Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Finding Balance: Chef & Owner Duo Sarah Heard and Nathan Lemley Ep 139

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Finding Balance: Chef & Owner Duo Sarah Heard and Nathan Lemley Ep 139 · Chef's PSA Podcast

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Hello chefs, this is Chef's PSA podcast.
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I'm your host Andre De Tero. On today's episode I have Sarah
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Heard and Nathan Lemley who are the Co owners of Foreign and
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Domestic and Commerce Cafe in Austin and Lockhart, TX.
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In today's episode we talk about the importance of using good
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ingredients, what it's like working together as a couple and
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the transition of going from chef to restaurant owner.
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I think you'll enjoy this one. Stay tuned.
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Cook hard, stay sharp. So I work my new shirt for you.
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I don't know if you can read that.
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You see what it says? Yeah.
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And I know you guys serve brunch.
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And I know. And actually it says Buckfront
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for people that are just listening.
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You guys serve a great brunch. Like, I don't like serving
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brunch. I hated brunch.
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It was like the bane of my existence when I was a chef.
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But you guys do a great brunch actually.
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And I'm thinking the last time that I was there, I don't know
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if you still served them. You have these like, amazing.
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Was it like pop overs? Yeah, the pop overs.
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We still do the pop overs. They'll live on forever, yeah.
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I wanted to talk about a lot of things.
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So one of the one of the most important things, I think it's
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something that you guys are extremely passionate about is
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what things that I think you do really good job with that
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foreign and domestic is incorporating great products and
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also respecting the ingredients, right?
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Yeah, that's definitely a big part of our ethos.
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Yeah, when we work together, I'm.
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I'm trying to think way back when, I remember one of the
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cooks had left some chickens in the sink and the next day, I
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mean you couldn't use them, they left them.
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I don't know if they were forced on them, but without running
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water, I don't remember exactly what happened, but I know the
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next day all the chickens were gone.
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Now where we work together, it was a large operation, so
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throwing away 5 or 6 chickens was nothing in terms of it was
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going to put a nothing dent in the food cost.
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But I remember you were so pissed because it wasn't about
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the food cost, it was about the product wasting product, the
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loss of life. How do you incorporate that sort
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of ethos and philosophy into the restaurant?
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Oh, it's in so many ways that I don't even think we realize that
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we do it anymore. We, I mean, we use every part of
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the animal. We love finding ways to
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incorporate things like, you know, pig ears and, and goat
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heart and all the things that do often get thrown away or used
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for lesser things like dog food. I know we had a battle with farm
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to table and somebody was buying up all the hearts for dog food
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and we were like, no, it's on our menu.
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We need it, you know, so it's just a huge part of what we do.
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We, you know, we want to use every part of the vegetable.
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We want to use all the leaves, we want to use all the odd bits
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of the animal. And that's just because that
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animal lived and it died. That plant lived and died and
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all those parts are here to to utilize.
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So why would we not utilize them?
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So just how how frequently does your menu changes?
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I mean I'm assuming it changes seasonally but it does change
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like micro seasonally. It changes, I like to say
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seasonally and on a whim. So if we find a product that we
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like, we change it. If we run out of a product that
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we can't, that we love to, but we can't get in anymore, we
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change it. And then it also depends on how
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things are running in the kitchen.
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So the smoother things are running in the kitchen, the more
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often we're going to change the menu.
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That goes down to training. So if, if we're short 2 cooks on
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the line, we want to keep things as steady as we can, you know,
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survive. Right now we're a little
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overstaffed on the line and we have a great sous chef.
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So we're not only changing the menu like crazy, we're also
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running 5 or 6 specials a day. That's a lot of specials.
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It's too many, yeah. What what?
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What is the? What is the venue change process
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look like? Like What is the creative
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process look like? Usually we run something as a
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come up with an idea, get it to a point where we feel like we
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can run as a special, probably run as a special.
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And if it's received well, we like it, the cost is good.
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Then we can probably put it on the menu as a, you know,
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permanent thing for, you know, however, a month or two or
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whatever and I don't know some some items are tested out more
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than others. Some are like ready to go day
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one, some are like weeks and or. Some we intend as a special and
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then something happens, like we had an item that just didn't
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work out the other day and we didn't have any for service, so
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that special all of a sudden became part of the menu.
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And and because you're you're running your own restaurant, you
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have the ability to be nimble, adjust quickly.
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If something's not working, take it off.
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If something, if something's great today, put it on.
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Obviously a lot of restaurants can't do that.
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Yeah, it's great not having to seek much counsel when we make
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decisions. Usually just a short argument
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between the two of us, the ones a little heated.
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But I should say. That that depends, I think is on
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the day, the day for sure and the the tempers that.
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Day so that's that's that's interesting that because both of
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you are chefs, both of you are, you know, fantastic cooks.
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How do you collaborate ideas together?
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Like because I'm sure like yes, you're both chefs, but you also
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have different backgrounds like you guys didn't come up in the
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same kitchens came up in different kitchens.
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You have different ideas on food.
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So how how is it having two? Because I know chefs, right,
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they're all opinionated and and none of us are wrong, right of
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course yeah. So how do you guys come together
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on ideas? I'll start by saying I'm wrong
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quite a bit. Ari, OK, good for you.
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That's bitey big. That's the learning process.
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You can't learn if you're not wrong, ever.
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I'm never wrong. This is where we disagree.
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We came up in very, very different kitchens.
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I kind of came up in the scrappier kitchens.
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He had the opportunity to go work for some incredible chefs.
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So he's learned all the very correct ways of doing things.
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And I won't say that the waves that I've learned are wrong, but
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they're a little less fine-tuned, a little more verse
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towards making sure that it gets done.
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But it's worked out for me so. Yeah.
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So when you guys are, do you guys brainstorm together like
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ideas on paper? What is the brainstorming
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process look like? Like a bunch of books in a room
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with a bunch of sticky notes? Or is it just like drawing?
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Like how does the creative process go?
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A lot of times we just send like notes to each other on our
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phones and stuff. And you know, like as far as the
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dishes, we usually kind of work on them independently and then
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have each other taste them. I think is what normally happens
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is it's really hard for two people to like cook one dish at,
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you know, at the same time and like really collaborate.
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So like we collaborate after we've come up with the full idea
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a lot of times. It's a lot of editing or a lot
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of I can't figure out I'm I'm stuck on the spot.
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What do you think would fix it? With the team also involved.
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So now you have other other cooks and sous chefs involved.
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How much? How much do they get to be
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involved in the in the menu creation process?
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Not as much as we need them to be, but now that we are a little
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overstaffed and feeling pretty comfortable in the kitchen, I
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feel like we can start getting back into that.
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We lost staff for a little bit. There was a shortage for sure,
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so it's getting back into the habit of that.
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It's going to be great. You know, I love foods in
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season, right? So they they also sponsor me.
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So I love them, but I used to use them because they would have
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like crazy mushrooms. You know, they're big on
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foraging. You know, I'm trying to think
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what, like if you need ramps, they're going to let you know
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when ramps are here, right? If you need like obscure
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vinegars and things like that. They also have like, I'm trying
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to think like spruce or like just shit that that you don't
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often think about. Like, oh, call, call Heather
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from foods and season, Like, hey, what's up?
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What do you got? But I know you also are you
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yourselves are also very into foraging.
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Yeah. We love getting out and seeing
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where the food came from. And I always call it picking
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gold up off the ground. It's a little scary to get into
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because you know, there's some things that can definitely go
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wrong with foraging. Wow.
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Well, like picking the wrong things, you know, not being as
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smart as you thought you were. I know, but.
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They have apps for that now, like where you could take a
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photo of the plan, right? It's.
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Easy. I don't trust.
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You don't trust the. But I do trust, you know, we've
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got a few people that we work with.
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I have a few books that I like to look through, and then
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there's good old Google, which will help you, you know, really
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nail down what the differences are.
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I thought I had wild carrots in my yard for a while.
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Turns out it's Hemlock. What's Hemlock?
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Super poisonous. Yeah.
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They used to. No, absolutely not look like a
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carrot. Does not smell like a carrot.
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There's a a difference on the stem with the hair.
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And then there's a slight purple in color that you want to look
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for. But I just, I like connecting
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with it. You know, when it comes on a
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truck, you're not really seeing where it comes from.
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And I think that all goes back to the the respect part of yeah.
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Do you remember years ago we went foraging?
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Yes, I. Do yeah, we went foraging years
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ago. I'm trying to think out of this
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like 10 years ago probably. And I remember like we were in
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the woods and like like, oh, these are Turks caps you could
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eat this and these are these are passion fruit.
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And I'm like, wait, passion fruit grows in Texas?
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And there was just so much wild shit out there that I had no
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idea that you could just pick up and eat.
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And some of it was honestly, some of it was very good that I
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thought you can't replicate that flavor.
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Like it, it only comes from a wild forged ingredient.
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So I'm trying to think the right way to ask this, but how do you,
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how do you like when you're introducing wild and forged
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ingredients on the menu? Like how do you prepare the
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guest #1 like, hey, we pick this and it might taste like this,
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but there's no frame of reference of what it may taste
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like. Yeah, I, we just go for it.
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And you know, we try to tell the staff like, like dewberries,
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they look like blackberries. They don't necessarily taste
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like blackberries. So we try to really nail down
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just like you would with wine tasting nuts.
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What does it taste like? So to me, dewberries are like a
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little more acidic than a BlackBerry.
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They still have a little note of BlackBerry and then they smell
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like a crate&barrel. Yeah.
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Do you think that? I mean, we've talked, we, we
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could talk about this at length, especially with ingredients.
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I'm a firm believer that if you want to make better food, use
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better ingredients. Like the ingredients make all
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the difference in the world. If you, if your chicken sucks,
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it might actually be the chicken.
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Like you might not be buying good chicken or might be the
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lamb or the cow that you're buying, but also the produce
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that you're buying when you're buying it, not just who you're
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buying it from, but when you're buying it.
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Obviously strawberries aren't in season.
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I mean, they're in season somewhere, but and I, and I
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think that gets lost on a lot of chefs, especially young chefs.
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Like they, they don't, they, they focus sometimes more.
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Like I want to make this really beautiful thing with all this
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cool techniques. I want to make sure it has, you
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know, a hexametophosphate to emulsify the, the cheese sauce.
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But it's like, yeah but but the ingredients are shit.
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Yeah, something I learned way back when I actually went to
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College in psychology class was just alt psychology.
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And it's the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
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So to me that that. Goes.
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Yeah. So that goes into, you know, the
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journey that the food takes, so the dirt that it's grown in, the
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person who picked it, the methods they use to pick it, and
12:17
then the journey that it took to get to you.
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All of those things. Then you combine them with who's
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cooking it, what equipment are they using, you know, who's
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receiving it, All of those things I'll have to line up.
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And it's a a delicate game. Yeah.
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Well, I mean, if you're, if you're a chef and you have
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access to amazing produce, you don't even, you know, mess with
12:36
it much and cut the tomato, put some olive oil that's good
12:39
quality, some finishing salt. But if you have bad ingredients,
12:44
like sometimes it doesn't matter how good of a chef you are, if
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you're starting out with bad product, there's not much you
12:49
could do with it. I mean, sure, you can make
12:50
something edible, but we're in the restaurant business.
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We're in the business of selling food that's delicious.
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Not not just edible food, but delicious edible food.
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Yeah, I think that as a, as a chef is one of your your biggest
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responsibilities is sourcing, finding the best product that
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you can, you know, obviously at a price that you can sell it
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for. But, you know, sourcing is, is a
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huge part of the job. And you know, when you find a a
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product that you does better than you've ever had before,
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it's super inspiring. And and that's, you know, makes
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you want to put it on the menu and have other people taste it
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like right away you. Ever put anything on the menu?
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That just sucks. Like the like fuck takes?
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I mean, I I can't remember that, but I'm sure I have I.
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Just what's what's like the worst thing you've ever put on
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the menu? Do you like, can you recall?
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Oh my. Gosh.
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One of the first dishes that foreign and domestic that I did,
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I loved it. And now I look back on it, I'm
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like, I would never do that. Why did I do that?
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And it was lamb, like the little tiny lamb T-bone chops.
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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. With cream collard greens and
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roasted grapes. And it all worked out.
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But it was a hideous dish. And those little lamb chops are
14:08
hard. To eat and, and they're really
14:10
difficult to eat, especially when you put them on a bed of
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cream collard greens. And I just, I don't know where I
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was. I know where my head space was
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that day. I was once I entered a chili
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competition and I made like and I scorched the pot and so the
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the chili was scored, but it was also a bad chili was like
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venison blueberry chili and I won.
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I ended up winning the competition.
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But I often look back on on this.
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I'm like, man, I served a scored.
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Like it was like one of those things like why?
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First of all, why did I win? Like who's voting on this?
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But I mean, it was all about the personality.
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And I'm not joking because what a lot of people forget when
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you're in these, you've, you've done these food grazers and it's
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also a competition and like people have to vote for the best
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dish. It's like when I was doing
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those, I, I'd be rowdy pouring them shots, giving them caviar,
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like buying the vote. It's a, it's a, it's a bit of a
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game. At Cochon 555 went and stood
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around the voting booth with a tray of cookies with pork fat
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icing on them. And it actually got us one of
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our our regulars for about 5 years now.
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Really. Yeah.
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He was like that move was that was it?
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I just wanted to correct my quote on Gestalt psychology.
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It's the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
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Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a good point.
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I love that. I would take that approach with
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leadership. So I would say, you know, if I
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could get one message to everybody, sometimes it's faster
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than just giving the individual message, right?
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So absolutely. Because the whole team knew to
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Even if one person didn't get the message, 20 people did.
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I've also always applied it to guests in the way that they act
15:51
in the dining room. So, you know, maybe the steak
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being overcooked by one temperature isn't really what
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set them over the edge. And you don't know.
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You don't know all the parts of the day, you don't know what
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they're going through, what traffic they sat in, you know
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what life experiences they had today that led up to that steak
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needing to be absolutely perfect for them today.
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So I have a question. This restaurant, Foreign and
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domestic, was your first restaurant that you guys have
16:20
owned together. Yes, it is.
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Yeah. And how did you transition?
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Because you go, you went from being chef employee to now being
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chef owner. What was the transition like,
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especially for people that have never owned a restaurant and
16:34
also for people that think 01 day, I want to own my own
16:36
restaurant. Like, and a lot of I mean, I
16:38
would say 99% of all the chefs out there don't own where they
16:42
work. I would say most of them are
16:44
employees and 1% probably do. And by the way, don't Fact Check
16:48
know that. I don't know if that's that I'm
16:50
just making shit up as we go. But what are some of the things
16:53
that were shocking for you in that transition from going from
16:57
chef, chef employee to chef owner?
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And then what were some of the biggest changes that you had to
17:04
make within to to make it a seamless transition?
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For me, a huge thing was that there is absolutely no one to
17:12
blame but yourself anymore. There is.
17:15
There is no way out. Everything that happens in that
17:17
building is our fault now. And that's a hard pill to
17:21
swallow. It really is.
17:24
And cooking is so much easier. Cooking is the the easiest part.
17:27
So you go from being the chef and you just have to make sure
17:30
your food cost is in line and your labor cost is in line and
17:33
the food is good and people are coming.
17:34
And now you know, you also have to make sure that the front of
17:38
house is happy and the dish machine's working and the
17:42
toilets are flushing and the front porch is swept.
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Yeah, that's, that was the, I guess the hardest part is making
17:49
sure that your employees are now set up to do their job.
17:52
Is that, is that you, you're not going to be there all times to
17:55
fix everything. But you, you know, the
17:56
maintenance is being done. You know, they have the
17:58
equipment that they need and and that they're set up to do their
18:02
job because I don't know that's that because other usually it
18:05
was like we were there, we could fix anything at any time, but
18:08
obviously not anymore. And then the back end, making
18:11
sure that the the taxes are paid and everything's in line and all
18:14
the work rents are up to date and.
18:16
So yeah, that that that's, that's something a lot of people
18:19
forget is like, you got to pay taxes.
18:21
I mean, I hate that. I hate that.
18:22
That's true. But you have to pay taxes.
18:26
So many taxes. So so.
18:27
Many that we didn't know I hate like taxes is the bane of my
18:31
existence. How do you, how do you reconcile
18:35
the idea of being the chef and making decisions as a chef would
18:40
make, but also sometimes having to be the, but not sometimes
18:43
you're always the owner and you always have to be, always have
18:45
to balance those two decisions. Because I would imagine that
18:49
I'm, I don't want to speak for you, but I would imagine that
18:52
when you were employed, you probably made different
18:56
decisions based on the integrity of the product and how you want
19:01
it to run your kitchen. But when you own it, it's a
19:04
completely different mindset because you have to factor in.
19:08
But I got to pay all these bills too.
19:10
And our guest coming back for that dish that I really want to
19:13
put on the menu, right? So how do you reconcile that?
19:16
For me, a big one is labor. You know, we run very clean
19:20
kitchens. It's just part of who we are.
19:23
I think it's super important. I wish more people did that, but
19:27
at the end of the night, you got to balance your labor.
19:29
And if now, if I know that front of house was heavy on labor
19:33
today or sales were a little lower.
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It's you know, I, I used to let the cooks prep after service a
19:42
little bit. And now I'm like, no, you need
19:44
to clean this kitchen. Like no more prep cutting you
19:46
off If it needs to be done tomorrow.
19:49
Maybe we'll come in early, you know, or maybe we'll just move
19:52
faster tomorrow. Right.
19:53
So, so it's a matter of instilling a sense of urgency in
19:56
the workplace culture, tracking everything daily.
19:59
What do you use to track everything like, you know, your
20:02
labor and all, all the, all the financials.
20:04
Toast does a lot of stuff for us.
20:07
You know, obviously we use like QuickBooks for bookkeeping and
20:11
you know, it's all there for you everyday to to look at either on
20:14
our phone, on your phone now so you see minute by minute.
20:18
So when you come into the restaurant, like, what's the
20:19
first thing to you? Do you check the numbers from
20:21
the day before? You checking those before you go
20:23
to bed? Oh, we checked from about.
20:24
Or or like every it's like you're tracking the price of the
20:27
Bitcoin like you check. Absolutely.
20:30
We watch. I would like to say that we
20:32
don't micromanage, but we do watch.
20:33
And if it's slow and we see that there's still 5 people on, we're
20:36
like, hey, what's going on? Why are we not, you know,
20:39
cutting people yet? Little things like that.
20:42
I watch the open table. It's a little bit of bit of a
20:45
session because I'm terrified that they're going to mess
20:47
something up then and somebody's not going to get seated.
20:50
And that's like the worst thing that can happen.
20:52
You have a reservation and we don't have a table for you.
20:56
So we we definitely probably check things a little too often,
21:00
but we also trust the people that we have.
21:03
So we're having to make a lot less of those calls.
21:05
Yeah. So when you're a chef, and I'm
21:07
just saying chef, chef, you have a lot of headaches.
21:09
You have the compression from the owners, you have the
21:11
compression from the, from the cooks that are like, I need a
21:13
day off and, and everything else.
21:15
But when you're the the owner, like it's a, it's a different,
21:20
it's a different stress, right? Because now you have, you have
21:23
those same pressures, but you also have the pressure of I have
21:28
the responsibility of keeping this restaurant open for myself
21:30
and my family, but also for all my employees that rely on this
21:33
to support their families. Yeah.
21:36
It's a internal pressure now. You know, we, we opened during
21:41
the freeze that we had this week and got a little bit of Flack on
21:44
the Internet for being open because we're endangering
21:47
people's lives. What they don't see oh, random
21:51
people on the Internet. Like on your are they go on your
21:54
page. Yeah, yeah.
21:55
You know, we'll post that. We're open and we get the
21:57
comments. But what they don't see is that
22:00
like our Lockhart location, the employees that did come in all
22:04
live within a mile of the restaurant.
22:07
And they all need that paycheck to pay their rent.
22:10
Rent doesn't take a snow day, right?
22:13
And in Austin, our 2 servers that came in, they live within a
22:17
mile of the restaurant. So that's really not that far.
22:20
And there was no ice on the roads when they came in, you
22:24
know? But we we can't just close
22:28
because it would be easier. We don't have the funds to just
22:31
pay everybody to take the day off.
22:33
I wish we did. It would be great.
22:36
But that's the reality of a small restaurant is there's just
22:39
not those funds. But yeah, it's just being able
22:44
to take a minute, look at all the things.
22:48
OK. Do we have staff that can make
22:50
it in safely? Do we have guests that want to
22:52
come in? And we were busy.
22:54
We had people that wanted to come out and eat, especially
22:56
because we're in a neighborhood in in Austin.
22:59
So people that wanted to go out to eat, that didn't want to go
23:03
far, they just walked over. Because you have two spots,
23:07
right? How do you guys divvy up the
23:09
time? If I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm curious
23:12
because we haven't talked about this, but how do you divvy up
23:14
the time between the two restaurants between the two of
23:16
you? And does one of you have, I
23:20
should say, like does one of you have your fingers on the food
23:23
just a little bit more in one of the places or are they both
23:25
equal? I'd say both of us are equally
23:29
involved in the food. We set up the second restaurant,
23:32
Commerce Cafe, to run without us being there day-to-day.
23:37
Foreign and domestic is still meant to be, you know, our
23:40
personalities on the plate is still meant to be very personal.
23:44
So we do, we go to commerce every day on the usually on the
23:47
way in to foreign and domestic and the way out.
23:49
Yeah. And the way home.
23:51
So what we'll, you know, it's in the middle of our drive to
23:54
foreign. Domestic, we'll stop.
23:56
We'll check in for lunch and talk with the chef, make sure
23:58
everything's looking good, taste of food, maybe lunch and then
24:02
head to foreign and domestic. So we don't, we don't, you know,
24:06
one person's not one restaurant, other person, other restaurants,
24:08
not at all like that. I would say we eat lunch there
24:11
almost every day usually too. Real.
24:15
Man. I really like the Rigatoni vodka
24:20
sauce. It's just simple.
24:22
It's easy to eat in the car. Spicy rig.
24:23
I love the chicken sandwich, but it's kind of hard to eat in the
24:26
car. And he just gets a burger every
24:28
day. Yeah.
24:29
Burger, chicken sandwich. But it's, yeah, even in the
24:32
car's heart. One of the great things about
24:35
Lockhart is we have a a great chef that I actually know from
24:38
high school. We work together at Red Lobster
24:40
in high school. And how to to Red Lobster and
24:43
their cheddar biscuit, right? Those biscuits are still good.
24:47
Is Red Lobster still around? I saw that a lot of them were
24:48
closed. Most of them are closed.
24:50
But fun fact, those biscuits are 310 calories each, right?
24:54
Yeah. Yeah.
24:54
As long as you only what? Yeah.
24:56
So you could do that, right? When you're a Red Lobster, you
25:01
don't not eat the the cheddar biscuits when you're a Red
25:04
Lobster, right? But we rely on him a lot.
25:07
He's he's the chef there, but he's also a bit of a general
25:10
manager. He takes care of things.
25:13
He's unfortunately had to do some plumbing this week, but he
25:17
really, really just takes things heads head on and that's super,
25:20
super important for us. What are the challenges that the
25:23
entire industry faces now is recruitment and retention.
25:27
So having two restaurants and being in Austin, which is a
25:32
competitive market when it comes to to to restaurants, especially
25:35
with the Michelin guy coming here, a lot of, you know, a lot
25:37
of cooks are now flocking to, you know, only a select number
25:40
of restaurants. How do you remain competitive to
25:46
attract talent? But also how do you how do when
25:50
they're in the building? What is the culture like to
25:52
retain the talent? Yeah.
25:55
I think culture wise, we really focus on making sure that
25:58
everybody has the tools that they need, that everything's
26:01
functional, that they have a clean environment to work in.
26:04
We try to minimize the chaos. It's a 1300 square foot
26:07
building, so that's easier some days than others, but we really,
26:11
really focus with them on on respect for each other.
26:14
So things like the dishwasher doesn't come in till three, the
26:18
cooks are there at 1, they're asked to do their own dishes
26:21
while they're cooking. Just, you know, racket and push
26:24
it through. That way when the dishwasher
26:26
comes in at 3, he's not coming into a mountain of dishes.
26:30
And that's not so much a labor thing.
26:34
Like realistically those dishes could pile up, but it'd be fine
26:38
ish. But it's a respect thing for
26:41
that dishwasher. They're not allowed to just drop
26:43
their dishes in the dish bit. They got to take the utensils
26:46
out, stack them nicely, spray them out if they have time, even
26:49
when the dishwasher is there. And that's respect for the
26:52
dishwasher, but it's also respect for each other.
26:55
We have one Xinhua. So if you use the Xinhua and
26:58
then you drop it into the bottom of a pile of dirty dishes, the
27:01
next person that needs it is going to have to not only find
27:04
it, then find space to clean it and push it through.
27:08
Do you take, you were talking about foraging earlier, do you
27:11
take some of the team out like are they the the cooks now?
27:14
Are they switched on with that? Like I want to learn about
27:16
foraging and fermentation. I know you you do a lot of
27:18
fermentation. I wish they were more
27:21
interested. I think part of it is distance.
27:24
So we live in Luling. We're about an hour from the the
27:27
restaurant and that's where I do a lot of the foraging.
27:30
Foraging is possible in the city, but it it takes a lot more
27:35
effort, you get a lot less produce, and I think I'm a lot
27:39
more worried about contamination in the city.
27:43
When I'm out foraging near Luling.
27:45
I'm literally like out on a dirt Rd. probably miles.
27:49
And I've got a few patches that I like to go to, and it's pretty
27:53
remote, but I'll find, you know, 2 gallons of dewberries in one
27:57
spot. Yeah, I was thinking about
27:59
forging. Do you remember again, we were
28:01
talking about forging earlier. Do you remember one of the, I
28:03
won't say who one of the guys we were cut his thumb off when we
28:05
were forging. Oh, I'm don't say his name.
28:08
Do you remember that we were forging?
28:10
He was trying to crack up a green walnut.
28:14
Yes. And he had the and the and he
28:16
put his thumb there and he chopped his thumb.
28:18
And I remember, you know, we have to.
28:20
He fainted. I do remember that.
28:23
Do you remember? That yeah, I I don't think I had
28:26
had that in the front of my head for a while.
28:27
Yeah, yeah. I I was thinking about that like
28:29
it's something I don't think about often, but because you
28:32
were there that day that that happened.
28:34
Well, see, and I think that's the thing.
28:36
You were in a a position where he was your your employees.
28:39
So it stuck more with you. For me, I was like, what?
28:44
Yeah. I actually, Rachel that took us
28:47
on that trip. I still message with her often.
28:49
She's when I talk about having some people I trust with
28:51
foraging. She's one of the people that I
28:53
do. I'll send her a picture of it
28:55
and I'll be like, can you just confirm this before I eat it?
28:58
You know, one of the big ones I pick is Wild Stinging Nettle.
29:04
And I didn't know that was around Luling until my daughter
29:08
tried to pick it. And that was a wild day.
29:11
She thought it was really pretty and it was a really rough couple
29:14
of hours. So I started figuring out what
29:16
it is and I use it for everything now.
29:19
I love to work it into doughs. It's just like spinach.
29:22
You know, like a pasta. Yeah.
29:24
And green pasta dough and. Then when I get I have really
29:26
bad allergies I use it in a tea. What does it do for the
29:30
allergies? It's, I'm not sure exactly how
29:32
it works, but it's one it was. Yeah.
29:34
It's one of those signs that cross the signs.
29:37
But I liked it up and it's great for allergies.
29:39
And so I'll just go out to the yard and pick a bunch, throw it
29:42
in the kettle with some honey and some lemon, and it works
29:45
pretty well. I try that before I go to the
29:47
doctor. Eventually I end up going to the
29:49
doctor sometimes. Do you do you find like a lot of
29:52
the the cooks that are coming into the kitchen now?
29:56
I haven't been a chef in three years.
29:58
Like, I mean, I've, I've consulted and I go in and I see
30:01
the shift, but I don't live it every day, right?
30:03
Like I haven't really been working with the cooks 'cause I
30:06
know, like it's funny, like someone was showing me executive
30:11
chef at this place and it's like, I've been retired longer
30:15
than they've been cooking. It blew my mind.
30:17
I was like, holy shit, I haven't cooked.
30:18
I haven't cooked professionally, like run a kitchen in three
30:20
years and they're already there and I've like, shit, I haven't.
30:24
Did they? Do they really know everything
30:25
they need to know? I had a realization not too long
30:29
ago that one of our cooks had been alive less years than I had
30:34
been cooking, right? And that was scary.
30:37
It was really scary moment. That's wild.
30:39
That's. Like I, he was born after I
30:41
started cooking. Is the, is the mindset Like
30:46
what's the, I guess I should ask this, what do you, what do you
30:48
notice is the biggest mindset shift from from when you were
30:53
when you first opened the restaurant?
30:54
Because how long have you had the restaurant now for like 5,
30:56
no more than that. Seven years, almost eight.
30:58
Yeah. So what is different with the
31:01
mindset when you first opened the restaurant?
31:03
Those cooks that that opening team and I'm not saying say
31:07
anything bad about the current team, but like just mentality of
31:09
the applicants. I think the intensity and we're
31:12
seeing it shift back to the intensity a little bit.
31:15
Why do you think that is? Because the chef's PSA?
31:18
Because I'm motivated on average.
31:21
Because the chef's PSAI. Would hope.
31:23
So, well, I mean, that's honestly why I started is like,
31:25
I wanted to be the, the, I noticed that a lot of people get
31:29
advice from like the bad line cook next to them, like the, the
31:32
angry cook and angry cooks have loud voices in kitchens.
31:36
And I think people don't understand that.
31:37
It's like sometimes the person that's influencing the kitchen
31:40
culture the most is the disgruntled line cook, sometimes
31:44
even more so than the person that's trying to affect positive
31:46
change. So part of what I did with
31:48
Chef's PSA was like, OK, I have a big enough platform where let
31:52
me be the positive influence and let me show you like the people
31:56
that are on the winning team, the people that are running
31:57
restaurants, running kitchens, like they don't think like that.
32:00
So listen to them because if you keep listening to that person,
32:03
you're going to like look at where they are.
32:05
You could be that person if you keep listening to them.
32:07
One of our biggest shifts I think professionally was
32:10
learning to even if somebody is a great cook, if they are
32:15
cancerous in the kitchen, eliminate them.
32:18
You know, you, you try to, we always give them, you know, a
32:21
little redirection. If they're not receptive and
32:24
they don't make changes, then we try to we get them out as quick
32:27
as we can because it's just not worth you have.
32:30
To disruption. Someone messaged me the other
32:31
day and was like, Hey, I got this cook and I want to get rid
32:33
of them. You know they're blah blah blah,
32:35
but they're good like fuck, like get rid of them.
32:38
It doesn't matter like you, you good doesn't it's it's a poison
32:44
pill, right? Here we go.
32:46
Being good at the expense of others is not good.
32:50
Right. Yeah, right.
32:52
The gestalt back to that, right. Yeah, yeah, You, you said that
32:58
you think it's changing recently.
33:00
I do, I feel a shift, you know, there was, there was a big
33:05
staffing shortage. Everybody you know, exited the
33:08
industry. So we went from having a decent
33:11
amount of intensity to everybody coming back into the industry
33:15
was super green and. You had to compromise.
33:17
And there was a lot of compromise, which is really
33:19
unfortunate. But now those cooks have a few
33:24
years under their belt, they're starting to understand the
33:27
basics. I do feel like there was a, a
33:29
mentality shift where everybody just kind of had this, like, I
33:34
need to take care of me and only me.
33:36
And there was a lack of focus and a lack of Dr. teamwork.
33:41
Teamwork was really, really bad. But we're seeing like right now,
33:45
we have, I think the best crew that we've had in a, a very long
33:49
time. We have a really good crew now.
33:51
Really, really happy to see it. We have, you know, a good mesh
33:56
of personalities. And they all have a little bit
34:01
of experience, some more than others, but they really, really
34:04
tried to help each other learn, which is incredible because
34:07
they're, they're definitely a mixed group of people.
34:11
You know, it's not, not everybody went to these certain
34:15
restaurants and everybody has the same experience.
34:17
So it's cool to see them, you know, collaborate and teach each
34:20
other and no. That's good when when you're
34:22
hiring people, what is it that you're looking for in candidates
34:25
right now? Like, and I'm not talking about
34:26
a good resume is a good resume, but like when you're
34:29
interviewing someone, like what are some of the, what are some
34:31
of the red flags and what are some of the green flags?
34:34
I think we look for less of like this technical skills now, so I
34:37
feel like we know that we can teach them that they just need
34:40
to be in the door. It's more of, are they receptive
34:42
to, not to say criticism, but advice or something?
34:46
Instruction. Yeah.
34:48
And do do they, are they respectful to the other cooks?
34:51
Do they ask questions like cleanliness?
34:55
Like, yeah, I mean, we always look at that.
34:57
But you know, it's something we can teach as well.
35:00
I always ask them like, So what do you want to do?
35:03
You know what, like, do you want to be a chef?
35:05
Do you want to own your restaurant?
35:06
And it's crazy to hear the things like, no, I would never
35:09
want to own my own restaurant. That's crazy.
35:11
And that is, I mean, for me, I always wanted to own my own
35:14
restaurant and it's crazy to. Hear, but do you think that like
35:18
because there's also like they they might see like I see what
35:20
you going through. Yeah, I mean that that's part of
35:23
it. For sure.
35:24
Like, at least want to be a chef, right?
35:25
Yeah. Like I want to be in this
35:27
industry. That, you know, I think that
35:28
that it wasn't that way for a while.
35:30
It was just a job for some people for a little while.
35:33
And that's super unfortunate because I always say like, Hey,
35:35
there's a lot better paying jobs that are way easier.
35:38
Go take that job. If you just need a job.
35:40
Like if you, if you do this because you want to cook,
35:43
because you love cooking, because you want to be a chef,
35:45
because you want to own your own restaurant.
35:47
I think that's, I mean finding people like that or that's
35:50
that's amazing. That's the best.
35:51
That's what you want one. Of the things that's super
35:53
unique about the two of you is that you're a couple also yeah
35:56
so how do you like how for for all the couples out there that
36:01
think that they want to work together not just work together
36:04
but open restaurants together and be chefs together and and
36:06
and a creative job what's what's the secret what what do you do
36:13
what do you don't do I. For me, I've had to I think
36:17
there's AI think it was Marco Pierre, why it said service is
36:20
service. And so I try to remember that
36:23
the restaurants, the restaurant, you know, and we we are both
36:27
very passionate and we both fight very hard for what we
36:33
think is the right way to do things.
36:36
Sometimes we don't listen enough, but we're learning to
36:39
work on that. But I like to think that we, we
36:43
fight hard and fast and we get over it hard and fast.
36:46
You know, we get it out. We say everything we need to
36:49
say. We may or may not come to a
36:51
decision and then we're OK. Yeah, I'm not.
36:55
I don't try not to take an argument home with me.
36:57
It's it's like a done and I'm over it in 5 minutes.
37:00
I forgot about it 5 minutes later, you know.
37:02
And sometimes that makes me mad. Are you always at work even when
37:05
you're not at work? You know what I mean?
37:07
Like because of that, you just, yeah, No, no, I mean like
37:09
mentally like even when even when it's like, hey, we're not
37:11
at work, but you're at work. Unfortunately, and I think
37:13
that's something that we're, we're both working on.
37:16
She's probably better at it than me.
37:18
You know there's always a, you know it's a phones, you have
37:21
your phone on you, you're connected to.
37:23
You're checking those daily OpenTable reports.
37:26
You're connected to it and it's, you know, it's unfortunate, but
37:30
we're, we're working on that and you know, it's, it's a hard
37:33
thing to, to learn. So for your, you know, for, for
37:36
your mental health and for your well-being, what do you do Like
37:39
to make sure that that it doesn't completely consume you
37:43
in a negative way. Do you do anything?
37:46
Smoke a blunt. Roasted roasted lamb.
37:51
Yeah, we're. I, I've taken up going to the,
37:56
the roller rink every Thursday. Yeah.
37:59
And I, I try to make it a priority.
38:01
Like I know that I need that release.
38:03
I know that I need to go skate off some aggression.
38:06
And it feels good, too. It's a more of a workout than I
38:10
remember it being when I was a kid.
38:13
So for me, just having those things that I kind of schedule,
38:16
like I go have breakfast with my parents on the same day every
38:19
single week. So I make time to make sure I'm
38:21
talking to my parents. My brother comes with me to the
38:24
roller rink. So I make sure that I'm spending
38:26
a little bit of time with him and his daughter.
38:28
And then, you know, we just, we make sure that we, we eat at
38:34
home and cook dinner and try to have those outlets.
38:41
Nathan has a little bit of a hobby.
38:43
We smoke cigars. Islands Men.
38:45
Yeah, sure. We need to smoke a cigar.
38:47
Yeah, we need to. We talked about that.
38:48
Yeah. Yeah, I should have brought them
38:49
today. Yeah, I only smoke Escobar
38:51
cigars, by the way. We're not.
38:54
That cool? No, no, like that's, that's what
38:55
I smoke. But I love a good cigar.
38:57
Yeah, yeah. What are you smoking these days?
39:00
Man, I Sarah's picks them out. Usually we have a we have a cool
39:03
cigar shop in in Lockhart. I can you even really name much
39:09
Mingo? But is that like a ritual for
39:11
you? Yeah, I mean, it's a good way to
39:13
relax, to kind of blow off some stress.
39:16
Yeah, especially after a hard day.
39:17
You know, on the porch late at night.
39:19
Yeah, I love that. I have a ton of cigars.
39:23
I have. Yeah, Like I have, I have a big
39:25
humidor. What is that, like 3 feet?
39:28
And then I have a small humidor that's, you know, the regular
39:30
box 1, and they're both full, like I had.
39:33
I probably have about 100 cigars right now that I'm like, damn,
39:35
how am I gonna get through all of these?
39:37
Yeah. So yeah, we need to smoke a
39:38
cigar. For sure, I've really been into
39:40
the ones that have the halapa filler lately.
39:43
I don't know what it is that's drawing me to that, but I really
39:47
enjoyed them. Yeah, I mean, I would never
39:50
encourage anyone to like pick up something that's maybe a bad
39:53
habit cuz I don't know if cigar smoke is a bad for me.
39:55
It's not a bad habit, but man, I do enjoy it personally.
39:58
I mean, I do my Q&A every Sunday with smoking cigars I love.
40:01
Everything in moderation. Yeah, right.
40:03
I mean, yeah, I try not to smoke all every day.
40:07
For me, I I promise I'm not having a midlife crisis.
40:11
I did buy a motorcycle when I turned 40.
40:14
Let's triumph the Bonneville T100.
40:16
So that's like my getaway, you know, I don't I try to drive
40:20
them on the back, drive them on the back roads and just kind of
40:23
relax. Yeah, I hate them riding in the
40:25
city in Austin. It's I feel like someone's
40:27
trying to kill me at all times. So that's that's my kind of like
40:31
getaway, you know, on Sundays or something, but.
40:34
One of the things that we really focus on in the show on chef's
40:36
PSA is giving advice to the next generation that's coming up for
40:42
a first time restaurant owner. Like what are some of the things
40:45
like if you could give someone advice like make sure you do
40:47
this? What is that thing that they
40:48
need to they need to consider? Take things in stride.
40:52
Don't try to do everything all at once.
40:54
Prioritize. Make your list of things that
40:57
need to be fixed, figure out what's the most important and
41:00
just chip away at it. I'd say talk to your peers, talk
41:04
to people who own own restaurants, get advice from
41:06
them. Work for people, work for good
41:09
people is a huge thing that worked for people that like I
41:13
wanted to own foreign and domestic.
41:15
It was the kind of restaurant that I wanted to open.
41:17
I worked there, you know, I learned a lot.
41:19
I learned how to run it before we actually bought it, which is
41:22
a pretty, I mean, not a lot of people get to do something like
41:25
that. Yeah, and it's because you're a
41:27
sponge. So for me, I always tell the
41:29
cooks, be a sponge, take everything in, observe
41:31
everything, and then figure out what applies to you later,
41:34
right? But always say thank you, be
41:36
appreciative of that input, and figure out what applies to you
41:39
later. If you had a chef's PSA out
41:42
there, what would it be? Just to stay observant and keep
41:45
up the intensity. Keep up the intensity, yeah.
41:47
I mean focus, yeah, an intense cook, and I don't mean like
41:50
yelling and but like an intense cook that's focused is a good
41:54
thing. Yeah, like keeping your station
41:56
clean and always learning, being on top of your prep and.
42:00
Always for me, like, I read cookbooks, you know, growing up
42:04
as a cook. And I don't think they do
42:06
anymore. I guess.
42:07
I don't know. I try to loan them my cookbooks
42:09
all the time. Like, if you see any books you,
42:10
look, you want to read, read them, please.
42:12
But I think that to me, that was a huge part of becoming a good
42:16
cook is reading and, you know, taking in information.
42:19
Yeah. Do you, would you read the
42:20
cookbook like when I say read the cook, like you look at the
42:23
picture and that's it? Or do you like read like, oh,
42:26
the story about the farm and the front page?
42:28
Do you like read them front to cover?
42:29
I, I can't say I've ever read any cookbook front, front to
42:33
back, go go through it, flip through, look at all the
42:36
pictures obviously, and then kind of focus on like the things
42:39
that I think are most interesting.
42:41
You know what's a really interesting cookbook is Andre
42:44
Chang's Octo Philosophy. See.
42:46
I Read Cookbooks. Cover.
42:48
Cover then that's why I asked because I don't know if I'm
42:50
weird in that regard like I'll read every single recipe the
42:52
method on every page and the reason I do that is because
42:57
every now and then you're going to see something like you
43:00
wouldn't have picked it up just from looking at the picture.
43:01
Like Octo philosophy is one of those books, like when you you
43:05
look at the photo, when you read the recipes, like, oh, I, I
43:09
didn't pick that up from the photo.
43:10
Like that pairing of flavors or the technique that he used to
43:14
get that. It's interesting because he's a
43:16
it's, it's a good book. So for people listening Octave
43:18
philosophy, I don't know if you have it, but it's a great book.
43:20
No, yeah, it's. One of the few that we don't
43:23
have. You should get it.
43:24
It's really good. I think you'd like it.
43:25
If you had a Mount Rushmore of chefs out there, who would be
43:29
the the four chefs that you put on Mount Rushmore?
43:35
Gabrielle Hamilton. Love her.
43:40
I'm a sucker for Marco Pierre White.
43:42
I came across him when I was a young cook and was pretty
43:47
obsessed. What about you?
43:49
I mean, Thomas Keller's always been, you know, he's the gold
43:52
standard. I mean, you know, Alonda costs,
43:58
that's a hard one. I mean, there's so many chefs
44:01
now. So what's interesting is you
44:03
guys answers are so different. Yeah.
44:06
You know what I mean? Like it's.
44:07
Totally. Ours, I could see the the
44:09
Gabrielle Hamilton influence here.
44:11
I could see the the TK Ducasse influence here.
44:15
And then you guys come together and create a great restaurant at
44:17
Bourne Domestic. Where can where can people find
44:20
you? Gosh, three O 6 E 53rd St. in
44:25
Austin and then all over the Internet.
44:27
So F&D austin.com, same same handle.
44:30
On Instagram F&D? Yep.
44:32
Yeah, F&D Austin. Yeah, and 800 on Instagram and
44:37
Chef Hurd. Yeah.
44:38
All right, guys. It was great seeing you
44:40
likewise. Thanks.
44:41
So much. Well, I hope you enjoyed the
44:42
show. If you're watching on YouTube,
44:44
make sure you hit the like and subscribe button and make sure
44:47
you leave five stars. If you're watching on Spotify or
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Apple or anywhere else, it's a five star podcast.
44:52
Go to chefspsa.com, get yourself some of the books that I've
44:54
written, or get yourself some nice Chefs PSA merch.