man, they send me these memes all the time stuff.
• 9:31
  But I respect those guys. They're cool.
• 9:32
  I mean, they have they have they know who they they know who they
• 9:37
  are, who, who they who they want to be and who they respect.
• 9:40
  Yeah, yeah. But so, but but so that was kind
• 9:43
  of that thing. So it's a really wild experience
• 9:46
  because I'm equal parts hug Finn, Tom Sawyer.
• 9:52
  I could go out, I can hunt, I can fish, I can grow, I can
• 9:56
  garden. I work tobacco.
• 9:57
  I started working tobacco in the fields of seven years old.
• 10:00
  So I'm out there. My father would Take Me Out, a
• 10:02
  very complex man, my father, he would Take Me Out and I know
• 10:07
  today why. And at 7 years old, my job was
• 10:12
  to follow the men that would go through the field.
• 10:14
  And this is not some good job. This is people that work for
• 10:17
  cash because they're probably have liens on their checks.
• 10:22
  They have, you know, there's a lot of, they're all have
• 10:24
  substance abuse problems of the amongst all anything you can
• 10:28
  imagine. Those things are there and my
• 10:32
  job was to follow them in through the field and one of
• 10:35
  them was to pick up the leaves that fall off the tobacco
• 10:38
  plants. This was when I was little and
• 10:41
  gather them. Those are dollars that's worth
• 10:43
  money. The area that I'm from, the
• 10:46
  region I'm from, is called the Big Burly Tobacco Region.
• 10:48
  It's a very, it's a very, at that time in the 80s was a very
• 10:54
  important region for growing tobacco.
• 10:56
  And so I would clear the fields of the leaves.
• 11:00
  And then my job was to pick up the rocks so that when it comes
• 11:03
  through until later, the rocks aren't there.
• 11:07
  I would pile the rocks on the side.
• 11:09
  And my pay for the day was typically my lunch.
• 11:13
  Yeah. And what what, what my father
• 11:15
  was teaching me is that you have to work for your dinner.
• 11:19
  There's no free ride, no free lunch.
• 11:21
  You know what I mean? No free dinner, right?
• 11:22
  Yeah. I mean, it's a thing.
• 11:24
  It's a thing. So that was that was a really
• 11:26
  good lesson. But as I grew older, I grew
• 11:29
  stronger. I would have different jobs and
• 11:32
  I literally did every single job in the tobacco field, cotton
• 11:36
  spudding, hanging, grading, topping the plants, seeding
• 11:42
  everything. And we, we did it all for cash.
• 11:44
  So very similar when I was a kid, my dad, when I was six
• 11:47
  years old, my dad had a tremendous work ethic.
• 11:50
  And you know, I'm a six year old kid and he said he bought a
• 11:54
  Popsicle cart, you know those Mexican paleta carts, right?
• 11:57
  So he says I was a paleta, right.
• 12:00
  So he, he would take me and my brother and he would drop us off
• 12:03
  at the flea market, 6 years old, my brother's a little bit older.
• 12:07
  And he would tell us, I'm not going to pay you.
• 12:09
  Yeah, you're going to work all day selling popsicles.
• 12:12
  We could eat all the popsicles you want.
• 12:14
  That's your pay, right? And we're kids.
• 12:16
  So it's like, yeah, I'll, I'll eat all like I, I get whatever I
• 12:19
  want. And you know, he was teaching us
• 12:21
  work ethic at six years old, right?
• 12:23
  Because it was like, no, no son of mine is gonna.
• 12:26
  You know. Yeah, be lazy.
• 12:28
  You need to get work ethic later.
• 12:29
  Like Dad, I'm only sick. So that work ethic.
• 12:32
  Yeah, Yeah, you get it now. Yeah.
• 12:34
  So I got my Bologna sandwich. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:36
  I'd rather have a nipple at them, but that's fine.
• 12:40
  Yeah, equal parts. It was like a.
• 12:43
  If you, if you look at it like it was like bread, equal parts,
• 12:46
  one slice of bread, one slice of tomato, one slice of Bologna.
• 12:50
  But it was mad thick. Yeah.
• 12:52
  Mayo. Mad thick.
• 12:54
  Yeah, another slice of bread. That's it.
• 12:55
  And they just, they call it a jam sandwich.
• 12:56
  And you just jam that shit together.
• 13:01
  Hey, that was lunch, man. And if I was lucky, I'd get a
• 13:03
  little bag of BBQ chips, probably Lay's or something like
• 13:06
  that. I don't remember exactly.
• 13:07
  Something regional possibly. Yeah, Yeah, that was a good,
• 13:13
  that was a good, that was a good start to everything.
• 13:15
  Because then also you're still in the soil.
• 13:17
  Yeah, you're still in the soil. You're still learning the growth
• 13:21
  process of a plant. And to me, that has paid huge
• 13:27
  dividends in my career of being one with the plant.
• 13:32
  And we can get into that later, but being a conduit for Mother
• 13:36
  Nature, for God, for the for the product that comes out of the
• 13:39
  earth, it's like it's very important.
• 13:44
  At what point do you go from I'm washing dishes to I want to do
• 13:49
  this professionally? Well, I think we have to zoom
• 13:52
  out a little bit. So my first job washing dishes I
• 13:59
  worked for, I worked at a place called J&E Italian Village.
• 14:02
  I was probably about 13 and I wasn't legally able to work.
• 14:06
  However, Joe and Irvina, shit I can't remember the last name.
• 14:17
  Joe was a hardcore dude from Czechoslovakia and he they
• 14:23
  cooked it all Italian cuisine and he was immigrated to the
• 14:28
  United States and joined the Marine Corps to get a green
• 14:32
  card. So he was tough as nails.
• 14:34
  This guy who knows what he did in his home country.
• 14:36
  He was a really tough guy. And his brother Joe also knows
• 14:41
  Joe Joe was the the, the patriarch of the business and he
• 14:45
  had a brother who was the, the peace Iola, you know, but I, I
• 14:51
  can't remember his name. It was it was something typical,
• 14:54
  but he made a deal with me that he could pay me $3.00 an hour
• 15:00
  because they weren't going to take taxes out of my check.
• 15:04
  That's a good deal. He's like, I can pay.
• 15:07
  You 5, but you have to pay taxes.
• 15:09
  But now you don't have to pay taxes, so I'm going to pay you
• 15:11
  3. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:13
  It worked the totally wrong way, but of course I was like, you
• 15:16
  know, I would skateboard in the bag.
• 15:18
  There was a basketball hoop. I would, they would put me on
• 15:21
  break as much as possible at any time possible.
• 15:24
  You know, I would clean, I would wash dishes, I would, I would do
• 15:27
  all these things and I would go back, smoke pot, run my
• 15:29
  skateboard, shoot some hoops. I'd hang out for three hours not
• 15:32
  getting paid. And they're like, they call me
• 15:34
  David Capicola and they're like, hey, Capicola, like get in back,
• 15:39
  get back in here like meathead basically, right.
• 15:41
  And they're like, get back in here.
• 15:42
  It's time to go. So I literally worked, I, I
• 15:45
  could work at a nine hour day and I make 3 bucks an hour,
• 15:49
  right? Maybe, maybe through all of
• 15:52
  that, I would earn 9 bucks. Yeah.
• 15:55
  And then what did I want to do? Yeah.
• 15:57
  Feed me. So I would just hang out.
• 16:00
  Yeah. I didn't make anything.
• 16:02
  I would end up paying them to be there.
• 16:04
  And it was a thing. So I didn't do that very long,
• 16:06
  but it was a fun experience. I learned a lot.
• 16:08
  But one thing that was really impactful were these dudes that
• 16:13
  were on the line and how they interacted with each other.
• 16:18
  And so I was the dishwasher and they needed the pants.
• 16:21
  So they would always treat me well.
• 16:23
  They would always look after me. They would always feed me.
• 16:27
  They would slip me little tasty goodies and whatnot because they
• 16:31
  needed the pans. And when they were in the
• 16:33
  service, that was just powerful. And I don't think they were,
• 16:38
  they none of them were professional stuff.
• 16:39
  I'm certain they were all military and they were just
• 16:41
  doing this for, for money and, and, or to try to build this
• 16:45
  business. They were all cousins and they
• 16:47
  would skip these saute pans down the floor and I would be on the
• 16:54
  receiving end. And to this day, I can barely
• 16:57
  eat marinara sauce because I would be in washing these pans
• 17:00
  and up to water with this red water, garlic, tomato grease up
• 17:06
  to my elbows. Just coat the, you know, just
• 17:09
  coating and oh man, I'll never forget that aroma and I would
• 17:13
  smell like it for days. You couldn't, you couldn't
• 17:15
  chisel it away if you had to. There's no other Drakar Noir
• 17:18
  that would. Fix that back then.
• 17:22
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holy fit the aroma.
• 17:25
  That's funny you bring up the, the low pay.
• 17:28
  I remember when I was in culinary school, I was working
• 17:30
  at this place as a Baker and I remember I got my first paycheck
• 17:34
  and I don't know, I was making it was probably like 4 or $5.00
• 17:37
  an hour or something like that. And I remember my paycheck I had
• 17:40
  never had a paycheck before because I worked for my daddy
• 17:43
  paid me under the table and I was cash since like my first
• 17:47
  paycheck I was like $120.00 or something like that.
• 17:49
  I was like this is like so bad ass.
• 17:52
  And I remember I had to get a bank account and I felt so cool
• 17:55
  walking up to the the cute teller at the.
• 17:57
  Bank and like, what do you think of that?
• 18:01
  That's a weird real $120.00 right there.
• 18:06
  I've got a good story about that too.
• 18:07
  Yeah, actually, yeah. So let's see where, where,
• 18:11
  where. Are we at in the grand scheme of
• 18:12
  things right now? So I have my introduction to my
• 18:16
  thought, my love of food, my love of agriculture, my love of
• 18:19
  my first little position at some point in my life, my, my home
• 18:26
  life. This is a very important part of
• 18:28
  my story. It's my home life.
• 18:30
  So my father, my father, it's, it's honestly it's, it's trauma
• 18:38
  bonding, man. It's like my father.
• 18:41
  So let me let me zoom out of a bit.
• 18:44
  When I was a baby, my mother was killed in a car accident at
• 18:50
  around four months old. My old man, she was 18 years
• 18:54
  old. My old man was 19 years old.
• 18:56
  So I grew up with a dude that was my parent who was not
• 19:01
  emotionally capable of being a parent and there were a few
• 19:04
  reasons why. He had rattled his brains a few
• 19:07
  times. Really really set him back.
• 19:11
  He didn't have the ability to be able to process emotions
• 19:15
  correctly. And a few years later, he was
• 19:24
  hit by a drunk driver on a motor.
• 19:26
  He was on a motorcycle, he was hit by a drunk driver, and he
• 19:28
  lost his leg. When I was about 6, this
• 19:33
  crumbled that man, it really messed him up in many, many,
• 19:37
  many ways, Obviously physically, but mentally.
• 19:43
  And so here's a guy who's 26 years old.
• 19:45
  He's got a 5 year old kid, maybe I was 6 at the time, I'm not
• 19:47
  sure. Something right around there and
• 19:50
  he's trying to pull out of the doldrums, trying to get his life
• 19:55
  on track and he just keeps getting smashed, smashed with
• 19:58
  life. And he didn't have the ability
• 20:01
  at that point to pull out of that one.
• 20:03
  That was the the final straw for him, in my opinion, rattled his
• 20:08
  brains. He, the first one really messed
• 20:11
  him up emotionally, probably because of the loss of my
• 20:13
  mother. He has a child, he has to raise
• 20:16
  a child. He's trying to get himself on
• 20:18
  track. Boom.
• 20:21
  It was devastating for him and he gets hooked on opioids.
• 20:25
  But this is before what we know today is opioids.
• 20:27
  It was morphine at the time, and then you can get morphine.
• 20:30
  So then you do heroin, right? So and then heroin turns into
• 20:35
  cocaine turns into crack, turns into all these other things.
• 20:37
  So he had a very, very big problem with pain management,
• 20:42
  started as pain and emotional management.
• 20:44
  And at that .6 7-8, this dude is totally off the rails, out of
• 20:54
  his mind in the middle of the night.
• 20:57
  We moved way onto the country and that's where we moved to the
• 20:59
  dairy farm. And so there's, it's a very long
• 21:04
  story, so I don't have to get too much in detail, but but we,
• 21:07
  we left the safety of my grandmother's home at that
• 21:10
  point. And that's when everything
• 21:12
  started to go totally crazy through a period.
• 21:18
  Without getting into the minutiae of from 8910, there was
• 21:28
  some hardcore drug addiction depth that I've I've never seen
• 21:35
  before, never seen again. That was the darkest times I've
• 21:39
  ever watched someone go through my life with him, struggling
• 21:42
  with himself and his addictions, his vices, his he was wild.
• 21:50
  My father very much like me out, or I should say, I'm very much
• 21:53
  like my father, very energetic, very my father was brilliant.
• 22:00
  My mother was brilliant. Thank God that I've been blessed
• 22:04
  with the, with the, with the, with the emotional capability
• 22:06
  that I have when the and the intelligence that I've, I've
• 22:09
  been blessed with. It's, it's a, it's a gift from
• 22:12
  God. I'm so grateful.
• 22:16
  So by 10 years old, he had been through prison, through jail.
• 22:23
  At this time, I'm bouncing around all these different
• 22:25
  places. I can remember the Sheriff's
• 22:27
  Department kicking in my front door, me escaping out the back.
• 22:31
  They couldn't chase him. He only had one leg, you know,
• 22:34
  And I ran away. I escaped from the Sheriff's
• 22:37
  Department. At this point, I went to stay
• 22:39
  with a friend, dear friend of mine, Greg Stratt.
• 22:42
  Love, love him and his mother Rose.
• 22:47
  This was my life. This was this toxic, caustic
• 22:51
  wildlife. OK, so then my dad gets out of
• 22:57
  it. Was in prison.
• 22:58
  At this point. It was jail.
• 22:59
  He served 1129 for that infraction.
• 23:01
  He got caught up with about 30 people in a huge drug ring.
• 23:05
  OK, so now I'm in 10 years old, ten years old, eleven years old,
• 23:13
  and we're in this new neighborhood and across the
• 23:15
  county. My my county I'm from is
• 23:16
  massive. He just falls deeper, deeper
• 23:24
  into drug addiction, deeper into depression.
• 23:27
  I watched this man, he would drink 40 beers before noon any
• 23:30
  given day. He could be totally blacked out,
• 23:33
  totally drunk, totally just out of this planet, one leg on
• 23:37
  drugs, on pills, on this, on that, whatever.
• 23:40
  And so he was, he was a tortured soul.
• 23:42
  And I'm not saying I'm not, I'm not, I'm not telling you these
• 23:45
  things because like, I'm, I'm not, I'm not looking for
• 23:48
  sympathy. I'm not looking for like this.
• 23:49
  It's not about that. It's about it's about
• 23:51
  celebrating my father and this poor man who experienced these
• 23:54
  things and through all of the things that he experienced in my
• 24:00
  observations of him experiencing them, they set me up to be able
• 24:07
  to be a successful man. And it was through seeing how
• 24:12
  deep and dark he went that I was able to be as a quote UN quote
• 24:17
  successful. Whatever I've done pretty well
• 24:18
  in my career. I've I've, I'm proud of myself.
• 24:22
  So then let's say 1011 years old.
• 24:25
  So now I'm starting to become a young man, no longer a childish
• 24:30
  ish. And so then we start partying
• 24:35
  together. We started any drugs together.
• 24:38
  My dad's philosophy was I wouldn't, I wouldn't expose you
• 24:41
  to all of these things before you will ever be exposed to them
• 24:45
  from someone else because I'm going to protect you.
• 24:48
  I'm going to teach you how to navigate these waters, which is
• 24:52
  not a good idea. I would never do that with my
• 24:54
  children. No way.
• 24:56
  But but so, you know, I can remember.
• 24:59
  I can remember a time when and I'll never forget MTV Pantera
• 25:08
  had done a cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan, one of
• 25:15
  my favorite songs. It was on the television.
• 25:17
  And my father holds his hand out to me.
• 25:18
  He says, take one and his hits of acid in the palm of his hand.
• 25:25
  And I'm like 10 years old. And so here we go.
• 25:28
  We're going to go on this trip totally responsible, but but but
• 25:32
  that just kind of like there's it's an important reason why I'm
• 25:36
  sharing this. So for me now, 10:11, 12/13/13 I
• 25:48
  start becoming super wild and I escaped that environment.
• 25:56
  I started running away from home.
• 25:58
  I couldn't be in that environment.
• 25:59
  My father at that point started going off the rails and crack
• 26:01
  cocaine, total hardcore addiction.
• 26:05
  You know, we lived on welfare. The 1st of the month.
• 26:08
  It was just like that Bone Thug song, you know, You know, it's
• 26:11
  like first of the month and because everybody's coming
• 26:13
  around, everybody's smoking, everybody's cooking, everybody's
• 26:15
  doing all this and that and it became such a toxic environment.
• 26:19
  I'm like, I don't want to be in that environment anymore.
• 26:21
  Even at 13 years old, my friends are I, I ran with a group that
• 26:25
  was a little older than me. They're getting killed, they're
• 26:29
  committing suicide, they're going to prison.
• 26:32
  And I'm like, this is not good. So I started to branch out.
• 26:36
  Skateboarding give me that kind of freedom because I had groups
• 26:39
  all over in different areas. So I started to to escape.
• 26:44
  Took me a little while. At 14, I left again.
• 26:51
  Toxic environment. I can't be around this at this
• 26:54
  point. I've been a juvenile detention.
• 26:55
  I've done all kind of different crazy things.
• 26:58
  I'm out, I'm out. I can't deal with this.
• 27:01
  I'm out. I ran away from home.
• 27:06
  I turned 15 on a Greyhound bus on the way to Los Angeles in
• 27:10
  Dallas, TX. And here I am freshly minted, 15
• 27:13
  years and one day old in Dallas, TX, excuse me, in Los Angeles.
• 27:19
  And I can remember looking up at this city because I knew all the
• 27:23
  skate spots and I could skate pretty good.
• 27:26
  You know, here I am this little punk rocker, like whatever.
• 27:28
  And I like Venice Beach, like I'm, you know, like I'll kind of
• 27:31
  like fit in whatever. And I met a group of kids and we
• 27:34
  all skated and I spent like 3 months there skating.
• 27:37
  Have a good time. And, and eventually I couldn't
• 27:41
  prove who I was. I couldn't, you know, things
• 27:43
  happen and eventually I had to go back and actually my dad came
• 27:45
  and got me and brought me back, but which is crazy, but he was
• 27:49
  wild. He would do that and I've been
• 27:52
  on for three months. Of course I have to go back to
• 27:54
  juvenile attention. I leave juvenile attention again
• 27:59
  and basically broke out of juvenile attention.
• 28:04
  It wasn't like breaking out. It's not like there's bars
• 28:06
  you're not saw. It's not a saw it through bars
• 28:09
  and anything. But you can leave.
• 28:11
  You're not supposed to. And I came to Nashville, TN and
• 28:16
  that was my deliverance. I left in the middle of the
• 28:20
  night. I went to Nashville, TN.
• 28:22
  There's a little bit of a precursor to that, but we're not
• 28:24
  going to go into that now. I arrived on Broadway.
• 28:30
  I made a post about it the other day.
• 28:32
  And I arrived on Broadway. There was a, there was a
• 28:34
  Greyhound bus station right behind Broadway.
• 28:36
  I happen to know a dude that works at a restaurant called
• 28:38
  Wolfies on Broadway. Robert Wiseman, exceptional
• 28:43
  skateboarder. He was from Chico, CA good
• 28:45
  friend of mine. And I went to the restaurant
• 28:49
  where he was working Wolfy's on Broadway and I'm like, yo, Bob,
• 28:52
  what's up? I need a job.
• 28:53
  I need a house, I need all this. And he's like, shit, They used
• 28:57
  to call me Crazy Dave. He said shit, Crazy Dave, let's
• 29:00
  go like, whatever. I've got a I've got an
• 29:02
  opportunity for you. Let me talk to Robert that owns
• 29:06
  the place or Bob that owns. But Bob Wolf, who's the guy that
• 29:08
  owns the place. Bob comes around mountain of a
• 29:12
  man, huge dude. He used to play drums for Johnny
• 29:14
  Paycheck. If you ever know any of that old
• 29:16
  country music and there's a honky tonk and Bob says you need
• 29:22
  a job, I said I would love to have the opportunity.
• 29:24
  Yeah, please. So you know how to cook.
• 29:25
  I'm like, no, but I haven't washed dishes.
• 29:27
  I can clean up. You know, I'll show up.
• 29:29
  I'm responsible. I wasn't respectful enough.
• 29:31
  I saw the diners, You know, I would like respectful,
• 29:34
  respectful. So I said also, I need a place
• 29:39
  to stay. And he says, well, you know
• 29:42
  what? We have a studio upstairs and
• 29:45
  I'll take it out of your check. So within 20 minutes of arriving
• 29:52
  in Nashville, TN, I had a job, I had an apartment, you know,
• 29:58
  paycheck. I had all the food I wanted to
• 30:00
  eat and I was set. And I never turned back.
• 30:05
  I never turned back. Now, of course there was all
• 30:07
  upset. It took a lot to get, you know,
• 30:10
  that's but that's a precursor to, you know, that's the that's
• 30:14
  the childhood, the stimulus of my childhood, the lessons I
• 30:19
  learned that are very good lessons.
• 30:22
  And I don't I don't look at it. It sounds like it comes off like
• 30:24
  this, like what was me like negative thing.
• 30:27
  But for me, they were the greatest stimulus that I could
• 30:30
  have ever had because it prevented me from making those
• 30:33
  mistakes in the future. Yeah.
• 30:35
  You know, you think I ever fell into drug addiction?
• 30:38
  No way. I was frightened.
• 30:40
  Frightened of that. There's no way.
• 30:42
  And there's no way, because I saw what humanity would do at a
• 30:45
  very young age. So really, that gave me the the
• 30:48
  desire to find a deeper depth of my perception.
• 30:53
  Excuse me, profession and and and run for it.
• 30:56
  Yeah, but I was still pursuing skateboarding.
• 30:58
  Right. At this point I was a really
• 31:00
  good skateboarder. That's a, that's a wild story.
• 31:03
  It's a, it's a, it's wild that you've gone through that and
• 31:06
  despite and overcome and gotten to the places that that you've
• 31:11
  gotten to. It's powerful because a lot of
• 31:14
  chefs out there share similar. Stories for sure, right?
• 31:17
  For sure. Some of them, Some of them don't
• 31:20
  make it to where. You've made it.
• 31:21
  Some of them get. Stuck in the mud.
• 31:23
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 31:24
  Look at Curtis. Yeah.
• 31:26
  You know Curtis Duffy. Yeah, that story, bro, I've got
• 31:31
  so much respect for. I don't even know him.
• 31:32
  Yeah, but that story is powerful.
• 31:35
  Powerful. Yeah.
• 31:36
  Yeah, indeed. He just wrote a book.
• 31:37
  I need to read it. Yeah, me too.
• 31:38
  Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that.
• 31:40
  Yeah, I. Can't remember the name of his
• 31:42
  book. I should I should give it a
• 31:43
  shout out on the show but I don't remember the name.
• 31:46
  Of it drop in, drop in notes, yeah, yeah, I'll drop it in the
• 31:49
  joint notes, yeah. Yeah, but he's AG too.
• 31:52
  He is. And that, and that's some
• 31:54
  stimulus you talk about some stimulus.
• 31:55
  Yeah. So, you know, but so my whole
• 31:57
  life, I've always felt like like, you know, I have my
• 32:00
  perspective, have my my things or whatever.
• 32:03
  My father, my father was very. I don't want to interrupt you.
• 32:07
  I'll call it. No, no, go ahead.
• 32:08
  But but there's a there's an important thing here is that my
• 32:10
  dad would never allow him to be called himself, to be called
• 32:14
  disabled. He would not.
• 32:17
  He was in that mindset. Yeah, somebody else has got it
• 32:20
  worse. And I have to live my life that
• 32:22
  way because I know that there's kids out there that experience
• 32:24
  worse. I know that they do daily.
• 32:26
  I know that the, you know, so many different types of abuse
• 32:29
  that are just horrific that people experience.
• 32:32
  But I think my, my, I mean, Kurt's experience is, is
• 32:36
  powerful, but my experience allowed me to be able to move
• 32:46
  forward in a different way. So I try to look back at
• 32:50
  everything that I experienced, even to this day as a positive.
• 32:54
  I always try to find the positive silver lining, no
• 32:57
  matter how difficult it may seem now as we struggle through these
• 33:00
  things or experience them or celebrate them.
• 33:05
  You know what, what is Frank Sinatra say?
• 33:07
  Flying high? Flying high in April and shot
• 33:09
  down in May. That's that's life, you know,
• 33:12
  You got to keep yourself, you know, You never know.
• 33:15
  Grim reapers on your tail, man, you know?
• 33:17
  But it all set me up to be able to be what I was able to do.
• 33:24
  And later I'll tell you about a very important story that
• 33:28
  changed my life. Well, let's get right into it,
• 33:30
  OK? Well, so, so here I am in
• 33:33
  Nashville, TN, running around doing my thing and I was just
• 33:36
  woefully unprepared to do that. First thing I do is get a huge
• 33:41
  tattoo on my neck. I get tattoos all over my body.
• 33:43
  I need to look like I'm scary and tough and like, like, you
• 33:46
  don't fuck with me, you know, like this is like I'm dangerous
• 33:51
  because I was a child, right? I need to project, put on a
• 33:54
  facade, you know? And it worked.
• 33:58
  Yeah, enough. I was also pretty wild, so I
• 34:01
  didn't. That was the helped.
• 34:03
  I wasn't scared to get into anything.
• 34:05
  I would do anything anytime. Never hurt anyone.
• 34:08
  I never like in my life. I never like stole from people.
• 34:10
  I never like hurt people. Never.
• 34:12
  Never. My father really is complex of a
• 34:19
  man as he was. He had a great set of morals and
• 34:22
  ethics. And it was about protecting your
• 34:25
  fellow man. About protecting someone who
• 34:28
  can't protect themselves, it was more of a protector mindset than
• 34:31
  it was or defensive mindset than it was in a predatory mindset.
• 34:35
  And, and he was beautiful man for that.
• 34:38
  He was, he was, I'm, I'm so blessed that he taught me that
• 34:40
  at a young age. And of course, in, in, in, in
• 34:43
  rural Appalachia, we have a very biblical kind of approach to
• 34:50
  things, right. And you have to like live by the
• 34:53
  10 commandments in the Golden Rule.
• 34:56
  But anyhow, so I, I traveled around a little bit.
• 34:59
  I was in Nashville, I was in Miami, and then I went to
• 35:03
  Knoxville and Knoxville is kind of where I had my awakening for
• 35:06
  culinary and I. How old are you at this time
• 35:10
  when you get to? Knoxville, 1717.
• 35:12
  Yeah, my first day in Knoxville. I remember I met up with these
• 35:16
  guys at the skate at the Skate shop.
• 35:18
  Yeah, We went over to Fort Sanders.
• 35:20
  We were skating around. I go into this house with these
• 35:24
  guys. Like I said, I didn't do drugs.
• 35:25
  I don't smoke pot. I don't know.
• 35:27
  None of that. I don't like, I don't, that's
• 35:29
  not my thing. And they're like, hey, sit, sit
• 35:32
  there. This guy's going to come over
• 35:35
  and just you sit there and I'm like, what?
• 35:37
  What's going on? And so apparently this guy had
• 35:39
  robbed these guys a couple days before.
• 35:42
  And this dude comes through the front door and this guy's hiding
• 35:44
  behind the door with a baseball bat.
• 35:47
  The guy walks towards me in the house.
• 35:50
  I have no clue why. I'm a child.
• 35:52
  I'm literally a child. And the dude behind the door
• 35:55
  comes out the smash the guy in the head with the baseball bat,
• 35:58
  like, Ding, like, here's Knoxville.
• 36:01
  Welcome to Knoxville. So, OK, what's what do I do?
• 36:05
  I don't know who any of these guys are.
• 36:07
  I run out the back door. Get me away from these people.
• 36:10
  Like, I don't want to be around this.
• 36:11
  So this is day one of Knoxville. I'll never forget that day one.
• 36:14
  That was what I told myself. Oh, my God.
• 36:16
  Day one, Marble City, baby. Here we go.
• 36:19
  Yeah. So so.
• 36:22
  I knew that wasn't the crew to hang out with immediately.
• 36:24
  So I started really embedding myself in in in my profession.
• 36:28
  That was really a big catalyst for that because I cannot
• 36:30
  continue down this road with these punk rockers, the
• 36:33
  skateboarders, these kind of miscreants.
• 36:37
  Like that's not, that's what I tried to escape from.
• 36:41
  And so I was like, look, day one already.
• 36:43
  We're here. This is not the life I'm going
• 36:46
  to live. I'm going to be a professional
• 36:48
  chef. That was it.
• 36:51
  And I had happened to be able to get a position at a place called
• 36:54
  Chesapeake's and it was a Maryland style seafood
• 36:57
  restaurant owned by a gentleman named Mike Chase.
• 37:00
  And it was awesome. It was great.
• 37:03
  It was not a chef restaurant, but it was a restaurant that
• 37:06
  served tons of fresh seafood, cooked aluminute and done well
• 37:11
  with recipes and I loved it. I loved it.
• 37:14
  I learned a lot from that group. It was called the Copper Seller.
• 37:17
  Copper Seller Group. I'm still around.
• 37:20
  Yeah, Yeah. Every time I go to Knoxville, I
• 37:22
  go to Chesapeake. Yeah.
• 37:23
  Yeah. A little reminisce.
• 37:26
  So it it wasn't somewhere that you would retire at for me at
• 37:30
  that time with my aspirations. Because at the same time,
• 37:33
  working in Copper Cellar Group, I met a dude named Chris
• 37:35
  Rainwater who was like, you have to read the Escoffier cookbook.
• 37:40
  Leguid. Leguid.
• 37:41
  Yeah. Leguid.
• 37:42
  Kill an air. Yeah.
• 37:44
  I don't think his southern accent would would allow him to
• 37:45
  lay guide. Lay guide, but, but so I bought
• 37:52
  it and I bought it at Barnes and Nobles.
• 37:57
  And my girlfriend at the time actually took me to Barnes and
• 37:59
  Nobles and I was like, they have cookbooks.
• 38:01
  They're like, she's like, yeah, yeah, of course they have a huge
• 38:03
  cookbook session. And for me, being from where I'm
• 38:07
  from, a cookbook store is like a bookstore Where I'm from in
• 38:10
  Greene County is like an antique store at that time.
• 38:14
  Yeah. And so you go in and you buy old
• 38:18
  Aesop's tails or. Something, you know, like
• 38:20
  there's, you know, old. Books and I'm like, OK, well
• 38:23
  let's see what they have. I didn't even really it didn't
• 38:25
  resonate what they the potential was.
• 38:26
  And I remember walking into Barnes and Nobles and there was
• 38:29
  this little stand that had the the discount books.
• 38:31
  Yeah, I was like, wow. And she's like, dude, you have
• 38:34
  no idea, look over there and there was like 4.
• 38:38
  Walls of cookbooks. Yeah, There was free coffee.
• 38:42
  There was free coffee. Couple lazy boys.
• 38:44
  Old days of the old days, couple lazy boys, you know, some
• 38:49
  tables. And I was like, you mean I can
• 38:51
  read? Any of these books, she's like,
• 38:53
  yeah, she was a poet. She was always in the bookstore.
• 38:57
  Yeah, go, no, go read. So that was like started started
• 39:01
  this thing and then Chris told me about the league Culinaire
• 39:05
  and I'm like OK, wow. Like this is incredible.
• 39:09
  So I started studying cuisine. So Chris is also the person who
• 39:12
  told me about a restaurant called Club Lecant.
• 39:17
  Club Lecant was on the 27th floor of the First Tennessee
• 39:20
  Bank building downtown on Gay Street, and the whole top floor
• 39:26
  was private dining club. And it was the Creme de la
• 39:29
  Creme. Like if you want to be a chef.
• 39:32
  There's only one place to work that's.
• 39:34
  Where you work. And so I put in AI, put in a
• 39:40
  application, resume wasn't even in.
• 39:44
  I couldn't even figure that out at that point.
• 39:46
  I put in an application and my application got put in with the
• 39:51
  dining room teams. So I didn't hear anything for
• 39:53
  like 3 months. And at this time I was working 1
• 39:57
  restaurant at lunch, 1 restaurant at dinner.
• 39:59
  I was working double SI, had tons of tons of cash.
• 40:01
  I was stacking cash, tons of cash.
• 40:04
  I was able to do whatever I wanted to do, and I had burned
• 40:09
  out all my opportunities. Not through.
• 40:13
  Poor relationship management, but for for desire to be in
• 40:18
  those establishments at that point in Knoxville.
• 40:20
  And I was like, I don't want to be anywhere else.
• 40:22
  I don't like I'm done. I'm going to join the Navy.
• 40:25
  I'm going to get AGI Bill and I'm going to go to culinary
• 40:27
  school. So I started to pursue that A
• 40:31
  few days later after I started that, well, maybe a week to
• 40:34
  leave, 2 weeks later after I started that process, a
• 40:37
  gentleman named Seth Zimmerman, who was the executive chef
• 40:40
  called me and he says, hey, I'm just reaching out to see if
• 40:43
  you're still interested in joining A-Team.
• 40:46
  Your, your application was accidentally put with the dining
• 40:49
  room teams. But I, I do have an opportunity
• 40:52
  if you want to come in and interview.
• 40:54
  And I said, chef I, I'm very grateful for your call, but I'm,
• 40:59
  I'm, I'm going to join the United States Navy today.
• 41:01
  And he says, what are you going to do in the Navy?
• 41:05
  I said, I'm going to be a chef. And he says, OK, you may want to
• 41:09
  come talk to me. I was a chef in the submarine in
• 41:11
  Vietnam. You know they're out patrolling
• 41:15
  around. Yeah, he says you may want to
• 41:18
  talk to me first. Let's just have a chat.
• 41:22
  And this was like a gentleman speaking to a young man.
• 41:25
  Sure. Like he he probably didn't care
• 41:26
  if I joined the team or not. He's like, probably wants to
• 41:29
  just try to drop some wisdom. So I said, well, you know what,
• 41:32
  chef? Absolutely I will.
• 41:34
  So I went to the recruiter and I said, Sir, I may have an
• 41:37
  opportunity to, to that I, that I, that I'm, that I'm going to
• 41:42
  consider. And if it goes nowhere because I
• 41:46
  had an appointment to complete my paperwork, I, I will be right
• 41:49
  back. And the guy looks at me and he
• 41:51
  says, Sir, the United States Navy is not your second choice.
• 41:55
  It cannot be your second choice. And I said, OK, well look, I'm,
• 41:59
  I'm going to go speak with this gentleman.
• 42:00
  And, and he reached out to me and I put my hand out to shake
• 42:02
  his hand and he refused to shake my hand.
• 42:04
  And I'm like, it's very telling. You're right.
• 42:07
  At that point too, I was a hard ass.
• 42:08
  Like I'm not, you know, I'm not like him.
• 42:11
  He's a grown man. But I'm saying like I was tough
• 42:13
  nuts. Like I'm not taking nothing from
• 42:16
  anybody. So I'm like, this is very
• 42:18
  telling of the future, sad future of me getting beaten.
• 42:22
  For years. Yeah, right.
• 42:23
  Yeah. So I was like, probably a good
• 42:24
  thing. Your life flashing.
• 42:26
  Pull your eyes. Yeah.
• 42:27
  This what the next few years look like revealed itself.
• 42:29
  You know, like it revealed itself.
• 42:30
  I'm not doing this. And so when I went and met Seth,
• 42:33
  it was probably the greatest moment in my life at that point,
• 42:39
  at that point for sure, because I had found a mentor and and and
• 42:45
  I had found a person who would care for me, like my own father.
• 42:48
  And I spoke with you about this with the check pants the other
• 42:50
  day, you know, and that was like, I literally start crying
• 42:52
  on the phone. So so I go and meet Seth and
• 42:56
  Seth says, OK, listen. And he looked me up and down and
• 42:59
  I'm like this shave head little like white T-shirt, tight blue
• 43:02
  jeans, like just look punk rocker like.
• 43:05
  And he's like, come on, like I'm going to whip you in the shape.
• 43:07
  I know he's sizing me up and I'm like he says, well, so do you
• 43:11
  know how to cook? And it's the first time in my
• 43:13
  life I said, no, I don't. I do not chef.
• 43:17
  I'm familiar with some things, but I'm eager to learn.
• 43:22
  And he's like, OK, good. He said.
• 43:24
  I called all of your references. You're not eligible for rehiring
• 43:28
  any of them. However, many of them said that
• 43:34
  you're a good kid and they would rehire if they could.
• 43:38
  And the dude took me in and that was the like that was the the
• 43:43
  spark. Seth Zimmerman, my #1 mentor.
• 43:46
  I wrote about him in our book, our recent book, Thomas and I
• 43:48
  with the French linger per SE book.
• 43:50
  OK, the show Fly Trout. I learned that from I I learned
• 43:53
  a lot of things that I do today. I learned from Seth.
• 43:56
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 43:57
  And I and I and I continue to perpetuate those dishes.
• 44:00
  He's still around. Yeah, he's still around.
• 44:02
  Yeah. Good dude.
• 44:02
  Good dude. Toughest.
• 44:04
  Male. Is he still the chef of that
• 44:05
  place? No, no, no.
• 44:06
  He retired a long time ago. He was 55 when I was 17.
• 44:10
  OK. Yeah.
• 44:11
  So he's he's chilling. Yeah, good for him.
• 44:13
  Good for him. By the pool.
• 44:14
  Yeah. Yeah, he's a good.
• 44:17
  Guy, good guy and, and I'll share the, the story that I
• 44:21
  mentioned to you. We, we spoke about check pattern
• 44:24
  the other day and for me, every time I see the check pattern,
• 44:29
  the houndstooth pattern, the black and white houndstooth and
• 44:31
  of course Thomas has that line of China that I just love, you
• 44:35
  know, it's just so beautiful to see every time I see it, you
• 44:39
  know, women love to wear today it's scarves or the, the blouse
• 44:43
  or the whatever. And I just, every time I see it,
• 44:45
  it just warms my heart. And only in the conversation
• 44:48
  with you did I realize why. Yeah.
• 44:51
  You know, because we I said we we were talking about the
• 44:54
  nostalgia of it and whatever. And I said why?
• 44:56
  Why do we like that? And I said it, it, it transports
• 45:03
  us to that time in our lives when we were kind of vulnerable.
• 45:06
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 45:07
  We're the kids. We got our.
• 45:09
  Little The world is in front of us, right?
• 45:12
  Yeah, the The Call to Adventure. For sure.
• 45:15
  Call to adventure, right? Yeah, It was our.
• 45:17
  It was our for chefs, it's. Your multicam when you join the
• 45:21
  Rangers, right? It's like.
• 45:22
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's sometimes I
• 45:25
  there's a there's a page on Instagram, I think it's don't
• 45:28
  eat before reading this or something like love that.
• 45:31
  I love that there always show Marcos stuff videos.
• 45:33
  Yeah, love it. I.
• 45:35
  Because I want nothing more than to just be a, a saucer in that
• 45:39
  kitchen. Yeah, you know, with a baggy
• 45:40
  chef coat, check pants and A and a white apron that's like
• 45:44
  flimsy. Yeah.
• 45:45
  And, and just be skimming stock or roasting bones or whatever
• 45:48
  and just those smells and there's just something about
• 45:53
  those kitchens that I feel like I don't know.
• 45:56
  I and I know kitchens are still kitchens, but there's just there
• 45:59
  was a feeling in those days in the kitchen there was just
• 46:02
  something special about. It pride and belonging.
• 46:04
  I mean, those guys literally kill for their positions.
• 46:06
  Yeah, I mean, they they they earn those positions Very.
• 46:11
  I don't, I'm not saying anything.
• 46:12
  I don't want to do that. I'm sorry.
• 46:14
  The the, the, the the chefs today are rightfully where they
• 46:18
  are. The young chef, I'm speaking,
• 46:20
  the younger chef, the apprentices, the chef, the
• 46:24
  parties, the commis are rightfully where they are and
• 46:27
  they deserve everything that they have in that other area.
• 46:30
  I don't want to be that old guy that says uphill both ways in
• 46:33
  the Snow Bear. Right, Right.
• 46:35
  But it was a different thing because we had a different set
• 46:38
  of resources to learn from. Yeah.
• 46:40
  And then we talked. About this at length, yeah.
• 46:42
  Yeah. You were talking about Barnes
• 46:44
  and Noble earlier. And I remember so, so much of my
• 46:47
  life before Google and even during the Google time, right.
• 46:51
  Yeah, It was day off. What am I going to do?
• 46:53
  I'm going to go to Barnes and Noble.
• 46:55
  I'm going to pick up a stack of books.
• 46:56
  I'm going to sit on the couch, and I'm going to sit there and
• 46:58
  read because I could probably only afford to buy one book.
• 47:01
  So I'm going to read 10 of them. Yeah.
• 47:02
  Pick the one that I'm going to. Buy the one that's most
• 47:04
  compelling, right? Right.
• 47:06
  Yeah, so much notes. Yeah, and make notes and and
• 47:09
  like, OK, this one's good, but oh geez, which one do I get?
• 47:12
  Is the new. Trotter book or is it that
• 47:13
  right? Yeah, I.
• 47:15
  Literally went in debt. Yeah.
• 47:17
  I mean, Charlie's Roger put my ass in debt.
• 47:18
  Yeah, friend. That was it.
• 47:20
  Actually, I'll share a book with you that was really impactful
• 47:23
  for me. It's it helped.
• 47:25
  It helped. It gave me everything.
• 47:31
  Karen Page, Andrew Dornberg Becoming a chef.
• 47:36
  That's right. I have that book.
• 47:37
  Yeah, it's a great book. Credible.
• 47:38
  I think it came out in 1996. It was one of the first ones
• 47:43
  that I got along with my escapier by.
• 47:47
  Food Lover's. Companion Irma.
• 47:49
  Food Lover's companion. That was a Dornberg.
• 47:51
  No, Irma. Shit, I can't remember, but Food
• 47:55
  lover's companion was great. Yeah, great.
• 47:57
  Of course. Julia.
• 47:58
  Yeah, Jacques. Right the the technique.
• 48:02
  The technique, yeah, I, I buy it every time I find one, I buy it,
• 48:06
  Yeah. And I give it away.
• 48:09
  I buy, I buy. I give so many books away, the
• 48:11
  ones that are important to me. But that book, sorry, let me,
• 48:14
  I'm a storyteller, man. So we're going to get out there.
• 48:16
  No, no, go for it. But so, but, but so becoming a
• 48:19
  chef was so powerful in my career because it told me
• 48:25
  exactly what my forefathers did to achieve their goals.
• 48:30
  And I never knew. How is some hillbilly redneck
• 48:33
  from East Tennessee going to know what a stash is that you
• 48:37
  can show up and do professional internship on your own accord
• 48:41
  like that? Don't know that.
• 48:43
  I don't know anything about that.
• 48:45
  I never worked in other professions.
• 48:46
  I mean, I roofed some houses, I got some tobacco.
• 48:48
  I did a little this and that. Like, I don't know.
• 48:51
  But So what that book did is it laid out what probably in the
• 48:54
  90s were the 20 most prominent chefs, the Jeremiah Towers, the
• 48:59
  the Waldie Maloofs, the I apologize, I can't really pull
• 49:04
  them out of my head right now, but I should have read before I
• 49:06
  came. I didn't even think about
• 49:09
  talking about that. But what it said was most of
• 49:11
  these guys would show up at Bokus.
• 49:16
  Hello, Sir. I would love to observe service
• 49:19
  today or may I stash or whatever it is I came.
• 49:23
  Here's the letter of recommendation from my previous
• 49:25
  chef, right, but I didn't have that.
• 49:27
  But what I what it said to me was show up application, right?
• 49:35
  We'll get you there. Apply yourself.
• 49:38
  So I started showing up. So after I had my club of con
• 49:43
  experience, I was fortunate to get that experience.
• 49:46
  I worked out a deal with Seth Zimmerman to where he would pick
• 49:48
  me up every day. I live way out in West Town
• 49:51
  Knoxville by design to stay away from the my peer group.
• 49:56
  The Riff, The riff and I live way out in West Knoxville.
• 50:03
  My lovely girlfriend Glenn Sapolo, she was incredible.
• 50:07
  She really was a powerful part in empowering me to be able to
• 50:12
  achieve what I achieved. She was an incredible woman.
• 50:16
  She helped me a lot. She a great person, great human
• 50:18
  being, the poet, which is very thoughtful.
• 50:24
  I went from, I went from West Town.
• 50:28
  I organized with Seth who lived on the other side of West Town,
• 50:30
  of the town called Farragut. Will you pick me up at 8:30 in
• 50:33
  the morning or pick me up in the morning?
• 50:35
  It happened to be there was 830 that he would come through.
• 50:37
  He agreed. I'll pick you up at 8:30.
• 50:39
  I'm going to work from 8:30 till 2:30 for free every single day.
• 50:45
  I clock in at 2:30. I'm going to work my my station,
• 50:47
  the grill station. So from 8:30 AM or maybe we
• 50:52
  arrive at 9. From 9 till 2:30.
• 50:55
  I was like spec OPS. I do anything that needed to be
• 50:59
  done. I'm an extra hand hired hit my
• 51:02
  mom. I learned so much.
• 51:05
  Chef would bring me books. He would challenge me to make
• 51:08
  specials. He would challenge me to, you
• 51:10
  know, we're carving ice for the buffets.
• 51:12
  We're doing this huge chauffeur salmons.
• 51:14
  We're doing like for, for that. That restaurant has seven dining
• 51:18
  rooms, one of which was a la carte, one of which was a bar.
• 51:22
  And then you would have a omelette or primary station or
• 51:27
  action station right right here. You would have a choice of
• 51:30
  entrees here, you know, 3 course menu.
• 51:33
  This one would have a a salad buffet and maybe a couple hot
• 51:37
  buffets with an entree that we got and it was just like.
• 51:40
  It's a classy buffet, the salmon Koviak over here in Wellington,
• 51:44
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 51:45
  So it's all. Popping.
• 51:47
  Yeah, but so after one year, I had two years of experience,
• 51:51
  plus I applied myself. I would sit at home and 20
• 51:53
  potatoes so I could get the dexterity, you know, like I'm
• 51:56
  going to figure out how to do this.
• 51:57
  I can do this. I was usually in, I would do
• 51:59
  this because I knew eventually I had to be able to match up with
• 52:02
  people that went to culinary school, right.
• 52:04
  But I was a teenager, run away, high school dropout.
• 52:07
  I'm never going to be able to go to culinary school in my mind,
• 52:11
  in my mind. So in practice, I became sick.
• 52:16
  So you're buying like sack of potatoes at home porn.
• 52:19
  A bird's beak. I'm a soup, yeah.
• 52:20
  No, Seth would give me the potatoes and I would bring them
• 52:23
  back to work. It's like the old stories of the
• 52:25
  guys at Ramsey's Royal Hospital Rd. splitting peas at the house.
• 52:29
  Yeah, there's French Laundry stories about that kind of
• 52:32
  stuff, you know? Yeah.
• 52:33
  Not my generation, but previous generations.
• 52:35
  But I mean, my generation really spans a lot, 20 years, but but
• 52:40
  not not my generation. We didn't do that, however.
• 52:43
  I mean, Thomas gave us great resources.
• 52:44
  So I'm blessed for that. But but so at some point I had
• 52:52
  amassed this experience and love on and Seth had realized that I
• 52:57
  had kind of grown to the point that I need to my next position
• 53:02
  and I didn't know he's thinking this.
• 53:03
  We didn't talk about this or whatever he says.
• 53:05
  How do you think about Charleston chef?
• 53:07
  I'd love to go to Charleston. I'm going to take you to Johnson
• 53:10
  Wales. Wow.
• 53:13
  OK, yeah, I'm going to introduce you.
• 53:17
  My friend. He's got a restaurant.
• 53:19
  So this dude took me probably one of the a pretty impactful
• 53:26
  member of his kitchen. I was not in any position to
• 53:28
  manage anyone. I was young and wild.
• 53:31
  I could not be a sous chef. I could not be responsible for
• 53:33
  anyone. I had too much ego, too much
• 53:36
  energy, like just not, not even. However, I had a desire.
• 53:41
  He brought me to Charleston, took me to his friend friend
• 53:46
  Tanks. Frank Chisera's restaurant was
• 53:49
  called the Harbor Club in impeccable beautiful restaurant.
• 53:55
  We introduced He said here's David.
• 53:57
  He has a very hard head and a very strong back.
• 54:01
  I remember those words, yeah. Very hard headed, a very strong
• 54:04
  back, which means you got to beat the hell.
• 54:06
  I mean, I can work hard. There's one thing I've always
• 54:09
  been good. I could work my ass off.
• 54:11
  This comes from the tobacco fields.
• 54:13
  Yeah, and skateboarding too. Thousands.
• 54:17
  Of repetitions. And then he took me and
• 54:20
  introduced me to the Dean at Johnson Wells.
• 54:23
  And I was able to get into a summer program, at least to have
• 54:26
  the confidence to be able to do what I'm able to do.
• 54:29
  And Johnson Wells was a really good thing for me.
• 54:31
  And I never in my lifetime thought that I would ever be
• 54:33
  able to go to college. And they provided that
• 54:35
  opportunity for me. They opened that door for me.
• 54:38
  I was able to get in on a very affordable path because it was
• 54:48
  not a degree necessary degree path.
• 54:50
  It was a orientation type path. I, I had already kind of
• 54:55
  surpassed a lot of that with my studies.
• 54:57
  I was so studious, not to say I was better than anyone there.
• 55:01
  I don't mean it like that. I mean that just orientation of
• 55:03
  understanding, right? What do you go to coloring
• 55:05
  school, school for general orientation of things.
• 55:09
  And then when you have the upper degrees, those are very
• 55:11
  important for business management.
• 55:13
  But so then here I am in Charleston, SC Incredible.
• 55:19
  A new cuisine, Low country cuisine.
• 55:21
  I had no idea. They're all Southern.
• 55:23
  We all speak with the same twang.
• 55:25
  We all have the kind of same thing.
• 55:26
  I'm a mountain boy. They're low country, but the
• 55:30
  food's different. Yeah.
• 55:31
  And I just went in again. That same loop of this
• 55:36
  consumption, of this incredible cuisine, this incredible culture
• 55:41
  has some very good mentors. I did that for a while with with
• 55:48
  Frank. I was at Charleston Grill under
• 55:51
  a gentleman named Bob Wagoner who was the only at the time.
• 55:56
  I don't know about past since chef in France.
• 56:00
  American chef in France to achieve 2 Michelin stars.
• 56:03
  Well Le Monte Cristo. Bob Wagoner is brilliant, one of
• 56:07
  the best friend chefs you'll ever meet in your life and you
• 56:09
  probably never heard of him. He's amazing.
• 56:12
  He runs a little cooking school now.
• 56:14
  Just so charismatic, incredible. He's from California, actually
• 56:21
  ended up in Charleston somehow, I'm not sure, at the Charleston
• 56:24
  Grill in the Charleston Place Hotel, which is a brilliant old
• 56:26
  property. But then I met a gentleman named
• 56:31
  Michael Kramer. Then Kramer was the second
• 56:34
  mentor. Kramer was amazing.
• 56:39
  Michael Kramer we used to call the California kid.
• 56:42
  He was this. He was probably 27 years old,
• 56:46
  redheaded Jewish kid from Pacific Palisades, CA.
• 56:50
  He could not have been any different than most of us, which
• 56:53
  was the best thing that we ever needed because we're all these
• 56:56
  little southern thing. And here comes this gentleman
• 57:01
  who had incredible experience, incredible figure.
• 57:05
  He would ride 30 miles on his bicycle every day for breakfast.
• 57:08
  The dude would the dude was the most energetic person I've ever
• 57:12
  met. And he cooked exactly the same
• 57:14
  way. And his cuisine was very
• 57:16
  Californian. He came from the camps of Spago
• 57:23
  back early 90s. Like, you know, when Lee was
• 57:27
  young and, and, and Wolf was in the kitchen and they were
• 57:32
  pounding. And that's a great, you know,
• 57:33
  Jason Nib was in on that team. There's a lot of those that,
• 57:38
  that's a that that camp. Yeah, when Sparkle was.
• 57:41
  The. Tip of the Spirit.
• 57:42
  Dude, they were good. Yeah, really good.
• 57:45
  And then he went to mansion on Turtle Creek and then he came to
• 57:48
  Charleston and partnered with with Piggly Wiggly.
• 57:54
  Mccrady's was originally owned by Piggly Wiggly, and of course,
• 57:59
  Mccrady's is the name in their profession.
• 58:01
  Sean Brock was very big and bringing that up, but I was a
• 58:03
  generation before Sean Brock Kramer taught me how to cook on
• 58:09
  demand, seasoned perfectly on demand.
• 58:14
  And in my lifetime, he's the only chef that I ever had at
• 58:17
  that point. If it wasn't season right,
• 58:20
  you're you're, you're getting it back, right back through the
• 58:24
  window. Not the rude way, not throwing
• 58:26
  food, but just like, no, I am not serving this.
• 58:30
  Never in my life had I experienced that Seth was Seth
• 58:33
  was very particular, but it was more of a was more of a business
• 58:37
  model. We produce this, we serve this.
• 58:40
  It can be, it can't be too salty, can't be on season.
• 58:43
  It just needs to be this, but there's.
• 58:45
  There's a lot of moving parts, yeah.
• 58:46
  You can't get too caught up, Yeah?
• 58:48
  Right, right. The Kramer was like the dude was
• 58:51
  like with this little spoon. So he always has little spoon
• 58:53
  and always every soup would make soup aluminu.
• 58:57
  All the soup was made aluminu. Yeah, I worked a hot app
• 58:59
  station. It was, I worked all the
• 59:01
  sessions eventually, but it was great.
• 59:04
  It was a really great experience.
• 59:06
  Kramer became the greatest mentors that I had ever had at
• 59:09
  that point and until, until Thomas.
• 59:13
  I mean, in my in my lineage of mentors, there's my father in
• 59:18
  tobacco field, Seth Zimmerman in the kitchen, Michael Kramer.
• 59:23
  Michael Kramer in the kitchen for a very different reason.
• 59:26
  And then Thomas Keller in the kitchen for their very different
• 59:28
  reason. Seth was a culinary instructor.
• 59:34
  Michael was a cooking teacher. I'm going to teach you how to
• 59:40
  bust this out, crush this perfectly.
• 59:44
  And then Thomas was a, a philosophical teacher.
• 59:47
  Then the three of them offered very different things that that
• 59:50
  didn't really overlap. From Mccrady's, do you go to?
• 59:53
  TfL. Well, no.
• 59:55
  There's one more soldier, if you will.
• 59:58
  I, I I. I was, I was fortunate.
• 1:00:01
  I had a very, very dear friend named Steven Green, who is, who
• 1:00:05
  is currently still an incredible chef.
• 1:00:08
  He's actually friends with Curtis.
• 1:00:11
  He's in, he's at the Olmsted. Very talented chef, very, very,
• 1:00:15
  very artistic, articulate, very talented Southern boy, good guy.
• 1:00:20
  So he was a saucier when I was the hot apps guy at Mccrady's.
• 1:00:24
  And he actually went to a restaurant called The Woodlands.
• 1:00:29
  And The Woodlands was ran by a gentleman named Ken Vidrensky,
• 1:00:32
  who was very accomplished globally.
• 1:00:35
  And he had worked in hotels throughout the world.
• 1:00:38
  And he was, it was kind of that restaurant was kind of the
• 1:00:43
  Unicorn, if you will. And at some point Stephen
• 1:00:47
  reached out to me and he says, hey, we need an AM sous chef.
• 1:00:50
  I think that you, you'd be a great fit.
• 1:00:53
  And it was a total blessing. I'm so grateful for him for
• 1:00:56
  that. And, and he and, and he invited
• 1:00:58
  me up and I interviewed and I took the position and I learned
• 1:01:03
  a lot. I learned a lot there because
• 1:01:05
  that was the first restaurant that I've worked in in my life
• 1:01:08
  that maybe would only serve 15 covers.
• 1:01:10
  And we had a tasting menu, we had a la carte menu and a prefix
• 1:01:14
  menu, all these different things.
• 1:01:16
  Breakfast, lunch, dinner was in a H5 Stars Mobile Relay Chateau
• 1:01:22
  Relay gourmand. Ken was Ken didn't drink.
• 1:01:27
  You weren't allowed to smoke. You weren't allowed to drink
• 1:01:30
  caffeine because it would numb your palate.
• 1:01:33
  You, you there were like these kind of rules that were about
• 1:01:36
  the food. And Ken was like a so
• 1:01:38
  enthusiastic about food. He was a wild dude, good, good
• 1:01:42
  guy. But when you would talk about
• 1:01:44
  food, you would watch him turn into a child, like just he love
• 1:01:50
  flavor, love food to recount these things in his life.
• 1:01:53
  So I took the the sous chef position there.
• 1:01:58
  And probably about four weeks later, my father was killed.
• 1:02:04
  So then I had, you know, I already had my.
• 1:02:07
  Yeah. You know, there's some issues
• 1:02:10
  there. Yeah, so, so when I was a kid,
• 1:02:15
  you know, I mentioned the thing about my mother that was very
• 1:02:17
  impactful. It's turned my father into this
• 1:02:19
  maniac. I ran away from home.
• 1:02:21
  I never reconcile with my father.
• 1:02:24
  I never, I never, ever had a conversation with him in my life
• 1:02:29
  that discuss any of the things that we went through together.
• 1:02:35
  And all of a sudden, he's dead. And I get a knock on the door in
• 1:02:37
  the middle of the night. My aunt and uncle are outside my
• 1:02:41
  apartment. I lived on King Street.
• 1:02:43
  And they're buzzing, trying to get up to my house.
• 1:02:48
  And I'm like, hello. Hello.
• 1:02:49
  This was not uncommon because it was like the, the the place was
• 1:02:53
  like Mardi Gras all the time. Hello.
• 1:02:57
  Hey, Anthony, let us up. This is this is Ange.
• 1:03:02
  This is John and Ange. Wow.
• 1:03:04
  My family calls me Anthony, by the way, my name is David
• 1:03:07
  Anthony. And I go downstairs to let him
• 1:03:12
  in. And I just knew because of my
• 1:03:14
  family, the way we are, I just knew my Uncle John had killed
• 1:03:16
  somebody. And I was here to hide him, you
• 1:03:19
  know? And my aunt's crying like a
• 1:03:22
  baby. My uncle's crying like a baby.
• 1:03:24
  And I'm like, who did you kill? First words out of who did you
• 1:03:28
  kill? What are we doing here?
• 1:03:31
  Like, let's, let's, let's chop like, let's chop it up.
• 1:03:33
  What are we doing? I'm ready to, like, hide him,
• 1:03:36
  drive him out of country. I don't know.
• 1:03:39
  And my aunt, my aunt looks at me.
• 1:03:40
  She said, no, Anthony, it's your daddy.
• 1:03:43
  He's been killed. Oh, I like, I like it crushed my
• 1:03:50
  soul because I'd always been prepared to reconcile with him
• 1:03:54
  at some point. And and I wasn't able to do so.
• 1:04:00
  So that was pretty devastating for me at that point, the most
• 1:04:03
  devastating thing I had ever experienced. close, close.
• 1:04:14
  It was pretty bad and, and I went into shock.
• 1:04:21
  And so then the next couple weeks, they were just went by
• 1:04:24
  really, really crazy. And I had to leave the
• 1:04:27
  restaurant and I didn't know what's going on with my life.
• 1:04:30
  And I went back to Tennessee in the mountains.
• 1:04:32
  And I can just remember the day that I'm at my father's funeral
• 1:04:38
  and all these people hadn't been home and forever.
• 1:04:40
  It'd been a very long time. I don't know who anyone is.
• 1:04:44
  And these people are coming through the procession.
• 1:04:52
  Hello, paying respects, whatever.
• 1:04:54
  My father was loved by everyone. And this gentleman walks up to
• 1:04:57
  me. He says, I bet you don't know
• 1:04:59
  who I am, do you? And secretly I don't know who
• 1:05:02
  the fuck any of you are. And he goes, He goes, I'm your
• 1:05:06
  granddad and today's your mother's birthday.
• 1:05:10
  Go ahead. So I'm standing.
• 1:05:11
  So I'm standing there in the procession and I don't know who
• 1:05:13
  anyone is really, you know, And it's just, it's been such a long
• 1:05:16
  time since I've been home and this guy comes by, no clue who
• 1:05:22
  he is. He says, I bet, I bet you don't
• 1:05:24
  know who I am, do you? No.
• 1:05:28
  And he goes, I'm your granddad and today's your mother's
• 1:05:32
  birthday. And I had no clue.
• 1:05:35
  Wow, bro. Like heavy emotional.
• 1:05:38
  Wow, heavy emotional stuff. So I just like crumble crying
• 1:05:44
  like a baby. I was already like had a couple
• 1:05:47
  of Valiums, maybe drank a couple of beers or something just to
• 1:05:49
  just to not to get like messed up or whatever.
• 1:05:52
  Just like I was like a anxiety mess.
• 1:05:55
  So I never knew my mother's family.
• 1:05:59
  I. Never knew what my mother's
• 1:06:00
  birthday was. So I buried my father.
• 1:06:03
  On my mother's birthday, I met my grandfather that, you know,
• 1:06:08
  one of my grandfather's not, not the grand, not the, not the
• 1:06:10
  gentleman that I called my grandfather and her, her father.
• 1:06:14
  So it was a lot of emotion, a lot of emotion.
• 1:06:17
  Here I am. I'm 2223 years old pursuing my
• 1:06:22
  my career. I'm a sous chef at a five star
• 1:06:24
  restaurant. Like, here you go.
• 1:06:25
  I'm still 23 years old. Yeah.
• 1:06:28
  And we've talked for an hour and a half about all this stuff.
• 1:06:29
  I'm like your child. I'm still a child.
• 1:06:32
  Your brain's not developed. So you're 26 years old, right?
• 1:06:34
  Like you like, I'm still my, my. Yeah.
• 1:06:37
  My prefrontal cortex is still spongy at this point.
• 1:06:40
  And and and. So I was just an emotional rag
• 1:06:44
  and I didn't know what to do. And at this point I was earning
• 1:06:47
  I think to like $28,000 a year to work 75 or 80 hours a week
• 1:06:52
  and just carry the load for the name of Hope cuisine and
• 1:06:56
  whatever. And that passes.
• 1:07:02
  I go home 4-5 weeks later, mom calls me and he says my Uncle
• 1:07:08
  John. He says, hey, apparently your
• 1:07:11
  dad had a life insurance policy and I'm surprised for sure.
• 1:07:17
  And so there's going to be a payout and I need your address.
• 1:07:25
  I need to make sure that we have all these details correct.
• 1:07:27
  What's your social? What's your this?
• 1:07:29
  Which is that all the stuff has to match up.
• 1:07:31
  And my so apparently my dad at some point through smoking 2
• 1:07:37
  packs of cigarettes a day, drinking 50 beers a day, doing
• 1:07:42
  God knows how many illicit drugs a day, found through his little
• 1:07:46
  bit of welfare money that he had to take out a life insurance
• 1:07:50
  policy. And I bless the heavens for
• 1:07:52
  whoever it was that introduced that to him, he did it had to
• 1:07:57
  have been by chance he goes to cash a check at the bank or
• 1:08:00
  something. And the, and the teller says,
• 1:08:02
  hey, by the way, dot dot dot, there's no way he, I don't know
• 1:08:07
  what happened. I don't know how he did it, but
• 1:08:08
  I think there's something really serendipitous kind of thing to
• 1:08:11
  happen. So I got a check for $100,000 at
• 1:08:15
  23 years old. I was about $30,000 in debt.
• 1:08:18
  I had, you know, my college thing.
• 1:08:22
  I hadn't paid for that. I wouldn't default on every loan
• 1:08:24
  I had in my life. I, I didn't have any ability to
• 1:08:26
  do it, but I was always like kind of rushing towards what's
• 1:08:29
  the next step because I know eventually I'm going to be able
• 1:08:31
  to pay it. I paid every debt I had, and I
• 1:08:36
  had gotten through the Grapevine a phone number for a woman who
• 1:08:44
  was renting a room in Yonville, California, named Susan Wickers.
• 1:08:51
  And so I rented a room from Susan.
• 1:08:55
  And even without having a job at French Laundry, I had rented the
• 1:08:59
  room. I had the capital to do so.
• 1:09:01
  And I'm like, do you have any contacts at the French Laundry?
• 1:09:06
  Because I already had the room. What year is this?
• 1:09:08
  2004, 2004? So this is the French Laundry
• 1:09:12
  cookbooks come out? Yeah.
• 1:09:13
  Bouchon is ish, yeah, per SE was opening about per SE open at
• 1:09:22
  that time, around that time. World's fifty best number one
• 1:09:25
  restaurant Ish. Two years in a row, right?
• 1:09:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They nailed that.
• 1:09:32
  Yeah. That's the era.
• 1:09:34
  Yeah. And that's when.
• 1:09:35
  You're there, right there. That's when you arrive.
• 1:09:37
  But I didn't get in yet, so I had to get a phone number to beg
• 1:09:42
  for a position. And basically what I did was
• 1:09:44
  much like the the Becoming a Chef book had told me to do
• 1:09:48
  apply yourself, show up, knock on the door.
• 1:09:52
  That's basically what I did. I was actually introduced
• 1:09:55
  through Susan to Devon. Now, who's the culinary Jedi?
• 1:10:00
  Yeah, everyone, not everyone knows Devin, but the people who
• 1:10:04
  know Devin love Devin. He's the best.
• 1:10:06
  And he hired me, you know, but it was later.
• 1:10:10
  He or or he allowed me. Thomas hired me, but Devin
• 1:10:14
  allowed me the opportunity to stash.
• 1:10:18
  So I finagled my way around this and that I stayed with Susan.
• 1:10:24
  I was able to get to the French Laundry.
• 1:10:27
  What is what is day One French Laundry for you when you walk
• 1:10:31
  in? What was that like?
• 1:10:32
  That that is at least. Because I'm, I'm assuming you've
• 1:10:34
  read the book. Yeah.
• 1:10:35
  You. You.
• 1:10:36
  You, you. You know the legend.
• 1:10:37
  Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  You're walking Every book, every article.
• 1:10:40
  Yeah. The soul of a chef.
• 1:10:41
  You know what? All the stories.
• 1:10:44
  You know everything. Yeah.
• 1:10:46
  And I'd heard all the. Yeah, folklore.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah, you're walking into the the Mecca.
• 1:10:52
  Bro, day one. Incredible, incredible,
• 1:10:57
  incredible. So, so one thing the building is
• 1:11:01
  the the historic building itself, built in 1893.
• 1:11:06
  Stone that came from the Napa River mortar, that's from the
• 1:11:10
  sand below your feet. Brilliant, beautiful, perfectly
• 1:11:16
  imperfect. So that's it's.
• 1:11:21
  Special At that point, they had built the kitchen onto the back.
• 1:11:26
  The original kitchen. When Don and Sally Schmidt ran,
• 1:11:29
  it was in the actual building. You must read 6 California
• 1:11:33
  kitchens that give you a good prequel.
• 1:11:36
  It's like this Star Wars thing. It's a prequel too.
• 1:11:38
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:11:39
  Thomas's generation of the restaurant.
• 1:11:42
  And then. And then there'll be another
• 1:11:44
  another one later at some point. But.
• 1:11:46
  But the copper door, you walk in the back door.
• 1:11:53
  It's copper, yeah. It's got a window and you open
• 1:11:57
  it. And I can remember the veal
• 1:11:58
  stock was on the stove and the way that we would run the
• 1:12:02
  extraction was very low, only high would it needed to be.
• 1:12:07
  So you didn't hear this industrial sound.
• 1:12:12
  And that sets the tone for everything.
• 1:12:15
  So the aroma of this beautiful veal stock with these fresh
• 1:12:19
  carrots and onions that had just been put into it and just this
• 1:12:23
  sweet smell, subtle calm wooden windows, carpets on the floor,
• 1:12:31
  professional stations, you know, all the equipment's on curbs.
• 1:12:35
  There's no casters, there's no feet, no stinky mop strings
• 1:12:40
  wrapped around things. You know, it was truly a
• 1:12:45
  professional kitchen with an it with a with a a residential feel
• 1:12:53
  incredible. But but, but I'd also dined
• 1:12:56
  there before that August the 4th August, August the 6th just use
• 1:13:00
  me was the 4th is another important day for me.
• 1:13:03
  August the 6th, 2004, I dined there.
• 1:13:07
  So I knew at that moment this is where I'm going.
• 1:13:09
  Let me tell you about that. Tell me I had lunch.
• 1:13:13
  I had lunch. I was able to finagle lunch
• 1:13:15
  somehow. Who are you eating with by
• 1:13:18
  yourself? No, with my girlfriend Hunter
• 1:13:21
  Emerson Holmes, incredible person.
• 1:13:24
  She's great. She's a Charlestonian and her
• 1:13:27
  family has deep roots in in in Edgefield, SC.
• 1:13:31
  She's an amazing person, so. You're 23 ish.
• 1:13:35
  Yeah, that. No, two days, two days before my
• 1:13:39
  24th birthday. Yeah, August 8th, it's my
• 1:13:43
  birthday. So I was with Hunter and we had,
• 1:13:46
  we were, we were there deciding if we wanted to move, see what
• 1:13:49
  we're going to do, whatever. It was going to be a really cool
• 1:13:53
  thing for us. It was a lot of great energy.
• 1:13:56
  You know, I had some capital to work with for the first time in
• 1:13:59
  my life, so I can make decisions.
• 1:14:03
  But after the meal, the meal was good.
• 1:14:08
  It wasn't relative. It was it was it was a great
• 1:14:12
  meal. Exceptional food, exceptional
• 1:14:15
  service, great wine. What made it for me was I was
• 1:14:20
  like, can I please see the kitchen?
• 1:14:21
  And there's a gentleman named Kevin Mackaway.
• 1:14:23
  Yeah. Who?
• 1:14:24
  Who's famous? Kevin's famous.
• 1:14:27
  Who took me down to the kitchen. He was my captain.
• 1:14:30
  And Thomas is there in between lunch and dinner services.
• 1:14:35
  And that dude is cutting Romano beans on the pass.
• 1:14:40
  And I can tell he's a little flustered.
• 1:14:42
  Nah, Nah, busy. He's he's a little perturbed, I
• 1:14:45
  should say, not floss or perturbed.
• 1:14:47
  He's he's banging somebody's meet some plus out because they
• 1:14:50
  can to get it done. Because I'm certain he at that
• 1:14:52
  point, he was the accountant, he was the human resources.
• 1:14:56
  He's, you know, greeting the guests.
• 1:14:58
  He's he's he's taking the guests for a walk through the garden
• 1:15:00
  and he he's cutting beans. The dude.
• 1:15:02
  Yeah. Yeah, the dude's got 30 hats,
• 1:15:04
  right? Yeah.
• 1:15:05
  And he's over here cutting Romano beans.
• 1:15:07
  But I just remember that. And Grant has a very similar
• 1:15:09
  story. About that, Yeah.
• 1:15:11
  With him sweeping the floor. Yeah.
• 1:15:12
  I'm here to see the chef. I am the chef.
• 1:15:13
  You're like, why are you sweeping the floor?
• 1:15:15
  Because I'm the chef. Yeah.
• 1:15:16
  Yeah, yeah, which is a very good lesson.
• 1:15:18
  And Thomas teaches those kind of lessons, right?
• 1:15:20
  But. And I'm just never forget that
• 1:15:24
  him cutting those Romano beans and he took the time and he laid
• 1:15:27
  his knife down and, you know, he says to me, how was lunch chef?
• 1:15:31
  And I said it was beautiful. Thank you so much.
• 1:15:35
  He said, I hear that you may come work with us soon.
• 1:15:37
  I'm working on it. That's what I said.
• 1:15:40
  And I was like so shy. And so I was a kid, you know,
• 1:15:44
  and and and I went about my way. I didn't want to keep him, you
• 1:15:47
  know, but he was AG total G man, you know, like.
• 1:15:51
  I had met him roughly maybe the year before.
• 1:15:54
  Yeah. And we, we, I sent very similar
• 1:15:56
  experience. I I ate dinner there.
• 1:15:58
  I, I I'll maybe in the show, I'll put up a photo of me
• 1:16:01
  standing in my suit in front of the sign.
• 1:16:04
  The French Laundry. Was it granddad's suit?
• 1:16:05
  Yeah. It was very too big.
• 1:16:07
  Right. We go, we go, we go, and we eat.
• 1:16:11
  And we, we had talked to Thomas before dinner and then he said,
• 1:16:15
  I'll come and eat. And then I was with a bunch of
• 1:16:17
  chefs. And then afterwards, we came
• 1:16:19
  into the kitchen, you know, kind of like where the service
• 1:16:22
  station is right there. Yeah.
• 1:16:24
  Yeah. And, you know, we're all chefs.
• 1:16:26
  There's like five of us there. And he comes up is like, how was
• 1:16:30
  dinner? Great chef.
• 1:16:31
  Like, we don't have anything. It's like, it's awkward silence.
• 1:16:34
  We got nothing to say. What do we say to the chef?
• 1:16:36
  Yeah, It's great. Great experience.
• 1:16:38
  Yeah. Yeah, so that was my prequel to
• 1:16:41
  starting. Yeah, so I already had been.
• 1:16:46
  What do you say? Proverbially roofied?
• 1:16:52
  Yeah, I was in love at that. Point like I'm like, this is my
• 1:16:56
  thing, like this is it, man, I love this.
• 1:16:59
  But so those are those the aromas.
• 1:17:01
  Were one thing and I remember that I'll never forget that like
• 1:17:05
  that, that aroma of that stock just simmering just beautiful.
• 1:17:09
  And we would take the pigs heads and tie them on the handle and
• 1:17:12
  we would braise the pigs head in the stock that reduced overnight
• 1:17:16
  yeah. Or you know that was like a it's
• 1:17:18
  like of course for the for the gelatin you'd braise the pig
• 1:17:21
  head in the in the in the Beal stock that's cooking overnight.
• 1:17:25
  Yeah, OK, just these things. But it was like, not because you
• 1:17:27
  have this thing, this cooking. Yeah, it was.
• 1:17:30
  It was also rudimentary. Yeah, it was also rudimentary.
• 1:17:33
  It was beautiful cookery. It was this classic cookery.
• 1:17:37
  Yeah. You have this stock simmering.
• 1:17:41
  You don't need to turn the oven on.
• 1:17:43
  Tie. We would tie the torchon.
• 1:17:45
  Yeah. Put it in, let it simmer
• 1:17:48
  overnight. Bring it the next morning.
• 1:17:51
  Re torque it. Yeah.
• 1:17:53
  Chill it, you know, but there's a lot of those little things,
• 1:17:56
  but that's a romance of cookery, right?
• 1:17:58
  Yeah. So that to me that's what I
• 1:17:59
  love. I love that.
• 1:18:01
  But so then but so that day, let me I I apologize.
• 1:18:04
  I I Southern boy I get I'm going to get out on start talking too
• 1:18:08
  much. I'm going to get so that.
• 1:18:10
  Day we go around, and so my job that day was to be the comedy of
• 1:18:14
  the of the Pausonier, and I was going to be the comedy of the
• 1:18:18
  Pausonier for the next three months.
• 1:18:20
  That was my commitment to the restaurant and I go in and my
• 1:18:26
  job is to make the poem maxims, which is like, not easy.
• 1:18:34
  For people that don't know, can you explain the process of what
• 1:18:36
  that is so they know how not easy it is?
• 1:18:38
  Yeah, well, today is very different than then, and there's
• 1:18:41
  been many iterations over the years.
• 1:18:43
  And that's what I love about cooking is the evolution and the
• 1:18:47
  the genesis and the you know, what era we how do we do it
• 1:18:51
  then? You know, and Elba Lee does a
• 1:18:52
  lot of that. If you look at their old books
• 1:18:55
  version, you know, 2002, right, You know, and it's like that one
• 1:19:00
  is that one. But so that era, it was probably
• 1:19:06
  the most difficult era to make them and not my favorite from a
• 1:19:11
  flavor perspective, but visually was striking.
• 1:19:14
  What we would do was we would take candy baked potatoes and
• 1:19:19
  slice them on a machine slicer, punch them with a 50mm punch and
• 1:19:25
  I believe there were probably about 15 punches per.
• 1:19:35
  So on a sill pad, on a full size sill pad, you could probably get
• 1:19:39
  5, maybe 6, probably 5 if I think about it per we need 60.
• 1:19:49
  Arduous process, man, just impossible.
• 1:19:52
  And I never made them. So then you would take them the
• 1:19:54
  raw punches which are oxidizing rapidly and you would, you would
• 1:19:58
  brush the sill pass with clarified butter.
• 1:20:02
  And it talks about this in the book, but it's not different in
• 1:20:04
  the book. The original book, the Under
• 1:20:07
  Pressure book, has a great palmaxine.
• 1:20:09
  And then there's an image of the current Palmac scene in the TfL
• 1:20:13
  per Se book. That is the.
• 1:20:15
  The one that's the one took 20 years for me to work on it from
• 1:20:19
  my day one, yeah. It was a long time, still
• 1:20:23
  mastering. Every.
• 1:20:23
  Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.
• 1:20:25
  It takes some time, but so but so.
• 1:20:28
  And you would lay methodically layout the potatoes, and then
• 1:20:32
  you would brush the top layer. So you brush the sill pat,
• 1:20:35
  season the sill pat, brush the top sill pat, season the sill
• 1:20:39
  pat. And then you would lay them out
• 1:20:40
  and you would sandwich it and then slow bake them.
• 1:20:43
  But we didn't have convection ovens.
• 1:20:45
  We did not have rationales. We did.
• 1:20:47
  Those tools didn't exist for us. Then we're cooking in still
• 1:20:52
  ovens. Everything was cooked in still
• 1:20:54
  ovens, which is, you know, is a challenge.
• 1:20:58
  I'd rather simmer on top, you know, put a diffuser under it,
• 1:21:01
  simmer on top. I mean, it's still of it, it's
• 1:21:03
  just not good. So it probably took me 5 hours.
• 1:21:10
  If you needed 60, how many would you make?
• 1:21:14
  I'm sure you lost a portion, a percentage.
• 1:21:16
  Yeah, because I had to figure out that they're burning around
• 1:21:18
  the sides. And then once they set, you have
• 1:21:20
  to flip them and you have to, like, it took me a while to
• 1:21:24
  figure out. Just flip the whole soap out,
• 1:21:25
  you know, or rotate the fan. And, you know, it's just, it was
• 1:21:28
  a thing. I had no clue because I'd never
• 1:21:30
  cooked something like that in my life.
• 1:21:31
  So I probably made 180 and it didn't matter.
• 1:21:37
  Just make that perfectly. This is the expectation.
• 1:21:41
  And I remember a dear friend of mine to this day, Jiu jitsu guy.
• 1:21:47
  Good, good dude. Walter Abrams, Columbia dude
• 1:21:54
  from South Florida, just tough as nails, good guy.
• 1:22:00
  He is a chef to party in the Faucina station.
• 1:22:03
  And I had barely made enough. I don't even know.
• 1:22:07
  They're ordering for overages. I don't know.
• 1:22:08
  I have no clue what's happening at this point.
• 1:22:11
  And he comes in and he grabs 1. He snapped in half and he eats
• 1:22:15
  it. And he's like, we need to work
• 1:22:19
  on this. And it was like, it was like,
• 1:22:22
  you know, I'm like, God, I don't have 49 now.
• 1:22:25
  Yeah, I already, I already shorted you 10, you know, But
• 1:22:30
  but it all worked out and we all become good friends at some
• 1:22:32
  point, you know, it was it was. That that was day one.
• 1:22:37
  Yeah, that was day one and day 2 through what, three, 350 days a
• 1:22:47
  year for for 20 years, you know? Yeah.
• 1:22:49
  What is that? The year to mask it?
• 1:22:50
  Yeah, Yeah. I don't know.
• 1:22:52
  A lot of days, yeah. We're all very exhilarating.
• 1:22:56
  Yeah, yeah. Is there a day that stands out
• 1:22:58
  more than any? I'm sure there's a lot of those,
• 1:23:01
  but is there, is there a day that you can share with us that
• 1:23:03
  like really stands out? Well, so there's OK.
• 1:23:07
  Well, well, we need to zoom out a bit.
• 1:23:10
  So in my career, French Laundry slash per SE, there were 4
• 1:23:14
  fundamental pivots. So it's like, how can you work
• 1:23:18
  at 1 restaurant for 20 years? Well, I had 50 jobs.
• 1:23:23
  You know, I had 50 jobs. I had a lot of goals.
• 1:23:26
  So each one of those jobs and each one of those goals had
• 1:23:29
  those pivotable pivotal moments and, and, and that were able to
• 1:23:34
  hit those, it was those levels. And, and you know, so my first
• 1:23:39
  two years, so I went from comedy to pastry.
• 1:23:42
  Not a lot of people know that there was a, something happened
• 1:23:46
  on pastry. Someone was not able to come to
• 1:23:47
  work ever again. And I worked pastry for two
• 1:23:53
  months. So I mentioned that the other
• 1:23:55
  day, best thing ever happened because I had two months of
• 1:23:59
  front row seats to the show where all I had to do was scoop
• 1:24:03
  ice cream. My responsibility was make some
• 1:24:05
  cookies and scoop ice cream. Not that it was that simple, but
• 1:24:07
  my responsibility was that simple.
• 1:24:09
  The team, which I was not a pastry guy.
• 1:24:12
  I had some pastry experience, but so I got to watch service.
• 1:24:15
  Yeah. So I had front front row seats
• 1:24:17
  to that service and that was incredible.
• 1:24:20
  And so then Thomas comes to me about two months later and he
• 1:24:26
  says, hey, do you know you have you have good experience?
• 1:24:30
  Do you think you can butcher? Yeah.
• 1:24:34
  I'm like, yeah, yeah, I could cut some meat, no problem.
• 1:24:37
  I got this. Got this.
• 1:24:40
  Welcome to the pain train, my friend.
• 1:24:42
  And and so if you if you think about that, if you you know, as
• 1:24:47
  chefs, we all can French of the rock of lamb.
• 1:24:51
  We could all probably cut a lamb side of a couple different ways.
• 1:24:55
  We can all probably cut a rabbit.
• 1:24:59
  But can you do consistently for time amongst everything else you
• 1:25:07
  have to do consistently? Boom, boom, boom.
• 1:25:11
  It's a Pymdis. Yeah.
• 1:25:15
  Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally.
• 1:25:16
  The the order of operations. Yeah, we talked about that the
• 1:25:19
  other day. Yeah.
• 1:25:20
  So. Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally
• 1:25:27
  so parentheses. Exponents, division, arithmetic.
• 1:25:32
  Nope. No, wait, dear aunt.
• 1:25:34
  Yeah. Division arithmetic.
• 1:25:36
  Multiplication, subtraction. Addition, subtraction.
• 1:25:40
  Yeah, like that, right? Yeah.
• 1:25:42
  But we talked about how it's the order of operations when you
• 1:25:45
  work. Too correct.
• 1:25:46
  It's about having a system, yeah, to work from here to
• 1:25:49
  there, yeah, left to right, right to left, left to right,
• 1:25:51
  right to left, so on and so. Forth, yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:54
  But that's good one. You have to do one thing first
• 1:25:56
  before you get to Step 2, correct, Right?
• 1:25:57
  Correct staging, right? Like.
• 1:26:00
  Everything is staging and like, how do you do it?
• 1:26:02
  And at that point, we're butchering in a hot kitchen and
• 1:26:05
  very hot kitchen, open windows, you can smell the beautiful
• 1:26:08
  flowers. You can hear the birds.
• 1:26:11
  It was like, it was like Willy Wonka, man.
• 1:26:13
  Yeah, it was a trip. It was great.
• 1:26:16
  But so that was impactful. And I think that everything that
• 1:26:19
  I did throughout that position set me up for everything else
• 1:26:22
  for the rest of my life. Yeah.
• 1:26:23
  That was the most in my career that that cutting me at the
• 1:26:29
  French Laundry was the most impactful position I've ever had
• 1:26:34
  in my life to that point. That served me better throughout
• 1:26:39
  my life, and it was a lot because the structure of the
• 1:26:43
  expectations, not the structure of the program.
• 1:26:47
  I developed the structure for the program.
• 1:26:49
  And that was with blessing from Thomas because it hadn't
• 1:26:55
  necessarily been set up yet, but he allowed me the ability to use
• 1:27:01
  the resources that we had to do that.
• 1:27:04
  And that's a very important thing about Thomas, is that, you
• 1:27:07
  know, I worked with Thomas for 20 years.
• 1:27:11
  I did not cook with him a lot. I.
• 1:27:19
  Didn't see. Him cook.
• 1:27:21
  A lot it wasn't. About that, it was a much more
• 1:27:25
  important thing that he provided for us.
• 1:27:28
  He would definitely come through and throw down a demo for Anya
• 1:27:30
  Lodi or and tell some stories and there would be some things
• 1:27:33
  like that. It wasn't that he wasn't present
• 1:27:35
  or it's not that. That's not a negative thing that
• 1:27:37
  I'm saying what he provided for us.
• 1:27:39
  And if you think about it that I mean, you have per SE French
• 1:27:42
  Laundry that the menu changes every single day.
• 1:27:46
  There's there's a minimal approval process for recipes.
• 1:27:50
  There's a minimal approval process for menus.
• 1:27:53
  If minimal, if none actually the the weights put on the shoulders
• 1:27:57
  of the chef, the cuisines in the sushi executive sous chefs.
• 1:28:02
  It's not Thomas is not approving.
• 1:28:04
  Recipes he'll. Taste food he will definitely
• 1:28:07
  observe when he's there he's not always there he doesn't see
• 1:28:10
  everything all the time So what he.
• 1:28:12
  Was able to. Do and what influences me
• 1:28:14
  greatly today is he developed philosophy of cooking and we
• 1:28:20
  know that from the essays in the first book.
• 1:28:23
  All of the essays in the first book are the initial beginnings
• 1:28:28
  of the philosophy, the importance of staff meal, right,
• 1:28:31
  the importance of rabbits. Those things teach us lessons.
• 1:28:35
  And once you buy into those lessons, you're for you must buy
• 1:28:39
  into those lessons. It's not, it's a non negotiable.
• 1:28:41
  You can't deny the staff meal needs to be good for your team.
• 1:28:45
  You cannot deny that once you kill that rabbit, you must serve
• 1:28:49
  that rabbit. You're you're a hack if you
• 1:28:51
  don't right? Or what we say, what's the old
• 1:28:53
  thing? The, the, the schoemacher,
• 1:28:55
  right. Like that.
• 1:28:55
  You can't, you can't like you just can't do that and.
• 1:28:58
  And so he provided. Financial resources for us
• 1:29:03
  budgetary resources for for China for product Never once
• 1:29:10
  have I ever. Bartered went back.
• 1:29:18
  And forth, what's the word negotiated price for a product?
• 1:29:23
  First thing I do, somebody brings me something that's
• 1:29:25
  compelling. How consistently can you give it
• 1:29:29
  to me? OK, that's that's that's
• 1:29:32
  important. Where's it from?
• 1:29:35
  Who's it from? How consistently can you give it
• 1:29:37
  to me? Then how much does it cost?
• 1:29:41
  OK, so there's a story that Thomas tells about the. 80s When
• 1:29:47
  Raquel closed, there was a. Big crash.
• 1:29:49
  In the 80s stock market crash, it really crumbled a lot of
• 1:29:52
  things there. And there was a chef that had a
• 1:29:55
  bakery and the chef had the best croissants in New York City.
• 1:30:00
  He used the best European butter, had the best flour,
• 1:30:05
  flour to sell like whatever and you know which flutter cell is
• 1:30:07
  easy for us today, but back then.
• 1:30:09
  It was some special right? So he made the.
• 1:30:11
  Best croissants in the city? There's a stock market crash.
• 1:30:17
  So what did he do? Did he did he compromise the
• 1:30:20
  integrity of his ingredients? He has to have the same price or
• 1:30:25
  maybe even more at that point. He did not compromise the
• 1:30:29
  integrity ingredients. He reduced the size of his
• 1:30:32
  croissant by 10%. That's brilliant.
• 1:30:36
  So that's philosophy. Doesn't that say a lot?
• 1:30:40
  I would love to serve this beef to all my guests.
• 1:30:42
  But you know what? I can't serve 6 oz.
• 1:30:45
  But I can serve 5 oz. And it's exceptional.
• 1:30:48
  They'll enjoy it if I guess once more we'll give them more.
• 1:30:53
  But that's one out of 25. Or whatever.
• 1:30:55
  So those those kind of lessons that we.
• 1:30:58
  Learned from Thomas. We're so much more important
• 1:31:00
  than a border leis recipe. Yeah, it's irrelevant.
• 1:31:04
  The borderline is irrelevant. He he was shaping minds and
• 1:31:06
  philosophies. Yeah.
• 1:31:07
  Which? Which?
• 1:31:08
  I agree with, by the way, 100% that is.
• 1:31:12
  And I use Thomas a lot as as an example on the podcast because
• 1:31:16
  I'll say people like Thomas or Renee or Ferran operate as the
• 1:31:19
  exception of the rule because of how they think.
• 1:31:22
  That's what makes them great. That's why.
• 1:31:24
  That's why he is who he is and Ferrans who he is and Bokus or
• 1:31:27
  whoever is that they operate intellectually, philosophically.
• 1:31:33
  Differently from everyone. Else and that's what makes them
• 1:31:35
  exceptional. I agree.
• 1:31:37
  I agree. Yeah, it's not.
• 1:31:39
  About dollars and cents. And that, and that's what, you
• 1:31:41
  know, in my company today when I work with people, the minute
• 1:31:45
  they start trying to split pennies, I already know that
• 1:31:48
  this is probably not going to be a good conversation.
• 1:31:49
  It's not going to work out for me because I manage, I manage
• 1:31:52
  finances and resources with my knife, with how I sell things,
• 1:31:56
  with how I right menus, how how you.
• 1:32:01
  How do you utilize your trimmings?
• 1:32:03
  You know, Seth's famous saying was they used to call Seth the
• 1:32:07
  accountant with the butcher's knife and he would say buy it
• 1:32:10
  once, sell it thrice. That was one thing.
• 1:32:14
  And so that resonates, buy one, sell it thrice.
• 1:32:16
  But meaning you're using 100% of your trimmings.
• 1:32:18
  And the other thing he would say?
• 1:32:20
  Is my trash cans are very light around here.
• 1:32:24
  We didn't waste, we didn't squander, and that's the same.
• 1:32:26
  Thing about the story of rabbits.
• 1:32:29
  Do not squander the life if you had to.
• 1:32:31
  If you had to snatch that rabbit out with your hand, slit his.
• 1:32:39
  Throat, break his neck, whatever, kill it.
• 1:32:42
  Are you going to let any of it go to waste?
• 1:32:45
  That liver had better be in Pate my friend.
• 1:32:47
  Those shoulders had better be soft and braised.
• 1:32:50
  That saddle had better be cooked over the fire on the Newt and
• 1:32:53
  just serve to just this beautiful au Pont, you know,
• 1:32:55
  that's, you know, braise the legs and cream and serve with
• 1:32:58
  noodles. Make the most out of that animal
• 1:33:02
  that's possible. I want to ask what was it like?
• 1:33:07
  The day that you found out you were going to be the chef,
• 1:33:11
  that's that's a really. Really good one.
• 1:33:13
  I can almost remember the date, it was probably October of of.
• 1:33:19
  20. 12 or so well, so Thomas is is very good at at checking in
• 1:33:29
  with the upper level leadership. You know, at sometimes.
• 1:33:32
  Then this is definitely not a negative thing I'm saying about
• 1:33:34
  him at all. If he's got 50 chefs at Per SE,
• 1:33:37
  he's got 50 chefs at at French Laundry, including Bouchon and
• 1:33:40
  everywhere else that he has. Well, yeah, I'm speaking, yeah.
• 1:33:43
  So you can see me egotistically only speaking from.
• 1:33:45
  Finite, but yeah, but those other restaurants as well.
• 1:33:47
  He's got a. 1000 chefs Army among amongst other employees
• 1:33:51
  big job yeah huge yeah so he's definitely he's he's the upper
• 1:33:56
  level leadership members. He is very he's very good with
• 1:34:04
  checking in on yeah. What are your plans?
• 1:34:06
  What are your goals? What are your you know where do
• 1:34:10
  you want to be in one year? Where do you want to be in five
• 1:34:13
  years and I told him every single time when I was in New
• 1:34:16
  York City I mean at this point I think I had two children that
• 1:34:20
  were born in Manhattan. You know I had developed a.
• 1:34:25
  Family and we were living. Our best lives.
• 1:34:27
  But I always said I want to be the chef of French Laundry.
• 1:34:33
  Take Me Home, Take Me Home. That's what I was talking about.
• 1:34:37
  I'm just waiting for you, man. Like let me know because I'm
• 1:34:40
  ready. And while I'm waiting, I'm
• 1:34:44
  developing my skill. And honestly, I was able to
• 1:34:47
  develop it out kind of outside of his, his direct eye, which
• 1:34:53
  was very powerful because you know when the cats are away, the
• 1:34:56
  mice will play. And if you're responsible mice,
• 1:34:58
  you come up with some really good stuff.
• 1:35:00
  My goal was always to respect the business, respect the guest,
• 1:35:02
  respect the team. It was never egotistical respect
• 1:35:06
  to animals, but respect to product.
• 1:35:08
  Be responsible. I want to run a great business,
• 1:35:12
  so I had amassed a very. Very.
• 1:35:16
  Good skill set and it was evident at some point that
• 1:35:19
  someone was going to become the next chef.
• 1:35:21
  Timothy had decided that he wanted to leave.
• 1:35:23
  And I said, look, it's this is my opportunity.
• 1:35:27
  And it would definitely was not an ultimatum, but it's like, if
• 1:35:30
  it's not here, I need to go elsewhere.
• 1:35:34
  And Thomas, I don't even know if we had that conversation, but it
• 1:35:39
  was evident. I'd kind of started to branch
• 1:35:41
  out a little bit and have conversations with people.
• 1:35:43
  And he knew. I discussed it with him
• 1:35:44
  beforehand. And he's like, no, you know
• 1:35:48
  what? I think it's time for you to
• 1:35:49
  come home. Yeah.
• 1:35:51
  And it was I left that meeting like cloud 9.
• 1:35:57
  I was like a, a Sultan on a flying carpet, dude.
• 1:36:00
  And I'm just like going through the sky, like I'm just living my
• 1:36:02
  best life. And I remember going home and,
• 1:36:05
  and speaking with my wife. It was just like, we're going
• 1:36:08
  home. She's actually from Yellville.
• 1:36:11
  So or she, her, her, her mother lives in Yellville.
• 1:36:16
  She's from. Napa, but.
• 1:36:18
  It was incredible. It was incredible because we get
• 1:36:22
  to take the grandkids home. We get to take, we get, we're
• 1:36:24
  going home, man, we're going home.
• 1:36:26
  It's happening. Yeah.
• 1:36:28
  You know, it was great, really great.
• 1:36:30
  So you're the chef now for the next 13.
• 1:36:32
  Years and French Laundry towards the end.
• 1:36:36
  Also French Laundry per SE, correct?
• 1:36:38
  What was the next 13 years like? Well, you know, it was.
• 1:36:42
  It was. A lot.
• 1:36:43
  More mentorship than cooking. And you know, I don't, I won't
• 1:36:47
  go into a lot of crazy details about, you know, I, I could, we
• 1:36:50
  can talk for five hours about the stories, but I, I think
• 1:36:53
  really I transitioned from being, from being, you know,
• 1:36:59
  line chef, sous chef. Executive sous Chef.
• 1:37:02
  Chef, the cuisine, now everything is my responsibility.
• 1:37:05
  So I put on my business hats and I need to run the teams like,
• 1:37:12
  like I'm going to run the business and make them
• 1:37:15
  successful. My, my number one priority was
• 1:37:17
  to ensure that all of my team members at all times, regardless
• 1:37:21
  of rank, were successful and fulfilled in their positions.
• 1:37:25
  Of course, it did not always happen.
• 1:37:27
  And if, and you know, we went through the, that was when we
• 1:37:31
  went into the kitchen. They were very, there were some
• 1:37:33
  very impactful members of, of the team there into the old
• 1:37:37
  kitchen. Elliott Bell who who was
• 1:37:40
  incredible, Jose Coleen, Junior Joe Papage, Mike Wallace, there
• 1:37:45
  were a lot of member Johnny Music County, a lot of really
• 1:37:48
  good members who helped support me through that as we molded
• 1:37:51
  that business model into where we needed to move forward to do
• 1:37:56
  the new kitchen. We broke ground of the new
• 1:37:59
  kitchen I think at the end of 2013 ish.
• 1:38:05
  Go check the calendar. And then we, and then we
• 1:38:09
  developed a $15 million kitchen. That was an amazing experience.
• 1:38:13
  I learned so much about design, layout, floor sinks and
• 1:38:20
  convenience outlets and, and you know, like electric load and all
• 1:38:24
  those things. But so, but really it was more
• 1:38:26
  about developing teams. And I think the most important
• 1:38:29
  thing that I learned in that process was working with the
• 1:38:32
  gardens. And I can speak for hours about
• 1:38:35
  that. That is truly the philosophy of
• 1:38:37
  my cuisine, is working with Mother Nature and being a
• 1:38:39
  conduit for the ingredient from the ground, respecting the
• 1:38:43
  farmer, taking it to the kitchen and processing it respectfully,
• 1:38:48
  preserving natural flavor and serving it to the guests in a
• 1:38:51
  way that they can recognize. That is the philosophy of my
• 1:38:54
  cuisine. That is it.
• 1:38:55
  And of course, the philosophy that I've learned from Thomas.
• 1:38:57
  But, you know, but over that time, that's kind of how it all
• 1:39:01
  wraps up And and at some point, actually, I had worked myself
• 1:39:07
  out of position and it became evident it was time for me to
• 1:39:12
  move on. The my job was done.
• 1:39:19
  Next chapter. Next chapter, baby.
• 1:39:21
  Yeah. You know that's.
• 1:39:22
  It yeah, if if. If, if, if, if I've done my work
• 1:39:26
  and my team is there to do it. Yeah.
• 1:39:28
  What what's left for me is to move forward.
• 1:39:30
  There's like a Taoist expression.
• 1:39:32
  It's. Allowed to in the Dow dejing, it
• 1:39:35
  says when the masters work is done, he could look back and the
• 1:39:39
  people will say amazing. We did it ourselves.
• 1:39:42
  Exactly right. Exactly.
• 1:39:44
  And we did it on our own. Yeah.
• 1:39:45
  Yeah, yeah. It's like the the bump, the the,
• 1:39:48
  the guides on the when you go bowling.
• 1:39:49
  Yeah, yeah, I just just went in every time.
• 1:39:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No guides necessary.
• 1:39:54
  Yeah. You know, I wanna, I wanna talk
• 1:39:57
  about the book really quick. I'm, I'm thinking back which
• 1:40:00
  one? My book and your book, The
• 1:40:03
  French Laundry Person, but also the first one I wrote.
• 1:40:05
  Yeah, Yeah. So the first book that I wrote.
• 1:40:08
  This is like a little. Easter egg for people that have
• 1:40:11
  the book or you know, follow chef's PSA and have been for a
• 1:40:13
  while. Is there's a there's a chef's
• 1:40:17
  PSA in the original red Book how not to be the biggest idiot in
• 1:40:20
  the kitchen. So don't mix your salt and
• 1:40:22
  pepper. And in there it's there's a
• 1:40:25
  little narrative as to why not to do it.
• 1:40:27
  And then at the end of it, I say, but a great chef once told
• 1:40:32
  me the most fun you'll have is working in those kitchens where
• 1:40:34
  you mix your salt and pepper. Yes, Sir.
• 1:40:36
  I never said who that who said that to you?
• 1:40:38
  But for people listening, that was you.
• 1:40:39
  That was you. You told me that years ago.
• 1:40:41
  And I was like, yeah, OK, that's funny.
• 1:40:43
  It was a good time. It was a good time, right?
• 1:40:45
  It was a good time. You know, those are, that's the
• 1:40:47
  most fun you'll have in those kitchens where you're mixing the
• 1:40:49
  salt and pepper and seasoning everything over the plancha.
• 1:40:51
  Like yeah, season the plancha before you lay the chair down,
• 1:40:54
  right? For sure.
• 1:40:57
  But I remember we talked years ago.
• 1:40:59
  This is. Probably before the per SE
• 1:41:01
  French Laundry came came out the book and and we had a long
• 1:41:05
  conversation about liaisons and I remember you talking about
• 1:41:08
  Roux and really, I don't want to say geeking out, but like you,
• 1:41:11
  you were blowing my mind back then when you were talking about
• 1:41:13
  Roux and you there's so much. I mean, we could talk about the
• 1:41:17
  book in general. And by the way, I would say that
• 1:41:19
  The French Laundry cookbook changed everyone's lives, but
• 1:41:23
  the new one, The French Laundry. Per SE, I felt like for.
• 1:41:26
  Me, it's even better for me. And there's so much updated
• 1:41:30
  stories in there about the fish brining and you know, you talk
• 1:41:34
  about that and there's also a lot of things that when the book
• 1:41:39
  came out, based on our conversation, then also when the
• 1:41:42
  book came out, I took like 5 things, immediately implemented
• 1:41:44
  them in the kitchen. It was like, yeah, the pre high.
• 1:41:46
  That was like, OK, great. There it is.
• 1:41:48
  What is it, 6% or something? 2 percent, 2%, Yeah, there was
• 1:41:52
  the veg Blanc. Yeah, right.
• 1:41:53
  I was like, OK, we're doing this.
• 1:41:54
  So we're cooking our artichokes in it or yeah, turnips or
• 1:41:57
  whatever. It works.
• 1:41:58
  It works. It was great.
• 1:41:59
  Yeah. And the fish brining, the whole,
• 1:42:01
  the whole story on fish brining, I immediately implemented that
• 1:42:06
  because we weren't brining all our fish before that.
• 1:42:08
  So I said this is great starting today, this is what we're doing.
• 1:42:11
  Yeah. And so it was the pre high, the
• 1:42:14
  fish brining there was a lot, but those were like the three
• 1:42:17
  biggest ones that after I read the book, I called all the chefs
• 1:42:20
  in the office and said, OK, here's the new stand.
• 1:42:22
  Start to work on this. Yeah, right away.
• 1:42:24
  Yeah, we don't. What do we do with it?
• 1:42:25
  Like, don't worry about. We'll we'll figure it out.
• 1:42:27
  Yeah. Jacob, my chef, the cuisine at
• 1:42:29
  the time. I think you know Jacob.
• 1:42:30
  Yeah, he's a good cook. Right away.
• 1:42:32
  He's like, yeah, I knew about pre.
• 1:42:33
  I was like, why the fuck didn't you say anything?
• 1:42:34
  You've known about this this whole time.
• 1:42:36
  Waited for me to read the book. Yeah, but it was a great book.
• 1:42:39
  And even the the updated big pot blanching.
• 1:42:43
  Yeah, right. So what is that the salt in
• 1:42:45
  there now? It's like it's officially
• 1:42:46
  measured percentage. Yeah.
• 1:42:48
  And also in the ice bath. Yeah.
• 1:42:50
  Yeah. Yeah, it's great.
• 1:42:51
  And it and it's such a great. Revision, slash, update to the
• 1:42:55
  to the original. So if people don't have it,
• 1:42:57
  evolution, yeah, it's great. It's a great book.
• 1:42:59
  Yeah, but while we wrap up, I mean, we we we need to do a part
• 1:43:04
  too. I agree.
• 1:43:05
  I agree. Yeah, we kind of dropped off.
• 1:43:07
  Yeah, we got some more. This is great, but the last
• 1:43:10
  question I'll ask you if you had a Mount Rushmore.
• 1:43:12
  Of chefs out there and. But I'm gonna change it up
• 1:43:15
  because I always ask people there Mount Rushmore, I want to
• 1:43:16
  change it up a little bit on you.
• 1:43:17
  Yeah, if you had to give people that, so many people came
• 1:43:20
  through your kitchen that you might not be on Mount Rushmore
• 1:43:24
  today. But you see them.
• 1:43:26
  Soon to be on the Mount Rushmore.
• 1:43:27
  So if you had to give 2 that you think are on Mount Rushmore and
• 1:43:30
  two that you think will be on Mount Rushmore, OK, that helps.
• 1:43:33
  That helps me because there's some individuals.
• 1:43:35
  Who may not even still be cooking.
• 1:43:37
  Yeah. Who are the best cooks I've ever
• 1:43:38
  worked with? Yeah, But so Mount Rushmore and.
• 1:43:42
  And this only has to do only has to do with their technical
• 1:43:49
  ability, their sensibility philosophy and their creativity.
• 1:43:56
  The best chefs that I've ever worked with in my life was from
• 1:44:01
  that perspective have will have to be Eli Kaime.
• 1:44:09
  Number. Number one.
• 1:44:10
  And and this is all from the same.
• 1:44:12
  Camp, we're always talking about this is TfL stuff because we're
• 1:44:14
  in the same the same realm. Eli Kaime is, is probably the
• 1:44:20
  most creative, artistic person I've ever, ever, ever ever
• 1:44:24
  worked with. Paul Lebrandt, the king, the
• 1:44:31
  king of creativity and emotion. Yeah, I freaking love Paul.
• 1:44:38
  He's the best. He's so good, so creative,
• 1:44:43
  charismatic, just a good dude. So Eli Paul and I think they
• 1:44:48
  would be the kind of godfathers. Yeah, in that.
• 1:44:52
  And then there's a gentleman named Tyler Vorse, Who who who's
• 1:44:56
  kind of. On the outskirts.
• 1:44:58
  Right now he's he's out there incredibly creative,
• 1:45:04
  disciplined, the most bad ass line cook you've ever, ever
• 1:45:09
  worked with. The dude is a machine, but he's
• 1:45:11
  also very creative. And then a friend of ours, the
• 1:45:18
  probably most artistic person I've ever worked with is Matthew
• 1:45:21
  Peters. Yeah.
• 1:45:23
  Peters is G Yeah, yes, yeah. But I mean, you know, it's, it's
• 1:45:27
  4 is. Hard, hard to do.
• 1:45:29
  Yeah. So many.
• 1:45:30
  Yeah. And you just kind of hit me.
• 1:45:31
  I hadn't really thought about it, but.
• 1:45:33
  But. But there's a few that in my
• 1:45:35
  heart, they're like deer. And so if my.
• 1:45:38
  My Mia Keepo out there. I love you guys.
• 1:45:41
  I'm sorry if I I love all of you the same.
• 1:45:44
  Yeah. You know, my guys are with me.
• 1:45:46
  My excuse? Me, not guys.
• 1:45:47
  My my team, that's with me. Guys, guys all all around, they
• 1:45:51
  know I love them. They they know I love them.
• 1:45:55
  We we have. Done so much good work together.
• 1:45:58
  I'm ego free in the kitchen and we we, there's no hierarchy.
• 1:46:02
  Last question, Chef, yes. Where can people find you?
• 1:46:07
  That's easy. Franklin.
• 1:46:10
  Tennessee. Franklin, TN Instagram page.
• 1:46:13
  Chef David Breeden at Instagram. I've got, you know, my little.
• 1:46:17
  Company, we'll talk about that on on phase two, I guess.
• 1:46:19
  Yeah, we'll have to do Part 2. Yeah.
• 1:46:21
  david@guestdrivenhospitality.com. Awesome brother.
• 1:46:25
  Yeah. It's good to see you.
• 1:46:26
  It's been Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's been as.
• 1:46:28
  Long as this was fun, all right. Good deal.
• 1:46:30
  Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Episode if you want to support
• 1:46:32
  the show. If you're watching on YouTube,
• 1:46:34
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• 1:46:35
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• 1:46:38
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• 1:46:40
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• 1:46:43
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• 1:46:47
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  We'll see you next week at the Porno Music No small Andre in
• 1:47:03
  the kitchen. Mix it.
• 1:47:04
  Drop the. Chef Dallas, No fiction stirring
• 1:47:06
  up the beats.