Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / How Michelin-Level Innovation Is Actually Built with Jorge Luis Hernández Ep. 186

Transcript

How Michelin-Level Innovation Is Actually Built with Jorge Luis Hernández Ep. 186 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs. This is Chef's PSA and I'm your
• 0:02
  host, Andre Natera. Today I'm joined by Chef Jorge
• 0:04
  Luis Hernandez, corporate Chef for Emmer and Rai Hospitality
• 0:08
  Group and Director of culinary innovation and R&D across Emmer
• 0:11
  and Rai, Hestia, Nicosi and Isidor, shaped by time at places
• 0:16
  like Mini Bar by Jose Andres and now driving Michelin recognized
• 0:20
  kitchens in Texas. In this episode, we talk about
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  culinary innovation, mentorship, building processes through
• 0:26
  mistakes, and how storytelling and collaboration push food
• 0:29
  forward. Stay tuned.
• 0:44
  Great restaurants don't always bring customers in.
• 0:47
  Great stories do. Because in food, beverage and
• 0:49
  hospitality, what you sell is only part of the story.
• 0:54
  It's the why behind it, the authority you create and the
• 0:57
  experience that you've built. Market Scale turns expertise
• 1:03
  into content that connects podcasts, video series and
• 1:07
  industry education, not ads assets.
• 1:13
  Market Scale has brought run the pass and how to manage like an
• 1:16
  executive chef to life real world examples of how great
• 1:19
  content leads the conversation because attention is earned and
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  the industry doesn't need more noise.
• 1:25
  It needs more leaders. You're at the time the chef at
• 1:35
  minibar for Jose Andres 2 Michelin stars and you think to
• 1:39
  yourself, I think I'm going to go turn in my notice.
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  I want to know how was the conversation when you sat Jose
• 1:46
  down and said, hey, just so you know, I don't want to do this
• 1:48
  anymore. It was something I thought about
• 1:51
  for a really long time before doing it.
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  And then actually I did a dry run with Ruben Garcia, the
• 1:57
  creative director. He and he kind of made me feel
• 2:00
  OK about it. But I think the crazy thing is,
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  like, I was so scared. Like that had been my home for
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  so long and I was worried. I was like, you know, like, am I
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  going to let Chef down, you know?
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  And he wasn't upset like not at all.
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  He was like, of course you're going to go home, right?
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  Because it's like he wants us to be where our heart is.
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  And you know, that all that anticipation and anxiety I had
• 2:30
  about it, I was like, I was, you know, I put in like 4 months
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  notice because I want to make sure the team's good, right?
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  Right. Not rush anything.
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  And he's like, yeah, enjoy it, right?
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  Because like when, when, when he had hired me at minibar the
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  second time, right? Because I've worked for him
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  twice there. He was like, yeah, I'm going to
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  let you have minibar for a little bit, but remember, it's
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  mine, right? Like it's his house.
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  Yeah, yeah. You know, and it really is to be
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  a chef's cuisine at Minibar. It's you're you're a curator,
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  right, of this just amazing legacy of this restaurant that
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  has only had a handful of head chefs over the years.
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  Yeah. You know, for me to have done
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  that twice in my career, it's just like, you know, I still
• 3:13
  pinch myself the idea of doing it and that place will always
• 3:16
  feel like home. But I think like the, the, the
• 3:19
  best thing I can say about somebody like Jose is that he's
• 3:24
  not scared to let people go be who they are.
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  Leaving him isn't a bad thing for him.
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  It's a go out in the world and do what we do and continue to
• 3:34
  touch people and make those connections.
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  If that's not the sign of a great mentor, a great leader, a
• 3:39
  great chef, then I, I don't know what is, right?
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  You can plot how many amazing chefs worked for Jose or with
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  Jose across the country, across the globe sometimes, right?
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  Like that's impact, right? Like I all wish we can be a chef
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  like that and say, like, all right, my former Sue's, my
• 3:55
  former head chefs are off doing amazing things.
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  That's his point of view. And it's like one of those
• 4:00
  things where I know if I needed to, I could give him a call and
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  he would give me the advice. He knows that if he needed me,
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  if he's in Austin, he can call me and ask me for anything,
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  right, Which he has done before. Yeah, you're, you're telling me
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  that he did for the snowpocalypse we had?
• 4:15
  Yeah, Snowpocalypse. Yeah.
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  With the World Central Kitchen, it was like we kind of just
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  started talking. He's like, let's activate, let's
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  go. And immediately his team's on
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  the ground, we're making connections, and that's the way
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  World Central Kitchen works, right?
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  It's just really beautiful thing that chef mentality of like,
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  here's a problem, let's solve it, let's go now, right?
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  Let's go fast. What's interesting about that
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  World Central Kitchen specifically in Austin, because
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  this is the only time I've experienced and seen how they
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  move, is I got the phone call, I want to say like at midnight and
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  they said can you have, I don't remember the numbers like 500
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  bucks lunches tomorrow at 10 AM or whatever it was.
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  And I was like, you know, Jose's, I was like, yeah, I
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  could, I, I'd figure out, right. So I remember, you know, we just
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  gathered the troops. I don't remember what we were
• 5:00
  putting in the box lunches, like grilled cheese sandwiches,
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  wherever. There wasn't a whole lot of food
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  at the time, but it was quick and, and the ability, OK, we're
• 5:08
  going to have a truck there at this time.
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  And I was like, wow, within 24 hours, they had trucks, they had
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  volunteers, they had people, they had box lunches.
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  They they had drop off points. Yeah, it was, it was wild.
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  It was interesting to see. And I didn't, I've never met
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  Jose, but I know he had passed through and was like, and I and
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  I didn't get a chance to say hello or whatever.
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  But it was really impressive to see how that world Central
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  kitchen operates and and how he's able to just pick up the
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  phone and then he calls you, you call someone and boom, people
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  are moving that I. Mean that's the heart of what
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  world central kitchen does well they mobilize by having
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  connections right so there's an entire chef core team right
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  there where the the team is reaching out to chefs in
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  different regions where maybe we don't need you right now but
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  maybe someday we do right like building those networks is just
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  absolutely massive. But like I remember like when
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  Jose was world central Kitchen in Haiti in the early days, the
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  beauty of it was just his mentality of like I'm a chef if
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  there's a problem, I know how to solve problems.
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  That's what we do on a daily basis in our kitchens and our
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  restaurants. It's like, and I know how to
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  cook and I know how to connect to people, put all those things
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  together and start building networks and now it's something
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  that's just obviously mind blowing.
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  Did you work with Barton Seaver at with with Jose?
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  I didn't. I didn't work directly with him,
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  but when I started as an intern for Jose Barton was like the hot
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  shit chef in DC, Georgetown. He had a restaurant called Hook.
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  That's right. That's right.
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  He was, he was ATA in the fish department when I was in
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  culinary school and I just missed him there.
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  But like he was like legendary DC scene and he had worked for
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  Jose before, so I loved going to his restaurant.
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  We would do like events that he was doing.
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  I would go volunteer to be like extra hands at.
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  And one year at the CIA, he did a he did a demo and I was
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  running the sustainable AG group at the time.
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  So I'm like, yeah, I want to invite Barton to come do this
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  demo. And he's butchering fish and
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  slices his finger like mid, mid, mid butchery in the pro that he
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  is. He just keeps going.
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  He keeps going. Everybody sees a little bit of
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  blood there. But yeah, he's badass.
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  Badass human. Being well, it's funny.
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  He's, we, we were talking about you, Bart, and he told me the
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  story, but I couldn't remember if you sliced your hand or he
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  sliced his hand. But he had, he had shared the
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  story. He just put out a book with,
• 7:30
  with Andrew Zimmern. And he was here the other day
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  doing a book sign. I was trying to catch up with
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  him to get him on the show, but we couldn't, we couldn't align
• 7:37
  our schedules. But he he had a lot of really
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  great things to say about you. Yeah, I mean, he, he was
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  honestly one of the first chefs that I I met that was like, all
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  right, a chef who's cooking in a kitchen can also be involved in
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  their community with social impact, right?
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  With in, in, in Barton's case, with ecological impact,
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  political impact in that regard. And that, yeah, what we do shows
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  up on the plate, but who we are is always going to show up.
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  He said something to me years ago, and I'm paraphrasing, and
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  I'm not sure if it's exactly what he said.
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  And that's why I was hoping to get him on the podcast because I
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  remember when he said it, it kind of like made my wheels
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  turn. Like, wait, is, is that true?
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  And he said that the most unsustainable practices in the
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  ocean are better than the most sustainable land practices.
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  Yeah. Because of the amount of
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  resources. You don't, you don't need a you
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  don't need water. You don't need to water the fish
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  for sure. And the amount of water that
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  goes into just growing one vegetable.
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  And I remember when he said that.
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  And again, I might be paraphrasing that.
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  I don't know if that's exactly what he said, but I just
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  remember it blew my mind. But yeah, he's a legend.
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  Shout out to Bart and see. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Yeah, I mean just.
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  So that incorporates into a lot of what you guys do now of.
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  Course, yeah, right. Like I mean we're using some of
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  the first proper farm raised oysters in in the Gulf of
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  Mexico, right. Say it that way.
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  Gulf of Mexico, you know, not that long ago you couldn't have
• 9:04
  aquaculture and forms of oysters in the Gulf.
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  It was had to be wild caught, right, right, right.
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  Those oysters got a really bad reputation, right?
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  And now people like blackjack points are like our favorite
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  right now. And AJ is doing a badass job
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  doing agriculture with oysters. And those things are not just
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  delicious. Like they rival oysters on the
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  East Coast to me for sure, like in every regard now.
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  And they're coming from the Gulf of Mexico and they're cleaning
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  the water, right? They're doing double duty,
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  right? Like if everyone in Texas ate
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  more oysters like that, we'd be in a great spot.
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  Not to not to get too far off subject, but only because I'm
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  thinking about the two Michelin stars.
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  That was that mini bar. You're the chef there.
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  And now congratulations to you and the entire Emmer and Rye
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  hospitality team, because I don't know if I don't know if
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  I've spoken to Kevin or Tyval or anyone else since the most
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  recent Michelin awards, but you guys cleaned up.
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  Yeah, it wasn't a bad night. Yeah, so Nicosi got a star,
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  Isador got a star and a green star.
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  Plus Emmer has green star and and Hestia also one star.
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  So you're walking away with three stars for the group and
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  two green stars. Is that correct?
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  Yeah, and a couple big gourmands as well for Ladino and then Emer
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  got a big gourmand as well so and couple mentioned so.
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  That's pretty cool. And for people that don't know,
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  you guys are talent packed group.
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  For sure. Yeah, I, I, I said that to Kevin
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  and Tavel both when they've been on the shows.
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  Like, man, there's so much talent in your group.
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  It's it's impressive. It's impressive.
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  But so where I was going with this is OK, so there's chef
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  chatter, chef chatter, right? So, you know, you know, everyone
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  starts talking, everyone has opinions and a lot of people
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  have the opinion of a star in one city is not the same as a
• 10:58
  star in a in a different city. You've been a two star chef and
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  a one star chef in two different cities, right?
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  What do you, what's your opinion on that?
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  Well. I think the star is the star,
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  right? Like I would put up what we're
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  doing at Nicosi to akin to what we would do at Minibar, right?
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  Like I'm the chef that I am now. I think the The thing is, at the
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  end of the day, there's great food everywhere.
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  There's great chefs everywhere. Getting the recognition is about
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  having the resources, putting the right things in play, right?
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  Like what Kevin Fink is great at.
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  And you know, I talked about this last, last month.
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  I think I was like, Kevin, you're great at putting the
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  right people in the right room together at the right time.
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  That's where the magic happens, right?
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  It is getting talent, getting them the resources to be
• 11:52
  authentically who they are, right?
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  That shows up with recognition, right.
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  Two stars in DC to me, like, you know, I, I don't know who the
• 12:04
  first two star restaurant in Texas is going to be.
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  I know that we're not chasing stars, but I know that I also
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  want to be that first two star. Yeah.
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  Right. Were you the first two star in
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  DC? At the same time, the same time
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  it was pineapple and pearls in Washington and us all got two
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  stars. Oh, wow.
• 12:26
  OK. Yeah.
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  So we, we were, we were in a small rarefied company, but
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  pretty amazing company. Yeah.
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  Great company. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I mean,
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  back to the difference, right? Yeah.
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  OK, so I'm a young chef in San Antonio, TX, right?
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  I was very fortunate to meet a chef named Bruce Auden at Big on
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  the Banks, and he let me work there in the summers when I was
• 12:48
  still deciding whether or not I was going to culinary school.
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  That experience I'm still extremely grateful for, and
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  Bruce and I get to chat quite regularly now.
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  But I remember that point where I was like, no, I have to go to
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  New York. Like I have to go somewhere
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  where the level is up here. Otherwise, like, I don't want to
• 13:08
  half ass this. I want to go 100% in on this
• 13:11
  dream that I have. And at the time it was like, if
• 13:15
  that's where all the Michelin star restaurant, that's where
• 13:17
  all the amazing chefs are, that's where I'm going to learn
• 13:19
  the most, that's where I want to be.
• 13:22
  All right? Those options weren't available
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  to us in San Antonio. And not that there weren't great
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  restaurants, but like not at that level, right?
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  Like, and that was, you know, when I started culinary school,
• 13:35
  that was 2005, something like that, right?
• 13:40
  20 years later, right? If you're a young chef like I
• 13:43
  was, or you were thinking about becoming a chef, you don't have
• 13:47
  to go to New York anymore. You can stay in San Antonio,
• 13:50
  stay in Austin and go work with Michelin level chefs in Michelin
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  kitchens, right? That's badass.
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  Right, like and and not just Texas, though, but also the
• 14:02
  South New Orleans, right it, it now opened it up.
• 14:05
  Atlanta, you don't have to go. Everywhere.
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  So, so if, if we're going to go from this thing of like, well,
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  the real Michelin level restaurants are the ones in
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  these major cities. And it's kind of a shame that's
• 14:14
  getting watered down by having more guys.
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  Like, that's not being watered down.
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  That's being more equitable, That's opening it up if
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  everywhere has the opportunity to shoot for the same criteria.
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  Right? Like, it's not like New York.
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  Watch out. We're coming for you.
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  It's just like there can be amazing chefs and amazing food
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  in Texas or, you know, Louisiana, just like there can
• 14:36
  be, I mean, Louisiana, New Orleans.
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  Are you kidding me? Yeah, right.
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  Like one of the greatest food towns in the world.
• 14:42
  Why shouldn't there be as many stars there as there are in New
• 14:44
  York? I was talking to someone the
• 14:46
  other day that's opening a hotel here in Texas and they're
• 14:51
  talking about the licensed celebrity chef restaurant.
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  And we had this a lot in, in, in, in Dallas.
• 14:59
  We've had a lot in Houston. We've had it a lot in in Austin,
• 15:02
  not as much in Austin. But you know, you bring in the
• 15:05
  big name celebrity chef Michelin level from California or New
• 15:08
  York, and then they open up their offshoot restaurant in
• 15:11
  Texas and, and it's usually license based in a hotel and it
• 15:14
  normally doesn't perform that well.
• 15:16
  And a lot of the reason is, is sometimes outsiders aren't
• 15:20
  necessarily welcomed, but to the investment group, the hotel or,
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  you know, whoever, whoever's the money behind it, they just see
• 15:28
  we we need a Michelin level chef.
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  And this completely changes the game and creates a whole new
• 15:35
  area of opportunities for chefs. Because now if you are in
• 15:39
  Atlanta and you're opening a hotel, you don't need to bring
• 15:42
  in a celebrity chef from, you know, one of the coast.
• 15:45
  You have Michelin level chefs in Georgia now in Texas, in, you
• 15:49
  know, in, in the Carolina wherever.
• 15:51
  And I think that opens up a whole new conversation and areas
• 15:55
  of opportunity for restaurant groups to scale in ways that
• 15:59
  maybe they're, they could scale, but eventually they might hit a,
• 16:02
  a wall of limitation. This is this is a whole new
• 16:04
  area. And I think it's, I think it's
• 16:06
  pretty cool and you know, kudos to all you guys with the group
• 16:10
  because it's pretty impressive. Yeah.
• 16:11
  I mean, like you mentioned earlier, I mean, it is a team
• 16:14
  that is stacked like, like no other, right?
• 16:17
  Like I'm experienced from all over the world, people with
• 16:20
  different backgrounds, different skill sets that complement each
• 16:24
  other. Yeah, the team aspect of what we
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  do within 11 restaurants, it's like everybody in the room's a
• 16:32
  badass. That feels pretty freaking good.
• 16:35
  Yeah. Is that very good competitive?
• 16:37
  Ugly. Oh hell yeah, competitive.
• 16:40
  Of course we're competitive, right?
• 16:42
  Like one of the, one of the, one of the things we talk about
• 16:45
  that's really, really fun is expediting a busy service at
• 16:48
  Emmer and Rye, which like, granted, I'm kind of one of the
• 16:52
  newbies on the team and some of Kevin's team has been with him
• 16:55
  for almost a decade, right? And we talk about all the
• 16:58
  similarities of like how fun and hard it is to Expo at Emmer.
• 17:02
  You've eaten at Emmer, right? Like, and it's like one of those
• 17:04
  things where if you're on Expo, you can't, you're not, you're
• 17:08
  not standing at Expo and just wiping plates and you are
• 17:11
  moving. It is a full workout and it is a
• 17:15
  hell of a lot of fun. Yeah.
• 17:17
  And when we were started getting really busy at Isador, some of
• 17:21
  those old Emir chefs were like, oh, we're taking turns expoing
• 17:24
  at Isador after the New York Times article came out.
• 17:27
  This was right before Michelin. And we're, you know, competing
• 17:30
  about who's got the best Expo. We could tell the line cooks
• 17:32
  afterwards, like, do you like me better?
• 17:34
  Do you like Chef Parker better? And they're like, Chef, we love
• 17:37
  your energy. You're great.
• 17:38
  You're like amazing. He's like, but Chef Parker's the
• 17:41
  best Expo in the company. And you're like, so yeah, we're
• 17:44
  competitive. Yeah, That's that's kind of hell
• 17:47
  it goes. What does the creative process
• 17:48
  look like specifically for you and and the reason I ask
• 17:52
  specifically for you because I'm sure you know Kevin has his his
• 17:56
  method to Bella, I'm sure has his method.
• 17:58
  You have a different method, but a lot of the method, I'm sure
• 18:00
  that you've it's, it's unique to your personality, but it's also
• 18:04
  unique to time spent in different kitchens.
• 18:06
  Yeah, I'm going to use Nikosi as like the reference because
• 18:10
  that's like the smallest environment that we have 20 seat
• 18:13
  restaurant tasting many only. And it is to me this little
• 18:17
  incubator lab of process. Now, when I worked for Jose, I
• 18:24
  was super, super fortunate to work with two of the best chefs
• 18:28
  I've ever met in my life, Ruben Garcia and Aitor Zawala.
• 18:32
  So Itor now has Somni in LA, Three stars.
• 18:36
  Ruben has his own little restaurant empire in DC now as
• 18:39
  well, Casa Teresa. But both of them are proper BUI
• 18:44
  alumni, right? Both did R&D work on both pastry
• 18:49
  and savory sides. Learning from them is the roots
• 18:54
  of the methodology that I still use, right.
• 19:00
  People obviously still look at the Andrea brothers as like this
• 19:03
  great force. And I think for all the photos
• 19:06
  and all the food and all the crazy techniques, the process
• 19:10
  that they had is probably the most impactful for me.
• 19:14
  And it's something that I still use.
• 19:17
  And actually it's it's interesting you say like the
• 19:19
  difference between Kevin Tebel and myself.
• 19:21
  Like, yeah, we have all differences, but the the, the,
• 19:23
  the core is where we align. And that's where that magic
• 19:26
  happens to me. The heart of it on the on the
• 19:31
  kitchen side is where product meets concept via method and
• 19:37
  technique. And I don't know, that sounds
• 19:39
  kind of nerdy and heady. But I'll give you more.
• 19:42
  Like if you ask Tavelle, like, what's your process and what,
• 19:46
  what do you what, what is the most important part?
• 19:48
  He's going to start over here and say what the guest is
• 19:51
  experiencing is the most important part right now in El
• 19:57
  Bui language. For on would have called this
• 19:59
  techno emotive cuisine, right? We're not doing techniques just
• 20:04
  to do techniques. We're exploring things.
• 20:06
  But the purpose is to make somebody feel something, to give
• 20:11
  them an experience that is uniquely belonging to that
• 20:16
  restaurant, that meal in that moment.
• 20:19
  That's what Tvell does. All up here, it's brilliant.
• 20:22
  I mean, the man's a genius for me.
• 20:25
  I need worksheets, I need laptops, I need research, I need
• 20:30
  all this stuff to get there. But it starts with
• 20:33
  conversations, right? So Nkosi, for example, we we set
• 20:37
  themes for each menu, right? This past summer, our theme was
• 20:42
  something really fun and playful because it's hot as heck in
• 20:45
  summer and tends to be a little bit slower in the restaurant.
• 20:47
  So we really wanted to make sure people were having fun.
• 20:49
  So it was summertime nostalgia and every course had its own
• 20:53
  little sub theme under that. And the idea was to make people
• 20:57
  giggle, right? Make people have a little bit of
• 21:00
  fun. From there, we take the products
• 21:03
  that are in season, right? Because Emmer and Rai Group,
• 21:05
  right, we are 100% looking at where things are coming from.
• 21:10
  If we can value a product from our region, we're going to
• 21:13
  always do that first. If our farmers have a potential
• 21:16
  problem of waste, they need to move something.
• 21:18
  We are going to use those ingredients every single time,
• 21:22
  right? So that does some of the work
• 21:23
  for us honestly, right. Because then you're, you're,
• 21:26
  you're looking at the product and you're saying, all right,
• 21:28
  what are we going to do with this, right?
• 21:29
  Like I will say that from my side, one of my pet peeves and
• 21:33
  one of the things I just really dislike is when someone says,
• 21:37
  oh, well, we need a new beet set.
• 21:38
  Let's put on a new beet dish tomorrow.
• 21:41
  Let's come in and we're just going to cook it.
• 21:42
  We're going to put it on. That drives me bananas because
• 21:45
  you're not getting the most out of that product that way, right?
• 21:49
  What you should be saying is what do we want someone to feel
• 21:52
  out of it? Do we want the beet, the beet to
• 21:54
  have this texture? Do we want it to be smoky, this
• 21:57
  flavor profile? What do you, what do you want
• 21:58
  that end result to be? And then are you looking at the
• 22:01
  techniques and the methods you're using to get there,
• 22:05
  right? That search is everything to me.
• 22:09
  And to get there, if you have beets on the menu or you're
• 22:12
  going to work with beets, you have to look at that beat like
• 22:15
  you've never seen a beat before, right?
• 22:18
  Jose used to do this thing. Like we would go out to the
• 22:20
  farmers market and he would grab a tomato.
• 22:23
  And like there's a film of him, I think, doing this with
• 22:24
  Bourdain where he looks at the tomato.
• 22:27
  And I'm not going to do a fake Spanish accent because of that.
• 22:30
  I won't do it accurately enough. But he would look at the tomato
• 22:33
  and be like tomato, what do you want to be today?
• 22:37
  And that, like Zen mind, beginner's mind thing is just so
• 22:42
  incredibly important because then you're going to start
• 22:45
  exploring methods, right? Like stick with a beet, for
• 22:48
  example. Are you burying it in the
• 22:49
  hearth? Are you putting it in the oven?
• 22:52
  Are you cooking it in beet juice?
• 22:53
  Are you doing an SUV bag, right? Are you doing partial steam dry
• 22:57
  heat, like all those infinite variations?
• 23:00
  That's all technique, right? The method is the method, right?
• 23:04
  Like so when I say if you're going to braise something,
• 23:08
  right, a braise is a brace, right?
• 23:11
  That that method has a language that we all as chefs know what
• 23:15
  it is. Now you can do a braise on a
• 23:16
  stove top, you can do a braise in an oven, you can do a braise
• 23:20
  in a sous video bag. That's all technique.
• 23:22
  The little equipment that you're using to get there, that's where
• 23:28
  the fun stuff is. But everybody thinks like, OK,
• 23:31
  yeah, you're having all the fun with R&D.
• 23:33
  Like there's a whole part of it that's not fun too.
• 23:37
  Like it's extremely methodical. All right, we tried that one.
• 23:40
  We tried that one. We tried that one.
• 23:43
  Where is the point where you're like, wow, this is special?
• 23:46
  That's the point you have to look for.
• 23:49
  Can I interrupt? Please.
• 23:51
  How do you how do you go around doing that process?
• 23:57
  So if, if you are working and I'm just, let's just use the
• 24:00
  beat as the example. You have some beats and you're
• 24:02
  like, I want to maximize the flavor of this beat and I'm I'm
• 24:06
  going to go through different iterations of the beat.
• 24:09
  You talked about spreadsheets and laptops.
• 24:13
  What do you do? So let's.
• 24:14
  Like like walk us through that. We have a lot.
• 24:17
  And again, it's it comes from Wii world, right?
• 24:19
  Like features or worksheets. So for every ingredient that
• 24:24
  comes in, we create a separate worksheet.
• 24:26
  I'm saying these are the characteristics.
• 24:27
  It's like a product spec sheet, right?
• 24:29
  And that's not a new thing for chefs.
• 24:31
  But then it's like, alright, I cooked the beets in water, I
• 24:35
  cooked them dry, I cooked them in beet juice.
• 24:38
  Peeled, not peeled. All of those things get a
• 24:41
  different worksheet and we file them all away so that next year
• 24:46
  when beets come in season, OK, I'm gonna beets pretty much all
• 24:49
  time right 'cause that's celery. Yeah.
• 24:52
  It's maybe like the worst. Example, we'll put strawberries
• 24:55
  and goat cheese on it, right? Well.
• 24:58
  That's, that's exactly it, right?
• 25:00
  Like that's what we want to avoid, right?
• 25:02
  What we want to avoid is we're gonna put on a beet dish and
• 25:05
  it's gonna have goat cheese and strawberries and fennel fronds.
• 25:09
  Those tertiary flavors like making something taste good.
• 25:12
  That should be the easy part, right?
• 25:14
  If you're a chef and you're good at your shit, making something
• 25:18
  tasty should be assumed, especially at our level.
• 25:21
  Yeah, yeah, right. We're not serving not delicious
• 25:24
  food. That's not an option, right.
• 25:27
  The the clever part and the part that is really the most magical
• 25:31
  is when you get to that point of trying all those different
• 25:34
  things and you're like, hey, well, this is this is unique.
• 25:38
  I haven't had a beat like this before, right.
• 25:42
  And whether or not that's nichitimalizing the beat and
• 25:44
  then roasting it, what whatever it is for you and your team that
• 25:49
  lets you say something in the end product, that's where people
• 25:53
  are going to respond to it. That's where the real fun is.
• 25:55
  Now, again, recording all the data is important.
• 25:59
  Collaboration is the other part and the reason why we really use
• 26:03
  all of those sheets and all of these things.
• 26:05
  It's not to just make more work for ourselves because it's
• 26:09
  cumbersome, it's hard. It's so that teens can
• 26:12
  collaborate, so that if I'm working on this new technique of
• 26:17
  beats, whatever form it is, that Paul Wenzel, the head chef at
• 26:22
  Hestia, can in our Google Drive see those results and be like,
• 26:27
  huh, cool. Maybe I can use that.
• 26:30
  Or even better, he can be like, you know what, chef, you should
• 26:33
  try this. And maybe he unlocks something
• 26:36
  that we don't know, right? That ability to collaborate only
• 26:40
  comes if you're extremely organized.
• 26:44
  And like we said, like we have all that talent.
• 26:47
  It would be silly for me to be like, all right, me, Jorge, I'm
• 26:50
  going to work on a beet dish and I'm going to assume that I'm
• 26:53
  going to get it to 100% perfect Michelin star level all by
• 26:57
  myself. That's arrogant as fuck when I
• 27:02
  could say I'm going to give it to Danny Prado to taste.
• 27:05
  I'm going to give it to Tavel to taste.
• 27:07
  I'm going to give it to our porters to taste, right?
• 27:10
  They're going to give me feedback.
• 27:12
  I need that data because they're going to tell me something that
• 27:15
  maybe I hadn't thought of, but if I'm already set in, this is
• 27:19
  the way the dish is going to look.
• 27:21
  These are the tertiary flavors that are going to garnishes.
• 27:25
  I'm I'm, I'm skipping over the best part.
• 27:29
  I'm, I'm pigeonholing myself into something that maybe could
• 27:33
  have been a lot better, right? I'll give you a specific example
• 27:36
  for Narosi, right? We had for a very short period
• 27:40
  of time white sweet potatoes and initially we were going to do
• 27:46
  like a fried, almost like savory snack with these beets.
• 27:50
  So we get in an S peeler and start shaving up cooking beets
• 27:53
  different way. And we, we literally Tibel and I
• 27:57
  pick up the sheet, we look at it and you see all these little
• 27:59
  striations in it. We're like, that's beautiful.
• 28:01
  Let's do something with that. Like let's just let's play
• 28:03
  around with it. So we had poached them, we had
• 28:06
  steamed them. We tried cooking it like phyllo
• 28:10
  dough and I put some in the oven that had been soaked in a little
• 28:16
  bit of like Moby bark syrup, just really bitter tree
• 28:19
  ingredient, kind of like cinnamon from, from Guyana,
• 28:22
  where Chef Tavella's from. One of the most delicious things
• 28:25
  you'll ever have, intensely bitter, right?
• 28:28
  So a little bit goes a long way. I pop these bad boys in the oven
• 28:31
  and then Tavella and I are doing our thing.
• 28:32
  We're brainstorming, we're talking and I'm like, oh shit, I
• 28:35
  I forgot about them, right? I didn't set my timer or
• 28:37
  whatever, whatever the heck. I go out and pull them out and
• 28:40
  I, you know, lift up the sill pad and they're they're dark.
• 28:44
  They're dark and I'm like, fuck. Well, these are burnt.
• 28:46
  So to kind of like hide my mistake, I start peeling them
• 28:49
  off because I don't want chef to see it right.
• 28:52
  And then I realized I'm like, oh, this textures cool.
• 28:56
  What was the texture? It was like it was still
• 28:59
  pliable, right, 'cause there's enough residual starch in, in,
• 29:02
  in the sweet potato. But we had also like let it soak
• 29:05
  in syrup. So then by the time I finished
• 29:07
  rolling it, it got super crispy, like perfectly crispy.
• 29:13
  And because I had kind of like put it in this Moby bark and let
• 29:17
  it go maybe a little too far, it looked exactly like a cinnamon
• 29:21
  stick. Like exactly.
• 29:23
  So mobbie bark looks like cinnamon stick.
• 29:27
  This little accident that I had looked like a cinnamon stick.
• 29:31
  I go and I show it to Tavel and he eats it and he's like, I'm
• 29:35
  like, it's maybe a little bit too bitter.
• 29:36
  He's like, not for the bitter course.
• 29:38
  It's not right, 'cause we, we have an entire course in Akosi
• 29:41
  that's devoted to the bitter taste profile.
• 29:44
  And then I eat 1, he eats one again.
• 29:46
  We don't say anything for a couple minutes and we're both
• 29:49
  smiling. And that's that magical part
• 29:52
  that I'm talking about. When you can find that wow part
• 29:56
  of a product to a technique, then coming up with the dish is
• 30:00
  so easy, right? We dusted it with a little bit
• 30:02
  of cacao powder, a little bit more spices, and then I made
• 30:05
  like a sweet potato toffee, aerated it, piped it in the
• 30:08
  middle and served it like you were biting into a cinnamon
• 30:11
  stick. And it was one of the most
• 30:12
  intense, delicious bites we had on that menu.
• 30:16
  And it's coming from exploration.
• 30:18
  It's coming from allowing yourself to realize, hey, that
• 30:21
  this little thing that's not a dish yet has got potential.
• 30:27
  Let's fuck around with that, right?
• 30:29
  Like when you see myself been our R&D chef, Danny, our our
• 30:36
  corporate chef in San Antonio, director of restaurants to Bell,
• 30:39
  when we're cooking and just messing with things, it's kind
• 30:43
  of chaotic, right? And then we have to reorganize
• 30:45
  cells every day. But there's at least a few spots
• 30:48
  in each one of those days where we're giving each other
• 30:50
  something to taste. And we're like, no, yeah, this,
• 30:52
  this is something, maybe we don't know what it is yet, but
• 30:56
  this is something. And that I feel like is, again,
• 30:59
  it's the organization, it's the collaboration, it's the
• 31:01
  language, right? I think what we do really well
• 31:04
  is we give ourselves a language on how to talk about creating
• 31:08
  dishes, right? And then you have somebody like
• 31:11
  Duval that's like, all right, well, what is the guest
• 31:13
  experiencing? Because you can't forget that
• 31:14
  part, right? And it's not that different.
• 31:18
  Like, you know, Itor and Ruben used to do the same thing.
• 31:21
  Can can you talk about the language?
• 31:22
  You said? Yeah, sure.
• 31:23
  You said we give ourselves a language.
• 31:24
  For sure. So, so there's the idea.
• 31:27
  And actually this came about when I was at Minibar.
• 31:31
  A roommate of mine for a little bit was an engineer at Johnson
• 31:35
  Space Center and he was up in DC just doing an extra course.
• 31:39
  And he was telling me about NASA's criteria or stage
• 31:44
  development criteria. When they're developing a new
• 31:47
  technology, they, they do it in stages and they set exit
• 31:51
  criteria for each stage, right? Like, and, and they, I think
• 31:56
  they have like 9 stages, right? We started saying like, well,
• 32:00
  how do we, how do we know that something is good at each of
• 32:03
  these levels so we don't waste our time?
• 32:06
  You have to start asking yourselves questions and those
• 32:09
  answers are what give us the language.
• 32:11
  So if we talk about themes or things that we want people to
• 32:15
  feel experiences, sorry, I'm switching sides and I was
• 32:18
  experiences over here. And then we have some kind of
• 32:23
  end goals. So there's some criteria there
• 32:26
  on that emotive side, right? We then know again, the products
• 32:31
  that are coming in from the farms because like, it's not
• 32:33
  like, oh, it'd be great if we could buy, you know, yuzu from
• 32:37
  Japan because that's not an option for us in Emmer and Rye
• 32:39
  Group, right? We just, we take that off the
• 32:41
  tape. Once we have those themes, we
• 32:44
  have some things we want to say. It's brainstorming.
• 32:46
  Can I go back? Yeah, please.
• 32:48
  When you say you can't buy yuzu from Japan, it's not an option
• 32:50
  for the Emmer and Rye group. Can you tell people why?
• 32:53
  Because we are always going to try to put our food purchasing
• 32:57
  dollars back into our immediate community.
• 33:01
  And we're pretty transparent about it, right?
• 33:03
  It's, I mean, farm to table's not new, right?
• 33:05
  It's, it's a thing. I know all restaurants are like
• 33:07
  that. We just put certain limits on
• 33:10
  ourselves, right? And, and every restaurant in the
• 33:12
  group's got slightly different criteria, right?
• 33:15
  If you're Isidor, everything in that restaurant with the
• 33:18
  exception of on the beverage side, like the wine side needs
• 33:22
  to be coming from a small independent regional producer in
• 33:25
  Texas, right? And that means they don't use
• 33:27
  black pepper, right? Instead, they use Vitex plant,
• 33:32
  right? Something that our chef's
• 33:33
  cuisine goes out and forages. So like the little flowers?
• 33:37
  Yeah, well, this is actually the the little Berry on it that we
• 33:40
  then harvest when they're green and then dry to use like
• 33:43
  peppercorns. OK, you know that's a very Noma
• 33:46
  answer. Which is like a a Texas plant
• 33:49
  that you guys are foraging. Yeah, Yeah.
• 33:50
  So wherever we can, we do that right?
• 33:52
  The vanilla bean like Develle would be like, all right, no
• 33:54
  vanilla, no problem. Mesquite bean baby.
• 33:56
  You know it's delicious and it's a pre precursor pregenitor to
• 34:00
  vanilla bean, right? Like they're all from the
• 34:02
  Central Valley of Mexico. Do you ever and I'm just kind of
• 34:06
  making this up, are there exceptions?
• 34:07
  There are definitely exceptions, right?
• 34:09
  So Nkosi, there has to be, right?
• 34:11
  Like chocolate doesn't grow in Texas.
• 34:12
  Right. Which is, which is why I was
• 34:14
  asking about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:16
  For sure, Hestia has certain exceptions.
• 34:18
  Kanji obviously has exceptions because it's Caribbean food they
• 34:21
  need. They need things from the
• 34:22
  Caribbean, right? Emmer and Rye and Isidor are the
• 34:25
  2 that are probably the most stringent.
• 34:27
  Hestia is a close third. At the end of the day, it's,
• 34:31
  it's about, I mean, pulling market, right?
• 34:33
  Same thing. It's it's about giving more
• 34:37
  credence and giving more value to things that maybe people
• 34:40
  don't even know grow in Texas, right?
• 34:43
  Nikosi during apple season, we always have an apple dish on in
• 34:46
  a different form, right? Drastically different apple
• 34:49
  dishes. But the majority of people don't
• 34:52
  think of Texas as a state that even grows apples.
• 34:56
  Yeah, I don't. Up in Idolu, Texas, top of
• 34:59
  Texas, they make. Are they good?
• 35:00
  They're. Delicious.
• 35:02
  What? What are they similar?
• 35:03
  To so they have evercrisps or Evercrisps are off off the
• 35:06
  chain. Their Fugees are great.
• 35:09
  They're, you know, like any, like any other small producing
• 35:13
  region, right? Like there's a year where like,
• 35:15
  hey, the Granny Smiths aren't our favorite.
• 35:17
  This one's our favorite. This is what we're going to use
• 35:19
  and focus on. But at least for for us at Emmer
• 35:23
  and Rye Group, we are always going to be supporting that farm
• 35:26
  with our food purchasing dollars.
• 35:27
  Because if we don't, then what incentive is for those farmers
• 35:31
  to keep trying to grow more? We can always bemoan the fact
• 35:35
  that California's got better growing seasons, better regions,
• 35:39
  But if we're not putting our dollars or guest dollars and
• 35:43
  translating that into pockets of farmers, then what motivation do
• 35:47
  they have to keep growing cool shit for us, right?
• 35:50
  That's that's really the heart of it.
• 35:52
  Selfishly, as a chef, we want more local farms growing more
• 35:56
  amazing things. Yeah, right.
• 35:58
  Speckled Belly Farm just east of San Antonio is growing finger
• 36:03
  limes in their hot house right now.
• 36:05
  Right. They're freaking delicious.
• 36:07
  They're growing lime plots for us like citrus season.
• 36:10
  It's like popping off. And right now they can only grow
• 36:13
  this tiny amount, But if we're like, all right, well, that's
• 36:17
  not enough for us. And we had we it's not we need
• 36:19
  to supplement it with ones from California or wherever else, you
• 36:22
  know, those those finger lines are coming from.
• 36:24
  And I'm not giving them those dollars.
• 36:27
  Then what incentive do they have to keep going, keep upping that
• 36:30
  production so that more people can buy it, right?
• 36:33
  And that's what, that's why Pullman Market exists, right?
• 36:35
  It's we've all had those experiences where you go to a
• 36:38
  restaurant and someone's like, oh, this is a heritage Dirac
• 36:41
  pork that only we get from this small farm.
• 36:45
  And that's a really romantic story.
• 36:48
  You know what's a hell of a lot cooler is when you can tell a
• 36:51
  guest this is the best pork that we can get in our region.
• 36:54
  It's delicious. You're gonna love it.
• 36:56
  And you know what? You can go 100 feet that way to
• 36:59
  a butcher shop that only gets in whole animals from the exact
• 37:02
  same farm and you can buy the exact same products and you can
• 37:06
  go cook with it at home, right? That starts to imprint in our
• 37:11
  guests minds. These products are of value and
• 37:15
  it's OK for me to pay more for them, right?
• 37:17
  Because we know where it's going.
• 37:20
  In in your job, because I know we talked a lot about the
• 37:23
  creative process and the R&D, but there's also an aspect of
• 37:27
  the operational R&D. So OK, now, now you now you've
• 37:31
  created the dish and you can execute it for one, right?
• 37:33
  And the group likes it. Now how do you how do you scale
• 37:35
  it to Emmer and Rye doing 100? Yeah, you know, or hundreds of
• 37:39
  covers. So again, like, and part of the
• 37:41
  reason we document so much is because maybe that technique
• 37:47
  that turns into that dish, maybe you have to be clever and be
• 37:50
  like, all right, we can do this at Nkosi where we know we're
• 37:52
  only served 20 of them at a time, you know, 40 a night.
• 37:56
  That's manageable. But if we were to serve it at
• 37:58
  Kanji that does, you know, 405 hundred covers, probably not
• 38:03
  going to work, but at least not the way I described that that
• 38:07
  roll of that sweet potato. But the idea of taking this
• 38:11
  specific sweet potato that has this enough residual starch and
• 38:15
  sugar to get this texture. I could say Bake Off sheets of
• 38:18
  it and use it on top of tartar or a crisp or make a like a play
• 38:22
  on a mil FUI with it on a pastry side.
• 38:25
  Right. There's adaptations.
• 38:27
  So great concept, technique work Shouldn't create one dish.
• 38:33
  It should create a crap ton of dishes, right?
• 38:35
  Like I've talked about him before, but saw me Itor.
• 38:39
  Itor is probably the best at this I've ever seen in my life.
• 38:43
  When he finds a concept technique that is of value, he
• 38:47
  doesn't make just one dish on it, run it for a while, and then
• 38:50
  retire it. He makes iteration after
• 38:52
  iteration after iteration. He finds his voice that way.
• 38:56
  That's why his food is so compelling.
• 38:58
  He's dialed in, he knows exactly who he is.
• 39:02
  He knows exactly what he wants to get out of the food.
• 39:05
  He knows what you he wants you to get out of the food and he's
• 39:08
  constantly tweaking that part of it.
• 39:12
  That's that's so freaking cool to me.
• 39:15
  Now, if you're doing again, you're doing high cover counts.
• 39:18
  Maybe that final dish isn't the element that's most important,
• 39:22
  but that technique is, right. Like show at Kanji for New
• 39:28
  Year's Eve. They're they were doing a
• 39:29
  coconut, coconut mousse. Coconut air, right?
• 39:32
  Sure. Foam.
• 39:34
  You know I hate that term. But.
• 39:37
  Bubbles, bubbles, air. The technique is called air, not
• 39:41
  foam, right? Like it's important.
• 39:43
  The distinction language is important, right?
• 39:47
  It he was like, hey, I want to do this.
• 39:49
  Like how do how do I do it? Do I use egg white?
• 39:51
  Do I use whatever? I'm like, I'm like Poppy here.
• 39:53
  Here's the ratio. Here's the guy.
• 39:54
  This is what you need. That's a pretty high end
• 39:58
  technique to take a sucrose. Sucrose esters make an emulsion
• 40:02
  bubble that get all these really fine airs, something like
• 40:06
  coconuts actually kind of tough because of the fat content.
• 40:09
  And it worked. And he did it for however many
• 40:11
  400 people or whatever they served on New Year's Eve, right?
• 40:15
  Just because you're doing high volume doesn't mean you can't
• 40:18
  have that great R&D part. I think maybe I want to think
• 40:24
  about it a little bit of a different way, though.
• 40:27
  How do you, so you have this, this technique or this recipe or
• 40:31
  whatever. How do you then scale it to the
• 40:33
  person who doesn't know how to do it at all?
• 40:34
  So I'm, I'm talking about the entry level line cook that, that
• 40:38
  that is now doesn't even know the difference between an air
• 40:42
  and a phone because they didn't even know that that even
• 40:45
  existed, right. So they're, they're super green.
• 40:47
  How do you scale some of these techniques to some of the more
• 40:49
  novices in a training program? Yeah, development in training is
• 40:56
  important, right? Like, and this is kind of, this
• 40:58
  is definitely an advantage that we have as a restaurant group.
• 41:01
  Yeah, because, you know, specifically around mentorship,
• 41:03
  because I'm sure there's a big mentorship component.
• 41:04
  Totally. How do you take a green cook?
• 41:06
  Because we were all there at 1:00.
• 41:07
  Point. Yeah, no, totally.
• 41:09
  How do you go from there to there?
• 41:10
  So, so this is this is awesome because actually there's there's
• 41:13
  there's a chef that we have at Emmer and Rye that reminds me so
• 41:16
  much of how I was when I was a young chef as well.
• 41:19
  Like I would like Ruben used to call me Jimmy Neutron because I
• 41:23
  was as a kid reading all the books being like, oh, I want to
• 41:25
  try this technique. I want to do this.
• 41:27
  And he's like, you know, whoa, whoa, whoa, right.
• 41:29
  You need to learn this part first, right?
• 41:31
  You want to make an air out of this rusty to this excavage.
• 41:34
  And like, no, you need to learn how to make the rusty first.
• 41:37
  I was like Catalan chicken juice essentially, right?
• 41:42
  That's that's important, right? Like the basics are important,
• 41:44
  right? Like people ask me like, what's
• 41:46
  your favorite book? Is it like, should I buy the boy
• 41:48
  book? I'm like, no, go buy Jacques
• 41:50
  Pepin first. Yeah, go buy Larousse
• 41:52
  Gastronomique first. Because if you don't know all
• 41:54
  that stuff, you're not, you're not going to get this other
• 41:57
  stuff, right? It's just not going to happen,
• 42:00
  right? If you don't have sabayon ratios
• 42:03
  off the top of your head, you don't know what to look for.
• 42:06
  You don't know what your temperature ranges are.
• 42:07
  You're going to have a hard time cooking the stuff that I'm going
• 42:10
  to ask you to cook, right? So the beauty that we have at,
• 42:15
  at in our group is that we have #1 mini restaurants, like 11
• 42:20
  restaurants plus Pullman Market. So if you're hungry, you want to
• 42:25
  learn how to cook. Yeah, maybe you're starting in
• 42:28
  one of the QSRS at Pullman Market and you're learning a
• 42:31
  proper roast chicken or you're learning how to make chicken
• 42:34
  stock in the back. And they, I mean, they make it
• 42:36
  it, you know, hundreds of liters at a time, right?
• 42:39
  Because they, we only get in whole animals.
• 42:41
  So you got to do something with all that, all the, all those
• 42:43
  bones, right? They're learning how to render
• 42:45
  tallow, right? It the, the chef that manages
• 42:49
  that team was a former chef to cuisine Emmer and Ryan.
• 42:52
  He's been with Kevin for over 10 years.
• 42:55
  He knows how to identify talent. He's the guy that's saying, all
• 42:58
  right, this person, he's been with us for six months and he's
• 43:01
  kicking ass or hey, chef, this this chef over here, she keeps
• 43:07
  asking about Nkosi. You should talk to her about it.
• 43:10
  Right? Like, that's the part that is
• 43:12
  not just mentorship, but it's like getting them excited about
• 43:15
  it, right? Like, it's like that Thomas
• 43:16
  Keller idea of like, if you can't get excited about peeling
• 43:19
  carrots, you're you're not gonna make it over here, Right.
• 43:22
  And it's one of those things that, like, part of the
• 43:24
  mentorship is, yeah, get your team excited about peeling
• 43:27
  carrots and be like, this is the best way that we know to do this
• 43:31
  and see how they run with it. Because chances are they're
• 43:34
  going to. Maybe they'll learn a better
• 43:35
  way. Maybe they'll show us something,
• 43:38
  right? Getting them through those
• 43:41
  different departments, right? Like, you can't run Emmer and
• 43:45
  rye if you haven't slung a lot of pasta, right?
• 43:49
  If you don't love sourdough bread, right?
• 43:52
  Alexa Mejia, who's in my opinion, probably one of the
• 43:56
  greatest, if not the best chefs running a kitchen in Austin, TX.
• 44:01
  She can make bread in her sleep. She can, you know, work with
• 44:05
  pasta. She can.
• 44:07
  I mean, she does it all right. And she's not just doing that
• 44:13
  because she's that good. She's showing teammates that
• 44:17
  some of them have only been cooking for six months, a year.
• 44:20
  She's showing them the things that she's learned, right?
• 44:23
  Like that, that, that mentorship, that apprenticeship,
• 44:26
  however you want to call it massive, massive.
• 44:31
  That doesn't go away. Even if we first heady as that
• 44:34
  conversation was earlier, you still need that, right?
• 44:36
  Like at the end of the day, for at least especially for us 11
• 44:39
  restaurants, if we're not in the talent development business as
• 44:42
  much as we are the restaurant business, who's going to run
• 44:45
  these restaurants? Who's going to staff these
• 44:47
  restaurants? And like, you know, like Kevin
• 44:49
  talked in when he was here with you, right?
• 44:51
  Like, well, what happens when like this crop of amazing talent
• 44:54
  you have ages out, right? Like we don't want restaurants
• 44:59
  that are going to be around for until Kevin retires.
• 45:02
  We want restaurants that are going to continue to have impact
• 45:04
  in our community over and over generation and generation.
• 45:08
  So seeing the next ones come up, right, like Maximiliano, the
• 45:12
  cook that I was thinking about from Emma and Rye, you know, his
• 45:17
  first few weeks, he was that kind of chef that was like, oh,
• 45:20
  chef, what have we tried this chef?
• 45:21
  What have you tried this? And I'm like, yeah, dude, all
• 45:23
  right, all right, you know, don't go, don't get in the weeds
• 45:26
  first on gourmand J. And then, you know, we can talk
• 45:29
  about, you know what, what ideas you have for the menu, right?
• 45:33
  But the fact matter is now I am so excited to taste when he has
• 45:37
  a new dish because number one, I know he's put in the work.
• 45:42
  Number 2, I know it's going to be delicious #3 I know he's
• 45:47
  going to take my feedback and not have an ego about it.
• 45:52
  He's going to learn, he's going to adjust, and his food is going
• 45:55
  to get better. If you're not all about that is
• 46:01
  a chef, why? Why are you a chef?
• 46:04
  So I have an interesting question for you because you've
• 46:09
  been a chef at different types of restaurants.
• 46:11
  So mini bar tea, Emma and Rai, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a
• 46:17
  couple, Emma was the the carpenter's hall, Carpenter's
• 46:22
  hall, right? And all of these have a
• 46:23
  completely different style of cooking.
• 46:26
  Not just completely different style of cooking, but a
• 46:27
  completely different style of service.
• 46:29
  Probably ethos around the menu. When you go to each one as the
• 46:34
  head chef, do you take the same approach or do you do you do
• 46:41
  you? I, I, what's the what's the what
• 46:43
  do the kids say to do you code switch, right?
• 46:45
  I think that's what the slang is.
• 46:47
  So I mean, sometimes, yeah, right.
• 46:49
  Like, I mean, again, like if I'm, if I'm going up to one of
• 46:54
  the QSRS at Pullman Market, right?
• 46:57
  And I, I want to, I see somebody toasting bread for a sandwich or
• 47:01
  something like that, right. And I'm like, all right, there's
• 47:03
  definitely a better way to do that.
• 47:05
  Let me go give them some advice, right?
• 47:08
  I'm not gonna be like, hey, what's your concept, technique
• 47:10
  search to this young cook? Right, right.
• 47:13
  I'm gonna be like, hey, like, you know, what are you smelling?
• 47:16
  Like what, what colors are you looking for?
• 47:18
  I want to appeal to their sense of taste memory, right?
• 47:22
  Like if they can learn what this is supposed to smell like, what
• 47:25
  it sound like when it's on the griddle, all those things that
• 47:29
  we consider experience or intuition as a chef, people are
• 47:33
  like, oh, you have natural talents or you have this
• 47:35
  intuition as a cook. Bullshit.
• 47:37
  You learn it, right? And you need somebody to teach
• 47:39
  you what it is, right? And it's like, all right, if
• 47:42
  you're toasting this bread and you're making 30 sandwiches,
• 47:44
  probably the best advice I could give a cook like that.
• 47:46
  I'm like, make one, let's eat it.
• 47:49
  What do you love about this? Right?
• 47:51
  Meeting chefs where they are through that way, then they're
• 47:55
  going to be like, oh cool, I'm going to pay attention when I'm
• 47:58
  toasting the bread and I'm going to get to this golden brown
• 48:00
  every single time. You're giving them quality
• 48:03
  criteria, but you're connecting into something that's visceral,
• 48:07
  something that they create a memory based out of, right?
• 48:10
  So the next time I go to that sandwich, I get a sandwich.
• 48:13
  I'm like, chef, this is a fucking good sandwich, right?
• 48:16
  Then they capture that win, right?
• 48:20
  That gives them buy in. Yeah, when I would, when I would
• 48:23
  train people, I would always, you know, try and hit one of
• 48:25
  their senses because, you know, we're all either, you know, as
• 48:27
  auditory, kinesthetic visual learners.
• 48:30
  So what you're talking about, eat the sandwich.
• 48:32
  What do you taste? You know, do you taste this?
• 48:34
  OK, close your eyes. Now look at it.
• 48:36
  Smell it. Like if you could, if you could
• 48:38
  connect with as many of those senses as possible, for sure the
• 48:42
  greater likelihood of them retaining it.
• 48:44
  But what's really interesting about this?
• 48:46
  I saw this this video 'cause I don't know, I've been talking to
• 48:49
  people. It's like time just seems to go
• 48:50
  by faster now. It's like it's.
• 48:52
  Already it's. Already like what happened and
• 48:55
  and there's this mundane thing that they talk about where if
• 48:59
  when you do mundane things every day and you repeat them every
• 49:03
  day, your brain starts deleting it because it's not new.
• 49:07
  But when you introduce something new, your brain will retain it
• 49:09
  because it's almost like it breaks the pattern.
• 49:10
  Or, or I mean, and let me let me challenge a little bit or you
• 49:15
  create ritual with that mundane. Yeah, right.
• 49:19
  I mean, that's, that's that's why we have things like
• 49:22
  meditation. That's why people pray.
• 49:24
  That's what part of that power is that you, you create a ritual
• 49:29
  out of something that is mundane, right?
• 49:31
  It it may be mundane to take time out of your day and just
• 49:34
  think about what you're grateful for, right?
• 49:36
  That's not a super complicated thing.
• 49:38
  It's a beautiful thing to do, sure.
• 49:39
  But if you create a certain time, you create an environment
• 49:42
  for it, you light a candle, you go to a specific place, right?
• 49:46
  That's ritual that gives it meaning, right?
• 49:48
  Even if it's just for you, right.
• 49:50
  And if you can share that with people, that that's really
• 49:52
  awesome. But you know what I mean?
• 49:53
  What I love about food is, yeah, food's mundane.
• 49:56
  You have to eat. You have to pick something to
• 49:59
  eat. But food is also transcendent,
• 50:02
  right? It can take you back to a memory
• 50:04
  from when you're a child. It can take you to a new place
• 50:06
  you've never been. You time travel with it.
• 50:09
  You totally. Can, right, time truly is
• 50:11
  relative, right? Like it's, it's so, you know,
• 50:13
  like hot take, right? Like we don't have phones in
• 50:16
  Nkosi when we open Nkosi, that pissed people off, right?
• 50:22
  And it's not because we don't want people to see the dishes.
• 50:25
  It's because we want to create a bit of ritual.
• 50:28
  Like it's theater. We're putting a lot of work into
• 50:30
  this. We want you to be present here,
• 50:33
  right? It is not something mundane,
• 50:37
  right? Like the world is so complex.
• 50:40
  There's so much nuance to it. We're all carrying around all
• 50:43
  these different things. And then it's like tapping into
• 50:45
  like what Tabel probably talked about, I think when he was on
• 50:48
  your podcast. It's like I don't want people to
• 50:51
  have to bring that trauma with them when they sit down at our
• 50:54
  table, right? I want them to believe that
• 50:56
  outside and part of that for us is like that's why we asked them
• 51:00
  to put the phones away because we want you here with us.
• 51:04
  But I creating that sense memories massive.
• 51:07
  This is the point that I'm trying to make is that they're
• 51:09
  so used to having their phone with them all the time,
• 51:11
  everywhere that they go and eat and they're used to snapping a
• 51:15
  photo and texting and not paying attention to what's in front of
• 51:18
  them. But the second that you remove
• 51:19
  the phone, it introduces a it's like rewiring the brain because
• 51:22
  this is new information. I have to be fully present.
• 51:25
  And how that applies to the mundane task of making a
• 51:30
  sandwich every day. And you've been making it and
• 51:33
  you've been over toasting the bread and you've been making it
• 51:35
  for the last three years over toasting the bread.
• 51:37
  And then here comes chef and says, hey, hold on, make it.
• 51:40
  Taste it now let's toast a little less.
• 51:42
  Taste it again. Yeah, It's a new memory and it
• 51:44
  rewires you to it's almost like a pattern disruptor for new
• 51:48
  growth. I mean, it's like a a branch in
• 51:50
  the in the in the learning spectrum.
• 51:52
  It's neuroplasticity, Yeah, exactly right.
• 51:54
  Like the like chefs like have reputations of being stuck in
• 51:58
  their ways. Like, I mean, one of the reasons
• 52:00
  I think I actually like working at multiple different
• 52:02
  restaurants. And I, I think, you know, Kevin
• 52:05
  and Tavella and I are similar in this.
• 52:06
  And most of our chefs are, is like, we want that challenge,
• 52:10
  all right? Like we don't, we, we don't want
• 52:11
  that stagnation, even if we were doing the same thing over and
• 52:15
  over again, right? Like Caccio Pepe at Emmer hasn't
• 52:17
  changed 10 years, right, since Kevin first came up with it.
• 52:21
  When to do a Caccio Pepe perfectly.
• 52:24
  You kind of got to think of it like the first time because
• 52:27
  every time you're giving it that flop, every time you're doing
• 52:29
  twirl in the back of your head, you're like, oh shit, oh, shit,
• 52:32
  Don't fuck it up. Don't fuck it up.
• 52:33
  I love that about Cookie. Yeah.
• 52:35
  It's like when you're making a bur Blanc, It's like, all right,
• 52:37
  granted, you and I can can make a bur Blanc in our sleep or we
• 52:41
  could break a bur Blanc and fix it.
• 52:43
  But I love that intensity of being in a kitchen where it's
• 52:46
  like, you don't want to mess it up.
• 52:48
  You don't want to break the sauce.
• 52:50
  Like that, that that thing of like that push and anxiety.
• 52:55
  I love it. Yeah.
• 52:57
  It's what makes it mundane and it's something that I think is
• 53:00
  cool. Yeah, it's, it's, it's it's
• 53:02
  almost like you need both You, you, you need the ritual, you
• 53:04
  need the repetition, you need the reps to get good at
• 53:07
  something. But when you've been doing
• 53:10
  something for so long, you might not notice until someone comes
• 53:12
  and says, hey, just do this. And then all of a sudden, boom,
• 53:15
  Yeah, I mean new opportunities of.
• 53:17
  Yeah, it's, it's being in the moment.
• 53:18
  It's being open, it's being on. It's, yeah, all the things that
• 53:21
  we want people to do in their actual lives, too.
• 53:23
  Right. Yeah.
• 53:24
  It's, it's cooking the sweet potato a little too long.
• 53:25
  Yeah, right. It's like boom now all of a
• 53:27
  sudden. Yeah.
• 53:28
  Yeah, mess up a bunch, right? Like what young chef doesn't
• 53:32
  mess up a lot? You know, it's, it's funny, one
• 53:35
  of the things that I think that we do well is the culinary
• 53:39
  community. And I think it's getting better
• 53:41
  because I think when we were coming up, it was siloed a
• 53:44
  little bit. There was still, you know, it
• 53:46
  was very clicky and a year from this click or a year from that
• 53:48
  click. And there was information that
• 53:53
  was retained with certain camps and, and certain groups.
• 53:57
  I think it's much more transparent.
• 53:59
  I think, you know, open source, open source recipes, information
• 54:02
  exchange. It's, it's there.
• 54:03
  And what I think is really cool for people that don't know is
• 54:07
  going back, I don't know, maybe two months ago we were at Emmer
• 54:11
  and it was International Chef's Day.
• 54:14
  Oh yeah, it was. The day that Ron was there.
• 54:15
  Yeah, so I'm thinking about like, you were there.
• 54:19
  Yeah. Kevin was there, Ron was there,
• 54:21
  I was there, Gabe was there, Jacob was there, Dan Kennedy was
• 54:25
  there. And it's like, and then
• 54:27
  afterwards everyone just goes out there and and shoots the
• 54:30
  ship. Yeah.
• 54:30
  Talks. It was awesome.
• 54:32
  And I love that now because I feel like the chef community is
• 54:35
  so much more open and inviting and inclusive than than than
• 54:40
  it's probably ever been. You know, I think, I think.
• 54:42
  And it'll only get better, but I love that.
• 54:45
  No, I, I, I agree with you. I mean, I, I think there there
• 54:47
  was, and maybe it's a part of like competition as chefs.
• 54:51
  Like, I mean, I know definitely when I was on the East Coast,
• 54:53
  there was that like a there that type of restaurant or this type
• 54:56
  of restaurant, right? I think there's always mutual
• 55:00
  respect generally. But I think I agree with you.
• 55:05
  I feel like now, and maybe it is just because of how open things
• 55:09
  are, social media, whatever, it's like you don't cook
• 55:13
  anything like me. And maybe there's a part of me
• 55:18
  that's like looks down on you, but I don't think that's really
• 55:20
  the case anymore. I think it's more like you don't
• 55:22
  cook like me and I can still celebrate the fact that you
• 55:25
  don't cook like me. And it's not a challenge to how
• 55:27
  good my cooking is or how I do it.
• 55:32
  Yeah, I will say in DC, like, and we talked about Barton,
• 55:35
  like, I feel like DC was kind of always that way, like because it
• 55:39
  was such a tight knit community. I mean, DC is relatively small.
• 55:44
  I feel like everybody was cool with each other, right?
• 55:47
  Like competitive chefs. Yeah, we were competitive, but
• 55:53
  those were my friends, right? Aaron Silverman or Pineapple and
• 55:55
  Pearl, like we would just shoot the shit together.
• 55:58
  Yeah, she's awesome. I I, I do think chefs are, are
• 56:02
  more and more that way. And that's one of the reasons
• 56:04
  why, like at least Emer and Rye are our guest chef series.
• 56:09
  We called it breaking bread because we didn't want it to be
• 56:12
  a sales driver for us. We wanted it to be like, if the
• 56:16
  heart of what this restaurant is is bread and pasta, sharing
• 56:20
  meals together, making people feel good, we want to do that
• 56:23
  with people that we respect. Sometimes they're our friends,
• 56:27
  sometimes they were our mentors, right?
• 56:29
  Like Alexa and Bryce cooking together in the same kitchen was
• 56:33
  epic, right? Having Ron come in from the
• 56:38
  great, the great White N was epic, right?
• 56:43
  Like nobody had ever cooked like that in that kitchen.
• 56:46
  Ron did, and it was awesome. It was great.
• 56:50
  Those are experiences that are as much for our guests as they
• 56:54
  are for our teams. It's like you're bringing the
• 56:56
  stage to them, yeah. Yeah, it's yeah.
• 56:59
  I mean that's what 4 hands are like collab dinners.
• 57:01
  I think that's the magic of it. I remember all the ones we did
• 57:03
  at Minibar. Like, I have never eaten at
• 57:06
  Central, but when Virgilio and his team came to Minibar for a
• 57:10
  week, my God, there were like, literally every hour some new
• 57:15
  thing either we tasted or happened.
• 57:17
  That just blew my mind. Yeah.
• 57:19
  And on top of that, some of the sweetest human beings will ever
• 57:21
  meet in your life. Like, biggest chef crush I've
• 57:25
  probably ever had on my life, Virgilio Martinez.
• 57:28
  I mean, the guy's just beautiful.
• 57:32
  Those experiences are awesome. And it's, it's always surprising
• 57:35
  how open people are to doing that.
• 57:37
  Yeah, right. Minibar is a tiny little
• 57:39
  restaurant, right? Granted, 2 stars and Jose's
• 57:42
  Jose, but like the Albert Adria doesn't have to schlep all the
• 57:46
  way over here from Spain to do a guest chef dinner.
• 57:49
  Yeah. He's doing it because he's
• 57:50
  hoping he's gonna learn something or see something,
• 57:52
  right? Because he's always learning.
• 57:54
  That's that's his mindset, right?
• 57:58
  And Jose wants to show off the team to the team.
• 58:01
  Yeah, right. Yeah, the, the idea of the
• 58:03
  competition that we we have as chefs.
• 58:05
  And you know, I was talking with someone about this the other day
• 58:08
  because I was thinking back to when, you know, 10 years ago and
• 58:10
  I, I had this chef that I, I was my rival, not because, not
• 58:16
  because they did anything, it was just they were my market
• 58:19
  competitors. They were, they, they were like,
• 58:20
  who's the best, me or them? And of course, in my mind, I
• 58:23
  thought they're not as good as me.
• 58:25
  And, and so I would, I would diminish them in conversation
• 58:28
  thinking, but I'm like, the only reason I would speak that way
• 58:32
  and I understand this now, the only reason I would speak that
• 58:35
  way about that person was because I respected them, right?
• 58:38
  They were that good. Otherwise I wouldn't be talking
• 58:41
  about them. Why would you waste your time on
• 58:42
  them? Why would I waste my time
• 58:43
  thinking about someone that I didn't respect?
• 58:45
  Yeah. And I didn't realize that then.
• 58:48
  I, I, I viewed it as like, oh, they're the competition.
• 58:51
  I got to do better. But no, the reason they made me
• 58:53
  better, they pushed me. The fact that they were good
• 58:55
  made me better. And you and a lot of times we
• 58:58
  look at we look at our competition in a, in a, in a
• 59:03
  negative aspect, right? It's like, no, it's great.
• 59:06
  It's great. They, they push you, they make
• 59:07
  you better. They, you respect them.
• 59:09
  You you have to, you have to speak with, with reverence and
• 59:14
  love for your biggest rivals because that's what they are.
• 59:17
  Yeah. Otherwise you wouldn't even be
• 59:18
  thinking. About it, yeah, no, I mean it's
• 59:20
  interesting. I mean, like, I'll say for me,
• 59:21
  like, like we said, we're competitive, but like, I don't
• 59:25
  know, I, I, I don't know that I've ever thought of having a
• 59:27
  rival in, in in the culinary worlds.
• 59:31
  Like I just never thought of it that way.
• 59:33
  Even when we're at key, right, like Emmer and Rye was like
• 59:36
  probably like the the next new cool kid on the block, right,
• 59:39
  Like right, right. That inherently probably could
• 59:43
  have been our competition. But then you meet someone like
• 59:47
  Tavelle, you meet someone like Kevin and you're like, how are
• 59:50
  you not impressed by these two individuals, right?
• 59:53
  Like if, if, if you meet and hang out with Tavel and, and you
• 59:57
  don't kind of fall in love, you gotta check yourself.
• 1:00:00
  If you talk to Kevin Fink about the restaurant industry and
• 1:00:04
  you're not in awe of just how freaking clever he is.
• 1:00:09
  And man, I feel sorry for you. Right.
• 1:00:11
  Like Kevin and I kind of started cooking at the same time.
• 1:00:13
  Granted, he's been in restaurants a lot longer cuz
• 1:00:15
  he's like grew up in it, but like there are times I look at
• 1:00:18
  Kevin, I'm just like. How fucking smart are you?
• 1:00:21
  Yeah, right. Like I've been doing this for a
• 1:00:24
  long time and we talked about it like I've worked in Mission Star
• 1:00:25
  restaurants. I still consider Kevin and Tavel
• 1:00:28
  my mentors, Co collaborators, right?
• 1:00:35
  And yeah, we're competitive with each other.
• 1:00:37
  Yeah, right. You put Kevin Fink in the
• 1:00:38
  kitchen, he's going to try to out cook you and chances are
• 1:00:41
  he's going to win, right? That's fun.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, those are fun days. It's it's funny, when you were
• 1:00:48
  at key, I I remember I ate there.
• 1:00:51
  What did I have? I I still remember.
• 1:00:53
  I want to say it was I might be wrong.
• 1:00:56
  I want I think it was gnocchi but it had like a blood sauce
• 1:00:58
  with. It Oh yeah, the Dinaguan.
• 1:01:00
  So good. Yeah, I mean that that was all
• 1:01:02
  Paul Key. Yeah.
• 1:01:03
  I mean, talk about an amazing cook, right?
• 1:01:05
  Like hands down one of the most talented chefs I've I've ever
• 1:01:10
  seen. Yeah, yeah, super talented,
• 1:01:12
  created. Yeah, we we did a a popper, a
• 1:01:15
  proper Nyuki parisienne over Tiniguan pork's blood.
• 1:01:19
  Sauce, right? Yeah, it was great.
• 1:01:20
  Yeah. I I still remember that dish,
• 1:01:22
  you know, almost 15 years ago. Yeah, you're not the only one.
• 1:01:24
  People talk about bringing that back up.
• 1:01:26
  A lot yeah, yeah, it's a great dish.
• 1:01:28
  It's funny. I I here's a little anecdotal
• 1:01:30
  story for people that have listened to a couple of the
• 1:01:32
  different chefs that have been on the podcast is in 2014,
• 1:01:38
  fifteen ish. We went and had cigars and
• 1:01:41
  drinks and you were there. Diego was there, Kevin was
• 1:01:46
  there, I was there and maybe one other chef was there.
• 1:01:48
  But it's funny because Kevin and Diego didn't know each other.
• 1:01:50
  That's when they met. It was at that event that we had
• 1:01:52
  we had put on together. That was the first time I met
• 1:01:54
  you. But it's funny because you're in
• 1:01:57
  rooms 10 years ago with people and then you don't realize where
• 1:02:01
  where these people are going. So many of those.
• 1:02:03
  And, and again, I mean, that's the power of food, right?
• 1:02:05
  Like you make connections. Yeah, right.
• 1:02:07
  Like, you know, I mean, I don't know about you, but when you
• 1:02:10
  travel, like chances are I can go to a city and there's a chef
• 1:02:13
  that I know maybe I just did an event with right years ago that
• 1:02:17
  can be like, hey, I'm in town. Where should I go eat?
• 1:02:20
  They're good. They're going to show you their
• 1:02:21
  town because like any one of us, like, you know, if Jose Andres
• 1:02:25
  wants to come or I tour a Ruben to San Antonio, I'm going to
• 1:02:28
  take time out of my day to make sure they eat really well in my
• 1:02:31
  town. Right?
• 1:02:32
  Like we we're proud of who we are in our food communities.
• 1:02:37
  That's a really freaking cool thing.
• 1:02:39
  And when you embrace that, it means that doors start to open
• 1:02:41
  for you. Yeah, right.
• 1:02:43
  Like if, I mean, we talked about Michelin already, but if you had
• 1:02:46
  asked me, like, you know, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even
• 1:02:50
  five years ago, all right, are there Michelin star restaurants
• 1:02:53
  in Texas? I would have said no, right.
• 1:02:56
  If you had said, hey, you're going to be working with Kevin
• 1:02:59
  and Taval and this big restaurant group with all of
• 1:03:03
  these chefs, a bunch of them who I've worked for before, right?
• 1:03:07
  Like Zenil, our service director worked with us at Key.
• 1:03:11
  Danny Perata worked with us at Key.
• 1:03:14
  You know, it, it's, it's one of these things where it's like, it
• 1:03:19
  is a small enough community still to where it's like you, if
• 1:03:24
  you're honest with people, you straight shoot with people like
• 1:03:27
  you put put the best of you out there, right?
• 1:03:30
  Like it's gonna pay off, right? Like our, our, our food
• 1:03:33
  community. To me, we all know it's hard,
• 1:03:36
  brutally hard sometimes. I like to think we get a hell of
• 1:03:41
  a lot out of it. And to me, it's like having
• 1:03:43
  nights like that. Yeah, right.
• 1:03:45
  Like where you can smoke a cigar with a friend, talk about food.
• 1:03:50
  And maybe you only do that once a year or once every five years.
• 1:03:54
  Still meaningful? Yeah.
• 1:03:56
  Those are great memories. Yeah, So, you know, it's funny,
• 1:03:58
  I, I look at all the great memories that I've had with all
• 1:04:01
  the great chefs and all my friends.
• 1:04:02
  That's like, man, some of the best memories are just sitting
• 1:04:05
  down and talking. That's it.
• 1:04:07
  Yeah, nothing special. It's like some good food, sit
• 1:04:09
  down, talk. Maybe it's a cigar, maybe it's
• 1:04:11
  a, you know, a glass of whiskey or whatever.
• 1:04:13
  But chef wrapping up the show. Sure.
• 1:04:16
  Couple of questions if you had a a Mount Rushmore of chefs out
• 1:04:19
  there. Oh wow.
• 1:04:20
  Who's on Mount Rushmore? Wow.
• 1:04:26
  Gosh. Ferron and Albert Adria, 1000.
• 1:04:33
  Count as one or is that 2? I think Albert is his own in his
• 1:04:37
  own right, you know, Like, I mean, there's, you know, they're
• 1:04:42
  brothers, but Albert is. Stands on his own if.
• 1:04:45
  Ferron, yeah, stands on his own feet 100%.
• 1:04:48
  So those, those two for me are just massively important.
• 1:04:53
  You know, I would say Jose Andres has to be on there for me
• 1:04:56
  personally. Jacques Pepin, right?
• 1:05:00
  An American master. Gosh.
• 1:05:07
  That's 4, right? That's 4.
• 1:05:08
  Is that say it so? Yeah, Limit, yeah.
• 1:05:10
  You could throw one extra if you want.
• 1:05:12
  And I'm going to throw in, I'm going to throw in one that maybe
• 1:05:16
  some of your listeners haven't heard of, but somebody that like
• 1:05:19
  I met a few years ago that I'm just incredibly in awe of.
• 1:05:23
  And his name is Diego Guerrero in Mothery.
• 1:05:26
  It's got a restaurant called D Stage.
• 1:05:29
  And he is like rock'n'roll spirit Spanish food, not stuffy,
• 1:05:36
  but puts out beautiful artistic food.
• 1:05:39
  I wish everybody knew his cooking.
• 1:05:41
  I mean, he's obviously very popular in Europe, but I wish
• 1:05:43
  more Americans knew his food because every time I see him
• 1:05:48
  post things like I'm just in awe and inspired.
• 1:05:52
  And even though I've known him a lot less than I'd say those
• 1:05:55
  other Mount Rushmore's, he's probably one of the people that
• 1:05:58
  I go to the most to think about. Yeah.
• 1:06:03
  And Tibel will be happy because I, I'll bear counsels my pastry
• 1:06:06
  chef on that list, right. Since I since I since I do a lot
• 1:06:09
  of pastry these days, Yeah. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:06:12
  If if you had if you had a chef out there like a a bucket list
• 1:06:15
  chef that you'd want to eat their food that you want them to
• 1:06:19
  cook for you, who would it be? Will.
• 1:06:21
  Goldfarb Room for dessert in Bali Nubu.
• 1:06:25
  Oh, OK. Yeah, the first chef ever to do
• 1:06:28
  a dessert only tasting menu. Yeah.
• 1:06:31
  And he and one of my mentors, Reuben Garcia, were really good
• 1:06:35
  friends at BUI. And I have never actually eaten
• 1:06:40
  his food. And it's like, you know, there's
• 1:06:44
  only so many Michelin starter, high end dessert tasting menus
• 1:06:49
  in the world. And I feel like I have to give
• 1:06:52
  props to somebody that's like has been doing it for 20 years.
• 1:06:56
  You know, I want to try that. Excellent.
• 1:06:59
  Or or. I'd love to have him come to
• 1:07:01
  Nkosi and cook with us. If, if, if you had to give
• 1:07:04
  advice to all the cooks and chefs out there in the world,
• 1:07:07
  what's one thing that we could do today to improve our cooking
• 1:07:10
  now? Beyond just taste, taste, taste.
• 1:07:18
  Don't be afraid of making mistakes, right?
• 1:07:19
  And I'm sure I'm not unique in saying that as a chef, but
• 1:07:23
  failure is a myth, right? Mastery is repetition, getting
• 1:07:28
  good at creativity. And I always talked a lot about
• 1:07:30
  creativity that only comes from putting up ideas and ideas and
• 1:07:34
  ideas. Don't be afraid of making
• 1:07:38
  mistakes. Shoot your shot, shoot 1000
• 1:07:42
  shots. Just you got to put in the work,
• 1:07:44
  right? Like that's that was a lot of
• 1:07:46
  advice, I think, and then one little nugget.
• 1:07:48
  No, no, no. It's good.
• 1:07:49
  Yeah, it's good. Rishef, this has been fun.
• 1:07:51
  I appreciate you giving us a peek inside your creative
• 1:07:54
  process and how your mind was brilliant.
• 1:07:55
  I loved it. So I think a lot of people will
• 1:07:57
  learn from this. For people that want to follow
• 1:07:59
  along and follow you, where can people find you?
• 1:08:01
  Oh, on Instagram, I'm normally on there.
• 1:08:05
  I don't remember what my JLF Fernandez is my handle there,
• 1:08:10
  but most days I'm at Nikosi or Isidora Pullman market.
• 1:08:14
  This coming year I'll be spending a lot of time at
• 1:08:16
  Nikosi, so you can normally find me there.
• 1:08:20
  Awesome, brother. Yeah.
• 1:08:21
  Thank you for being here. Thank you.
• 1:08:22
  Yep, it's fun. Well, I hope you enjoyed the
• 1:08:24
  show. If you want to support the show,
• 1:08:26
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• 1:08:27
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• 1:08:34
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• 1:08:35
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• 1:08:50
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