Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Michelin Star Chef Phillip Frankland Lee: Battling Fancy Chef & Building Dream Restaurants Ep. 163

Transcript

Michelin Star Chef Phillip Frankland Lee: Battling Fancy Chef & Building Dream Restaurants Ep. 163 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chefs PSA. I'm your host Andre Natera.
• 0:02
  Today I'm joined by Philip Franklin Lee, Michelin starred
• 0:05
  chef behind Sushi by Scratch pasta bar and the Not a Damn
• 0:08
  Chance podcast. In this episode, we talked about
• 0:11
  what it really takes to earn respect in the kitchen, maintain
• 0:14
  your creative vision and build a team from scratch.
• 0:16
  We get into the mindset behind culinary mastery, balancing
• 0:19
  perfection, pressure and personal growth.
• 0:21
  We talk one of my favorite subjects, fancy chef and his
• 0:25
  next venture. Stay tuned.
• 0:38
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• 1:19
  Coming up, I had it as a as a young line cook and even as a as
• 1:22
  a sous chef, I had a very strict rule.
• 1:24
  If you were the fucking man, like who?
• 1:25
  Whoever that chef was that I worked for, if you were the
• 1:27
  fucking man, you could burn me. You could hit me, you could
• 1:32
  throw a pan at me, you could talk shit about my mom, whatever
• 1:36
  it was, if you were the fucking man, If you weren't, there might
• 1:41
  be a problem. Was there ever a line like, OK,
• 1:44
  so you said like, talk shit about my mom, but was there ever
• 1:46
  a line like, like I often tell people there's two things you
• 1:49
  can't joke about with me. One is kids.
• 1:53
  Like, I don't think kid jokes are funny, right?
• 1:55
  Kids are off limits and. And mom jokes.
• 1:59
  Mom jokes kind of. I mean mom jokes kind of.
• 2:02
  Sorry, mom. But I also say I don't, I never
• 2:06
  insult other people's religion. Like those are usually I'll
• 2:08
  never insult someone's kids. Yeah, I don't insult other
• 2:11
  people's religion. And if that line was ever
• 2:13
  crossed, I'd be like, OK, I might have to punch you.
• 2:15
  Well, here's the thing. I I'm not religious, so no one
• 2:19
  ever talked shit about my religion.
• 2:21
  I didn't have kids back then, so no one talked shit about my
• 2:22
  kids. But like, to me, it was the
• 2:25
  price of entry. Yeah, I have been striving for
• 2:29
  almost 20 years now. I wanted Michelin stars.
• 2:33
  So when I'm, when I'm, when I'm a young cook, when I'm a line
• 2:36
  cook, when I'm working in Michelin starred kitchens 1518
• 2:40
  years ago, 19 years ago. I, it's, it's the price to, to
• 2:46
  play the game, right? I, it was like, I would rather
• 2:49
  get all of the influence. I mean, here's the thing.
• 2:52
  Like when I say you're the man, it's not just that you're
• 2:56
  necessarily the face, but the food you're doing is, to me,
• 3:00
  godly, right? The, the care you put to it is
• 3:05
  otherworldly. And I mean, I had the same chefs
• 3:08
  who were, you know, acting like that literally.
• 3:11
  Like I've had chefs who would like, you know, smash plates and
• 3:16
  everything, but they're like breaking down in tears because
• 3:18
  they're like, this is my fucking name on the marquee.
• 3:20
  This is my fucking because it's, it's just straight passion.
• 3:24
  And I wanted that and I wanted to learn from that.
• 3:26
  And you, you're not going to, it's like all these people who
• 3:29
  get, you know, mad at an artist who does something in their
• 3:32
  personal life. Yes, there's probably a line at
• 3:36
  which you cut someone off, but also like, you don't.
• 3:38
  Was that Diddy reference? It was not a Diddy reference,
• 3:41
  but you don't get great art from a straight laced, you know, guy.
• 3:45
  You just don't, you know. And so if you want to be the
• 3:49
  best, you have to train under the best, and the best are often
• 3:53
  times unhinged. And they were definitely more
• 3:55
  unhinged, you know, when I was coming up than they are today.
• 3:58
  They were. I would say they're definitely
• 4:00
  more unhinged before the cameras came out and what I mean the
• 4:03
  cameras, I mean the cell phones. Yeah.
• 4:06
  I would say I remember I was reading this book.
• 4:09
  It was like 2013 and I read actually was 2010.
• 4:13
  It was called Leaders Make the Future.
• 4:14
  It was like predicting what the future would be like.
• 4:17
  And I remember reading it was, there was, I was like, oh, fuck.
• 4:20
  Pretty soon everyone's going to have cell phones.
• 4:22
  And what's going to stop someone from working in a shitty kitchen
• 4:25
  that the drains are backing up and they're still cooking over
• 4:27
  sewage? And no, and the guests don't
• 4:30
  know what's going to stop them from taking out their phone and
• 4:33
  saying these are the conditions that we're cooking your food.
• 4:35
  In well, now Instagram teaches you to do that right, right.
• 4:38
  So like when, you know, when I first opened scratch bar in like
• 4:41
  2013, I was, I would give my cooks letters to a young chef by
• 4:47
  Danielle Balud, a great book, an amazing book.
• 4:49
  And it was like book report, you're going to work here.
• 4:52
  Book report, you know, because you needed to, because there's
• 4:59
  there's really two things that when you get, there's two
• 5:01
  different ways you can go about cooking for a living.
• 5:03
  You can do it for a paycheck or you can do it for a passion,
• 5:07
  right. And I didn't want anyone looking
• 5:10
  for a paycheck back then. I actually used to require you
• 5:14
  to, to if you want to come work with us, I would make you work
• 5:18
  further your first month for free.
• 5:20
  And it was solely to prove to yourself you're not here for the
• 5:24
  money because small crew, we don't want you're here for the
• 5:27
  money. We don't want you.
• 5:28
  You're here because you want to be in the part of the band, then
• 5:31
  we then we want you. They didn't know this, but if
• 5:34
  they made it the month retroactive back pay and if they
• 5:39
  quit before the end of the month retro, they were always going to
• 5:42
  get paid. They just didn't know it.
• 5:45
  And so, you know, everybody on the team would know that was
• 5:49
  happening soon. And they all went through the
• 5:50
  haze of haze of that. So nobody would would would, you
• 5:53
  know, tell anyone who was coming on the team.
• 5:55
  But it was an important thing because you, you, if you used to
• 6:00
  have to want and need to be in that kitchen.
• 6:04
  And I'm in, in, you know, now with Instagram, they're teaching
• 6:07
  you how to like, quiet quit and fuck your boss and don't care
• 6:11
  anymore. And it's like you have to make
• 6:15
  money to live. And so why not enjoy the thing
• 6:19
  you do like, find the thing you love and then figure out how to
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  monetize it, whether that be a line cook or or or anything you
• 6:27
  know? You said something interesting
• 6:29
  because of the, the, the quiet quitting and you know, I, I'd
• 6:34
  say we're teaching people to not want to be the best.
• 6:37
  But what a lot of people don't understand some of these these
• 6:39
  older, I don't want to say older kitchens.
• 6:41
  There's still a lot that run this way.
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  I just don't think they're talked about as as much as they
• 6:45
  used to be. But what a lot of people don't
• 6:47
  understand is like this is like going into the, the special
• 6:50
  forces when you go to some of these kitchens, like they're
• 6:52
  not, they're not going as hobbyists.
• 6:54
  This isn't, this isn't like weekend warriors, this is like,
• 6:57
  no, they are going in because they want to be the tip of the
• 7:00
  spear. They want to be the best of the
• 7:01
  best. And if you don't want to do
• 7:03
  that, maybe you don't want to be in those kitchens.
• 7:05
  Because the reality is when you put yourself around a lot of
• 7:09
  apex predators, like I used to joke around, so you put a dog
• 7:14
  that's not a wolf around a pack of wolves.
• 7:16
  They're either going to eat them up or he's going to turn into a
• 7:18
  wolf. One or the other.
• 7:20
  There was some, some Instagram that popped up in my my
• 7:24
  algorithm lately or recently of some kid complaining about
• 7:27
  working in a Michelin star kitchen and like that, like they
• 7:30
  were being mean to him because they were always telling him his
• 7:33
  mies and plots wasn't good enough and they were throwing
• 7:35
  away his mies and plots. And like he got a million
• 7:39
  comments about like, yeah, fuck that restaurant.
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  And it's like, why should the restaurant serve bad food for
• 7:45
  your feelings? I don't understand that now.
• 7:49
  I didn't, I mean, I didn't do all my research.
• 7:51
  Maybe they were, you know, taken in the back and beating them
• 7:53
  with a stick shouldn't be doing that.
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  But it didn't appear to be like that.
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  It appeared to be more like I was trying my best, but you know
• 8:01
  it. Nothing was ever good enough.
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  But here, here's the thing. And I've always had this very
• 8:05
  strict rule for myself as a chef, I hold everyone
• 8:09
  accountable to one thing, and that's themselves.
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  If you've been cooking for 30 years and this dude's been
• 8:16
  cooking for, you know, 30 months, and you're both cutting
• 8:20
  onions at the same speed, I might tell him, great job.
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  And I might be like, dude, what the fuck?
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  Right, right. So all I can ever expect from
• 8:29
  you is for you to give me your all.
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  But if your all isn't good enough to make the plate, that's
• 8:35
  OK. We're just going to throw it
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  away and do it again. And this kid didn't complain
• 8:41
  about getting fired, so he complained about never being
• 8:44
  good enough and that it's like, it's almost like going for the
• 8:47
  football team, missing every pass and be like, well, how come
• 8:51
  I don't get to be the starting, you know, wide receiver?
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  It's like, dude, because you're not catching it yet.
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  Go practice, go practice. Get better.
• 8:58
  But the culture has sort of taken in this way of like, I
• 9:01
  should just be the sous chef instead of like, I should go
• 9:05
  practice. Like in that book, Daniel
• 9:08
  thought talks about, you know, going and getting sacks of
• 9:10
  potatoes and tortaying potatoes in his, in his, you know, in his
• 9:13
  basement for hours a day. I don't think that's what kids
• 9:17
  are learning on Instagram these days.
• 9:18
  No, I mean, I would argue that you could learn a lot faster
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  with Instagram and chef steps and all these all these websites
• 9:24
  now exist and and social media does help you cook, get the
• 9:28
  technique faster where before you had to go sty somewhere and
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  see it. Yeah, and maybe they weren't
• 9:33
  going to show you and you're going to be stuck.
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  So now you can see it quicker, but you still have to learn how
• 9:35
  to do it. You do have to learn how to do
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  it, but it also, I mean, Instagram then takes you to that
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  culture of like, you go to a restaurant.
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  I'm sure you've experienced this.
• 9:43
  You go to a restaurant and the food looks like you're at France
• 9:46
  and or you're at Noma and you taste it and you go, oh, this
• 9:50
  chef has Instagram. The chef has not been to Europe.
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  The chef has just seen pictures in a book.
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  Yeah, yeah, I like to say it's chef thirst traps.
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  Like like like they're chefs are plating the most beautiful food,
• 10:02
  but it's like. Or it's not beautiful.
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  It's like A and I, this whole thing makes me come off like a
• 10:07
  hater. I'm not a hater.
• 10:08
  I, but I, I feel like we've gotten, we've started on this
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  sort of, you know, on, on this. We started on it.
• 10:16
  No, but but you're right. You're right.
• 10:17
  Like just because you know how something looks doesn't mean you
• 10:20
  know what it tastes like. And someone, someone that I know
• 10:25
  went to Public Coast recently to eat, eat at restaurant Public
• 10:28
  Coast and they were saying like it doesn't look like the most
• 10:31
  impressive food, but when you taste it, you're like, fuck no,
• 10:34
  I'm not. No, I understand.
• 10:35
  There last summer and it was like, I mean, I'm.
• 10:38
  You get, it's it really. I mean, there's a reason, yeah.
• 10:40
  There's a reason that it stood the test of time.
• 10:42
  It's there's a reason. I mean, was it the best meal
• 10:45
  I've ever had in my life? No was it in my top 20?
• 10:49
  Probably you know, could I see that that's where almost
• 10:54
  everything came from yes was it inspirational yes.
• 10:56
  You know I mean it was it's an awesome.
• 10:58
  I mean it's the corniest looking restaurant.
• 11:01
  I don't know if you've. Seen it?
• 11:02
  Yeah, I have. Yeah, it feels like if you know,
• 11:04
  like a 1980s version of like a Disneyland for a chef.
• 11:08
  But it's, it's so cool. It's so cool.
• 11:10
  Well, what what one of the thoughts I have on restaurant,
• 11:13
  but I haven't tea in there. So, you know, for, for, for
• 11:16
  clarity, but what my friend said, he's like, we've been
• 11:20
  making this food our entire career.
• 11:22
  He's like, now I know how it's supposed to taste.
• 11:24
  Yeah, like now it's like, oh, it's wasn't supposed to taste
• 11:27
  the way I thought it was. Yeah, it looked like that, but
• 11:29
  it didn't taste. France did that for me.
• 11:31
  I'd never been to France and I had only eaten at French
• 11:34
  restaurants in LA and I thought I didn't really care for French
• 11:37
  food. It's not that I didn't like it,
• 11:38
  it's just like I was like, I don't get what's so special.
• 11:41
  Then you go to France, and we started out in the South of
• 11:44
  France, and I'm like, this is Italian food.
• 11:46
  Well, you're sharing a border and it's, you know, coastal.
• 11:48
  It's Mediterranean. And then we go up and we end up
• 11:51
  in Provence, and it's like, OK, we're starting to get there.
• 11:54
  And then we get to Leon and I'm like, I get it.
• 11:58
  Yeah, I get it. I finally get it.
• 12:01
  But you have to go to Lyon or travel France.
• 12:05
  You know, you can't just eat French food in America.
• 12:07
  That's like eating Chinese food in America and being like, I get
• 12:10
  it. No, you don't go go to China.
• 12:12
  And the food is like, I mean, the best bite of food I've ever
• 12:14
  had in my life is was on like the, the western side of China
• 12:19
  and Lijiang and the, the translate we're sitting on like
• 12:22
  upside down buckets. And they they described it as
• 12:26
  crispy pork. And that that dish, I'm like, I
• 12:30
  get why they stopped innovating 2000 years ago.
• 12:32
  Like that dish was done. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's,
• 12:35
  that's a really good, that's a really good point.
• 12:38
  And I think a lot of people miss that.
• 12:39
  Like you don't always have to be the new and the innovative.
• 12:44
  I I say this a lot lately, like it's been on my mind.
• 12:46
  It's like I don't want to try something and say I'm glad I
• 12:49
  tried that once. I've never tried again.
• 12:51
  I think it's harder to say I try that and I want to eat that
• 12:54
  every day for the rest of my life.
• 12:55
  That is harder. It might not be as glamorous,
• 12:57
  but it is harder to achieve the. Thing that's interesting is like
• 13:03
  as you perfect something, you let it go, right?
• 13:07
  So like as a chef, at least for me, you know, I'll, I might be
• 13:13
  iterating a dish in the menu for years and then once it's like
• 13:17
  done, done, it'll stay on for a while, but then it will move on
• 13:21
  for the because it's it's about striving for creating something.
• 13:25
  Like this constant 1% better refinement.
• 13:28
  Yeah, I, so I have a lot of friends now in, in, in, in
• 13:31
  comedy. And I go watch them, what they
• 13:33
  call working out, you know, they'll go and they'll do the
• 13:35
  same set over and over and over again.
• 13:38
  And I'll watch it over and over and again.
• 13:40
  And I find it so, so interesting and inspiring because I'll watch
• 13:43
  them take beats in different spots.
• 13:46
  I'll watch them, you know, hurry up a punchline, slow down a
• 13:50
  punchline, change just a single word.
• 13:53
  And they're trying to work it out.
• 13:55
  And to me, that's like every night.
• 13:57
  It's like, OK, let's do lemon. No grapefruit.
• 14:00
  No, let's. You're just, you're just
• 14:01
  iterating it until they finally get it.
• 14:03
  And then for a comedian, they put out the special.
• 14:06
  Never do the joke again, you know?
• 14:09
  You know, sticking on the same subject as the comedian with,
• 14:12
  you know, different iterations of food because sometimes we we
• 14:16
  tweak food and it's like, OK, that's it.
• 14:17
  It's perfect. But it's perfect to us.
• 14:19
  Yeah. And like, we serve it and then
• 14:22
  the guest like, Nah. And you're like, you don't
• 14:24
  fucking get it. I wonder if the comedians would
• 14:26
  say like this is the perfect you guys are.
• 14:27
  All for sure, for sure there are comedians that go why are you
• 14:30
  not laughing? This is funny, you idiots.
• 14:32
  This. Is way too fucking so here.
• 14:34
  But here's the thing with comedy and with with food, with any art
• 14:37
  that you're trying to monetize, there's no purpose in being a
• 14:41
  starving artist who starves to death, right?
• 14:43
  So you have to figure out the balance between your artistic
• 14:47
  integrity and what will sell now.
• 14:50
  If you're very lucky, you'll be able to sell exactly the art
• 14:55
  that you want now or, or some, you know, some iteration of that
• 15:01
  art. And so like I've always, you
• 15:04
  know, really believed that when it comes to like accolades and
• 15:09
  all those types of things, the only accolade that really
• 15:11
  matters is are people making reservations, right?
• 15:13
  You know, and because, and you know, there's two, you know,
• 15:15
  there's a couple different types of restaurants.
• 15:17
  There's hey, babe, it's I'm hungry, it's Tuesday night.
• 15:19
  And then there's, I want to see what that chef's doing, you
• 15:22
  know, And so when, when you start to become that type of
• 15:25
  chef, the idea is just cook food the way you want to eat it, You
• 15:31
  know, so like I, I make a burger the way I want to make, I eat
• 15:33
  it. I make sushi the way I want to
• 15:35
  eat it. And if nobody was to show up, I
• 15:39
  might have to be like, well, I have to change the way I make
• 15:40
  sushi a little bit, you know, but they do show up.
• 15:43
  And so the idea is like, oh, they like my palate, you know,
• 15:47
  And so you have to understand, is it that they're wrong or is
• 15:51
  my palate wrong? And do I need to adjust my
• 15:54
  palette? Or is this like, am I making
• 15:56
  some art house film that nobody will ever understand?
• 16:00
  So maybe that needs to be my fourth film, you know, Maybe I
• 16:03
  need to scale it back a little bit, get their trust, and then I
• 16:07
  hit them with the, you know, Pink Flamingo or whatever.
• 16:11
  Yeah. Now you bring up an excellent
• 16:12
  point going back, because I want to make sure that everyone, I
• 16:15
  want to make sure people understand how I feel about this
• 16:19
  is that I, I think these really hard kitchens and this is
• 16:23
  something that I learned in my career.
• 16:25
  Probably like around 2013, I had already been a chef for a while,
• 16:31
  and I had to readjust how I approached people because I, I
• 16:37
  think early on when we get in tents in the kitchen, we made it
• 16:41
  personal. Yes, but a lot of chefs made it
• 16:43
  personal with me too. Yeah.
• 16:44
  Like I remember just being a cooker.
• 16:45
  They'd say nasty things to me that were personal.
• 16:47
  My nickname in the kitchen was Feto, which in Spanish means
• 16:51
  fetus because I was the young kid in the kitchen.
• 16:53
  I was the kid. Yeah, the kid, right.
• 16:54
  Hey, kid or a stupido was my other nickname, right.
• 16:58
  They're like, oh, you know, cuz I would, I was notoriously about
• 17:00
  a minute or two late every day for work.
• 17:03
  And the sous chef at the time, he used to play the pot.
• 17:06
  He would get the big Rondo and something and bang, bang, bang,
• 17:08
  bang, yeah, you know, and he'd say, hey everyone, this
• 17:10
  stupido's here. One minute late like always.
• 17:12
  Everyone clap for a stupido. And I used to fucking hate it.
• 17:15
  But I wouldn't show up early. I just used to hate that.
• 17:17
  Yeah. And what I what I think the old
• 17:20
  generation did wrong is they made they made it personal, and
• 17:23
  they didn't make it about the performance.
• 17:25
  It wasn't, hey, you can't be late because if you're late
• 17:27
  again, you this is what happens, and I'm gonna fire you.
• 17:30
  Yeah. And if they would have said
• 17:32
  that, I probably would have stopped being late.
• 17:33
  Yeah. But instead they just called me
• 17:35
  a stupido. And I hated it.
• 17:36
  And they made a scene and I just resented them for it.
• 17:39
  But I didn't change the behavior.
• 17:40
  So I had a very, a very interesting thing happened to me
• 17:43
  somewhat similar to this reminds me, do you know James Trees?
• 17:46
  You know of James Trees? No very, very well known, very
• 17:50
  well respected chef out of Vegas.
• 17:52
  I mean now has Esther's Kitchen and a bunch of restaurants.
• 17:54
  There, I know the restaurant. Yeah, so I was a line cook when
• 17:58
  I was 20 years old for him, when he was a sous chef at the
• 18:02
  Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica. And he called me the kid.
• 18:09
  And he broke my balls about everything to the point where
• 18:15
  like one day, you know, he he pushed something back in the
• 18:20
  window towards me. That was just like complete
• 18:22
  bullshit in my mind as a 20 year old, right?
• 18:25
  Complete bullshit. Because I cared.
• 18:28
  It's all I wanted to do. And I see the other cooks
• 18:33
  sometimes putting up scallops that aren't seared perfectly,
• 18:36
  right. And I put up scallops that I
• 18:38
  think are seared perfectly. And he's talking shit.
• 18:41
  And so I, one day I go, chef, can we go talk in the office?
• 18:45
  You know, when, when he's in? So we go in the office and I'm
• 18:47
  like, I can't fucking do this anymore.
• 18:49
  It everything I do is never good enough.
• 18:52
  I'm working harder, I'm working fast, I'm doing everything I
• 18:54
  can. And he's like, Philip, I'm going
• 18:56
  to tell you something. You might not believe me.
• 18:58
  He goes the, there's a reason that I'm because I was like,
• 19:02
  it's not fair. Why are you mean to me and no
• 19:04
  one else? And he's like, there's a reason
• 19:06
  he's like, because in 10 years you're going to have a Michelin
• 19:11
  star and in 10 years these other cooks are still going to work
• 19:15
  here. And it would be a disservice to
• 19:19
  you if I let you get away with anything.
• 19:22
  And I said, fuck you. You're, I don't believe you.
• 19:24
  You're just trying to gas. I quit and I quit.
• 19:28
  And as I got older, I realized he, he was doing that for me.
• 19:33
  And we're very, very close and good friends now.
• 19:36
  And he's right. Some of those cooks still work
• 19:38
  there. And and ten years later, I I did
• 19:41
  get a star. And so I think that there is.
• 19:45
  And it and he made it personal. Yeah, but he made it personal
• 19:47
  because he knew that's what I needed to get that push, you
• 19:51
  know? Yeah, it's it's funny that you
• 19:53
  bring that up. I One of the hardest things that
• 19:57
  someone has ever said to me as a chef when I was a cook is my
• 20:01
  chef came up to me was busy, wheels fall off the bus fucking
• 20:04
  we had too many orders and not enough cooks.
• 20:06
  And I was plating a dessert because I was working the
• 20:08
  station. I had to pick up the desserts.
• 20:09
  And I just remember it was like a fucking bullshit.
• 20:11
  And I just zigzag, send it out. I didn't put any effort into the
• 20:14
  plating. And the chef that was called in
• 20:17
  the past walks up to me, whispers in my ear.
• 20:20
  I'll never forget it because he didn't yell, he didn't humiliate
• 20:26
  me. He just said you're better than
• 20:27
  that. Yeah, it's that I'm
• 20:29
  disappointed. It's that dad saying yeah,
• 20:30
  disappointed, he said. You're better.
• 20:32
  You're not grounded. I'm just disappointed.
• 20:33
  Yeah, yeah. And it fuck, I was like, like,
• 20:36
  still to this day I could like just talking about it.
• 20:39
  Like fuck. Yeah, I had a friend.
• 20:41
  I have a friend, one of my best friends, Brian, who actually
• 20:45
  became our GM at Sushi in Chicago and then opened in as
• 20:49
  AGM in, in New York. He wasn't in the industry back
• 20:53
  then. I was 20.
• 20:54
  We, we've been friends since 6th grade.
• 20:57
  He ended up being, you know, best man at my wedding.
• 21:00
  We, we were hanging out because, you know, when you start
• 21:04
  cooking, you're not really hanging out with your friends
• 21:05
  anymore because you're working 100 hours a week.
• 21:08
  And one night we're just like drinking beers, catching up.
• 21:11
  And I was telling him how like, I'm having this issue.
• 21:14
  I'm at the restaurant, is actually at the Viceroy.
• 21:17
  I'm at the restaurant and I, I'm, I'm working Garmin J for
• 21:21
  this story and it's so busy that I and I'm putting it in the
• 21:27
  window knowing it is not 100% correct.
• 21:32
  And he's like, why? And I'm like, I just, there's,
• 21:34
  it's just so much and like, I don't have time to fix it.
• 21:36
  And he goes, but why don't you just do it right?
• 21:38
  And I was like, well, and I gave him all he's like, he's like,
• 21:41
  but just do it right. And I was like, yeah, he's like,
• 21:43
  no, no, but why would you not just do it right?
• 21:45
  And I'm like, Oh yeah, because that one, he's like, don't you
• 21:50
  think the guests would rather wait an extra 2 seconds for it
• 21:53
  to be correct and add up those two seconds you get you're,
• 21:57
  you're, you're fucking fine. And I was like, oh, and for
• 22:01
  some. And then from there on, I never
• 22:04
  let a plate go out again. That wasn't perfect.
• 22:07
  Yeah. And that's a lesson that I feel
• 22:09
  like every cook has to go through.
• 22:11
  Yes, every single cook has to go through.
• 22:13
  We've all, we've all put up that plate that we weren't proud of
• 22:16
  because we thought if I don't put it up in 10 seconds earlier,
• 22:18
  we're going to crash service. Like no.
• 22:20
  And now we. Crash service when they send it
• 22:21
  back. Yeah, and now I say exactly what
• 22:24
  Brian said to me, to my cooks very often.
• 22:26
  Dude, they've been waiting 15 minutes.
• 22:28
  They'd rather have it perfect at 16 minutes than wrong, or they'd
• 22:31
  rather have it perfect in 18 minutes than wrong in 16
• 22:34
  minutes, right? No guest is going to be mad that
• 22:36
  it took an extra minute to get it right.
• 22:37
  Right. And that, that's, that's
• 22:38
  something that I think is a very hard lesson when you're in the
• 22:41
  weeds. Yeah.
• 22:42
  And you're getting yelled at and the person next to you saying
• 22:44
  my, my, I'm up with a veg, it's getting cold, right?
• 22:46
  Where's the protein? Yeah, and when you're 20, right,
• 22:50
  you know, but, but yeah, I mean, there was there's one thing I
• 22:54
  wanted to mention. We were talking earlier about
• 22:56
  this sort of like, you know, this, this, I don't want to call
• 23:00
  it cancel culture, but you know what the Internet is sort of
• 23:04
  like, you know, teach, like. I think it's important that
• 23:07
  chefs not be mean, but that they still hold a standard.
• 23:13
  You know, I, I, when I, I remember applying at a
• 23:17
  restaurant when I was probably 20 still, and I had, I had done
• 23:22
  a little bit of catering. So in my resume it said
• 23:26
  executive chef of my personal catering company.
• 23:30
  And I remember sitting down with the chef and him being like,
• 23:34
  I'm, I'm willing to hire you, but you need to take that off of
• 23:37
  your resume. It has to be off of your resume.
• 23:40
  And I'm like, but I am the chef. He's like, no, you're not,
• 23:44
  that's not you. You have not you, you're,
• 23:46
  you're, you're a line cook. You have not earned it yet.
• 23:48
  And, and now every, every young cook is a chef because they
• 23:52
  don't, because there's a, it's a very big misnomer between the,
• 23:56
  the title cook and the title chef.
• 23:59
  And I'm sure most everyone who's listening knows it, but I'll say
• 24:02
  it anyways because it's one of my favorite things to say.
• 24:05
  If I come to your house tonight and I cook you a great dinner
• 24:09
  does not make me a great chef, makes me a great cook.
• 24:12
  But if I bring 5 dudes from different walks of life who
• 24:15
  maybe do or don't know each other, and I get them to cook
• 24:18
  you a great dinner, that makes me a great chef.
• 24:22
  And so everyone thinks that. Not everyone, but many people
• 24:26
  think that like, oh, my wife's a great chef because she makes a
• 24:28
  great chicken cordon Bleu at home.
• 24:29
  No, your wife's a fucking phenomenal cook.
• 24:31
  There's nothing to take away from her.
• 24:33
  Yeah, she's not a chef. Yeah, it's like when you
• 24:35
  prescribe yourself aspirin. You say I'm a great home doctor.
• 24:39
  Or it's like, I'm really good at basketball.
• 24:41
  I'm a great head coach, I'm a great manager.
• 24:43
  No, you're not. You're really good at
• 24:44
  basketball. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:48
  That's, that's so funny. I was thinking about this the
• 24:50
  other day because, you know, we talked about the old days and I
• 24:52
  feel like we threw the baby out with the bathwater.
• 24:54
  It didn't all need to go out. Well, the pendulum always over
• 24:58
  swings and then it will correct and we are getting towards the
• 25:01
  recorrection because it was wrong, right?
• 25:04
  And it went over, yeah. And it was wrong on the other
• 25:06
  side, and it's coming back that way.
• 25:08
  One of the issues, so a lot of people, I mean, I feel like I'm
• 25:10
  the ask Abby sometimes of chefs and I get a lot of people that
• 25:13
  message me and say hey, chef, I'm having this problem with
• 25:16
  whatever. And you know, they're not doing
• 25:18
  their job. What do I do?
• 25:20
  And I'm like, you just fucking tell them to do it.
• 25:22
  Like why is that hard? Yeah.
• 25:23
  And I think in the old days, not the old days.
• 25:26
  I like I'm a old timer, but. It is the old days.
• 25:28
  The old days, like you just fucking told him there was no,
• 25:30
  like they're fucking up. What do you do?
• 25:33
  Will you tell them to stop fucking up?
• 25:34
  Yeah. And now we're so afraid and we
• 25:37
  because we, we just thought like instead of saying stop fucking
• 25:41
  it up, you idiot, it's like, no, no, just stop fucking it up.
• 25:44
  You don't. You can drop the you idiot part.
• 25:47
  I I went through a very so I became, I became a sous chef
• 25:52
  young. I became a chef young.
• 25:56
  I was my first chef job in 2011, which is what, 1415 years ago,
• 26:04
  something like that. And I'm 38.
• 26:09
  So I was, you know, in my early 20s maybe I was 23, something
• 26:12
  like that. Was at a restaurant in Chicago
• 26:16
  called Park Grill. And I had a cook who worked for
• 26:23
  me who sat me down one day just much like I sat down Chef James
• 26:27
  Trees and said, he said to me, chef, you are.
• 26:31
  You've never once said good job to me.
• 26:34
  You've never once been nice to me.
• 26:35
  You only ever correct me. Now, I wasn't talking shit about
• 26:38
  his mom or anything, but I like that thing that Brian taught me
• 26:43
  it. Why not make it correct So we
• 26:45
  just don't let it go out wrong. Which means I am going to
• 26:49
  correct every single thing every time, no matter what, because I
• 26:52
  don't turn a blind eye. I might miss it, but if I see
• 26:54
  it, I'm saying it. And my response to him was you
• 27:00
  still work here. That's your good job.
• 27:03
  You get a paycheck, that's your good job.
• 27:05
  My job is not to sit here and patch you on the head.
• 27:08
  My job is to hold you accountable.
• 27:10
  If I didn't think you were good enough, you just wouldn't have a
• 27:12
  job here anymore. My job is not to say good job.
• 27:15
  He quit. And that was a huge eye opener
• 27:18
  for me because it really it it, it showed me a couple of things.
• 27:23
  One, not everyone is there just to like it.
• 27:27
  Like like I thought that everyone had my mind set.
• 27:30
  Whatever it hit me, talk shit to me as long as I am, I'm it's the
• 27:34
  price to pay to learn, you know, from the best.
• 27:37
  Now I wasn't the best at 23, so don't get me wrong, but it's
• 27:40
  still that mindset. But I realized right then that
• 27:46
  it's kind of like, it doesn't matter how good your art is if
• 27:48
  you die a starving artist, doesn't matter how, how, how
• 27:52
  perfect or, or how much I try to control the the food if I have
• 27:56
  no team to cook it. And so I had to Start learning
• 28:02
  how to get them excited and get the food perfect.
• 28:09
  And you have to drop the you idiot and you have to, I mean,
• 28:14
  really what it came down to is you just got to sort of lead a
• 28:18
  little bit more by example and you got to be excited.
• 28:23
  It's so easy to wear your heart on your sleeve when you're a
• 28:26
  chef. It's so easy to get overwhelmed
• 28:30
  by if you don't own your restaurant by by the the owner
• 28:33
  who's some fucking Doctor Who lives on a yacht who's talking
• 28:36
  shit to you because of your food cost.
• 28:37
  It's so easy to get, you know, caught up in someone talking
• 28:40
  shit on Yelp. It's so easy to get caught up in
• 28:43
  the bathroom overflowing and and so and so-called in that we you
• 28:48
  can easily walk into that kitchen and bring the morale
• 28:51
  down when you have to be. It's like being the president.
• 28:55
  You have to walk in with the understanding of like boys and
• 28:59
  girls, we are going to crush the fucking world today.
• 29:02
  Who's in with me, right? No matter what happened.
• 29:05
  And as soon as I started doing that, I started to have, you
• 29:08
  know, a team that like that would like follow me into
• 29:12
  battle, excited and ready to die.
• 29:15
  You set the tone completely as the chef and this like my one of
• 29:20
  my biggest fucking pet peeves is a chef.
• 29:21
  Like you go tell your sometimes your sous chef or your exact Sue
• 29:24
  becomes the person that you could not, I don't want to say
• 29:26
  dump on, but like they might know shit because you got to
• 29:29
  tell someone like fuck, I'm getting pressure, like we got a
• 29:32
  whatever, and then they go and tell the team.
• 29:35
  Well, Chef said, instead of saying this is what we're doing.
• 29:38
  So that's The thing is you've got to make sure I had a chef,
• 29:41
  the same one who told me to take executive chef off my my resume.
• 29:47
  Warren Schwartz, Amazing, amazing chef, legendary in Los
• 29:50
  Angeles, He told me. Here's what you want in your
• 29:54
  sous chefs. Cooking is important.
• 29:58
  You want two or three dudes that you want standing behind you
• 30:01
  when a bar fights about to go down.
• 30:03
  That's it. That's who you want.
• 30:05
  Which means they keep their fucking mouth shut.
• 30:08
  They swing when you swing without you having to fucking
• 30:11
  ask. That's what you want in a sous
• 30:13
  chef. You can teach them how to cook.
• 30:16
  You cannot teach that mindset. And so you have to know who your
• 30:21
  confidants are. And it is the loneliest position
• 30:25
  is at the top because even there are things you can't tell your
• 30:27
  sous chef, right? You know, you have to you, you
• 30:30
  have to hold that and it's dude, it's so hard.
• 30:32
  It's so hard. No, no doubt, especially, you
• 30:34
  know, I was a young chef like you.
• 30:37
  I think I got my first exec when I was like 25.
• 30:39
  And looking back on my career, I thought, well, I was a really
• 30:44
  good cook, but I wasn't a really good chef.
• 30:46
  And there there wasn't the emotional maturity to deal with
• 30:49
  the problems that I was going to face.
• 30:50
  Like problems on a plate weren't my issue.
• 30:53
  It was problems with people that were my issue.
• 30:55
  Meaning like, how do I leave them?
• 30:56
  How do I get them? How do I get someone motivated
• 30:58
  to wash dishes all day? Yeah, you know, and when it's
• 31:00
  fucking hot and how do I motivate the team to, hey, the
• 31:03
  dish, the dishwasher broke down and we got to wash them all by
• 31:06
  hand. No one can go home.
• 31:07
  And they're like, well, you're not fucking paying me enough.
• 31:09
  That was what was hard. It wasn't the cooking part that
• 31:11
  I struggled with early on. It was, I just didn't know what
• 31:15
  I didn't know. Yeah, fuck it.
• 31:17
  You're you're you're making me remember shit that I I buried
• 31:20
  deep. I mean, the way, the, the way
• 31:22
  that I did it because I, I was, I was 25 when I opened my first
• 31:26
  restaurant as an owner. Yeah, when when Scratch Bar
• 31:28
  opened and you know, it's hard to hire people younger than you
• 31:34
  when you're 232425. And So what I really started
• 31:38
  doing over the years was I stopped hiring based on resume
• 31:43
  and I started hiring based on wanting to be here.
• 31:46
  And I started looking for people who wanted to get into the
• 31:50
  industry and you'd bring them into your because I, I, I grew
• 31:54
  up playing music. So I'm, I never was a solo
• 31:56
  artist. I'm a drummer.
• 31:57
  So I'm the backbone of a, of a, of a band, right?
• 32:00
  And we live together, we ride together, we die together.
• 32:03
  And so when I started taking sort of that approach to it
• 32:06
  where it's like you apply for the dishwashing position, I
• 32:10
  would hire you because you're somewhat interested in food and
• 32:14
  your job is to get the fuck out of the dishwashing station and
• 32:17
  get on that line, you know, and now I have, you know, I mean,
• 32:21
  today I have like almost 400 employees and several of them
• 32:25
  have been with me over for over a decade and started as
• 32:27
  dishwashers and now like are overseeing four or five
• 32:31
  restaurants, you know, because to me it was, if you just hire a
• 32:36
  kid from millennia, he's going to come in and argue with you
• 32:38
  about everything you want to do. And if you hire a kid who's
• 32:42
  excited because he's eaten at Alinea or he's heard of Alinea,
• 32:45
  you can start him in the dish pit and you can teach him every
• 32:48
  single thing there is to know about food, or at least
• 32:50
  everything that you want him to know about food.
• 32:53
  I have. I have so many things that I
• 32:54
  want to ask you, but the one thing that's on my mind that
• 32:58
  I've been thinking about this a lot is fancy Chef.
• 33:01
  So I am just as fascinated. The pinnacle of my of my my
• 33:06
  crowning. Achievements.
• 33:07
  When I first discovered him, I thought, oh, he's trolling
• 33:10
  everyone. Yeah, there's sometimes he'd
• 33:11
  wear like the the like a scarf, he says the cereal box upside
• 33:15
  down. He's deliberately missing.
• 33:18
  OK, so. So is he trolling us?
• 33:19
  But then I thought, oh, maybe he's not.
• 33:21
  OK, so Tom, if you look at our like text thread, it's 80% fancy
• 33:26
  chef videos. Is it?
• 33:27
  I fucking love the. Guy for the last like, year and
• 33:29
  a half, I'm like 48 hours. Don't go by that.
• 33:31
  Tom doesn't send me a fancy chef video.
• 33:33
  Yeah. And I'm like, dude, this this
• 33:35
  dude is, it's got to be a bit. It has to be a character.
• 33:39
  That's what I think, but then I started thinking it's not.
• 33:42
  So when I decided for sure it's a character, yeah, was when Tom
• 33:47
  said no, I found the video and it's one where there's two
• 33:51
  champagne flutes. One of them still has the
• 33:53
  sticker on right, Right. And he's putting a slice of
• 33:56
  oranges into it is like, beautiful and nice, beautiful.
• 34:00
  And then he misses and drops it next to it.
• 34:03
  I'm like, dude. But Tom's like, at that point,
• 34:05
  Tom had already had him on YMH, and he was like, yeah, he's
• 34:09
  blind. And I'm like, so, so then we do
• 34:15
  this, this fancy chef, you know, competition.
• 34:18
  And you know, I, I, I, I, I don't know, I don't know if it's
• 34:25
  part of me thinks it isn't part of me thinks it isn't.
• 34:27
  Because there was a moment where so like I, I believed still
• 34:34
  maybe with a with a very light D, but I believed that he this
• 34:41
  was a bit. Right.
• 34:42
  Like like an Andy Kaufman style genius?
• 34:44
  Yes. Yes, 100%.
• 34:47
  But as we were standing next to each other and Tom was about to
• 34:51
  announce the winner, I'm standing just behind him and
• 34:55
  fancy and he's got his glasses on and I, you know when you can
• 34:58
  see somebody from behind their glasses, Tom announces him
• 35:02
  winning and I see his eyes well up.
• 35:04
  Oh really? And I don't know why they kind
• 35:07
  of cut this, but like he gives an acceptance speech and he's
• 35:11
  kind of fumbling over his words, which he never fumbles out.
• 35:15
  Like you can tell his, he's become emotional.
• 35:20
  And at that moment I almost kind of felt bad.
• 35:24
  But then I was like, do the suit so good.
• 35:28
  Like, I don't know that the, the true honest answer is I've seen
• 35:32
  him on Instagram. I've shaken his hand in person.
• 35:35
  I've cooked great food against them.
• 35:37
  I've I, I talked to him afterwards.
• 35:40
  I don't know. Yeah, I, I don't know either,
• 35:43
  because some of it's like, because I'm a troll in real
• 35:46
  life. Like in real life, I'm a fucking
• 35:47
  troll. But I I, I realized like, what
• 35:50
  what I do with Chester is like, I don't think people would get
• 35:51
  my humor, so I tone it down. But I'm good at recognizing
• 35:54
  trolls. Yeah.
• 35:55
  And I'm like, this dude's a fucking.
• 35:57
  Troll. So here's the thing.
• 35:59
  If he was, if he had a mental disability, yeah, I feel like he
• 36:04
  would have like some young producer trying to capitalize on
• 36:07
  him. And when he rolled up to the set
• 36:10
  to shoot that he was solo. So it made me think that maybe
• 36:15
  this is his vision, not necessarily like somebody
• 36:19
  exploiting. Because like if, if, if you got
• 36:21
  someone who like really has, you know, issues, you would think
• 36:24
  the only way they make that amount of videos is
• 36:27
  exploitation, right? But he knows what to keep in the
• 36:30
  video. And that's like, he was at 11
• 36:32
  Madison, and he's talking to whoever's serving him and he's
• 36:35
  like, this is Thomas Keller's restaurant, right?
• 36:37
  And the guy just rolled his eye. But he keeps that in the video.
• 36:40
  So it's almost like he knows what people are going to like.
• 36:43
  Fucking like everyone in the comments.
• 36:45
  He just called him Thomas Keller.
• 36:47
  It's it's what here's, here's what you can take away,
• 36:50
  regardless of whether it's real or it's a bit.
• 36:52
  Yeah. It's genius.
• 36:54
  It's fucking, it's art at its highest form.
• 36:56
  Yeah. And yeah, I mean, Tom and I have
• 36:59
  been talking for literally over a year about, dude, we got to do
• 37:01
  a cooking competition. Like we got to put him like he's
• 37:04
  going to come on and do his stuff and I'm going to come on
• 37:06
  and fucking beautiful. You know?
• 37:09
  I'm going to make it beautiful and nice, Right, Right, right.
• 37:12
  And, and just how funny would that be?
• 37:15
  And the day before it came out, Tom text me and goes, dude, I
• 37:19
  just saw it. He's like, I think this is the
• 37:21
  funniest thing we've ever made. I fucking love.
• 37:23
  You know what's crazy is a lot of chefs behind the scenes
• 37:27
  you'll similar to yours and Tom's text.
• 37:29
  Like, I got a lot of fancy chef DMS in mind too.
• 37:32
  Yeah, and. You should have them on the pod.
• 37:38
  Could he carry a conversation for?
• 37:39
  For dude, I think he would overwhelm the conversation.
• 37:42
  Really. Oh my yes, I think that would be
• 37:45
  such an interesting person for you to have on because nobody
• 37:47
  knows his real real back story and nobody knows his fake back
• 37:51
  story either, whether it's real or not.
• 37:53
  But like, I mean, he, he's a, he's a, I mean, we're, we're
• 37:57
  cooking. You know, he's like, hey, cook
• 37:59
  this for me. Do that for me.
• 38:00
  Do this. Killing the carrot with the
• 38:02
  knife but like scratch scraping it.
• 38:04
  Yeah, when he was, when he was, I didn't see it, but Josh told
• 38:08
  me when he was breaking down the cauliflower for that, the dish
• 38:11
  that he didn't cook. Yeah, he was breaking it down by
• 38:14
  hand. He was just pulling off nubs of
• 38:17
  and like so in the in the salad it had like nubs like this big
• 38:20
  of raw cauliflower. Oh fuck.
• 38:22
  It's it's, it's crazy, but one of the things that some of my
• 38:25
  DMS with the other chefs is like, he came in and he's eating
• 38:29
  everyone's lunch in the content creation world.
• 38:31
  Yeah. Like there's content creators
• 38:33
  that are putting all this effort into making these cool videos
• 38:36
  that I'd love to get Josh Wiseman's take on it.
• 38:38
  It's like he's coming in and out of nowhere. 100,000 followers
• 38:40
  and no one could fucking stop. Talking.
• 38:41
  Well, I mean, it's kind of out of nowhere, but also Tom found
• 38:44
  him. Yeah, like for like 2. 1013 he's
• 38:46
  been doing this. Yeah, I mean, but that's what
• 38:48
  Tom. I mean, like, do you know Sam's
• 38:50
  Taylor? No.
• 38:51
  OK, so Tom found this this dude in in Hong Kong.
• 38:55
  Named. Oh yes, yes, yes, I saw that and
• 38:58
  or he slapped him on the ass or something.
• 38:59
  Yeah, so I actually filmed part of that video in Hong Kong.
• 39:02
  I got I got myself a a Sam Taylor Taylor shirt.
• 39:06
  But but yeah, I mean, Tom has this this ability to like find
• 39:12
  wackadoos, you know, and, or just like the biggest characters
• 39:18
  and he puts them on YMH and then they go, yeah, and some fall off
• 39:22
  very quickly. Some have some actual substance
• 39:25
  to them and then they hold on. So I mean, like Fancy's held on
• 39:28
  for, I mean, he's, he's had a spotlight on him for over a year
• 39:33
  now. So I had someone on the podcast
• 39:35
  that was a fancy chef fan just like me, and we we, we said this
• 39:39
  on the show. He should put out a cookbook,
• 39:40
  dude. He should.
• 39:41
  He should put out a cookbook like a lamb trunk Fancy ranch.
• 39:43
  Put out, Put out Robberies like you'll be a New York Times
• 39:46
  bestseller. So we told the audience, we said
• 39:49
  if anyone could find the first fancy Chef video, screenshot it
• 39:53
  and send it to me, I would send him a books.
• 39:55
  Yeah, or whatever. Right.
• 39:57
  And I was like, well, before I kind of verify what is his first
• 40:00
  video, it took me almost 2 1/2 hours of scrolling before I
• 40:03
  found the very first fancy chef video.
• 40:05
  It was like, fuck, when did he start?
• 40:07
  It just goes on forever. Yeah, finding the bottom of that
• 40:10
  is absolutely insane and was. He doing the same thing back
• 40:13
  then, yeah. Yeah, it was the exact same
• 40:15
  stuff, so. What year was that?
• 40:17
  I want to say, I want to say it might have felt like 2013.
• 40:21
  I don't know exactly but but yeah, it's been.
• 40:23
  And 12 years will be a long time to do a bit when no one's
• 40:26
  watching. Right.
• 40:26
  And and and you're right because it's like I think the very first
• 40:29
  video, I don't remember, but it's like crab legs.
• 40:31
  Here's the thing for crab legs, Fucking king crab.
• 40:34
  And you know, he's he's pulling out of the bag and they're
• 40:36
  dripping everywhere. He's great.
• 40:37
  I love fancy chef. Fancy chef, if you're listening,
• 40:40
  I I can't afford you, but but if you'll if you'll jump on the
• 40:43
  podcast next time you're here, I'd.
• 40:44
  Like, but like when? But like when he presents Tom
• 40:46
  the John Segura, you know, like. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:49
  And he says no, no, you called me John Segura.
• 40:50
  No, I said. Tom, I said.
• 40:52
  Rewinds to John. Yeah, that was great.
• 40:54
  It was, it was one of the most entertaining things that I've
• 40:57
  seen. I'm a fancy chef fan and it's
• 40:59
  crazy because what, what I find even more interesting is when
• 41:03
  chefs like, I don't want to say real chefs, but you know, like
• 41:05
  people in the industry are commenting he's not a real chef
• 41:08
  like. Dude, what the fuck are?
• 41:10
  You guys worried about? He's making fun and funny things
• 41:14
  online. Yeah, who cares?
• 41:16
  Like he, he's destroying our industry.
• 41:18
  He's like, no. He's not.
• 41:19
  No, he's not. I want to tell people like,
• 41:20
  dude, shut up. Fucking get over it.
• 41:22
  Like he's, he's, he's great. If you have the time to talk
• 41:27
  shit about whether or not Fancy Chef is a chef online, yeah, you
• 41:31
  need to be spending more time tornaying potatoes in your
• 41:34
  fucking basement. Yes, you know what I mean?
• 41:35
  You need you like you're you're you're lacking.
• 41:39
  There's no there. I can't remember who said it.
• 41:41
  Might have been Joe, might have been David Goggins.
• 41:44
  If some somebody said nobody more successful than you will
• 41:49
  ever talk shit about you, nor will they care about how
• 41:51
  successful you are. They will only ever try to bring
• 41:54
  you up. Yeah, Yeah.
• 41:55
  And so like, if you're talking shit about fancy chef dude and
• 41:58
  you're taking the time. Fucking one.
• 42:00
  You need to be working on yourself.
• 42:02
  You have too much time. Get your weight up.
• 42:05
  As they say, get your weight up. You were, maybe you were talking
• 42:09
  with Joshua, but I was listening to one of your episodes where
• 42:12
  you're talking about how quickly you open restaurants and and
• 42:15
  kind of what the process was. I don't remember what it was so
• 42:17
  I don't even want to re quote it but I remember when I heard I
• 42:20
  was like that's fucking crazy. Yes, so there's I So I come from
• 42:25
  a DIY punk rock hardcore background.
• 42:28
  Yeah, right. I dropped out of school when I
• 42:29
  was 15. I started touring when I was 14.
• 42:33
  I dropped out of school to tour like almost full time when I was
• 42:35
  15. And back then it's like before
• 42:38
  you go on a full U.S. tour, you print out MapQuest directions
• 42:41
  and use a Thomas guide, right? And every city you go to, you go
• 42:45
  to you stop by Hot Topic or the local skate park and you flyer,
• 42:49
  right? And then you play a bowling
• 42:51
  alley to 150 kids. And then you you eat Top Ramen
• 42:56
  and then you sleep on a floor. And if it was a great night, you
• 42:59
  saw a lot of merch. You get to go to Wendy's, right?
• 43:02
  So like that's my, that's my core upbringing.
• 43:07
  And so when I, when Marguerite and I opened our first
• 43:12
  restaurant, we did it with that mentality.
• 43:16
  And everything we've done has been from sort of that
• 43:18
  mentality. Pre pandemic, we got up to we.
• 43:23
  So when we first opened her and I had 100% of our restaurants.
• 43:25
  Yeah, By the time the pandemic hit, we only had 50% of our
• 43:30
  restaurants because we had brought in some money guys, by
• 43:35
  end of 21, we had the opportunity to sell Sushi Bar
• 43:38
  ATX here to a private equity firm.
• 43:42
  And it would, it would alot us the ability to turn around and
• 43:47
  and buy out all of our partners in all of our California
• 43:49
  restaurants retaking 100%. So we did that.
• 43:52
  So now we're back to 100%. And then what happened is about
• 43:56
  two weeks after the private equity firm sued her and I for
• 44:01
  $15 million. And I don't know if you've ever
• 44:06
  been involved with lawsuits or litigation.
• 44:09
  I hope not. And if you have, I hope you
• 44:10
  never do. I hope if you haven't, I hope
• 44:12
  you never do. But the way it works is if you
• 44:16
  can't defend yourself, you lose. And I had no money.
• 44:19
  I only had assets. My assets were my restaurant.
• 44:22
  So if I don't defend myself, I would end up losing all of my
• 44:25
  restaurants, is what I was told. So I had to defend myself.
• 44:30
  How do you do that? You have to get an attorney.
• 44:33
  Attorneys cost a lot of money. Sure.
• 44:35
  Yeah. I needed to generate revenue.
• 44:37
  That's why I opened so many restaurants.
• 44:40
  Wow. And so the.
• 44:43
  Because I had that DIY background, we could just
• 44:48
  fucking do it. And so we would, I mean, and now
• 44:50
  lawsuits have been over for a couple years.
• 44:52
  I'm still doing this. There's, I've recently heard
• 44:55
  that there's a term for it. It is called Parkinson's Law.
• 45:01
  Have you heard this? Yeah.
• 45:03
  So Parkinson's law for anyone who has who has it doesn't know.
• 45:05
  It basically is a law that states that.
• 45:08
  And this is every chef out there will know this.
• 45:13
  Any task will either shrink. We'll either shrink or grow to
• 45:18
  the size of the time allotted. It's.
• 45:21
  Like your prep list? Exactly like your prep list.
• 45:23
  You give a dude 4 things on his prep list to get done before
• 45:25
  service, he's barely, we're done on time.
• 45:27
  You give him 30 things to do before service, he's barely done
• 45:30
  on time, Right? It's the same fucking thing.
• 45:32
  So we had to go. We had to generate revenue.
• 45:36
  Now I'm lucky because my father-in-law builds all of our
• 45:40
  restaurants. He's on salary with the company.
• 45:42
  All I got to do is take out a credit card from Lowe's or Home
• 45:46
  Depot to buy all the materials. And then him and I like will
• 45:49
  show up. We'll basically rent an
• 45:51
  apartment a month before, you know, opening day him and I
• 45:54
  will, you know, do the build the whole thing.
• 45:57
  When I see him and I, he builds it, he's like scalpel and I'll
• 46:00
  hand him the you know, and then we open a restaurant.
• 46:03
  But also like our, our restaurants are designed to be
• 46:06
  very, I mean, we, we open 800 square foot restaurants with 10
• 46:10
  seats, you know. So for people that aren't
• 46:12
  familiar with your restaurants, can you cut?
• 46:14
  Cuz can you kind of give an overview of how many you have
• 46:17
  and like what the different concepts are?
• 46:20
  27 restaurants in total today. Wow.
• 46:23
  That's a small amount. You could fit them all in this
• 46:26
  in, like in Nobu's biggest restaurant?
• 46:28
  Yeah. I mean, biggest restaurant's ten
• 46:29
  seats. But actually, that's not true.
• 46:32
  There's an NADC in Denver that's pretty fucking big but still
• 46:35
  only one thing on the menu. So 27 restaurants total.
• 46:39
  We have NADC burger. Not a damn chance with Neen
• 46:42
  Williams and myself. Any of.
• 46:44
  Those do you have. I think 10 or 11 now just opened
• 46:48
  one in the casino in Vegas last week, New York City, several in
• 46:51
  Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Nashville, couple in Chicago,
• 46:59
  you know, and, and we're continuing to grow that.
• 47:02
  And then sushi by scratch restaurants, formerly known as
• 47:05
  sushi bar. And I believe there's thirteen
• 47:09
  of those and we're in 13 cities or I think 11 cities actually,
• 47:13
  because there's 2IN in Austin and three in in Southern
• 47:17
  California, but from Seattle down to Miami.
• 47:21
  And that that restaurant did get a Michelin * and 21 and 22.
• 47:28
  And then we have Pasta Bar 2 locations, one in Los Angeles, 1
• 47:33
  here. Postmar also got a Michelin star
• 47:36
  last five years that. One in Austin, by the way, I
• 47:38
  think. Yeah, so Michelin sometimes
• 47:43
  takes a couple years to get a city, right?
• 47:45
  Yeah, in my opinion, we didn't even get a recommendation, which
• 47:50
  suggests one of two things. We're so bad.
• 47:54
  Not true. Not true.
• 47:55
  Dan's a stud. I know.
• 47:57
  Yeah, I'm or you have to recognize that they had three
• 48:03
  months to review every restaurant in Texas.
• 48:06
  Now, we are not the hottest restaurant.
• 48:10
  We're not who all the bloggers are talking about.
• 48:12
  We're not who Matthew Odom is as on his, you know, on his list.
• 48:17
  So like what happens is when when Michelin comes to a new
• 48:19
  city, they often times they have a very small amount of time to
• 48:24
  review. And so they'll go to like the
• 48:28
  they'll check out the like they'll they'll pull up the
• 48:30
  biggest reviewers, the biggest whatever.
• 48:32
  Who's on the like, who should I be looking at?
• 48:35
  Right? We're not on anyone's list.
• 48:36
  Don't know why we up until I think very recently, we were the
• 48:41
  first and only tasting menu only restaurant in Austin history.
• 48:45
  Maybe. I mean, there are restaurants
• 48:47
  that you can. Do.
• 48:48
  I used to taste the menu here before and then barley swine I
• 48:50
  think does. Right does but tasty menu only.
• 48:54
  OK, then you are correct. Yeah, you are correct.
• 48:56
  So if you consider omakase, then yes.
• 48:58
  Otoko. Yeah, right.
• 49:00
  But Ottoko was the only omakase before sushi.
• 49:03
  Before we open sushi. Uh huh.
• 49:05
  Then we were the second one to do like a tasting and then when
• 49:08
  pasta bar opened, it was the first restaurant where it's just
• 49:11
  tasting menu only that I'm that I'm aware of there.
• 49:13
  There may have been, but I don't think there is now Now bar now I
• 49:16
  think Barley's wine their. Tasty menu slash.
• 49:20
  Yeah. To me, it's like if you go to a
• 49:22
  restaurant and they have a tasting menu, that is one thing.
• 49:25
  It is very different operation to not have happy hour at your
• 49:28
  bar, to not have appetizers, but to say we do.
• 49:32
  It cost $200 to enter our our doors and that's it.
• 49:36
  So I mean, we're, I mean, there's a reason that in LA, you
• 49:41
  know, we've been crushing for five years and we're on the
• 49:44
  lists and here we're not because in LA we're not the first state.
• 49:47
  LA is already used to that style of, of restaurant.
• 49:49
  Austin isn't yet, but it's not I mean I'm working on another new
• 49:52
  tasting menu restaurant right now for Austin and going to
• 49:55
  continue, but I think Michelin will come around and they I.
• 49:58
  I think they should have. I mean, with all due respect, I
• 50:01
  think you should have gotten a star.
• 50:03
  I, I, I, I don't, I was surprised and I'm not trying to
• 50:06
  be mean, but I was surprised that that you didn't because I
• 50:09
  was like, that's one of the best people that know, know.
• 50:13
  Here's the thing. Franklin doesn't get a star.
• 50:16
  Yeah, Franklin doesn't get a star.
• 50:20
  I'm not taking away from from Ali and Leanne.
• 50:23
  Rest in peace. I'm not taking away from that at
• 50:26
  all. But Franklin doesn't get a star,
• 50:27
  right? Right.
• 50:29
  That's. I was honestly, I was all
• 50:31
  surprised Uchi didn't get it. I mean, they're like they put
• 50:34
  Austin on the map. They did Uchi should have got a
• 50:37
  Bib Gourmand. They should have got Uchi.
• 50:38
  Uchi shouldn't get a star. But I I think if you ask Tyson
• 50:41
  Cole himself, he's not going for a star there, right, right.
• 50:44
  So I mean, there's this huge misunderstanding and, and, and
• 50:49
  about Michelin, like, I don't know if you saw all of like the
• 50:51
  local critics who were like guessing on who was going to.
• 50:54
  Yeah, well, when I saw that list, I thought they're fucking
• 50:56
  crazy. But when I saw the awards, I was
• 50:57
  like, OK, they got some of them right.
• 50:59
  They did get some right. They there was some to me, I
• 51:02
  thought that there was going to be between zero and three
• 51:06
  restaurants getting one star in Austin.
• 51:08
  Yeah, and none of the restaurants that I thought were
• 51:11
  getting a star got a star unless in my mind, unless they go BBQ
• 51:16
  because like, LA, everyone was mad they didn't go tacos, right.
• 51:20
  So I'm like, there's a chance they don't go to, to barbecue.
• 51:23
  So that wasn't really in my list.
• 51:24
  And if they go BBQ, of course it's going to be LA barbecue and
• 51:27
  and and and and Franklin. But like, Jeffrey's not even on
• 51:32
  the list. Jeffrey's one of the best
• 51:33
  steakhouse in the country that should have that.
• 51:36
  That should have a Michelin star to me.
• 51:39
  To me, if you're, you know when when you're looking at it.
• 51:41
  But again, give them some time. There's the business of Michelin
• 51:44
  as well, and I'll leave it at that.
• 51:47
  I, I don't know even know how the the business goes.
• 51:49
  I have no idea. But I do know that if you look
• 51:53
  at, you know, some of the more prominent critics in Austin and
• 51:57
  you look at their favorite restaurants, they line up pretty
• 52:00
  closely with with who got stars and who got bibs and who got,
• 52:04
  you know. What what I think by the way,
• 52:07
  you and your brother both got a star, which I think is fucking
• 52:10
  wild. I first of all, I didn't know
• 52:11
  you had a brother that was the chef.
• 52:13
  So Lennon Lee, actual brother, everyone thinks like I, I was
• 52:17
  introducing him at the Michelin ceremony in California a couple
• 52:20
  weeks ago. And everyone, I'm like, it's my
• 52:22
  brother. Like, yo, it's my brother, by
• 52:23
  the way. No, no, no.
• 52:24
  Same mom, same dad, same household.
• 52:27
  Like my brother. Yeah, he started when he was 18
• 52:31
  as my dishwasher, just because he needed a job.
• 52:34
  How? How far apart?
• 52:35
  Are you 7 years? So when he was 18, I was 25, I
• 52:37
  was 25 on open scratch bar. He was our dishwasher.
• 52:42
  And over the years he went from dish to prep, prep to line, line
• 52:49
  to sue, sue to chef. And he spent nine years with me.
• 52:55
  He's never worked for anybody else, so I he doesn't call me
• 53:00
  Chef. When you guys work together, did
• 53:01
  he call you chef? When you're on the line, if I'm
• 53:03
  cooking. So OK, so here's who Chef is in
• 53:06
  my in my ward, Expo is Chef. Yeah, and whoever's in charge.
• 53:10
  Of anyone who you answer to is Chef.
• 53:13
  I'm the same way. And so if I'm on the line, it's
• 53:16
  yes, Chef. I don't.
• 53:18
  It's not about the hierarchy for me, it's about chief.
• 53:22
  Yo coach, what do you want from me?
• 53:24
  If you're cooking on the line and your sous chef's calling, he
• 53:27
  chef. Doesn't matter who the fuck's
• 53:29
  out there. They're if they are, if they are
• 53:32
  conducting the orchestra, they are the chef for the moment, you
• 53:35
  know, so, so my, my brother, you know what he was, he was running
• 53:40
  the kitchen at Scratch Bar in like 2016 or 1717.
• 53:43
  It must have been. And I was, I made a decision one
• 53:47
  afternoon that I was going to let my head chef go at sushi
• 53:53
  and, and in Encino, where our originals were, we had three
• 53:57
  storefronts next to each other with one back of house.
• 54:00
  So then I connected all of them so that I could get one liquor
• 54:04
  license for all of my concepts. And so I'm like, yo, Lennon, I
• 54:10
  need you and sushi. And he's like, I'm like, oh,
• 54:13
  here's a fucking apron. Get in there.
• 54:14
  You'll be fine. I'll show you what's up.
• 54:16
  He gets in there and within six months he's got a fucking sushi
• 54:20
  knife tattoo. He finds he he was always saying
• 54:23
  prior to that, I just I like working for family.
• 54:26
  I don't give a shit about food. But like he comes from like, you
• 54:29
  know, from a he's he's the dude. He is the dude you want in a
• 54:34
  fucking bar fight. He is so it like it didn't.
• 54:37
  I'm like, Lennon, go fix that. And he goes and he fucking fix
• 54:39
  that and he makes sure no one's fucking with his brother, right.
• 54:42
  Family's a big thing. So he goes into goes into there
• 54:45
  and falls in love with sushi. When we go to open our second
• 54:49
  location in Montecito, I had already moved him up there to
• 54:54
  work at the 'cause we had three restaurants in Montecito.
• 54:57
  The third one was, was sushi. He was already living up there
• 54:59
  and, and by this time he was like really into sushi and he
• 55:03
  was going to be the head chef of that location.
• 55:05
  And opening day, the day of opening day, he comes to me and
• 55:10
  goes, hey, cannot, can you not work behind the line?
• 55:13
  I want to, I want to work the middle.
• 55:16
  He's like, can you sit down? I want to work the middle.
• 55:19
  And I was like, Are you sure you ready?
• 55:21
  And so I sat down in the first seating.
• 55:24
  So I've, I've never sat down in my restaurant on opening day.
• 55:28
  I did that for my brother to, to let him have his moment.
• 55:32
  Fast forward two years when we get out, when I get my first
• 55:37
  Michelin star, I get it for pasta bar and sushi Montecito at
• 55:42
  the same time. And so Lennon was behind the
• 55:45
  counter now back then, you know, he, you know, he did have a
• 55:49
  little bit of, you know, a little bit of touches in the
• 55:53
  menu, but primarily it was, you know, were were my dishes.
• 55:58
  And the thing that I think I'm the most proud of now because he
• 56:00
  was there for a couple years and then he he got an offer he
• 56:04
  couldn't refuse, broke off, took him a couple years to open his
• 56:07
  restaurant opened in 24 and within three months got
• 56:11
  recommendation in the guide. Following year gets his first
• 56:15
  star, which Michel, you probably saw that article that Michelin
• 56:19
  put it out. It's hard to make history in
• 56:21
  Michelin. And we are the 1st brothers in
• 56:26
  the history of Michelin to each hold stars at our own
• 56:29
  restaurants. So like you got the Roka
• 56:30
  brother, you have a lot of brothers who work together and
• 56:32
  get stars, but we're the first ones to get stars independently
• 56:37
  of each other simultaneously. And the thing that I'm the most
• 56:40
  proud of is, and you, you've probably noticed this like you
• 56:43
  go to a restaurant where it's like it's an alum of EMP or
• 56:48
  wherever and they get a star and their menu is very much EMP.
• 56:53
  They at least haven't figured out their identity yet.
• 56:55
  Yep. Lennon's not doing my food,
• 56:57
  which is great. He's not doing my food.
• 56:59
  He is doing A10 seat omicase. Only 10 guests drive at the same
• 57:04
  time, But that's just the style of restaurant.
• 57:08
  He doesn't do my rice. He doesn't do the way I treat
• 57:12
  the fish. He doesn't do my soy sauce.
• 57:15
  And so to me, that's the most proud because I've never been a
• 57:19
  chef who taught recipes. I think recipes are for for the
• 57:23
  birds. I don't like recipes for a
• 57:27
  burger. I do a recipe right, because
• 57:29
  it's it's consistent and a lot of stuff is shelf stable,
• 57:31
  etcetera. But like, if you have a recipe
• 57:35
  for your beet puree and you've got 8 grams of sugar and 3 grams
• 57:39
  of lemon juice, what about when this beets are sweeter or less
• 57:44
  sweet, right? So what I've always taught is
• 57:46
  approach and philosophy. I don't want you to make the
• 57:49
  dish taste exactly the same. I want you to make it taste
• 57:51
  fucking delicious every single time.
• 57:53
  And so I, you know, the thing that I'm most proud that I feel
• 57:56
  like I, you know, that I imparted on him was just showing
• 58:04
  him it could be done and like, and showing him how to organize
• 58:10
  a restaurant that can be at a star level.
• 58:13
  But but honestly, when he when he got a star, that was the most
• 58:16
  proud moment of I think my career.
• 58:18
  Yeah, congratulations. That's pretty cool.
• 58:19
  Like, that's a really incredible moment to share with a brother.
• 58:23
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's super cool.
• 58:25
  When I saw that I was like, oh wow.
• 58:26
  And in front of all, like, you know, cuz it's California where
• 58:28
  I grew up. And in front of all the chefs,
• 58:30
  Yeah, who you know. They're all there, Thomas and.
• 58:33
  Well, Michael Semresti is like my my favorite chef and improv.
• 58:37
  He's just got three, right? He did.
• 58:38
  Yeah. Did for him.
• 58:39
  Congrats. And before the ceremony starts,
• 58:42
  Michael comes over. I'm kind of like a honorary
• 58:45
  alum. I never got paid to work there,
• 58:47
  but I worked there for free for a long time.
• 58:49
  Even though you can read online a million places that I worked
• 58:52
  there, I didn't, I did not get paid.
• 58:54
  But people still write that. But like, he comes out him and
• 58:57
  him, and then I'll come over and, you know, say hey, you
• 59:00
  know, congratulations, blah, blah.
• 59:01
  Before the ceremony, introducing my little brother, you know, And
• 59:05
  so then like after the ceremony, Chef Michael comes over and gets
• 59:09
  my brother's phone number. You know what I mean?
• 59:11
  Like that's just so fucking cool.
• 59:12
  Yeah, very, very, very cool. Yeah.
• 59:14
  And I mean, how cool is that to share that with your brother to
• 59:18
  see him coming up, not only, I'm not saying you raised him, but
• 59:22
  he looked up to his Big Brother and then now, like, I mean,
• 59:27
  that's so cool. I mean, and The thing is like,
• 59:29
  he only ever worked with Margarita and I yeah, you know,
• 59:32
  and that's the cool thing too, is like my wife, who I haven't
• 59:34
  given enough credit on this, this podcast too, is my business
• 59:37
  partner and, you know, pastry chef.
• 59:40
  I've gotten to share that, you know with them the whole time.
• 59:45
  Can we talk about what you're opening soon?
• 59:47
  Sure. Yeah, sure.
• 59:48
  I don't think, well, I've touched on it, but I have not
• 59:50
  really. I have not made an announcement
• 59:53
  out loud yet. I also don't give a shit so
• 59:56
  we'll break it here. Kind of yeah, awesome.
• 59:59
  I bought a piece of property about 30 minutes from downtown
• 1:00:05
  West of Austin. Couple of acres just got the my
• 1:00:10
  next door neighbors got a land lease on that so I'll be able to
• 1:00:12
  about four acres. I live out there in in Dripping
• 1:00:16
  Springs and you know, we touched on the fact that we have 27
• 1:00:21
  restaurants, which means. And that you'll get people are
• 1:00:24
  probably on here hating you. He's not a chef anymore.
• 1:00:26
  He's not. No shit, I'm not.
• 1:00:28
  Well, chef again, is just the word, chief.
• 1:00:31
  It's like saying that the director is not the director
• 1:00:33
  because he didn't have any speaking lines.
• 1:00:35
  That's not really how that works.
• 1:00:37
  But, you know, I don't do the job that I got into the love of
• 1:00:41
  the game for anymore. I can't, you know, I'm I'm there
• 1:00:45
  for all the openings. I'm there to work with the
• 1:00:47
  teams. I'm there to, to, to, you know,
• 1:00:48
  to inspire and to train and I'm there to do special events and
• 1:00:53
  I'm there to do, you know, those types of things.
• 1:00:57
  But I'm not working the line daily at any restaurant.
• 1:01:01
  I can't, it's not what I, it just what if, what if one of my
• 1:01:04
  restaurants required me to be there?
• 1:01:06
  It would fail. I can't.
• 1:01:09
  And so now Margaret and I have a three-year old daughter and we
• 1:01:12
  bought this piece of property a couple of years ago, actually
• 1:01:16
  with this ambition and we've been working on it for a couple
• 1:01:18
  of years. There's a, you know, couple of
• 1:01:21
  acres, it's got 150 year old pioneer aero log cabin on it.
• 1:01:25
  And like, the ones actually, like there's no drywall.
• 1:01:28
  It's made out of slices of tree, right.
• 1:01:30
  And they and they stack up. Yeah.
• 1:01:33
  And going to open a luxury bed and breakfast.
• 1:01:37
  We're building 4 small one bedroom cabins on site.
• 1:01:42
  Going to have an acre and 1/2 of a garden.
• 1:01:45
  Going to have Longhorn dairy cows that I'm going to finish on
• 1:01:50
  the, the mash from Texas Olive Oil Company right down the road.
• 1:01:58
  Also, I'm going to get some beer mash from Jester King.
• 1:02:01
  That's what I will feed my my dairy cows.
• 1:02:04
  Our whole thing since the beginning is scratch right from
• 1:02:07
  scratch. So we're taking it even further,
• 1:02:08
  further further. We're like, we've always made
• 1:02:11
  our own butter. Now we're going to milk our own
• 1:02:14
  cows. You know, I, I, I saw this thing
• 1:02:17
  years ago, World 50 best posted this picture of a restaurant
• 1:02:21
  that have like a, you know, the cheese trolley.
• 1:02:23
  And I was like, that's so sick. And then I read, it's like
• 1:02:26
  restaurant sources, all the best cheeses from around the world.
• 1:02:29
  I'm like, so does Whole Foods, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:31
  I was like, but how sick would that be if they made all of
• 1:02:34
  those cheeses? So like a scratch bar had a
• 1:02:36
  cheese program of like four or five different cheeses that were
• 1:02:39
  aged up to two years. So we're going to have a huge
• 1:02:42
  cheese program. We're going to have goats for
• 1:02:46
  dairy as well. We're going to have chickens for
• 1:02:47
  eggs. We're going to have ducks that
• 1:02:48
  I'm going to attempt to gavage attempt.
• 1:02:51
  I don't know if it'll fucking work, but I'm going to try.
• 1:02:54
  We, we're going to have an AP area on site and going to go
• 1:03:01
  hunt for the rest of the, the, the proteins on the menu.
• 1:03:06
  And this one will be our attempt at 3 Michelin stars and world's
• 1:03:13
  fifty. And this will be, it's not going
• 1:03:18
  to be an expensive restaurant, as I'm sure you can imagine.
• 1:03:21
  And it's going to be a tasting menu, obviously, but it's going
• 1:03:25
  to be a kind of restaurant where it's like it's going to be a
• 1:03:29
  full blown experience. Like you're going to pull into
• 1:03:31
  the property and we're going to like, the best way to do this
• 1:03:33
  restaurant is you're going to spend probably about an hour or
• 1:03:35
  so just on property, you know, and by the time you sit down for
• 1:03:40
  dinner, you've already had two cocktails and seven or eight
• 1:03:43
  canapes. But then you sit down for
• 1:03:44
  dinner, there's no gas in the in the, in the, the house where the
• 1:03:49
  original fireplace will be cooking in that.
• 1:03:52
  I just got it from Homewood stoves.
• 1:03:55
  I think it's Homewood stoves in New Zealand.
• 1:03:58
  I got the sickest cast iron wood burning range.
• 1:04:04
  And then after you have your, your, your final savory, you'll
• 1:04:07
  go through the, the French doors to the backyard by the fire pit.
• 1:04:10
  That's where you'll have after dinner, drinks and desserts.
• 1:04:12
  And we're going to go. And The thing is, this is a 3
• 1:04:16
  minute drive door to door from where I live.
• 1:04:19
  And I wanted a lifestyle restaurant.
• 1:04:23
  Again, I haven't been a chef in too long.
• 1:04:27
  I've been a businessman for too long and I've I've, I've lost
• 1:04:33
  the I haven't I, I need to cook, I need to cook.
• 1:04:38
  I love to cook and but I also have a three-year old daughter
• 1:04:42
  and I need to be the best father in the world.
• 1:04:45
  And so I want to, I want to have a three star restaurant that
• 1:04:49
  like you're the, the, the dogs are running around the yard.
• 1:04:52
  The, the cat is running through the thing.
• 1:04:54
  My I'm, I'm expoing with my daughter in my arms because this
• 1:04:59
  is going to be a bed and breakfast and it's going to, we
• 1:05:02
  won't, we, we technically live, you know, a 3 minute drive, 5
• 1:05:05
  minute drive, but you're going to feel like we live on site.
• 1:05:09
  Yeah, you know, by the front door I'm going to have, you
• 1:05:12
  know, I'm going to have all of my chefs put their boots by the
• 1:05:14
  front door and then have their, you know, clogs in the kitchen
• 1:05:18
  type of type of situations. Like you're going to come in and
• 1:05:20
  like, oh, you're, I'm in a 250 year old house.
• 1:05:23
  That's that's I mean, that sounds amazing.
• 1:05:26
  And that's going to be that's our masterpiece, That's our
• 1:05:30
  piece to resistance. That's, you know, we, we got
• 1:05:34
  invited to cook during the World's fifty best ceremony in
• 1:05:38
  Vegas last year and it was an incredible honor to be there.
• 1:05:42
  And I met so many people and, you know, cooked for so many
• 1:05:46
  amazing chefs. You know, Vergilio from Central
• 1:05:49
  comes in and goes, chef, this is amazing.
• 1:05:53
  You know, I love, love the sushi.
• 1:05:54
  You should come down and do a guest chef at Central.
• 1:05:57
  You know, Chef Romito comes in right after being the third.
• 1:06:00
  I think it was #3 best restaurant in the world.
• 1:06:02
  And they got number one this year.
• 1:06:05
  He comes in, you know, for for sushi chef is amazing.
• 1:06:08
  Come do a pop up at my dough and all these types of things.
• 1:06:11
  And then but then I'm like, I don't possess a restaurant
• 1:06:14
  that's worthy of the world 50. I don't pasta bar is arguably 2
• 1:06:20
  stars not world 50 and and sushi for sure is A1 star solid but
• 1:06:28
  not anywhere near. But we've had this property now
• 1:06:31
  since 2022 and we just broke ground.
• 1:06:33
  Like we're actually like it sucks because the the actual 150
• 1:06:37
  year old log cabin the foundation was shot.
• 1:06:42
  So as we started the remodel they were like we got a demo.
• 1:06:45
  So what I had to do is pay extra and have them instead of demo.
• 1:06:48
  They disassembled tree by tree and now what we're going to do
• 1:06:53
  is we're going to build a brand new structure, but take the
• 1:06:57
  original like, you know, they're like 12 by 8 inch logs, split
• 1:07:01
  them and clad the entire thing. So it's still the spirit will
• 1:07:06
  still be encased in the same wood.
• 1:07:09
  I mean, it sounds incredible. Congratulations.
• 1:07:11
  When? When are you thinking live?
• 1:07:14
  Assuming all goes well because I know how quickly you open
• 1:07:17
  restaurants. Well, this is the one.
• 1:07:19
  I don't spend a lot of money opening restaurants and I don't
• 1:07:21
  spend a lot of time opening restaurants.
• 1:07:23
  This one I'm spending time and money and this one I'm actually
• 1:07:29
  have some investors involved with because I to do this right,
• 1:07:33
  it's going to cost a few $1,000,000, but I'm hoping to
• 1:07:39
  have this done open by by late spring, early summer.
• 1:07:43
  The thing is, once we're done, we're built.
• 1:07:46
  I'm going to get myself 8 months.
• 1:07:48
  I'm going to hire on my I'm not hiring ACDC for this concept.
• 1:07:52
  I'm going to be the CDC. Margaret will be the pastry
• 1:07:54
  chef. I'm going to hire a sous chef or
• 1:07:57
  a head chef, kind of, you know, but I'm going to.
• 1:08:02
  So about 6 to 8 months before we open, I'll start.
• 1:08:05
  I'll bring on my chef, I'll bring on my GM and I'm I'm
• 1:08:09
  hiring a anyone out there wants this job.
• 1:08:11
  Hit me up. I'm looking I'm looking for a
• 1:08:13
  director of culinary agriculture.
• 1:08:16
  Oh, there you go. I want someone who like was a
• 1:08:19
  chef, but also went has a degree in horticulture and is aged out
• 1:08:23
  of the kitchen. And you're that job is like
• 1:08:26
  planning the next season of like the garden and organizing the
• 1:08:31
  hunts and organizing the fishing trips and then harvesting and,
• 1:08:37
  you know, preserving charcuterie, cheese program, you
• 1:08:42
  know, all of those types of things.
• 1:08:44
  And so in order for us to be a restaurant like this, I need a
• 1:08:47
  minimum of eight months for my charcuterie and cheese program
• 1:08:50
  prior to opening the doors because I don't want to be the
• 1:08:53
  restaurants. Like we do all this cool stuff.
• 1:08:54
  We'll do it. You'll see it next year if you
• 1:08:56
  come back, you know, so we need to have the restaurant built and
• 1:08:59
  a small team to like we have to build our larder, which is going
• 1:09:03
  to take us, you know, 8 months. Well, chef, normally when I
• 1:09:06
  start wrapping up the show, I like to get some nitty gritty
• 1:09:09
  chef advice for the listeners and also pick your brain.
• 1:09:12
  Let's talk about your your work in the past and your you have
• 1:09:16
  your finishing station. What's the salt?
• 1:09:18
  What's the salt? Salt for finishing.
• 1:09:21
  For finishing Bali. Bali, yeah.
• 1:09:24
  So yeah, it's big tree farms. Shout out Big tree farms out of
• 1:09:29
  Bali. It's the best salt in the world.
• 1:09:30
  It just Tim, I've not tried every salt in the world, but it
• 1:09:34
  shits on every salt I've ever tried, OK.
• 1:09:36
  And is it flaky? Like, no, no, it's it, it's a
• 1:09:41
  rock salt. My wife and I being chefs, every
• 1:09:46
  opportunity we travel, we've traveled the world quite
• 1:09:48
  extensively and every opportunity we have where we're
• 1:09:51
  in a city where there or even work near a city that has like a
• 1:09:55
  salt mine, we go, you know, we've been to the salt mines and
• 1:09:59
  Maras and, and in Peru, we've been to the, you know, all all
• 1:10:04
  over. And we actually got married in
• 1:10:06
  Bali and we found this salt and I put in my mouth, I was like,
• 1:10:11
  holy shit. It's the only thing I will use.
• 1:10:15
  And so when I'm looking for finishing salt, there are two
• 1:10:18
  characteristics I'm looking for the salinity level.
• 1:10:21
  I want it dialed all the way down.
• 1:10:23
  I don't want salty salt. And two, the the texture, this
• 1:10:30
  is almost effervescent. It almost crunches like a pop
• 1:10:32
  rock. So it adds this incredible like
• 1:10:36
  like Micro Crouton, you know, like perfectly fried.
• 1:10:41
  Where? Where do you?
• 1:10:41
  Get it? I've never, I've never tried it.
• 1:10:44
  So for many, many years, I would send somebody once a year to
• 1:10:48
  Bali and they would Dan Foot actually would do it a lot.
• 1:10:52
  He's now, I mean, he's been with me for well over a decade.
• 1:10:55
  But go, go, go say what's up to Dan over at Sushi by Scratch on
• 1:10:59
  on 6th and Brazos Downtown Austin.
• 1:11:01
  He's over there, but he sent him out there and he'd come back
• 1:11:05
  with 100 lbs. I'll be honest, I don't know
• 1:11:10
  what purveyor we order it from now.
• 1:11:12
  Got it, But I know that. We're Someone will find it.
• 1:11:15
  They'll hit us up in the comments.
• 1:11:16
  Yeah, I, I I can find out and let you know, but I haven't done
• 1:11:19
  any ordering. Is it your all-purpose work
• 1:11:21
  salt, or is it only your finishing?
• 1:11:22
  Only for finishing. What's your all?
• 1:11:23
  Purpose. Diamond Crystal.
• 1:11:24
  Diamond crystal. Yeah.
• 1:11:25
  I, I, I, I, I won't. I don't like Morton's.
• 1:11:29
  No one likes more than chef. No, I'm just.
• 1:11:31
  Kidding. They make you.
• 1:11:31
  They make you use it on Top Chef.
• 1:11:32
  And I was like, this isn't this this?
• 1:11:35
  It changes the flavor of everything.
• 1:11:37
  Why can't we use the salt that actually is good?
• 1:11:39
  Right. And you have to learn how to re
• 1:11:41
  season with more, yeah. Yeah, I, I worked in a
• 1:11:42
  restaurant called Hatfields. It was my first, it was my first
• 1:11:46
  sous chef job in a one star. It was my second sous chef job,
• 1:11:48
  but first in a one star. And we used baleen.
• 1:11:51
  Yeah. So I, I know how to use, Yeah, I
• 1:11:53
  know how to use baleen. And the reason, one of the
• 1:11:55
  reasons we use baleen. And I love this idea.
• 1:11:57
  We left them in the canister because when you're when you're,
• 1:12:01
  when you're seasoning, your fingers are always a little bit
• 1:12:03
  wet and you can't really control.
• 1:12:05
  So you're, and the salt can get clumped.
• 1:12:08
  So in in bailing you, you always have a perfect.
• 1:12:13
  What's your what's your finishing?
• 1:12:14
  Go to ACID General. Acid.
• 1:12:16
  Yeah. Lemon.
• 1:12:17
  Lemons. Always.
• 1:12:18
  Lemon. Lemon.
• 1:12:19
  Yeah. And how seasoning at scratch
• 1:12:21
  restaurants is olive oil lemons. You see salt?
• 1:12:23
  Yeah, there you go. Specific olive oil.
• 1:12:27
  I really like Texas olive oil company it's good huh I really
• 1:12:31
  really like it and at the new restaurant I will be I'm I'm I'm
• 1:12:37
  discussing with them right now I'll definitely be using them
• 1:12:41
  yeah but I want to be doing a table side fresh olive oil press
• 1:12:46
  0 that. 'D be cool.
• 1:12:47
  Yeah. And we're going to see how we
• 1:12:51
  can make that worst case scenario.
• 1:12:53
  I mean, you know, I say we're only going to serve what we grow
• 1:12:55
  and hunt. We're not only going to serve
• 1:12:57
  what we grow and hunt. I mean, the, the, The thing is
• 1:13:00
  like if you get a carrot on the plate, that carrot came from our
• 1:13:04
  garden. But if it's done with a sauce of
• 1:13:07
  like 400 lbs of onions cooked down to a cup, that's not coming
• 1:13:11
  from our garden, that's coming from the onion guy that's a
• 1:13:13
  quarter mile down the road, right?
• 1:13:15
  So that's kind of the, you know, but like, but like vinegars,
• 1:13:19
  we'll be making, you know, all those types of things.
• 1:13:21
  But like the olive oil, if I can't press it myself for
• 1:13:24
  whatever reason, I will be getting it from them.
• 1:13:27
  Because again, I, I feel like the idea and it's kind of like,
• 1:13:32
  you know, we were talking about earlier about like being
• 1:13:34
  creative and going, you know, pushing food forward.
• 1:13:37
  But there's this idea of like, I think we've pushed really far
• 1:13:41
  forward. Yeah.
• 1:13:41
  It's time to go back a little bit.
• 1:13:43
  Yeah, it's time to go like and I've been, you know, scratch bar
• 1:13:45
  was a 25 course tasting menu only restaurant, no servers and
• 1:13:52
  16 foot fireplace. No ovens, no, no, no stoves, no
• 1:13:57
  nothing. Just a fireplace.
• 1:13:59
  And that opened in 2013, 2013 yeah, we, we switched.
• 1:14:04
  We, we moved in 2015. That's when we came up the
• 1:14:06
  fireplace restaurant. And I mean, that that's just my
• 1:14:10
  favorite way to cook is, is with fire.
• 1:14:13
  And I feel like American cuisine still kind of lacks identity.
• 1:14:19
  Yeah. I mean, the French Laundry still
• 1:14:22
  is the IT still is. It still holds the torch for
• 1:14:26
  what is fine dining in America. No one's really taken that, that
• 1:14:30
  I that I, you know, I mean, there's been restaurants who
• 1:14:33
  definitely compete at that level.
• 1:14:35
  You could argue there's restaurants that are better, but
• 1:14:37
  there aren't. You know, like take a linear for
• 1:14:39
  example, that hasn't come become the standard for American
• 1:14:42
  cuisine. It's the fucking best food you
• 1:14:45
  can get in America, but it hasn't become the standard for
• 1:14:47
  American cuisine. And so I've always found it
• 1:14:49
  interesting that the standard for American cuisine is a French
• 1:14:51
  restaurant. And there's nothing more
• 1:14:54
  American than hunting in the plains of Texas and cooking it
• 1:15:00
  in a fireplace in 150 year old log cabin and milking your own
• 1:15:05
  cows. And so I'm not trying to reset
• 1:15:10
  the standard, but I've done all the things like I, I, I now I
• 1:15:14
  personally want to go back. If you had, well, let me ask you
• 1:15:19
  this one last question on the station and then I want to ask
• 1:15:22
  you the last question. Green tape or blue tape?
• 1:15:26
  Or does it not? I don't care.
• 1:15:27
  You don't care. Pick one.
• 1:15:28
  Yeah, pick one. Stick to it.
• 1:15:29
  But I don't care. You don't care.
• 1:15:30
  OK, so you're. Not scissors, yes.
• 1:15:31
  Scissors, yes, Not tape cutters. It could be scissors.
• 1:15:37
  It could. If you have the the the thing,
• 1:15:39
  it has to be clean. Clean.
• 1:15:41
  Yeah. And if it's a perforated clean,
• 1:15:42
  that's fine too. Yeah, it can't be.
• 1:15:45
  Right, right, right. It's not hand ripped.
• 1:15:48
  So we all, we always have like the tape dispensers with the
• 1:15:53
  the, you know. Yeah, I like those.
• 1:15:54
  Yeah, yeah. If you had your Mount Rushmore 4
• 1:15:57
  chefs that you think were the biggest influence for you, for
• 1:15:59
  me, yeah. Who would they be?
• 1:16:07
  Influenced my style of cuisine, influenced my career and being a
• 1:16:11
  restaurateur. However you want to, however you
• 1:16:13
  want to whoever you want to give their flowers.
• 1:16:17
  Michael Summer, Rusty's on it. Quinn Hatfield is on it.
• 1:16:30
  I kind of feel like David Chang is on it.
• 1:16:33
  Never worked for him. Never even eat.
• 1:16:37
  I mean, I mean, like, you know, noodle bar and a couple a couple
• 1:16:40
  things, but I watched his career and I was like, that's he kind
• 1:16:47
  of had this mentality of like, I don't kind of give a fuck what
• 1:16:50
  you think. I'm just going to kind of do
• 1:16:51
  what I want. And I definitely have been
• 1:16:54
  guilty of that. Just doing what I believed in.
• 1:16:57
  So he, you know, Chef Michael's on that because Providence is my
• 1:17:02
  favorite restaurant. And that was the first
• 1:17:04
  restaurant that like was like holy SH, like I went there and I
• 1:17:07
  was like, he came like I was like 21 and like he came out to
• 1:17:11
  the table because he heard that I was a cook because my mom told
• 1:17:13
  him, told the server. And I was like, can I, can I
• 1:17:19
  sweep the floors? Like just to be in your kitchen,
• 1:17:21
  you know, Quinn Hatfield is from Hatfield's no longer there.
• 1:17:26
  But that was the first. That's the restaurant that I
• 1:17:29
  credit learning how to cook. I mean, it was my second sous
• 1:17:33
  chef job and clearly I knew how to cook.
• 1:17:34
  But like this was like the restaurant that there was no
• 1:17:38
  tongs allowed in the restaurant. You had one towel and you had a
• 1:17:41
  Coon spoon. That's it.
• 1:17:45
  There was no oil on the line. You would unwrap 20 lbs of
• 1:17:49
  butter. Your butter could not break and
• 1:17:53
  your pan frying to order, your braising to order in butter and
• 1:17:58
  it cannot break. Everything's A7 pan pick.
• 1:18:04
  That's where I and we're doing tasting menus for 200 people.
• 1:18:08
  You know, that's it's it's now Meteora, same restaurant that
• 1:18:12
  that that Jordan has has made into Meteora in in Hollywood.
• 1:18:16
  So those those two from like the cooking standpoint.
• 1:18:19
  We have David Chang from the restauranteur standpoint.
• 1:18:24
  Also Quinn Hatfield, his wife famously was his pastry chef,
• 1:18:27
  right, right. And his kids would, you know,
• 1:18:29
  see him coming around the restaurants like that was that's
• 1:18:32
  inspiring for me with my family. You know #4 I think #4 goes to
• 1:18:42
  Thomas Keller. Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  Yeah, I think #4 goes to Thomas Keller because he's just such a
• 1:18:49
  fucking class act. Yeah.
• 1:18:51
  I got the opportunity when I was in culinary school.
• 1:18:55
  This is actually the story leads to why I dropped out of culinary
• 1:18:57
  school. Got the opportunity in culinary
• 1:18:59
  school to go to the French Laundry and sit in the private
• 1:19:02
  dining room for one of my While I was in culinary school I was
• 1:19:05
  also a cook at 2 restaurants. I was working at Providence for
• 1:19:09
  free and then I was working at the Viceroy and then West Side
• 1:19:13
  Tavern while I was in culinary school.
• 1:19:15
  So seven days a week basically morning to night, didn't sleep.
• 1:19:18
  I said I drive to culinary school, sleep in my car, go to
• 1:19:20
  school, drive to Santa Monica to the restaurant, sleep in my car,
• 1:19:25
  go to work, drive to culinary school, sleep in my car.
• 1:19:27
  That's and then on my 2 days off work at Providence.
• 1:19:31
  But fuck I just lost where was I going?
• 1:19:36
  Thomas Keller, Thomas Keller, I get invited by one of my chefs
• 1:19:40
  for his birthday to go to the French Laundry and, and, and
• 1:19:45
  have a lunch there in the private dining room with all of
• 1:19:47
  the, like all of my chef friends and cooks, you know, and there's
• 1:19:51
  like kind of us and I go to my chef instructor at culinary
• 1:19:54
  school and that we were in an egg class, a breakfast class.
• 1:19:57
  And that week we were going to do eggs.
• 1:19:58
  And they had a very strict rule. If you miss two days, you fail.
• 1:20:01
  And I went and said, Hey, I have this opportunity.
• 1:20:03
  I'm going to need to miss 2 days.
• 1:20:05
  And they said, if you do, you'll fail.
• 1:20:07
  And I said, listen, I, we're doing eggs.
• 1:20:10
  I was a line cook at BLD. Which was breakfast, lunch and
• 1:20:14
  dinner was what it stood for. It was Neil Frazier's restaurant
• 1:20:17
  in in Los Angeles. 400 cover brunches. 8 pans of eggs going
• 1:20:22
  at a time. I get it.
• 1:20:24
  I know on Friday we're learning how to boil an egg.
• 1:20:27
  But like, dude, come on. And they're like, I'm sorry.
• 1:20:29
  Rules are rules. I'm like, I should get extra
• 1:20:31
  credit. Yeah.
• 1:20:32
  For going to the French Laundry. Sorry, Rules are rules.
• 1:20:34
  Fuck you. I quit school.
• 1:20:36
  So I go to anyway to go incredible dinner, right, See
• 1:20:40
  the garden, the whole deal. The next day we're having brunch
• 1:20:45
  at Bouchon and we see Thomas Keller is sitting at a table
• 1:20:51
  inside of Bouchon. We're on the patio and our
• 1:20:55
  table, you know, we, we just basically we want to send our
• 1:20:59
  regards to to chef. Would you?
• 1:21:02
  We'd like whatever their drink. We'd love to buy a bottle of
• 1:21:05
  whatever they're drinking. Doesn't matter.
• 1:21:07
  Like we want to send a bottle. We had an amazing dinner last
• 1:21:10
  night at French Laundry. We're all huge fans, you know,
• 1:21:14
  so he doesn't come over nothing. We finish our, our, our, our,
• 1:21:19
  our lunch and it's like taking kind of forever to get our check
• 1:21:23
  and like eventually we have to be like, Hey, can we get the,
• 1:21:26
  you know, we spend 45 minutes since we were done eating right?
• 1:21:31
  And chef comes out, says hello to us, you know, takes pictures
• 1:21:37
  with us, shakes our hands, blah, blah.
• 1:21:40
  He leaves. Soon as he leaves, they come and
• 1:21:42
  drop the check and the check says thank you for the wine.
• 1:21:46
  And that's the, that's the entire check.
• 1:21:49
  And he's just, he's, he's been a, he's been a beacon for like
• 1:21:56
  just hospitality in general. And I had the honor to cook for
• 1:22:01
  him recently. He came in and, and sat in front
• 1:22:04
  of me when we did sushi. And it was a night.
• 1:22:08
  Of course, I'm of course I'm going to be there that night
• 1:22:10
  when he's coming in, right, right.
• 1:22:12
  I think I flew to LA to be there that night and sits in front of
• 1:22:18
  me, you know, after dinner is done, we have one more seating,
• 1:22:23
  but he's like, you want to grab a beer?
• 1:22:24
  And I'm like, yes, I'm like, guys, somebody step in.
• 1:22:27
  I'm I'm going to grab a beer with Thomas Keller.
• 1:22:29
  We sit there for a couple couple hours, I think and just just
• 1:22:32
  talk. And how cool is that?
• 1:22:34
  And I'm sure he was Thomas, not Thomas Keller when you sat down
• 1:22:38
  with him. He was chef.
• 1:22:39
  I never called him by his. Name No.
• 1:22:41
  No. But you know what I mean.
• 1:22:42
  Like you. You got to see him outside of.
• 1:22:44
  He's having a beer. Yeah.
• 1:22:46
  We sit down. He's been.
• 1:22:47
  We were drinking beers together. So.
• 1:22:49
  So this was only we're in. We were in the Beverly Hills,
• 1:22:52
  the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons.
• 1:22:54
  We this was a pop up that lasted like 9 months.
• 1:22:57
  Now we're in the SLS hotel, but we were in the Beverly Wilshire.
• 1:23:02
  And so we're in a penthouse on the on the top floor used to be
• 1:23:05
  Elvis's apartment. And so one of the bedrooms is
• 1:23:08
  the is the restaurant. And then, like, the living room
• 1:23:11
  is where we were hanging out just, you know, having beers.
• 1:23:13
  And it just like how much time he took with me and how
• 1:23:20
  complimentary he was and how just just his overall approach
• 1:23:24
  to me as a young chef. Yeah.
• 1:23:25
  Total gentleman. Just just total mentor vibe.
• 1:23:30
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:23:31
  And it's crazy because next summer when we open the
• 1:23:35
  restaurant, I will be the same age that he was when he when he
• 1:23:38
  took over the French Laundry. Wow, sorry about.
• 1:23:42
  That that's it's OK. Well, chef, where can people
• 1:23:45
  find you? But but tell them about your
• 1:23:47
  podcast too. So where can they?
• 1:23:50
  They can listen to it anywhere. It's great, by the way.
• 1:23:51
  Yeah, so we've got the Not a Damn Chance podcast on YMH.
• 1:23:57
  It's awesome. It's not a it's not a comedy
• 1:23:59
  podcast, even though you would think it would be because it's
• 1:24:01
  on YMH. It's not a cooking podcast, even
• 1:24:03
  though you would think because it's me.
• 1:24:05
  It's a mindset podcast. And the idea is so we have an
• 1:24:10
  ADC burger stands for Not a Damn chance burger and Not a Damn
• 1:24:13
  Chance truly is a mindset. It was kind of Neen Williams is
• 1:24:16
  like battle cry. And the idea is like, there's
• 1:24:20
  not a damn chance. I'm giving up.
• 1:24:23
  And so every Tuesday new episode comes out and I think we're on
• 1:24:27
  episode 9 now or something like that. 10 and it'll be every
• 1:24:31
  Tuesday. And we sit down with someone
• 1:24:33
  who's at the absolute top of their field, like someone that
• 1:24:36
  you've probably heard of with esoteric people too, but they're
• 1:24:40
  at the top of their, you know, niche field.
• 1:24:43
  And we don't talk to them about what are your routine habits to
• 1:24:48
  like, find success? Like, oh, I get up early and I
• 1:24:51
  do the cold plunge. And many of them do.
• 1:24:53
  But that's not what we're talking about.
• 1:24:54
  What we're talking about is the mindset it took to overcome
• 1:24:58
  adversity along the way. What are the things that you
• 1:25:01
  went through that made you want to give up?
• 1:25:02
  What are the things that your wife told you?
• 1:25:04
  Hey, maybe you should just maybe it's not working.
• 1:25:07
  Maybe you do need to go back to that job.
• 1:25:09
  What are the times that, you know, you found out that your
• 1:25:12
  partner was embezzling or you were getting sued or you're
• 1:25:14
  about to file for bankruptcy or you're going to have to close
• 1:25:17
  your restaurant or, you know, how did you wipe the tears away
• 1:25:22
  from your eyes while you were in the shower and look in the
• 1:25:25
  mirror and say, fuck you world? There's not a damn chance I'm
• 1:25:28
  giving up. Because the one thing that we
• 1:25:30
  have found that is consistent with everyone who has found
• 1:25:33
  success, not overnight success that that dwindles, but like
• 1:25:37
  proper success is they have been through those times where they
• 1:25:40
  didn't give up. And that's really what it takes.
• 1:25:46
  And I think it's really fun because I get to learn a lot and
• 1:25:49
  he gets to learn a lot. But people at home get to see
• 1:25:53
  these are just regular people who never stopped trying and
• 1:25:57
  didn't take no for an answer. So many people have great ideas,
• 1:26:01
  great execution, but they run into a brick wall and they turn
• 1:26:06
  around. You just got to you have to have
• 1:26:09
  the mindset that if I keep hitting this wall with my head,
• 1:26:14
  there's no way my fucking head's breaking.
• 1:26:15
  I'm breaking that fucking wall, and that is where people find
• 1:26:18
  success. So that's what the podcast is.
• 1:26:20
  Awesome brother. Well, thanks for having come
• 1:26:22
  back on anytime. This is fun.
• 1:26:24
  I feel like we barely even scratched the surface of
• 1:26:26
  anything. We did.
• 1:26:27
  And yeah, thanks for coming on and we'll definitely do it
• 1:26:29
  again. Hell yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:26:31
  Yeah, thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed the
• 1:26:32
  show. You know what to do and make
• 1:26:34
  sure you leave five stars if you're listening on Spotify or
• 1:26:36
  anywhere really. If you're watching on YouTube,
• 1:26:38
  hit the like and subscribe button.
• 1:26:39
  I'd completely revamped the Chefs PSA store shop Chefs
• 1:26:43
  psa.com. My team added a ton of new
• 1:26:46
  items. I advise you to go check it out.
• 1:26:48
  Just peruse, look around, maybe you see something nice that you
• 1:26:51
  like. Keep supporting the show.
• 1:26:53
  Go to chefspsa.com. You get books, obviously the
• 1:26:56
  merch, early access to episodes on sub stack and Spotify for
• 1:26:59
  premium members. We'll see you next week.
• 1:27:02
  Hit the porno music. No small drink in the kitchen.
• 1:27:05
  Mix it. Drop the chef Dallas.
• 1:27:07
  No fiction. Stirring up the beats.
• 1:27:09
  Heat enough the session. Listen.
• 1:27:10
  Close classes in session.