Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / How AI Will Change Fine Dining Forever Ep. 157

Transcript

How AI Will Change Fine Dining Forever Ep. 157 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chef PSA. I'm your host Andre Natera.
• 0:03
  Today we have two amazing guests who are visiting Austin with the
• 0:06
  Flavor 4H tour, Helen Kennan, founder of Canon Food Strategies
• 0:10
  and Connor Sergeant, Vice President of Restaurants at the
• 0:13
  Headington Companies in Dallas, TX.
• 0:15
  We discuss AI, fine dining, and what the future holds for the
• 0:19
  culinary world. Lena had to catch a flight
• 0:21
  midway through, so I was lucky enough to have her join us, even
• 0:24
  briefly. She's got a ton of insight when
• 0:27
  it comes to AI, so I really was looking forward to this
• 0:29
  conversation. After she leaves, Connor and I
• 0:32
  get to reminisce about the old days of sous chefs.
• 0:35
  I think you'll enjoy this one. Stay tuned.
• 0:51
  Great restaurants don't always bring customers in.
• 0:54
  Great stories do, because in food, beverage and hospitality,
• 0:57
  what you sell is only part of the story.
• 1:01
  It's the why behind it, the authority you create and the
• 1:05
  experience that you built. Market scale turns expertise
• 1:10
  into content that connects podcasts, video series and
• 1:14
  industry education, not ads assets.
• 1:20
  Market scale has brought run the past and how to manage like an
• 1:23
  executive chef to life real world examples of how great
• 1:26
  content leads the conversation because attention is earned and
• 1:30
  the industry doesn't need more noise.
• 1:32
  It needs more leaders. I know you got to run.
• 1:41
  So we're going to we're going to get right into the most
• 1:44
  interesting subject, at least for me, and that is AI and I
• 1:48
  know you're big time into it and you're working with it right
• 1:50
  now, but where do you where do you see this going?
• 1:52
  What do you, what do you think some of the what do you think
• 1:54
  are some of the things that we're not thinking about when it
• 1:58
  comes to AI in the kitchen with that chefs can use in the
• 2:00
  day-to-day and what do you see kind of coming down the road?
• 2:04
  Such a good question, but I think the, the initial thing is
• 2:09
  not what we are thinking about, but what you're right, what
• 2:12
  we're not thinking about, right? So because I don't really think
• 2:15
  we understand the potential of AI, not just in the food
• 2:18
  industry, but in any industry in our real life or anything.
• 2:22
  But I know for sure that what we think of it now is kind of like,
• 2:26
  remember when the Internet first came out and we were like, you
• 2:29
  know, and there were websites like Epicurious and we could
• 2:31
  look for new recipes and we could get inspiration in
• 2:33
  different places. And now there's chat bots,
• 2:36
  right? You, you go into ChatGPT or some
• 2:39
  other AI platform and, but it's so much more than looking for a
• 2:43
  recipe. It's so much more than, you
• 2:46
  know, trying to understand a technique or it's so much more
• 2:51
  than that. We're digging into now.
• 2:53
  And specifically the platform that I've been working with,
• 2:55
  which is air technologies is to really understand artificial
• 2:59
  intelligence, recipe menu and data management.
• 3:03
  And that's important for big restaurants, as you know, small
• 3:06
  restaurants, independent restaurants, as well as big food
• 3:09
  companies, right? Because you really need help
• 3:12
  and, and insight into driving, you know, labor efficiency, menu
• 3:17
  development, get the right suppliers.
• 3:20
  I mean, it can help all of that. It can help all of that Chef, it
• 3:25
  is, we don't know the potential of its ability to learn either,
• 3:29
  right? So you embed certain things into
• 3:31
  an AI platform and then machine learning takes over.
• 3:35
  And when you make certain choices, the actual, the, the
• 3:39
  platform learns. So let's say you want to know
• 3:44
  really what's in season, what's in season for the best, you
• 3:47
  know, at the time, when should I actually be using asparagus for
• 3:51
  my region from these local forms and I should be putting it on my
• 3:55
  menu. Like AI can do that for you.
• 3:58
  So it's not just about, I think a lot of people think it's the
• 4:01
  death of creativity or it's the, you know, actually, I think it's
• 4:06
  going to provide, you know, some much needed efficiency in the
• 4:09
  world of an, you know, in the day of a life of a chef to be
• 4:13
  able to have more time to perfect your craft, be more
• 4:17
  creative, spend time with your people, spend time with your
• 4:19
  customers. Yeah, I think that just like
• 4:24
  Chef said, it's it's we're kind of at the intro level.
• 4:27
  So I think that right now it's being used primarily.
• 4:30
  I've talked to other chefs that use it somewhat as a creative
• 4:35
  voice for them are like they're like, hey, I need to pair
• 4:38
  something with this. Like these are you can load up
• 4:41
  your menus and be like, this is some of my, this is how I cook
• 4:45
  pair, you know, create a menu. I am actually really.
• 4:49
  It's those types of usages that kind of scare me about it
• 4:55
  because I feel like we're just increasing the echo chamber for
• 4:59
  yourself. Like you're letting ChatGPT tell
• 5:04
  you how to be creative. Yeah, like forcing you down a
• 5:06
  lane. Chef obviously has a lot of more
• 5:11
  experience on, on, on those things, but that's where as far
• 5:16
  as using AI as mid wear efficiencies.
• 5:19
  But you're seeing restaurant 365 toast, all these platforms
• 5:24
  starting to integrate it and and those, you know, we've talked
• 5:29
  about it in some of our financial meetings at our
• 5:32
  restaurant crew where to find efficiencies for, for labor and
• 5:36
  it kind of can look back and see a bigger picture.
• 5:38
  So it's exciting. I try to tell my cooks and my
• 5:42
  staff to use it. The things you're not good at to
• 5:45
  get you in the kitchens because the place that's I think, you
• 5:51
  know, chefs and cooks are irreplaceable are in the
• 5:54
  kitchen. So help get you in the kitchen.
• 5:57
  Like the things that you're struggling with writing an
• 5:59
  e-mail cuz like, you know, there we have different departments.
• 6:04
  I have historically been bad at emails.
• 6:07
  Yeah, you know, rewording things.
• 6:08
  I tell myself like, hey, just put it through and be like, hey,
• 6:10
  make this professional. Right.
• 6:12
  And what's crazy about AI? I mean, I've been using, I want
• 6:15
  to say I'm going to give myself props.
• 6:16
  I don't give myself enough props when ChatGPT first came out.
• 6:21
  So I don't know, it's like November 2022 maybe I was an
• 6:25
  early user because I discovered it on Twitter at the time.
• 6:27
  I was like, what's this? And I jumped in.
• 6:29
  I got and I downloaded it and I, I think at least I don't, I
• 6:33
  can't prove that this is true, but I don't know anyone else
• 6:37
  that can disprove it. As I think I wrote the first AI
• 6:39
  cookbook I got on there and I got my, my old recipes that I
• 6:43
  had, I had a stack of old recipes and I just said copy,
• 6:47
  OK, scale it up, change this to grams, make sure it's worded
• 6:50
  consistently. Boom, make these changes.
• 6:52
  And it was pumping out the information.
• 6:54
  And so I, I screen recorded and I shared it on social media and
• 6:57
  so many chefs were upset. This is not, this is not true
• 7:01
  creativity. This is, it's never going to
• 7:03
  replace your seasoning. It's like, I'm not trying to do
• 7:06
  that. I'm just trying to spend less
• 7:08
  time in front of a computer. And this is an efficient way to
• 7:12
  to scale recipes up and not have to sit there for hours with a
• 7:15
  calculator. Well, and formatting, I feel
• 7:16
  like like when I jumped from being a executive chef, the
• 7:20
  corner director or like was like on that stage, you know, where
• 7:23
  I'm like, you know, imposter syndrome and like looking up
• 7:26
  what does pro forma mean? Like how much time just, I was
• 7:29
  staring at a computer, yeah, trying to format something.
• 7:32
  And that's where like, you know, something like that where it's
• 7:35
  just like doing those things of copying and pasting that it can
• 7:38
  be useful, I think for me as a chef.
• 7:40
  If I didn't have AI I'd probably need 10 people to help me with
• 7:42
  what I do and and I have a chat bot.
• 7:45
  Normally when I get hired as a consultant for a restaurant
• 7:48
  group or something like that, the first thing I do is I, I set
• 7:50
  up several chat bots for them, a menu editor, a recipe writer,
• 7:54
  you know, someone that's going to analyze whatever.
• 7:56
  And I want to ask you this because you were talking about
• 7:58
  data. And this has nothing to do with
• 8:02
  culinary, but it has to do with my taxes.
• 8:05
  It's something that's like the bane of my existence.
• 8:07
  Every day when I part of my work routine, I spend about 30
• 8:11
  minutes working on tax stuff every day.
• 8:12
  It's like, sit down, It's my, it's my 30 minute tax time.
• 8:16
  And I was like there has to be a more efficient way to do this.
• 8:20
  So what I did is I got 2 excel reports, one from from a toll
• 8:24
  tag and another one from Everlands, which is you know, a
• 8:28
  driving app that tracks mileage. And I sent it to ChatGPT and I
• 8:32
  said, can you consolidate these two and tell me which ones are
• 8:35
  personal driving expenses and which ones are, are are are
• 8:39
  taxable? It thought for two minutes and
• 8:41
  it spit me the Excel report back categorized, colour coded these
• 8:46
  go here, code it to this. I was like, this just saved me
• 8:49
  hours worth of work and I didn't realize how good it is now at
• 8:53
  filtering data. And that's just one example, but
• 8:56
  what are some of the other things that you talk about?
• 8:58
  You know, the, the data aspect. What are some other things that
• 9:01
  you guys are using it for? So I think what's being
• 9:03
  developed for, I don't know anybody that's actually using it
• 9:07
  yet, but what is being developed for is First off, I mean, you
• 9:09
  came from a hotel background, so you know that, right?
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  There's a, there's procurement, there's sales, there's POS
• 9:17
  systems, there's digital signage, there's inventory,
• 9:20
  there's production, there's all these different aspects that
• 9:23
  just like now is an independent culinarian, right?
• 9:27
  You're, you're using it for taxes.
• 9:29
  But think about how that manifests as a real business
• 9:33
  tool, not just for big companies, but for small, for
• 9:37
  each location. So it has the ability to bring
• 9:40
  together all those disparate technologies that people use,
• 9:43
  right? So you have one POS system.
• 9:45
  You might have a menu and ordering system or not.
• 9:48
  You might not have a system at all, right?
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  You might have a, you know, an order guide with one of your
• 9:55
  vendors, like a, a large broad liner.
• 9:57
  It brings together all those systems.
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  It's like air traffic control for all of them.
• 10:02
  And then you can pick and choose just like you did.
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  You needed data for these two expense categories.
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  This is what you needed. You can tell AI whatever you
• 10:11
  want to do, right? And we're getting to the point
• 10:14
  where we can actually look at a kitchen and the equipment that's
• 10:18
  in a kitchen and the skill level of the cooks and say, if you we
• 10:23
  want to make 404 hundred dishes of this one specific dish,
• 10:28
  right? So you're going to scale it to
• 10:29
  400, you need in your kitchen where you already have this
• 10:33
  equipment, you're going to need this many cooks at this skill
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  level. So think about what that means
• 10:39
  for labor, because labor is a huge issue for us, right?
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  So think about what that means. And it also as an operator,
• 10:45
  gives you the true cost of food, which is valuable at at a deli,
• 10:50
  at an independent restaurant, at a big hotel.
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  And so we are just at the tip of the iceberg about the
• 10:58
  information that's going. You said it correctly in that
• 11:00
  you said it saved me this amount of time.
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  Imagine. And it's not about replacing
• 11:06
  people, right? It's about that exact thing,
• 11:09
  giving people back time. So what's the highest and best
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  use of your time as a chef, as a consultant, as whatever it is
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  that you're, you know, your position is, but it gives you
• 11:21
  back that time. I think there's a lot of fear
• 11:24
  that it's somehow going to replace people or and it's just
• 11:27
  not it's going to make. I think a conversation that
• 11:31
  happens a lot, especially when I used to, when I was active as a
• 11:35
  chef, there's a lot of young cooks would come up to me and
• 11:37
  say, I want to learn the management stuff.
• 11:39
  I want to learn food cost and I want to learn how to write
• 11:41
  emails like you or whatever, right?
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  Like all the stuff that's not glamorous.
• 11:45
  And I used to tell them, don't worry about that, Focus on your
• 11:48
  craft. Learn to be a good chef.
• 11:49
  Like that's the easy part. And trust me, it's not that fun.
• 11:52
  And you could probably learn it pretty relatively quickly.
• 11:55
  But what's interesting now is I noticed a lot of chefs, I hate
• 11:59
  to use the term office chef, but a lot of chefs turn into office
• 12:01
  chefs because the amount of administrative work forces you
• 12:04
  into that. It forces you to become an
• 12:05
  office chef because from the second you get in to the second
• 12:09
  you leave, you're inundated with questions, emails,
• 12:11
  responsibilities, ordering, scheduling, etcetera.
• 12:15
  And what I, what I think is going to happen, at least now,
• 12:17
  if you're efficient with AI and you have, and you have chat bots
• 12:20
  set up or whatever, I think you cut your admin time in half.
• 12:23
  Realistically, I think you'd get 5 hours back in the day and get
• 12:26
  back in the kitchen where now you could see where the food
• 12:29
  cost issues are. You could develop your team, you
• 12:32
  could be a little less stressed, You should be a little bit more
• 12:34
  efficient. And I, so I see AI as a tool not
• 12:38
  to replace your, your taste buds or, you know, whatever, whatever
• 12:42
  chefs are worried about. Like no, like you could iterate
• 12:44
  much faster. Like, like you said, what
• 12:47
  asparagus is in season, Give me 20 ideas that I could do with
• 12:50
  asparagus with Italian food. Boom.
• 12:52
  You might not use any of them, but I kind of like this.
• 12:54
  And it's going to spin off. And then you could print out the
• 12:56
  recipe and give it to someone and say, hey, give me 10 recipe
• 13:00
  variations of that. You hand it to 10 people and you
• 13:02
  could scale it like, OK, let's pick the best one.
• 13:04
  Yeah, yeah. People should not be afraid of
• 13:07
  it. And it's it's not going away.
• 13:09
  At least I don't think so. I think I heard something on
• 13:12
  some sort of podcast, they were talking about the car industry
• 13:14
  and how it's like going towards automation and some like self
• 13:17
  driving. Yeah.
• 13:17
  And it was like, well, aren't, aren't we gonna like, you know,
• 13:20
  aren't, isn't the next generation just gonna be sad
• 13:22
  that they don't drive? It's like, dude, were you ever
• 13:24
  sad that like you don't know how to ride a horse?
• 13:26
  Like it's not, it's just gonna change and evolve.
• 13:28
  You're gonna do something else with that time.
• 13:31
  So yeah, I do think that like the people part is not gonna go
• 13:37
  away. How issues that you and I were
• 13:40
  talking about just the other day, right?
• 13:42
  If you have that time back, then, you know, the heart of
• 13:46
  being a chef is also teaching and training other chefs.
• 13:51
  That's the heart of what it means being a coach, a mentor,
• 13:55
  psychologist, Mama or Papa, right?
• 13:58
  I think, I mean, that's what. And when you talk about
• 14:01
  developing loyalty and staff and developing people and developing
• 14:05
  culinary leaders and next Gen. you know, great chefs, it's only
• 14:10
  because somebody had enough time to be that generous with me that
• 14:13
  I got to where I am. And I think that it's the same
• 14:18
  thing for us to talk about giving that time back.
• 14:20
  You said you can be in your kitchen, you can be with your
• 14:23
  people, you can be, you know, right there tasting things every
• 14:27
  day. To me as a chef, again, whatever
• 14:30
  the venue, whatever your venue is, that's the most valuable
• 14:34
  thing is being right there with the food, with the people and
• 14:38
  frankly with your with your customers.
• 14:40
  I mean driving, you know, being don't underestimate that going
• 14:43
  to the table touch. A lot of chefs don't like that.
• 14:46
  But you know, people come because they want to say they
• 14:48
  know the chef. It's like the chef is so
• 14:50
  powerful. They want to know the right
• 14:52
  cooks stay because they're like, that's my chef.
• 14:55
  Yeah, yeah. No, I agree.
• 14:56
  What do you like if there was some basic things that you think
• 15:00
  every culinary operation should have in place with and, and
• 15:06
  let's just go like very basic chat bot software.
• 15:09
  What are some things that you think every culinary operation
• 15:11
  should have in place in the chef's office as far as chat
• 15:14
  bots set up? Well, I don't, I don't know that
• 15:17
  it's just bot oriented. I think you actually like the
• 15:20
  the the platform that I'm working on now.
• 15:22
  I've been in development with this, with this Air technologies
• 15:25
  for the last 15 months, right? So I think it's, it's finding
• 15:30
  the right platform that can bring things together for you,
• 15:34
  right? So it's, you can personalize
• 15:37
  things. It's like anything else, right?
• 15:38
  You can pick and choose modules, You can have professionals
• 15:42
  develop certain things for you. I think the chatbot is just one,
• 15:46
  one piece. It's the automating the those,
• 15:50
  those daily tasks, you know, like menuing, ordering,
• 15:55
  receiving inventory, right? It can't think about having the
• 16:00
  ability to have an inventory where where the the bot or the
• 16:04
  platform actually send you a push notification that says,
• 16:07
  Hey, chef, you know, you got 10 lbs of snapper that's going to
• 16:11
  go bad. You better, you better menu it
• 16:13
  tonight. Like think about just having
• 16:15
  that at you. You might even have forgotten
• 16:17
  that that pen that snappers in there or a cook didn't tell you
• 16:20
  or it was put in the wrong place or, but because it's interfacing
• 16:24
  with all your other technologies, it understands
• 16:26
  that. So I don't know that it's just
• 16:28
  the the bot it's in. It's integrating AI into the
• 16:31
  systems that you already use. And if you don't have those
• 16:34
  systems, get those systems, right.
• 16:37
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 16:37
  So I think that it's, that's what I'm saying.
• 16:39
  It's more than just the the bot or learning how to learn because
• 16:43
  you know how you see those things where an answer from a
• 16:46
  chat bot is only as good as the question questions that you.
• 16:48
  Asked that is true and. I don't know if there's anything
• 16:51
  maybe is it air you said is working on it, but it would be
• 16:56
  interesting to have something that cuz my thing is the
• 16:59
  training and the leadership down the exec chef usually knows
• 17:02
  everything that's in their walk in cuz they're in there or they
• 17:04
  should be right? But you know when you're
• 17:07
  training sous chefs? They're not in there every day,
• 17:09
  chef. I wish they're.
• 17:11
  They're not. They're not in there, chef.
• 17:12
  I'm not. Today, Because like, that's my
• 17:14
  biggest thing is like at, you know, the next level now running
• 17:17
  restaurants on, you know, in charge of front of house and
• 17:20
  back of house. Yeah.
• 17:21
  Recently I've had to step in and I'm functionally the executive
• 17:24
  chef of one of our restaurants. And it's like, it's a difficult
• 17:27
  job, but it's also an easy job. Just be in charge of everything
• 17:29
  all the time, all at once. Yeah, right.
• 17:31
  Like it's like. But it would be responsible.
• 17:33
  Be responsible. And you know, some things like
• 17:35
  training the sous chefs, it's like, you know, I look at the
• 17:37
  order guide. I was like, Hey, do the order,
• 17:39
  do the, you know, he does order guide.
• 17:41
  And I'm like, Hey, we, we only have this in here, you know, so
• 17:43
  it's like if you have a bot that like knows your inventory and
• 17:46
  they're try to go log it in and then then AI is just like, Hey,
• 17:50
  you already have this like you. Don't need it, but it won't be a
• 17:52
  bot that knows your inventory. It'll still be software that
• 17:55
  knows your inventory. The bot is embedded, right,
• 17:59
  right. So it's not, you know, the
• 18:01
  information is coming from the software system, not from the
• 18:05
  bot. The AI is embedded in the system
• 18:07
  and that's what you're going to see more of, right, AI embedded
• 18:10
  in systems. And we can, I think both of us
• 18:14
  Chef can say we there is no way in the operation that I ran that
• 18:18
  I knew everything and every walk in there were multiple walk-ins,
• 18:22
  multiple locations, multiple. And again, single restaurant
• 18:25
  and. I think, I think the other thing
• 18:27
  that you have to think about, like even when we talk about
• 18:30
  pricing, inventory, anything like that, people make mistakes.
• 18:34
  Yeah, yeah, technology. Doesn't you know, erasers and
• 18:37
  ones and sevens? Well, you look at because AI is
• 18:41
  like a fascinating topic. I don't know, chefs probably
• 18:44
  that listen to this know that I love AI only because I see it as
• 18:49
  a force multiplier for most of the daily operations that you
• 18:51
  could work with, especially if, if if you don't know like and AI
• 18:55
  is becoming more conversational, right?
• 18:57
  So it's understanding like if, if you could ask it questions
• 19:00
  and you could say, don't give it back to me at a third grade
• 19:02
  reading level or, or scale it up, make it a little bit more
• 19:04
  complicated. I have people that I work with
• 19:08
  that'll that'll say, we're working on addition.
• 19:12
  I'll say, and I mock it up an AI image of it and say, is this
• 19:15
  kind of like how you want to plate it?
• 19:17
  And it's like, wow, it knocks out another portion of the R&D.
• 19:20
  Like you could give me 10 different plate variations with
• 19:23
  an AI image that would take you four or five hours in the
• 19:26
  kitchen, but it's going to take you 5 minutes with some prompts.
• 19:30
  But it's also knowing how to use the system.
• 19:33
  I think it's fascinating. Like I, if I had a prediction, I
• 19:37
  would say in a few years you're gonna be able to put on your
• 19:41
  virtual reality glasses and you're gonna have your board of
• 19:44
  directors that are all AI and you're gonna have your AI
• 19:47
  director of marketing and your AI director of finance and your
• 19:50
  AICFO or whatever, whatever. And you're gonna sit down with
• 19:53
  all these virtual reality and you're gonna say, hey, I need
• 19:55
  you to work on this day and I need you to work on this day.
• 19:57
  And then we'll meet in a few hours when you, well, I need a
• 19:59
  few hours for lunch. But you guys will be done
• 20:01
  instantly, right? Right.
• 20:03
  I think that like one thing I'm worried about with AI, another
• 20:06
  thing my constant worrying brain is this push towards like
• 20:11
  everything being efficiency. Chefs are already like that.
• 20:14
  But then but what we have and and I've had, you know, great
• 20:18
  examples of, I mean, chefs in general are the like most
• 20:21
  hospitable people. And when you're driving for
• 20:24
  efficiency, like hospitality is inefficient, you know, trying to
• 20:28
  make someone feel good isn't efficient.
• 20:30
  And even your own staff, when you have something that's
• 20:32
  driving towards maximum efficiency, I think sometimes we
• 20:37
  could lose the humanity of it to where it's like, well, this is
• 20:42
  whether it's, I think that's why people are afraid that it could
• 20:48
  lose the people like, OK, we're just gonna go to robots or
• 20:53
  whatever. And I don't think that.
• 20:54
  How far away are we from robot cooks, though?
• 20:56
  A long way, I think. What?
• 20:58
  Do you think? I don't think so.
• 20:59
  I just don't. I think it's just going to have.
• 21:00
  Here's one. Type of food.
• 21:01
  Right. It just has different
• 21:03
  applications. But I disagree with you in
• 21:05
  something you said. And this is where I think we
• 21:07
  have to be honest with ourselves as chefs.
• 21:10
  Not all chefs Dr. towards efficiency.
• 21:13
  Not all chefs have a capability of driving.
• 21:15
  Towards. That's true.
• 21:16
  You know, and when we talk about, you know, let's talk
• 21:19
  about the talent gap, right? There is definitely a talent
• 21:22
  gap. There's people that you know
• 21:24
  that aren't coming into our industry anymore or they're not
• 21:28
  opening restaurants or they're not working in, you know, hotels
• 21:32
  or they're not working where, you know, where hospitality, you
• 21:36
  know, is AI don't know how we I don't think you actually can
• 21:40
  automate hospitality. I think that's a cultural thing
• 21:43
  that exists outside of AI and I think that that, but I actually
• 21:47
  think I've had this discussion with several chefs.
• 21:50
  There's this talent gap where we know there's not enough great
• 21:54
  chefs for all the openings that we have.
• 21:56
  And I think that begs another question, if we can give them
• 21:59
  tools, AI based tools, be it a bot vehicle, whatever it is, a
• 22:04
  platform or an integrated platform.
• 22:07
  I think that what we what we will have is the ability to go
• 22:10
  out and talk about how great it is to be a chef and how
• 22:14
  restaurant careers are awesome and hotel and you know,
• 22:17
  hospitality jobs that it's a privilege to be of service.
• 22:21
  And that's, you know, we don't just do it because we love
• 22:24
  cooking food, We do it because we love feeding people.
• 22:27
  Yeah. I mean, we talked about it at
• 22:30
  great length yesterday. That's the the, the I mean, how
• 22:35
  do it? It just seems like every time I
• 22:37
  come into one of our restaurants or I'm talking to one of our
• 22:41
  chefs, it's like finding the people that are passionate about
• 22:44
  food and taking care of people that like can push past the fact
• 22:48
  that it's an it's amazing. You know, one of our cultural
• 22:52
  values is like seek heat. Like, but there's also something
• 22:55
  great about doing something hard, but people routinely and
• 22:59
  increasing numbers can't get past the fact that it's also a
• 23:02
  hard job. And so they like run into that
• 23:04
  wall and they're like, oh man, do you like, I, I want to go out
• 23:08
  on Saturday night, like I, I want, you know, to hang out with
• 23:11
  my friends. And I was like, my friends are
• 23:14
  in the kitchen. Like I purposely, when I got
• 23:16
  into this industry, I moved to a different state because I knew
• 23:19
  that like, if I wanted to do this, like I don't need the
• 23:22
  distraction of like my friends are going to go to a show and
• 23:25
  like, I want to go there. Like no, like I need to be, you
• 23:28
  know, it, it takes all that, but the rewards, like you said,
• 23:31
  it's, it's a great job. It's, it's, it's awesome.
• 23:35
  I mean being, you know, the relationships and the people
• 23:38
  and, and the people that, you know, the, the shoulders that I
• 23:41
  stand on and those relationships.
• 23:43
  So how, how do you think we're going to develop the next
• 23:49
  generation of chefs? I mean, culinary schools are
• 23:53
  fewer and far between than they used to be.
• 23:56
  You know, we're on the subject of AI and I'm not trying to beat
• 23:58
  AI again, but it's like people can learn faster.
• 24:01
  There's chef steps, there's Ruby, there's these online
• 24:03
  culinary courses, there's the Internet, there's Instagram,
• 24:07
  there's YouTube, and then there's, there's still culinary
• 24:10
  schools. Like we could go and pick up a
• 24:12
  knife and, and work with the chef instructor right now.
• 24:17
  I think that there's a big gap in the, in the, in the culinary
• 24:23
  world where, where new cooks are coming in and they're learning
• 24:25
  much faster. And I, I, I, I was saying this
• 24:28
  today with, with another chef that I was having a conversation
• 24:30
  with. I was saying that cooks can
• 24:33
  become chefs now and probably half the time for my generation,
• 24:36
  you know, because of all these, all the access.
• 24:38
  Skill though. Well, the the information is
• 24:41
  there. There's no bait keeping.
• 24:42
  If you want to know how to do something, you just you could
• 24:44
  find that information. You could.
• 24:45
  There's no gate. You could just break over it,
• 24:47
  right? But one of the things that we're
• 24:50
  losing, it's the, it's almost like the food still needs soul
• 24:56
  though. And you get that by making it
• 24:58
  hundreds of times and connecting with it.
• 25:00
  And so it's almost like we have knowledge, but we don't have
• 25:04
  understanding. So we have, we know everything
• 25:07
  about food, but we don't know. And I've had to give it some
• 25:11
  soul. The lack of leader, I mean, the
• 25:13
  lack of leadership in the kitchen.
• 25:14
  We talked for about an hour on this, this bus ride.
• 25:17
  And like, my head goes immediately to the fact that
• 25:20
  one, I'm from Southern California.
• 25:22
  She was the chef in LA. I was like, man, if I could have
• 25:24
  found her, like and learn from her.
• 25:26
  Just talking to her. You're like the leadership, like
• 25:29
  what Chef Aline has. Like talking to her, I was like,
• 25:33
  I want to work for you, you know, like I want to be, you
• 25:37
  know, pumping out food on on your line and, and learning from
• 25:40
  you. And it's those things.
• 25:41
  It's like, it's like they know that technical job duty.
• 25:44
  And I think something that, you know, has always stuck with me.
• 25:47
  Danny Meyer's book Setting the Table, It's like that 51 percent
• 25:51
  or The thing is, is like the technical job duty is not
• 25:54
  important. It's hard and you need to learn
• 25:55
  it. But that's the 49%.
• 25:57
  It's like, where do we find those 51% people that he talks
• 26:00
  about? We're we're the age of too much
• 26:02
  information, right. And not enough soul.
• 26:04
  Yeah. Not enough soul.
• 26:06
  Yeah. Because the food, not all food.
• 26:08
  And I'm this is a general statement, but a lot of food
• 26:11
  doesn't taste the way it did 10 years ago.
• 26:14
  And and we know better now. Like we, we know the right flour
• 26:17
  to use. We know where to buy the right
• 26:18
  ingredients. We know the right way to make
• 26:20
  Neapolitan pizza where, you know, before we were just all,
• 26:23
  we we just didn't understand. So we know better.
• 26:26
  But it's still feels like it's just missing a little something.
• 26:29
  You know what I think it's missing?
• 26:30
  What's that? I think that when I was learning
• 26:34
  to cook and it was a long time ago and I didn't go to culinary
• 26:37
  school, I met a chef, I went to work for him.
• 26:41
  I worked for him for six years and that's how I learned
• 26:43
  everything, right? Everything, most things I kept
• 26:46
  learning. And that's the other thing, you
• 26:48
  know, that compulsive curiosity to keep on learning is what
• 26:50
  makes a a really good chef great, right?
• 26:54
  But I think it's because, you know, if I wanted to learn
• 26:57
  something that he wasn't available to teach me, he would
• 27:00
  just call up a friend and I could just go.
• 27:02
  I didn't clock in. I didn't have workman's comp.
• 27:05
  I don't know what would have happened if I cut myself at that
• 27:07
  property or at that restaurant. I probably would have just
• 27:10
  bandaged it up and gone back to work.
• 27:12
  But I think there's this, you know, all this insurance over
• 27:16
  regulation and everything that has that keeps us from just
• 27:20
  sharing openly with each other and really being able to learn.
• 27:25
  We were at, we saw this, met this awesome farm couple, right,
• 27:30
  who needs labor on their farm? And I'm sitting there thinking,
• 27:33
  you know, how can I get kind of the big companies to get labor
• 27:36
  out there? But you know what the reality
• 27:38
  is, they're never going to do that because who's going to
• 27:41
  insure them? Who's going to get them there?
• 27:43
  Who's going to pay them, right? And it's not even necessarily
• 27:45
  the pay, but it's the ability, you know, how can we bring back
• 27:49
  volunteering to to learn, right? So volunteering at a farm
• 27:54
  because you want to learn that connection to the land, the
• 27:57
  soil, in this case, the chickens, the pigs, whatever.
• 28:00
  And in one hour time period with them, I learned so much right
• 28:04
  about regenerative agriculture. And but you know, you don't get
• 28:09
  those opportunities enough, especially young, young
• 28:12
  culinarians don't get those opportunities.
• 28:15
  So how do we foster those opportunities without putting
• 28:18
  our business at risk, right. So I mean, I don't know what the
• 28:22
  answer to that is. I don't know.
• 28:23
  I'm not a lawyer. I don't know if we could sign a
• 28:25
  waiver or whatever have them come.
• 28:28
  And the other thing is, is it's it's generational, right?
• 28:31
  Because now I find a lot of a lot of people don't want to
• 28:34
  volunteer. They want to be paid for all
• 28:36
  their time and effort. And I'm like, but you're getting
• 28:39
  this education for free. So circling back to AI, they can
• 28:45
  have that education, they can see that online, but they don't
• 28:48
  feel the experience. Right, right.
• 28:51
  By the way, only because, only because you brought it up, can
• 28:57
  you talk about why you guys are both here in Austin.
• 29:00
  Ohio. Yeah, I'll let.
• 29:01
  No, you're way more eloquent. So we are with flavour forays so
• 29:09
  Barb Mathias and Beverly Stevens from.
• 29:11
  They're they're in the room, they're off, they're off camera,
• 29:14
  but they're. Here they're the icons that like
• 29:16
  I read food Arts religiously if nobody knows like because food
• 29:21
  arts hasn't been around for a while now, but but.
• 29:24
  It was the magazine that I would look forward to.
• 29:27
  Yeah, I would get in my in my box.
• 29:28
  I would go check it. Who's in the back?
• 29:30
  I. Still have Who's the chef feed?
• 29:32
  Recognize this time. And so when I talk about being
• 29:35
  able to volunteer and experience and everything, it's the
• 29:38
  generosity of people like Bev and Barb that that create these
• 29:42
  culinary experiences for chefs in different cities where we get
• 29:46
  to meet these farmers, we get to meet other chefs, we get to
• 29:48
  spend time and get to know each other.
• 29:51
  And you're in in enriched exponentially.
• 29:54
  And again, it's that learning is that I want to learn more about
• 29:57
  what you do. I want to learn more about what
• 29:59
  you do right. And so and I think and it's
• 30:02
  also, it's also curated in a way that that each experience is
• 30:08
  valuable. So you're on this culinary
• 30:09
  excursion for, what, last three days?
• 30:11
  Yep. Yeah, the last three days.
• 30:13
  It was for me, like we at I work for Addington companies.
• 30:18
  We try to take our leaders to like NRA Cater source that's
• 30:21
  national Restaurant Association for people there the common fan
• 30:26
  and this has been the single most like educational 3 days and
• 30:31
  just picking up stuff and. And you get to meet a whole
• 30:34
  bunch of new chefs. Yeah, your network.
• 30:36
  Grows yeah like, and you know it's not even seeing the farm.
• 30:39
  It's the you know like I've mentioned twice already that
• 30:42
  the. I'm on the bus with Chef Helene
• 30:44
  and, and talking to some of the people at what's Texas Pete's
• 30:49
  Hot sauce was there and some other chefs and chef friend of
• 30:53
  mine that said of the mansion at Troll Creek.
• 30:56
  Like so that, you know, the whole experience is so eye
• 30:59
  opening and learning and, and yeah, it's been very impactful.
• 31:03
  It's been awesome. And so I think, again, circling
• 31:08
  all the way back to the beginning of our conversation,
• 31:10
  if you can make the work easier, if you can automate the
• 31:14
  administrative part, you can make time to participate in
• 31:18
  things. Yeah.
• 31:18
  That's an excellent point. It's an excellent point.
• 31:20
  And I think we're, we're, we know more about food, but we're,
• 31:24
  we're losing a little bit of that connection.
• 31:25
  And not everyone, but like there's some chefs that are in
• 31:27
  the dirt, right? They're growing their food and
• 31:29
  they are in it. But there's other chefs that
• 31:31
  just, you know, they're, they're looking at a, a beautiful social
• 31:34
  media picture. They're trying to replicate it,
• 31:35
  but they don't really understand what they're replicating.
• 31:39
  And I think again, back to the, to the original point, like you
• 31:43
  said, is getting back in the kitchen, cooking, connecting
• 31:45
  with food, go to the farmers market, talk to the talk to the
• 31:48
  farmer, taste some food, cut an orange, eat it, see what, see
• 31:52
  what food tastes like again and reconnect with it.
• 31:55
  And, and we run the risk of all the food starting to look the
• 31:59
  same because we're all, all eyes are pointed in the same
• 32:03
  direction. And I and I think if you could
• 32:05
  just, you know, take a step back, look around, have an
• 32:08
  expression like if everyone's looking at the front door, look,
• 32:11
  look at the alley, like look at the side door.
• 32:14
  Because if you if you sound like everyone else, you end up just
• 32:17
  like everyone else. So I always like say be the
• 32:19
  exception to the rule. Where we at on time?
• 32:24
  How how you doing? I'm good.
• 32:26
  I'm. I'm going to wrap it up in a
• 32:27
  minute. We'll give you 1.
• 32:28
  Last, we'll probably talk with you guys.
• 32:29
  No, no. We do this all day.
• 32:31
  I just I'm trying to think I want to get one last question in
• 32:34
  with you before you. I, I think again, it's, it's, I
• 32:37
  love the, the conversation about the marriage of technology and
• 32:41
  soul, but that they're not mutually exclusive, right?
• 32:44
  But it actually gives you, you know, a, a doorway to explore
• 32:48
  more. You just have to get comfortable
• 32:51
  with, you know, with it. I mean, let's face it, you know,
• 32:54
  it's been an evolution, right? It's been a journey for us.
• 32:56
  We didn't use. I wrote stuff on the back of a
• 32:59
  napkin and I had a little, you know, a little inspire.
• 33:02
  Yeah, little, no pocket and a pencil.
• 33:04
  And that's how I wrote recipes, right?
• 33:06
  That's how I learned. Yeah, I used to.
• 33:07
  I used to go to Google and like look something up and then quiz
• 33:11
  people. Do you know what that means?
• 33:13
  That word that I just learned or something like that, that when
• 33:16
  we only had the food lovers companions, Like no, you can't
• 33:18
  use the food lovers companion. But I love that, yeah.
• 33:20
  Right, it was the book. What was that other book, the
• 33:23
  one that had like the ingredients it was by?
• 33:25
  Culinary artistry, yes. Yeah.
• 33:27
  Is that it? The Karen somebody?
• 33:30
  Yeah. Like it's like Konenburger.
• 33:32
  Is that the flavour? Was it the flavour?
• 33:34
  Bible. No, no, it was, I think it was
• 33:36
  called. Yeah, but it had all the
• 33:38
  different. Yeah.
• 33:39
  And it by season and what? Yeah, it's culinary artistry.
• 33:42
  I think I went through copies of that.
• 33:44
  There's a, you know, Gary Kunz is in there and Hubert Keller,
• 33:49
  like, all the like, Charlie Palmer's in there.
• 33:50
  There's a bunch of legends. Yeah.
• 33:52
  Like having their menus on it, too.
• 33:53
  That was really. Cool.
• 33:54
  You know, you know what I have? You know what my most prized
• 33:56
  possession is like? My most prized chef possession
• 33:59
  is is I have a menu from the Savoy from Escoffier.
• 34:05
  Oh wow, wow, that's the big one. That's pretty.
• 34:08
  Yeah, like 1929 or something like that.
• 34:11
  Yeah. That's like my most prized
• 34:13
  culinary possession. I haven't like, you know, in a
• 34:15
  safety deposit box somewhere. But yeah, it's like, it's, it's
• 34:18
  really cool when you, when you look at where we came from as
• 34:22
  chefs and you know, Escoffier, Hey, I don't know if anyone's
• 34:24
  read his, his book. We were talking books right now.
• 34:27
  Well, I I have. It's funny, I try to tell like
• 34:30
  young chefs and stuff. Like I have the brown Escoffier,
• 34:32
  the Leggy. Yeah, that's just like.
• 34:33
  No, but have you read Ritz and Escoffier?
• 34:36
  No, like that is such a great book.
• 34:39
  People listening. You should read that book
• 34:41
  because the guy was a rock star. He's kind of a crook too, you
• 34:44
  know, right, like they but there's some there's some funny
• 34:48
  stories in there. Just how he was the original
• 34:50
  celebrity chef and he would here's a here's a tip is he had
• 34:54
  his clientele and they would come in and he would name dishes
• 34:56
  after them. And so that's why you have a lot
• 34:59
  of yeah, the Peach Melba. He would name it after all his
• 35:01
  his high rollers that would come into into the Ritz but or the
• 35:05
  Savoy or wherever he was at the time.
• 35:06
  But but talk about having time to connect with his customers
• 35:09
  yet to know them right, and it builds your so I, I think that's
• 35:13
  it. I think that you know the last
• 35:15
  point for me or what I'd like to say, and it's been like such a
• 35:18
  great time talking to you. I wish, you know, we had more
• 35:20
  time, but I I think don't underestimate what hospitality
• 35:25
  means both inside your kitchen and outside your kitchen.
• 35:29
  Yeah, right. And true hospitality is like
• 35:32
  embracing that generosity of spirit that I think most chefs
• 35:35
  have and that love and respect for ingredients, producers,
• 35:39
  execution, all parts of it till it goes to the dish.
• 35:42
  And I think that finally on the AI, you know, things like air,
• 35:47
  you have to get comfortable with a platform that's literally
• 35:50
  going to take something from the mind of the chef to the mouth of
• 35:54
  the consumer, right? Because that's going to.
• 35:56
  And it's that connectedness can only make us better.
• 36:00
  Well, chef, I'm sorry that you can't stay.
• 36:02
  I know you got a plane to catch. We're going to keep talking, but
• 36:04
  I'll. Try to follow, I don't.
• 36:06
  No, no, this was fun. We got to have you back on SO.
• 36:09
  I'd love to come to Austin. Yeah, Yeah.
• 36:11
  Come to Austin, we'll have you back on.
• 36:13
  Thank you. Thank you so much.
• 36:14
  Yeah, that's. Been great.
• 36:16
  We'll be in touch. All right, take care.
• 36:18
  Have a safe flight. Have a great rest of the
• 36:21
  podcast. So when people are starting in
• 36:23
  your kitchen, how do you train them?
• 36:25
  You know, How many kitchens do you oversee right now?
• 36:28
  Right now 4 there's for people. That are listening.
• 36:31
  What are the four restaurants? Commissary, the porch, mirador
• 36:36
  and tango room all in Dallas. I have a little to a lot to do
• 36:41
  with the quality control with the restaurants in the Jewel
• 36:44
  Hotel, so the CBD provisions and cesetta, but.
• 36:50
  Great restaurants, by the way. Thank you.
• 36:52
  A lot of people working hard to make sure that they are.
• 36:55
  Yeah. So, yeah, so I like basically
• 36:59
  head up the whole F&B department for my company, whether it's
• 37:03
  from the house or back of the house.
• 37:04
  So I think for a long time we operated in silos and we had a
• 37:08
  lot of, you know, great, you know, icons.
• 37:11
  Like I said, I got to work with junior Mike Sandoni, Scott
• 37:13
  Romano that were in the kitchens for Headington companies.
• 37:17
  And now as you know, I grow in my career and, and, and in in
• 37:24
  culinary. It's like kind of trying to find
• 37:27
  those people I've had success with, you know, putting people
• 37:31
  I've worked with in the past as cooks and sous chefs and all
• 37:33
  that stuff in executive chef positions.
• 37:35
  But we are kind of in the process of trying to homogenize
• 37:41
  what those training things are because you know, you've done a
• 37:44
  great job in in your books of, of putting those in a concise
• 37:47
  form of kind of like, you know, like, so you want to do this.
• 37:50
  Yeah, yeah, I put those so like I could say what you can't say,
• 37:54
  right? So you'll if you say it, you
• 37:55
  might get in trouble with it, right if I say it.
• 37:58
  You know, it's like that thing where like, you know, all
• 38:00
  executive chefs, you know, we go out like I had this one cook do
• 38:02
  this the other day and you're like, now you roll your eyes
• 38:06
  about it. And, and that we were, we were
• 38:08
  talking about it on with Chef Helene.
• 38:10
  Like I was like, you know, I remember distinctly executive
• 38:13
  chef, it's my first executive chef gig.
• 38:16
  I see this young cook, she has so much potential, right?
• 38:19
  She's like hustling, doing this thing and she pulls a pan out
• 38:24
  super fast and there's like it had fat head rendered.
• 38:28
  It was on a great, you know, and and it, it the fat came over her
• 38:31
  hand. Yeah.
• 38:32
  And immediately let her suck. I'm like, hey, we're gonna wrap
• 38:36
  that up. Take a second, you know, busy
• 38:38
  service Saturday night. And this is a 24 hour hotel
• 38:44
  restaurant. We do in room dining overnight.
• 38:47
  You know, it's technically 28 mil periods a week.
• 38:50
  So it's a hoss. And, you know, she's like, she
• 38:54
  gets back on the line that night and she's like, I'm like, OK,
• 38:57
  cool. Like, you know, she the next
• 38:59
  morning I told her I was like, how to take care of it.
• 39:01
  You know, I've had second degree burns numerous times.
• 39:04
  And she gives her a call. Hey, I went to urgent care.
• 39:08
  I'm like, OK. She's like they say I can't come
• 39:10
  back to work for seven days. And I'm like, OK, and at that
• 39:18
  point, you know, she sends the thing to HR and I'm like, OK,
• 39:21
  you know, and I just kind of like, like you said the thing,
• 39:23
  you can't say it's like, dude, like I know that it hurts and I
• 39:26
  know that, you know, like I don't want you to re injure it
• 39:30
  or anything, but it's on the back of your hand.
• 39:31
  It's a burn. Like you come back, take the day
• 39:34
  off today. I mean, but like you could come
• 39:36
  back, you know, and if it's important to you and like it's,
• 39:39
  it's, it's not even the like selfish part of like hand needed
• 39:43
  manifestation. It's like show up for your
• 39:45
  people. Like the person on Garmin is
• 39:46
  being next to you, you know, like you look to your left and
• 39:49
  like, you know, me and Helene kind of were talking, you know,
• 39:53
  we got to this place of like, I think that there's a romanticism
• 40:00
  with like, kind of when you and I came in the game of the the
• 40:04
  chef that, you know, calls you a donk, you know, that Gordon
• 40:06
  Ramsay, like, I mean, you know, for a long time had the most
• 40:09
  Michelin stars. He was my icon.
• 40:11
  And you know, but there's a romanticism about it.
• 40:17
  And I think there is because like a kind of creative
• 40:19
  community because you guys were all we were all in the like jail
• 40:23
  together, you know, experiencing the abuse a little bit, But it's
• 40:28
  that community, right? Like, how do you create those
• 40:30
  communities where like, it's not that like, you know, like
• 40:33
  switching the mindset to where she got that note and she was
• 40:36
  like, fuck, like out seven days. What, dude?
• 40:40
  Like, no, I gotta get back in the kitchen.
• 40:42
  Yeah, I want to cook. Like, I like to make things.
• 40:43
  I like to be in there. I like to shut my eyes for a
• 40:46
  second, hear the click of the plates and the the timer's going
• 40:49
  off and someone yelling behind and you know, like this the the
• 40:52
  ticket part. Part of the issue I well, by the
• 40:54
  way, and I I think I should say like to each their own like like
• 40:58
  if if, if if you are sick, like don't get.
• 41:01
  It yeah, yeah, I don't want like.
• 41:03
  But what I will say is a lot, I think a lot of people love the
• 41:07
  idea of being a chef more than they love being a chef, Right,
• 41:11
  right. It's, it's not what it, when you
• 41:13
  get in and it's like, oh, it's a lot harder.
• 41:16
  It's, it's hotter, it's more physical.
• 41:18
  There's the personalities, there's all the personalities in
• 41:21
  the kitchen. And I, and I think a lot of
• 41:23
  people, you know, they think, well, I'm a good cook and I love
• 41:26
  food. I should become a chef.
• 41:28
  It's like, Nope, you might not love working in kitchens, which
• 41:31
  are two completely different things, loving food and loving
• 41:33
  working in kitchens, two different things.
• 41:35
  If you love both, you're a Unicorn.
• 41:37
  If you love working in kitchens and you love food, you're going
• 41:39
  to be a great chef, Right. But you can't love food but hate
• 41:42
  working in kitchens. Yeah, you have to like, if
• 41:45
  you're going to be a chef, you have to enjoy that environment
• 41:47
  because it's it's it's not for everyone.
• 41:49
  Here's a a funny story because you brought up Scott Romano.
• 41:52
  I don't know if he's going to listen to this, but maybe you'll
• 41:54
  send it to him back, let's say 2010.
• 41:58
  I'm hope. I'm hoping I could find a
• 41:59
  picture of this and I'll put it in the in the podcast.
• 42:03
  We were judging. I was judging something with
• 42:05
  Ferdinand Matt, certified master chef.
• 42:08
  Yeah, he's a legend, right? Oh my God.
• 42:09
  Yeah. We were judging something in
• 42:11
  Dallas. We were judging a reality show
• 42:13
  auditions and afterwards it was honestly one of the greatest
• 42:18
  days of my life because here I'm like, that's fucking for a damn
• 42:21
  match, right? Right.
• 42:22
  Like I'm like the dude, it's just me and him and we're
• 42:25
  hanging out all day and I'm picking his brain all day long.
• 42:29
  It was it was amazing, right? And he comes up to me and he
• 42:33
  says, Andre, gather some chefs. Let's let's cook.
• 42:38
  And I was like, oh, shit, like who do I know?
• 42:40
  And I was, I was like scrambling to like, because it's we're
• 42:43
  going to cook like at midnight. He just wants to get together,
• 42:46
  cook and eat with the Dallas chefs.
• 42:49
  And Scott Romano was there. Matt McAllister.
• 42:52
  I'm trying to think, who else was there?
• 42:53
  Brian Lucier. David, you're.
• 42:56
  No, he was not there, not that time.
• 42:58
  He was there a different time, OK, Because we did one at
• 43:02
  Charlie Palmer's. I was there.
• 43:04
  That's right, but I don't think Ferdinand Metz was there that.
• 43:06
  No, he wasn't. That's why I was like, am I
• 43:07
  misremembering? How?
• 43:08
  How could I? Yeah, no, no, we did.
• 43:10
  So we did three. The first one we did, it wasn't
• 43:13
  a lot of us. It was a couple of food writers,
• 43:15
  one from Dallas, one from New York for Nan Mets.
• 43:17
  Like I said, Matt McAllister, Brian Luscher, myself, Scott
• 43:23
  Romanen. Yeah, and there's maybe I'm
• 43:25
  probably missing. People remember getting like
• 43:28
  kind of like verging 2 memories. But I was probably, I was either
• 43:32
  at the time the tornado because the one that you did with David
• 43:36
  Huger, I was at that one. I cooked something there.
• 43:39
  I was a sous chef then, but I was probably on the line.
• 43:41
  I remember getting that together cuz I remember like Scott.
• 43:43
  'S yeah, I was there. I was there.
• 43:45
  That. Met.
• 43:45
  'S crazy. Yeah.
• 43:46
  So I was there that day and I'm trying to think.
• 43:48
  I remember we did it there at the, at the Jewel in Charlie
• 43:53
  Palmer's right. It was myself, Scott.
• 43:57
  I don't remember who else was there that day, but I remember
• 43:59
  David Huger. Myself and Scott were there.
• 44:00
  I remember David Huger made soft scrambled eggs.
• 44:03
  Yeah, he made. And he did on a double boiler.
• 44:05
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:06
  Shit. You're bringing back memories.
• 44:07
  I could do some. I had not thought about that
• 44:09
  until right now. And.
• 44:10
  I would remember just like I made my.
• 44:11
  I can't even remember what I mean.
• 44:13
  That's why kids write it down, dude.
• 44:14
  Write it down, Yeah. Anything you make take a photo,
• 44:17
  you can take a photo now. Yeah, but I just remember
• 44:20
  watching him cook being like, Oh my God, I got to take notes of
• 44:22
  this. Like yeah, movie is so precise
• 44:24
  and exact. Where's Scott now?
• 44:27
  He's in the Ozarks. He really nice hotel.
• 44:34
  It's great to see him cook. That man can cook man.
• 44:39
  Everything that I know like and I've for the longest time, I
• 44:43
  think most people when they get into it.
• 44:44
  I kind of got into his second career, like I felt like
• 44:47
  imposter syndrome, but like, like being a cook for him and
• 44:51
  then getting, you know, promoted, like him promoting me
• 44:55
  to a sous chef and, and being his sous chef with it.
• 44:57
  Like, you know, for myself, I don't really care what everyone
• 45:00
  else, but like, I kind of wear it as a batch of honor because
• 45:02
  like he really taught you how to cook.
• 45:03
  We did all of our own stuff, all from scratch.
• 45:06
  Actually, I remember something Scott made that day.
• 45:08
  He made a ravioli with like a coffee broth.
• 45:10
  Yeah, with a with a egg yolk in the scenario he Yeah.
• 45:14
  Yeah, cuz he, he, I remember he put he put coffee in his veal
• 45:16
  stock or something like that. Yeah, it was really good.
• 45:19
  I stole that from him. I was like, I mean like it was
• 45:22
  good. It's like he had I was like, he
• 45:23
  infused the veal stock with coffee beans and.
• 45:25
  That's where everything was Smart would do.
• 45:27
  He would do when he would do menu changes.
• 45:30
  Yeah, he like net, like it was all creativity.
• 45:33
  He never thought about like, is this going to be too hard?
• 45:38
  And I remember like one time I was on fish station and I was,
• 45:43
  it was like there was, there was a, a dish that he did that like
• 45:46
  if you didn't get it down like immediately and started, it was
• 45:49
  1 pan pickup, but it was like everything you build in the pan.
• 45:51
  It was like 11 minutes, I think was the fastest you could get it
• 45:55
  out. And I went on vacation and
• 45:59
  somehow he ended up on the the like, he had to work it one, one
• 46:02
  day. Yeah.
• 46:03
  And I came back and he he grabbed me and he's like,
• 46:06
  Connor, your station is really hard.
• 46:08
  And I'm like, I know it's. Probably harder when you're the
• 46:12
  executive. Chef right, like oh man of the
• 46:14
  show. He's like, he's like, OK, he's
• 46:16
  like we had like I think and it was that dish like we had like,
• 46:20
  I think a restaurant we coming. I was like, yeah, I'm taking off
• 46:23
  that dish for Restaurant Week. And I was like, Oh my God, thank
• 46:26
  you. Like, but yeah, no, he
• 46:29
  creativity wise and and just like the basis of of cooking.
• 46:33
  Yeah, you know, making it taste good.
• 46:35
  He taught me my first day in his kitchen.
• 46:40
  I made a steak tartare with not a lick of fucking salt.
• 46:45
  Yeah. And he like, I mean, just, he's
• 46:47
  everywhere. He'd come box up, he sees this
• 46:50
  steak tartare and he just looks he's like, who made this?
• 46:54
  Well, like me chef is like, OK, he just like, I mean, he was
• 46:57
  gonna have me make another one no matter what.
• 46:59
  So he just takes a spoon, tastes it and I can see like his jaw
• 47:02
  kind of, you know, tighten, swallow it.
• 47:06
  He's like stand right there. He makes 1 and I see it and it
• 47:10
  was basically I made it like that because like the a garmage,
• 47:14
  a cook told me how to make it like wrote like, now you do
• 47:17
  this, now you do this, now you do this and just left out like
• 47:20
  season and taste it right, right.
• 47:21
  It should be in every recipe and, you know, made it
• 47:27
  beautifully perfect, delicious. He's like taste yours and taste
• 47:30
  mine. And I tasted it and I was like,
• 47:32
  yeah, chef, you know, And it was like from there I was like,
• 47:34
  dude, you know, basically don't be the biggest idiot in the
• 47:38
  kitchen, right, Like, right, right, right.
• 47:39
  But yeah, no, he's a sorry. I could go on about Scott.
• 47:42
  He's great. No, he's a great guy.
• 47:43
  I, I, I, like I said, I think the last time I spoke with him
• 47:46
  was at probably at that dinner at Charlie Palmer.
• 47:48
  So I haven't. I'm not good at keeping in
• 47:50
  contact these days. But yeah, he was.
• 47:53
  He's a legend. He's a legend.
• 47:55
  He's a fantastic cook. Who else was there that day
• 47:57
  besides David Huger and Leon Scott?
• 48:00
  You seem to remember Chef Kelly. He was down at I can't remember
• 48:03
  his first name. His last name was Kelly.
• 48:05
  He was great too. Like he was like the first, like
• 48:07
  cuz you know when back then, like everyone wore a chef coat.
• 48:11
  Yeah, I. Remember, I can't remember his
• 48:12
  first name. It was still cool to wear a chef
• 48:14
  coat. Yeah.
• 48:15
  He he wore white. All white, white embroidery.
• 48:18
  Right, Right. Yeah, Brigard.
• 48:19
  He wore a just a cook shirt. I was like that's so bad ass
• 48:24
  dude, like just coming in and like he's like I'm on a cook
• 48:26
  shirt dude, and he worked at like this place while salsa down
• 48:29
  the street, but he worked at a bunch of other He was a great
• 48:32
  chef. We got way off.
• 48:36
  So how do you so new cook coming into your kitchens?
• 48:39
  Yeah, yeah. What are some things that you
• 48:42
  tell them to get them set up for success?
• 48:45
  One, you know, write it down. Notebook pen, Yeah.
• 48:50
  Bad pen is better than a good memory.
• 48:52
  Yeah, yeah. And then always, you know, like,
• 48:57
  you know, we're kind of we have a restaurant too, where like you
• 49:00
  have some cooks that don't have their own knives, have their
• 49:02
  knife, you know, the, the, the, the, the person that served for
• 49:05
  JOBI really told them like, look, do you want a JOB or do
• 49:08
  you want a career? You know, because like here you
• 49:13
  are doing a job, but like, if you want a career in this is
• 49:15
  what you're doing when you're not here.
• 49:17
  That's really important. And I, you know, it was Scott,
• 49:24
  it was Mike kind of teaching me those things.
• 49:27
  What are you reading? What are the people that inspire
• 49:30
  you? Are you like we?
• 49:32
  For a short time, we had this culture at Charlie Palmer where
• 49:35
  all the Cokes went out after and the first drink, no one talked.
• 49:40
  Everyone looked over their notes, saw what they did, you
• 49:44
  know, and if they had a struggling pick up, if something
• 49:47
  lagged, you know, like they would, we would go over that
• 49:50
  together Sometimes, you know, of like, OK, like this ticket sunk
• 49:54
  the line. Yeah.
• 49:55
  Like on your station, motherfucker.
• 49:57
  Like, so like, let's go over this and see like where we went
• 50:00
  wrong and get the timing right because guys, it's hard.
• 50:03
  So I used to do those as well. I used to call them a post shift
• 50:06
  nameless, rankless debrief, right?
• 50:07
  I think I might have picked that up from Blue Angels maybe.
• 50:10
  I don't know, but it was it was great.
• 50:12
  Like put everyone's rank to the side.
• 50:13
  We're outside. Like what went wrong?
• 50:15
  What went right? Let's talk about and everything
• 50:17
  that went wrong. Let's talk about how to fix it.
• 50:19
  Let's not fucking turn this into a complaining session.
• 50:23
  Like how do we fix it? And if we can't fix it, take it
• 50:25
  off the menu. Right.
• 50:26
  And so like it was those things I would look at my prep list.
• 50:29
  I still have these books. I, I try to, I show the young
• 50:32
  cook wants it like here, let me show you what I did in 2 1/2
• 50:36
  hours that day because it's like it's impressing me.
• 50:38
  I'm like, how did I get all this done?
• 50:39
  You know, like, because once that's what really, you know,
• 50:43
  there's a there's a young cook that came on the line that was
• 50:46
  seasoned, came from like a a like kind of a restaurant family
• 50:50
  from Saint Louis. Yeah, he's a really talented
• 50:53
  chef since Ryan Carberry, but he was on the line with me and he's
• 50:56
  like, you know, we go out and kind of like shoot the shit and
• 50:59
  he's like, guys, what are you doing?
• 51:00
  Like we had the worst service ever.
• 51:03
  Like, no, like, no, we're not having always go over this.
• 51:07
  And like, once, you know, that kind of stuck with everyone.
• 51:10
  It was like, it almost became a competition, like how much you
• 51:12
  could get done, you know, And then like, everyone was just
• 51:15
  kind of calm. It was funny.
• 51:16
  Like it it, it got to a point where the sous chefs were
• 51:18
  running around crazy and the cooks were coming up to me and
• 51:21
  like, hey, what do you need me to do?
• 51:23
  It's important to create that culture because it could quickly
• 51:25
  become a race to the bottom right if if it's not competitive
• 51:28
  and we're all winners and we have a winners mindset.
• 51:30
  And if all of us, when we went together, I mean, we're all
• 51:33
  driving forward and we're all getting Better Together, it
• 51:36
  could easily turn into the other, into the opposite, which
• 51:39
  is we all suck. Nothing's good.
• 51:42
  Everything's broken. And it just becomes a pile of
• 51:45
  excuses why we can't get better. And it's, and I'll be honest
• 51:49
  with people like I've been in all those kitchens and the ones
• 51:52
  that are like that, I promise you they were fixable, right?
• 51:58
  But they're not fixable if no one wants to fix it.
• 52:00
  Yeah, they give a shits like how do you, how do you?
• 52:02
  And like, that's where my frustration with the world, I
• 52:07
  guess, is like, how do you, how do you get that?
• 52:09
  Like, you know, because I've been in interviewing chefs, even
• 52:13
  stodging them, like, dude, stodging and and and tasting
• 52:19
  like tasting's the worst. Like, so you can cook, you know,
• 52:22
  like so many cooks can cook. Cooks make food, chefs make
• 52:24
  money. But also chefs are leaders.
• 52:26
  I don't see your leadership when you cook by yourself, you know,
• 52:30
  like, yeah, great. Everything is perfect.
• 52:33
  How do you scale it? How do you scale it?
• 52:34
  And like the thing was like that culture at that time, it came
• 52:38
  from like the bottom up. And that's easy.
• 52:39
  Like when it's coming from the cooks.
• 52:41
  Yeah. How do you how do you you know
• 52:43
  what are the? How do you do that?
• 52:44
  How do you implement that though now into your kitchen so.
• 52:47
  You know, I'm it's, it's, it's hard.
• 52:50
  Like I make mistakes. Like, you know, I think that
• 52:52
  like at right now where the restaurant that I'm in, you
• 52:57
  know, 5-4 days a week, like as the chef, It's, it's, you know,
• 53:06
  I, I made the mistake because like it wasn't being being
• 53:10
  driven top down or that culture wasn't being driven.
• 53:12
  But I think that like, you know, the things that I spend my time
• 53:16
  on that I feel like have been effective is what are your Ray
• 53:21
  Dalio? Dalio has a great book called
• 53:24
  principles. Like what are your principles?
• 53:27
  What are the things that like define you as a chef?
• 53:29
  And what are the things that like and, and, and principles
• 53:32
  are like something that you you just will not, you know, go back
• 53:36
  on. Like one of my things is like,
• 53:37
  if you take a knife out, you better have a steal.
• 53:39
  It's a principle. It doesn't happen.
• 53:40
  Like I don't put shoes on without socks because it feels
• 53:42
  weird. I never do it.
• 53:44
  It's like, what what is that thing that you're willing to
• 53:47
  like? OK, like, I guess I'm late, but
• 53:50
  like, I'm still going to put my shoes on.
• 53:51
  You know, I'm not going to be like a minute extra, not late
• 53:54
  and not and go barefoot. You know it's a good.
• 53:57
  Example. Like so it's a.
• 54:00
  Good visual. So that's like the, the what are
• 54:02
  what are those things for you, you know, and it's kind of like
• 54:06
  you have to have to make sure they're being done.
• 54:08
  I think that like, you know, Chafeline is spot on.
• 54:12
  Like anything that like minimum like that we can use technology
• 54:15
  to minimize our time that's outside the kitchen.
• 54:17
  If that is one thing that hasn't smacked gobsmacked me right in
• 54:20
  the face the last three weeks, it's like, man, I can be so
• 54:24
  effective if I'm in the kitchen. Right.
• 54:27
  True training people. Training people and what are
• 54:29
  you? Doing and not only that, but you
• 54:30
  start to notice when you're in the kitchen and, and I'm not
• 54:33
  trying to insult any sous chefs out there, but there's a lot of
• 54:36
  asshole sous chefs. I I have, there's this meme.
• 54:39
  I don't know if you watch UFC, do you watch fights?
• 54:42
  I do every now and. Then so there's John Jones and
• 54:45
  Daniel Cormier going back and forth, you know, with a hot mic,
• 54:49
  right? And John Jones is like, hey,
• 54:51
  pussy, you still there? And he's like, I'm here.
• 54:54
  It's like I clipped it. And I said that to a chef friend
• 54:57
  of mine was like, as soon as the chef leaves, the sous chef to
• 55:00
  the cooks, right? Because as soon as the chef
• 55:02
  leaves, some of those sous chefs turn into tyrants, right?
• 55:05
  As soon as the chef walks out, the sous chef is bananas.
• 55:08
  Now I'm in charge. You're now the chef's not here.
• 55:11
  And I think when the chef sometimes go into the kitchen
• 55:13
  and they spend more time and they see what's going on, they
• 55:15
  talk to their people, they find out what's really going on in
• 55:18
  the kitchen. They find out how their teams
• 55:20
  feel. They find out what's working.
• 55:22
  People will start to tell them things, but none of that's going
• 55:24
  to happen if you're not, if you're not present, right.
• 55:29
  And I think being present is one of the most important things
• 55:31
  that you could do as a chef because I, I promise you, chefs
• 55:34
  that are listening, your team needs you.
• 55:36
  Yeah. Your team needs you.
• 55:37
  They need you in the kitchen. They need you showing them
• 55:39
  things. They need you working with them
• 55:41
  whenever you can. And I know you can't.
• 55:43
  It's not really. Your, your, your sous chefs need
• 55:44
  you. I mean, I spent a lot of your
• 55:46
  time as a sous chef because I had that like one.
• 55:49
  I was a little bit of a psychopath when I started.
• 55:51
  You kind of inherited a little bit, but also like, you know,
• 55:54
  I'll never forget it because it clicked, because I saw all my
• 55:57
  friends kind of getting promoted to exact sooner than me, you
• 56:01
  know, because I I was I would like, I mean, I'm not now, like
• 56:05
  don't don't put me like, but I was a bad ass motherfucker on
• 56:09
  the line. Like when when someone came in
• 56:12
  like Thomas Keller, I cooked everything but Leslie Brenner,
• 56:15
  the the local, like Connor, you cook everything on her ticket,
• 56:19
  you know, like. And I bumped into her the other
• 56:22
  day at Italy. Oh, I love her.
• 56:24
  Yeah. She's great.
• 56:27
  And you know, I said to my chef, like, what?
• 56:30
  What? What's what's going, you know,
• 56:32
  like, why? Why is it never me, dude?
• 56:34
  And he's like, you know, you walk around here like you're the
• 56:38
  baddest motherfucker and you make sure everyone knows, like,
• 56:42
  yeah, but I am. He's like, who the fuck cares?
• 56:47
  They all they they knew that before.
• 56:48
  Before they came in her work. You know why?
• 56:51
  Because you're wearing the fucking jacket, my man.
• 56:53
  Yeah. Like they expect it.
• 56:54
  They're not surprised. If you weren't, they would be
• 56:58
  kicking to the curb, you know what I mean?
• 56:59
  Like, yeah, you better be. But you act like it's some
• 57:02
  fucking cool thing, like, Oh my God, aren't you impressed?
• 57:05
  No, they're not my dad. Actually, I came home one time.
• 57:09
  My dad visited me, you know, and this was, I was so sous chef and
• 57:12
  he was using my knife. And I'm like, are you like, you
• 57:14
  know, like I'm like, isn't that such a sharp knife?
• 57:16
  He's like, yeah, like, well, yeah, aren't you, like, isn't
• 57:20
  that cool? And he's like, well, I mean, if
• 57:21
  it wasn't, I'd be a surprise, you know what I mean?
• 57:23
  Like, and learning that of like, dude, like, you know, humble
• 57:28
  yourself a little bit. But also, like, like, that's the
• 57:31
  expectation. Danny Meyer talks about.
• 57:32
  You have 1000 eyes on you once you're a manager and they expect
• 57:35
  everything of you. And if you're an executive chef,
• 57:38
  not being with your sous chefs, your sous chefs can create so
• 57:41
  much damage. I create so much damage.
• 57:42
  And looking back at it in my role now and being like, oh man,
• 57:45
  Scott and Mike had to put up with me being a dumb shit.
• 57:49
  And even like when I was a chef for junior and junior had to put
• 57:52
  up with me when I was being a dumb shit.
• 57:53
  Because you're if you're in a position where you're an
• 57:56
  executive chef and you have a corner director, like my corner
• 57:58
  director was junior, you know, like, dude, like you haven't
• 58:02
  learned anything yet. Even as an exec chef.
• 58:05
  Yeah, still be open to learning, you know, and and I learned a
• 58:09
  bunch from him too. So it's it's.
• 58:11
  Did you go to Junior's new place?
• 58:13
  Yeah, Nick and Junior. How was it?
• 58:14
  It's great. I'm going this week.
• 58:16
  So good. Yeah, I think it's always good.
• 58:18
  Yeah, I think it's always good. It's always good.
• 58:21
  What do you think about the Michelin Guide coming to to
• 58:24
  Texas, specifically the Dallas dining scene?
• 58:28
  And specifically, where do you think fine dining's going?
• 58:31
  You know, we like it. It definitely it was, I mean, we
• 58:37
  talked about all the time. It was a push, you know, like
• 58:39
  when we first found out. I feel like they, they, they,
• 58:42
  they made the announcement. They'd already visit us.
• 58:44
  Yeah, I think so. You know, it's surprising to me,
• 58:50
  I guess in a lot of ways, kind of kind of some of the
• 58:55
  selections I think that did it. Surprise you who wasn't
• 59:00
  selected? Yes who?
• 59:02
  Who do you think in Dallas got snapped like they they should
• 59:07
  have gotten a star. I think Toby should have gotten
• 59:14
  a star at a quarter acre. I think he got the
• 59:16
  recommendation, but that dude's food is.
• 59:22
  He's a legit chef. I mean, yeah.
• 59:24
  And I'm kind of like, well, I've eaten everywhere and he has the
• 59:28
  best food. So, yeah, and you're a chef.
• 59:31
  Like I'm trying to like RIP him off and like, you know, like I'm
• 59:33
  like, wait a minute, like, you know, and, and I kind of was
• 59:36
  like what? And I've eaten at Michelin star
• 59:38
  restaurants all around. I'm eating at 2 Michelin star
• 59:40
  restaurants. And like when I ate at his when
• 59:43
  he opened, I was like, well, well, I'm glad we have a
• 59:46
  Michelin star restaurant here, even though it's not, you know,
• 59:49
  yeah, it is like in my mind because it it, it compares and
• 59:53
  what he's doing, you know, with, with, you know, his little
• 59:56
  kitchen and, and, and the cook station there.
• 59:59
  It's more of the fact that they didn't, you know, give out a
• 1:00:02
  star thinking about that. Where do you think fine dining
• 1:00:05
  is going? Do you think it's dead?
• 1:00:06
  Do you think it's making a company?
• 1:00:07
  No, I just think it's different. Like I, you know, I think that
• 1:00:09
  like I've always kind of been cutting my teeth with fine
• 1:00:13
  dining, working at Charlie Palmer and being kind of in that
• 1:00:17
  group. Like I've done a bunch of events
• 1:00:19
  with Matt too. I think all of us kind of got to
• 1:00:23
  the point and maybe yourself included, where like fine dining
• 1:00:25
  was fine. You know, it's fine, but you
• 1:00:29
  know, sorry, I mispronounced everything.
• 1:00:32
  It was as of as of ease off, ease off.
• 1:00:35
  You know that like you come in, you wouldn't think it's a super
• 1:00:39
  fine dining, but like that is kind of like it is though, like
• 1:00:42
  it's it's not fine dining isn't like, you know, the Adam Tahani
• 1:00:47
  designed, you know, restaurant on the top floor of some
• 1:00:52
  building. You know, fine dining is the
• 1:00:54
  approach at with at which you respect the ingredients and food
• 1:00:59
  that goes out in my mind. So I think that, you know, and
• 1:01:05
  and respecting the experience because is a linear fine dining.
• 1:01:10
  Of course it is. But like, I think that, you
• 1:01:13
  know, I know a lot of people have a lot to say about David
• 1:01:18
  Chain, but what he did with Momofuku was like, dude, I love
• 1:01:20
  this wholesome street food like this dish and I have all these
• 1:01:28
  chops for fine dining. Like I'm going to poach it like
• 1:01:31
  that. So I think that we're seeing
• 1:01:34
  that now, you know, where it like it can be less fussy.
• 1:01:39
  I don't know. No, I, I think you're on to it.
• 1:01:41
  And I think fine dining has evolved and I've been ranting
• 1:01:43
  about fine dining a lot. And I think as we talked about
• 1:01:48
  earlier, I think as we lose a little bit of the connection to
• 1:01:50
  food and I think sometimes we're cooking too much like each other
• 1:01:53
  versus like ourselves. The funny thing about that, like
• 1:01:59
  you mentioned something earlier and me and Barb, I was talking
• 1:02:04
  about food arts. I have like 50 of them in my
• 1:02:06
  office and my wife was like, can we throw these away?
• 1:02:09
  I'm like no, like no, like it's in the prenom somewhere.
• 1:02:14
  No, but like. She's off camera, but can I get
• 1:02:16
  some of those food arts magazines too?
• 1:02:18
  Like, I'm kind of a collector of pack rat and so like, just great
• 1:02:22
  reference points, but people got to create, yeah, in their own
• 1:02:26
  silo for a bit. You know, I remember, you
• 1:02:28
  remember when like, I don't think they're doing anymore.
• 1:02:30
  But like, we would wait every, what, four months for the art
• 1:02:34
  culinary 3 months to come out. Yeah.
• 1:02:36
  And like, be like, holy shit, look what they're doing.
• 1:02:38
  Yeah. Like you said, like we go
• 1:02:40
  everyone like the next every day goes on Instagram, sees what
• 1:02:43
  their favorite chefs are doing. He's like, I'm gonna make food
• 1:02:45
  like that, right. You know.
• 1:02:46
  And so there's these like echo chambers we're building like a
• 1:02:49
  circular Trump that just goes up instead.
• 1:02:52
  Before it was like this beautiful tree.
• 1:02:54
  Yeah, where people were creating what would food.
• 1:02:56
  Look, like if there was no incentive structure and there
• 1:02:59
  was, and you were, and you weren't cooking for likes and,
• 1:03:02
  you know, like social media. Oh man, it just be like for me
• 1:03:04
  it would just be stews. It'd be delicious, Yeah, Like it
• 1:03:07
  would be. It would be.
• 1:03:08
  It would be delicious first. Building flavors, yeah, You
• 1:03:10
  know. Chef, normally when we wrap up I
• 1:03:14
  always ask chefs like if you had a Mount Rushmore of chefs that
• 1:03:17
  you would put on rum on Mount Rushmore.
• 1:03:19
  OK, which 4 chefs to you should be on the chef Mount Rushmore?
• 1:03:25
  Man, that's like, I mean, there's like my, the personal
• 1:03:28
  like, you know? Like that's all right.
• 1:03:30
  The personal is good too. Give them, give them some, give
• 1:03:32
  them their flowers. I mean, my personal is for me
• 1:03:34
  is, is Scott Romano. Yeah.
• 1:03:38
  And, you know, as an extension of Scott, Charlie Palmer,
• 1:03:41
  because, you know, he was in those kitchens every day and and
• 1:03:44
  he, you know, like Scott worked for him forever.
• 1:03:48
  So. And then Mike Sandoni.
• 1:03:52
  I always kind of tell people like Scott taught me how to cook
• 1:03:55
  and like taught me how to be a chef.
• 1:03:56
  He's like, what are you doing leadership wise?
• 1:03:58
  Like, yeah, sure you can cook, you know, And then like overall,
• 1:04:03
  like I really those those first BBC series, like boiling point
• 1:04:08
  that had Mark a pure white and you saw I think Boiling point
• 1:04:12
  was Gordon Ramsay. 'S yeah, it was Gordon Ramsay.
• 1:04:15
  What was Mark? A pure Mark is first.
• 1:04:16
  They did one with Mark Pure White.
• 1:04:18
  That was that one. And Gordon Ramsay's in the
• 1:04:20
  background. Yeah, young cook.
• 1:04:21
  Young cook Gordon, you're right. Yeah.
• 1:04:24
  He looks exactly the same, by the way.
• 1:04:25
  Yeah, in those videos, Yeah. He's like, why does he not age?
• 1:04:29
  Why does he always look that way?
• 1:04:31
  And then the boiling point with him.
• 1:04:38
  I I do think that, like, American media was like
• 1:04:40
  sensationalized the, like, calling people donkeys and
• 1:04:43
  stuff. And yeah, like, I'm not, you
• 1:04:48
  know, proud of any time that I let the temper get the best of
• 1:04:51
  me. But like, you can't deny what he
• 1:04:54
  did for professional cooking was that Marco.
• 1:04:57
  And just like his commitment to excellence and and the BBC like
• 1:05:06
  restaurant rescue one that he did, the one that was BBC where
• 1:05:08
  he's not yelling at it and it's put together really well.
• 1:05:10
  It's not like a yeah, you know, he's like having real.
• 1:05:13
  It was like the original Kitchen Nightmares, right?
• 1:05:15
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, those are really good
• 1:05:18
  because you see the hospitality, you see the soul, you know.
• 1:05:22
  It wasn't the made for TV drama. Yeah, and you know, I someone
• 1:05:26
  else's. Gosh, it's it's really hot you,
• 1:05:31
  buddy. Thank you.
• 1:05:32
  What you're doing now, I mean. I'll tell you like you're the
• 1:05:34
  first person to say that every single guest moving forward
• 1:05:37
  should say me. Yeah.
• 1:05:38
  Well, I just like someone that's like looking at like, I'm just
• 1:05:40
  kidding, make it like, you know, something that I do think that
• 1:05:44
  like has been really beneficial with with all the technology.
• 1:05:47
  It's just making it like, stop gatekeeping.
• 1:05:49
  Yeah, stop. Like, I mean, anyone could cook.
• 1:05:51
  My favorite, my favorite movie about cooking, like that's
• 1:05:56
  actually about cooking is probably Ratatouille and that
• 1:05:59
  like message. I like everyone can cook it.
• 1:06:01
  Like I do believe that it's more of a a craft honestly.
• 1:06:07
  Like emerald lagasse dude. Emerald, emerald.
• 1:06:09
  He's like. Shit, man.
• 1:06:10
  I love Emerald. Yeah, yeah, I love him.
• 1:06:13
  No one ever complaints that the rat was tasting food.
• 1:06:16
  That's true. Like he was washing his hands
• 1:06:18
  well. Like, and then like serving it.
• 1:06:20
  The rats tasting food. Oh yeah, that's good.
• 1:06:22
  Go ahead and serve it. The rat approved.
• 1:06:24
  It's a cartoon. My other two moves I recommend.
• 1:06:28
  Whiplash. It's a cartoon, but it's
• 1:06:30
  influencing kids to cook with rats on their shoulders.
• 1:06:32
  Whiplash about the drumming, you know, 1 is I try to be a
• 1:06:38
  musician. Yeah.
• 1:06:39
  If anyone knows anything about music schools, they are not like
• 1:06:42
  that at all. Like you have like the the
• 1:06:45
  instructor smoking weed, like they're all just like, hey,
• 1:06:48
  groovy, man. No one, no one's that intense.
• 1:06:50
  But kitchens can be like that. And that message of like of this
• 1:06:54
  dude's totally trying to breaking down this, this
• 1:06:56
  musician. And then they get to a point of
• 1:06:59
  mutual understanding and it's when like the musician fights
• 1:07:02
  back and it's like, no, dude, I'm standing on equal level with
• 1:07:06
  you. That was pretty.
• 1:07:07
  That's a pretty great movie. If, if you know when, what
• 1:07:12
  people need to think about when they work in kitchens is you're
• 1:07:15
  going to work 8 or 10 hours or or more and you're either going
• 1:07:18
  to work and love it or you're going to work and, and not love
• 1:07:22
  it. But if you work and you love it,
• 1:07:24
  you'll be more successful. If you, if you could decide that
• 1:07:27
  you love what you're doing, you will be more successful at it
• 1:07:30
  because the food's going to taste better.
• 1:07:34
  People are going to taste it through your food.
• 1:07:35
  People are going to want to be around you.
• 1:07:37
  It's going to become infectious. So yeah, if you're going to be
• 1:07:39
  in this business anyway, you have to work just as hard
• 1:07:42
  regardless. You might as well work hard,
• 1:07:43
  like and and love. It oh man, like the last super
• 1:07:45
  long. I mean, you, you get tired when
• 1:07:47
  you don't work, but like, you know, when you put a 12 hour day
• 1:07:52
  in or 14 hour day in and like you're, you're like at the end
• 1:07:55
  of it, you're like, I wish there was like 36 hours in a day
• 1:07:58
  because like this, this and this.
• 1:08:00
  I want to get set up for tomorrow, but there's just no
• 1:08:02
  time. Yeah.
• 1:08:03
  Like that's when you know you got something, I think.
• 1:08:05
  Well, Chef, it was fun having you on work.
• 1:08:06
  Thank you. Find you.
• 1:08:09
  In Dallas, you know. All the restaurants.
• 1:08:12
  All the restaurants, I'll put my e-mail up here, you know
• 1:08:16
  Instagram handle C under score Sergeant.
• 1:08:21
  Why it's spelled funky. No one in my family knows how
• 1:08:23
  to. Spell I'll put in the show.
• 1:08:24
  Yeah. My, my first name's spelled
• 1:08:26
  wrong. My last name's spelled wrong.
• 1:08:27
  Yeah, anything I write is spelled wrong.
• 1:08:29
  Also, I use ChatGPT for that. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:08:32
  There you go. Well, chef, thank you.
• 1:08:33
  Good to have you on. Thank you so much.
• 1:08:34
  Yeah, thank you, everyone. Awesome.
• 1:08:36
  Well, I hope you enjoyed the show.
• 1:08:38
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• 1:08:40
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• 1:08:42
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