Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / How Chaos Builds Great Chefs: Josh Sutcliff on 55 Seventy Episode. 203

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How Chaos Builds Great Chefs: Josh Sutcliff on 55 Seventy Episode. 203 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  What I did know is that I thrived in that environment of
• 0:03
  chaos when it the tickets came in and it was crazy.
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  I I could kind of, I could function higher level than
• 0:11
  everybody else. Don't know why, don't know how.
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  Hello chefs. This is Chefs PSA and I'm your
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  host Andre Natera. Today my guest is Chef Josh
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  Sutcliffe. He's the corporate executive
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  chef at 5570 Private Members Club in Dallas, TX.
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  He's worked in some incredible restaurants including Mirador
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  and FT-33. He was recognized as Rising Star
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  Chef of the Year by Culture Map Dallas, recovering his journey
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  from family upheaval at a young age that led him to washing
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  dishes and falling in love with the kitchen.
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  Pirate life. Balancing chef creativity with
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  business acumen and some advice to younger chefs.
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  Stay tuned. What happened?
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  How did we get here? Yeah.
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  How did how did this whole thing start?
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  I was, I was sitting on the couch, right?
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  And I was 13 years old and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, knock on
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  the door. I think it was a Sunday.
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  I remember opening the door with my sister and they were like 15
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  feds at my front door. And of course, being 13, right,
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  you don't know, like, I know something's not right, but I
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  have no idea what's going on. And, you know, that was the
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  moment my life changed for forever.
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  And it's something I think about now. 2020, was it 24 years
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  later? And.
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  Where were you living at the time?
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  I was. Living in in like just north of
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  Wilmington, NC. So I was born and raised in
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  Wilmington and then we moved to Hampstead, which is like 30
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  minutes N near like a little small beach town and small, you
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  know, we had like 1000 people in our high school.
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  So it was, it's a small town. And anyways that, you know, that
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  change the, you know, feds came in, did what they do tear your
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  house apart. Later come to find out, you know
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  what dad was selling pot big quantities.
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  He ended up going to jail for about 4 1/2 years.
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  So miss him all through high school and that transition, but
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  that's when I got introduced to restaurants.
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  What? What?
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  What about your mom? My mom, so she fortunately,
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  like, you know, we had to sell everything and she, you know,
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  they, they tried to ring some stuff on her that she knew and,
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  and she did a little bit, but not enough to luckily not enough
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  to send her away. So she continued to work.
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  We made some major changes, right?
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  We were living in like a, you know, a pretty nice house that
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  we, my, my family had built, my mom, my dad, I'd built, it's
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  probably about 3000 square feet. And we were there probably like
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  3 or 4 years before all this happened.
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  And so, you know, we, we moved into a 38 foot camper, right?
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  So it was me, my two sisters, my mother, I was 13.
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  And right, like this is huge change in, in the pivotal point
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  in my life. And so that's where.
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  You're in high school. Yeah, I was going in high
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  school. I was in 8th.
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  Grade well, this I mean, but image matters at that point.
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  Like image is everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  And, and, and my sisters were working at a local restaurant
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  and and that was it, right? It was like, OK, we'll have to
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  get a job and there's no time to pout.
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  Like let's you know, you know, I have two older sisters, right?
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  So I'm the man of the family at this point.
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  I had to take care of them and and my mother and be there and
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  be this, be this anchor. So I started washing dishes and
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  I loved it. Like it was.
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  It was a calling. Yeah.
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  I didn't even know about cooking at this point, right.
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  I hadn't. I didn't.
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  All I knew was like, I love this.
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  And it was hard. I'd come in three pot sink.
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  This is like, I'm sure those restaurants are still out there
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  where like the chefs and the people aren't washing the
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  dishes. They just throw it in the three
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  pot sink, fill it with soap. You come in at 3:00 and this
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  thing is just a mountain. And guess what?
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  Get to work. You get to scrub.
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  And I need that. I need those pans for service.
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  I need that. I need that.
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  And you got to knock it out. And so that was like my
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  introduction to the restaurant business.
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  And it was something about working with my hands and
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  something that was really tangible for me, like, OK, I
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  just have to finish this task quickly and do it well, and then
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  I move on to the next thing. And so there was something about
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  that, that task oriented thing where it was like the only thing
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  that's going to make a difference whether I'm great or
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  not great here is my speed is my.
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  You're you're 131313. They're putting you under the
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  table. Oh yeah.
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  Yeah, I mean, you know, it's probably making like 150 bucks a
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  week, maybe 100 bucks a week, things like that, you know, just
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  paying me, sliding me cash. And, you know, I'm not going to
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  name the drop, but you know who you are.
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  Love you guys still keep in contact with them.
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  And so, yeah, I washed dishes for a year and I loved it, man.
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  I just the energy of the kitchen.
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  And then, you know, it's very much like that pirate situation.
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  Guys are smoking cigarettes in the back and going through the
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  hood vent. You know, my kitchen manager,
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  rest in peace. He died a couple years ago.
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  I was wearing, you know, sandals in the kitchen, right?
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  Like that short sandals, music blasting, just like, you know,
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  early 2000s, just like stain or like stain and like Creed and
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  kind of like that, that just like that punk rock thing and
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  chaos, you know, just doing 350 covers a night.
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  And so I, I was about a year in washing dishes and I was like,
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  man, like I want to go over there.
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  I want to be over there. And I could imagine being 13 or
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  14 years old, you know, teenager, young man, and then
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  you're hanging around with all these grown ass pirates and
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  they're smoking cigarettes. They're fucking drinking and
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  they're cool and and they're probably taking you outside and
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  giving you life lessons. 100% right, that was that was my
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  introduction into life really quickly.
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  And again, I loved it and I had a bunch of great people around
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  me, I think, and and I was fortunate enough to have my
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  friends work there, right, because it was just that kind of
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  it was a seasonal joint. So it's like, hey, homie, like
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  my three guys like, hey, you want a job to make some money
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  this summer, we need a fry cook or we need a grill cook, we need
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  a sautee cook. And so, you know, it's fortunate
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  enough through that, you know, from 13 to 18 full time to be
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  able to work with my friends. And it was, it was very
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  definitely a special time in my life.
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  But you know, that's where I learned that really quickly.
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  I'm, I'm really good at this thing.
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  I didn't know anything about the craft or anything about really
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  the skills that were needed to be ultra successful.
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  What I did know is that I thrived in that environment of
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  chaos when it, the tickets came in and it was crazy.
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  I, I could kind of, I could function higher level than
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  everybody else. Don't know why, don't know how,
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  but you know, that's been like the the pillar that's continued
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  to push me forward is like, I'm just great at this thing and and
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  you know, through the years trying to find like what, you
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  know, what are the other things that I'm great at and keep kind
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  of just pushing towards those. Things how did how did you
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  balance going to high school and working and, you know, finishing
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  school and trying to trying to do good and trying to also be
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  the man of the house and then going to this restaurant?
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  I mean, it's a lot of pressure for a 13 year old.
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  Yeah, A. 14 year old, yeah. I mean, I think I was blessed to
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  be raised with great values and ethics, first and foremost,
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  right? Like while my dad, you know,
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  gots into prison, I was raised proper, was raised, you know, in
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  the South, you know, like, respect, respect your elders,
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  hard to work all those things. So like, my structure had
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  already been built. And so I think like that was
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  obviously something that allowed me to be successful.
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  And then also I got lucky, man. Like I just was around a bunch
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  of great people. And so when this transition
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  happened and I was living in this camper with my mom and my
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  my sister, my older sister end up moving out because she like
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  was getting, she was there for a year and she graduated high
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  school and she went to college. And so it ended up just being
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  me, my middle sister and my mother.
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  And so at 14, I moved out because I I couldn't, I couldn't
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  be in that situation. My mom still works at Corning,
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  Corning Corning fiber optics. She's going to retire next year.
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  Shout out mom, love you. 3030 plus years there.
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  And so she's working 12. You know, it's a an hour commute
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  hour back. So she's gone 14 hours a day.
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  She's working 12 hour shifts. You know anything about Corning
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  and those kind of operations union.
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  So you work like 7 days on, you get 7 days off.
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  She's gone a lot. So I moved out, you know,
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  there's just no, I didn't have any.
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  Anybody tell me what to do? So I moved out and I kind of
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  just started messing around and sleeping on couches at 14.
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  And I was fortunate enough to have a, a near and dear friend
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  of mine. His mom pulled me inside and
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  it's like, you need to come live with us.
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  And so I think without her life looks a lot different, right?
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  And so instead of me like pushing away, I, I said, yeah,
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  like I would love that because I don't want to be couch surfing
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  and figuring out my life at 14. And so I went and stayed with
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  her and, and, and, and her son was my one of my best friends.
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  And so I was fortunate enough to have that stability from 14
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  pretty much to until I graduated.
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  And, you know, just to be able to have a place to call home and
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  go to. And she supported me and bought
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  me clothes and gave me a, you know, spending money even though
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  I was working. And, you know, she ended up
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  buying me a car when I was like 17.
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  And, you know, Terry is, you know, near and dear to my heart.
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  So definitely a second mother, you know, without her, I
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  definitely would probably not have been where I am today.
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  So, so you decide at a certain point like I'm going to go to a
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  cooking school and I'm going to become a chef or.
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  Yeah, when I was 16, I was like, I just knew.
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  I loved it. I was like, this is what I want
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  to do in my life. Were you more in love with the
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  cooking or were you more in love with the environment?
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  The environment, I didn't even the like what we know now.
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  And when I come, I came to love change over time.
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  I fell in love with the with the chaos of all of it.
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  Like I love the thrill. I love the idea that I could
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  just curse like a sailor. I love the idea that, you know,
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  you worked in the back of the house, like you kind of called
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  the shots. So I told you, you were getting
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  the steak in 4 minutes. It's you and you were getting
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  the steak. If your table wasn't ready, you
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  better get your table ready, right?
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  Like, you know, it's that that thrill of being a chef.
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  I'm in charge. Like you just figure it out.
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  We're doing all the hard work back here, right?
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  It's that old school kind of mentality.
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  And so I fell in love with that. The partying, not coming to work
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  till, you know, 3:00 in the afternoon and staying up all
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  night and going out and hanging out with people and smoking
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  cigarettes and doing drugs. I fell in love with that first
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  and foremost. And I loved cooking.
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  And so I knew I wanted to be a chef, but I didn't know what I
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  would have to give up to be successful at that point in
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  time. I just knew that like, I'm going
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  to go to culinary school and I went to my own restaurant one
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  day and that's all I knew, right?
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  And so moved and did some stuff. How?
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  How old were you when you went to culinary school?
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  So I went to, when I graduated high school in O7, I went to a
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  Community College in Charlotte, NC.
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  So I moved right out and did six months party like a sailor.
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  And I was like, man, I can't, I can't stay here like this is
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  dangerous. So I moved back home and I
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  enrolled into that local Community College, did that for
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  six months. And I was like, I can't, I
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  can't, I can't do this. Like I'm having too much fun,
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  I'm partying too much. I've got a great job making good
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  money. And I just kind of was like, I'm
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  just going to, I'll put school in the back burner.
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  And so from like 18 to 21, I just partied and had as much fun
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  as I could and worked and had a great life.
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  You know, I was able to always live with friends.
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  You know, I had some great spots, spent all our money on
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  booze and drugs and paid rent and and made it to the next week
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  and pretty simple life. Yeah, the pirate life.
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  That's right. And then I realized, you know, I
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  was like 21. I was like, if I don't get out
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  of here, I'm not getting out. And so again, very fortunate to
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  have, you know, my mother was able to kind of help me get this
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  loan for El Centro. I'm sorry, El Centro, but the
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  cord on blue in San Francisco. I originally wanted to go to
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  Hyde Park, but I had a couple pending charges as far as like
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  drunk in public, like nothing major, but that was a life I was
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  living. And so like forget to mention
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  from the age of 14 to 21, I probably, I was probably issued
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  anywhere from 6 to 8, like underage drinking tickets.
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  And so I was always kind of in the court system because of that
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  because I didn't have any authority, I can do whatever I
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  want. And so that led to a lot of
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  like, hey, dude, you're drinking again, here's a ticket, call
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  your lawyer, take care of it. And so when I applied to CIA in
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  Hyde Park, they obviously didn't like that and they wanted me to
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  send like this four page letter of like how I was going to
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  change and stuff. And I'm like, fuck this.
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  Like, you know, I understand that what I'm doing isn't great,
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  but I'm also not like doing anything terrible and I'm not
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  going to do that. And so I was like, forget them.
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  I'm going to figure this out another way anyways.
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  And. This is what the Cordon Bleu is
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  like. The Cordon Bleu we'll take,
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  we'll take anybody. We'll.
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  Take anybody. And so it all worked out.
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  It was obviously very easy. It probably was a month process
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  from start to finish and got the paperwork sign.
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  Mom helped me kind of like bear kind of the front of like the
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  first year of loans, 300 bucks a month or something.
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  And I could have never afforded it.
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  And so that gave me the flexibility to be able to just
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  like jump on a plane, live in a hostel, which is like that, you
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  know, San Francisco's a whole another story, maybe for another
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  time. And anyway, so like that, that
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  set me there and that place and that time and that was, that was
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  a jump I needed. And it was also the risk that I
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  needed to take to move my career forward.
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  So that's what I do. But you played sports too,
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  right? I played basketball, you played
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  basketball, and I was good at basketball.
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  My vision has always been an issue.
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  You know, like you really need purple vision.
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  Like purple vision when? You were trying to get LASIK.
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  Yeah, my, my, my eye is too bad. So I, I had, I had really bad
• 13:50
  vision. I had laser surgery like in 2016
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  or 2017, I don't remember, but it was I fucking hated wearing
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  glasses in the kitchen because they fog up, they're constantly
• 14:00
  greasy, they're scratched, I'm constantly pushing them up my
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  face. And then after I got laser
• 14:05
  surgery, I was like, why the fuck did I never do this sooner?
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  It was fucking great. I had like 2020 vision the next
• 14:10
  day. It's amazing 'cause I have a bad
• 14:12
  stigmatism in my left eye that has denied me the two times I've
• 14:15
  tried. But technology does change and
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  yeah, I think hopefully in the next couple years with
• 14:22
  technology changing, we'll be able to get it done.
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  Yeah, I have fucking laser eyes now.
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  It's fucking great. It's amazing, I'm sure.
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  It's fucking great, especially because I've spent my whole
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  life. Can't wait for the day.
• 14:30
  Wearing wearing glasses, right? Like and I played sports too, so
• 14:33
  I remember playing baseball when I was a kid.
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  You got you got the straps. No, I wouldn't wear them.
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  So I'd fucking strike out because I couldn't see the ball.
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  And I remember once the fucking ball hit me right on the hand
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  because I, I couldn't, I, I just didn't see it until it was too
• 14:45
  close or until it's too late, really.
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  But the reason I ask about basketball and sports is because
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  I'm wondering, did playing sports prepare you for kitchen
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  life? A. 100% I think about it to this
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  day. Yeah, I think you probably, but
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  you being in the game so long too, you see a lot of, you know,
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  similarities with with chefs running teams.
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  It's a it's a team game, right? And the, the further you get
• 15:08
  down the path, the more you realize I'm, I'm a piece of this
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  puzzle and I can't do I can't be successful about all these
• 15:16
  people. And so yes, it, it is played a
• 15:21
  huge part in who I am as a person and who has I am as as a
• 15:25
  chef, even as a person, you know, even to this day, like I
• 15:30
  don't want to do something by myself.
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  I don't want to be, I want, I want to be in a, in a group
• 15:35
  setting where like the team is, you know, we're all equal part
• 15:41
  of that sum and we're all like without one piece.
• 15:45
  It, it, it doesn't work. And and for me, I've always
• 15:49
  enjoyed that. Yeah, I, I agree.
• 15:51
  I think well, and what a lot of young cooks don't understand is
• 15:54
  when they get into a kitchen for the first time and you're 17 or
• 15:58
  you're 18. You, you kind of touched on this
• 15:59
  earlier is you might be walking in with cooks that have 10 years
• 16:03
  experience, 20 years experience, two years experience and you're
• 16:07
  all expected to fucking work together and perform at the same
• 16:10
  level. The the guy that's been cooking
• 16:13
  for 25 years and is in his mid 40s and he's a disgruntled line
• 16:16
  cook and he's a beast on the grill and he's pissed off at you
• 16:19
  because you're three months experience and you can't keep up
• 16:23
  with them and they don't give a shit.
• 16:26
  But when you have that sports, I don't want to say sports
• 16:30
  training, but you know, just just being on teams and working
• 16:32
  with people, you understand that you're hey, look, I'm playing
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  this part. I got to get better because
• 16:37
  they're the star player. You know, that competitive
• 16:40
  mindset does lend itself well to kitchens, I think.
• 16:45
  You know, you talked about earlier how you wanted to get
• 16:49
  into a kitchen because you liked that environment more so than
• 16:52
  you loved cooking. I often say to people, just
• 16:55
  because you love to cook doesn't mean you're going to love
• 16:57
  working in kitchens. They're 2 completely different
• 16:59
  things, loving to cook and loving to work in kitchens.
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  There's people that love to work in kitchens but don't
• 17:03
  necessarily love food. And I know that's very strange
• 17:06
  for people to hear it, but they could give a shit about what
• 17:08
  they're cooking. They just want to be in the
• 17:09
  kitchen, right? They, they just love the thrill
• 17:11
  of it. And other people like they love
• 17:13
  nothing more than cooking. And then they go get their first
• 17:16
  cooking job and they're like, Oh my God, I make the greatest
• 17:19
  fucking casserole. And the chef says, like, Hey,
• 17:21
  we're not making your fucking casserole, Go clean the walk.
• 17:24
  And and then you're, you're picking herbs after that.
• 17:26
  Like you're not, we're not, we're not trying your casserole
• 17:28
  maybe for family meal one day. And the reason I bring that up
• 17:31
  is because now that you're a chef, now that you're operating
• 17:34
  your own kitchen, if you could look at your career and some of
• 17:40
  the ups and downs that you've had throughout from being a line
• 17:43
  cook to now being an executive chef and, you know, multiple
• 17:47
  properties. What are some of the things that
• 17:50
  you're advising young cooks on now when they're coming into the
• 17:52
  industry? I mean, you know, it's a loaded
• 17:56
  question and I know that we could talk about it for hours.
• 18:00
  Yeah. But I think start starting at,
• 18:03
  you know, I think tying it into the sports thing really quick,
• 18:08
  understanding that like it is a team game, right?
• 18:11
  And so something that I always enjoyed was like, hey, dude,
• 18:14
  like if, you know, if Joey fucks up, we're all running sprints.
• 18:19
  And that it's something I think that for me is, you know, and
• 18:26
  again, everybody's different. Everybody's going to see it
• 18:28
  through the same viewpoint. And like you said, some people
• 18:30
  love cooking, but they don't love the chef part or they don't
• 18:32
  love the food part. And so now everybody's going to
• 18:34
  gravitate towards it. But kind of understanding that
• 18:40
  like everybody plays a role and in a big pivotal piece and how
• 18:45
  this thing moves forward. And as you start out
• 18:48
  understanding that it's a team game, right?
• 18:50
  A lot of people, you know, myself included as a young cook,
• 18:53
  it's like me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
• 18:56
  And you know, what am I doing or how am I growing?
• 18:59
  And I didn't understand how that affected the team, right?
• 19:01
  I had no idea. And and I don't expect for you
• 19:04
  can't expect for a young chef or a young cook to to be thinking
• 19:07
  like, well, what is the chef going through?
• 19:09
  What's he looking at? But, you know, I think that's
• 19:12
  important to kind of just like compartmentalize as you start
• 19:15
  cooking. OK, this is a long, long game.
• 19:19
  There's many layers to it. It's about a big group of people
• 19:21
  being successful. This one person at the top has a
• 19:24
  lot of challenges and they're trying to make sure all these
• 19:29
  pieces work. And so I just need to go in and
• 19:31
  I need to do great in my role. And if I do great in my role and
• 19:35
  I understand my role, hopefully I can move up.
• 19:37
  And so learning the basics, right, like, you know, I'm sure
• 19:40
  you've talked about it so many times on this podcast, being
• 19:44
  being to work on time, you know, showing up early, being
• 19:47
  consistent and when you're there, like learning your stuff,
• 19:51
  but trying to make things better.
• 19:54
  And then you're not always going to get tall every little single
• 19:57
  thing. And so you know, hopefully using
• 19:59
  a little bit of like your intuition to, you know, as an
• 20:03
  example, like if I'm, you know, on the egg station or something
• 20:07
  and. I've been trained to cook eggs
• 20:10
  and you know, there's recipes and they're showing me, but you
• 20:12
  know, I, I guarantee 100% every time, unless maybe you're at the
• 20:17
  French Laundry, there's something about that station
• 20:20
  that can be more efficient. Every restaurant you work at, an
• 20:22
  example, you know, would be like, OK, I'm cooking eggs and
• 20:26
  my my coolers over here and I'm putting eggs over here and I'm
• 20:30
  turning back around and I'm grabbing salt, you know?
• 20:32
  OK, well, why don't you take the salt and have salt here and put
• 20:35
  a second salt here? Who?
• 20:36
  I showed you that who I trained. To do that, I thought you were
• 20:38
  gonna say just mix your salt and pepper, just dump them together.
• 20:44
  Don't, don't do that. That's very.
• 20:47
  Don't do that. Yeah, don't do that.
• 20:49
  Let's let's not do that. Very steakhouse style, but you
• 20:52
  know, think about what can make your job easier.
• 20:57
  Not because so I didn't show me or hey, I was showing to do it
• 21:00
  this way. So I'm not going to Nobody is
• 21:02
  going to get upset at you. If you like make a station
• 21:05
  better. If you say hey, like chef like
• 21:08
  and you don't even have the teller chef, but like, hey, like
• 21:10
  I was putting tasting students here and I was turning around
• 21:12
  dumping them here, but there's not a trash can.
• 21:14
  So I'm pulling the trash can up beside me, which is gross.
• 21:16
  And you don't want to do that. OK, we'll get a six pan and
• 21:19
  label it, you know, dirty spoons and put it here, right.
• 21:22
  You know, get a rack like make your station work for you as you
• 21:27
  as you move through the kitchen and try to make everything that
• 21:30
  you do better, right. Like, hey, man, like I came in,
• 21:33
  I worked this egg station and now I'm getting promoted because
• 21:36
  I'm doing a great job and I'm going to, you know, maybe hot
• 21:38
  apps or whatever, or the Sally line or going to Expo, I'm going
• 21:42
  to grill. But this station is better now
• 21:45
  because I've kind of set better systems in place and and guess
• 21:50
  what? The next person coming on, they
• 21:51
  will see something that you didn't see, and they can also
• 21:56
  make the station better. It continues to grow in our
• 21:59
  kitchens. We're always talking about that.
• 22:01
  When you come in, identify something that's wrong, fix it.
• 22:05
  Every single day you come in, there's gonna be something
• 22:07
  that's not right. I wish that wasn't the case, but
• 22:09
  that is the case. And so get, get good identifying
• 22:13
  that and trying to, to resolve it and, and put a solution in
• 22:16
  place. And, and, and, you know, that
• 22:19
  could be, you know, somebody's burning something or, you know,
• 22:21
  I walk in and, you know, somebody's dumped pasta in
• 22:25
  water. That's not boiling, right.
• 22:26
  Those are like things that are just that that's the job.
• 22:29
  But you know, putting the salt here and the salt here, having
• 22:31
  two salts or having two things or tasting spoons, like those
• 22:34
  are things that if you put a good system in place, like it's
• 22:36
  not going to change. The moment you became sous chef,
• 22:39
  the rules changed. You can't drink with the crew
• 22:41
  anymore. You can't look the other way
• 22:43
  anymore. You can't be liked and respected
• 22:45
  at the same time. Caesar's not above the law and
• 22:48
  neither of you the sous chef blueprint the manual that nobody
• 22:52
  handed you when you got promoted.
• 22:54
  Get it at Chefs psa.com. What is when you on board a new
• 22:59
  a new cook on your team? What is on boarding look like?
• 23:02
  What is the training process look like?
• 23:05
  It needs to look better and we're and we're.
• 23:07
  What does the ideal onboarding look like then?
• 23:10
  Yeah. So and we're getting there,
• 23:11
  right. We, you know, our business has
• 23:14
  boom and grown so quickly and now we're scaling.
• 23:17
  And so there's a lot of things that we have to put in place.
• 23:19
  And I think this resonates with people listening because you
• 23:25
  rarely are you going to find something that's 100% ideal.
• 23:27
  But the goal for me is to continue to build towards that.
• 23:31
  You get all the information beforehand that you need.
• 23:33
  You get all your paperwork, you get your insurance stuff
• 23:36
  beforehand. Everything gets filled out.
• 23:38
  You give it to, you know, the chef, you show up early, you've
• 23:42
  already been given, or maybe on your first day, you're giving
• 23:45
  recipes, you're giving training manuals, you're giving job
• 23:48
  descriptions. And then you're kind of talk
• 23:52
  through like, here's your station that you're going to
• 23:54
  start on, here's the dishes, here's your prep list, this is
• 23:57
  where it lives, here's these items.
• 24:00
  And kind of just briefly go through, right?
• 24:02
  Like, you know. Are you like hardcore
• 24:04
  standardized recipes? Yes, everything grams I'm
• 24:07
  assuming. Everything grams, everything in
• 24:08
  percentages. We built some really good
• 24:11
  systems, right? If, if you know in a system we
• 24:13
  built in our kitchen is if like you come buy a recipe and for
• 24:17
  whatever reason, like and you know, this stuff just happens.
• 24:20
  It's an oz right there. We have a, we have a document in
• 24:23
  a specific spot. You grab the document, it's a
• 24:25
  recipe revision. You make the revision, you sign
• 24:29
  it. And this would be like a high
• 24:31
  level prep cook or like the lead prep cook or, or somebody in a
• 24:34
  white coat. So somebody as a chef would do
• 24:35
  this. Nobody else would do this.
• 24:37
  Blind Cook's not allowed to do this.
• 24:38
  They don't know about this. But if you did, you're really,
• 24:41
  you know, you're really stepping up.
• 24:42
  You know, you're going the right direction.
• 24:43
  Yeah. And then we have a box.
• 24:45
  Then you drop in the box. So essentially the chef's
• 24:47
  walking by, they can see it and they can pull it, pick it up and
• 24:50
  say, OK, cool, we made this revision, talk to the chef about
• 24:53
  it. Hey, like this is all in ounces.
• 24:54
  I tweaked it in grams. And then that chef knows to go
• 24:57
  take. So we use Meese as a recipe
• 24:59
  system. And so they go in, they update
• 25:01
  it. Boom, now it's in it's in grams
• 25:03
  versus oz. But yeah, everything's
• 25:06
  standardized. I mean, we tried because we're
• 25:08
  trying to scale a business. The idea is that anybody can
• 25:11
  come in, they get the proper training, they get the proper
• 25:14
  information and then, you know, they are are training for about
• 25:18
  a week and then they're on their own.
• 25:20
  But they're they're, you know, for the first two or three weeks
• 25:24
  there, there's constant supervision and, and tasting of
• 25:26
  their dishes. Like when it's slow make me this
• 25:28
  make me that make me. This what would it look like for
• 25:30
  someone to be successful in your kitchen?
• 25:32
  Like when you look at the cook, that's like, OK, here's this
• 25:35
  person, they are successful because they do these things.
• 25:37
  What? What are some of those things
• 25:38
  that they do? Well, inherently, like, you
• 25:42
  know, when somebody gets there or they don't, right?
• 25:44
  That's first and foremost. By the way, someone said that to
• 25:47
  me once is like, there's people who get it and there's people
• 25:49
  who don't get it. That's right.
• 25:50
  And it's fucking been true for my entire life.
• 25:53
  No matter what, it seems like that that person that never got
• 25:57
  it still hasn't got it. Yeah, so I would say if you
• 25:59
  don't get it, then you then you're in the wrong field,
• 26:02
  right. And and if you're struggling and
• 26:04
  you can't, you know, you know when you're gonna get something,
• 26:10
  you know, like, hey, I got, I got a shot here, right?
• 26:12
  I got a shot to, I played varsity my freshman year.
• 26:15
  I got a shot to like I'm throwing the ball 90 miles an
• 26:18
  hour and on the mail, I'm like, I got a shot here, right?
• 26:21
  Don't lie to yourself. And if you're struggling in the
• 26:23
  very beginning and you just can't find it, it's probably
• 26:27
  you're probably you are in the wrong field, but not probably
• 26:30
  right. People that are really
• 26:32
  successful, I think maybe you don't come in and crushing it in
• 26:35
  the beginning, but you get it right.
• 26:37
  And so some of those things, I would say, first of all, you
• 26:39
  have to get it. And that means like obviously
• 26:42
  showing up on time. And then as you start to see
• 26:45
  stuff, right? Like a big sign for me is like
• 26:48
  day 2 or day three, the person isn't like doing small tasks,
• 26:55
  right? They're not grabbing.
• 26:56
  OK, maybe you don't know the dishes, but like at this point,
• 26:59
  if you haven't remembered, that 1/2 sheet tray and a resting
• 27:02
  rack lives here in this area and the salt and pepper lives right
• 27:05
  in front of it. And that's your seasoning tray
• 27:07
  and your Kumi is going front with a wet towel.
• 27:10
  And those things are already in a tray.
• 27:12
  It's not like you're we're not pinting those up.
• 27:15
  For people that might know, what's a Kumi pan?
• 27:18
  Your Kumi pan is. Because that's not, that's not
• 27:20
  like that's a that's insider knowledge.
• 27:22
  Yeah. So for, for, for the people that
• 27:23
  are listening, like, what did he say?
• 27:24
  Where can I buy a Kumi? Pan Yeah, yeah.
• 27:26
  Well, yeah, good luck buying them.
• 27:27
  They're hard. They're hard to find.
• 27:28
  They're very expensive. I mean, I get them on Amazon,
• 27:30
  but they take weeks to get there.
• 27:31
  Yeah. Every time I go to like JB
• 27:33
  Prince or something, they're out.
• 27:34
  And so I Amazon them. They're just like they're
• 27:37
  they're stainless steel trays and they fit perfectly and they
• 27:40
  have different sizes. And so generally for, you know,
• 27:43
  finishing salt garnishes and. And you know, if you're at like
• 27:47
  a steakhouse, for example, like you're probably running that on
• 27:49
  your Expo pass and you're probably putting like your oils
• 27:52
  in there, but it's really like to to set your mis and plus up.
• 27:55
  It's that fucking Swanee station.
• 27:57
  It is set up. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:57
  That's so, so like when you're on Instagram and you're looking
• 28:00
  at those, those Michelin star kitchens, like where do you get
• 28:02
  those pants? What are they called?
• 28:03
  They're called Kumi pants. Called Kumi pants.
• 28:05
  You find them on Amazon and just need a little bit of lead time.
• 28:07
  Yeah. And so it's like things like
• 28:09
  that where it's like, OK, well, maybe like you haven't mastered
• 28:12
  the omelet or maybe you don't remember the whole like every
• 28:17
  component on the chicken dish. But if you, you know, if you're
• 28:21
  not like doing some of the things again, setting your
• 28:24
  station up properly, like having your towels folded in the right
• 28:26
  spot, getting your drop tray down on the floor or like where
• 28:29
  it needs to go, you know, getting, you know, getting kind
• 28:34
  of your bread set up or, or whatever it is.
• 28:35
  I'm, I'm thinking about these things because they're in our
• 28:37
  kitchen getting your plates where they need to be put at
• 28:41
  like, you know, your oven at the right temp.
• 28:43
  Like then I'm concerned, right. If you're getting the food stuff
• 28:46
  and maybe you're forgetting some of the station stuff, then OK,
• 28:48
  like you're doing one of the two.
• 28:50
  But the people that are really excelling, like are taking
• 28:53
  notes. Yeah, they are taking, they're
• 28:56
  taking photos of their station. Like they're doing those things
• 28:59
  like they're showing you that they want to succeed and you're
• 29:02
  not going to memorize everything.
• 29:04
  Use the tools. Take a picture A.
• 29:06
  Lot, a lot of line cooking is muscle memory, repetition and
• 29:11
  just, and, and speed and efficiency.
• 29:14
  Because I, I've worked in places and I, and I can say this for
• 29:17
  myself as a line cook when I was young, I didn't know how to
• 29:20
  cook, but I was really good on the line.
• 29:22
  So I was really good at making the dishes that they told me to
• 29:25
  make, but I couldn't like, OK, make something else.
• 29:28
  Well, I don't know how to make anything else.
• 29:29
  I know how to make these dishes. So I wasn't a good cook, but I
• 29:32
  was a good line cook. And I and I think people don't
• 29:35
  understand what you're talking about.
• 29:37
  It's like, yeah, you just want to turn around.
• 29:39
  The salt's always there, the pepper's always there, the
• 29:40
  towel's always there. The pan is always there.
• 29:42
  It's always hot. My burner works just like this.
• 29:45
  And you start to pick up the the autopilot settings of you can
• 29:49
  get in that flow state and just crank out food.
• 29:52
  And then there's other people that know how to cook, right?
• 29:55
  There's other people that's like, hey, I'm not the greatest
• 29:57
  line cook, but I know how to cook.
• 29:58
  I can make a delicious sauce. I can make delicious braises,
• 30:01
  food, beautiful plates. Like, OK, that's a different
• 30:04
  skill, but they're not always the same person.
• 30:06
  Agree And, and, and on that note, like I'll tell you about
• 30:10
  myself, right? Like I, I have a problem like
• 30:14
  cutting straight, you know, and, and I've picked these things
• 30:18
  I've been doing this for 23 years, right And it's nothing
• 30:20
  like at year 10 I was like, Oh yeah, this is weird or turning a
• 30:24
  potato in culinary school. It was always challenging for me
• 30:27
  and you know, I think early on I thought like, man, like I just
• 30:32
  suck at these things And guess what, Like if I would have
• 30:34
  practiced more, I could have got them, but it naturally wasn't my
• 30:38
  strength. And so you know that that didn't
• 30:42
  lead me down a path of like if I if I if I like rolled up in
• 30:45
  culinary school, Mr. Patricio, he's a chef, Chef Patricio so
• 30:49
  good do a tornado behind his back.
• 30:51
  You know, like this is crazy. But if I was good at that, like
• 30:55
  maybe I would have chose and, and like focus to go down a
• 30:58
  different path as far as like trying to go the French Laundry
• 31:01
  or going to take a three star different focuses.
• 31:06
  But also like Nash, I wasn't great at that stuff.
• 31:07
  And still to this day, those aren't my strengths, right?
• 31:10
  And I, I think through my journey, I, you know, I've been
• 31:14
  fortunate enough to be able to like look through a lens and try
• 31:16
  to understand what am I good at? And what do I want to like put
• 31:22
  time into and focus and my energy into, you know, is if the
• 31:26
  answer is like, Hey, I'm not great at tornaying, but I'm
• 31:28
  really passionate about going to work at this restaurant and I've
• 31:32
  got it out of Pernet. And for because of that, like I
• 31:35
  think that's going to open up this door.
• 31:36
  It's going to lead me down this path because I don't really want
• 31:38
  to open a restaurant in Mission star.
• 31:39
  They're like that probably would have made sense, but for me, I
• 31:44
  ran into the business side of things and the leadership side
• 31:50
  of things, and I found more interest in in in care in that.
• 31:55
  And so like, I took that path that was a little bit of a
• 31:59
  tangent, but in like onto the cook thing.
• 32:02
  Yeah, you just know, right? Like you have to want to be
• 32:07
  successful. And so if you want to be
• 32:10
  successful, you have to do things that are going to set you
• 32:11
  up for success. And yeah, cooking is easy,
• 32:14
  right? I can say that because it's easy
• 32:15
  for me. It was easy for you.
• 32:17
  Learning the nuances is something that like, I mean,
• 32:20
  again, it's been a long time and I, I still, I, I, I really love
• 32:25
  talking about this stuff. Like I've been, you know, doing
• 32:28
  it since I was 15 and going out and talking about the dinner
• 32:33
  service and how many steaks I, you know, I put up.
• 32:36
  You see, I put up 13 steaks all the same time, 3 salmon and four
• 32:40
  this and boom, boom, boom, right.
• 32:42
  And, you know, went out with a friend the other night and guess
• 32:45
  what? Like different parts of our
• 32:46
  career, still just telling amazing stories.
• 32:49
  And he, he knows overseeing 12 units, 3 states.
• 32:53
  He was telling me a little bit about like his first tasting.
• 32:55
  And these guys kind of like told him to like make this stuff.
• 32:58
  And he's like, I don't think that that's right.
• 33:00
  He doesn't really fit the concept.
• 33:01
  But they were above him. And so he made, he made kind of
• 33:04
  what they wanted him to make. And everybody was like, dude,
• 33:06
  like fucking tasting, not good. Like it's bad.
• 33:10
  And so he was telling the story, but we were just laughing and
• 33:12
  laughing and laughing because he's, he's killing it.
• 33:14
  He's ungodly talented and but it, you know, reminded me of
• 33:19
  those those days or like this, this, you know, this many years
• 33:23
  down the road and still like these moments make me the
• 33:27
  happiest. And, and and that, you know,
• 33:30
  obviously tells me like I'm I've done the right thing, I've made
• 33:35
  the right decisions, I'm going down the right path.
• 33:37
  I love what I do, you know, and I love spreading and the love
• 33:41
  and talking about cuisine and food and leadership.
• 33:44
  And, you know, it looks different for everybody.
• 33:48
  There's a lot of different ways to get that mountaintop.
• 33:51
  But the one thing that will always be the same is once you
• 33:55
  get there, there's another mountain and there's another
• 33:57
  mountain. You got to keep climbing, you
• 33:58
  got to keep going. There's no, you know, the saying
• 34:03
  is for a reason. It only gets harder.
• 34:05
  I mean, you have to continue to push and elevate and like kind
• 34:10
  of you got to you got to get comfortable stepping outside
• 34:12
  your comfort zone, you know, and that what I would say to cooks
• 34:14
  is like, if you're uncomfortable doing something awesome, like
• 34:18
  keep doing that thing as a cook, right?
• 34:21
  It's important for you to get good at cooking steaks, at least
• 34:24
  to be able to manage a station. You don't have to be the best
• 34:26
  grow cook, but you better be able to go run the station and
• 34:28
  hold your own you. Need to understand.
• 34:30
  Because somebody might be better than you.
• 34:31
  There are people better than me, right?
• 34:32
  That's fine. There's always going to be
• 34:34
  somebody probably a little bit more swanier than you in the
• 34:36
  kitchen. And if that matters to you and
• 34:39
  you want to keep growing, then keep trying to go to better
• 34:41
  restaurants until you become, you know, maybe one of the most
• 34:43
  swan yay. But like you got to be able to
• 34:44
  hold your own on all these stations.
• 34:45
  You don't have to be the best. And I could say like in my
• 34:48
  experience, probably wasn't always the best.
• 34:53
  There's price at least one person that was better than me
• 34:55
  specifically, at least on one station, But I I pushed hard to
• 35:01
  like to get there and it mattered to be like, you know, I
• 35:07
  can hold my own when I. Used to have a large team and
• 35:11
  everyone's a fucking gangster on my team.
• 35:13
  Like everyone had Michelin pedigree and, and, and I mean
• 35:18
  dozens of them, like world's fifty best Michelin PED and they
• 35:21
  were all fucking gangsters, every single one of them.
• 35:23
  And we'd always used to sit around and shoot the shit.
• 35:25
  Like who do you think's better at this?
• 35:27
  Who do you think's better at that?
• 35:28
  Like, and, and no one was ever one of those like, well, I
• 35:32
  should be the best across all metrics 'cause some of them were
• 35:35
  like, oh, he's the best at pasta, but he's the best at, you
• 35:39
  know, cooking meat Or he's, he's really, he's really good at
• 35:42
  creativity. But I wouldn't call him when the
• 35:44
  line gets busy, you know, and you, and you start to realize
• 35:47
  that when you have a, a diverse group of chefs, like they all
• 35:50
  come with different skill sets and they all prop each other up.
• 35:54
  Because I, I used to say one of my friends, I don't want to say
• 35:59
  who, but I would go up to him and say, like they say, like
• 36:02
  he's a really good chef. I said, no, no, no, he's a
• 36:04
  really good cook. I'm a really good chef.
• 36:07
  I would just bust his balls. But, but it's, it's one, it's
• 36:10
  one of those things like there's so much that goes into it.
• 36:15
  And in culinary, you could not be good in one kitchen and you
• 36:19
  could really be good in a different one.
• 36:21
  And and of course there's those certain chefs, they're like
• 36:24
  sevens, eights across the board. Like I'm, I'm not the best at
• 36:26
  anything, but I could do a lot of different things.
• 36:28
  That's right. But you have to love the game.
• 36:31
  You have to love learning and you have to love hard work.
• 36:34
  Because the shocking part when you come into your kitchen is it
• 36:38
  is hard work. And you do have to, you do have
• 36:41
  to learn. You do have to learn how to
• 36:43
  cook. You do have to learn how to
• 36:44
  saute. You do have to learn how to show
• 36:45
  up on time. You do have to learn how to, we
• 36:48
  were talking about this earlier, make sure your fucking
• 36:50
  transportation is reliable, whatever that is, if that's the
• 36:52
  bus or that's the car or that's the friend or the Uber,
• 36:55
  whatever. But you got to be able to get to
• 36:56
  work on time. You have to be consistent.
• 36:59
  And one of the things that I like to say about when it comes
• 37:01
  to consistency is I'd rather you be consistently good or
• 37:07
  consistently bad, one or the other.
• 37:09
  Because when you're consistent, when when you're inconsistent,
• 37:12
  sometimes you're really good and sometimes you're really bad.
• 37:14
  It's hard for me to plan with. Yeah, you can't solve for that.
• 37:16
  Yeah, I, I can't cuz like, hey, you're the best cook, but you
• 37:19
  always call off on Fridays like I, I, I, well, I guess that
• 37:23
  would be consistency, but you can't like, show me something.
• 37:27
  I need to understand who you are fully and what I tell people
• 37:30
  when you're consistent. Like if you suck, just be
• 37:32
  consistently sucky because at least we know that you're the
• 37:35
  the B team and you stay in this kitchen until you're ready A.
• 37:37
  100% and we know, you know where to put that person.
• 37:40
  If, if, if there is a spot for that person, you, you, you can
• 37:43
  find the spot. It's in most kitchens, right?
• 37:46
  Like there's a lot of people that work and and get paid to do
• 37:49
  this and they're not very good. And, and you know, back to the
• 37:53
  team thing, right? Like, and as you, as you rise to
• 37:57
  the ranks and you, you become, you know, exec sue or CDC or
• 38:00
  exec chef like you, you realize that more than ever, the game is
• 38:07
  a puzzle and it's putting the right people in the right places
• 38:10
  and understanding people's skill sets.
• 38:13
  And like this person's I can't have I can't have three creative
• 38:16
  people in the in the kitchen. Like that is a, you know, it's a
• 38:20
  trouble waiting to happen in it's the same with the bad cook.
• 38:26
  It's like if you're consistently kind of average or not that
• 38:28
  great. OK, well, maybe I have a spot
• 38:30
  that like you could kind of cuz I cuz I need that right?
• 38:33
  I need, I need that spot. I need that product made.
• 38:36
  You know, maybe that's maybe that's washing dishes, right?
• 38:38
  Or maybe that's being a comedy to four different stations and
• 38:43
  you're like washing lettuce and you're just doing very minimal.
• 38:46
  Maybe you're. Just covering people's days off
• 38:47
  because you can't fully on the station. 100% and maybe like you
• 38:50
  don't solve problems while you're on the station, but like
• 38:52
  you, you can, we can get their service and I know I'm going to
• 38:55
  get a decent product and I don't have to worry so much about it.
• 38:58
  And and maybe you like doing that, right?
• 39:01
  But yeah, you can, you can work with that.
• 39:04
  You can't work with that. You can't work with this because
• 39:05
  it's like, well, what could be or you're great and now you're
• 39:07
  terrible. And it's like, OK, that's I just
• 39:09
  don't know where to put you. How do you guide a young cook
• 39:13
  that's looking to map out their career and what that looks like?
• 39:17
  So they're they're getting into the industry now and they're
• 39:20
  thinking about like, OK, where do you want to go?
• 39:22
  How do you advise people to map out their career early on?
• 39:28
  I think part of that, I think part of that depends on where,
• 39:32
  you know, I can say for me like where, where am I right in, in
• 39:35
  my example is that is like when we open 5570 in 22, that looked
• 39:42
  a lot different in like what I would have said to somebody in
• 39:45
  that position. I had like 3 cooks.
• 39:47
  And so it would have been like, hey, like we're going to grow.
• 39:50
  I just don't really know what that looks like yet.
• 39:52
  And four years later, we've exploded.
• 39:57
  And so I think, yeah, it depends on where you are as a chef and
• 40:01
  what your operation looks like, as most chefs are running
• 40:03
  someone else's establishment. So, and if you do own your own
• 40:07
  restaurant and you are the entrepreneur and you are the
• 40:10
  business owner and you are also the chef, then like you have a
• 40:13
  very good understanding of like, hey, we're going to open up.
• 40:15
  Another concept or we're going to go to another city or not or
• 40:19
  you know we're going to Providence to staying in LA and
• 40:22
  we're going to start from here and we're going to try to get
• 40:24
  through Mission Stars and so this is journey we're going to
• 40:26
  take. So for me specifically it
• 40:28
  depends on like where you know so again, we're trying to scale
• 40:32
  this company. We're about to open our second.
• 40:35
  We will soon be signing a lease on our third and.
• 40:39
  Did you find an exact shop yet? Still looking?
• 40:41
  We're getting there, OK? We're getting there.
• 40:42
  Yeah, we got some. We got some promise and
• 40:44
  prospects. You got to build a whole team,
• 40:46
  right? So if people are, if people are
• 40:48
  looking to come work for your work today.
• 40:51
  Where should they come find me? Yeah, I mean.
• 40:55
  For for the new for the new project.
• 40:57
  Yeah, I mean, DM me. DM me my Instagram.
• 40:58
  Yeah, Jay Suckler. You need 2 chefs everything.
• 41:00
  We will need everything. Yeah.
• 41:02
  So I mean, I'm going to, you know, we want to be mid-july, we
• 41:07
  want to have AEC kind of announced and then the training
• 41:10
  process will start. And then really it's on that EC
• 41:13
  and myself more on that you see than me to start building the
• 41:17
  sub team. So it's the Exec zoo, CDC
• 41:20
  banquet Chef, Zoo chef. Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to
• 41:23
  cut you off. I just figured people are
• 41:25
  listening, people are listening. You might need to.
• 41:28
  I might need to direct some people.
• 41:29
  Your way. So with that specific question
• 41:31
  directed towards me knowing our trajectory, yeah, I would ask
• 41:36
  the person, you know, what is it you're what are you looking for
• 41:39
  again? If, if our, if our values don't
• 41:41
  align and you want to be working in a Mission Star restaurant?
• 41:46
  Well, OK, well, maybe I maybe maybe you're willing to commit a
• 41:49
  year to what we're doing and I can teach you, you know, golly,
• 41:53
  all the things that would make you ungodly successful in any
• 41:56
  environment. Or maybe you're not willing to
• 41:57
  because you're not, it's not exactly where you want to be yet
• 42:00
  and you want to just get there now and then.
• 42:02
  Like, OK, well, I don't have anything for you, right?
• 42:04
  So it's like when it's my stages and it's generally not a long
• 42:07
  term thing. But the way you know, I talk to
• 42:10
  stages is this is a two way street, right?
• 42:13
  Like I'm coming in to see you perform.
• 42:15
  But equally, equally as important, you're seeing the
• 42:19
  team and you're seeing what we're doing.
• 42:20
  And if you don't feel like this is for you, that's also why we
• 42:23
  do this. And we do 4, we do 4 hour
• 42:25
  stages, 3 to 4 hours. I don't, I don't, I'm not
• 42:28
  looking to get a bunch of work out of you.
• 42:30
  I want you to do one or two recipes and I want to see how
• 42:33
  you move around the kitchen. I can tell obviously in about 5
• 42:36
  minutes whether or not somebody is going to a fit in the kitchen
• 42:40
  or be a good fit or if they just aren't going to be a good fit,
• 42:43
  not culturally, but just getting the work done.
• 42:46
  And, and so I really start there and then we kind of figure out,
• 42:50
  yeah, what is it that you want to do?
• 42:53
  And then we can map that out as far as like, hey, we're growing,
• 42:57
  this kitchen's growing this, this business is growing.
• 43:00
  And so if you're willing to move, if you're willing to go
• 43:03
  into other States and go train, you get to this point and we can
• 43:09
  kind of map that out for you. If if you were talking to
• 43:11
  someone that maybe wasn't working in your kitchen, they
• 43:13
  were just a random culinary student reaching out for advice,
• 43:18
  they weren't going to work for you.
• 43:19
  They're just saying, hey, I'm starting my journey, where do I
• 43:23
  begin? I would say, where do you want
• 43:25
  the journey to end? What do you want to be work
• 43:27
  backwards? Yeah, I think that's the way.
• 43:29
  I think the way is to work backwards.
• 43:30
  And I do that with a lot of stuff nowadays is I think about
• 43:33
  what do I want? What's the end product?
• 43:36
  And we get to do that in business because it's like,
• 43:38
  well, if you're, you know, to be the best, what does that look
• 43:42
  like? And then you have to say, well,
• 43:43
  what is actually a table? Do I have the funds?
• 43:45
  Do I have the resources? Or what do I need to do to then
• 43:48
  try to get that? And so, yeah, what I would ask,
• 43:52
  what is the end goal? What do you want to do?
• 43:53
  And if you said, you know, I want to, and this is what most
• 43:56
  people say. I also taught culinary school
• 43:58
  for like almost a year. Did you?
• 43:59
  Yeah. Where at El Centro Community
• 44:02
  College and that school. Yeah.
• 44:03
  Yeah. And so I did that.
• 44:06
  You know what? Did you teach?
• 44:07
  Basic, basic culinary fundamentals, yeah.
• 44:09
  Tornay. No, I didn't not teach that I
• 44:12
  didn't teach. I couldn't do it like I still I
• 44:14
  still can't tornay like. Did you flute a mushroom?
• 44:17
  I've never actually fluted a mushroom I.
• 44:19
  Can flute the shit out of mushrooms.
• 44:20
  So like when it comes to some of those classical skills, I don't
• 44:22
  have them. I've I've trained classically,
• 44:24
  but like that classically, it just wasn't anything I was
• 44:28
  strong at. So again, I never like really
• 44:29
  focused my attention towards it. Yeah, but no, I can't.
• 44:32
  One of my first jobs we had fluted mushrooms on my station.
• 44:35
  I was like a 20 year old cook, whatever.
• 44:39
  So I had to, and it was a busy restaurant, so I had to absolute
• 44:43
  like, I don't know, 200 mushrooms a day.
• 44:45
  Geez. Yeah.
• 44:46
  So I I got good. At it, Yeah, you got a.
• 44:47
  Quick. Yeah, I mean, and by the way,
• 44:50
  back then, they weren't all perfect, but it's like, good
• 44:53
  enough. Yeah, we're not gonna throw it
• 44:54
  away. Yeah.
• 44:55
  And you're gonna. Glaze them probably and cover
• 44:57
  them in chives or something. Yeah, yeah.
• 44:58
  I mean, back then it was like a lot of chopped parsley, right?
• 45:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were delicious.
• 45:03
  I love, I love butt. Butt mushrooms I think are
• 45:05
  underrated. Like they're fucking tasty.
• 45:07
  Man. Duck cells.
• 45:08
  Great. I do sell, sorry.
• 45:11
  Salt, Mushroom, you know, maybe you put maybe some garlic,
• 45:15
  maybe. I don't think so.
• 45:17
  And you just like put that on a bechutan and you the cap up,
• 45:20
  right? Yeah.
• 45:20
  You've got to let the, the moisture and the juice soak into
• 45:23
  itself. And I mean that by itself is
• 45:27
  umami and deliciousness. And so you add like in whatever
• 45:31
  if you were to add like some crispy chicken skin or that or
• 45:33
  something like, are you? It doesn't at that point, it
• 45:35
  doesn't matter what you add to it.
• 45:36
  It's gonna, it's even. It makes it that it takes it
• 45:38
  over top, it's even better. 30 years in the kitchen, 7 books,
• 45:41
  200 podcast episodes, all distilled into a 5 minute daily
• 45:45
  leadership practice. It's called lead like a chef.
• 45:48
  Most people get promoted, quit the industry within two years,
• 45:52
  not because they can't cook, but because no one taught them how
• 45:55
  to lead. I built an app that does Lead
• 45:57
  like a chef. Take the free 2 minute quiz that
• 45:59
  tells you exactly where you stand.
• 46:01
  Go to studio.com/andre. Link is at the show notes.
• 46:05
  What I love about the industry so much is like it, it really is
• 46:09
  like, yes, you got to have the thing, you got to be intuitive
• 46:12
  in the kitchen, like you got to know it's for you first and
• 46:14
  foremost. And if it is, all you have to do
• 46:16
  is work your ass off. That is it.
• 46:18
  And pay attention. Yes, surround yourself with the
• 46:22
  right people, the right chefs and the right team and the right
• 46:26
  try to try to be a successful restaurant right You don't want
• 46:29
  to work at. And you, you can learn anything
• 46:32
  from any kitchen. And I learned any any time I was
• 46:35
  in a new environment. Yesterday I did a dinner in
• 46:36
  Houston. Guess what?
• 46:38
  Taking pictures of all this stuff like.
• 46:39
  Yeah, Yeah, you go. In my brains, always.
• 46:42
  And what am I seeing that's new? It's great to go to.
• 46:44
  Operations, so you could see how they how they operate.
• 46:47
  One of the things that I thought this is where I was going with
• 46:49
  my Ratatouille comment. I don't know how I was going to
• 46:51
  segue into this because I lost my train of thought, but the
• 46:55
  network of chefs, there's a network effect that I, I think
• 47:02
  we, we know a lot of the same people.
• 47:04
  I mean, Junior's a good friend of both of ours, right?
• 47:06
  And, and there's so many, and that's just one, but we know so
• 47:08
  many other chefs that, you know, Matt McAllister, like there,
• 47:12
  there's, there's a lot of chefs that we cross paths with.
• 47:15
  There's a lot of chefs that will send you a text.
• 47:18
  We'll send me a text, we'll pick the phone, we'll have a long
• 47:20
  conversation with them. And I think years ago, I think
• 47:26
  it was a little bit more guarded, like your chef's circle
• 47:28
  was probably smaller. I think social media obviously
• 47:30
  expanded your chef, your chef's circles, going to events like
• 47:34
  food and wine festivals, food grazers and stuff like that.
• 47:36
  And you get to meet people and you get to break bread with them
• 47:38
  and you get to know them. You get to know who you don't
• 47:40
  like. And like, I'll never party with
• 47:41
  them again. Maybe I'm that person to some
• 47:46
  people too, right? But with that being said, I
• 47:49
  think it's important for, I mean, do you agree?
• 47:52
  Like it's not just about the network in your kitchen, it's
• 47:54
  about putting yourself out there, especially when you start
• 47:56
  becoming a sous chef. Go to those food events, go with
• 47:59
  your chef, start introducing yourself to people, and start
• 48:01
  building your network. 100% it's something personally, right?
• 48:08
  And again, it, it, it also, it's like if you have it, you have
• 48:12
  it. If you don't, you don't.
• 48:13
  And and that also blends into like your personality.
• 48:16
  Yeah, right. Me personally, I, I think I
• 48:20
  thrived in the kitchen because I also in a lot of ways was not
• 48:24
  very confident. And at that point in my life,
• 48:27
  definitely more of an introvert. Yeah.
• 48:30
  I knew that kind of as I got a little bit older, but I knew
• 48:34
  that like, at some point I needed to step outside that box
• 48:37
  and become a little more of an extrovert.
• 48:38
  And I'm, you know, in my 30s, you know, like when I'm 37,
• 48:44
  almost 37, but in my 30s, I knew I really need to start moving
• 48:46
  that direction and start networking and meeting more
• 48:50
  people because man, you just, it's like this, yeah, organic
• 48:57
  effect where you, you have to put yourself out there and, you
• 49:01
  know, and on social media, like I'm not really big into a social
• 49:04
  media thing. But what what I am getting
• 49:07
  better at is just like connecting with people, saying
• 49:11
  hello, having a conversation, being genuine.
• 49:13
  And that's something that's working for me.
• 49:15
  Whereas for somebody else it might be like, dude, like you're
• 49:17
  awesome at the social media thing.
• 49:18
  Like you should keep doing that and and build your following.
• 49:23
  But but, but what's also interesting is the reputation
• 49:26
  that you have. So before you and I had ever met
• 49:29
  years ago, years ago, and I mean, like almost 10 years ago,
• 49:35
  someone had mentioned your name to me and said, oh, he's a
• 49:37
  really good cook. And I remembered it like,
• 49:39
  because your name is also unique, it's easy to remember,
• 49:41
  right? And someone mentioned to me
• 49:43
  like, oh, you should, you should look at him.
• 49:44
  He's a really good cook. I was like, OK.
• 49:46
  And then it's like that name sticks in your head.
• 49:49
  And then years later, Junior's talking about you to me.
• 49:52
  And, you know, and then, and then we meet and we've hit it
• 49:53
  off. And I think we've had some
• 49:56
  really great conversations since then.
• 50:00
  But the opposite has also happened to me where someone
• 50:04
  will say that person's a piece of shit.
• 50:06
  I've never met them right? And it's and it sticks with me.
• 50:09
  And then that one time that I do meet them.
• 50:11
  Is a piece of shit. Well.
• 50:12
  Sometimes they're not, but I don't even want to give them a
• 50:14
  chance because it's it's already been, it's already been told to
• 50:16
  me by someone that I respect. And you know, maybe someone
• 50:19
  that's a mutual friend. And I don't know the back story.
• 50:21
  They just said, oh, they don't like that person.
• 50:23
  And sometimes, unfortunately, I'll be like, OK, I kind of want
• 50:25
  to keep my distance from that person because I have heard
• 50:28
  negative things that I never gave them a chance.
• 50:30
  Right. And shame on me for for doing
• 50:32
  that. I try not to do that, but it is
• 50:34
  a natural human reaction. When someone says something
• 50:37
  positive, you remember them, but also when they say something
• 50:40
  negative. And because of the industry
• 50:42
  effect, if many people don't know you and only one person
• 50:47
  says bad things about you, but no one else comes to back you
• 50:49
  up, say no other. You need your network.
• 50:53
  That that network, sorry, is a force multiplier.
• 50:57
  And without getting into the gossip, but I'll give you a, a
• 51:02
  very real example. I sent you something the other
• 51:05
  day and I sent it to a couple of other people.
• 51:08
  And I said, is this that? And you said yes, because that
• 51:14
  person has that reputation without.
• 51:17
  And, and I'm not trying to, to, to say who we're talking about
• 51:19
  because I don't want to hurt their business or their
• 51:21
  reputation, but people's reputations are definitely
• 51:25
  preceding them. What do what?
• 51:27
  I don't know the saying exactly, but it's like it takes you, you
• 51:29
  know, a lifetime to build your reputation and it takes you, you
• 51:33
  know, a week to ruin it, something along those lines,
• 51:36
  right? You know, it's you only got so
• 51:41
  many things in this life, right? You got what you can control.
• 51:44
  And, you know, again, spec to like my upbringing, I was always
• 51:47
  taught like you be a man of your word.
• 51:50
  If you say you're going to do something, you you better
• 51:52
  fucking do it. Yeah.
• 51:56
  And those are things that I live by, right.
• 51:59
  And again, like, I think I've just been very lucky.
• 52:02
  I've been very blessed in a lot of ways in my life.
• 52:07
  You know, a lot of things that I've done that like, I shouldn't
• 52:11
  be sitting here today, shouldn't be sitting on this earth.
• 52:13
  Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, I think a lot
• 52:15
  of I'm not, I'm not unique in this situation, but I, I am very
• 52:19
  understanding of it. And, you know, I've been
• 52:22
  fortunate as I get older to like, not put myself in those
• 52:25
  positions anymore. But that was, yeah, always talk
• 52:29
  to me at a young age, like just be a good person and, and, and
• 52:32
  take care, you know, and you learn as a chef, you got to take
• 52:35
  care of your people. Like you can't do this without
• 52:39
  them. And, and these people that work
• 52:41
  for you are going to have to show up.
• 52:43
  They show up every day. They do this thing and they're,
• 52:47
  they're grinding to get a paycheck.
• 52:50
  And you, it is your job to be a great leader.
• 52:54
  You have to truly care about your people and you can't.
• 52:57
  There's, there's no, there's no halving it, right?
• 52:58
  Like you, you have to be all in. And it's something we, we talk
• 53:02
  about with my team like all the time, you know, like if this
• 53:07
  person's asking for a day off, even if it's next week, if we
• 53:10
  can make it happen, make it happen.
• 53:11
  And sometimes caring about your team means taking that one
• 53:14
  person out. That's bringing down your team,
• 53:17
  which is uncomfortable. But we're.
• 53:19
  We're currently going through the same situation and we're
• 53:21
  somebody has been with me since the beginning and it's time to
• 53:23
  part ways. And the, the good part about
• 53:26
  this story is we both see it. We both the both sides agree.
• 53:30
  But I, you know, I was actually talking to him while here and,
• 53:33
  you know, I told him like I thought, you know, to have
• 53:37
  somebody who works with you for 3 1/2 four years plus, if you're
• 53:40
  that kind of chef, you're doing something right.
• 53:43
  Nine times out of 10, you're doing something right.
• 53:45
  Somebody show up for that long to work for you, they go work
• 53:47
  anywhere else. You know, you're taking care of
• 53:51
  them, they're taking care of you and, and right in a lot of
• 53:53
  different ways. But I thought, you know, for me,
• 54:00
  that has always been like a sign of like I'm going in the right
• 54:02
  direction. Like man, to have someone who
• 54:04
  because before this job, like I really, I really wasn't a lot
• 54:07
  around a place long enough, you know, three years, probably
• 54:10
  three years kind of a Max before my first job when I was a kid.
• 54:14
  And so I never really gave myself the opportunity to have
• 54:17
  somebody work for me for five years because I was never in a
• 54:19
  place for five years. And so this being really my, my,
• 54:22
  my first long 10 year job, I would say, you know, when I was
• 54:26
  young, you know, I did kind of culinary school year and a half
• 54:28
  year and a half, right. The classics kind of bounce
• 54:30
  around until you kind of get into like a management role and
• 54:32
  you do three years. And then I try to about anyways.
• 54:36
  But I learned today kind of through this conversation, like
• 54:40
  it's equally or more important to let that person go if the
• 54:45
  time is up, right? You're doing everybody
• 54:47
  disservice from trying to keep them just to like, but to keep
• 54:52
  the tenure long, right? When it's time for swine to go,
• 54:54
  it's time for swine to go. And it ultimately, hopefully you
• 54:59
  see it before they do. And you say, hey, man, like it's
• 55:02
  time. Like I've done all I can do,
• 55:04
  love you to death. I want to help you in your next
• 55:06
  chapter, but it's time for you go a different direction.
• 55:11
  So you're in a very interesting position, which by the way, I
• 55:14
  ate it at your spot. Food was fantastic.
• 55:17
  The, the space is crazy. It's, it's crazy.
• 55:21
  Thank you for giving me a tour. It was really, really impressive
• 55:25
  how complex and how unique what you're doing is.
• 55:29
  And it's, I mean, I thought while I was walking through, I
• 55:31
  was like, oh, this is a great business model.
• 55:34
  What are you working on right now?
• 55:35
  What, what is it that you're doing for yourself to develop
• 55:38
  yourself now? What's exciting you?
• 55:40
  Well, again, I think midpoint my life, I realized like these are
• 55:46
  the things that I'm great at leadership.
• 55:51
  I think being a great leader is where it started and learning
• 55:53
  new tasks, right. And so I've taken that kind of
• 55:56
  with me through my journey and, you know, with, with this
• 56:00
  specific part of my career and, and, and kind of scaling this
• 56:06
  private members club, it's focused on wine and food.
• 56:11
  You know, I, I am now partnered with somebody who's in private
• 56:14
  equity and, and going through this experience banking, like
• 56:20
  banking and private equity is what my partner and CEO, Tommy
• 56:23
  Shuey, That's what he, his previous life.
• 56:26
  And so it's given me such a, a beautiful outlook on things that
• 56:30
  I wish I probably would have known earlier in my future or
• 56:33
  I'm sorry, earlier in my career is, you know, we talked about
• 56:38
  being in the right room and surrounding yourself with the
• 56:39
  right mentors. Yes.
• 56:43
  But also like before it gets to, you know, before you get too far
• 56:47
  down, the whole understanding and trying to find people that
• 56:51
  are higher than that, the business owners, the people
• 56:54
  running the business, How can you start getting closer to that
• 56:58
  person to Start learning the other side of the business,
• 57:01
  right? How the deals get put together,
• 57:03
  how the leases get put together. You know, we bought, we bought
• 57:07
  the property in Houston, right? We own that.
• 57:10
  And like me being able to be part of understanding kind of
• 57:16
  understanding because I don't have a, you know, a finance
• 57:18
  background. So like, you know, I don't fully
• 57:21
  understand all of it, right? But I, I grasp and I was, I've
• 57:25
  been able to sit in the room and like be part of these
• 57:28
  conversations that we are scaling this business that I
• 57:32
  haven't in, in the, in the past. And so, you know, as much as I
• 57:36
  love food, as much as I'm always going to be a chef, for me,
• 57:40
  it's, it's, it's, it's switched a little bit to if we, if I'm
• 57:44
  going to be the person at the top pushing this business
• 57:47
  forward, I've got to be a business mindset first before
• 57:50
  I'm a chef. And that switch is obviously
• 57:54
  hard because I don't really believe it's a switch.
• 57:56
  I think you have to wear both those hats all the time because
• 57:59
  my job is to make sure my team's good.
• 58:01
  And so like, I'm always going to look at it through first and
• 58:04
  foremost the chef perspective, but I've had to learn to also
• 58:07
  immediately then take that hat off and put the business hat on
• 58:12
  and say, OK, what's best for the business?
• 58:15
  And how do those two things work together?
• 58:17
  Because that's now what I have to be teaching my team.
• 58:19
  Do you spend more time in your own personal studies?
• 58:24
  Do you spend more time in the business side or in the culinary
• 58:27
  side? Half and half.
• 58:29
  Half, yeah. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in
• 58:33
  where I'm gonna be in a year. It'll probably be more in the
• 58:36
  business. Are there any resources that you
• 58:38
  currently use or books or anything like that, that you're
• 58:41
  like, hey, this is a good resource for people that are
• 58:43
  listening that they might also find beneficial?
• 58:48
  I'm getting ready to start a book called The E Myth
• 58:50
  Revisited, which is like a business, professional business
• 58:54
  kind of scaling restaurant book and I haven't started yet.
• 58:57
  I've heard it's great. So I'm getting to start that.
• 59:01
  Before that I just finished, right, because I'm always going
• 59:04
  to be this person. I finished the Wilga Dara book,
• 59:07
  Unreasonable Hospitality. Great book.
• 59:09
  It's fantastic, right? It's fantastic.
• 59:11
  And again, like that's wearing both hats.
• 59:12
  I usually go back and forth. I usually will read a business
• 59:14
  book and I read a culinary kind of like leadership book.
• 59:16
  It could just be a culinary, but it might be one of your books
• 59:18
  just to keep refreshed. I'm writing a new book, by the
• 59:21
  way. Let me know when I will send it.
• 59:23
  Over so it's it's most likely when this episode's airing,
• 59:25
  it'll be out. It's called the Sous Chef
• 59:26
  Blueprint. And if I'm going to give it a
• 59:29
  plug for listening, go get, it's the Sous chef blueprint.
• 59:32
  And what I did with this book is I read a lot of books.
• 59:36
  I mean, I went through a phase in my life where I probably read
• 59:39
  about a book a week. I'm over educated in a sense.
• 59:43
  I'm over read to the point where it's not necessarily good
• 59:46
  because I don't remember everything.
• 59:47
  That I've read right? But with this book, and I wanted
• 59:51
  to correct a problem that I find in a lot of books, especially
• 59:54
  that are like, I hate to say self help or business.
• 59:57
  Like they tell you what to do, but they don't tell you how to
• 59:58
  do it. Like they give you a lot of
• 59:59
  ideas, but they're like vague and there's a lot of Gray
• 1:00:03
  business advice. It's like, OK, but what do I do
• 1:00:05
  with it now? I don't know where to start.
• 1:00:07
  So in the book that I wrote at the end of each chapter, there's
• 1:00:10
  do this now, execute this now. And there's bullet points on
• 1:00:13
  there like, OK, do this, this, this, and it's in every single
• 1:00:16
  chapter. And one of the things that, and,
• 1:00:19
  and you and I have talked about this, you know, I, I fully live
• 1:00:21
  in the matrix. Sometimes AI is so beneficial
• 1:00:24
  when it comes to building spreadsheets, recipes,
• 1:00:28
  converting and all, all sorts of other things.
• 1:00:31
  Writing manuals. What I did was a lot of times
• 1:00:34
  when I consult or when I'm helping other chefs, I just, you
• 1:00:36
  know, I have my AI prompts that I use.
• 1:00:38
  So I put some of my AI prompts that I use in the book too.
• 1:00:42
  So like people would like, Hey, if you need a, if you needed to
• 1:00:44
  generate recipes that are in grams with allergens, with
• 1:00:49
  percentages, etcetera, etcetera, just copy and paste the prompt
• 1:00:52
  and put your recipe and it'll convert it.
• 1:00:53
  So I wanted to make sure I had tools in there that were useful.
• 1:00:56
  That would be the next thing is AI.
• 1:00:59
  You know, I'm currently working with my team to, you know, we
• 1:01:01
  get we get BE OS and so we need now to take those BE OS and
• 1:01:07
  input in the back end, like portion sizes and waist sizes.
• 1:01:13
  But we're trying to work with, I mean, I'm sure this doesn't
• 1:01:15
  exist. We just we're we're starting on
• 1:01:16
  this rabbit hole now taking that BEO putting in AI and it is just
• 1:01:20
  going to regenerate prep list how much you need to prep, what
• 1:01:23
  you need to order, where you need to order from the
• 1:01:25
  quantities. And so like that will take my my
• 1:01:28
  banquet chef spends 2 hours every week.
• 1:01:30
  More, does that depend on how complex the?
• 1:01:32
  Yeah, just just going through like what needs to order?
• 1:01:35
  When do we need to buy, who's it coming from, how and then
• 1:01:38
  writing the prep list, right. And then and then the actual
• 1:01:41
  organization of the day-to-day. So it's a you're basically.
• 1:01:43
  Creating a banquet chef brain. 100% so he or she can focus on
• 1:01:49
  surely the execution portion of it and not all the modern the
• 1:01:53
  monotony of building up to. It, I, I think about this
• 1:01:56
  sometime and this will be the, the last thing for my rants, but
• 1:01:59
  I think about this sometimes it's like how different our
• 1:02:02
  operations going to look when the chefs who are technically,
• 1:02:04
  you know, the, the, the driving force of the culinary, they can
• 1:02:07
  leave the office and spend more time in the kitchen.
• 1:02:09
  How is that going to affect labor models?
• 1:02:11
  How's that going to affect the flow of service?
• 1:02:14
  How's that going to affect food quality when they're no longer
• 1:02:17
  in the office for six hours out of their shift where they're now
• 1:02:20
  like, oh, office work is an hour and that's five hours on the
• 1:02:24
  floor? And especially in a time right
• 1:02:26
  now where the labor is more than it's ever been, like we need to
• 1:02:30
  be going that direction. We need to be taking those away
• 1:02:32
  and, and right we, we push for right now like less meetings,
• 1:02:36
  Like we, we're, we want to be a hands on company.
• 1:02:39
  We don't want to be a, a building in all these meetings
• 1:02:41
  and all, you know, it's like, yeah, you got to answer a lot of
• 1:02:44
  emails. But like, I want my team in
• 1:02:47
  there doing the thing, solving the problems, spending time in
• 1:02:50
  the kitchen, doing what it is that is going to make us
• 1:02:54
  flourish as the best private members club in the country.
• 1:02:57
  Chef, when we start wrapping up, I typically have my my wrap up
• 1:03:00
  question, so I have a few of them for you.
• 1:03:03
  If you had a Mount Rushmore of four chefs that you think should
• 1:03:06
  be on there, who should be on? Listen, I heard I was listening
• 1:03:11
  to somebody's, I don't remember who might have been Kennedy.
• 1:03:13
  I don't remember. I was like, yeah, those are some
• 1:03:16
  good ones. You know who You know the the
• 1:03:18
  twins. It was the twins that I was
• 1:03:20
  listening to and I like theirs. I don't remember off the top of
• 1:03:24
  my head, but for me, and again, some of these are repetition of
• 1:03:29
  no, people said these. But personally for me in in in
• 1:03:32
  my, my journeys, in my travels, Ducasse Albert Ardria, right,
• 1:03:42
  Not for Ron, but Albert. I think he he truly, I mean, you
• 1:03:46
  see what he's doing, like the guy is obese, right Enigma and
• 1:03:51
  everything he's doing in Spain, like unreal.
• 1:03:54
  So I think I think he's one that will forever be talked about
• 1:03:59
  just like escapier, right? Like he's one of those cats
• 1:04:05
  escapier right. Again, I grew up in the guy went
• 1:04:08
  to French culinary school. I think escapier and there's
• 1:04:11
  there's another one or two right in that same round.
• 1:04:14
  But I think those set the standard for, for how, you know,
• 1:04:19
  French cooking and, and the sauces and all the things and
• 1:04:23
  then, right, we need to do kind of somebody modern.
• 1:04:27
  It's a tough one, man. Give me a second.
• 1:04:33
  I mean, there's a bunch of people going through my head and
• 1:04:37
  then I like a lean to New York and there's somebody said David
• 1:04:41
  Burke. He's not on the Mount Rushmore,
• 1:04:42
  but David Burke's AG who's the 4th, You know, one of one of
• 1:04:49
  those top guys, you know, TK Ballude repair.
• 1:04:55
  John, George. John George, these guys are all
• 1:04:58
  Mecca. If I can link all those into one
• 1:05:00
  and put them in on the same head of the fourth round much more.
• 1:05:03
  That's what I do because I think all those all those cats just
• 1:05:06
  came at the right time and did some really cool stuff.
• 1:05:08
  And all of them except TK are foreign.
• 1:05:12
  And so like that was a special, you know, time in in our in our
• 1:05:17
  air of cooking. What's the what's the tape in
• 1:05:19
  your kitchen? Is it green tape or is it blue
• 1:05:21
  tape? It's three M first of all,
• 1:05:25
  right, it can be well, it's three M tape right, the brand 3M
• 1:05:28
  right. It can't be is it is 3 It's
• 1:05:31
  three M It's three M Scotch 3M right.
• 1:05:34
  You can get green blue. We do blue.
• 1:05:36
  I, I like, I say 3 M Scotch because if it, it's more
• 1:05:42
  important that the tape is durable and not like, you know,
• 1:05:46
  some tape you put on and it's like it's not thick.
• 1:05:48
  So like you put it on and it like has like little bubbles in
• 1:05:51
  it. It's like it's just not good
• 1:05:52
  quality tape. So first and foremost, no matter
• 1:05:53
  what color better be Scotch and it better be 3 M.
• 1:05:57
  We use blue. I also love green.
• 1:05:59
  I just, I've just been a blue guy.
• 1:06:01
  What about salt? And black sharpie Only black
• 1:06:03
  sharpies, no other. Colors I I don't.
• 1:06:05
  Don't fucking don't come in the kitchen with a red Sharpie or
• 1:06:08
  purple Sharpie. I had to kill that stuff.
• 1:06:10
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Black only.
• 1:06:11
  No, no, no, no. Click Sharpies are fine.
• 1:06:14
  No fine points like either click or traditional.
• 1:06:17
  Sharpie, I'm against click Sharpies just because they annoy
• 1:06:19
  me because there's always that one cook that's just standing
• 1:06:21
  there. Click, click, click when I'm
• 1:06:22
  trying to talk. Yeah.
• 1:06:23
  We don't, we, we don't have like nobody.
• 1:06:26
  We, we, we buy off brand Sharpies like, because, you
• 1:06:30
  know, we're too nice and we provide Sharpies because, you
• 1:06:33
  know, like people can have Sharpies and I just can't deal
• 1:06:35
  with that. So we Amazon like the really
• 1:06:37
  cheap ones and that's generally what everybody in the kitchen
• 1:06:39
  uses. What?
• 1:06:40
  What about your all-purpose salt?
• 1:06:43
  Oh, Diamond. Diamond Kosher.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah, Yeah. Diamond Crystal.
• 1:06:46
  Yeah. What about?
• 1:06:48
  What about finishing acid? What do you use?
• 1:06:50
  It depends on the dish, but you know, I'm you know, because of
• 1:06:56
  what we do and we try to work with local stuff as much as we
• 1:06:59
  can and we do and we do like do make some vinegars and stuff,
• 1:07:02
  but like it's not really the forefront of what we do.
• 1:07:05
  Hopefully as we grow this brand, we get some creative people that
• 1:07:07
  can do some fun stuff like that. Like we're all about that.
• 1:07:10
  But right, you right people, right place, right time, right
• 1:07:13
  position. I'm too busy to be like trying
• 1:07:15
  to ferment strawberry tops to make vinegar.
• 1:07:18
  And so if we have some kind of like sometimes we like marinate
• 1:07:22
  and macerate vinegars, like so we'll take white distilled and
• 1:07:25
  we'll put a bunch of Peaches in it like Peach scrap.
• 1:07:27
  So like that's how we would do like a house vinegar.
• 1:07:29
  So to answer your question, something like that that goes
• 1:07:31
  with a dish. So if we're doing tomatoes and
• 1:07:33
  you know, just say just tomatoes and we have a Peach vinegar,
• 1:07:36
  maybe there's not Peaches in there.
• 1:07:38
  Like that makes sense for me to finish that dish with.
• 1:07:39
  And if not that, Daniels Sherry 2 that I love, or lemon or lime.
• 1:07:48
  Awesome, where can people find you if they want to follow you
• 1:07:51
  on Instagram if they want to reach out for a job?
• 1:07:55
  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm based in Dallas and 5570, you know,
• 1:07:59
  website you can you can kind of e-mail or find or I'm Jay
• 1:08:02
  Sutcliffe on Instagram. Josh Suckcliffe, LinkedIn.
• 1:08:06
  It is kind of big now in the chef world.
• 1:08:08
  So I'm on LinkedIn a lot. Yeah.
• 1:08:09
  And yeah, that's it. Awesome brother, I'm glad you
• 1:08:13
  came. I appreciate you man.
• 1:08:14
  Yeah, yeah, this was fun. Yeah, Nice seeing you.
• 1:08:16
  Cheers. All right, that's the show.
• 1:08:18
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• 1:08:20
  than five stars. If you want more chefs PSA, go
• 1:08:23
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• 1:08:26
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• 1:08:28
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• 1:08:30
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• 1:08:35
  The link is in the notes. We'll see you next week.
• 1:08:37
  Hit the porno music. No small drink in the kitchen?
• 1:08:40
  Mix it. Drop the chef dollars.
• 1:08:42
  No fiction stirring up the beats he enough to say.