Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Why Your Food Needs a Story Ep. 34

Transcript

Why Your Food Needs a Story Ep. 34 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs.
• 0:01
  PS a podcast. I'm your host on Trina.
• 0:03
  Tara, on today's episode we're going to talk about why your
• 0:05
  food needs stories. Stay tuned.
• 0:20
  So first, let's start with an update.
• 0:23
  I just finished the kitchen Art of War strategies for chefs, it
• 0:29
  is available. You can go to hsn.com to get it
• 0:32
  or, you know, there's a link in any of my social Handles in the
• 0:36
  link tree. You can click on that and you
• 0:38
  could get to it at some only available right now in ebook.
• 0:41
  I don't think I'm going to publish it.
• 0:42
  I think I'm going to keep it only as an e-book.
• 0:45
  If anything I will also make an audio book at least that is the
• 0:48
  plan, but For those of you that are not aware that are thinking
• 0:52
  about getting into writing books and Publishing audiobooks are
• 0:56
  much more, lengthy and difficult to publish, then the written in
• 1:01
  the ebooks audiobooks just, you know, there's a lot more
• 1:05
  technical requirements. So anyway, I don't want to bore
• 1:07
  you with that. Hence, the reason for the delay
• 1:10
  right now and the line cook survival manual, audiobook,
• 1:13
  which I have been working on. We're getting closer but still
• 1:17
  not done, not ready. Anyway, That's what I've been up
• 1:21
  to. I got I gotta tell you this
• 1:23
  because I thought it was funny. I got an email the other day
• 1:25
  from someone at Columbia University and they addressed me
• 1:31
  in the email as mental athlete. Now, for those of you that don't
• 1:36
  know, if you haven't been listening, or maybe just weren't
• 1:38
  paying attention, I was in the United States memory
• 1:41
  championships. I want to say funny enough, I
• 1:44
  don't remember, but I want to say in the year 2000, I play
• 1:47
  state. So there's about 200
• 1:48
  competitors. It's put on by MIT.
• 1:50
  T and I placed eighth out of 200 because I'm a nerd for those of
• 1:56
  you that haven't figured that out.
• 1:58
  I am a nerd in real life. I'd like to read a lot and I do
• 2:01
  a lot of stupid things to, actually, I don't do stupid
• 2:04
  things, I do smart things to make me smarter.
• 2:07
  Anyway, long story short, the email addresses me as mental
• 2:11
  athlete and it says that they want me to go to New York and
• 2:15
  study my brain. Put me in an MRI machine.
• 2:19
  Anyway, I just thought that was funny.
• 2:20
  I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to have any one
• 2:22
  study my brain. I don't, they're probably just,
• 2:25
  you know, trying to steal my my ideas for chefs, PSA content
• 2:29
  anyway. So that's I just thought that
• 2:32
  was funny and I thought I'd share that with the audience for
• 2:35
  those of you that know, me know. That I'm mental athlete, I
• 2:38
  changed. I used to change my name about
• 2:42
  once. Every two weeks, I would change
• 2:44
  my name on Instagram to something new and for a while,
• 2:48
  it was mental athlete. Anyway, I thought it was funny,
• 2:50
  so now it's back to mental athlete.
• 2:52
  It's no longer the parody account of Entre natera.
• 2:55
  So, now it's back to mental, mental athlete, Andre natera.
• 2:58
  Anyway, that's what I've been up to.
• 3:01
  I keep getting offers to get sucked back into kitchens and
• 3:06
  was supposed to go. Help a friend, open up a
• 3:09
  restaurant anyway. That didn't come through
• 3:12
  restaurants still happening, but they don't need my help.
• 3:14
  They find out on expensive and talking to another friend about
• 3:18
  doing something and then talking to someone else about doing
• 3:20
  something and people want me to go back into the kitchen.
• 3:24
  I, it's like, I'm retired. I don't want to go back into the
• 3:26
  kitchen, but I don't mind helping out friends with going
• 3:29
  in and Consulting and helping them.
• 3:31
  Get up and running and then leaving them with all the
• 3:33
  problems and say, okay. All right, it's all you.
• 3:35
  I'm going back to Chillin and making podcasts and write and
• 3:39
  books and things like that. Anyway, I do miss the kitchen at
• 3:42
  times. And when I think about what I
• 3:45
  miss about it, I do kind of miss the action and, you know, the
• 3:48
  the grind and, but that will probably wear off pretty quick.
• 3:52
  Right? You know, you miss it for a
• 3:53
  little bit and then you get back in.
• 3:54
  It's like, I don't know if I missed it that much.
• 3:57
  I'm going to go back to doing what I normally do.
• 4:00
  Anyway, I do miss it. I was thinking about this the
• 4:03
  other day I was texting with one of my friends.
• 4:05
  He's a chef in New York and he works at a really great
• 4:08
  restaurant that I was looking at the food that they're doing this
• 4:10
  Bistro, and it's incredible, beautiful food stunning and I
• 4:14
  started thinking myself boy. If I ever open up a restaurant,
• 4:18
  it would be really basic food. Like really done, well,
• 4:21
  technical. But basic, I wouldn't go too
• 4:23
  complicated. Like keeping up with Trends and
• 4:25
  all that. I would just want to do simple
• 4:27
  food that I enjoy, executed very well.
• 4:30
  Proper technique but not over-the-top not trying to be
• 4:33
  trendy. Just I would focus more on
• 4:35
  delicious versus cool. Me personally.
• 4:39
  That's what I would do if I was opening up a restaurant right
• 4:41
  now. And the reason I say that is
• 4:42
  sometimes I think cool is short-lived, right?
• 4:46
  But there's longevity and delicious right?
• 4:48
  Look delicious can be in the neighborhood for 20-30 years and
• 4:52
  your kids go there and your kids kids go there.
• 4:54
  And you know, I don't know if I plan on cooking that long if I
• 4:58
  would ever open up a restaurant but someone else had reached out
• 5:02
  to me and started asking me about how do you negotiate a
• 5:05
  deal to get ownership in this that and the other.
• 5:07
  So that's Put up a poll today. I said, what do you want the
• 5:10
  episode to be about? Do you want it to be about?
• 5:12
  Why food need stories or do you want it to be about how to get
• 5:15
  that money? Why food needs stories one?
• 5:19
  So that's what we're going to talk about.
• 5:20
  We'll talk about how to get that money on another episode and
• 5:23
  strategies on how to negotiate salary.
• 5:25
  Not just for chefs, but also for Cooks because I think it's
• 5:27
  important to teach Cooks how to get their money, how to
• 5:31
  negotiate when they're applying for a job.
• 5:32
  But also, teach chefs again. How do you negotiate that deal
• 5:37
  to make sure that you're getting taken care of financially?
• 5:42
  Right? Because money is important, we
• 5:45
  passion is good to but the end of the day we all have bills to
• 5:47
  pay and getting paid well and knowing how to get paid well as
• 5:51
  an important skill as a chef. So anyway, I digress.
• 5:54
  Let's get into the topic at hand and that is why food needs
• 5:57
  stories? Well, I think it's pretty
• 6:00
  obvious why food needs stories, but in case it's not going to
• 6:04
  tell you all a story. I'll start out with The story
• 6:06
  and that is growing up my mom. I'm sorry.
• 6:10
  Mom if you're listening to this, by the way, She hates the story
• 6:14
  because I told her and she says it's not true, but it is true.
• 6:17
  So when I was a kid, you know, when you're a kid, you think
• 6:21
  your parents food is great? So whenever my mom would cook I
• 6:24
  loved it whenever my dad would cook.
• 6:25
  I loved it as well. And they like, they were the
• 6:27
  best chefs. I knew my mom, my dad.
• 6:31
  And I remember I was having a party and I invited my friends
• 6:35
  over. That was a kid.
• 6:36
  I don't remember how old I was, but I was a kid.
• 6:38
  Now, I invited my friends over, and my mom was going to make
• 6:40
  this Her nacho cheese dip chili con queso, right?
• 6:46
  And I used to love that, I used to love it so much, and I would
• 6:48
  tell everyone how good it was. Anyway, I thought it was the
• 6:51
  best thing ever. I invited all my friends over
• 6:53
  and I was like, I can't wait for you to try this and they tried
• 6:56
  it and they're, like, your mom's a terrible cook.
• 7:00
  This sucks. And I remember, like, what are
• 7:03
  you talking about? My mom's a great cook.
• 7:04
  Would, what are you talking about?
• 7:05
  Anyway, I remember, I was so dumbfounded to think that this
• 7:10
  wasn't good, but I I was like, I don't understand.
• 7:13
  I don't understand how people could think this is not good
• 7:15
  when it's excellent, right? Anyway, long story short, I go
• 7:18
  to culinary school I learn how to cook.
• 7:20
  I come back and I realize oh shit, yeah it is bad but I
• 7:24
  didn't know that right? Because the attachment to the
• 7:30
  dish, the attack, the emotional connection to the food makes a
• 7:32
  big difference in what you're doing.
• 7:34
  So Whenever you're putting dishes on the menu for your
• 7:38
  restaurant, you could have a dish and if that dish has a
• 7:42
  story, it's going to have a more emotional connection to you, and
• 7:46
  it's also going to have an emotional connection to your
• 7:47
  Cooks. It will also translate to an
• 7:49
  emotional connection to the guests in your dining room.
• 7:53
  If, for example, you have a lasagna on the menu and I think
• 7:57
  this applies more to Universal food that everyone has a way of
• 8:00
  doing it. Like, if you say, I'm making a
• 8:02
  lasagna, everyone's going to tell you, oh, I make It this way
• 8:05
  and someone else can say, I make it that way.
• 8:06
  But I mean there's a chef's PSA that I put up that no matter how
• 8:09
  well you do something another Chef thinks you're wrong and
• 8:13
  it's very true. Like I put chefs PSAs up all the
• 8:15
  time and people tell me how I'm wrong that they do it another
• 8:18
  way. It's like, yeah, read read,
• 8:19
  chefs, PSA, rule number one, no matter what I tell you you're
• 8:23
  going to think your way is better.
• 8:24
  So let's say you're making this lasagna and if you go out there
• 8:28
  and you say and you present it and you say this is lasagna,
• 8:30
  right? The server serves it to the
• 8:32
  guests and you say here's the lasagna, well people against a
• 8:34
  mile If I like it the one over here is better.
• 8:37
  So and so's is better. But if you go and you deliver
• 8:39
  that lasagna and say this is the lasagna that my mother used to
• 8:44
  make for me and it was passed on from her mother and so on and so
• 8:49
  forth. And the way that we make it is
• 8:51
  we do this that and the other, and it's a two-day process and
• 8:54
  we grind the meat and she always said you just making this up,
• 8:57
  but the lasagna has to have carrots because my grandmother
• 8:59
  used to put carrots in it. So I know that's not traditional
• 9:02
  but that's the way we do it. Well then when someone gets it
• 9:04
  they'll be like, okay. So, the Judgment of the dish is
• 9:07
  removed. And you're able to have someone
• 9:11
  connect with you on that particular dish, right?
• 9:17
  It's important to remember that a lot of the experiences that
• 9:20
  you have with food are anchored to memories and that particular,
• 9:23
  anchor can affect how you perceive a particular moment in
• 9:26
  time as specifically the food that you ate.
• 9:30
  What a story is attached to the food, it allows you the
• 9:32
  flexibility to play with the rules a little bit and color
• 9:37
  outside the lines, and make something not traditional, and
• 9:40
  I'm using, you know, finger quotes as I say that not
• 9:42
  traditional because, you know, every chefs can say, oh, has to
• 9:44
  be made like this, you know, if you're making a bolognese sauce,
• 9:47
  you have to have this, if you're making a stock, it has to have
• 9:48
  this. So everyone gets caught up in
• 9:50
  the proper way to do things, but when food has a story, you could
• 9:53
  use that to your advantage to color outside the lines of
• 9:56
  tradition and make it unique to yourself.
• 9:58
  And I know I've said this Before on spsa podcast.
• 10:02
  But I've also said it on social that I do think that the next
• 10:04
  Food trend is going to be you sharing stories about your food,
• 10:12
  right? It's where you grew up, it's
• 10:13
  your house, it's your home, it's your neighborhood.
• 10:15
  Whatever the case may be, it's not going to be so much based on
• 10:17
  the tradition of the cuisine. It's going to be based on the
• 10:19
  tradition of the individual as much as I believe that.
• 10:23
  I also think it's a smart marketing play for a lot of
• 10:25
  chefs because again, you could you have some flexibility to
• 10:29
  color ER, Outside the Lines when you want to, I'll tell you the
• 10:31
  story and I hope I haven't shared this before, but I was at
• 10:35
  this restaurant and with every course they would come out and
• 10:38
  they would explain the origin of the dish, where it came from the
• 10:42
  tradition of the recipe. So on and so forth.
• 10:45
  And, you know, when the server comes out and explains that
• 10:47
  there's a story behind each dish again, the tomatoes came from
• 10:51
  this Farm, that's the story. Then there's the story of the
• 10:54
  farm. Okay.
• 10:54
  The farm does this that and the other.
• 10:56
  Where'd you get your steak from? Oh, we get it from this farm and
• 10:59
  this Raises their cows, like this.
• 11:01
  And this particular cow was named that right.
• 11:03
  All of a sudden, the food tastes different.
• 11:05
  People are connected to stories and people will remember
• 11:08
  stories. And you know, I know I started
• 11:10
  out this podcast talking about the memory championships but now
• 11:13
  I could, people ever want to learn how to memorize a bunch of
• 11:16
  things in sequential order. I could tell you that the way
• 11:19
  you remember things for memory competitions is through a story.
• 11:23
  So you'll say if I gave you 10 random words and set of memorize
• 11:29
  them, I'd have a hard time but if I told you a story and I
• 11:31
  said, first, we did this and then we were walking down the
• 11:34
  street and we saw this and then you went here and you did this,
• 11:37
  it would be much easier for you to remember the story and the
• 11:40
  particular items in sequential order because that's the way our
• 11:45
  brains are wired to remember, things is through story.
• 11:48
  You know, there's obviously oral tradition stories were passed
• 11:51
  along for, you know, Generations.
• 11:53
  So when your food has the story, people are going to be more
• 11:56
  inclined to feel an emotional attachment to that and they're
• 11:58
  also going to feel an emotional. Schmidt to you.
• 12:00
  There was a restaurant that I oversaw in Austin, Texas called
• 12:05
  Garrison which shout out to them.
• 12:06
  They just received Forbes travel guide four-star rating, again, I
• 12:11
  think they're the only four star restaurant in Austin if I'm not
• 12:15
  mistaken. But anyway, shout out to the
• 12:17
  Garrison team, chef Graham and Chef Jacob you guys well done.
• 12:21
  But anyway, when we first opened the restaurant, we used to have
• 12:24
  a box on the table and it was this mysterious box that what
• 12:28
  was in it. And we Not say anything about it
• 12:30
  that would get placed on the table and there was little
• 12:33
  knickknacks in there and so maybe there was a cork maybe
• 12:36
  there's a photograph. Maybe there was a notebook where
• 12:39
  you could just leave little notes and it was Alex Gonzalez's
• 12:43
  idea of Alex has a good friend of mine who was the GM of the
• 12:46
  restaurant. When we first opened up, he is
• 12:48
  now the GM at next restaurant in Chicago, shout out to Alex,
• 12:53
  also, phenomenal artist. But anyway, we digress.
• 12:55
  But it was like, you'd go through it and you pick up the
• 12:58
  the photograph and there might be One of the chef's grilling on
• 13:02
  a small Weber grill. Because when we were doing the
• 13:05
  Test Kitchen, we didn't have a grill to cook on.
• 13:07
  So we had to cook on this little teeny tiny Grill and there's a
• 13:10
  photo of it, but it's like when someone would look at this photo
• 13:13
  be like, oh, this is kind of random what's in here, then it
• 13:16
  would start the conversation. Oh, here's the story behind this
• 13:19
  and this is how it happened. And then all of a sudden oh it's
• 13:22
  super interesting. Now they have a connection with
• 13:23
  the culinary team. Now they have a connection with
• 13:26
  the restaurant so figuring out ways where you could include a
• 13:29
  story. And your food is going to make
• 13:32
  the experience much better. It's going to it's going to
• 13:34
  create some sort of stickiness with the guests and start to
• 13:37
  build the bond with them. One of the things that I did at
• 13:40
  that particular restaurant. So I had to do a cooking
• 13:43
  interview and this is a story that not a lot of people know,
• 13:47
  but it does illustrate the point and I'm a little bit cautious to
• 13:50
  share it but I'll share it anyway.
• 13:51
  Because yeah, statute of limitations in The Culinary
• 13:54
  world have passed. Anyway, I was on an executive
• 13:57
  chef cooking interview and It was intense.
• 14:00
  I had to do like nine courses and I had to do Italian food,
• 14:04
  and I had to, you know, as multiple restaurants that I was
• 14:06
  going to oversee. So I had to do like food from
• 14:07
  this restaurant food, from that restaurant food from this other
• 14:09
  restaurant. Long story short, I had to do
• 14:12
  this this Italian course, which is like a bread.
• 14:15
  Gnocchi. And you know it's basically a
• 14:18
  has spec in it has onions as bread and you make it almost
• 14:21
  like matzo balls and it's served in a broth.
• 14:24
  Anyway, I spent all day making sure that the broth was perfect
• 14:28
  and you know is a it was a bro do And it had like parmesan rind
• 14:31
  in it and prosciutto trimmings and it had.
• 14:33
  I put some Bonito flakes in it. So it's like super Punchy,
• 14:38
  Umami, Savory broth. And then you know you had these
• 14:41
  these bread Yoki that we're going to go in it and it was
• 14:44
  just going to be, you know, delicious and unctuous and
• 14:48
  beautiful anyway because I have to do nine courses for this
• 14:52
  tasty and I'm like organized. And I'm like, banging things out
• 14:55
  and everything is perfect. I could tell you that.
• 14:57
  There's there's very few times that I could tell you.
• 14:59
  I was so organized. And on point, this was one of
• 15:01
  those times. I was like, I was organized on
• 15:03
  point and I was Get out nine courses and everything looked
• 15:06
  beautiful. Anyway we get to the bread
• 15:08
  gnocchi and like I said, the broth was absolutely perfect but
• 15:12
  I left it on my burner and it kept cooking.
• 15:16
  And as it kept cooking, it started to reduce and as it
• 15:19
  starts to reduce, you know, this what happens.
• 15:23
  It was perfect but now it became salty and I fucked up because I
• 15:28
  did it taste it before I served it.
• 15:29
  So, here I am. I'm plating the gnocchi and I
• 15:32
  put the broth in and I have it all.
• 15:34
  All set and it's just a beautiful bowl with this
• 15:38
  gorgeous broth. I give it to the service staff
• 15:40
  and I say okay take it now as the server is walking to the
• 15:44
  table to present it to my potential.
• 15:46
  New employers I taste the broth and I'm like oh shit it is
• 15:52
  inevitably salty inevitably salty and I'm thinking this is a
• 15:55
  deal-breaker it is so salty. I shouldn't get the job right.
• 15:59
  It's that bad. It's so salty.
• 16:01
  I should not get the job but I think to myself you've come this
• 16:04
  far. Our everything else is so on
• 16:06
  point, you can't lose this opportunity due to Salty broth.
• 16:11
  So, I quickly run to the table and before they begin, you know,
• 16:15
  the plates were placed right in front of him, and I explained
• 16:17
  the course, and I said, now, before everyone tries to this
• 16:19
  dish, let me tell you a little story about this dish.
• 16:22
  This comes from a small town in the northern part of Italy near
• 16:26
  the coast and the way that they do it, there's something called
• 16:29
  Acqua pazza, which means crazy water.
• 16:31
  And what they do, is they go to the ocean, they take a bucket of
• 16:34
  They take a bucket of seawater and they cook the gnocchi, the
• 16:38
  bread gnocchi inside the seawater and the reason they do
• 16:41
  that is because the bread is so Bland, they use it to season the
• 16:46
  gnocchi. So the sea water being salty
• 16:49
  Seasons, the gnocchi, which is Bland.
• 16:51
  And then what you're supposed to do is I just want you to eat the
• 16:55
  gnocchi, but do not drink the broth, because it is going to be
• 16:57
  salty the same way that it is served in the small town in
• 17:02
  Italy. And they ate it and they said,
• 17:06
  thank you for sharing that with us.
• 17:07
  That is brilliant. We've never heard of that
• 17:09
  before. What a great story and if you
• 17:12
  hadn't said anything to us, we would have thought this was
• 17:14
  salty, but it's perfect. And I ended up getting the job.
• 17:19
  Anyway, long story short is like shit.
• 17:21
  So if there if there wasn't a story, I wouldn't have gotten
• 17:24
  the job and it was all complete bullshit and they fell for it.
• 17:28
  But I got the job you could make.
• 17:31
  Like I said, you could make small mistakes but if there's a
• 17:33
  There people will be okay with it.
• 17:35
  So when you're designing your menus, make sure that you have a
• 17:38
  story behind everything. Make sure that there's a story
• 17:40
  behind where the produce is from.
• 17:41
  If you can't have a story behind the produce behind the meat
• 17:44
  behind the product, right? If you can't have a story behind
• 17:46
  the product then maybe it's behind the chef.
• 17:50
  Maybe it's time and place, right?
• 17:52
  Noma does this very well think about restaurants like Eleven
• 17:55
  Madison Park in New York where they talk about, you know, it's
• 17:58
  New York food, you know, Norma doing their thing.
• 18:01
  It's Scandinavian right there. Has to be a story to the food,
• 18:05
  maybe it's something from your childhood.
• 18:06
  Maybe it's something that you grew up with, but once you start
• 18:08
  incorporating that if there is no story to your food, make one
• 18:12
  up, right? Find one give one to your server
• 18:15
  so that they could share it with the guest.
• 18:17
  One of the dishes that I did on this cooking interview that I
• 18:19
  was just telling you about stayed on the menu and it was a
• 18:24
  beautiful dish that people really enjoyed but honestly it
• 18:27
  was a very difficult pick up it had way too many touch points
• 18:29
  and it was good for cooking interview but it was bad for
• 18:31
  service but it stayed on the menu for a long time.
• 18:33
  I'm and the reason it stayed on there is because the schpiel
• 18:37
  that the servers would give to people was this is the dish that
• 18:40
  got the chef, the job so it stays on the menu and or
• 18:43
  versions of it. And it stayed on forever.
• 18:46
  But, you know, I eventually talking to the shovels, like,
• 18:50
  yeah, we should probably take this off there like I thought it
• 18:52
  was a sacred cows. Like well, you take it off.
• 18:55
  It doesn't need to be on there forever, right?
• 18:56
  I know it's a difficult dish but it's sold.
• 18:59
  Well, and it shouldn't have sold so well.
• 19:01
  But the reason it sold so well was because there was a story
• 19:03
  behind it that it was the the dish that got me the job.
• 19:07
  Anyway, long story short, get a story behind your food.
• 19:12
  And there's a lot of different people that could share the
• 19:14
  story, right? So like I said, it could be
• 19:16
  where the food comes from. It could be a sous chef in your
• 19:18
  kitchen, it could be your story, could be your parents story,
• 19:20
  whatever the case may be, but have a story for the food.
• 19:24
  And when your food has a story, there's an emotional connection.
• 19:27
  And when you when you have an emotional connection, right
• 19:30
  people will remember it. And you will be bonded with the
• 19:36
  person that's eating the food. Because now it's like sharing a
• 19:38
  meal with them, they have a story about the food that they
• 19:41
  have, and it's also like a little Insider thing they could
• 19:43
  go and tell people. Oh, I had this dish and yours
• 19:45
  the story behind it was so cool. Anyway, that's going to wrap up
• 19:48
  today's chefs. PS a podcast if you would like
• 19:52
  to support the show first and foremost, make sure you leave
• 19:54
  five stars and subscribe. Nothing less than five stars.
• 19:57
  Five stars podcast Less than five stars goes on other
• 20:00
  podcasts. Definitely not this one anyway.
• 20:04
  Go get the new book ebook kitchen, Art of War.
• 20:07
  The other books. Culinary leadership
• 20:08
  fundamentals, how not to be the biggest idiot in the kitchen
• 20:10
  line. Cook, survival manual.
• 20:12
  Go get some merch. You can find all of this on
• 20:15
  Chefs PSA.com. Thank you all very much and hit
• 20:18
  the porno music, see you next week.