Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / No Star Is Worth Your Health: Jake Rojas Episode 192

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No Star Is Worth Your Health: Jake Rojas Episode 192 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  The thing that is the most important that I've learned is
• 0:03
  it fucking doesn't matter on what the food looks like, where
• 0:08
  it's sourced from, how it's sourced, what the garnish is,
• 0:11
  what fucking plate where you're using, whether it's a 30 hour
• 0:16
  sous video or not, if it's not delicious, if it's not well
• 0:22
  seasoned, it doesn't matter. Hello, chefs.
• 0:26
  This is Chef's PSA and I'm your host, Andre Natera.
• 0:28
  Today's episode is my friend, Chef Jake Rojas.
• 0:32
  This is a powerful story. It's going to touch on some
• 0:34
  strong subjects. His battle with cancer, working
• 0:38
  in some of the greatest kitchens, including the two
• 0:40
  Michelin star Alain Ducasse restaurant in Las Vegas and the
• 0:44
  three Michelin star with Joel Robichon.
• 0:46
  Traveling the world with the Master Chef Society and
• 0:49
  competitions and putting a perspective on chef's life.
• 1:05
  What happened? Man, it's been a long stretch.
• 1:09
  You know, it's, I found myself in a moment of adversity dealing
• 1:17
  with thyroid cancer, which I never fathom would be my
• 1:23
  trajectory. And it's been, you know, a road
• 1:29
  that has allowed me to really dig deep and think about the
• 1:34
  things that are important to me as a chef.
• 1:38
  As I mean it, it was sudden, right?
• 1:39
  You didn't. You didn't see it like it was
• 1:41
  just one day to the next. Really.
• 1:43
  One day to the next, you know, it all happened in in early
• 1:47
  January of 2025, you know, February of 25, I started to
• 1:51
  notice that, you know, kind of a lump in my throat, kind of had a
• 1:54
  hard time swallowing. And then, you know, went down
• 1:59
  the path of Western medicine and kind of in and out seeing
• 2:02
  different doctors, different specialist.
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  I live in the Boston area, so, you know, we've got Dana Farber
• 2:09
  not far, which is, you know, kind of the cancer treatment
• 2:11
  center of the country. And so I was super fortunate to
• 2:15
  meet with some specialist in my area that, you know, gave me
• 2:18
  some insight. But also it just became a
• 2:21
  prolonged, you know, situation where trying to identify what
• 2:27
  was actually happening really took a lot of effort, I guess
• 2:34
  from, from, from, from my perspective, you know, and kind
• 2:38
  of not knowing, OK, I've got something that's happening in my
• 2:41
  throat as a chef. It was frightening, right?
• 2:46
  Especially when you kind of start to lose a little bit of
• 2:48
  your taste, you know, and we all know what, what Grant went
• 2:54
  through. So I, you know, I, I started to
• 2:56
  kind of like go down that road of like thinking about, you
• 2:58
  know, what Chef Grant went through and, you know, started
• 3:03
  to kind of research a little bit of his story and trying to apply
• 3:10
  some of the things that I found and the people that I talked to
• 3:12
  to my own personal journey. Well, I mean, and, and you know,
• 3:19
  I've obviously I've known you for a long time, so I've been
• 3:21
  following along when, when it happened to, to, to where we're
• 3:25
  at now. How has how has it gotten
• 3:29
  better? Treatment and time, you know, I
• 3:35
  will say that, you know, this type of disease really strips
• 3:42
  you down to the bare necessities mentally, physically,
• 3:50
  emotionally and running restaurants.
• 3:56
  Being a father trying to not die, you know, you start to
• 4:02
  prioritize what are the priorities that I have?
• 4:04
  Is the restaurant not really, you know, is it the ego that
• 4:09
  comes along with being an entrepreneur and being, you
• 4:11
  know, a chef? Not really.
• 4:13
  It is time and health at the end of the day.
• 4:17
  Without time and health and with health leading the two, there is
• 4:25
  no entrepreneurial mindset. There's no opportunity to lead
• 4:32
  and to be the mentor that you want to be if you don't have the
• 4:35
  health. And that was something that I
• 4:38
  guess I've taken for granted my whole entire career as a chef.
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  You know, I think that I grew up in, you know, a time of being a
• 4:47
  chef where, you know, there was some piracy that was, that was,
• 4:50
  you know, part of it. And I definitely pushed the
• 4:54
  envelope in all the ways, whether it was mentally or
• 4:59
  physically, you know, whether it was alcohol or drugs or, or, you
• 5:06
  know, just the sheer amount of work that one wants to be a part
• 5:12
  of in order to be a creative, in order to be a leader, right?
• 5:18
  All those things kind of just faded away and disappeared
• 5:22
  because I couldn't get out of bed 'cause I, you know, I
• 5:25
  couldn't swallow. And that really made me re
• 5:30
  evaluate the role of a chef, the role of a leader, the role of a
• 5:35
  father, the just the role as being a human being and kind of
• 5:39
  navigating the things we all navigate.
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  How so? You know, without time and
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  without health, you can't do those things.
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  They become obsolete. So I don't know that I
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  prioritized that in my past and I, I have quickly realized in
• 6:01
  this last year and if I really, you know, shrink it down to the
• 6:06
  last three to three to five months, I've learned a lot about
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  what I'm actually capable of. You know, I, I thought like
• 6:16
  spending time in three mission inside restaurants like with
• 6:18
  Joel Robichon and LAN du Cast and and, you know, being an
• 6:22
  entrepreneur and having 3-4 restaurants of my own.
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  I thought that it kind of like, you know, had experienced all
• 6:29
  the adversity that one might experience, but this was a
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  different level of, of adversity, a different level of
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  what was being asked of me as a human being.
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  And to be honest with you, I'm grateful for the experience.
• 6:51
  Yeah. You know, I, I think that I was
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  not taking the things that were like super important to me as as
• 7:06
  serious. What did you learn about
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  yourself during the process? I think the the learning moments
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  for me through the process of going through kind of this very
• 7:22
  tragic moment of my life as a chef, as a father and as just a
• 7:27
  human being trying to figure it out.
• 7:28
  I think the things that really created the most stress for me
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  was the question of will I be able to taste again?
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  Will I be able to swallow the, you know, the cancer spread into
• 7:45
  my thyroid, lymph nodes, tongue and tonsils.
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  So when I heard the word tongue, you don't come from the ENT
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  doctors and my oncologist, I thought the worst, you know,
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  because someone who heavily depends on taste and smell
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  everyday, whether it's in a creative way or just a passive
• 8:13
  way, right way to get through the day.
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  And the thought of losing that I think really struck me
• 8:24
  psychologically. And I think that was one of the
• 8:27
  most difficult parts to overcome was to get through the emotional
• 8:36
  stress of oh, fuck, what if I got to lose my tongue or what if
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  you know what I mean? So those are the first questions
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  I asked, you know, as a, as a chef, right, as a chef that, you
• 8:51
  know, highly depends on the sense of smell and taste.
• 9:00
  And I haven't, you know, it's, it's been six or seven months of
• 9:04
  treatment, three months of hardcore radiation and
• 9:10
  chemotherapy where they go in and the radiation attacks, you
• 9:16
  know, the, the, the clumping of cells that they call cancer.
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  And during that time, you know, the the doctors were very honest
• 9:26
  with me. Listen, we know that you're,
• 9:28
  you're young and you're, you know, you're healthy, but this
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  is going to crush you in a way that you've never been crushed
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  before. And I've been crushed, right?
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  Born and raised in El Paso on the border.
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  I've, you know, I've been crushed in a lot of ways, just
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  as you have, right? And, you know, it was kind of
• 9:51
  like, all right, let's give it to me.
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  You know, I can handle this. And I quickly realized that
• 9:56
  their crushed was not something I'd ever experienced before.
• 10:02
  You know, feeding tube had to be inserted, which meant I couldn't
• 10:05
  eat, couldn't swallow. Now I'm feeding myself through a
• 10:09
  tube while still running the restaurants, still showing up,
• 10:14
  still tasting, trying to taste, you know, cooking three meals a
• 10:19
  day for my kids but not being able to eat.
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  So I went three months with not eating or swallowing food and
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  inserting food into my body, trying to keep myself alive
• 10:33
  through these purees, which is a whole nother level.
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  It's, I'm sorry, a whole nother aspect in the health world or
• 10:44
  in, you know, in Western medicine where we're feeding
• 10:47
  people that are physically I'll with cancer, sometimes things
• 10:53
  that cause cancer, right? You know, I, I sat in some of
• 10:58
  these off some of these meetings with these nutritionists and
• 11:01
  these oncologists and you know, their goal is to get calories
• 11:07
  and and protein in you with lots of these shakes that they
• 11:12
  prescribe you. The first ingredient is high
• 11:14
  fructose corn syrup, right? And in all my research, sugar
• 11:19
  accelerates the growth of cancer, right?
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  So, you know, I had a hard time finding food that was not
• 11:29
  genetically modified, full of gums and full of, you know, bad
• 11:38
  ingredients. And there's not many out there.
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  And that was difficult because at the core, someone who spent
• 11:48
  their life feeding people and trying to feed people in ways
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  that it would feed myself or feed my children, that is going
• 11:56
  to nourish them. You realize, man, there's not a
• 12:00
  lot of options for people who are on their deathbeds with this
• 12:04
  disease. And it gave me, you know, of
• 12:08
  course, the entrepreneurial part of my brain is like, OK, now it
• 12:11
  might, you know, my next venture is to, to create this, this, you
• 12:15
  know, shake or this food that is good for people when they're
• 12:20
  going through cancer or something where they, you know
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  what I mean? They have to have a, a PEG tube
• 12:25
  inserted in them. Still working on that one.
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  Yeah, yeah. Well, last night we went to
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  dinner. Me.
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  You gave it Alice. And, you know, we're celebrating
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  and we're raising a glass of champagne and what, what, you
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  know, cheers to. And then you cut it off and you
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  said cheers to health because without that there's nothing.
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  There's nothing, bro. And it was never at the
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  forefront of my mindset. You know, I've, I've always been
• 12:56
  in a place where it's like, OK, maybe I should get to the gym a
• 12:59
  little bit more. You know, maybe I shouldn't do
• 13:02
  those late night pizza runs. Maybe I shouldn't, you know,
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  maybe I should cut back on this a little bit.
• 13:09
  But it wasn't affecting you now, so it's like I'm OK now.
• 13:13
  I'm fine, yeah, right. And then all of this hit.
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  I lost 55 lbs in amount of weeks, weeks.
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  You know, I had to be hospitalized in the middle of
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  everything because I, with all the meds I was being given, I
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  wasn't able to keep any of the pureed food in my feeding tube
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  down. So I had to be hospitalized in
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  the middle of everything. And the doctors like, you're not
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  doing good. It's like, well, you know, I'm
• 13:48
  you guys did this. This, this level of treatment
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  really, really was devastating for my body.
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  It was, you know, it wasn't ready for it, even though I
• 13:56
  thought I was ready for it. Yeah.
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  And as of today, how? Are you, you know, I'm about 3
• 14:05
  weeks or so back into consuming Whole Foods again, which last
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  night, you know, we had a dinner and man, it was kind of one of
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  the first dinners that I've had since my treatments where, you
• 14:22
  know, it felt like home. It felt like, OK, you know, the
• 14:27
  food was well executed. I could taste the food.
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  You know, I was sitting at a dinner table again with friends
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  that mean a lot to me, which is, you know, obviously, you know, a
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  part of dining that gives us enjoyment, fulfillment, right?
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  Hospitality felt hospitable. We felt welcome.
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  And I was like, OK, I'm back. It just feels feels like home
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  again, right? Kitchens are brutal right now,
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  everyone knows it. Fewer people on the line,
• 14:55
  margins tighter than ever, and somehow the expectations keep
• 14:58
  going up. There's just no room to miss
• 15:00
  anymore. I was talking to a chef recently
• 15:02
  who said the biggest stress wasn't the volume, it was the
• 15:05
  mental load. Babysitting, food, timing
• 15:08
  everything perfectly, trying to be everywhere at once.
• 15:12
  And that's where equipment matters more than people want to
• 15:14
  admit. Rationals technology comes up a
• 15:16
  lot in those conversations. The Icon B Pro, the Ivario Pro
• 15:20
  overnight roast that don't need to be checked, custom programs
• 15:23
  for all your recipes, consistency without hovering,
• 15:26
  completely automated cleaning, monitoring everything from your
• 15:30
  phone. The list goes on.
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  And what really buys you the headspace?
• 15:34
  Less standing over pans and more time to leave the kitchen
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  instead of constantly putting out tiny fires.
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  When you're down to cook, when the prep list is rough, when the
• 15:42
  production ramps up. Think rational.
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  Just being at the dinner table with friends and consuming food
• 15:49
  and sharing food and choosing and and and breaking bread, you
• 15:54
  know, everything that I've spent so much time creating and
• 15:59
  creating the relationships with the people that I surround
• 16:01
  myself with. So it felt really good, even
• 16:06
  though it was hard to, you know, it's hard to swallow some of the
• 16:09
  like the crab dish, I loved it, but there was just there was a
• 16:12
  little bit of acid in it. And unfortunately with like some
• 16:15
  of the radiation that I took, you know, it, it's really burned
• 16:21
  the inside of my mouth and my tongue.
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  And it's created a very adverse environment for consuming food.
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  And I'm, you know, I'm being told that that's going to
• 16:33
  change. But without health, there's
• 16:38
  nothing else. You're right, you know, it's
• 16:41
  when this whole thing started from, from my perspective,
• 16:44
  watching it from an outsider, you know, I think, I think we
• 16:48
  saw something on Instagram and it's like, am I seeing that
• 16:52
  right? You know, I like, I'm, I'm, I
• 16:55
  saw you post something in the stories and I'm like, am I
• 16:57
  seeing that right? So I quickly sent a text to Gabe
• 17:00
  like, hey, am I reading this right?
• 17:02
  Or, and Gabe's like, let's check in.
• 17:06
  He's OK. I checked in with David Sucio,
• 17:11
  who who's mutual friend who worked for you for a long time.
• 17:14
  And is he OK? He's like, ah, he's, he's good.
• 17:17
  He's Jake fucking Rojas. He's fine.
• 17:19
  Like OK, as more time went on, I was like, no, he's not.
• 17:22
  Yeah, man, he's not. And so we started checking in
• 17:24
  more and, you know, and, and, and you have a lot of people in,
• 17:32
  in our circle that care about you and, and, you know, behind
• 17:34
  the scenes, a lot of phone calls going on between myself and Gabe
• 17:38
  and Rico and, and, and, and David Sucio and like, hey, what,
• 17:42
  what do we need to do here? What what's going on?
• 17:46
  Obviously it's, it's the extended family, right?
• 17:49
  So it's not, you know, I, I people say family, but you know
• 17:52
  what I mean? It's the extended family.
• 17:54
  It's the, it's the people who care about you that aren't blood
• 17:56
  relatives. And there's a lot of them.
• 18:00
  But I know that, you know, from my own experience that, but when
• 18:06
  you're laying there in the bed, it feels like it doesn't like,
• 18:09
  it feels like that. It's great that people love you,
• 18:11
  but no one else is going through this with me.
• 18:13
  It's me. You're sitting there.
• 18:15
  You're you're, you're the one that has to go to the treatment
• 18:17
  every day and. For sure.
• 18:19
  You know, yeah, that's why I, I know that every time we check
• 18:25
  in, you know, and I think, I think David Sushi was, he's
• 18:32
  like, Jake's the strongest motherfucker I know.
• 18:37
  Yeah. Yeah, You know, I just like you.
• 18:43
  And just like so many of us, we've spent a lifetime in these
• 18:47
  careers of being a chef or being hospitality professionals,
• 18:54
  giving back, making time, creating space for people that
• 18:59
  are dealing with adversity, dealing with a hard time, going
• 19:06
  through a health scare, or just a charitable foundation that we
• 19:10
  believe in, right? I've spent a lifetime in my
• 19:14
  career giving, giving to these organizations, whether they're
• 19:18
  cancer foundations where they're, you know, lifting
• 19:23
  people up or feeding people that need food, right?
• 19:26
  It's always been a part of my coexistence with putting a white
• 19:33
  coat on, right? I always felt it is it was
• 19:36
  always a duty of mine to lift people up and to nourish them
• 19:39
  with my talents or, you know, my ways of, of feeling like I could
• 19:45
  support. So when I started posting their
• 19:52
  very cryptic posts of of me be like OK this is day one of you
• 19:57
  know my journey. Of cancer.
• 20:03
  And it was it was an unrealistic feeling until I started sitting
• 20:11
  in these rooms. I started going to these
• 20:15
  treatments and sitting there solo and be like, wow, I've got
• 20:22
  a massive group of people that are going to show up for me and
• 20:27
  support me. But at the end of the day, I'm
• 20:31
  the one that's going to have to go through the treatment and,
• 20:33
  and at the end of it, everyone's going to go home to their
• 20:35
  families and I'm going to go home and I'm still going to be
• 20:38
  dealing with this. And I've never dealt with
• 20:41
  something that was so hardcore feeling like, fuck, I'm in this
• 20:48
  solo, you know what I mean? But I wasn't.
• 20:51
  But internally you internalize it as like, you know, no one
• 20:56
  else has the, the, what I'm dealing with, the cancer I'm
• 20:58
  dealing with, I'm the one that's dealing with it.
• 21:02
  But I had so many people show up for me.
• 21:04
  The Tony Foundation showed up for me, which I'm, I'm super
• 21:07
  excited getting, getting the opportunity.
• 21:11
  I'm here in Texas now, you know, to hang with you guys.
• 21:15
  And then we're Gabe and I are shooting at San Antonio tomorrow
• 21:17
  to hang out with Rico and, and, and, and going to meet up with
• 21:20
  Tony at the Tony Foundation and going to one of the dinners.
• 21:22
  And, you know, they, no questions asked, you know,
• 21:26
  during Christmas, you know, I, Gabe linked me up with Tony and,
• 21:29
  and they were like, Jake, what do you need?
• 21:32
  You know, we got you and, you know, showed up in a time during
• 21:36
  Christmas when like, you know, in New England, it's one of our
• 21:40
  slowest times in the restaurant business.
• 21:42
  There's not a lot of extra cash flow, you know, So lots of
• 21:46
  people showed up, created a GoFundMe for me and kind of
• 21:49
  helped me get through a lot of obstacles that I was facing, you
• 21:56
  know, but I would still go to these treatments and sit in
• 21:59
  these rooms with these people that I didn't know, that weren't
• 22:05
  going to make it to the treatment.
• 22:08
  And they knew it. And that was hard because you
• 22:12
  create these relationships, right, with these people.
• 22:17
  And I've never been in a place where I've created relationships
• 22:20
  with multiple people and there what they were dealing with
• 22:28
  wasn't going to be what I was dealing with, right?
• 22:31
  I was going to, I found myself in a place where I was going to
• 22:34
  be able to get through it. Some of these other people that
• 22:37
  I met, moms, dads, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, family
• 22:46
  oriented individuals, they weren't going to go home and be
• 22:51
  alone like I was. And I was like, fuck, at the end
• 22:54
  of the day, I'm going to go home whether or not I'm alone or not,
• 22:58
  I'm going home, you know, And that gave me a different
• 23:02
  perspective too, into time and into health.
• 23:08
  So if there's anything that I, I've taken away from this
• 23:11
  journey is is to be respectful of time and to make that time be
• 23:24
  focused on keeping your health. Because at the end of the day,
• 23:27
  when you got 50 guests and you got the tasted menu and you've
• 23:30
  got one star, two stars, three stars and no stars, it fucking
• 23:34
  doesn't matter at the end of the day.
• 23:39
  And the doesn't matter what guests you're serving, doesn't
• 23:41
  matter who's coming in tonight, who's the VIP, who's not.
• 23:45
  You know how difficult your day may be.
• 23:48
  Fucking fish showed up. Fish didn't show up.
• 23:50
  You know what I mean? All the adversity one deals with
• 23:53
  with with being in this business, if you can't show up,
• 24:02
  then there's nothing else. So I'm, I'm talking to a friend
• 24:05
  of mine the other day and what we're, we're talking about
• 24:10
  sometimes the guilt that chefs have because they don't want to
• 24:15
  leave a job for a better opportunity or they don't want
• 24:18
  to better themselves out of fear of, well, I'm, am I being
• 24:25
  disloyal or whatever the case might be because we're so used
• 24:28
  to putting everyone before us for sure.
• 24:30
  We, I mean, it's, it's what we do.
• 24:32
  We put the cuisine before us. We put the guests before us.
• 24:35
  We put everything before us. And I mean, for people that are
• 24:40
  listening that are, that are watching the podcast right now,
• 24:44
  like maybe you just need to hear it.
• 24:47
  You have permission to take care of you first.
• 24:50
  No one's coming to save you. No one, no one's going to go
• 24:53
  through, no one's going to go through it with you and your
• 24:56
  family and your loved ones but you.
• 24:59
  For sure. And if you don't put yourself
• 25:01
  first, like because you're afraid to give yourself
• 25:04
  permission, like, hey, if someone needs to give you
• 25:06
  permission to take care of you, this is it.
• 25:08
  This is me telling you, take care of you first.
• 25:10
  You have permission. Absolutely, yeah.
• 25:11
  No one ever said that to me. No one ever said that to you.
• 25:14
  No, right. Until you hit rock bottom,
• 25:18
  right? I know some of the struggles
• 25:20
  that you've gone through as being an entrepreneur, as being
• 25:23
  a chef, you know, dealing with adversity, dealing with all the
• 25:26
  things that we're, you know, all the cards that were being dealt.
• 25:29
  I know your story. You know mine, right?
• 25:33
  We grew up in, you know, we grew up in the same town, right?
• 25:36
  Same neighborhood. Yeah, exactly it was.
• 25:38
  Funny for people that are listening to like last night we
• 25:40
  were telling stories and it's like where you went to high
• 25:43
  school. It's like, yeah, I got robbed at
• 25:44
  that bus. I might have robbed a few people
• 25:47
  at that bus stop. Just say, yeah, no, it's, I
• 25:54
  never take that for granted. You know, I think there was a
• 25:59
  moment in my life where I did, and it's just because I, I was
• 26:04
  unaware. What do you mean?
• 26:06
  You know, just taking for granted, you know, that you're
• 26:11
  going to be given the opportunity, right?
• 26:15
  And I think opportunities come when you create them, which is
• 26:18
  what I realized, right? And when I ended up moving from
• 26:22
  El Paso to Dallas, I met chefs that gave me opportunity that
• 26:28
  I've never been given before, like Michael Scott, right, Pat
• 26:32
  Mitchell and Dave Sokol, like some of these guys that all of a
• 26:35
  sudden now I realize that we, you know, you and I were, were
• 26:39
  more. Yeah, we were.
• 26:41
  We were in that same group, you know.
• 26:45
  I remember doing all the, all those food grazers at, at
• 26:47
  Salerno's or Oh my God, in the, in the grass, in the grass in
• 26:51
  the back, right. Totally, totally.
• 26:55
  But you know, those guys looked at me and they gave me an
• 26:57
  opportunity. They they saw that I was eager
• 26:59
  to show up and, and, and looking for opportunity.
• 27:03
  And, you know, I've transferred that into into my growth and
• 27:10
  sharing that with the people that have kind of come through
• 27:12
  my kitchens, you know, but none of that's possible without
• 27:19
  health. I cannot stress that more now
• 27:23
  than anything else, you know. But there there's another part
• 27:27
  to that story, you know, because you and I came from the same
• 27:31
  area, same number Gabe 2. You know, for people that don't
• 27:33
  know Gabe and Alice, Top Chef season 18 winner.
• 27:36
  He and I grew up on the same block he lived.
• 27:39
  He lived up the street for me where you lived.
• 27:44
  And we didn't know each other then because I'm a little bit
• 27:46
  older than him, right? So, and, and where you lived is
• 27:50
  like, well, I graduated in the high school that's close to
• 27:53
  where you live. Right.
• 27:54
  Yeah, of course. And, you know, knowing, knowing
• 27:57
  the same people and, you know, we're, we're kind of talking
• 27:59
  shit last night, but the, the three of us and, and other
• 28:03
  people as well, but just, you know, just culinary related and
• 28:07
  Rico too, also from the same town and, and Fettamine and, and
• 28:11
  a lot of other chefs. And well, one of the things that
• 28:15
  I think a lot of people don't realize, like we left and we, we
• 28:18
  went on this journey like, because I, I needed to escape
• 28:23
  because I wasn't, I was a bit of a knucklehead.
• 28:27
  And it's like, well, what are you going to do with yourself?
• 28:28
  Like I'm going to cook. I didn't, I didn't know anything
• 28:31
  about cooking. I was like, I'm, I'm going to
• 28:32
  cook because it seemed like, OK, girls like chefs.
• 28:34
  I like girls. Boom.
• 28:35
  That's, that's the easy answer. So all right, go to Portland OR
• 28:39
  move 2000 miles away. 17 years old, don't have any life
• 28:44
  experience outside of the hood for sure.
• 28:46
  You know what I mean? Like and, and then and figure it
• 28:48
  out, still, still trying to figure out.
• 28:51
  And then from there, you know, my culinary journey, very
• 28:54
  similar to yours through Dallas, through that same world master
• 28:58
  chef society, competitive chefs. And, and then here I am, here
• 29:04
  you are. And, you know, you look at Gabe
• 29:05
  or you look at that mean and, and you know, all of us had to,
• 29:09
  you know, it's that, that, that hero's journey, like getting
• 29:12
  kicked out of the nest and it was hard and, and traveling
• 29:15
  through that. I don't know, it's, it's wild
• 29:19
  when I think about it, when I look back, because a lot of
• 29:22
  people are in that situation where they think there's, you
• 29:24
  know, I'm, I'm here and there's no way I'm going to get out.
• 29:27
  It's like, well, I, I can tell you there is a way.
• 29:29
  It's, it's, it's, it's hard. And sometimes you're going to
• 29:33
  think no doors are opening for you, but then you look back and
• 29:36
  you realize every single door open for you to get to where you
• 29:39
  are. For sure.
• 29:40
  You got to knock on the door. Yeah, you got to create the
• 29:42
  path. Yep, that's what it comes down
• 29:45
  to, right? Very similar to you, right?
• 29:48
  I found culinary because I found myself facing adversity.
• 29:55
  You know, I chose culinary or as the the counselor put it at
• 30:05
  Riverside High School and you know, vocational school in, in,
• 30:09
  in the Lower East Side of of El Paso, we teach our students the
• 30:16
  basis of classical French cooking.
• 30:18
  It's like, what the fuck is classical French cooking?
• 30:22
  I grew up on beans, rice, you know what I mean?
• 30:26
  Enchiladas in the morning, menudos on Sundays, going to the
• 30:29
  bodega. You don't carry the pot home
• 30:31
  full of menudo, right? Like, I had no clue what that
• 30:35
  meant, but I love to smoke weed. And I thought, all right, you
• 30:40
  know, I don't smoke before school, go in, do some cooking,
• 30:45
  get a little munchies, have some food that I like.
• 30:47
  My mind was just, you know, yeah, obviously not developed.
• 30:54
  I met people at that place that shaped my life, that gave me
• 31:05
  opportunities, that believed in me.
• 31:13
  And pushed me to search for the path and to not be embarrassed
• 31:21
  or not to be scared of knocking on the door.
• 31:25
  And if I didn't have that experience, you know, I don't
• 31:28
  know that I would have been able to find my path out, right.
• 31:37
  And I say that with love because El Paso has lots of positive.
• 31:43
  But at where I was at that time, we're talking about early to mid
• 31:47
  1990s, growing up in the Siguo Navarro area of El Paso, born El
• 31:54
  Paso high School, like shit was tough, right?
• 32:01
  It wasn't just tough for me. It was tough for everybody.
• 32:02
  We were, we were all in it together, right?
• 32:07
  And if you weren't for one side of the tracks, you had fucking
• 32:10
  better be from the other side because if not, you know,
• 32:14
  someone was going to kick your ass, right?
• 32:16
  And it was just kind of the way it went.
• 32:18
  And, and I found cooking, man. And in the late 90s, I found
• 32:23
  myself cooking at a place in downtown El Paso called Cafe
• 32:27
  Central. Shout out to Cafe Central.
• 32:29
  Cafe Central man. You know who else do you know?
• 32:32
  Mike Diaz. I do.
• 32:33
  Mike Diaz. Yeah.
• 32:34
  Yeah. Gosh, man, I spent a couple
• 32:39
  years as 1617 year old, right, maybe 18, in the kitchen of Cafe
• 32:46
  Central. I had foie gras for the first
• 32:49
  time. I had lobster for the first
• 32:52
  time. I learned how to make Caesar
• 32:56
  dressing. You know what I mean?
• 32:58
  I had an anchovy for the first time.
• 33:01
  I mean, that restaurant open my eyes to to food.
• 33:05
  Yeah, you know it was. It was the, I mean, back then it
• 33:08
  was probably the only fine dining restaurant.
• 33:10
  There was Chatfields. I worked at Chatfields.
• 33:14
  There was Chatfields. There was inside the Dome.
• 33:16
  I think it was, you know, what's the Paso del Northern?
• 33:19
  Yeah. Paso Del.
• 33:19
  Northern the the I think it was called the Dome.
• 33:21
  Right. I think it was, yeah.
• 33:23
  So there was like 3 restaurants that like if you're going to
• 33:25
  work, there's only three restaurants that aren't cooking
• 33:27
  enchiladas. For sure, right?
• 33:29
  Or Chiko stock with right? That's funny because we were
• 33:32
  talking last night. I didn't know you had worked at
• 33:34
  Cafe Centran. And we were, I said, did you
• 33:37
  know this guy Jacob? And you're like, yeah, I worked
• 33:39
  with him. And I was like, yeah, that was
• 33:40
  my roommate in Colorado. He was like, I was my first sous
• 33:43
  chef job. He was a roommate and he was a
• 33:45
  cook. He was a wild guy.
• 33:46
  But and it's like, yeah, 6° of separation.
• 33:48
  He's like, yeah, I worked. For him for sure, man, I worked
• 33:52
  with a lot of really great cooks at that restaurant and there was
• 33:58
  we were all pirates. I mean, it was a you know, it
• 34:00
  was that kitchen was full of pirates and we, you know, we
• 34:06
  went to battle with each other every day cause the restaurant
• 34:09
  was fucking packed. Yeah, you know, we were the show
• 34:12
  and and we were cooking food that I had never been around.
• 34:19
  What? Did you say tequila shrimp?
• 34:21
  Yeah, you know, the there was the, the Dozecki's clams, right?
• 34:26
  We had these steamed clams which I'd never had a clam either
• 34:28
  before, you know what I mean, And.
• 34:31
  Like you said, try and flog off for the first time you're like
• 34:34
  what the fuck is? This, I was, my mind was blown
• 34:36
  away, you know what I mean? And then I started to
• 34:41
  understand, OK, like in order to feed my feed my soul with what's
• 34:45
  happening here, I got to, you know, there's these books I was
• 34:48
  being turned on to, right? And these shafts that I was
• 34:51
  being turned on to. And, and it opened up my eyes
• 34:56
  and gave me an opportunity, but I created the path.
• 35:00
  I knew that in order for me to get to the next step, I needed
• 35:04
  to go through that, right? I needed to, to spend the time
• 35:07
  in a place like that. And it doesn't have to be the
• 35:11
  most, you know, elegant or fine dining restaurant in your town
• 35:14
  or in your city. But it has to be a place that
• 35:16
  people care about it for sure. And I think that's what a lot
• 35:18
  of. So I posted this on, on, on
• 35:21
  social media yesterday and I said kitchens aren't toxic
• 35:24
  Working around assholes and idiots or, or, or kitchens don't
• 35:29
  burn you out. Working around assholes and
• 35:31
  idiots is what burns you out. Because I think a lot of people
• 35:34
  think like, you know, I'm in this industry and it sucks and
• 35:37
  everyone's an asshole's like get yourself in a kitchen where they
• 35:39
  care for different. The, the, the industry is
• 35:43
  usually a reflection of the people that you're around.
• 35:46
  And a lot of people think that the entire industry is like
• 35:48
  that, but. It's not true.
• 35:49
  It's not. It's not true.
• 35:50
  You could be in a great kitchen, you could be in a bad kitchen.
• 35:52
  And and just because you worked in a bad kitchen doesn't mean
• 35:54
  all kitchens are bad. But I think I would advise
• 35:58
  people like if, if, if you're in a place like we were talking
• 36:02
  earlier, you don't need permission to leave.
• 36:04
  If it's not, if you're not loving it and it's not
• 36:07
  benefiting you and you're not improving as a human being and
• 36:09
  you're not getting closer to your to your goals.
• 36:11
  Like fucking get into a kitchen where you do.
• 36:14
  Like don't, no one's going to come save you.
• 36:15
  No one's going to come fucking drive by and be like, hey, I
• 36:18
  happen to be Gordon Ramsay. Come work for me.
• 36:20
  I see you the saute cook over there.
• 36:22
  I saw you pretty good. You cook that fish.
• 36:24
  Well, that doesn't happen. But anyway, I'm I'm getting off
• 36:29
  track. I was, I was thinking about you
• 36:31
  because I had I was talking about Robichon the other day on
• 36:36
  the podcast and I was thinking, Oh, fuck, you spent a lot of
• 36:41
  time in some of those, those crazy kitchens.
• 36:45
  So not only did you like we came up in the same area in Dallas
• 36:49
  under this World MasterChef Society competition style.
• 36:54
  So you were going, you know, with the teams to go compete in,
• 36:58
  what did you say, Switzerland? Sweden.
• 37:01
  Sweden, yeah, yeah. Visby, Sweden go first time out
• 37:05
  of the country rather than going to Juarez.
• 37:08
  Yeah, yeah. Go going, going overseas,
• 37:09
  competing in, you know, Culinary Olympics and Hotel Olympia and
• 37:12
  all these things. Totally with the team and I was
• 37:15
  involved too. And that's what I wanted to be
• 37:18
  more than anything else. Like I mean, we talked about it
• 37:20
  last night when I was younger as a chef.
• 37:22
  Like I want nothing more than to be ACMC fucking competition chef
• 37:26
  that that's all I want to do. I want to compete and I want to
• 37:29
  fucking have that embroidery on my jacket.
• 37:31
  And then as time went on for me, and I'm curious about you
• 37:34
  because again, similar background and we were both in
• 37:38
  Dallas at the same time, also in that same circle when I moved to
• 37:43
  California. And then I got a taste of not
• 37:47
  doing competition food, but doing fine dining at a high
• 37:50
  level and getting attention for it and realizing like these
• 37:54
  techniques and skills that I learned from these competition
• 37:57
  chefs, but my creativity and the books that I'm stealing recipes
• 38:01
  from can allow me to create food differently.
• 38:04
  I was like, well, I kind of got the the bug to like, OK, maybe
• 38:08
  maybe ACF competitions is not for me.
• 38:12
  Maybe I just kind of like this high end restaurant competitive
• 38:17
  mindset. It's all competitive.
• 38:18
  That that was me. You said fuck it, I'm going to
• 38:23
  Vegas, right? I did.
• 38:26
  I did. I, I was enamored as a, as a
• 38:32
  young culinarian on how A-Team could come together and build a
• 38:42
  grouping of dishes the, at a competition level, right?
• 38:46
  I always been kind of a competitive kid, you know, in
• 38:51
  sports and what not. And, you know, I was always the
• 38:54
  guy that was willing to bet I could run faster than you down
• 38:57
  the alley. And then you know what I mean,
• 38:59
  barefoot, you know what I mean? Like it was just kind of always.
• 39:02
  Funny that you say the alley. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:05
  Good. That's, you know, growing up in
• 39:06
  in Central Paso, everyone's got an alley.
• 39:09
  But like the competitive nature, right?
• 39:13
  Which I now understand how competitiveness and ego
• 39:19
  intertwine, right? And how neither one of them are
• 39:22
  bad unless you abuse them, right?
• 39:27
  But I was drawn in to the competition world as a 1516 year
• 39:34
  old at the tech, the vo tech school that I was going to
• 39:42
  Academy of Science and Technology is what it was called
• 39:45
  at at Riverside. But I competed in Skills USA,
• 39:49
  Vika, which was this, you know, national organization that was
• 39:54
  taking kids, you know, in high school and allowing them to
• 39:58
  compete against each other in their, you know, various trades.
• 40:02
  So I competed in culinary and I fucking won, right?
• 40:08
  I won with a chicken Ballantine dish that I never obviously
• 40:13
  never deboned the chicken, never created a farce, you know, never
• 40:16
  done anything like this. Never trust, trust the chicken.
• 40:19
  None of none of it. And you know, Sean Nugent taught
• 40:23
  me how to do that as a 15 year old.
• 40:26
  And I fucking won a scholarship to go to culinary school.
• 40:33
  Meanwhile, I was going to culinary to to the vocational
• 40:37
  school half day and then going to this accelerated Learning
• 40:40
  Center afterwards where you went there if you had dropped out of
• 40:45
  high school. And we're trying to get your
• 40:50
  credits quick, you know, kind of quicker than you would if you
• 40:53
  were in a regular high school setting in order to graduate.
• 40:59
  I fucked off so hard after my culinary program in the daytime,
• 41:04
  and I'm just, I was never going to the other part of the of the
• 41:07
  day, you know what I mean? I was finding myself at Preppies
• 41:12
  and Juarez, you know what I mean?
• 41:14
  Ripping down some coronitas. I was, you know, playing with
• 41:19
  fire, let's just put it that way.
• 41:21
  But that introduced me to the world of competition, right?
• 41:28
  And I was like, fuck, I can kind of, I'm good at this.
• 41:31
  And then when I, you know, I ended up getting my GED without
• 41:35
  a diploma because culinary school was like, hey, listen, if
• 41:39
  you don't use this, you're going to lose it.
• 41:41
  I was like, fuck, OK, I got a pastor.
• 41:43
  Community College, here we go. You know what I mean?
• 41:45
  It made it happen, but ended up in a space in Dallas with this
• 41:51
  group of chefs. Are you talking about EWMCS?
• 41:54
  That gave me the opportunity to be a part of this group of
• 42:01
  people that cared about not only competition or being
• 42:05
  competitive, but they had camaraderie, they had family,
• 42:09
  they had bonds that were deep. They all had their independent
• 42:13
  restaurants or they were all chefs in their independent
• 42:16
  places and they all kind of came together.
• 42:19
  Whether they were competitive in the dining world for guests or
• 42:24
  not, they were coming together. And that, you know, that made me
• 42:30
  want to have the CMC on my chef coat.
• 42:34
  You know, that made me want to be part of the ACF.
• 42:37
  That made me want to be a part of all of that.
• 42:40
  I mean, we were talking last night.
• 42:41
  I remember Ernst Gruk was a certified master chef was making
• 42:44
  these butterflowers and I'm helping them and I'm like
• 42:46
  totally melting my brain, like, Oh my God, he's making roses out
• 42:50
  of butter for sure. Yeah.
• 42:51
  And this is a long time ago. So I mean, I, I know to people
• 42:54
  today, it's like, yeah, I saw that on Instagram.
• 42:56
  It's like, yeah, I know. There was no Instagram.
• 42:58
  There was. You learn from chefs and books.
• 43:00
  That's it. For sure, for sure.
• 43:02
  I mean, I spent time with Ernst as well and learned how to do my
• 43:06
  first tornado, you know, put to perfect it because that was one
• 43:11
  of my jobs on one of the competitions that we ended up in
• 43:15
  Sweden was to I was to call me for the team.
• 43:18
  So, you know, other than making sure everyone's parking knife
• 43:21
  bag was where it should be and everyone had their utensils that
• 43:24
  they needed for the competition, I was also doing, you know,
• 43:28
  small jobs like that, you know, and fuck, if that one single
• 43:32
  tornado potato wasn't perfect that went on that plate with the
• 43:35
  beef Rossini. It's fucking my ass, you know?
• 43:40
  So yeah, I'm, I'm grateful for those those times in Dallas,
• 43:43
  Yeah. It was.
• 43:44
  Good times. Yeah.
• 43:44
  But I ended up, you know, as you said, I ended up moving on to
• 43:48
  Vegas. I ended up in Florida, was in
• 43:50
  New York for a little while. But I found chefs like Joel
• 43:55
  Robichon in the US, in Las Vegas and and Alan Ducasse.
• 44:02
  And that was a whole nother level of cooking that I didn't
• 44:05
  know existed either. Yeah.
• 44:07
  You know what I mean? Yeah.
• 44:09
  I want, I want to go back to something that you said just to
• 44:11
  give the audience context and then we'll get back to Robuchon.
• 44:15
  You said, you know, you were, you were going over to Juarez
• 44:18
  for people that because I don't think this happens anymore.
• 44:20
  I'm pretty sure it doesn't. But when we grew up in this time
• 44:24
  and I'll for people that don't know El Paso and Juarez are
• 44:27
  it's, it's a border city, but I mean, it's, it's, it's a 5
• 44:30
  minute walk, right? Once you, once you cross over
• 44:32
  the bridge and this is before it was difficult to go to Mexico
• 44:36
  either way. And so there was a strip of
• 44:39
  clubs and as long as you were about 13, you could you could
• 44:42
  walk over the bridge. And everyone did from the ages
• 44:46
  of 13 to 21, mostly because if you were 21, you didn't have to.
• 44:50
  You didn't have to, but you could walk over the bridge and
• 44:53
  you'd go into nightclubs and you'd party like in a fucking
• 44:57
  nightclub at 13 and 14 years old and you'd buy a bucket of beers.
• 45:00
  Drink and drown is what it was called, right?
• 45:02
  Drink $10 Drink and drown on Tuesday afternoon.
• 45:04
  Drink, drink and drown. You'd buy a bucket of beers and
• 45:06
  some places like get you like $2.00 drink and drown.
• 45:08
  Totally bucket of Dos Equis. Oh, and and you were getting you
• 45:12
  were getting wasted at 13 and 14 years old coming back over the
• 45:15
  border. All you had to say was American,
• 45:17
  if you could stand up and say American.
• 45:19
  Yeah, you were in. You were in.
• 45:21
  And for people that don't know, it's like, yeah, it it was wild
• 45:26
  because we had we were exposed to the nightclub life with drugs
• 45:32
  and alcohol at 13 and 14 years old.
• 45:35
  Tourist war, Yeah. And up right.
• 45:38
  But that's when you started to experience it totally.
• 45:40
  Yeah. And I don't think, I think
• 45:42
  that's an important piece of context because I don't know if
• 45:44
  anyone's ever, if you're not from there, you don't know that
• 45:46
  that happens. I mean, I live in New England
• 45:49
  now when I tell the story with parents that are in my age group
• 45:54
  and we, you know, we get to talking about our childhood, you
• 45:57
  know, upbringings. And I share some of these
• 45:59
  stories. And, you know, some people don't
• 46:02
  understand. The dynamic and I don't know.
• 46:04
  No, this is real and I spend lots of time perfecting it,
• 46:09
  Yeah. I was kind of fucking Jedi
• 46:11
  Mastering, right? OK, so anyway, we, we got all
• 46:15
  over. So you're, you're now you wind
• 46:17
  up in, in Vegas, right? So where'd you wind up first?
• 46:19
  Which which restaurant we got? I was on the opening team at
• 46:24
  Mix, which was Alan du an Alan du Cast restaurant.
• 46:27
  That was his second. Restaurant in the US at the
• 46:29
  time, right? Yeah, yeah, You had the Essex
• 46:31
  House in New York and yeah. And then the Vegas, which was on
• 46:35
  the 62nd floor of the hotel at the Mandalay Bay and.
• 46:39
  You know Bruno's the chef. Bruno Davion was the.
• 46:42
  Chef shout out to Bruno. Yeah, Bruno was the chef.
• 46:46
  I learned a lot from from him and Sean O'Toole.
• 46:51
  I learned a lot there. I learned a lot about perfecting
• 46:57
  the task. I learned a lot about execution
• 47:01
  and teamwork because we were, you know, a team of 12 cooks and
• 47:06
  four sous chefs, which that was the first kind of real brigade
• 47:10
  system that I had been a part of.
• 47:11
  Other than chefs at the pass, sous chefs on the line, 2 line,
• 47:16
  two or three line cooks, right? This was the first time where
• 47:20
  it's like, OK, I don't plate a single dish.
• 47:23
  Everything's passed to the pass and chef plates the food and
• 47:27
  make sure the food that's coming his way is cooked perfectly.
• 47:30
  And all my all your job was as a chef, to party was to cook the
• 47:35
  food. Did you have a steep learning
• 47:39
  curve? Because obviously you know how
• 47:42
  to cook, you understand competition food, but then you
• 47:45
  get into the DICAS system and it's different.
• 47:48
  You know how to cook. That's not the problem.
• 47:50
  The problem is getting your team to do what you want when you
• 47:53
  want it. That's leadership.
• 47:55
  My book, Culinary Leadership Fundamentals, breaks down
• 47:57
  exactly how to run a kitchen without losing your mind.
• 48:00
  Stop yelling. Start leading.
• 48:01
  Get the book at Chefs psa.com. Totally.
• 48:04
  I'm assuming they sear a certain way, they season a certain way,
• 48:06
  they cook a certain way totally. Yeah, every.
• 48:10
  I feel like everything that I had learned about seasoning
• 48:13
  heavy and cooking hard, it was kind of stripped back and it was
• 48:20
  more, OK, let's let ingredients shine and let's manipulate them
• 48:26
  least possible, right? And you know, I had dishes like
• 48:32
  that fucking horseradish panna cotta dish, you know, with the
• 48:36
  spicy tomato syrup in the legendary dish.
• 48:39
  Legendary. Yeah, Silvan Porte, right.
• 48:41
  Yeah, like Silvan was in the kitchen and, you know, he was,
• 48:46
  you know, he was tasting the food and he was there and Dukas
• 48:49
  was there, you know, where they there every night for service?
• 48:53
  They weren't. But we had, you know, you had
• 48:58
  such a respect for being in the kitchen that you, your goal was
• 49:02
  to do the best job no matter what, you know, and we were
• 49:07
  serving lots of people. You know, we, we had an
• 49:09
  opportunity to, I had an opportunity to learn a lot about
• 49:13
  food that I hadn't learned yet, you know, and I had to really
• 49:17
  strip back everything that I had previously learned and kind of
• 49:21
  re evaluate and redevelop my skills and realize I wasn't as
• 49:26
  good as I thought I was. And now I'm cooking in a kitchen
• 49:29
  with people from all over the world.
• 49:32
  And that was the first time I had been exposed to that, where
• 49:35
  I'm cooking in next people from Sweden, from Japan, from France,
• 49:39
  you know what I mean? And that gave me a new
• 49:43
  opportunity as a as a cook. Was there anything that you
• 49:46
  learned in in that kitchenette mix that is like, this is the
• 49:52
  best way I've ever seen it done and I still do it to this day?
• 49:55
  Risotto. Risotto.
• 49:56
  How so? Sylvan Porte tomatomake risotto.
• 50:03
  I mean, talk about having a good teacher.
• 50:04
  Right, right. And it's because.
• 50:06
  For people who don't know who Sylvan Porte is.
• 50:09
  Like he's the fucking legend that was scaling to Costa's
• 50:12
  system. For sure, across the world,
• 50:14
  across the world. I was making risotto.
• 50:19
  One day he fucking came up behind me and said, what the
• 50:22
  fuck are you doing, Barbie cook? Get the fuck out of the way,
• 50:26
  right? I show you all right, and watch
• 50:30
  him do it. And then he gave me the wooden
• 50:32
  spoon back and he's and then he was like, now you do it.
• 50:35
  And from that day on, you know what I mean?
• 50:37
  And it was an 11 minute timer and it was, you know, this
• 50:40
  technique and you know, I didn't understand that the the bouillon
• 50:44
  should be at a boil and you know what I mean?
• 50:46
  Went to season, what not to season, you know, the al dente
• 50:50
  Ness of the rice and what you're looking for with the tooth.
• 50:52
  And we were reheating it during service.
• 50:55
  So we pre cooked, you know, we weren't cooking Alan Manud
• 50:57
  because we were just, we weren't that particularly.
• 51:00
  Like 80% or? Something.
• 51:01
  Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean.
• 51:03
  So that's one thing that there I was like, OK, I had made risotto
• 51:06
  before, right? Yeah, I got it.
• 51:09
  Yeah, You know, and. With all this heavy cream,
• 51:13
  right? Yeah.
• 51:13
  And I realized quickly I was like, OK, I've been doing this.
• 51:17
  Not the wrong way, but not the right way, Yeah.
• 51:20
  Yeah, there's there's like pushing the finesse further and
• 51:23
  further refinement. Yeah, Yeah.
• 51:25
  So I learned refinement there, right?
• 51:29
  Was was the system more just out of curiosity because I I never
• 51:32
  worked under the ducat system. I've worked with people who
• 51:35
  have, but I've never, but specifically at Mix in Las Vegas
• 51:40
  with Bruno, how much of the system was influenced by Bruno
• 51:44
  or how much of it was it was the ducat system?
• 51:48
  At the core it was the ducat system and we cooked ducat
• 51:51
  dishes. But Bruno had the ultimate say
• 51:56
  in creating or changing or tweaking the dishes.
• 52:02
  And he he did that and he was I, in my opinion, super successful
• 52:07
  at doing that at a large scale. Right.
• 52:10
  We were serving at the end when I was there, you know, we were
• 52:13
  doing 250. Did you get the two stars while
• 52:17
  you were there? Yeah.
• 52:18
  Yeah. For people that don't know.
• 52:19
  So Bruno Davion, he's he deserves, he deserves to for
• 52:25
  people to know his name for sure, right.
• 52:28
  So he's a he's a very humble French chef.
• 52:31
  He's a phenomenal cook. And he was the chef at mix in
• 52:35
  Las Vegas. Then he came to Dallas
• 52:37
  afterwards. He was the the chef at the
• 52:39
  mansion on Turtle Creek. And he was at that time.
• 52:42
  So I want to say he came to the mansion in like 2010 ish, maybe
• 52:46
  2009. And he was taking over for Dean.
• 52:50
  Maybe he's taking over for John Teaser, but anyway, he was the
• 52:55
  chef at at the mansion on Turtle Creek and he big deal.
• 52:58
  It was 2 Michelin star chefs coming into Dallas.
• 53:01
  There was only three French restaurants at that level doing
• 53:04
  tasting menu stuff style at the time in Dallas.
• 53:08
  It was Bruno at the at the mansion.
• 53:10
  It was myself at the pyramid room and then it was the French
• 53:13
  room. I want to say Jason Weaver may
• 53:15
  have been the chef. I don't know for certain, but I
• 53:18
  remember I was so competitive with Bruno because it's like,
• 53:24
  you know, we're all kind of in the same circle.
• 53:25
  Like when in in in the tasty menu, French cuisine, you know,
• 53:30
  they got a souffle. We got a souffle.
• 53:31
  You know, they got a pasta, we got a pasta.
• 53:33
  You know, it's like they do 6 courses, we're going to do 7,
• 53:35
  you know, you know, fucking we got to one up them.
• 53:40
  But I had I was so competitive with him.
• 53:43
  He doesn't know this, but this is me.
• 53:44
  That was like, man, I want I admired him so much because of
• 53:50
  what a great chef he was. You know, he's a he's a great
• 53:53
  chef and you know, he indirectly pushed me to become better
• 53:58
  because I said, OK, the level we were talking about being
• 54:02
  competitive earlier level of competition came out like we got
• 54:05
  this two star chef coming in, like, let's see what let's see
• 54:08
  what he could do. See what he could do is like,
• 54:10
  OK, if he could do that. Then I got to the bar got raised
• 54:14
  for sure. What is the expression?
• 54:15
  You know, rising tide lifts all boats for sure.
• 54:20
  He was that rising tide in Dallas.
• 54:22
  And I have a lot of respect for Bruno because he made me better
• 54:26
  unknowingly. Unknowingly.
• 54:27
  Yeah, he made me better by, you know, checking my means on plots
• 54:32
  daily, right? You know, at that time, I was
• 54:37
  coming to the end of my time at Mix and my roommate had just
• 54:41
  opened Joel Rouachawn at The MGM Grand, the mansion of Joe
• 54:46
  Roubichon. He had Latalier and he had the
• 54:48
  mansion, and my roommate was working there, Stu Hummel and
• 54:55
  Marcel Vignoron and. Marcel from Top Chef season 1.
• 54:59
  Yeah, he was just the the apartment across the hallway
• 55:02
  from me at on South Las Vegas Blvd. at Diamond Sands.
• 55:08
  Was the name of the apartment complex.
• 55:10
  The best? I feel like all the cooks that
• 55:13
  if you were working at Picasso or you were working at, you
• 55:17
  know, at Alex Strada's place or you working at everyone lived in
• 55:20
  this apartment complex. So we had the most epic pool
• 55:23
  parties at this fucking apartment complex.
• 55:26
  Anyways, I didn't know who Joe Rochon was, right?
• 55:32
  Heard the whispers of the name, but kind of didn't understand
• 55:36
  how important of a chef he was in the 20th century, right?
• 55:46
  And I said to Bruno one day, hey, I'm thinking about maybe
• 55:52
  going to Joe Robuchon. And fucking Bruno was just like,
• 55:56
  you can never, you can never leave a laundry pass for Joe
• 56:00
  Robuchon. Just doesn't happen.
• 56:03
  You shouldn't do it. It's not a good idea.
• 56:07
  Is that just due to rivalry? Yeah.
• 56:09
  Yeah, and you know, some things happen at the restaurant.
• 56:14
  Switching gangs? Yeah, for sure, right.
• 56:16
  Some things happen at the restaurant and, you know, I was
• 56:19
  facing some adversity and I had a conversation with him again.
• 56:24
  And he's like my, my, one of my best friends is the chef Joel.
• 56:29
  If you, you know, I kept hitting him about it, kept hitting him
• 56:32
  about it. So he gave me the opportunity
• 56:34
  and he connected me. He's like, I'm going to do
• 56:36
  nothing or more but to just give you an e-mail.
• 56:40
  And I took the reins from there. I also found myself having to
• 56:44
  leave next. So I kind of needed to figure it
• 56:46
  out. But, you know, getting, getting
• 56:52
  the opportunity to to be on the opening team of, of Robuchon,
• 56:57
  which we quickly became, you know, the first 3 mission star
• 57:00
  restaurant in in Vegas gave me another opportunity to work with
• 57:06
  the brigade system of cooks and chefs from all over the world.
• 57:10
  That allowed me a different perspective on cuisine, a
• 57:14
  different perspective on respect for food, respect for each
• 57:19
  other, teamwork, right? I don't think I've ever worked
• 57:27
  as much or as many hours or as much time.
• 57:32
  I devoted all my time and all my effort into, you know, making
• 57:36
  sure that, that, that I was showing up there.
• 57:40
  But I was living in Las Vegas. So I was, you know, I was out
• 57:42
  till 45 AM and then showing up at 789 AM right on a few hours
• 57:47
  of sleep. But we were we were doing it.
• 57:53
  And that restaurant shaped me to become the leader, to accept and
• 58:03
  learn about the leadership role that a chef endures or has the
• 58:07
  opportunity to take on, right, Because they gave you autonomy
• 58:11
  there to be in charge of your own destiny, right?
• 58:17
  And if you didn't, your ass was grasped like you fucking you do
• 58:20
  your own ordering for your station, right?
• 58:22
  You, as long as we're showing up and making sure everything was
• 58:27
  on par and expectation was being hit, you were responsible for
• 58:32
  start to finish everything. So that didn't you don't when
• 58:36
  you're when you're responsible for everything start to finish
• 58:38
  as a as a chef to party, it makes you think like the chef,
• 58:44
  right? And that was the first time I'd
• 58:46
  ever been in a position where I had to think like the chef.
• 58:50
  You know what I mean? I had to be organized like the
• 58:53
  chef. I was being taught how to become
• 58:57
  a chef. Everything else I'd done prior,
• 59:00
  I was just a chef de partiro cook, you know what I mean?
• 59:03
  And my job was to cook food. It wasn't to think like the
• 59:07
  chef. It wasn't to make choices and
• 59:09
  decisions that a chef would make.
• 59:15
  And that really gave me, you know, a perspective into being a
• 59:20
  culinarian that I hadn't received yet.
• 59:22
  So I'm grateful for that time there.
• 59:26
  How did it feel? Because you were there when they
• 59:28
  got the three stars? Yeah.
• 59:30
  How did it were you? What position were you in when
• 59:33
  you? Left I was sous chef of the Vion
• 59:36
  station. And did it.
• 59:39
  Were you the sous chef when you received three stars there, or
• 59:41
  were you still in the chef? I was a chef de party position
• 59:44
  and got promoted. Yeah, yeah.
• 59:46
  I mean, how was how was the reaction as I'm sure was
• 59:54
  expected, but for the rest of the team that's getting the
• 59:56
  three stars for the first time, the the the comedy's, the CDPS,
• 59:59
  How did you guys celebrate at the pool party?
• 1:00:04
  We had a party. I just can't give you all the
• 1:00:07
  details. But how did it feel like how
• 1:00:10
  this is your first time like you, you, you looking back,
• 1:00:14
  you're like, I'm from El Paso, from like you said, from the
• 1:00:17
  Segundo barrio, going through the vocational school at
• 1:00:23
  Riverside, going through the EWMCS, being in Sweden at the
• 1:00:28
  competition, all of this to like, I'm the sous chef at a
• 1:00:33
  three Michelin star restaurant. Like how how did how did that?
• 1:00:40
  Well, I got to be honest, I didn't understand the impact.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, it was just like, well done.
• 1:00:48
  I didn't understand the impact globally, right?
• 1:00:54
  You got to remember at that time the United States we didn't
• 1:00:59
  have, we had New York and Vegas was the 2nd, I believe, city
• 1:01:04
  that the Michel guy came to. California maybe?
• 1:01:07
  Is he the California or Vegas? It's one of the two.
• 1:01:09
  Maybe Vegas was 1/3, right? We had a handful or maybe 2
• 1:01:15
  handfuls of restaurants that had two stars.
• 1:01:19
  We had, you know, less than a handful of restaurants that had
• 1:01:22
  three stars, right, Right. So the, we understood as cooks
• 1:01:29
  how important the Michelin Guide was, but there wasn't as much
• 1:01:34
  notoriety. We weren't scrolling on fucking
• 1:01:36
  Instagram to see who the new recipients of a big gourmand or
• 1:01:41
  a one or two or three star was. It wasn't.
• 1:01:45
  You have to fucking find the book and open it and flip
• 1:01:49
  through and read and read the ratings and so on and so forth.
• 1:01:53
  Or like find the website. Right, you had to find the
• 1:01:57
  press. Release, right?
• 1:01:58
  I mean, I'm. Thinking back like we didn't
• 1:02:00
  have Michelin and Dallas, we had the Zagat guide.
• 1:02:04
  You had to look back what what's your score?
• 1:02:05
  2029 or 30 out of 0 to 30 or? Whatever, that's it.
• 1:02:09
  You know, I, I was buying the Michelin Guide and the Zagat
• 1:02:13
  Guide when I was traveling to figure out where it is that I
• 1:02:16
  was going to, you know, spend my time with restaurants.
• 1:02:18
  I was going to spend my. Time.
• 1:02:19
  I had a lot of them. I have a lot of them still in my
• 1:02:21
  garage. Dude, a lot of those Zagat.
• 1:02:22
  Guides, yeah. So I'll say this, we knew that
• 1:02:27
  we were executed in a fucking immensely high level, right?
• 1:02:31
  And our peers respected us immensely.
• 1:02:34
  And we, you know, let's just say we had carte blanche in Las
• 1:02:37
  Vegas, at Tao Nightclub and at, you know what I mean, these
• 1:02:42
  places, we had carte blanche to go to these places because we
• 1:02:45
  were, you know what I mean? Kind of like the best of the
• 1:02:48
  best at the time and so on and so forth.
• 1:02:50
  And so I utilized all of those partnerships and and
• 1:02:56
  friendships. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:57
  You swiped. It but you know what I mean,
• 1:02:59
  when I would talk to friends that were, you know, in Chicago
• 1:03:02
  or or in in Florida or in Texas, they didn't understand the
• 1:03:08
  magnitude of being a cook or call me or a chef at a three
• 1:03:14
  Michigan star restaurant. They didn't understand it
• 1:03:17
  because it wasn't as it wasn't you know what I mean?
• 1:03:20
  It wasn't as in our face as it is now.
• 1:03:24
  Right now, there's so much controversy, right?
• 1:03:28
  I'm sure here in Texas, everyone, we're experiencing the
• 1:03:31
  controversy of like, well, but back then there was, there was,
• 1:03:36
  there was not a platform for controversy to be shared
• 1:03:39
  organically or to be shared publicly, right?
• 1:03:43
  Right. So you just kind of accepted it.
• 1:03:45
  And if you weren't traveling to Europe, you didn't understand
• 1:03:50
  the magnitude of the Michelin Guide.
• 1:03:52
  Yeah, if, if, if you look back again, I'll ask you the same
• 1:03:56
  question that I asked you about your time in Ducasse.
• 1:03:58
  Is there something that you learned at Roubichon Culinary
• 1:04:00
  Wise Cooking that you still that there isn't a better way to do
• 1:04:05
  this and you still do it to this day?
• 1:04:09
  Gosh, there's so many Pom lataire, pom puree, Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  You know what I mean? Is it the equal?
• 1:04:17
  It's equal parts butter, potato, potato.
• 1:04:19
  Pearls. Frozen potatoes.
• 1:04:21
  No, I don't, but I have many of times.
• 1:04:26
  Freeze dried. Yeah, we were.
• 1:04:28
  You know, we were buying those. I've never tasted more potatoes
• 1:04:31
  in my life than we were working on the recipe for the for the
• 1:04:34
  Pom puree at Robuchon and none of the potatoes were good
• 1:04:38
  enough. Yeah, what did you use cause?
• 1:04:41
  For a lot for for the beginning parts, all the potatoes are
• 1:04:44
  being shipped to us from France. De la rat.
• 1:04:48
  Yeah, with that Sherry butter, yeah, you know, I use that as an
• 1:04:55
  example. But there's there's things as
• 1:04:58
  simple as a as as potato puree to, you know, the way to trust a
• 1:05:03
  Guinea hen to, you know, there's so many things that I still are
• 1:05:10
  still part of my repertoire that I learned in that kitchen.
• 1:05:15
  But I think if there's anything that became the most dynamic for
• 1:05:18
  me was respect for product. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:25
  Last night we went to dinner without getting too much on off
• 1:05:28
  subjects, you know, we're wrapping up.
• 1:05:30
  Last night we went to dinner and I thought the food was
• 1:05:32
  exceptional. Shout out to Casey Wall at Le
• 1:05:36
  Calamar in Austin, TX. He's cooking at an exceptional
• 1:05:41
  level in terms of flavor. It's not weird.
• 1:05:44
  Yeah, the chicken tastes like great chicken.
• 1:05:45
  The sauce tastes like great sauce, good technique.
• 1:05:51
  You know the the the gnocchi that we had the the the chicken
• 1:05:56
  liver parfait with a strawberry jolay on top.
• 1:05:58
  Everything tasted delicious. It was perfect it.
• 1:06:01
  Was delicious. One of the gripes I have right
• 1:06:05
  now with culinary is that it all looks prettier than it tastes
• 1:06:12
  and it's all more creative than it needs to be, right?
• 1:06:15
  They're they're, they're trying to, you know, fucking Sprint at
• 1:06:19
  the Olympics before they could run the relay race in, in high
• 1:06:22
  school, right? If you had an opinion right now,
• 1:06:29
  strong opinion on the food, what is it?
• 1:06:31
  I, I just shared mine. I'm just curious.
• 1:06:33
  I I'm sure we we're aligned a little bit, but is there
• 1:06:35
  something that's been on your mind when it comes to food?
• 1:06:38
  Food in general or the dinner we had.
• 1:06:40
  No food in general. Food in general.
• 1:06:41
  Food in general. I think we share similar
• 1:06:47
  perspective, right? And to me, I've had the
• 1:06:54
  opportunities to dine at some of, you know, San Piano Vino,
• 1:06:58
  best restaurants in the world and also work in some of them.
• 1:07:02
  And I feel immensely fortunate for that.
• 1:07:05
  The thing that is the most important that I've learned is
• 1:07:09
  it fucking doesn't matter on what the food looks like, where
• 1:07:13
  it's sourced from, how it's sourced, what the garnish is,
• 1:07:17
  what fucking plate where you're using, whether it's a 30 hour
• 1:07:21
  sous video or not, if it's not delicious, if it's not well
• 1:07:28
  seasoned, it doesn't matter. It fucking doesn't matter.
• 1:07:35
  Yeah. If a guest doesn't look up and
• 1:07:42
  say to their dining partner or to themselves, fuck, this is
• 1:07:45
  delicious, then it you have not done your job as a culinarian.
• 1:07:51
  Yeah, right. And that is a difficult thing to
• 1:07:56
  teach because we're in this world of being a chef and art
• 1:08:04
  and being creative is what pushes us into stardom.
• 1:08:09
  It pushes us into notoriety. It is what our society respects.
• 1:08:20
  I think that the thing that we should respect chefs that are
• 1:08:25
  doing real work is, is their food delicious or not?
• 1:08:30
  Yeah, it's the ultimate. It's the ultimate test.
• 1:08:32
  The ultimate litmus test, right? Yeah, I, I just, I don't.
• 1:08:36
  And I had my own little 35 seat restaurant in Newport, RI with
• 1:08:43
  the fucking 12 course tasted menu.
• 1:08:46
  And I will be honest, out of the 12 courses, there's probably
• 1:08:52
  four of them that were fucking delicious.
• 1:08:55
  And the rest were kind of like, all right, we, we, we need a new
• 1:08:58
  set for the, for it's spring. We need a new set for the
• 1:09:00
  salmon. Yeah, right.
• 1:09:05
  And we got to keep that on the menu because it's part of the
• 1:09:07
  rotation and like, you know what I mean or whatever.
• 1:09:09
  Yeah, the the playbook. Right.
• 1:09:12
  And that playbook has changed a lot.
• 1:09:14
  And I have an immense amount of respect for chefs that are, are
• 1:09:17
  rewriting the narrative, right. Whether you're rewriting the
• 1:09:22
  narrative or not, I think the important question is with your
• 1:09:26
  team. And when you look at yourself in
• 1:09:29
  the mirror or not is, is, and am I creating delicious food or
• 1:09:33
  not? Doesn't matter if it's on a
• 1:09:36
  paper plate or not. And I spent a lot of time in the
• 1:09:38
  fast casual world, you know, with the, with the taquerias and
• 1:09:42
  so on and so forth. And I realized really quickly,
• 1:09:47
  having travelled Mexico, I want to stand on the corner and eat
• 1:09:50
  tacos on a fucking plastic plate wrapped in plastic.
• 1:09:54
  You know, they do the, the thing where it's like, it's the, you
• 1:09:56
  know, pink plate wrapped in a little plastic bag.
• 1:09:59
  And then they fucking rip the plastic bag off and reuse the
• 1:10:02
  plate. Like I've had some of my best
• 1:10:04
  meals doing having those experiences because they were
• 1:10:10
  delicious. So I think at the core, if
• 1:10:14
  there's anything that I've taken away from being a chef, if I I'm
• 1:10:18
  not doing my job, if I'm not thinking about before the
• 1:10:22
  garnish, before the plate, before the, you know what I
• 1:10:25
  mean, Whether or not it's chrono, like what?
• 1:10:30
  Whatever it is, whatever shape, it's got to be delicious.
• 1:10:34
  Last question before we wrap up, if you had Mount Rushmore 4
• 1:10:39
  chefs that should be on it, who should be?
• 1:10:42
  Who are those 4 chefs that deserve to be on Mile Rushmore
• 1:10:44
  in your opinion? Wow.
• 1:10:51
  I think it should be Joel, Robichon, Ferran, Adria, Renee,
• 1:11:01
  and gosh who? I'm trying to think of someone
• 1:11:05
  else who is inspired. I'm talking to me personally.
• 1:11:14
  I'm going to go with someone that no one, you know, no one
• 1:11:17
  really that he doesn't have a book, but Michael Scott and he
• 1:11:21
  is somebody that inspired being ways to.
• 1:11:27
  He taught me that a chef is not just a cook.
• 1:11:31
  He has to understand how to market himself, has to
• 1:11:34
  understand how to build a network, how to create
• 1:11:37
  relationships, whether it's with his people or with vendors or
• 1:11:41
  you know what I mean, whatever. Like I never had somebody teach
• 1:11:45
  me that. You know, all those other guys,
• 1:11:48
  I've learned through them, whether being in their kitchens
• 1:11:50
  or reading about them or meeting them at a guest chef dinner or
• 1:11:54
  whatever. But those guys have pushed the
• 1:11:57
  mark on creativity and classical French cookie, right?
• 1:12:04
  But I was the impression I took away from Chef Michael Scott
• 1:12:08
  taught me that a chef is more than just a cook.
• 1:12:13
  Yeah, shout out to Michael Scott.
• 1:12:15
  Yeah, I love Michael Scott too, by the way.
• 1:12:17
  Yeah, shout out to Michael Scott as we were talking earlier.
• 1:12:19
  Known him for years. Maniac.
• 1:12:21
  Yeah, maniac. Well, chef, where can people
• 1:12:23
  find you if they want to, if they want to follow you on
• 1:12:26
  social media, if they want to hang out with you, where?
• 1:12:28
  Where can people? Wake you up.
• 1:12:31
  I live in Rhode Island. I live in this tiny little town
• 1:12:35
  in within Rhode Island that is an actual island called
• 1:12:38
  Jamestown. I've, I still have one Taco shop
• 1:12:41
  in Providence. I've got a couple new
• 1:12:43
  restaurants that I'm kind of trying to figure out whether or
• 1:12:45
  not I want to stay as a small business entrepreneur or not
• 1:12:48
  and, and build restaurants from the ground up with my own money,
• 1:12:50
  which fucking sucks. You know, I'm trying to figure
• 1:12:55
  that out. I'm trying to figure out whether
• 1:12:56
  or not, you know, how I want to use my experience with cancer to
• 1:13:03
  maybe to shape the next 10 years of my career and how I can
• 1:13:08
  continue to be a mentor in different ways.
• 1:13:11
  But if you're coming to New England, look me up.
• 1:13:14
  That Jake Rojas at Instagram. Drop me a line.
• 1:13:20
  I appreciate you coming on because I've wanted to have you
• 1:13:23
  on for a long time and just we can never.
• 1:13:25
  You can never I live on the other side of the world.
• 1:13:26
  Yeah, you live on the other side of the world, so getting you
• 1:13:28
  while you were in town was perfect.
• 1:13:29
  So thank you, chef. Yeah, it's my absolute pleasure
• 1:13:32
  and I just want to say I'm grateful for what you're doing
• 1:13:35
  for our industry shining light, giving people opportunity for to
• 1:13:41
  share their experiences and and shape the voices of others.
• 1:13:46
  Thank you, chef. I appreciate you.
• 1:13:47
  Yeah, All right. That's.
• 1:13:48
  The show, if you liked it, make sure you leave five stars.
• 1:13:51
  Nothing less than five stars. If you want more chef's PSA, go
• 1:13:54
  to chefspsa.com. Get yourself some books, get
• 1:13:56
  yourself some merch, including Culinary Leadership Fundamentals
• 1:13:59
  and the Line Cook Survival Manual.
• 1:14:01
  If you want early access to episodes, you can get them on
• 1:14:03
  Spotify and Substack by becoming a paid member.
• 1:14:06
  The link is in the notes. We'll see you next.
• 1:14:08
  Week hit the porno music. No small drink in the kitchen
• 1:14:11
  mixing. Drop the chef knowledge.
• 1:14:13
  No fiction stirring up the beats.
• 1:14:15
  Heat enough the session, Listen. Close classes in session.