Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Adrienne Cheatham: Le Bernardin Standards, Top Chef Reality & The Private Chef Pivot (Ep. 175)

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Adrienne Cheatham: Le Bernardin Standards, Top Chef Reality & The Private Chef Pivot (Ep. 175) · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, This is Chef's PSA. I'm your host Andre Natera.
• 0:03
  Today I'm joined by Adrian Cheatham.
• 0:04
  She was the former executive sous chef at the three Michelin
• 0:07
  star La Bernadine, executive chef at Red Rooster under Mark
• 0:10
  the Samuelson, and a finalist on season 15 of Top Chef.
• 0:13
  We'll dive into her journey through New York's top kitchens,
• 0:16
  her insights on tasting and presentation, and how she
• 0:19
  navigated the competitive world of culinary television.
• 0:22
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  When? When did you go to La Bernadine?
• 1:35
  I went I started there on internship in 2006 or 7.
• 1:40
  And you worked with my friend Matthew Shafe.
• 1:42
  Yes, Maddie Shafe. Yeah, he was a sous chef when I
• 1:45
  started. So he was my I hired him as
• 1:47
  ACDC, and he was great. He's one of the most interesting
• 1:50
  people that I know, highly intelligent, highly articulate,
• 1:54
  and I and I'm telling his story, but it's not his show today.
• 1:57
  But I want to say he was a school teacher that later on
• 2:01
  transitioned into becoming a chef.
• 2:02
  I never knew. That yeah.
• 2:03
  So he was a he was a he was a school teacher or some sort of
• 2:05
  teacher. And then he went, he decided,
• 2:09
  oh, I'm going to I'm going to become a chef.
• 2:10
  And he worked under some great chefs in New York, had his own
• 2:13
  place and I think Brooklyn. Who do you work under?
• 2:16
  Bill Talapan, Eric Repair. Yeah, Samuelson.
• 2:20
  And he had great stories about La Bernadine and he would
• 2:24
  obviously probably tell me stories that I'm not allowed to
• 2:26
  share on the podcast, but he had some great stories and he was
• 2:29
  the sous chef there. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:31
  He was senior Sou when I started and he was very cerebral.
• 2:35
  He was quiet other than like calling out orders and giving
• 2:40
  you direction one-on-one. He wasn't one of the, like,
• 2:42
  loud, brash sous chefs just always yelling.
• 2:46
  He wasn't like this huge character, but he had a huge
• 2:49
  presence and it was very calming.
• 2:52
  But it was also like you had to be on it because you knew that
• 2:54
  he was like watching. And he was really fucking tall
• 2:57
  so he could see over onto your station.
• 3:00
  You're like, how did he even see me over here?
• 3:02
  Yeah, he was great. And, and The funny thing is he
• 3:04
  would, he would have like crazy little sayings that I don't know
• 3:07
  if they're true from the Bernadin, but he would, you
• 3:10
  know, he would impart that knowledge into some of the cooks
• 3:12
  that we worked with. And so you would say, you know,
• 3:14
  when you're cutting fish, it has to be medium sharp.
• 3:16
  Can't be too sharp. It can't be too sharp.
• 3:18
  That's what I'd say, yeah. So especially when you're
• 3:20
  butchering, like when you're breaking down certain types of
• 3:22
  fish and you're going along the backbone and you know, you want
• 3:26
  to kind of get that xylophone action along the bones.
• 3:29
  And if your knife is too sharp, you're slicing into the bones
• 3:33
  and you're going to get fragments of bone.
• 3:34
  Not fragments like they chip off, but clean slices that you
• 3:38
  don't even feel the resistance because your knife is sharpened
• 3:41
  the way it's supposed to be. But then when you take that
• 3:44
  filet off, you've got long skinny shards of bone that might
• 3:48
  look like sinu, but they're actually shavings of bone.
• 3:52
  So that is something that you have to learn, that you keep a
• 3:55
  knife that's like just sharp enough, but not so sharp that
• 4:00
  you can't feel it passing through bones.
• 4:02
  So when you started a la Bernadine?
• 4:03
  So this is your first Michelin 3 star kitchen, Yes?
• 4:07
  Yeah. Oh my God, yeah.
• 4:08
  What was that like? Oh, it was.
• 4:09
  The culture shock. The culture shock was that it
• 4:13
  was very quiet. I had come from restaurants that
• 4:17
  you're not necessarily listening to music, but there's some small
• 4:20
  talk. I had worked in production for
• 4:23
  pastry at a large hotel in the Gulf of Mexico.
• 4:26
  People are talking, people are chatting.
• 4:28
  You know, it's a production kitchen.
• 4:30
  So it's not like you're under the pressure of service and
• 4:33
  having to bring things to the past.
• 4:34
  This is more executing recipes like large batch 1 batch of Key
• 4:39
  Lime pies, for instance, made 200.
• 4:41
  So it's massive production. There's a lot of conversation
• 4:45
  and camaraderie, but it wasn't even when I got on the line at a
• 4:49
  restaurant in Orlando, which was also a fish focus restaurant,
• 4:53
  funny enough, there was like a lot of bullshitting on the line,
• 4:57
  like a lot of talking during service and yelling at people.
• 5:00
  And I got to La Bernadine. It was so quiet.
• 5:03
  Did you ever like, yell and say something stupid?
• 5:05
  Like, did you ever, when did you realize like, oh, this isn't
• 5:08
  that place? I mean, I kind of learned very
• 5:11
  quickly because also I came in on internship so I was already
• 5:14
  like, I need to not fuck this up or else, you know, I've worked
• 5:18
  in restaurants before, but now I'm officially in culinary
• 5:21
  school and I don't, I went through undergrad and I
• 5:24
  graduated successfully from undergrad.
• 5:25
  So how, how am I going to fuck it up once I get to culinary
• 5:28
  school by not finishing my internship?
• 5:30
  So you just have to read the room, which as soon as I got
• 5:34
  there, I just, I kind of just read the room.
• 5:36
  I saw that people are quiet, they're serious, they're
• 5:39
  observant, they listen more than they talk.
• 5:42
  And so I just like I just stayed quiet, observed and did what I
• 5:45
  had to do. So if you remember in
• 5:48
  Ratatouille, I don't remember, Linguine is getting the tour of
• 5:51
  the kitchen. Like, you know, keep your elbows
• 5:53
  tight. I don't remember what they said,
• 5:54
  but you know, he's he's getting like don't do this, don't do
• 5:57
  that. This is how we do it here.
• 5:59
  When you're getting that first tour of La Bernadin and and
• 6:03
  whether it happened or it didn't happen, what were some of the
• 6:05
  things that do this? Don't do this.
• 6:06
  Like here are the new rules of the game.
• 6:08
  The first thing that they tell you when you started La
• 6:10
  Bernadin, whether you're an intern or even starting on
• 6:13
  garbage, you cannot season anything for maybe a week, maybe
• 6:19
  2. Would you like nothing?
• 6:22
  Nothing. You can't season a piece of
• 6:24
  fish, you can't season the lettuce for the salad.
• 6:27
  You can season nothing. You literally have to watch
• 6:31
  people and there is like a stand here, especially when you're on
• 6:35
  internship, moving through the stations, they tell you where
• 6:39
  you can stand. That's out of the way because
• 6:41
  you don't want to slow down service.
• 6:43
  You don't want to get in people's way.
• 6:45
  And it's kind of like a you're welcome for letting you be here,
• 6:48
  so stay the fuck out of the way so you don't mess up our flow.
• 6:52
  Because these people have worked together for so long, they know
• 6:54
  how to move around each other. It's a weird.
• 6:57
  I call it kitchen karate. Yeah, it's like a ballet.
• 7:00
  They're black belts in kitchen karate.
• 7:01
  They know I. Know the the the width that I
• 7:04
  need the arc to get around this person.
• 7:06
  I know if I spin to my left I can clear fina, but I need to
• 7:10
  spin twice to get around gusto. You know, it's, it's a very
• 7:13
  different awareness that when you're starting in a kitchen,
• 7:17
  you don't know these people, you don't know their movements.
• 7:20
  So you just have to stay out of the way.
• 7:21
  And that was one of the first things was like stand here, here
• 7:24
  and here, observe, observe, observe.
• 7:27
  And then when you start on a station, do not touch.
• 7:30
  You can taste, but you cannot seize.
• 7:33
  Isn't it interesting? And I've worked with certain
• 7:35
  people in my career that, you know, for a long time.
• 7:38
  So after, after about a year when you work together, maybe
• 7:41
  they're a sous chef and you're the chef, or, you know, maybe
• 7:43
  you're both sous chefs, whatever.
• 7:44
  And you just learn how to work together like you, they, they
• 7:47
  hand you the deli container without the lid already, right?
• 7:50
  It's just this nice little cadence that you have with them.
• 7:53
  You need to wipe the plate and they're handing you a plate wipe
• 7:56
  before you know, and it's like, Oh, yes, thank you.
• 7:58
  And you just hand and then they have the tray ready.
• 8:00
  Here's your, you know, doctor scalpel.
• 8:02
  You know, it's just, it's beautiful.
• 8:04
  It's, I love working with chefs that know how to work.
• 8:08
  And it's, it's something that I don't think gets talked about a
• 8:12
  lot because a lot of people know how to cook, but a lot of people
• 8:14
  don't know how to work, right. It's a different skill.
• 8:17
  Knowing how to work at a high level is not the same as knowing
• 8:20
  how to cook at a high level. And it's, it's so different.
• 8:23
  So I had come from restaurants that were so casual.
• 8:26
  I had worked in a couple restaurants in Orlando.
• 8:29
  I had worked, my mom was in the industry.
• 8:31
  So I had worked, but it was like mostly just child labor at the
• 8:35
  restaurant she managed in Chicago.
• 8:38
  So I had never worked at a level of precision this high.
• 8:42
  And when I got to garbage and I was finally on the station where
• 8:48
  I could season, and I'm responsible for all of the
• 8:51
  garnish, for all the tartars, all the sashimis, all the
• 8:54
  crudos, everything. I'm not making the sauces on
• 8:57
  garbage, but I'm responsible for every bit of garnish.
• 9:00
  The brunoirs for this, the julienne for this, the
• 9:03
  chiffonade of this herb, everything.
• 9:05
  So I knocked it out. I'm like, man, I am killing it.
• 9:09
  I was like day three on the garnish.
• 9:12
  My Brunoirs, my Julianne, all those were good.
• 9:15
  But my herbs, I thought they were good.
• 9:18
  And then I was so proud of myself.
• 9:20
  And we're rolling into service. It's 5:00, we're putting up the
• 9:23
  tastings for the chef to try everything.
• 9:25
  So is this every day at 5:00? O'clock every day, every day.
• 9:28
  4:45 You want to have them up five at the very latest because
• 9:32
  5 is when guests are starting to sit, so you're not going to get
• 9:34
  orders. So at 4:45, what's the lineup?
• 9:37
  What's the tasting that chef is? And OK, a couple of questions.
• 9:40
  What's the lineup? I'm assuming sauces and certain
• 9:42
  things. Everything.
• 9:44
  Everything from every stage. Who's the taster?
• 9:47
  So there is first of all, everything from every station
• 9:51
  has to be up. If your station has a tartar on
• 9:54
  it, you have to mix a portion of the tartar, maybe not a full
• 9:57
  portion, but like 1/2 or third size portion.
• 10:01
  So you have to put up five tartars.
• 10:03
  If you're on garbage, every, every single dish has to be up
• 10:08
  and ready for tasting by 5:00 at the latest.
• 10:11
  If you're saucier, all of your sauces are going to be tasted.
• 10:14
  You don't have to put them up because they're already in the
• 10:17
  beans and containers for service.
• 10:19
  But chef Repair, at the time, it was Chef Chris, Chris Muller who
• 10:24
  ran La Bernadine for like 2830 years.
• 10:26
  Eric Justelle, who has now, he's now in charge of the kitchen at
• 10:30
  La Bernadine and he's been there for like 32 years.
• 10:33
  There's Eric Repair and then there's Eric Justelle and they
• 10:37
  work together at Robichon back in the day in Paris.
• 10:40
  So they knew each other before. Cadence right between the two of
• 10:45
  them. Right.
• 10:45
  Yeah. And Chris Mueller had started
• 10:47
  under Gilbert Lacos, so these three men had worked together
• 10:51
  for years. So the three of them are tasting
• 10:53
  everything on every station every day at the start of lunch,
• 10:58
  at the start of dinner. Also, the sous chefs, so senior
• 11:01
  to junior sous chefs, you've already built up that palette
• 11:05
  from tasting because you have to work every station at La
• 11:08
  Bernadine. You don't get hired to be a sous
• 11:10
  chef or a saute cook or a saucier or even chef de partie.
• 11:14
  You start on garbage, no matter your level of experience, when
• 11:18
  you start at La Bernadine. And when I got there, that was
• 11:22
  the biggest learning curve because I thought I was doing
• 11:25
  well in terms of speed, but my precision was off.
• 11:29
  So there was this one service where we're set up and we're
• 11:32
  getting ready to put up our tastings.
• 11:34
  And the sous chef at the time, Jen Carroll, came through, and
• 11:37
  she was the only other woman in the kitchen for some of my times
• 11:42
  there. We had a couple of other cooks
• 11:44
  who were women on the AM or PM shift, but she was there
• 11:47
  throughout my entire time. Actually, not my entire time.
• 11:51
  But Jen was the only woman sous ship that I ever saw at the
• 11:54
  Bernadette, and she would tear me up because it's a reflection
• 12:00
  of her also, you know, so she came in to check garbage and she
• 12:04
  was like, these herbs look like fucking lawn clippings.
• 12:08
  And she like took all the containers of the herbs out of
• 12:11
  the bar trays and said you have to redo every single one.
• 12:15
  But at this point, tickets are starting to come in.
• 12:17
  So I'm like chiffonading cilantro to order.
• 12:20
  It was a wild night. I had a chef that would do very
• 12:23
  similar. He would send us all on break
• 12:25
  and that's what he would do, his tasting when we were like, OK,
• 12:28
  you guys go on, on break for the sake of the store because I
• 12:30
  don't remember what time we opened.
• 12:32
  Let's say it's 4:30, we go on break, service starts at 5.
• 12:36
  We come back, everyone's out there.
• 12:38
  Honestly, they were probably out there drinking vodka or smoking
• 12:41
  cigarettes, whatever we were doing, drinking the juice.
• 12:44
  And then when we'd come back, you'd just have Mesenplatz
• 12:47
  dumped out. It was like, and it would be.
• 12:50
  And we're not 8016 anything. That's exactly what you would
• 12:54
  say. Like it's it's dumped out, it's
• 12:56
  in the trash. If you want to know what you
• 12:57
  have to prep, it's in the trash. We're not 86 in anything.
• 13:01
  Oh wow, they would tell you one by one, like they would pick it
• 13:04
  out of the lineup. Like next time you mix the
• 13:06
  tartar, this needs more of this. But the sauces were difficult to
• 13:10
  recover from. So when I was saucier, if there
• 13:12
  was something that wasn't right, like I would have a six pan of
• 13:16
  sliced shallots, like all my aromatics, I would save like
• 13:19
  maybe a pint of backup just in case I needed to refresh or
• 13:23
  adjust something at that initial learning curve, because you
• 13:26
  would. That's something you do not want
• 13:28
  to get caught in the middle of is adjusting a sauce.
• 13:30
  A chiffonade you can do, but that, no.
• 13:34
  And well, I mean, going back to the tasting, I would imagine the
• 13:38
  palette that these gentlemen have or whoever's doing the
• 13:41
  tasting said the three gentlemen, right, that they have
• 13:43
  is just incredible. They could tell you to the gram
• 13:47
  it needs a little bit more of this, like a dash or.
• 13:50
  Well, that's the thing. There were no measurements.
• 13:52
  There's no measurements. It's strictly like using the
• 13:55
  force. It is the force must be with
• 13:58
  you, and that's something that they teach throughout your time.
• 14:00
  So it's like, what's the measurement for this recipe?
• 14:04
  Enough of this until it tastes like it should.
• 14:07
  So it teaches you to pay attention to your ingredients.
• 14:10
  When you're peeling shallots, you can tell if they have a
• 14:13
  little more sulfur or if they're a little more sweet.
• 14:16
  You get to know the ingredients by paying attention to them, not
• 14:20
  by relying on measurements. So I know that if I need to
• 14:22
  adjust this jalapeno vinaigrette, right?
• 14:25
  It's say during this time of year, the jalapenos have more
• 14:29
  capsaicin, so I can use the same measurements as I did a couple
• 14:32
  months ago. But the vinaigrette will be too
• 14:34
  spicy and it'll overtake the fish.
• 14:37
  So you have to know how to adjust it with maybe sneak in a
• 14:40
  pinch of sugar or a splash more of oil, or even open it up with
• 14:44
  a tiny bit of water you have. Or cut back on the acid because
• 14:47
  the acid will amplify the capsaicin.
• 14:49
  So you have to really know what every minor adjustment can do to
• 14:55
  the final product before you even touch it.
• 14:58
  So I want to say I'm paraphrasing.
• 15:00
  I think this is Elaine Ducas quote, where the the the chef
• 15:03
  doesn't necessarily have to be the best cook.
• 15:06
  He'd have to be the best taster or something like that.
• 15:08
  Yeah, I'm, I'm paraphrasing, but I think it is a bit of a lost
• 15:12
  art. Today I went to two restaurants,
• 15:15
  one right after the other. One was a very trendy new cool,
• 15:20
  getting all the write ups and you know, the local and all the
• 15:23
  local magazines. And I tasted the food and it was
• 15:25
  just flat, like everything was missing, needed, needed salt.
• 15:28
  And it was slightly undercooked. It was slightly, it was just, it
• 15:31
  was just missing the mark, right?
• 15:33
  Every single cook in there looked cool though, by the way.
• 15:36
  They all tattooed. They they all looked cool
• 15:39
  Mustache. Their aprons were very nice I
• 15:42
  must say, but everything just missed a little bit right?
• 15:46
  And I noticed no one was tasting food.
• 15:49
  Fast forward I went to another restaurant, established chef and
• 15:53
  again I'm not trying to call names out but it was an
• 15:55
  established chef. The food wasn't the most modern,
• 15:58
  but the chef has been around and I noticed every time anything
• 16:01
  would go to the past, taste it, send it back, or it was like
• 16:04
  they would bring the chef a bowl or they'd bring them a little
• 16:07
  spoon and nothing was getting sent out.
• 16:09
  And I saw multiple times the chef that was working the past
• 16:11
  send things back. Everything tasted excellent.
• 16:14
  There was no misses. Everything was cooked right.
• 16:16
  Everything was seasoned perfectly.
• 16:18
  There wasn't any. Oh, needs a little of this.
• 16:19
  It needs a little of that. And I think a lot of times,
• 16:22
  especially as we live in the Instagram world, especially
• 16:26
  young chefs, they want to make the most beautiful thing.
• 16:28
  They want to make the most trendy thing, and they forgot
• 16:29
  like, but does it taste good? Yeah.
• 16:32
  Yeah, at the end of the day, and I used to divorce those two
• 16:35
  things myself. So at La Berna Den we had
• 16:38
  compostable tasting spoons. There is nothing you're not
• 16:42
  tasting before it hits the pass, and there's nothing going to the
• 16:46
  dining room that the chef on the pass has not tasted themselves.
• 16:50
  You're sneaking a piece of tartar, you're peeling off a
• 16:52
  flake of the fish. You're tasting everything from
• 16:55
  the saute pan before entrement puts it on the plate.
• 16:59
  You're tasting the sauce when the saucier is heating it up in
• 17:01
  the small pot. Not everything is getting a
• 17:04
  level of attention. And sometimes when I would go
• 17:08
  out to eat as a younger cook, I would divorce taste from
• 17:12
  technique. I'm like, Oh my God, this is so
• 17:15
  cool. Look what they accomplished with
• 17:16
  this that is so different from this ingredient.
• 17:19
  They've morphed it into something so out there, so
• 17:23
  different, but I'm just, like, not paying attention.
• 17:26
  Like, But it didn't actually taste that good.
• 17:28
  So that was actually something that I had to relearn myself.
• 17:32
  When I start developing my own things, it's like, OK, yeah, So
• 17:36
  what if I did something cool? Is it fun to eat?
• 17:39
  Does it actually taste good? And I was so enthralled by like,
• 17:43
  technique when I was a younger cook, and I wanted to, like, try
• 17:46
  everything that people were doing that was so out there.
• 17:50
  But I realized the beauty of a place like La Bernardin is
• 17:54
  because it is honest, straightforward, making the
• 17:59
  ingredients shine. And that does so much for the
• 18:02
  guest eating a dish. Not all bubbles taste good.
• 18:08
  That's going to be my chef's PSA coming up.
• 18:10
  Like just because it's just because it's a bubble doesn't
• 18:12
  mean it tastes. Right, right.
• 18:14
  So how long were you at La Bernadette?
• 18:15
  Oh, I was at La Bernadette for eight years.
• 18:17
  Eight years, yeah. And you left at what position?
• 18:20
  So you started entry level. I left when I was executive sous
• 18:24
  chef, so I was there for eight years total.
• 18:28
  I spent one year of my time there working with Chef Repairs
• 18:32
  Consulting Company. He had a contract with the Ritz
• 18:35
  Carlton. He had a few properties in DC,
• 18:38
  Philly and Grand. Canyon.
• 18:39
  I never ate at La Bernadene, but I ate at his DC property.
• 18:43
  What was it called? West End Hen.
• 18:45
  Arts. Yeah, hen Arts was Philly.
• 18:47
  Yeah, it was West. End.
• 18:48
  It was good, yeah. I mean, I remember I had.
• 18:50
  That was Jopa. You know what I had there that
• 18:53
  was really good that you don't see often anymore?
• 18:56
  I had a skate, you don't see skate anymore.
• 18:59
  And I get why, but the skate's delicious.
• 19:02
  I love, yeah, I love skate. And they had for dessert there
• 19:05
  was a Klafuti. And you don't see klafu tea
• 19:07
  anywhere. No one does klafu tea anymore.
• 19:10
  I love it. Simple but it's so good and you
• 19:12
  can use whatever fruit is in season.
• 19:14
  It sounds like a disease, and I get why.
• 19:17
  I get why no one wants to write it on the menu.
• 19:19
  They're like, excuse me, I think I'm going to the doctor because
• 19:21
  I got the Klafu tea. Like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 19:23
  It's delicious. Don't bring that home to your.
• 19:25
  Wife I brought the klafu tea home.
• 19:28
  I got a divorce. I love that it's like it's
• 19:32
  honest, straightforward food, and a Clav Futi is a perfect
• 19:35
  example of that. If you put too much almond in
• 19:37
  there, it's like it can really mess up the ratio.
• 19:40
  And then it doesn't taste like this pillowy, gorgeous cushion.
• 19:44
  For what? It's just a vessel for seasonal
• 19:46
  fruit, but it's got that crisp crust on top.
• 19:49
  Oh, and it's done well. It's a thing of beauty.
• 19:51
  You know, going back to the the tasting of things and I think
• 19:55
  that's so important. I think a lot of cooks do mess
• 19:57
  that like taste your food. Like really taste your food.
• 20:00
  You're about to cook pasta. Taste the water.
• 20:02
  Yeah, right. Like, taste everything.
• 20:04
  Taste the vegetable. Taste your sauce.
• 20:06
  Look at the variable. Sometimes you can look at a
• 20:08
  chive and like, OK, they're fresh.
• 20:10
  They're cut, Right. Right.
• 20:11
  But you might need to taste everything else.
• 20:13
  You know, taste the butter. Taste.
• 20:14
  Sometimes that butter's been unwrapped in the fridge and it
• 20:16
  has a taste. People, people need to taste
• 20:20
  just like, that's like one O 1. Taste your food.
• 20:23
  You want your food to taste better.
• 20:24
  Taste it first. Make sure it tastes good.
• 20:26
  Yeah, right. I was.
• 20:29
  There's a chef named Bruno Tyson.
• 20:31
  He was the chef at the Plaza for a long, long time back in the
• 20:34
  Carrie Simon Rock'n'roll days. And I remember I was, he was, he
• 20:38
  was giving me a tour of his kitchen.
• 20:41
  And he was also one of these old, you know, French chefs, old
• 20:45
  school French chefs that just, you know, knew how to do things
• 20:48
  the right way, you know, the way we would say the right way.
• 20:51
  It was then. And we're walking past the he's
• 20:54
  giving me a tour and we're in the pastry shop of of where he's
• 20:57
  at. And he looks out of the corner
• 20:59
  of his eye and he tells the pastry chef what's wrong with
• 21:01
  the croissant. Oh, and the pastry chef says,
• 21:04
  Oh, no, nothing, chef. And he brings it over and he's
• 21:06
  like, Nope, cuts it in half, like, look.
• 21:08
  And I remember I was blown away because he just caught it in the
• 21:11
  periphery of his eye. Wow.
• 21:12
  And it might have been a setup because I was there.
• 21:14
  And it's like to impress me. But it's amazing when you taste
• 21:18
  something every single day and you know your food you will tax.
• 21:22
  Exactly like your pasta, water can reduce even an inch of
• 21:26
  reduction, can make it too salty, and then you need to hold
• 21:29
  back on the sauce you're putting in or adjust some other way, or
• 21:32
  just add more water to the pot. But tasting builds the palate.
• 21:36
  Nobody's born within. I mean, some people are super
• 21:39
  tasters, but it's rare to be born with an exceptional palate
• 21:42
  that you can taste that nuance every single time.
• 21:46
  But it comes by paying attention, being present.
• 21:49
  You know, if the croissant nor you walk by a room and the
• 21:53
  croissant is usually up to this line and it's slightly under,
• 21:56
  slightly over. That's how you know, because you
• 21:58
  have a frame of reference to compare it to that's built up
• 22:02
  over paying attention to it for a long time.
• 22:05
  So that is, that's like my, I mean tasting something every
• 22:09
  day, working with something throughout every season is the
• 22:12
  only way that you get to know your ingredients and then you
• 22:16
  can make a consistent product out of inconsistent ingredients.
• 22:20
  Hey everyone, I'm going to interrupt this podcast very
• 22:23
  briefly for a special message from the James Beard Foundation
• 22:26
  and Chef Elizabeth Faulkner. Hi, it's Elizabeth Faulkner, and
• 22:30
  I'm a chef, cookbook author, former restaurateur, and I'm the
• 22:35
  chair of the James Beard Award Committee.
• 22:38
  And I happen to be on a culinary cycling trip in Sardinia.
• 22:41
  So hence the background. And I just want to say I'm
• 22:43
  thrilled to announce the 2026 open call for entries is open
• 22:47
  for the James Beard Awards. You know, the James Beard
• 22:51
  Foundation celebrates the all ends of the culinary spectrum
• 22:55
  and we are celebrating 40 years of the James Beard Foundation
• 23:00
  this next year. So open call for entries means
• 23:04
  if you're a chef or you know some or a bar manager or
• 23:08
  cookbook off, you can nominate yourself.
• 23:10
  You can other people can nominate who they think deserves
• 23:12
  or who is worthy of a James Beard Award.
• 23:15
  I was a nominee in 2005. And you never know where the
• 23:20
  culinary world is going to take you, even far in places like
• 23:22
  Sardinia. So if you want more information,
• 23:26
  go to the James Beard website jamesbeard.org/awards and
• 23:31
  nominate somebody. For people that don't know, when
• 23:34
  you say you're the executive sous chef at La Bernadine, what
• 23:36
  does that look like in higher in terms of hierarchy?
• 23:38
  So you have true God. We had 40 cooks in the kitchen
• 23:45
  then. You and is it run like CDP Demi
• 23:47
  chef? Kind of yeah.
• 23:49
  So there is there are chef de partis.
• 23:51
  We didn't really have a Demi chef position.
• 23:54
  We have a tornant or we had a tornant, but it's, you know, you
• 23:58
  have three stations on garbage. So you go from cutting the
• 24:01
  garnish, doing the vegetables, then you wind up cutting the
• 24:04
  fish before you move on to the first hotline hot apps.
• 24:08
  And that's where you learn some of the basics.
• 24:10
  You're not necessarily cooking proteins, but you have things
• 24:14
  like an olive oil poached escolar or a crab dish, things
• 24:18
  that you're not cooking Ala manute or a lobster that's
• 24:22
  already like a lobster carpaccio where the lobster has been
• 24:25
  cooked and sliced and you're flashing it and finishing it,
• 24:29
  but you're not cooking proteins yet.
• 24:32
  You're learning the the nuance and you're learning how to run
• 24:36
  yourself during service and how to time with the other people.
• 24:39
  And then you build up to chef de partie of the hot Apps line,
• 24:42
  which is also got a sous chef assigned to it.
• 24:45
  So you go through all these stations.
• 24:47
  There's 2345678910 stations at La Bernadette and you have to
• 24:54
  build up through all of them before you can reach junior sous
• 24:57
  chef. When you reach Junior Zoo, you
• 24:59
  open and you get to know the kitchen in a new way because
• 25:05
  you're checking pars, You're suggesting things for the order
• 25:08
  for that night, but you're not doing ordering yet.
• 25:10
  It's all this like building of skill.
• 25:13
  Even once you get past Saucier and you're a junior zoo, you're
• 25:16
  building a new skill set. And then you get to a mid level
• 25:19
  zoo and then you get to a senior zoo and you're overseeing the
• 25:22
  junior zoos. You're giving them checklists.
• 25:24
  Instead of you being the one checking on what was shorted or
• 25:28
  who didn't show up on time, you're asking them for their
• 25:30
  reports and then you start closing.
• 25:33
  So you're learning all sorts of management skills through this,
• 25:36
  through this build, not not just management, but culinary, yes,
• 25:38
  cost control. Yeah, Cost control, there was
• 25:41
  like one person who really just would not let anybody step in on
• 25:45
  that. But it you do build up a lot of
• 25:49
  skills in terms of managing the team and knowing where to put
• 25:54
  people. And when you have a party
• 25:56
  upstairs, you have a wine bar event, you start to learn how to
• 26:00
  manage people. And then you get up to exec SU
• 26:06
  chef de cuisine and exec chef. And you know, Eric Justelle is
• 26:11
  now the exec chef, but he started on garbage day like
• 26:15
  everybody, and now he is running everything from doing the
• 26:18
  scheduling, the food costs and all of that, which he was
• 26:21
  steeped in along the way. But when you're exec sue, you're
• 26:25
  in charge of sous chefs. So instead of me setting up
• 26:28
  events, I'm overseeing the sous chefs, setting up the private
• 26:32
  events at the salon or at prevave, a new dining space or
• 26:37
  at the wine bar. I'm shifting people around.
• 26:40
  I'm making suggestions to the exec chef so that everything's
• 26:44
  not on that person. I'm catching the problems before
• 26:46
  they become problems. So I have a question, your exec,
• 26:50
  Sue, how old are you when this happens number one?
• 26:53
  And what year is this I was well, if you don't want to give
• 26:56
  away your. Age.
• 26:58
  No, I mean, I can't remember exactly.
• 27:00
  I have no qualms about my age. OK, I'm, I'm well steeped in the
• 27:04
  experiences of life, but I was probably early 30s, early 30s.
• 27:11
  And by the time I got to exec SU, let's see, I left La
• 27:14
  Bernadine in 20, 15 or 16. OK, So I was, you know.
• 27:23
  So let's say 10 years ago, Yeah. So 10 years ago you're.
• 27:26
  So I was probably mid 30s. You're the executive sous chef
• 27:29
  at some people's number on some list #1 restaurant in the world.
• 27:33
  Occasionally I know which list we're looking at.
• 27:38
  Is that dangerous? I mean, no, because I didn't.
• 27:45
  I had no scope of everything else.
• 27:46
  Literally, when I was coming out of culinary school, I wanted to
• 27:49
  go home to Chicago, so I wanted to go to Charlie Trotter's, but
• 27:52
  I could not get a phone call. I submitted resumes, I was
• 27:56
  faxing, I was calling, I was snail mailing resumes to try to
• 28:00
  get an internship at Charlie Trotter and I could not get a
• 28:04
  call back. And my mom had worked with
• 28:06
  Charlie Trotter back in the day, so I was so excited to get that
• 28:11
  experience, but I couldn't get a call back.
• 28:12
  And I wasn't physically in Chicago to stalk the people at
• 28:15
  the restaurant, so the closest I could come to stalking was La
• 28:18
  Bernadin, which I did. I went there and dropped off
• 28:22
  resumes several times a week in addition to the mailing and
• 28:25
  calling. But from La Bernadin Red
• 28:27
  Rooster, is that correct? Yeah, from La Bernadin.
• 28:30
  I went to work for the Marcus Samuelsson restaurant group.
• 28:32
  I was chef de cuisine of the restaurant group.
• 28:35
  I was exec chef of Red Rooster and St.
• 28:39
  Bird. So 2 restaurants in the same
• 28:41
  neighborhood. And at what point?
• 28:43
  Because that's top of the food chain restaurants in the United
• 28:47
  States, both of them right under two of the most legendary chefs
• 28:52
  in the United States, arguably, right.
• 28:55
  With that being said, that's at a certain point you go on Top
• 28:58
  Chef, how, how, how is the preparation from those two
• 29:03
  restaurants to go to Top Chef? Like did that help you or did
• 29:09
  that hurt you? I mean, if you think about it
• 29:12
  this way, going to Top Chef, working at those places, it is
• 29:16
  100% different. It is a complete different set
• 29:21
  of thoughts. It's a different mindset, It's a
• 29:23
  different skill set, everything. It's like even though the level
• 29:27
  of awareness of yourself is completely different.
• 29:30
  When I was working for Le Bernardin, Eric Repair, Marcus
• 29:34
  Samuelson, I'm executing their vision.
• 29:37
  I never wanted to be more than operational.
• 29:41
  I thrive in operations. I love operations.
• 29:44
  There's nuance in beauty and you can put your Bain Marie here
• 29:47
  versus here and it has a completely huge ripple effect on
• 29:51
  service. And the efficiencies that you
• 29:54
  learn about operations is what I loved about restaurants.
• 29:58
  Every movement you make makes a difference, and that's what I
• 30:02
  love about restaurants and that's what I love about
• 30:04
  cooking. So being in operations allowed
• 30:08
  me to hold the standard without being in the front.
• 30:13
  I might be responsible for every dish coming out of the kitchen
• 30:16
  on any given night of service, but I take cash, I don't take
• 30:19
  credit. So I was able to stay in the
• 30:22
  background and I loved it. But going on Top Chef is about
• 30:27
  you, and I had never conceptualized what my food
• 30:32
  would be like because I never thought I wouldn't be working
• 30:35
  for another chef, helping them express their vision and
• 30:40
  articulate their POV on food and what they wanted.
• 30:45
  So I got to Top Chef. They called and said, hey, would
• 30:47
  you be interested in doing the show?
• 30:49
  I was like, what the fuck? Like I quit my job.
• 30:52
  Who's calling, by the way? Who's calling?
• 30:53
  Who's making the phone? Call every year once you've been
• 30:56
  on Top Chef. The casting department, ask the
• 31:00
  chefs who have been on, hey, do you have any recommendations?
• 31:03
  Who are some of the people that you work with that you find very
• 31:05
  talented that you think would do well on the show?
• 31:09
  And they're asking from a food perspective.
• 31:11
  They're not asking based on personality and all this.
• 31:14
  And so Jen Carroll, the sous chef from La Bernardin, had been
• 31:17
  on a couple years before, a couple other chefs that I know
• 31:21
  had done the show, and I had no idea.
• 31:23
  I had never watched Top Chef so. You never watched Top Chef
• 31:27
  before going on? You watched it?
• 31:29
  My sister would watch it all the time and my mom also.
• 31:32
  So when I went home to Chicago to visit family, it would be on
• 31:35
  in the background. But it's like I cook all fucking
• 31:37
  day. I don't want.
• 31:38
  To watch the do you watch the bear?
• 31:39
  No, neither do I. By the way, someone asked me
• 31:42
  yesterday because I watched a couple of episodes and there's
• 31:46
  an episode where they're they're, they're about to open
• 31:49
  up a restaurant. Restaurant openings.
• 31:52
  Restaurant opening. And This is why I, like, I can't
• 31:54
  watch it anymore. Yeah, after this episode, it's
• 31:56
  like, I can't watch it anymore. The pastry chef comes up to him.
• 31:59
  It's his first restaurant that he's ever going to open.
• 32:01
  It's his name on the door. His name's on the marquee.
• 32:02
  OK, you know the the chef, Carmen.
• 32:04
  His name, right? Carmen, his name's on the
• 32:06
  marquee. And the pastry chef comes up to
• 32:08
  him 30 minutes before opening and says, here's chef, I'm.
• 32:10
  I'm ready with my dessert menu. Like he's seen the desserts for
• 32:13
  the first time 30 minutes before his first restaurant opens.
• 32:17
  I was like, that's it. That would never happen.
• 32:20
  Can't watch this anymore. That's it.
• 32:21
  I'm done. I'm out.
• 32:22
  Like a tasting. No.
• 32:24
  It's like, oh chef, is this approved?
• 32:27
  To go on the menu in 30 minutes for your first restaurant that's
• 32:31
  going to change the world. That would never happen.
• 32:34
  Never, never, never happened. It would never happen.
• 32:37
  Everything would have been tasted, discussed, thrown away,
• 32:40
  start over. And that's a completely
• 32:42
  different perspective. I had heard that the show was a
• 32:44
  little too realistic. And so that's that's part of my
• 32:49
  issue is La Bernadine was all handwritten tickets when I went
• 32:52
  to work for Marcus, the restaurants had printers and
• 32:56
  that fucking sound of kitchen tape printers.
• 33:00
  I can't, I can't. It's like it triggers in a way.
• 33:03
  And I heard there was a whole episode dedicated to Yeah I.
• 33:06
  Can't that episode? That's enough to keep me off the
• 33:09
  whole. Show, there's two shows, but in
• 33:12
  particular this show where you're talking about the ticket
• 33:14
  printers. I stood up and I was pacing in
• 33:17
  front of my TV like if I was on the past, looking at the cooks
• 33:22
  like I want to kill them and thinking I need to help you but
• 33:25
  I'm just watching a show. Why do I feel like this?
• 33:28
  Exactly. It's triggering in a way that
• 33:30
  like you probably have some like buried trauma that like I refuse
• 33:35
  to acknowledge it's. Not buried right there, right
• 33:38
  off the surface. This is my this podcast is my
• 33:40
  therapy. Right.
• 33:42
  It's like I'm, I'm very good at boxing everything away and
• 33:46
  burying it nice and deep. And I feel like that episode
• 33:48
  would just bring it too far out. And I'm not, I'm not here for
• 33:51
  that. Yeah, I, I, I, I did watch.
• 33:54
  There's one that the CIA just put on it.
• 33:56
  I think it's called Next Gen. Chef.
• 33:57
  OK, someone messed me. Like, you want to watch this?
• 33:59
  It's like, OK. And I I, I binged it in a day.
• 34:01
  Nice. It was good.
• 34:02
  I mean, it's like, it's it's it's cute, OK.
• 34:05
  I don't know how else to explain it.
• 34:06
  Like it's like. It's idealistic.
• 34:07
  Yeah, It's like a like they're, they're, well, they're a little
• 34:10
  bit more advanced than culinary students.
• 34:12
  Like they could be sous chefs or whatever.
• 34:13
  Yeah. And they're like doing real
• 34:16
  cooking challenges. And it's like, OK, you know,
• 34:18
  make this. It's like, OK, these are this is
• 34:20
  real. This is not nothing too weird.
• 34:23
  It was great. I loved it.
• 34:25
  It's just a wholesome show. Good.
• 34:26
  OK, so I like that show. For the person that said I
• 34:30
  should watch it, thank you for recommending.
• 34:32
  I watched it. It's wholesome and.
• 34:34
  Question, So that's filmed at CIA.
• 34:36
  Did you go to culinary school? Did.
• 34:39
  You. I did.
• 34:39
  Are you a CIA grad? Kind of not a grad.
• 34:43
  I think I'm an ambassador though.
• 34:45
  I think I have a medal that says that says Culinary Institute of
• 34:49
  America ambassador. No, I went to the Western
• 34:54
  Culinary Institute in Portland, OR in in 1995.
• 34:58
  That's when I went and it became a lake cord on blue later on,
• 35:02
  but not while I was there. It became a lake cord on blue
• 35:04
  and then they closed. But I have taken multiple
• 35:08
  continuing education at all CIA properties.
• 35:10
  So Saint Helena Greystone. Greystone.
• 35:15
  Yeah. Saint Helena Greystone.
• 35:17
  OK, yeah, yeah. So California, San Antonio,
• 35:20
  multiple times. New York.
• 35:22
  Wow. I've only done I'm, I'm over
• 35:24
  educated when it comes to culinary.
• 35:25
  Like I've gone too much. I've taken classes at all three
• 35:28
  Cias, plus my culinary degree, plus I completed Ruby's online
• 35:34
  culinary course. Plus I like saw every Chef Steps
• 35:37
  video like I'm over educated. PhD and like.
• 35:42
  Yeah, I'm a little bit over educated in culinary, but it's
• 35:44
  like, can you? Ever be them?
• 35:46
  Well, no, you can't, right? You can't.
• 35:48
  And the more, and I think that's my problem is like how I don't
• 35:50
  know that I need to learn that. And now it's like, no, I'm over
• 35:53
  educating myself now on social media.
• 35:56
  We all have our rights, you know.
• 35:59
  Yes, but going back to Top Chef, sorry, we digress.
• 36:01
  We got we're right, sorry. We got off the rails Top Chef.
• 36:06
  So you're in and I've talked to a couple of other people that
• 36:09
  have been on Top Chef and I don't know if they've said this
• 36:10
  on the pot, but they I've definitely heard it off record.
• 36:14
  There's a lot of people say that sometimes when you're on that
• 36:16
  show, you know how to cook, but you've been cooking everyone
• 36:20
  else's food. You never like who who am I?
• 36:22
  Yeah, and you and, and a lot of times that's kind of the
• 36:24
  Achilles heel of a lot of very talented chefs that have gone on
• 36:28
  the show is that they don't know who they are yet.
• 36:30
  So they have all these skills, but it's it's someone else.
• 36:34
  'S right, yeah, because a lot of times you have people who are
• 36:36
  senior zoos or CDC's, you have some people who are exec chefs
• 36:41
  of restaurants and they've already worked on their vision.
• 36:45
  They've already worked on their take on this classic dish or
• 36:50
  have a clear vision of the type of food that they want to cook
• 36:52
  and represent and the food that represents them.
• 36:56
  If you're coming in as a sous chef or CDC of someone else's
• 36:59
  restaurant, you don't have that clear vision.
• 37:01
  And that was exactly the for me. And it's they, they throw you
• 37:04
  these challenges and you immediately go back to things
• 37:08
  that you know how to execute, but they've lived in your brain
• 37:12
  because they come from other chefs.
• 37:14
  So you're executing somebody else's dish in a challenge, not
• 37:18
  your own dish in a challenge. Because a lot of cooking is
• 37:22
  muscle memory and you have 3 hours to make a dish.
• 37:25
  You don't want to experiment, you want to create a dish that
• 37:28
  you know how to execute. You don't have time to faffo.
• 37:30
  Exactly. Right.
• 37:32
  So you're like, let me just go for this, that I it's in my my
• 37:36
  Rolodex of recipes. Then you realize like these
• 37:38
  recipes came from other people. These say nothing about me.
• 37:42
  They don't speak to me in the same way.
• 37:44
  I'm just executing them. I'm not cooking them with love.
• 37:48
  I'm just getting it done for the challenge.
• 37:50
  Like a mercenary, A hired hit man.
• 37:52
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 37:54
  So if we had to look at your success on Top Chef, because you
• 38:00
  were very successful on Top Chef.
• 38:02
  Yeah, I. Mean very successful.
• 38:03
  But I did have a lot of challenges in the bottom because
• 38:06
  of that exact thing. I didn't have a clear point of
• 38:09
  view on the food. I was so.
• 38:11
  Let me ask you this, if you had to say these things made me
• 38:15
  successful on Top Chef and these things hurt me on Top Chef, if
• 38:19
  you were giving advice to someone that's like, hey, I'm
• 38:21
  about to go on the next season, I need to listen to this
• 38:23
  podcast. Give me some free, give me some
• 38:26
  free advice. What are some things that
• 38:28
  someone should know? So I know people who have done
• 38:31
  subsequent seasons after me, and I give them all the exact same
• 38:34
  advice, The same thing that you would probably tell a sous chef
• 38:40
  working to put a dish on a menu at a restaurant you run.
• 38:43
  What's the first thing you're telling them?
• 38:46
  Well. Make it taste good.
• 38:47
  I mean, I don't know, I don't know where you're leading me,
• 38:49
  but make it taste good. I'll make it too weird.
• 38:52
  Make sure it tastes good first. Only make things that you know
• 38:55
  you know how to make and that other people could know how to
• 38:57
  make. That's it right there.
• 38:58
  Make it taste good. Don't go so far into your bag of
• 39:02
  tricks and hone it in. Like rein it in.
• 39:07
  You don't need 12 fucking components on every dish.
• 39:09
  Don't try for the first time. No that.
• 39:12
  In front of everybody, right in front of the world.
• 39:14
  Don't try for the first time in front of the world.
• 39:15
  Epic fail but that's the main things are make it taste good
• 39:19
  because they actually care more about how it tastes on that
• 39:23
  show. There is so much integrity for
• 39:24
  the food that if it doesn't taste good but it looks really
• 39:27
  cool they give zero fucks. So make it taste good and hone
• 39:32
  it in. You can keep adding stuff, but
• 39:35
  that's ultimately going to take away and it's also giving you
• 39:37
  more components to get dinged on.
• 39:40
  So hone in that idea, edit until you have just what is necessary
• 39:45
  for this plate of food, and perfect each component.
• 39:49
  So let's just say we're hiring you to the the Culinary
• 39:52
  Competition Olympic Training Center.
• 39:55
  What are like, what would be the the training, you know, the
• 39:58
  Rocky montage training for for the culinary competitor look
• 40:02
  like? What are you having?
• 40:03
  So I'm hiring you, I'm giving you X amount of dollars.
• 40:05
  You're going to train me to go on a.
• 40:06
  Fill in the blank cooking competition.
• 40:08
  You don't know what the the competition is going to be
• 40:10
  because they they throw surprises at you.
• 40:12
  Regardless of what show we're talking about.
• 40:14
  What are some of the things that you're going to tell someone?
• 40:15
  Like get really good at these things.
• 40:17
  Time to knife skills because you're yes you can brunoise the
• 40:21
  fuck out of a shallot, I have no doubt about that.
• 40:24
  But can you do it quickly while you're thinking about everything
• 40:27
  in a kitchen that you don't know where anything is?
• 40:29
  So your mind is distracted. So you need to get fast and you
• 40:33
  can cut yourself just like in a kitchen.
• 40:35
  Like you can do the same thing every day for 20 years and still
• 40:38
  cut yourself by mistake. So get to know how to focus in.
• 40:44
  So time to knife skills, I think are really important.
• 40:48
  Quiet your mind, don't spin out and think about what can I add
• 40:52
  to this? What else can I do for this?
• 40:55
  That would be the thing like execute this time yourself, do
• 41:00
  it again, time yourself. You should be getting faster and
• 41:02
  better every time you do something just like in a normal
• 41:05
  kitchen. So those are the things that
• 41:07
  like I think time and being able to focus.
• 41:10
  So I would give people a basket of ingredients, nothing crazy.
• 41:14
  I'm not trying to throw them off.
• 41:15
  I'm not going to give them a tarantula and like snakeskin,
• 41:19
  but maybe an eel and you need to know how to nail it to a cutting
• 41:22
  board. But like, give them a basket of
• 41:25
  ingredients and tell them to create a dish and then do it
• 41:28
  again with the same ingredients and tell them to create a
• 41:31
  different dish. Because you need to know how to
• 41:34
  pick an idea and execute it and not second guess yourself.
• 41:39
  That's where people really start to fail is they start with one
• 41:42
  plan and then they deviate and DV, it's like, no, but I could
• 41:45
  do this. No, but I could do this.
• 41:47
  Stick to the plan, make the plan, and execute the plan.
• 41:51
  So you'd say knife skills, you'd give them onions and potatoes
• 41:55
  and tomatoes and whatever else artichokes and say get time for
• 41:59
  time and quality. Would you also spend any time on
• 42:05
  dessert with? 100%.
• 42:08
  Because you can't become an excellent pastry chef if you're,
• 42:10
  you know, we, we only have three weeks at the Olympic training
• 42:12
  center, right with, with Adrian, right.
• 42:14
  You can't. You can't turn them into a world
• 42:16
  class pastry chef, But what are you going to have them learn?
• 42:18
  So I, I mean actually a perfect dessert to learn just because it
• 42:22
  teaches you several different components that you could pull
• 42:25
  apart and use in different things would be the Elaine
• 42:29
  Ducasse, was it Louis the 15th dessert.
• 42:32
  Which one's? That or is it Louis the 15th or
• 42:34
  14th? It was after his restaurant, but
• 42:37
  it's got the hazelnut decois. It's got a chocolate mousse and
• 42:43
  it's got a perfect ganache. And so it's layered.
• 42:46
  So you learn how to make a meringue.
• 42:48
  You learn how to toast, grind and sift your nuts.
• 42:52
  You can swap, you know, swap out the hazelnuts, but you have to
• 42:55
  know the perfect texture of the nuts to fold into the meringue
• 42:59
  to make the decois. So it's not too gritty, it's got
• 43:03
  the perfect texture, and it doesn't deflate the meringue too
• 43:05
  much. So it's almost the same
• 43:07
  technique as making a macaron shell, but with a different type
• 43:11
  of nut and a little more texture to it.
• 43:14
  But same thing. You have to learn how to fold it
• 43:17
  without deflating the meringue too much.
• 43:19
  Moose Chocolate Mousse will get you so far in this life.
• 43:22
  Yeah, and and then you had a little grandma.
• 43:24
  Yeah. Or you had amaretti, right?
• 43:25
  Like you just flavor it with your personality.
• 43:27
  But you got to know how to make that mousse first.
• 43:29
  Right, You need to know how to temper yolks.
• 43:30
  You need to so it, it teaches you all the basics like of
• 43:34
  making a custard, making, you know, tempering the egg yolks,
• 43:39
  doing all that, making the liaison, like every single part
• 43:42
  of those components for that dessert you can take with you to
• 43:45
  something else. And then a ganache, like a
• 43:48
  perfect ganache that's glossy, that's horrible, thick enough
• 43:53
  but not too thick, thin enough but not too thin like that is a
• 43:57
  perfect dessert because it teaches you so many useful
• 44:00
  components. So now we've taught them some
• 44:03
  pastry skills at your your training center.
• 44:04
  We've got them some knife skills with vegetables.
• 44:06
  If you had to focus on some proteins to cook and and
• 44:10
  butcher, which ones like would would you?
• 44:13
  Would you tell this personally? I would definitely tell them to
• 44:16
  perfect butchering fish, cooking fish, not overcooking fish
• 44:22
  because most people cook it till it's just obliterated.
• 44:26
  Even even professionals in our industry sometimes take it too
• 44:29
  far. I mean, if you leave it in pan
• 44:31
  for a few seconds too long, it you know it changes.
• 44:34
  It's a different fish, right? And you have to know for a show
• 44:37
  like that they're going to eat it soon after it was cooked, but
• 44:40
  not immediately. So if it sits and you need to
• 44:43
  know the carryover timing of fish, that if it's going to sit
• 44:46
  for three minutes, 1st 10 minutes, that salmon could get
• 44:51
  dry and mealy or that bass could get dry.
• 44:55
  And then you hear that. Yeah.
• 44:57
  And and pan to the person cry. It is like, oh geez.
• 45:02
  So I would definitely tell them to learn like and work on fish
• 45:05
  butchery. But a braise, Know how to braise
• 45:10
  a lean cut, a fatty cut and know how to tempt steaks.
• 45:13
  Know how to temp meat with or without a thermometer, you know
• 45:17
  nothing. No shame in using a thermometer.
• 45:20
  Are you allowed to bring a thermometer on those shows
• 45:21
  usually? No, you can bring a certain
• 45:23
  number of things in your knife roll, but I'm you know, it's
• 45:26
  just. People ever bring Are you
• 45:27
  allowed to? I haven't watched Top Chef in
• 45:29
  quite some time. Do people use circulators on the
• 45:31
  show? I don't know if they usually
• 45:32
  have enough time in challenges, but they are usually available.
• 45:36
  But I mean proteins. Know how to cook your meat?
• 45:39
  Yeah. And cut it.
• 45:40
  But I feel like most people, by the time you're getting to Top
• 45:43
  Chef, you've that's something that you should.
• 45:45
  Well, you'd be surprised. And I'll tell you why you'd be
• 45:47
  surprised. Well, you wouldn't be surprised
• 45:49
  because like we were talking earlier, there's a lot of very
• 45:51
  successful restaurants and chefs that are really good at plating
• 45:54
  but aren't really good at cooking.
• 45:56
  And they're, they're really good at like being trendy and making
• 45:59
  beautiful food. But it's all like we were
• 46:01
  talking earlier, it's all not cooked right, Right.
• 46:03
  So sometimes you might be able to make the prettiest fish dish,
• 46:08
  but like you said, but you don't know how to cook.
• 46:09
  Fish, right? I don't care if you can make a
• 46:11
  beautiful coral tweel, if you don't know how to cook the piece
• 46:14
  of fish that that tweel is going on top of the dish is going to
• 46:17
  suck. I don't care if it's got cute
• 46:19
  little dots, all the dots and herbs.
• 46:21
  And like, you know, I heard David Breeden talking about the
• 46:24
  borridge flowers. Yeah, the random borridge
• 46:26
  flowers I. Mean.
• 46:27
  They're beautiful, don't get me wrong.
• 46:28
  Yeah, they don't make sense in a lot of things.
• 46:30
  Yeah, they don't. And, and so many times the
• 46:33
  chefs, it's like we know that, but we still do it, right?
• 46:36
  Like I need something. What does it need?
• 46:38
  Throw a whole bunch of flowers and it's beautiful.
• 46:41
  Now that's what it needed in it. But you don't.
• 46:43
  So sometimes when we're making dishes as chefs, you know, I
• 46:46
  would bring my team together and like we're, we do tasting, we're
• 46:48
  all picking it apart. And I would always say make sure
• 46:51
  it tastes good first. We could always make it look
• 46:52
  pretty late, but in retrospect, sometimes we'd make it look
• 46:55
  pretty later but we didn't taste it again.
• 46:58
  To see how that garnish affected.
• 46:59
  Yeah, right. That's a good point.
• 47:01
  And I mean, you do I, I think some people overstate how, you
• 47:07
  know, go too far on on talking shit about micros and, and
• 47:11
  flowers and things like that. Because you do eat with your
• 47:13
  eyes 1st. And if you're at a restaurant
• 47:16
  where you're not getting 12 courses, I've only got one or
• 47:19
  two chances to impress you by the look of a dish.
• 47:22
  But that being said, you still need to exercise restraint and
• 47:27
  you can't put if the dominant herb flavor in your dish is
• 47:31
  cilantro, why are you using Napatella mint just because it's
• 47:35
  pretty? Or are you using micro
• 47:37
  watercress that might be a little bitter and throw off the
• 47:41
  taste and cover up that delicate cilantro?
• 47:44
  Like it still has to make sense, but it does have to be visual
• 47:48
  because if I get a dish that's monochromatic or you know, there
• 47:52
  can be beauty in that, but that even has to be finessed and done
• 47:55
  well. So I can't talk shit about
• 47:58
  people who use micros and flowers without purpose behind
• 48:03
  them. Well I can talk shit if there is
• 48:04
  no purpose behind them, but if there is a reason for this being
• 48:08
  there, it's not just pretty, it should also enhance the dish,
• 48:12
  not just be there for for show. You know which one grinds my
• 48:18
  gears? Micro cilantro that's blooming.
• 48:22
  Oh, it's so. Strong.
• 48:23
  It's so strong and it looks so pretty.
• 48:26
  It's so pretty. And then like every young chef I
• 48:28
  know, like let's put more micro cilantro on there that's
• 48:31
  blooming. It's like, no, don't.
• 48:33
  It's so strong. That's all you taste.
• 48:36
  It'll, it'll take your beautiful dish and it'll ruin it.
• 48:40
  And I, I've seen and I don't know why people do this.
• 48:42
  And again, this goes back to tasting your food.
• 48:44
  If you're listening, I'm not calling anyone out by name, by
• 48:47
  the way, this is not for you. But if it's for you, though, it
• 48:50
  might be for you. Beautiful dessert.
• 48:53
  And then they put micro cilantro on it.
• 48:55
  Have you ever seen that? I've seen it and it's like.
• 48:58
  Taste it. It can, yeah.
• 49:00
  Taste it. Taste that beautiful chocolate
• 49:02
  strawberry dessert that you made with the micro cilantro.
• 49:05
  Right. If it's coconut, pineapple,
• 49:07
  something in that flavor profile, too much micro cilantro
• 49:11
  can kill all those flavors. So if it's on something like
• 49:14
  chocolate that doesn't necessarily go it's yeah, that
• 49:17
  can be a bad look. But I'm guilty of that too.
• 49:19
  I don't put chive blossoms on a scalloped crudo.
• 49:23
  And then I'm like, oh, this dish fucking rocks.
• 49:25
  Like this is amazing. And then I try it.
• 49:27
  I'm like, oh God, all I taste is chocolate.
• 49:29
  Like it's so the allium flavor is so strong in micros and these
• 49:33
  little flowers that some people underestimate that.
• 49:36
  So eat your entire dish before you don't just taste a bite of
• 49:41
  it. Eat the entire portion that
• 49:43
  you're planning on serving to somebody.
• 49:45
  And you'll see how it changes bite to bite.
• 49:48
  And by the end of the dish, you'll probably have some things
• 49:51
  that you want to edit. Where do you stand?
• 49:54
  Let's what are your hot takes on 2026 as we go?
• 49:57
  We're in 2025, but as we go into 2026, what are your thoughts in
• 50:01
  general on Microgreens today 20/26/25?
• 50:11
  They need to have purpose. I do love microgreens and micro
• 50:14
  vegetables because they are, it teaches you a different flavor
• 50:18
  profile of an ingredient that you're familiar with.
• 50:20
  So you're getting them at a different stage of the
• 50:23
  development. So baby turnip versus a big
• 50:26
  turnip. Obviously I was listening to the
• 50:28
  David Breeden recipe or episode recently.
• 50:31
  So that's like top of mind. But you know, a baby cucumber
• 50:35
  versus a full grown cucumber completely different.
• 50:38
  So you know, the water contents lower.
• 50:40
  It's, you know, it's there's just so many nuances and and
• 50:44
  changes that you notice. So I'm not, I'm not by any means
• 50:48
  anti micros. I think there are some micros
• 50:51
  that are underutilized, like micro celery.
• 50:55
  It can be mild, it can be strong sometimes, but not as strong as
• 50:59
  celery leaves. But micro celery adds a
• 51:02
  freshness to things. So I think just approaching
• 51:06
  micros with a new level of purpose, finding micros that we
• 51:10
  don't use as much like micro endive, like those little shoots
• 51:15
  pack that endive flavor without the bitterness.
• 51:18
  So things like that. I would love to see more of
• 51:20
  these kind of underutilized micros that really enhance
• 51:24
  dishes across the board. So you don't you can also cut
• 51:27
  down in your ordering because you don't have to have one micro
• 51:30
  that only works for one dish. Find a couple micros that work
• 51:34
  for a few things that enhance visuals and flavor.
• 51:37
  So very intentional purposely taste it, make sure make sure it
• 51:41
  should be there in culinary school they talked about like
• 51:44
  you don't put on if it has to be a functional garnish.
• 51:47
  I I think we've kind of lost that a little bit like we over
• 51:50
  garnish sometimes that we forgot like is it a functional
• 51:53
  functional in terms of flavor? Yeah, yeah, it has to have
• 51:55
  functional purpose. The end result flavor should be
• 51:59
  improved not it shouldn't detract, right. 20252026 what do
• 52:05
  you think about tasting menus? Let me let me give you some
• 52:08
  context in terms of how long do they need to be for the
• 52:12
  attention span of the modern diner?
• 52:14
  What when is a good thing no longer good?
• 52:19
  I am probably not the best person to ask because I will sit
• 52:25
  through 27 fucking courses. You will like I I will.
• 52:29
  I can't say I'm not getting antsy or mine.
• 52:31
  I might not need to get up and walk around a.
• 52:33
  Little bit, but if you're opening up a restaurant
• 52:35
  tomorrow, oh, and it's a tasting and it's a tasting I.
• 52:38
  Would Max out including dessert courses?
• 52:41
  I would probably Max out at 11:50 and that's including
• 52:44
  everything from canopy to mean. Your DS I would probably Max out
• 52:47
  around there because you also, the more courses you're doing,
• 52:52
  the smaller the portions need to be because you're not trying to
• 52:55
  stuff people. I ate a diverso in Madrid and
• 52:59
  that was the chef scent extra courses also.
• 53:02
  So I think my husband and I had like somewhere around 18 to 20
• 53:06
  courses. I was so full by the end that it
• 53:11
  was hard to eat, but the food was so delicious that I wanted
• 53:14
  more. But I was always happy when I
• 53:17
  got a very small course that I could get that flavor and get
• 53:20
  that technique, but not too much.
• 53:23
  Brad Kilgore at Altar in Miami was one of the most exceptional
• 53:30
  but also filling tasting menus I ever had.
• 53:34
  So I don't go to tasting menu restaurants as a lot as much as
• 53:38
  I used to, because when I do, again, I want it to be
• 53:42
  purposeful. I'm really excited about what
• 53:45
  this chef is doing. So, you know, I used to go to
• 53:48
  like maybe four or five a year. Now I'm probably down to like
• 53:53
  two or three just because I know it's a time commitment and it's
• 53:58
  also I'm going to be really full.
• 54:00
  But I think nowadays, everybody's attention span is so
• 54:03
  short, but it does keep people engaged because their attention
• 54:08
  span is short. On the other hand, you're
• 54:10
  changing courses more often and you're giving them, I mean, I
• 54:13
  hate to say it like this, but you're giving them more content
• 54:16
  for more experiences wrapped up in this one.
• 54:19
  Yeah. It's like you're getting that,
• 54:21
  like, dopamine hit every so often because you have more cool
• 54:25
  stuff. But yeah, I don't know.
• 54:27
  It's like I personally can only do a few a year now I can do 456
• 54:33
  courses but if I'm going full in long format I'm only probably
• 54:39
  going to do like a few a year. I don't know, I, I, I'm, I'm of
• 54:44
  the mindset that right now, I think it's the perfect time to
• 54:49
  rethink the tasting menu. I, I, I'm and I don't have the
• 54:53
  answer yet. So this is like, this is like
• 54:55
  inception right now for me because I, I was looking at a
• 54:58
  menu the other day. Someone sent me and I should ask
• 55:01
  Bill Kim sent me. Someone sent me Trotter's menu
• 55:04
  from like 1980 something. Oh man.
• 55:06
  So it's still in the 80s I believe.
• 55:08
  And it wasn't a tasty menu. It was an A la carte menu.
• 55:10
  So this was pre tasting menus at Trotters and it had like lamb
• 55:14
  chops for like $13. And I was thinking, oh, what
• 55:16
  happened to inflation, right? But it was crazy to see a
• 55:19
  Trotters menu that wasn't a tasting menu.
• 55:21
  And then I started thinking, when did tasting menus really
• 55:23
  become a thing? She had always done tasting
• 55:25
  menus. I didn't even know that.
• 55:26
  I'll show you after this. I'll pull it up so I can show
• 55:28
  you. And I thought it was crazy.
• 55:31
  It was crazy. I was like, well, when did
• 55:33
  tasting menus become a thing? I started thinking back to like
• 55:35
  my early career. I was like when we were doing
• 55:38
  tasting menus in a restaurant, there's always like, you know,
• 55:41
  soup, salad, starter, entree, dessert, second dessert, maybe a
• 55:44
  sorbet there. It was like maybe six or seven.
• 55:46
  It wasn't that big, OK. And I started thinking, well,
• 55:48
  what did the French Laundry do when they, I don't know, this?
• 55:52
  I was like, I think they started with a smaller tasting menu.
• 55:55
  And then it came the Grand Tasting.
• 55:57
  OK, I don't know if any of this rings a bell.
• 56:00
  I mean, it's, it's tough because in my mind, I always remembered
• 56:05
  Charlie Trotter being the first American chef to do a tasting
• 56:07
  menu. So I wasn't around when Charlie
• 56:10
  Trotters first opened. So I always knew of his
• 56:14
  restaurant in terms of being a groundbreaking restaurant,
• 56:17
  American restaurant where tasting menus happened.
• 56:19
  I mean, I think I remember hearing about like Jean Louis
• 56:22
  Paladin doing tasting menus, but separate from the a la carte
• 56:26
  normal menu. That was like an option that you
• 56:29
  could do, may not have been the only format of the restaurant,
• 56:33
  but was still there as an option.
• 56:35
  But then again, they were French and they were coming from
• 56:37
  restaurants where that was already built into the culture.
• 56:41
  So could you not become the best restaurant in the world off
• 56:47
  someone's metric and not offer the large tasting menu?
• 56:50
  Could it be 5 course? Could be 7 courses.
• 56:53
  Have you ever gone to a tasting menu that was 12 courses?
• 56:55
  And it would've been better if it was 15?
• 56:57
  You know, like at what point does it like, you know what you
• 57:01
  could get away with fewer staff, right, right.
• 57:03
  It's a little less cost and I don't know, I'm thinking about
• 57:07
  this. I'm going to have to it's.
• 57:07
  A great. I want to go back and say like,
• 57:09
  when did this get out of control?
• 57:11
  Yeah, yeah. When did we lose control?
• 57:13
  Was it Al Bully? When did?
• 57:15
  Because when you go back and you look at like old Escoffier menus
• 57:18
  or like La Pyramid with, you know, whoever, like they weren't
• 57:21
  that, right? They were not these.
• 57:24
  Right, right. So.
• 57:26
  It's like, at what point did we did, we did this become the new
• 57:29
  standard? And is it OK to say, you know
• 57:32
  what, it's this is also OK? Like we could also do an
• 57:36
  exceptional dining experience with fewer courses.
• 57:38
  Interesting. Do you think that came along
• 57:40
  with all the listicles that it's like you kind of want to impress
• 57:44
  these people when you can get them in the door and they're
• 57:47
  going to be the ones putting together these lists.
• 57:49
  You want to show them more and more, so I kind of feel like.
• 57:53
  We talked, I got this the other day off, off, you know, on the
• 57:56
  phone where it was like, you know, you want some of that
• 57:59
  attention. So if like if, if, if I'm a
• 58:01
  young chef and I see that restaurant's getting awards and
• 58:05
  that's what they do, then I'll just do that.
• 58:07
  Yeah. And I'll I might put my, my own
• 58:09
  spin on it, my own personality. But if if 10 courses gets best
• 58:12
  restaurant in the world then I'll do 11.
• 58:14
  Right, right. Yeah, what's better than Six
• 58:16
  Minute Apps 5? Minute apps.
• 58:23
  Oh, by the way, for people that don't know, you have a great
• 58:25
  podcast. Thank you.
• 58:27
  Really fun. I love your podcast.
• 58:29
  I've I think I'm all caught up by like one or two episodes.
• 58:31
  I was just listening to the one I told you with the Olivia
• 58:34
  Tideman. Yeah, it's great.
• 58:35
  And you're talking about private chefing.
• 58:37
  Yes. And I think it's cool because
• 58:41
  when we met at the James Beard Awards, we were doing a panel.
• 58:44
  You were, you were the moderator and one of the questions, I
• 58:46
  don't know if I answered or you answered it, but we were talking
• 58:48
  about private chefing and how I do think this is a more
• 58:51
  lucrative career now for chefs. It doesn't have to just be in a
• 58:55
  restaurant, right? I know some private chefs and
• 58:57
  you don't gotta say, but I know some private chefs that make a
• 58:59
  lot of money, right? A lot more money than chefs that
• 59:03
  are executive chef with all the stripes on their lapel.
• 59:08
  Yeah, it's a whole new world, one that I never thought I would
• 59:13
  do, I never wanted to do. And thank you, by the way,
• 59:15
  because you gave me so much advice, starting off the podcast
• 59:19
  with my friend Joe Flam and being so gracious with like,
• 59:23
  advice and pointers and things to do.
• 59:25
  So I really appreciate the support and the help.
• 59:27
  Also, you know, you're like a mentor to chefs.
• 59:29
  You're also a mentor to chefs and podcast.
• 59:31
  Like, I really appreciate that. You're welcome.
• 59:34
  But private work was something I never wanted to do.
• 59:37
  I never thought I would do again.
• 59:38
  I wanted to be the person behind the scenes.
• 59:41
  He wanted to be Eric Repair gets the attention and he's the chef
• 59:45
  of La Bernadine. I wanted to be the person
• 59:47
  holding the standard in the kitchen every day.
• 59:49
  Marcus is on television. Marcus does this.
• 59:51
  I wanted to be the one making the restaurants great every day.
• 59:54
  So no matter who came in there, having an amazing experience
• 59:57
  that matches the image of the chef that they have.
• 1:00:00
  And that was I was really passionate about that.
• 1:00:04
  Private work is not that because even if the chef.
• 1:00:10
  In front is the one getting the awards.
• 1:00:12
  I have the personal satisfaction of my ego being stroked and I
• 1:00:16
  know that I'm the one that helped be a part of making that
• 1:00:19
  happen. And that was something that was
• 1:00:21
  really important to me. A private work.
• 1:00:25
  There's no awards, there's no recognition and it can be hard
• 1:00:30
  because as chefs, like if you say you don't have an ego like
• 1:00:33
  blow smoke somewhere else. Like.
• 1:00:35
  All have a bit of ego. Every and by the way, it's like
• 1:00:38
  when I get that's one of my pet peeves when people say I don't
• 1:00:40
  have an ego, I was like, I want to show them a definite ego is
• 1:00:42
  self-awareness. Like you're aware of yourself.
• 1:00:44
  Yeah, so everyone has an ego. Let's let's get that it's some
• 1:00:47
  people have a ego that is unbearable and some people have
• 1:00:50
  an ego that's positive like yeah, happy go lucky is part of
• 1:00:54
  your ego as. Well, right.
• 1:00:55
  Yeah. And like for me, I used to not
• 1:00:59
  be a very happy, pleasant person.
• 1:01:01
  Believe it or not, I. Don't believe that.
• 1:01:02
  Happiness is a fucking choice. Life, as my mother told me, life
• 1:01:06
  will kick you in the nuts every day.
• 1:01:09
  It is whether you choose to smile and move on and walk it
• 1:01:13
  off, or if you choose to let it turn you into somebody else.
• 1:01:16
  And for a while I had kind of let restaurants turn me into
• 1:01:20
  somebody else. Not I was never out of
• 1:01:22
  character. I was never the kind of chef who
• 1:01:25
  would tear somebody down or make an insult personal.
• 1:01:28
  But I definitely was raised in a system and became part of that
• 1:01:32
  system. So it took me moving out of
• 1:01:35
  kitchens. Also, I stopped driving because
• 1:01:38
  when I get behind the wheel, I'm a whole another person.
• 1:01:40
  It's like getting behind the wheel and getting in a kitchen.
• 1:01:42
  It's like Jacqueline Hyde for me.
• 1:01:44
  So getting out of restaurant kitchens allowed me to lighten
• 1:01:48
  up a bit and get back to like being in a more pleasant
• 1:01:53
  headspace because there's so much pressure in restaurants.
• 1:01:56
  And I loved that. And I thought I was thriving in
• 1:01:58
  it. But going to private work, I was
• 1:02:01
  like, wow, I'm cooking something and I'm getting the instant
• 1:02:04
  gratification. It may not be an award, I might
• 1:02:06
  not be on a list, but I'm getting the instant
• 1:02:08
  gratification of seeing this event go amazingly well for the
• 1:02:14
  board of this amazing art institution or these incredibly
• 1:02:18
  high level, you know, executives or people that you read about
• 1:02:22
  and I'm cooking and they're enjoying it.
• 1:02:24
  And it's like, you can be on the news and you can be whomever you
• 1:02:28
  are, but when you come into the kitchen, you're like, man, chef,
• 1:02:32
  that was fucking awesome. Like you're, you're connecting
• 1:02:35
  with people on a different plane and it's so personal and it's
• 1:02:39
  very intimate in a way because you're at somebody's home.
• 1:02:43
  And it's more gratifying than I ever thought it would be.
• 1:02:47
  And yes, the starting salary for a private chef in New York, I'm
• 1:02:51
  not sure about all markets, but in New York, in New York, a
• 1:02:58
  private chef is probably going to be starting around between
• 1:03:01
  1:15 and 1:25. And you're probably going to be
• 1:03:05
  getting benefits too, vision, dental, healthcare, 401K, you
• 1:03:10
  know, that's it's a completely different dynamic and then you
• 1:03:12
  go up from there. And you're a very accomplished
• 1:03:15
  chef. But there's people that are able
• 1:03:17
  to not have climbed all the way up to executive sous chef and
• 1:03:22
  executive chef that can say, hey, you know, I'm a pretty
• 1:03:24
  solid sous chef, and I could do that and make that money.
• 1:03:27
  Yeah. Now I don't have to wait 10 more
• 1:03:29
  years until I'm ready to make that.
• 1:03:30
  You do have to have some experience under your belt.
• 1:03:33
  You can't go in cold. You need to know how to time
• 1:03:37
  things course to course. You need to know how to put
• 1:03:40
  together a full menu. You need to know how to get to
• 1:03:44
  know somebody. So you have to have the front of
• 1:03:46
  house and back of house experience a bit, but it's more
• 1:03:50
  about maturity. You don't have to be a mature
• 1:03:52
  cook, you have to be a mature human to be able to be
• 1:03:56
  successful at it. We could do a whole episode on
• 1:03:59
  Project Chef if we could. But as we get close to the end,
• 1:04:02
  I like to do, by the way, here's a business idea for people.
• 1:04:05
  So for you and for anyone that's listening, that this is like,
• 1:04:08
  you're welcome. I'm gonna throw this out there
• 1:04:09
  to the universe. Open up the Culinary Olympic
• 1:04:13
  Training Center. Oh.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah. And you don't have to say what
• 1:04:16
  show you're going on. You're just going to come over
• 1:04:18
  here, you're going to pay me X amount of dollars.
• 1:04:20
  We're going to put you through this for three weeks.
• 1:04:23
  You could sign an NDA and then we'll, you could partner up and,
• 1:04:26
  and and leave and I will, we will put you through the
• 1:04:28
  grinder. Oh my God I have a whole
• 1:04:30
  curriculum that would be amazing from like basic techniques to
• 1:04:33
  advanced techniques by the end of that.
• 1:04:35
  It will cover Top Chef, it'll cover Next Level Chef, it'll
• 1:04:38
  cover, you know, the next sous chef.
• 1:04:41
  Whatever that competition is, hell yeah, any of them.
• 1:04:43
  You need to go through it. We'll put you through the
• 1:04:45
  grinder. We'll even have specialty
• 1:04:46
  courses for like barbecue and pastry and all that.
• 1:04:48
  Only $50,000 for three weeks. It's totally worth it.
• 1:04:53
  Most of the prize money is like 2. 100 No, we'll just take a
• 1:04:57
  portion of the prize money. Even better Hell.
• 1:05:00
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like those lawyers that you
• 1:05:02
  only have to pay if you win. OK on your station.
• 1:05:06
  Let's just say it's it's your work in the past, you're
• 1:05:09
  finishing. What is your go to salt in the
• 1:05:11
  kitchen? Oh, finishing salt.
• 1:05:13
  Finishing Salt Maldon, but I am slightly grinding it in my
• 1:05:22
  fingers. To give it a little.
• 1:05:23
  Crush. Yeah, give it a little crush
• 1:05:25
  because sometimes you get a big flake here and not enough there.
• 1:05:29
  So Maldon, I love the kind of high note flavor that it has for
• 1:05:34
  the salinity and the minerality, but it does need to be dispersed
• 1:05:39
  a little more evenly. So Maldon but crushing it.
• 1:05:41
  What's your general? I know there's always going to
• 1:05:44
  be exceptions, but general finishing acid.
• 1:05:48
  Lemon juice, Lemon juice, lemon juice.
• 1:05:49
  Lemon juice? What about your all-purpose
• 1:05:52
  workhorse salt? Baleen, baleen, baleen, fine sea
• 1:05:56
  salt baby all day all day. Look at you.
• 1:05:59
  Yeah, that's the French kitchen. I'm a baleen girl.
• 1:06:02
  I'm a baleen here. Early all the way all.
• 1:06:04
  Right, fair enough. Are you are you a green tape or
• 1:06:08
  a blue tape person? Or any blue?
• 1:06:09
  Blue. Blue tape?
• 1:06:10
  Do you cut them? Oh God, yeah.
• 1:06:12
  Is there any other? Way Do you do you use scissors?
• 1:06:14
  Do you use tape? Cutter.
• 1:06:14
  Oh OK, so I usually do paring knife, fold the tape over the
• 1:06:20
  knife and go parallel to the countertop.
• 1:06:23
  If you're cutting on the countertop, you're a fucking
• 1:06:25
  asshole. There's no, no, there's no world
• 1:06:28
  in which your blade should touch.
• 1:06:30
  I know stories of people getting thrown out of kitchen for doing.
• 1:06:32
  That. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:06:33
  For people that are listening, don't go to certain kitchens and
• 1:06:36
  cut on the stainless steel. That shows such a disrespect for
• 1:06:39
  the environment. Your knife, everything but cut
• 1:06:42
  parallel to the countertop with a paring knife.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah. Is there something that you do
• 1:06:48
  like if you, if you do something as a chef that you said a lot of
• 1:06:52
  people could really learn from this.
• 1:06:54
  Maybe like I'll give you an example.
• 1:06:57
  Maybe it's the way that you cook fish a certain way or the way
• 1:07:00
  that you extract flavor from something that a lot of people
• 1:07:04
  do. Like don't throw your artichoke
• 1:07:05
  trimmings. Turn that into stock.
• 1:07:07
  Is there something that you do that you think a lot of people
• 1:07:09
  could start implementing into their kitchen?
• 1:07:10
  That's an easy it's an easy win. In restaurant kitchens or home
• 1:07:15
  kitchens for. Only chefs listens.
• 1:07:17
  Yeah, If there's a home chef listing and you've never worked
• 1:07:22
  in the industry, stop. Welcome to our world.
• 1:07:26
  I'm just kidding. Gosh, I feel like every time I
• 1:07:30
  think I do something special, somebody else is doing it.
• 1:07:34
  Like the hubris of saying that like I do this so well that
• 1:07:38
  nobody else does is complete bullshit.
• 1:07:41
  But something that you see in kitchens when you go is like,
• 1:07:43
  hey, I'll say like, do this. It'll save you save you some
• 1:07:46
  headaches. Yeah.
• 1:07:49
  Oh, gosh, I think it's one thing that I am OCD about.
• 1:07:56
  Put something back exactly where you took it from.
• 1:08:00
  Exactly. That will save you so much time
• 1:08:04
  because so much of cooking is muscle memory.
• 1:08:06
  So if I put my spoon, even if it's in a spoon vein, if I put
• 1:08:10
  it to the right side and then somebody comes on my station,
• 1:08:13
  it's on the left, that's going to cost me two to three seconds
• 1:08:16
  shifting through the things to find that.
• 1:08:18
  It's going to be more than two to three seconds for the
• 1:08:20
  tantrum. Yeah.
• 1:08:23
  So for me, it's literally it's, there's so many food things that
• 1:08:27
  people know. I can't teach professionals
• 1:08:29
  something, you know, that they probably haven't seen or tried
• 1:08:34
  or it didn't work for them. But literally putting things
• 1:08:37
  back. Exactly where you got them.
• 1:08:41
  The aggregate amount of time you spend by the end of a service
• 1:08:45
  will add up exponentially. You'll move so much better,
• 1:08:49
  You'll be so much more fluid because you're not thinking
• 1:08:51
  about what you're getting, you're thinking about what
• 1:08:53
  you're cooking. It's keeping your focus where it
• 1:08:55
  should be. And so I can just reach here and
• 1:08:58
  I know this is exactly where I need it to be.
• 1:09:00
  If I see the butter bubbling a little too fast and starting to
• 1:09:02
  brown, I know exactly I don't have to take my eyes off of it.
• 1:09:06
  So I think that small thing makes such a big difference.
• 1:09:10
  If you had this is going to be the most difficult question.
• 1:09:13
  If you had a Mount Rushmore chef and you've worked for some
• 1:09:17
  people's Mount Rushmore by the. Way I yeah, that's yeah.
• 1:09:22
  Who? Who goes on Mount Rushmore?
• 1:09:25
  Gosh, it's it's actually hard to narrow that down.
• 1:09:27
  That's 4, right? That's four.
• 1:09:28
  Yeah. Shit.
• 1:09:29
  OK, Well hands down, James Hemmings would 100% be on there
• 1:09:34
  and. For people that don't know
• 1:09:35
  James. For people who are not familiar
• 1:09:36
  with James Hemings, he was the chef for Thomas Jefferson.
• 1:09:41
  He's a black man. He was enslaved.
• 1:09:43
  He was owned by the Jefferson family, by Thomas Jefferson's
• 1:09:47
  wife. The family owned famously Sally
• 1:09:50
  Hemings. Was sorry, James Hemings.
• 1:09:53
  Did I say Hemings or did I say Jefferson?
• 1:09:56
  OK, so the Hemings family was owned by Thomas Jefferson's
• 1:10:01
  wife's family, and she brought them as part of her dowry when
• 1:10:05
  she married Thomas Jefferson. So Sally Hemings was famously
• 1:10:08
  Thomas Jefferson's other wife. They had several children
• 1:10:13
  together, but she was owned by him and his family.
• 1:10:16
  Her brother was the chef for Thomas Jefferson.
• 1:10:20
  So Thomas Jefferson, as was he Secretary of State or something?
• 1:10:24
  He moved to France and lived there for a long time, brought
• 1:10:27
  his his slaves and his family with him.
• 1:10:30
  And James Hemmings was the first American chef to train in
• 1:10:34
  France. He brought back everything that
• 1:10:39
  laid the foundation for American cuisine, incorporating French
• 1:10:42
  technique. It's kind of like when the
• 1:10:43
  Italians and French would marry within Europe and bring those
• 1:10:47
  cooking techniques to other countries, and that's how French
• 1:10:50
  cuisine became so dominant around Europe.
• 1:10:53
  Same thing happened here, but James Hemmings brought back
• 1:10:57
  learning how to make French fries, bechamel, the mother
• 1:11:02
  sauces. He was the first American chef
• 1:11:04
  to be doing ice cream because he learned how to make.
• 1:11:08
  Why am I blinking? Custard base.
• 1:11:09
  Yeah, custard base. What's it called?
• 1:11:12
  I can't remember what the fuck, but you know what I mean.
• 1:11:14
  Ice cream base. So he learned all those
• 1:11:16
  techniques and friends everything literally from potato
• 1:11:19
  chips and French fries to something technical like mousse
• 1:11:22
  and ice cream. And he that's why Thomas
• 1:11:24
  Jefferson was the man, because his chef was so freaking
• 1:11:29
  amazing. And that was the man who did it.
• 1:11:33
  Who else is on my more smart? Right, he is.
• 1:11:37
  I mean, hands down, he is probably the most influential
• 1:11:40
  chef in American cuisine in the history of his country.
• 1:11:44
  So James Hemmings would be front and center.
• 1:11:50
  Oh, gosh, maybe it's a tough call between Jean Louis Paladin,
• 1:11:55
  David Boulet. Oh, but you know somebody that
• 1:11:58
  they that they both have in common, Elaine Ducasse.
• 1:12:03
  So Elaine Ducasse because of the tree that came out from him.
• 1:12:10
  Eric repair. Eric repair hands down.
• 1:12:15
  So much in so many ways for I would have to say probably Edna
• 1:12:20
  Lewis, because she was one of the chefs that was also very
• 1:12:24
  influential in American cuisine. And she was originally from
• 1:12:28
  Virginia, made her name in New York and had such a huge
• 1:12:33
  influence on people like Alice Waters.
• 1:12:37
  Even Jean Louis Paladin have eaten at her restaurant.
• 1:12:40
  There's so many, so many small touches that she was able to
• 1:12:45
  popularize among regional American cuisine and letting
• 1:12:49
  ingredients speak for themselves.
• 1:12:51
  Also a black woman. So, you know, she she was the
• 1:12:55
  chef of a couple restaurants in New York and then just kind of
• 1:12:59
  faded out when she went back to Virginia as she got older.
• 1:13:02
  But an amazing chef who had such a huge, who had such a huge
• 1:13:07
  impact on American cuisine from coast to coast.
• 1:13:12
  Well, this was fun. We could, we could, we could do
• 1:13:14
  like Part 2, part 3-4 for sure. So fun.
• 1:13:17
  Where can people find you and where can people listen to your
• 1:13:20
  podcast? So the podcast is called The
• 1:13:22
  Chef's Cut, and it's me and my good friend Joe Flam.
• 1:13:25
  He's actually the guy who beat me on Top Chef in the finale,
• 1:13:28
  but we like them anyway. You hadn't done the Olympic
• 1:13:30
  Training Center yet? So it's on Apple and Spotify
• 1:13:34
  wherever you get your podcast, right after listening to Chef's
• 1:13:37
  PSA, you can go right down to there.
• 1:13:40
  It's a great podcast, I love it. I really appreciate that we have
• 1:13:43
  a good time and then on Instagram at Chef Adrian
• 1:13:47
  Cheatham or the Chef's Cut Pod on IG where you can see all the
• 1:13:51
  guests that we have and all the fun wild shit we talk about.
• 1:13:56
  This is fun. Thank you so much, chef.
• 1:13:58
  Yeah, we'll have you back. I would love that, thank you.
• 1:14:02
  Well, I hope you enjoyed the show.
• 1:14:03
  You know what to do and make sure you leave five stars if
• 1:14:05
  you're listening on Spotify or anywhere really.
• 1:14:07
  If you're watching on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe
• 1:14:09
  button. I'd completely revamp the chef's
• 1:14:11
  PSA store, shop.chefspsa.com. My team added a ton of new
• 1:14:16
  items. I advise you to go check it out.
• 1:14:18
  Just peruse, look around, maybe you see something nice that you
• 1:14:21
  like. Keep supporting the show.
• 1:14:23
  Go to chefspsa.com You get books, obviously the merch,
• 1:14:26
  early access to episodes on sub stack and Spotify for premium
• 1:14:30
  members. We'll see you next week.
• 1:14:32
  Hit the porno music. No Andre in the kitchen.
• 1:14:35
  Mix it. Drop the chef knowledge.
• 1:14:37
  No fiction stirring up the BC enough the session.
• 1:14:40
  Listen. Close classes in session.