Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / From Struggle to Success: Chef Kevin Fink’s Culinary Journey Ep. 164

Transcript

From Struggle to Success: Chef Kevin Fink’s Culinary Journey Ep. 164 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chefs PSA. I'm your host Andre Natera.
• 0:02
  Today I'm joined by my friend Chef Kevin Fink of Emmer and Rye
• 0:05
  Hospitality, Food and wine, Best new chef, Michelin green star
• 0:09
  recipient for Emmer and Rye and Michelin star for Hestia.
• 0:12
  We talked about the realities of career progression in the
• 0:14
  kitchen, what it takes to build and sustain multiple successful
• 0:17
  restaurants, how to balance life outside of work, the importance
• 0:20
  of quality ingredients, and the partnerships that make it all
• 0:23
  possible. Stay tuned.
• 0:36
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  free shipping plus a complimentary sample box on your
• 1:16
  first order. For me, when you talk about our
• 1:19
  industry, what a lot of people don't talk about is career
• 1:22
  progression in it. And you talk about how great it
• 1:25
  is to be a cook and all the places that are going to stage
• 1:28
  and the Michelin stars. But you don't talk about your
• 1:31
  life cycle on Earth and then how you earn into that.
• 1:34
  And so for every 20 year old cook, you're going to naturally
• 1:37
  filter out 95% of them by the time that they turn 40 to where
• 1:41
  they have to do something else. And if you're looking at a
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  career where you know, out of 20 people that are here, only one
• 1:49
  of them really has a career in that past 40 and they all are
• 1:52
  going to have to figure something else to do, that's a
• 1:54
  problem in our industry. Can you go a little bit deeper
• 1:57
  in that? Because I think I think that's
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  an important subject that's I don't think anyone's touched on
• 2:01
  the podcast yet. Well, if you look at a brigade
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  and there's 10 people there and you know that there's only two
• 2:08
  sous chef positions and one chef de cuisine position, right?
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  You, you feel that pyramid happening, but even for that,
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  there's a time where you age out of being able to be on the line.
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  And so you've worked your entire career for this progression of
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  food and how you're thinking about these things and what that
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  meant. But you can't do that when
• 2:29
  you're 50 and and you don't think about what that means in
• 2:34
  the struggle to get to the pinnacle of your career and then
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  really start to look at what the next options are.
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  There's no other career does that because you're a doctor.
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  You know you're going to be a doctor until you're retiring.
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  If you're a lawyer, the same exact thing.
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  Really. Even a teacher, you get tenured
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  into that. As a cook, you get retired and
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  put out to pasture. I did an episode way early in
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  Chef's PSA was a solo episode where I talked about how being,
• 2:58
  becoming an executive chef is actually the exception to the
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  rule. When you think about how many
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  people are in the industry, just becoming an executive chef is
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  the exception and then becoming a good executive chef is a
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  greater exception. And then you know, and you know,
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  winning a Michelin star is even the furthest exception.
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  And I think a lot of people don't realize that when they do
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  get into the industry. When I part of why we do this is
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  because there's a form of creativity and cooking for
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  others, right? We're nurturers.
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  We want to make sure that we're taking care of people, right?
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  You go over to a Cook's house, they always have something, you
• 3:32
  know, for you, right? That that is very much how we
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  kind of, for lack of a better room, like get off on this is to
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  make sure that we're taking care of people in that.
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  And I think what often happens is you don't take care of
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  yourself very well. Then most people who nurture
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  other people do a really bad job of nurturing themselves, and you
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  don't look further than the next thing, right?
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  When I'm a cook, I really want to be a sous chef.
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  When I'm a sous chef, I really want to be an executive.
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  You get to an executive chef, you're like, OK, great, what do
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  I do now? Yeah.
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  So what do you do? Well, like if, like if you.
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  Well, first of all, let's go back.
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  If you were advising cooks, let's start there because
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  they're they're they're coming into the industry.
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  They're green, they're bright eyed.
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  They want to become chefs. How would you say, Hey, look,
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  you're early. You should start thinking about
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  this now, because when you're thinking about it when you're
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  40, it's too late. Yeah.
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  So I don't have the solve for that, right.
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  And I think that's the thing that we're trying to solve
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  together. And why I bring it up that way
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  is because I think on a whole we accept that our position in the
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  country is why our earnings are the way that they are and the
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  way that we're utilized is different, right?
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  The the fact is that form and care and how dynamic people are
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  in our industry makes them of great value.
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  You're a great example of this. You transitioned into something
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  into another career and succeeded greatly in that
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  because of a huge amount of skill set that you learned in
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  culinary and hospitality. But think about all the people
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  that were great in culinary, in hospitality that had to go
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  somewhere else to continue their career.
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  How do we figure out how to make sure that we are creating long
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  term monetized growth for people that are superstars in what they
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  do for not just one or 5% of it, but 10 or 15?
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  Because if we can do that as an industry and allow you to age
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  within that, we will keep incredible talent and we will
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  disrupt way more. And that's the thing that we
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  have to talk about because there's an industry.
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  We're way more powerful together than we are.
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  If we're separating this restaurant from this restaurant
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  down the street, right? We're really in competition with
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  the Brinkers, the Chili's of the world who have figured out that
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  a lot more than the day-to-day mom and pop or the Michelin star
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  restaurant. Yeah, well, you also bring up an
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  interesting point. I look at people that if, if, if
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  you said, for example, hey, we're going to get together as a
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  community and we all agree to, to raise the rate and do all
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  this. There's going to be someone
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  that's a capitalist going to say, I'll do it cheaper.
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  Yeah, of course there's always someone that's going to say,
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  I'll do it less expensive or I'll do it better, or I'll find
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  a, a, a quicker way to do it just to eat up the rest of the
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  competition. I mean, we saw that during
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  COVID. You remember when?
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  Well, obviously we all remember, but everything closed.
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  Everything opened at the exact same time.
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  And I know I was dealing with it where it's like, hey, I'm going
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  to go work here. They're paying me $13 an hour.
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  Oh, I'm going to go here. They're paying me 14.
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  Can oh, please come back. And we're playing arbitrage
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  between other restaurants because we've never had a
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  situation where all the restaurants close and open at
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  the same time. Yeah.
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  Well, and I mean the American capitalism is great and alive in
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  that aspect of you're always looking for a competitive
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  advantage. What I will say is I think why
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  the food industry has struggled is because I would call that a
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  race to the bottom mentality, right?
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  And what happened is if the only comparable of your product is
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  price, then you're a commodity, right.
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  So in this scenario of this burger is 499, this burger is
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  599, Which burger are you going to buy?
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  Everyone's going to buy the 499 burger if all I'm talking about
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  is the price. And so that's where storytelling
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  and marketing and ethics and all those things really show up,
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  right. And in in the example of wages
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  is what you said, if all I'm talking about is wages and
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  that's all I care about, then yeah, I'm going to go to the
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  place that has the highest wage. But the reality of that is, is
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  that is the bare minimum of what it means to be an employer, of
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  what it means to have a career, of what it means to be proud of
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  what you do. And that to me is the number
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  one. Like, you know, this may be
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  privileged, but in the aspect of I would way rather be proud of
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  what I do every single day and make a dollar or $2.00 less an
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  hour. Then go into the same exact
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  space and know that I'm making a dollar or two more.
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  But cook food that I don't care about and be a part of a a
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  community or something like that that I don't think is doing
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  anything. When people leave jobs, so you
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  know, they always say they don't leave jobs, they leave bosses or
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  whatever, right? But you, you look at it and when
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  someone comes to you and they say they're leaving because I'm
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  going here for $0.50, that's nothing.
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  And the grand scheme of the it's nothing.
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  It's, you know, $25.00 a month or something like that.
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  I wouldn't leave a job that I'm happy at for $25.00 a month.
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  You know, that's gas station snacks.
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  So really then the focus becomes on looking at the, I would say
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  maybe total compensation package, but it's also the other
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  things like are you offering Wellness benefits or PTO, all
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  these other things that factor into it.
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  Well, and so my argument would be even more important than all
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  that. It's where do I see this taking
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  me, right. So if I know that I'm probably
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  not going to get that chef job, then my stability changes.
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  But if I know that in this company they have 40 other
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  career paths that I can pick and choose from that take me for the
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  course of 30 years to an earning potential of $250,000 a year
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  when I'm 50, that $0.25 means nothing.
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  Right. It's the same thing with school,
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  right? Like everyone gets on culinary
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  school. Culinary school's amazing.
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  If it turns into that, you end up being a chef and you have a
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  long term society and all those sort of things with that.
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  But if it doesn't, then it doesn't work as well.
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  And so that's where you know the do you go and get paid to learn
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  and work somewhere or not? What does that look like in, in
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  your organization right now, currently?
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  So for for people that are listening and, and maybe how
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  about because you have, I mean, you have quite a large empire
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  now. Yeah, we have 775 employees
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  today. Wow.
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  Wow, I remember like I'm thinking back to when we met,
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  like I think Emmer had just opened.
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  Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it's a I, I tell
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  that story not often because I don't do podcasts that often,
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  but where, you know, when we opened, we were not immediately
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  successful. And it's a really hard kind of
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  vulnerable moment where you're putting yourself out there,
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  which is what a restaurant is, at least when you're taking a
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  stance. But if I'm, if I'm making a
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  restaurant that's just tried and true and simple, and I'm not
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  trying to take a stance in that, then maybe I'm not putting
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  myself out there. But Emmer and Ryan, we are
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  trying to have a voice that that meant something that that was
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  worth saying. And because of that, we really
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  did a lot of things differently. And we attracted people to that,
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  many of whom are still with us today to leave sous chef jobs to
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  become wine cooks for what we're doing.
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  And when we open, we're doing 30 covers and we still hadn't
• 10:53
  figured out exactly who our customer was, which is kind of a
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  unique thing to think about, right?
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  Because you think that great food resonates with everybody
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  and it just doesn't, right? It you're fantastic if it
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  resonates with 70% of people. Now The thing is, 25 of that
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  remaining 30% are going to naturally filter themselves out
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  because they're not going to go to a restaurant that doesn't
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  sound appealing to them. So if your capture rate is only
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  70% when people eat there, you've got a big problem.
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  But but you know, we were really unsuccessful.
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  And so we were, you know, I had run 5 restaurants.
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  I was the director of OPS in Arizona before I came to Austin
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  and I kind of sold out of that and finished that because I
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  wanted to do something like Emmer and rye that was unique
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  that I knew was going to take every ounce of our creative and
• 11:47
  thought process that and we lived upstairs and we had a nest
• 11:51
  egg that we put in. We did it all the right way
• 11:53
  where we raised money before we secured the space, we built out
• 11:59
  the space. We hammer the GC on, you know,
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  value engineering all the way through to get it to exactly
• 12:07
  where we want. We kept Tuval and myself and
• 12:10
  Allison off payroll. We Uber drove all the way up
• 12:12
  until two weeks before I worked as a line cook at Olomay to make
• 12:16
  sure that, you know, it's like I'd wake up, I'd go to the site,
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  I'd ride my bike to Olomay, I'd ride my bike back to get a
• 12:23
  workout in. I'd Uber drive till 4:00 in the
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  morning on weekends, go back to sleep and then and then hit it
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  again. And and for all to have $100,000
• 12:33
  in the bank when we open. Because the number one reason
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  why restaurants fail is they do not have enough financial
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  cushion for when the wrong thing happens.
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  Because inevitably it will at some point.
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  And then you compromise and you compromise and compromise.
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  What was the moment? Because I'm sure you had that
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  moment when like you were saying, it's slow.
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  What? What's going to go on here?
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  What was that moment when you said, OK, we're going to make
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  it? Well, so, so we had to have the
• 13:00
  other moment first, right? And so we were losing $40,000 a
• 13:06
  month, right? Because that's what it cost to
• 13:08
  have a brigade in your opening. And your food cost is often like
• 13:10
  all these things. And we just weren't busy.
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  And I can remember vividly getting home after service one
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  day and not being able to sleep and waking up.
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  I'm really standing or, or sitting on the edge of the bed.
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  And Allie, my wife woke up and she said, are you OK?
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  And I, you know, just turned and looked at her.
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  I said, no, like, are we? Did I just ruin our lives?
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  Is it good? She said, you know, I think
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  it's, I think it's good. And you have to understand was,
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  you know, so she worked at the United Food Lab.
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  She's a master's in food anthropology.
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  I respect her palate as much as really anyone in the world.
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  So that means a lot to me, not just through my life.
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  And and she tells it to me straight enough.
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  So I said, OK, well, are we going to double down on it then
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  because we're out of money? And she was like, yeah, you
• 14:10
  know, which is which is what you need.
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  So 3 in the morning, we made a game plan to 1st sell my car
• 14:19
  because we lived above the restaurant.
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  So that was get us at the time, I thought it was going to be
• 14:23
  worth 30,000 would which would get us to at least another two
• 14:28
  weeks to make payroll. And then we would look at her
• 14:31
  four O 1K, which would get us, you know, another 17,000 or so.
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  And then we were going to get into, you know, past this
• 14:40
  January time, which is really hard in Austin.
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  We're going to get a little bit in the season.
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  And that would float us enough to see what was happening.
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  And so the next day, I woke up, washed the car bright and early
• 14:51
  at, you know, 6:00 AM, took photos of it, and I listed it
• 14:55
  before I went into work. What kind of car was it just.
• 14:58
  Well, so I left a really great job, right So I had AI had a
• 15:01
  brand new Audi S4 that was now like 2 years old, right, because
• 15:05
  I left a pretty cush gig where I was running 5 restaurants and I
• 15:08
  was a partner and they were all car you'd.
• 15:10
  Probably love that car. Oh, it's an amazing car.
• 15:12
  It's a manual. I only drive manual.
• 15:15
  And you know, we downsized it with my wife had like a old car
• 15:19
  'cause she didn't care about this stuff.
• 15:20
  And so that was what we ended up using.
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  And I can remember Keith Rupeki, who's our corporate chef over
• 15:30
  Austin now and is really into cars.
• 15:35
  We were at family meal when I ultimately sold the car and I
• 15:38
  just walked outside. The guy looked at it and I gave
• 15:40
  him the keys. He gave me the check, walked
• 15:42
  back inside, didn't say anything, went into service
• 15:44
  because you don't really want to be like, hey, I'm selling my
• 15:46
  car. And everyone's like, well, why?
• 15:48
  You're like, well, I got to make payroll.
• 15:49
  Like, you know, like you're a leader, you're a general.
• 15:51
  Like you can't, don't. Let him see you sweat.
• 15:54
  No, there's a form of that, but you don't want if.
• 15:58
  If I'm following somebody who I know is failing, that doesn't
• 16:02
  feel like good career advice either.
• 16:04
  Right. And so there's this balance
• 16:06
  between this thing, right? There's this fake it till you
• 16:10
  make it. But then there's also this
• 16:14
  vulnerability in making sure that you're, you're being real
• 16:16
  about these things, right? Everyone's going through this
• 16:18
  struggle. And so we sold the car.
• 16:22
  We I paid off a lot of my credit card debt, which was all
• 16:25
  restaurant stuff. And right around that time was
• 16:30
  when Kate Crater came in with Matthew Odom and she had the
• 16:35
  Caccio. Like 3 weeks later we found out
• 16:40
  that we won food and wine best new chef, which we couldn't tell
• 16:43
  anybody, right? And this I think at the time we
• 16:46
  were the earliest restaurants have opened to win the award to
• 16:49
  because we were open for like 2 months and then we had to wait
• 16:53
  another three months or so. So are are you thinking like, do
• 16:56
  we have enough money to, Oh yeah, you know, you're going to
• 16:58
  get the upside? Well, I mean, you're in a,
• 17:01
  you're in a cloud to that, yeah. But what happened is and and
• 17:05
  this is the great thing about distance to this is now I can
• 17:09
  look back and I can see that with some seasonal changes, we
• 17:13
  went up 10% a week, right, for the course of 3/4 of a year.
• 17:20
  So if you think about that for like 37 weeks, we went up about
• 17:25
  10% with seasonal variation of what that looks like, right?
• 17:28
  So you're 370% more over the course of 37 weeks than where
• 17:34
  you were. That's game changing.
• 17:37
  But 10% a week doesn't feel like it, right?
• 17:40
  And so if you're looking for double, that's unachievable,
• 17:46
  right? That happens only in freak
• 17:48
  things. Somebody comes in that is a huge
• 17:50
  fear of influence and attracts people to what you're doing.
• 17:54
  But most growth happens bit by bit by bit, and that's not the
• 17:59
  sexy part of it. And so sometimes you just got to
• 18:02
  look for those inches that you're getting.
• 18:05
  And once we really realized that trend was happening, it made it
• 18:08
  a lot easier. And it was such a tale of two
• 18:11
  worlds between the restaurant world of 1, where I felt like
• 18:15
  such a failure, right? Imagine this, right?
• 18:19
  I'm at the edge of my bed, wondering what I can do with the
• 18:23
  rest of our career and how to get ourselves out of this debt
• 18:26
  that we took into. And a month and a half later,
• 18:31
  I'm winning one of the most prestigious awards in the
• 18:33
  culinary industry, flying to New York, which had to buy a suit.
• 18:38
  And, you know, now people asking me about what we're doing and
• 18:43
  how it's so progressive. And nothing really changed other
• 18:48
  than the aspect of the right people came in and we just
• 18:51
  steadfast to doing the thing that we really believed it.
• 18:57
  I want to ask you this question because I think it's an
• 19:02
  important part to the conversation.
• 19:03
  But how do the right people find you?
• 19:06
  Because that's not so easy because there's, there's,
• 19:09
  there's a lot of great chefs that never, we never hear of
• 19:11
  them. So how did the right people find
• 19:13
  you? Like if you had to give some
• 19:14
  advice to a chef that's out there that might be in the
• 19:18
  similar situation that just needs the right people to find
• 19:21
  them, What are they? What can they do?
• 19:24
  Well, this is AIII would say that I'm bad at this internally.
• 19:31
  Luckily, I have really good partners that are good at this,
• 19:33
  like Tabella's very good at this.
• 19:35
  And you know, we also worked with giant noise, who's in PR
• 19:37
  agency who's really good at this.
• 19:38
  But you have to figure out the thing that you're going to be
• 19:42
  loud about and make sure that that's something that you really
• 19:47
  care about and then be very loud about that on multiple platforms
• 19:52
  and what you did right, that can be just in your space.
• 19:55
  But whatever it is, if you really want to be somebody worth
• 20:00
  being listened to, you need to have an opinion worth listening
• 20:04
  to. If you're just doing the same
• 20:07
  thing, or even if you think it is something that is unique and
• 20:10
  different and nobody else does, the reality of it is it's
• 20:13
  probably not. That's the hard, uncomfortable
• 20:17
  truth. Well, like how many people think
• 20:18
  that they're great and that, like, behind closed doors,
• 20:21
  everyone's like, yeah, they're not that great.
• 20:23
  Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, that's, I hate to
• 20:25
  say that's like 99% of every, everyone thinks they're great
• 20:27
  when you ask them. Just ask them.
• 20:29
  Yeah, what's the what's the thing where they say ask, get
• 20:33
  all your friends in a room and and ask them who they all think
• 20:35
  is the smartest and all of them are going to say themselves.
• 20:39
  Well, I think the unique thing about it is most people that I
• 20:42
  think are really great would say that they're not.
• 20:44
  Yeah, that's true. Right, like people are always
• 20:46
  like, oh man, you've accomplished so much.
• 20:47
  I'm like, I don't know, I don't think so.
• 20:49
  Like I, I, I feel like I'm halfway or we really need to
• 20:53
  figure out how to do these things because, you know, you
• 20:56
  just get to the next space and you look at that.
• 21:00
  There's just so much more to accomplish in for for our
• 21:04
  industry, right for for cooks, the the disparity is still so
• 21:10
  great on you either have to choose to kind of sell out and
• 21:13
  make money or to or to be creative and do what you really
• 21:16
  like. Like why?
• 21:19
  Yeah. So going, going back, at what
• 21:23
  point do you now say we've made it and now we're it's time to
• 21:28
  scale? In at Emmer and Ryan.
• 21:31
  Yeah, because you remember what was next, Hestia.
• 21:34
  Technically is hen bit, but being committed to doing Hestia
• 21:37
  first. So, you know, we were working
• 21:42
  with a really talented chef, Paige Presley, and I think it's
• 21:46
  exactly this, right? Truthfully, like when I opened
• 21:49
  Emmer and Rye, I expected that that was a restaurant that they
• 21:52
  were going to bury me. I was going to wake up every
• 21:55
  day, come to work, cook, work there.
• 21:58
  That's what I wanted. And genuinely, it is still my
• 22:02
  happy place. The responsibility of doing more
• 22:07
  is something that I, we all stepped up into because we're
• 22:11
  blessed enough to work with incredibly talented people.
• 22:15
  And what I recognized is we could create a platform that we
• 22:18
  could all do together rather than them having to continue to
• 22:23
  brave their own way to do those things.
• 22:25
  And there's a huge amount of leverage that comes from success
• 22:33
  in the hospitality industry in a group.
• 22:36
  And so our negotiated rate was different at Hestia or Henbit
• 22:41
  than the leverage that I did not have at Emeron Rye.
• 22:45
  And so the people that worked with me were able to benefit
• 22:48
  from that. And we were able to get to the
• 22:51
  next level because of those things, because of the scale.
• 22:55
  And so really it was based upon the talent that was within the
• 22:58
  organization that allowed us to expand.
• 23:03
  You guys have some heavy hitters by the way in, in the group.
• 23:06
  Like I, I, I don't know, I mean, really I, I talk to a lot of
• 23:10
  chefs and we often say, you know, your group has the
• 23:14
  heaviest of the heavy hitters in Texas.
• 23:15
  Probably you, you're stacked with talent.
• 23:18
  And I'm assuming that that comes with its challenges too.
• 23:22
  Yeah, of course. Yeah.
• 23:23
  How do you sometimes navigate having so many, you know,
• 23:31
  gangsters in the kitchen? Well, I think the the first goal
• 23:37
  is hiring a lot of people that have a like minded purpose to
• 23:40
  that, right. And so the goal of the majority
• 23:43
  of people that either grew up within our organization or
• 23:46
  joined it from the outside isn't they want to be part of
• 23:49
  something that's bigger than just that.
• 23:51
  And if you're in it to have your name on the headline of that
• 23:56
  thing, you're probably not going to be happy in our organization.
• 24:00
  But if you're in it to truly change the relationship of food
• 24:06
  and service from transactional to something that has deeper
• 24:10
  meaning to you with a group of people, there are very few
• 24:15
  spaces in the US that you can do that.
• 24:17
  And that's how we've been able to keep a lot of people and grow
• 24:23
  because, you know, Tavelle and my name are in the papers a lot.
• 24:28
  But the reality of that is, is that we are purely small parts
• 24:33
  of what the organization does. And every single one of those
• 24:36
  heavy hitters and gangsters recognizes really quickly how
• 24:40
  much influence they have on what we do.
• 24:44
  It is not just a four or five partners directing this thing at
• 24:48
  all. We have to make a decision
• 24:51
  together to have that impact. And they are huge parts of what
• 24:54
  we do and our growth. Great restaurants don't always
• 25:00
  bring customers in. Great stories do, because in
• 25:03
  food, beverage and hospitality, what you sell is only part of
• 25:06
  the story. It's the why behind it, the
• 25:10
  authority you create and the experience that you built.
• 25:16
  Market scale turns expertise into content that connects
• 25:19
  podcasts, video series and industry education, not ads.
• 25:23
  Assets. Market scale has brought run the
• 25:28
  past and how to manage like an executive chef to life real
• 25:31
  world examples of how great content leads the conversation
• 25:36
  because attention is earned and the industry doesn't need more
• 25:39
  noise, it needs more leaders. So what does your day-to-day
• 25:48
  look like now? Because you've you've started as
• 25:51
  you know, chef, chef with one restaurant to now, I don't know
• 25:56
  CEO is that is that appropriate title?
• 25:58
  Yeah, yeah, I I've accepted. I've, I've steered away from
• 26:02
  that title for a very long time. And now I now I have a suit coat
• 26:08
  and a suit do. You wear a suit every day?
• 26:10
  No, I I like the leather jacket. Thank you.
• 26:11
  It looks sharp. Yeah, it's like a it's like a
• 26:13
  shacket. Yeah.
• 26:14
  And it's quite light still, which works.
• 26:18
  No, I I don't, although I can wear loafers now or suede shoes,
• 26:21
  which is like a whole thing. Yeah, because, you know, in a
• 26:25
  kitchen you get grease on everything, your pants, your,
• 26:28
  you know, as as clean as you are, which I hate when I get
• 26:31
  grease on anything. But yeah, it's it's transitioned
• 26:35
  a lot. And I struggle with that.
• 26:39
  True, right. The the reality of it is, is I
• 26:42
  am happiest still making pasta, cooking food, serving it to
• 26:48
  somebody. That is the thing that I quench
• 26:52
  after. What I also love is creating
• 26:58
  spaces where people like Alfred Keith, Danny, Jorge, these are
• 27:05
  just amazing talents in our kitchens that have been there
• 27:08
  get to have an impact on Texas, their viewpoint and and scale.
• 27:18
  And, and that's all I work on now is how I can help develop
• 27:21
  them and make sure that their careers, their passions are are
• 27:27
  met and how I can you know, we, we have development plans for
• 27:30
  people. So I get to sit side by side and
• 27:32
  I say, you know, in 5 or 10 years, here are the paths that
• 27:36
  you can go on. What tools do you need to be
• 27:39
  successful for those things? You need to travel more to go
• 27:45
  to, you know, Keith, Rebecca is a good example.
• 27:47
  You want to go to Tokyo to cook, Great.
• 27:50
  You want a month? Fantastic.
• 27:52
  We have a program that we work with, with every single salaried
• 27:55
  manager where they get $3000 a year to get, they have to apply
• 28:00
  for it, but it's it's already pencilled for them and they're
• 28:05
  paid on top of that while they're gone.
• 28:07
  So that's just to cover expenses that they incur on this to learn
• 28:13
  and what they have to do is have to come back and share that with
• 28:16
  the organization and stay for six months and then they re up
• 28:20
  every single year to be able to do that.
• 28:22
  Why do you do that though? Well, so there's two reasons
• 28:25
  that we do. There's a lot of reasons that we
• 28:27
  do it, but the main reason was I believe that we all want to live
• 28:33
  a great story and our industry is so captivating that it keeps
• 28:40
  everyone locked into day-to-day service.
• 28:43
  And often we don't save the right way to be able to go out
• 28:47
  and explore in those things. So by creating a scenario where
• 28:52
  they get money set aside to incentivize them to travel,
• 28:58
  we're broadening these lives that you get to live in our
• 29:02
  industry, which is something that I think it deserves to
• 29:05
  have. And the second part of that is
• 29:08
  those were the moments for me that I was the happiest where I
• 29:13
  had perspective of what was out there.
• 29:15
  And I got to come back in a space where I where I missed it.
• 29:19
  And, and now we're creating an organization that is not driven
• 29:26
  by perspectives of a shared few at the top, but it's driven by
• 29:31
  perspectives of many who have gone out and lived these diverse
• 29:35
  lives and have amazing ideas that hopefully we get to work
• 29:40
  with and continue. And so you create a completely
• 29:42
  different culture than what most places are I.
• 29:45
  Want to go back to kind of, I hate to say the the CEO, but for
• 29:49
  for the sake of conversation, what is the day-to-day look like
• 29:51
  for you now? And I mean, what do you have, 9,
• 29:56
  10? We have a.
• 29:57
  Lot so I call it 11 and that is. And spread across with people
• 30:02
  for people that don't know right, San Antonio and Austin.
• 30:05
  Yeah, correct. Yeah.
• 30:07
  And we just announced Houston. Oh, congratulations.
• 30:10
  Thanks. Just means more travel.
• 30:13
  You just get to scale and you have to do different things.
• 30:15
  But I have an EA now, which is a lifesaver.
• 30:21
  And So what it allowed me to do is she schedules essentially my
• 30:26
  hours. And So what I get to do is I
• 30:28
  reflect with her on the what productivity I want to have,
• 30:32
  right? So right now, Pullman consumes
• 30:34
  most of my life and it has the last two years because it's just
• 30:38
  such a large endeavor. And we also have grand
• 30:41
  aspirations for the impact that it will have.
• 30:44
  And So what I'll do is I have meetings with our finance, our
• 30:51
  marketing, our operations, our HR.
• 30:57
  And in each of those I'll reflect back in a group dynamic
• 31:00
  about how we're doing. I'll read their emails and their
• 31:05
  initiatives into those things and I'll set goals with them.
• 31:09
  And then we'll we'll track that forward.
• 31:12
  And then I will have separate one-on-one meetings with each of
• 31:15
  my direct reports, which are still mostly culinary facing
• 31:20
  because that's kind of my passion to that.
• 31:23
  And and then there's a mixture of community outreach to those
• 31:26
  things too. And, and candidly, I'm still
• 31:30
  learning to be a great CEO because I've been in that
• 31:35
  position now formally for two years.
• 31:40
  I was in the hospitality industry for 20, right, right.
• 31:43
  That that's what I know and that's what got me a form of
• 31:47
  success. And it's why I will be a
• 31:49
  successful CEO is because of that too.
• 31:52
  But I read a lot of books. I talked to a lot of other
• 31:55
  people there. I'm I'm in a whole new education
• 31:58
  on how I can be impactful in the career that I grew up in four
• 32:04
  others. One of the things that you do
• 32:05
  very well is, and I'm learning this now with what I do as
• 32:09
  chef's PSA because I, I know it for myself.
• 32:12
  When I was a chef, I was a chef and my circle of chefs and all I
• 32:16
  talked to was chefs and all I talked about was food.
• 32:19
  And then now that I'm chef's PSA, I still talk to a lot of
• 32:22
  chefs, but now I have to talk to financial people and, and
• 32:25
  marketers and I, I deal with a lot of PR companies and, and
• 32:29
  lawyers and things like that. People that I never, they
• 32:31
  weren't in my circle of influence before.
• 32:35
  But I thought, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, I always
• 32:38
  thought you did a pretty good job at that.
• 32:39
  Because I remember, you know, you'd call me up and say, Hey,
• 32:41
  I'm sending this one to your restaurant.
• 32:42
  I'm sending that one. You is always this high profile
• 32:44
  person that you're sending over. So I always thought that you did
• 32:47
  a really great job at preparing yourself for the CEO.
• 32:51
  Maybe you didn't know you were, but I felt like you were doing a
• 32:53
  good job and I I saw it back then.
• 32:55
  Yeah, I mean, I mean, that's probably my dad connected me
• 32:58
  with a lot of great people early on.
• 33:00
  And I think the other thing is if you surround yourself with
• 33:03
  only like minded people, then you don't get a diversity of
• 33:07
  opinion. And to me, it's incredibly
• 33:11
  engaging to talk to other very passionate people in in learn
• 33:17
  their perspective about things that are not in the same
• 33:19
  day-to-day as you. You also talked about you read a
• 33:24
  lot of books. Yeah, you used to play.
• 33:26
  Or do you still play audio books and the rest?
• 33:28
  Yeah. So, so no, because I got
• 33:32
  overruled in that and that that was what I was doing there.
• 33:34
  We do it in the bathrooms, yes. But when I drive back and forth
• 33:38
  between San Antonio and Austin or when I work out, it's all
• 33:40
  audio books. Yeah.
• 33:41
  Or podcast. Yeah.
• 33:43
  Well, it's funny because I remember one of the times I was
• 33:45
  eating at Emmer and I went to go to the restaurant.
• 33:47
  I was listening to Dan Barber's book.
• 33:50
  Yeah, I was listening to it, not at your restaurant.
• 33:53
  I was listening to it on my own. And then when I went to the
• 33:55
  restaurant, I was like, wait a minute, I've listened to that
• 33:56
  book right now, too. I mean, the whole goal was to
• 33:59
  put people into our mindset, right?
• 34:02
  So you're coming into this space where we really want you to
• 34:04
  start to question where food comes from and why most
• 34:09
  restaurants are the way that they are and why the perspective
• 34:11
  is a little bit different than what we do at at Emmer and
• 34:14
  Ryvett. On the subject of books, just
• 34:16
  because I, I read a ton of books as well.
• 34:18
  Is there anything, well, I guess 2 questions, The type of books
• 34:22
  that you read or listen to, is it typically industry related or
• 34:27
  is it outside of the industry number #1 Second one is what's
• 34:30
  the best thing you've listened to lately?
• 34:32
  Oh man, this is tough. So I typically don't read
• 34:40
  industry specific books. It depends on if I'm deep diving
• 34:44
  about things. Like I weirdly, I'm obsessed
• 34:47
  with bread. So I really love reading bread
• 34:50
  books and just recipe books about that because I find the
• 34:53
  nuance of how people talk about it sometimes where the the truth
• 34:56
  of those things are. I'm reading Bill Belichick's
• 34:58
  book right now. I'm a bit of a Patriot's Homer
• 35:01
  because I'm from Boston and whatnot, but it's really to me,
• 35:04
  again, if you want to attract great people, you have to treat
• 35:10
  them like great people. And that right there is the
• 35:14
  thing that I think Belichick did incredibly well and why I'm
• 35:20
  reading that book. The podcast that I really like
• 35:25
  that I listen to pretty often is called Super Psych and he does a
• 35:30
  really good job of talking to philosophers or, you know, just
• 35:38
  different industry professionals about mindset and why we are the
• 35:43
  way that we are. So I, so I really love that
• 35:47
  Freakonomics is another amazing podcast that I love to listen
• 35:50
  to. And specifically right now I'm,
• 35:53
  I'm listening to one about the most powerful people that you've
• 35:56
  never heard of, which are the commodity traders.
• 35:59
  And, and it's really interesting because when you get into these
• 36:03
  broad scale economics. Bodies like gold, oil.
• 36:06
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 36:07
  Whatever. Yeah.
• 36:08
  Yeah. And so they're often the first
• 36:10
  people that go into destabilized environments, right?
• 36:12
  So when the USSR collapsed, the commodity traders were there
• 36:17
  within days to re secure and trade ahead.
• 36:22
  And they're actually way less price sensitive to if they're
• 36:25
  buying high or low because they're holding something in the
• 36:27
  markets going to affect that. But the pipeline of it is what
• 36:30
  they're protective about. That's interesting.
• 36:33
  I like very similar books. I I love reading a lot about
• 36:37
  finance, but lately I've been on a world conqueror kick.
• 36:41
  Yeah. And I've, so I've been listening
• 36:43
  to like, you know, Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan or
• 36:46
  anything like that. And I love that because I like
• 36:48
  to see what they all have in common.
• 36:49
  And you start to see those same threads in a lot of chefs.
• 36:55
  Sure. A lot of what what I've noticed,
• 36:58
  what makes people great when I sometimes I'm able to pick them
• 37:01
  out young in their career, like, oh, they're going to be good.
• 37:03
  And I noticed like, OK, some of those same traits are the ones
• 37:05
  that you see in those. Great.
• 37:06
  World, what is that to you? It's a belief in themselves and
• 37:10
  it usually comes from a parent, is what I've noticed.
• 37:13
  So in the case of Alexander's, his mom would tell him he was
• 37:17
  the son of Zeus and she'd say, you know, King Phillip's not
• 37:21
  your real dad, Zeus's. So he would go, he, he always
• 37:24
  had this on. Am I able to conquer the world
• 37:28
  because I'm the son of Zeus and it's my destiny, right?
• 37:31
  And you see, like UFC fighter Jon Jones, right?
• 37:34
  He believes he has this destiny to be the greatest.
• 37:38
  You look at like Mike Tyson, he had the destiny to be the
• 37:41
  greatest. And you see that in a lot of
• 37:43
  people that they feel because they've been told from an early
• 37:46
  age, you're destined for greatness.
• 37:47
  Now, whether it's real or not, I don't know.
• 37:50
  But that, yeah, they manifested it because someone believed in
• 37:53
  them. And it's funny because I've
• 37:56
  talked to to to chefs early on in my career.
• 38:00
  I remember I was in culinary school breaking down chickens.
• 38:02
  I was quiet. I was like 17 years old.
• 38:05
  And the, the chef, I think the chef instructor noticed that I
• 38:09
  was just this quiet kid, didn't really talk to anyone in class.
• 38:13
  And it comes up to me one day and he says, I can tell you're
• 38:15
  going to be a great chef one day.
• 38:17
  I remember it to this day. Like of all the things he said
• 38:19
  to me, I don't remember. I remember that conversation
• 38:21
  because it stuck with me forever.
• 38:23
  Whether he was saying it because he meant it, I have no idea.
• 38:28
  But what's interesting about that is I've gone back and
• 38:31
  knowing that I've said that to other people throughout my
• 38:33
  career, You're going to be a great chef one day.
• 38:35
  And all of them that I've said that to have become great chefs
• 38:39
  and they've all come back to me and said, do you remember that
• 38:42
  one time you said I was going to be a great chef?
• 38:44
  And it was. It cost me nothing to say that
• 38:46
  to them, cost me nothing and it impacted them and their career.
• 38:50
  So a lot of these people that go on and achieve greatness, a lot
• 38:54
  of it has to do with someone believed in them and that fueled
• 38:57
  their belief in themselves. Well, I think as humans we, and
• 39:02
  this gets us all the way back, but I think as a species we are
• 39:08
  when we fear for our survival, right.
• 39:12
  Whether that being a job in your relationship with your parents
• 39:20
  or or just truly walking on the street and how your mindset is,
• 39:24
  you're not able to think at a higher level.
• 39:27
  But when you no longer are worried about the loss that
• 39:32
  comes because you're looking forward your ability to think,
• 39:36
  to reach for things to do the impossible, you can see it in so
• 39:43
  many circumstances to that. And so you really have to get
• 39:47
  out of this scarcity mindset that that happens because you
• 39:52
  know, we are not the apex predator on earth.
• 39:56
  The way that we think has allowed us to control all of
• 39:58
  this. That's the the beautiful part of
• 40:01
  the species of man, right? Put us up against the lion or a
• 40:04
  tiger or a gorilla. We're going to lose.
• 40:07
  Right. But because of the way that we
• 40:10
  think, because of the way that we control food, because of our
• 40:13
  relationship with food, we have been able to steer this journey
• 40:19
  in so many ways that were completely unfathomable to man
• 40:23
  even 2000 years ago, even 200 years ago.
• 40:31
  So 100 men versus 1 grilli. So we're talking about gorillas,
• 40:40
  right? For it's 95 or 105 versus one
• 40:42
  man. And we can debate all those sort
• 40:44
  of things. But the simple fact is, if we
• 40:48
  now have guns, we now have castles that we can go up into
• 40:52
  all these sort of things. We've steered the odds because
• 40:55
  of the way that we think about things.
• 40:58
  And that right there is what the true trait is, right?
• 41:03
  As strong as we can be, the greatest strength is our belief
• 41:06
  in ourselves and and really our ability to use our mind in
• 41:10
  question, what reality is currently versus what it's going
• 41:13
  to be. It's so funny you say that
• 41:15
  because that's what makes the exceptional chef really.
• 41:17
  I mean, if we're, if we narrow it down to, to our business,
• 41:20
  right? And being a chef, you notice
• 41:22
  that the ones that are exceptional are exceptional
• 41:24
  because they thought differently.
• 41:25
  They, they believed in themselves and they found
• 41:27
  solutions where other people just saw a wall.
• 41:32
  And I think about that a lot. Like I, I look at the most
• 41:34
  successful chefs and I study them and I noticed that at the
• 41:38
  very, you know, at the tip of the spear, they all operate as
• 41:41
  the exception to the rule. You know, Renee's food and, and
• 41:44
  then everyone, everyone else, right?
• 41:46
  You know, Thomas's food and everyone else or the business
• 41:51
  model that they operate and they see, they find solutions.
• 41:55
  And I think too many people that I, I find when they get stuck in
• 41:59
  a rut, it's because they don't think that there's any other
• 42:03
  option. And there's always another
• 42:04
  option. There's always another option.
• 42:06
  I talked to this guy and I'll, it was years ago.
• 42:09
  And I remember him telling me how impressed he was with, and
• 42:13
  I'm not trying to knock any of the people in this, this
• 42:16
  conversation that I had. He was telling me how impressed
• 42:18
  he was with David Chang because David Chang did something.
• 42:21
  I don't remember what he did. And I just remember thinking
• 42:24
  like, that's not impressive, not because it wasn't impressive
• 42:26
  what he did, but it's like he thought he couldn't do that.
• 42:30
  And I remember thinking like, why do you think you can't do
• 42:32
  that? Like it's just a technique.
• 42:34
  You could learn it. It's not that difficult.
• 42:36
  I could learn it today. And he showed me how to do it.
• 42:38
  I'll learn it in 30 minutes. And I, I realized that a lot of
• 42:43
  people sometimes view other people, chefs, whatever, and
• 42:47
  they just, I can never do that. And I'm, I'm the like people
• 42:49
  talk about imposter syndrome. Sometimes I think I have the
• 42:51
  opposite where I see anything like I can do that too outside
• 42:54
  of dunking a basketball or you know, being able to, you know,
• 42:59
  things that I physically can't do.
• 43:01
  I never really look at anything and say that's beyond my
• 43:03
  capability if it isn't. If they have two hands, 2 legs
• 43:07
  and a brain, I figure I got the same.
• 43:09
  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think that there are
• 43:15
  natural limitations and strengths and weaknesses that
• 43:17
  people have. And if you're going to stack up
• 43:21
  the greats, you can see that there are different things that
• 43:24
  each of them have that are great, right?
• 43:26
  And then they tried to do the exact same thing as the other.
• 43:29
  There would be a clear difference, right?
• 43:31
  And you get professional athletes in the same way, right?
• 43:33
  Some of them are better shooters, some of them can jump
• 43:36
  higher, some of them are faster. And no matter how hard the
• 43:39
  others train at those things, they're not going to be as good
• 43:42
  at that because they're just not set up for those things, right?
• 43:45
  It's the same with us. We just got to figure out what
• 43:49
  are the things that we're truly great at and that's the timer
• 43:53
  that is happening here, right? I'm probably not as great at
• 43:59
  tour nodding something as a lot of other people.
• 44:04
  Well, what does that mean in the grand scheme of things?
• 44:07
  And if my menu doesn't have any of those on it, well then
• 44:10
  probably not that much, right. And so you know, the, the
• 44:14
  question that I get into with this thing is you're right.
• 44:17
  Like there is a blind confidence that you sort of need to have,
• 44:23
  but you also have to have the mirror a little bit because
• 44:25
  otherwise you just end up wasting your time to get great
• 44:27
  at this thing that you're never going to be that great at.
• 44:30
  And I agree with you. I think the point that I was
• 44:33
  trying to say is I think people limit their potential because
• 44:38
  they see it as I will never be able to do that.
• 44:41
  And I'm not saying I go around chasing everything and said I
• 44:43
  could do that. And I and I try and do it
• 44:45
  because I'm not interested in it, but I don't ever look at
• 44:48
  something and say they are exceptional.
• 44:51
  And, and, and there are some exceptional cases.
• 44:52
  Like I'm not saying I'm gonna get in the ring and knock out,
• 44:55
  you know, Mike Tyson, I'm not saying that.
• 44:57
  But what I am saying is that I think with enough time and
• 45:00
  dedication and if you really want to do something, you could
• 45:02
  become very good at anything. Maybe not world class, but you
• 45:06
  could become very good at anything.
• 45:08
  And I think a lot of if for chefs that are listening, I
• 45:11
  think a lot of times they limit their true potential because
• 45:14
  they think I'll never be a sous chef or I'll never be a chef.
• 45:17
  I'm never, I'm never going to be good enough to be a chef to
• 45:18
  cuisine. I'm always going to be this or
• 45:20
  I'm always going to be that, or I'll never own my own
• 45:22
  restaurant, whatever the case. Yeah, exactly.
• 45:26
  With that mentality, you'll never get there.
• 45:28
  But the ones that do believe in themselves.
• 45:31
  And this kind of goes back to the earlier conversation.
• 45:32
  The ones that do believe in themselves and think that they
• 45:35
  can, even if they can't, at least they're shooting for the
• 45:39
  basket they have. They have a greater likelihood
• 45:41
  of the ball going in the net. Yeah, totally agree with that.
• 45:44
  Yeah, back to Pullman Market because it's massive.
• 45:48
  Yeah. And by the way, I go there
• 45:50
  often. So I go to San Antonio often to,
• 45:52
  to to teach a leadership seminars and things like that.
• 45:56
  And I always eat at one of your restaurants always, whether it's
• 46:00
  Isador or really any of them. But I always go through Pullman
• 46:04
  Market. I'm like, what does Kevin have
• 46:05
  now? Like what's on the shelves?
• 46:06
  Yeah, we're always doing new stuff, Yeah.
• 46:08
  So can you tell people because I know you do a pretty cool thing
• 46:10
  with the with the meat program and sustainability and all that.
• 46:13
  So the whole, the whole origin of Pullman came from COVID,
• 46:18
  right? And so, you know, we source
• 46:21
  about 50% of our food from grocery and we consume 50% of
• 46:26
  our meals in restaurants, which is as high it has ever been,
• 46:30
  right? It was always 75% grocery.
• 46:33
  And then it has slowly continued to increase really since World
• 46:36
  War 2. And obviously, COVID was the
• 46:38
  massive disruption of that and what that showed to me in a
• 46:42
  restaurant person that all of a sudden had consumed 90% of my
• 46:46
  meals in restaurants and had to go to someplace else because,
• 46:50
  you know, while I was still working, it was just huge
• 46:52
  disruption. The quality of the meat and the
• 46:57
  seafood that we have access to in restaurants versus what
• 47:00
  doesn't matter how much you're willing to pay that you can get
• 47:03
  in a grocery store. They're not the same thing,
• 47:05
  right? Like every single chef knows
• 47:08
  that. Well, why?
• 47:14
  And the story of it is a logistics thing, right?
• 47:16
  Retail is set up to let things last longer and to have kind of
• 47:24
  the, again, this race to the bottom of that of how can I get
• 47:27
  the most amount of food out to people as fast as possible.
• 47:32
  And if you're really starting to look at it of how can I get
• 47:36
  people the best quality product, you have to look at it
• 47:42
  differently. And so for us ethically, we
• 47:45
  started from we only want to source from within Texas.
• 47:49
  We want to do whole animal because what that says to a
• 47:52
  rancher is you focus on just raising the best animal.
• 47:56
  We'll focus on everything else. Wanted only single kill floors
• 48:01
  and we wanted a model where we knew exactly what that animal
• 48:05
  has grazed on, where it grazed its breed, exactly how long it's
• 48:10
  been alive. And so at Pullman we go through
• 48:15
  about four steers a week right now a mixture.
• 48:19
  We, we have two Angus producers, really one the Bobby is our main
• 48:23
  Angus producer and then we have 3 Wagyu producers, all of which
• 48:28
  are really incredible. And, and in that everything you
• 48:34
  get in all the restaurants comes from that whole animal.
• 48:38
  And so you get, and I truly believe the best steaks that you
• 48:43
  can buy that have never been frozen, which most of these
• 48:47
  small ranches have to freeze because they're going to lose a
• 48:50
  lot of things otherwise. And you get tortillas from the
• 48:54
  beef tallow and we're making chopsticks now from local
• 48:59
  beeswack your love cycle beef tallow.
• 49:01
  And we all the we've just transitioned to where the
• 49:05
  employee facing areas are now up cycle beef tallow in a liquid
• 49:09
  form made by one of our farmers from the the tallow, right.
• 49:15
  So now all of a sudden you have this kind of playground of
• 49:19
  byproduct in the way that it was meant to be that we no longer
• 49:23
  have to cook as is chefs. And to me, that's where the
• 49:28
  ideas come from. And now as a consumer, if you
• 49:31
  live in San Antonio, you have access to all the same things.
• 49:36
  And what we do, if you do side by sides all the time, right?
• 49:38
  Just blind for our team, right? So where we cook one of our
• 49:41
  steaks, we cook a steak from, you know, all the other places
• 49:44
  we can buy them. It doesn't compare, right?
• 49:47
  That's the coolest thing about it, is just when you ever take a
• 49:50
  blind study where 20 people try something and 20 people or 19
• 49:54
  people pick the same thing. Never, by the way.
• 49:56
  Yeah, never. That's the difference and it
• 49:59
  really is that significant. And as a chef, you get it right.
• 50:01
  Like you've seen that we try side by side products in that.
• 50:05
  We just have accepted that that's what we're going to get.
• 50:10
  I'm ready for a really scary statistic.
• 50:12
  Yeah, go for. It up to 100 animals can be in a
• 50:18
  single pound of ground beef. What?
• 50:21
  Yeah, think about it. Yeah, I guess so.
• 50:24
  Huh. I mean, they're grinding them in
• 50:27
  these large factories, mixing it all up, putting into these bags
• 50:32
  and shipping that out. Well, that is not a thing that
• 50:36
  you ever have to worry about with the way that one, it should
• 50:39
  be. But two, that we're doing it,
• 50:41
  you get one animal, it's broken down.
• 50:43
  This is this animal's ground beef.
• 50:45
  You want to move on to the next one.
• 50:46
  Here you go. Wow, 100 animals.
• 50:50
  Yeah, I know. Isn't that a scary statistic?
• 50:52
  Yeah, it is. It's terrifying, actually.
• 50:54
  But if you think about the transparent, This is why I'm so
• 50:57
  bought into what we're doing at Pullman and why people need this
• 50:59
  access is because our system is based purely on convenience.
• 51:08
  And, and the, when it grew, it grew in a way where our ethical
• 51:13
  awareness of what was happening was just different.
• 51:16
  And today we know more and we get to make the choice about
• 51:20
  that, right? It's the same thing with
• 51:21
  organic. Some days maybe you're going to
• 51:23
  choose to buy organic, maybe you're not, but at least you
• 51:25
  know that there's a difference. And here's what I'm doing that
• 51:28
  the industry of beef, of seafood, of pork, of chicken,
• 51:33
  we're just starting to really pull back what has been
• 51:37
  happening in those industries. And now people are getting to
• 51:39
  make the choice. Chickens are really hard, right?
• 51:43
  So we work with greener pastures.
• 51:45
  They do an incredible job. Please look up what they're
• 51:47
  doing. It's a more expensive bird.
• 51:50
  It's a significantly more expensive bird.
• 51:52
  It's darker red. It has higher myoglobin to it.
• 51:55
  The reason why is because they actually are outside and move
• 51:59
  and they need that in their in their you know system.
• 52:05
  The reason why they're birds are $4.00 or $5 a pound wholesale,
• 52:09
  which is more than double what you can buy a larger producers
• 52:15
  birds for. Which by the way means that I
• 52:17
  can't sell a rotisserie chicken for 999 or 799 because the bird
• 52:22
  itself cost me 15 to $20.00. So if you get back to the aspect
• 52:33
  of what are they cutting out of the process to get the birds
• 52:37
  that cheap, particularly for chickens because the difference
• 52:39
  is not as significant for beef and pigs on a price point wise,
• 52:44
  it is alarming. Yeah, yeah, just, I mean, for
• 52:48
  people that don't know go, if you're go order a case of like
• 52:53
  logs and see what they look like.
• 52:55
  Like they have cysts, they have, you know, big boils on them.
• 52:59
  They're not healthy birds. No.
• 53:01
  They're broken, you know, they're they're the bones are
• 53:05
  broken by the time they run. It's just not good in it.
• 53:07
  Like I'm I'm assuming that's what the that's that's what
• 53:11
  everyone's eating. Let's.
• 53:12
  Yeah, that's exactly it though. Yeah.
• 53:14
  You really want to talk about the quantity of logs that are
• 53:18
  sold versus whole birds? Yeah, I'd be willing to wager
• 53:23
  it's 85% volume logs to whole birds.
• 53:26
  Yeah, that's the scary part about.
• 53:29
  That yeah, it is. And, and I think what you're
• 53:31
  doing is great because you're providing the option for people
• 53:36
  to eat better and, and, and whether it's in your restaurants
• 53:40
  or, or cooking for themselves, we're a lot of times it's just
• 53:43
  not an option. It's this is what we have, you
• 53:46
  know, in this neighborhood, this is what you got.
• 53:48
  So the fact that you're doing that is tremendous.
• 53:50
  So, yeah, yeah, congratulations to you.
• 53:53
  I want to ask you, and this is a loaded question.
• 53:56
  What's the hardest part about doing what you do?
• 54:06
  I think for me it's the there's every day I wake up and I know
• 54:13
  that there's more to do and it takes a relentless amount of
• 54:22
  energy to do it every single day.
• 54:27
  And I really want to just make sure that I'm providing and
• 54:30
  doing the best that I can for all the people that work with me
• 54:35
  and that every single day coming with that amount of energy,
• 54:38
  every single day is tired. And I would say, you know, I've
• 54:45
  worked 80 to $100 a week for 20 years.
• 54:49
  And I just recently talked to our capital partner and I said,
• 54:52
  hey, I have to work 60 hours a week.
• 54:55
  I can't work 80 hours a week. And that was, you know, for my
• 55:01
  family, but it's also for my energy is for my perspective of
• 55:04
  those sort of things because you get into a space where your To
• 55:07
  Do List will never be done. And you know, I've been a chef.
• 55:12
  As a chef, I never made a dish that I was 100% happy with.
• 55:16
  Never, not once. And then take that to being
• 55:22
  somebody who is ultimately responsible for the health and
• 55:27
  Wellness of 775 people with aspirations to have even more.
• 55:31
  And that just as the people that work with us, not even the
• 55:33
  outside people that source with us or or the farms that are
• 55:37
  adjacent to that. And I think that the pressure
• 55:39
  that shows up on that is something that I have yet to
• 55:43
  figure out how to truly have the a healthy relationship.
• 55:50
  So one of the big topics right now, especially in the culinary
• 55:55
  world, is burnout balance, work life balance.
• 55:59
  How do you balance fatherhood? And also, you know, being, being
• 56:05
  Kevin Fink, Yeah. So I, I, I, for sure, I don't
• 56:11
  think anybody would describe me as balanced.
• 56:14
  And, and I for, you know, during COVID times, I was really being
• 56:17
  into this like work life balancing.
• 56:18
  Then I was like, OK, this is just not me, right?
• 56:20
  Like I, I just now what I will say is having a son changed my
• 56:30
  life in a lot of ways because it took the space where I was with
• 56:35
  my wife and we were talking about what our goals and
• 56:38
  aspirations were with another adults.
• 56:41
  And then it changed into this where now I don't know what
• 56:49
  percentage, but my life is now around how I can also support
• 56:55
  him. And the other thing that changed
• 56:59
  is you realize really quickly that getting out at 1:00 AM is
• 57:04
  going to be a big problem when school starts at 7:30.
• 57:08
  Yeah. And so you're like, well, do I
• 57:13
  sleepless? Do I switch my schedule?
• 57:16
  Like being away from this? They don't really understand
• 57:19
  that. And you, again, look at how
• 57:22
  stacked against the hospitality and culinary industry our world
• 57:27
  is. Doctors are all during the day,
• 57:30
  shops are all open during the day, schools that go through
• 57:34
  that sort of thing. There is nothing set up for
• 57:36
  night jobs. That is when we live.
• 57:39
  Dinner is the bread and butter of this thing.
• 57:41
  So you know, for me, I will tell you that it it put it in
• 57:49
  perspective a lot of things right where myself importance
• 57:51
  went way down because I just realized, like I'm a dad like
• 57:55
  it. First of all, fatherhood kicks
• 57:57
  your ass. You can tell anybody like I love
• 58:02
  I, I at least say to people I've, we're, we're privileged
• 58:04
  now where we've had a lot of people have children in our
• 58:07
  organization, which I'm actually really grateful that you can
• 58:10
  continue your career right as a dad in what we do.
• 58:12
  That's really important because otherwise, again, this filter
• 58:15
  out thing, but I always look at somebody I'm like, I'll talk to
• 58:18
  me in like two or three months. I'm not going to try and tell
• 58:20
  you how your life's going to change because you're not going
• 58:22
  to see it. Then all of a sudden it happens
• 58:24
  and you're like, Oh my God, everybody else has been dealing
• 58:27
  with this and not complaining about like how hard it is the
• 58:29
  whole time. Like you think like scrubbing
• 58:32
  the floors when you're a cook is hard.
• 58:34
  No way, man. Like that.
• 58:36
  You're going to look back at that and you're going to you're
• 58:37
  going to say, that was so easy. Like what did I have to complain
• 58:40
  about? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:42
  So what do you do to to unwind? I mean, I know you're a cigar
• 58:46
  guy like me. Yeah.
• 58:47
  What else do you do to unwind? Yeah, that's it.
• 58:50
  To take care of you. No, I I don't know.
• 58:53
  I'm still figuring that out. I, I work out which I which I
• 59:03
  don't do as often as I should. Cigars is great for me.
• 59:06
  My skull is good for me, although also not great in the
• 59:08
  same way. Yeah, probably the same as
• 59:10
  cigars. I just started infrared saunas.
• 59:13
  Those have been really nice. Yeah.
• 59:17
  So you're sitting in a in a one that that covers you entirely.
• 59:20
  Yeah. I'm not doing like the face
• 59:21
  thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
• 59:23
  I'm saying I'll read or I'll listen to a podcast and I'll
• 59:27
  just kind of be present to that. Yeah.
• 59:29
  Which has been really great. Chess is great for.
• 59:32
  Me, we should play. I've, I look forward to that.
• 59:34
  Yeah, yeah, Danny Prada is very good at chess.
• 59:37
  One of our corporate chefs is like a like ranked and it's like
• 59:40
  a 1200 ranking. Oh shit, yeah, he's good.
• 59:43
  Yeah. I always tell people like, if
• 59:44
  you're not good at chess, I'm gonna seem like a master, but if
• 59:46
  you're good, I'm gonna seem like an amateur.
• 59:47
  Right, right. Yeah, so I try and take his legs
• 59:50
  out before I or he just had a baby so now I can play him while
• 59:53
  he's sleep depressed. Yeah.
• 59:57
  But yeah, I mean, the reality of it is, is family time travel a
• 1:00:02
  great meal? Will kind of just take my breath
• 1:00:05
  away still. Yeah, was the last great meal
• 1:00:07
  you had. I had a lot of great meals in
• 1:00:11
  those. I just went to Copenhagen in
• 1:00:12
  London and first of all, somebody said this a long time
• 1:00:15
  ago and I and I fundamentally agree with it, which is make
• 1:00:19
  your money in America and retire and spend your money in Europe
• 1:00:22
  because God, the lifestyle is just so awesome.
• 1:00:27
  We ate at Alchemist, which was a great meal.
• 1:00:30
  I had an incredible meal at Ambassador Clubhouse in London.
• 1:00:34
  It was just so, so good. I had a really great steak at a
• 1:00:37
  buy in London as well. We ate at the Tomorrow Prince
• 1:00:41
  there, which was awesome, man. All great meals.
• 1:00:44
  When you cook for yourself and maybe your loved ones, what does
• 1:00:48
  that look like as opposed to restaurant food?
• 1:00:50
  Or is it? Are you cooking the same thing
• 1:00:52
  that you would do in the? Restaurant No, no, no, I'm
• 1:00:54
  cooking very I mean, I think I will at least speak for me in
• 1:00:59
  this. But when you're in a restaurant,
• 1:01:04
  you have this staple of ingredients that have kind of
• 1:01:06
  like been going in this larger and and you're building all this
• 1:01:09
  complexity on items that have traditionally taken, you know, a
• 1:01:13
  week or three months or a bare minimum two or three days to
• 1:01:17
  kind of prep through these things.
• 1:01:19
  And they just add a complexity to a lot of that, but you also
• 1:01:22
  need the volume in those things to be happening to utilize them
• 1:01:26
  right. So at home I could what's
• 1:01:29
  simpler and, and what is probably not surprising to is I
• 1:01:33
  love grilling just like cooking over, you know, live fire.
• 1:01:37
  So I have a green egg, but then I also have this massive cowboy
• 1:01:41
  cauldron and I have them deliver like a chief firewood delivers
• 1:01:45
  like a big pallet of of wood to my house.
• 1:01:49
  And so I'll just light fires all the time and I'll cook like
• 1:01:51
  directly on the coals with all sorts of different stuff.
• 1:01:55
  That is my favorite thing to do. One of the really interesting
• 1:01:58
  things about your group is you have a lot of partners.
• 1:02:00
  So how do you manage that many partners?
• 1:02:03
  How do you make it so it's so it's a win for everybody and so
• 1:02:07
  that they want to be involved and how do you manage all the
• 1:02:09
  personalities? Yeah.
• 1:02:10
  Well, so great question and one that we get asked all the time.
• 1:02:15
  And so we've been together as partners for about seven years
• 1:02:19
  now. And and really I worked with
• 1:02:22
  Tavelle for almost 15. Years you guys worked in Boston,
• 1:02:25
  in New York. No, no no no in Tucson, AZ.
• 1:02:29
  He worked in New York. He worked in New York.
• 1:02:30
  And then he moved to Tucson, which is actually, he got set up
• 1:02:34
  to work with us through a former chef that I had worked with in
• 1:02:39
  the organization. We just got really close.
• 1:02:41
  Yeah. And, you know, I, I think
• 1:02:48
  wherever we travel, people recognize really quickly that
• 1:02:52
  it's a unique relationship, one where you are husband, wife and
• 1:02:57
  partners 2, where you have 3 chefs that are in that group.
• 1:03:04
  And then that doesn't account for Rand, who's also a culinary
• 1:03:08
  trained chef who transitioned into a creative director, and
• 1:03:12
  then Ally who's a food anthropologist.
• 1:03:14
  And So what you end up with is you end up with a space that can
• 1:03:18
  have a lot of really big opinions.
• 1:03:22
  And what we've all chosen time and time again is that we're
• 1:03:27
  doing it together, and we're willing to have those conflicts
• 1:03:32
  around what makes us feel good about that.
• 1:03:35
  Who carries 51% of the vote, though?
• 1:03:37
  No, so we don't do that. That's a great, it's a good
• 1:03:39
  point and we started that way. But today what we do is we're
• 1:03:44
  essentially all kind of equal partners in those things.
• 1:03:47
  And you know, whatever it is, you have to trust that your
• 1:03:52
  partners have the right perspective enough to where if
• 1:03:56
  they're telling you that it's the wrong thing and that you
• 1:04:00
  fundamentally believe it's the right thing, they hopefully
• 1:04:03
  you're missing something or you need to take a week re prepare
• 1:04:09
  something and convince people of why, right?
• 1:04:11
  And that has happened a lot, right?
• 1:04:13
  We give everybody the option where any new project forward,
• 1:04:18
  if one of the partners vetoes it, we don't do it.
• 1:04:21
  And that has happened and I think you have to sign up for
• 1:04:27
  that, right? But what you do by doing those
• 1:04:31
  sort of things is you're investing more further together
• 1:04:35
  and it's not always equal, right?
• 1:04:38
  And there are definitely concepts that are more led by
• 1:04:42
  one or another. But the overall we all have to
• 1:04:46
  have an equal weight and responsibility of what that
• 1:04:49
  looks like in MRI hospitality group at least it is different
• 1:04:55
  at Pullman just because of time allocation and things like that.
• 1:04:59
  But in, but in MRI, that's where we got to.
• 1:05:01
  It's not where we started, it's where we got to.
• 1:05:03
  And that was a whole thing too. I mean, think about it, during
• 1:05:05
  COVID, we really invested in growing the restaurant group and
• 1:05:12
  doing that together. And it switched from me being
• 1:05:15
  the majority owner of Emir and Hestia to a group of partners
• 1:05:20
  because that was more valuable than, you know, us picking and
• 1:05:25
  doing separate things together. You guys have a one-of-a-kind
• 1:05:30
  group. I want to make sure that I say
• 1:05:33
  this while I have you on on the show because I don't know.
• 1:05:36
  We haven't talked in a while which cigar nights very overdue.
• 1:05:41
  But every time I've been to any of your restaurants, whether
• 1:05:44
  it's Hestia, Ladino, Ammer, it's always great.
• 1:05:51
  And I think you're able to execute at the highest level per
• 1:05:58
  concept. So whether it's a burger
• 1:06:00
  concept, it's best in class. Whether it's you know what,
• 1:06:04
  whether it's, you know, Spanish tapas, it's best in class in
• 1:06:09
  every single restaurant that you have Mexican best in class.
• 1:06:15
  And kudos to you and everyone on your team, because I don't know
• 1:06:19
  another group that could do that and I don't and I and I, and I'm
• 1:06:23
  even some of the greats, some of the greats can't do that.
• 1:06:25
  They they have the the one great restaurant and the other ones
• 1:06:28
  are just OK. Every single one of your
• 1:06:30
  restaurants is fantastic. So kudos to you.
• 1:06:33
  Kudos to the team. I'm, I always, I always tell
• 1:06:38
  people when they come like, where should I go eat Testia
• 1:06:40
  Emmer Like it's always the you know, one one of your
• 1:06:43
  restaurants is usually always and has been on the list of
• 1:06:47
  recommendations since they've been open.
• 1:06:49
  Thank you. Yeah, we're coming up on 10
• 1:06:51
  years, so we have the anniversary.
• 1:06:52
  I'll have to come. Yeah, we got some really fun
• 1:06:54
  stuff planned for it. We're going to collaborate with
• 1:06:56
  Austin Food and I don't know when this will be out, but yeah.
• 1:06:59
  So it's 10 years. It's I, you know, it's a great
• 1:07:04
  question. It's the same weekend as Awesome
• 1:07:05
  Food and Wine, so. OK, so help me edit that back
• 1:07:08
  in. Yeah.
• 1:07:08
  I think that's November, right? Yeah, it's in November, but I
• 1:07:11
  don't know the exact date. Yeah.
• 1:07:12
  Yeah. The birthday is the 7th, but I
• 1:07:14
  don't think it's actually on the 7th.
• 1:07:16
  So typically when we wrap up the show, it's like the chef geek
• 1:07:19
  questions. So like, what do they say?
• 1:07:21
  Like the fastball questions, Right.
• 1:07:23
  Oh, yeah. OK.
• 1:07:24
  So what are you doing in your kitchen?
• 1:07:26
  Green tape or blue tape? Oh, it's green tape.
• 1:07:28
  It's green tape. Yeah.
• 1:07:29
  Is there a specific reason why or just preference?
• 1:07:32
  Well, I think the blue tape comes off a little bit easier
• 1:07:37
  and and we've had issues with that in the past.
• 1:07:40
  And then I also think that the green is easier to see on.
• 1:07:44
  I agree. Yeah.
• 1:07:46
  Do you? Is it scissors or tape cutters
• 1:07:47
  allowed? Well, so it's tape cutters now.
• 1:07:50
  We started as scissors. The effectiveness of it switched
• 1:07:53
  just to to tape cutters, but it's never a RIP.
• 1:07:55
  Yeah, yeah, fair. What's your plate wipe?
• 1:07:59
  So, so Jorge Hernandez changed this for us.
• 1:08:02
  Actually, there's these little like kind of towelettes that you
• 1:08:07
  just put a little bit of like alcohol on and then we'll wipe.
• 1:08:11
  And so we have those at the past for that.
• 1:08:12
  If you bring a plate to the past that needs anything more than
• 1:08:16
  that, it's going to get sent back.
• 1:08:18
  But they're, they're great and they're effective and you get a
• 1:08:20
  stack of about 100 of them. They're single use, putting into
• 1:08:23
  a little space right after that. Very cool.
• 1:08:25
  Then they're just little. Are are they cloth?
• 1:08:27
  Yeah, they're, well, it's. Like a chick towel.
• 1:08:30
  It's they're, they're actually like a like a small, yeah, it's
• 1:08:34
  like a chick towel fabric that's cut into these small little
• 1:08:38
  squares. And then it's a push little
• 1:08:42
  alcohol damp. And so when you push it down, it
• 1:08:45
  will put up, I mean, a very, very small amount of raw
• 1:08:48
  alcohol, rubbing alcohol. And you just wipe the plate with
• 1:08:50
  it, which it dissolves right away and you're done.
• 1:08:52
  Oh shit, I need to see that. Yeah, they're cool.
• 1:08:54
  Yeah, when you're when you're in San Antonio.
• 1:08:55
  Yeah, yeah. I'll next time I'm there, I'm
• 1:08:57
  going to. I'll go see you.
• 1:08:59
  What is when, when you're setting up your workstation and,
• 1:09:04
  and, and this is a general question, so I'm sure there's
• 1:09:07
  specifics for dishes, but what's your finishing acid?
• 1:09:09
  Is it typically vinegar or is it lemon or is it something else?
• 1:09:12
  Yeah, OK, so I, I'm a, I'm a, a nature person in this aspect,
• 1:09:20
  right. So I love finishing things with
• 1:09:24
  like lactic acid of what that item is to bring some form of
• 1:09:29
  acid to that. It really depends upon the dish
• 1:09:32
  in the season, right? If citrus is in season, there
• 1:09:34
  are a few things that are better than citrus, right?
• 1:09:36
  If citrus is not in season, I don't want to use it.
• 1:09:39
  Then I've got vinegar that we've made or produced or something
• 1:09:41
  like that. And what I will also say is I
• 1:09:45
  believe in redundancy throughout a menu.
• 1:09:47
  So if we're using an acid on a particular dish, it should be
• 1:09:52
  intentional for that thing because otherwise if you use
• 1:09:55
  that same exact acid throughout the entire menu, then your brain
• 1:09:59
  eventually becomes numb and dull to it.
• 1:10:02
  So just like the same ingredient, Like I don't want
• 1:10:04
  lamb on the menu 14 times. If I'm going to finish something
• 1:10:07
  with lemon juice 14 times my brains going to filter it out.
• 1:10:10
  Yeah. What about salt?
• 1:10:12
  What is it? Is it kosher?
• 1:10:13
  Is it I'm? Sorry, Salt.
• 1:10:16
  I'm a diamond crystal. I'm a big reader on salt and I
• 1:10:21
  believe that the biggest differences between salt are
• 1:10:24
  it's imperfections and it's crystallization.
• 1:10:27
  So if I'm using and this is a thing in our kitchens, by the
• 1:10:30
  way, right, we have what are our one O 1 tenants every single
• 1:10:34
  time you come into an MRI hospitality group kitchen, this
• 1:10:37
  is the policy, right? So anything that is used in a
• 1:10:41
  sauce is Morton's kosher because it's going to dissolve into that
• 1:10:47
  sauce and what you want is the purity of that thing.
• 1:10:51
  And then finishing is where the diversity shows up and it can be
• 1:10:56
  ground sawed, it can be smoked sawed, it can be, you know,
• 1:11:00
  Flake saw it. It can be Murray River into
• 1:11:02
  these sort of things. It can be Jake.
• 1:11:03
  That's where then the dish in the pal and how it eats will
• 1:11:06
  change into this. But I think that if if you're
• 1:11:10
  going to dissolve something directly into water, you're just
• 1:11:12
  burning money. If you're putting like this
• 1:11:14
  beautiful French Gray sea salt into this thing, I'm sorry.
• 1:11:18
  It's just not a thing, right? The small amount of impurities
• 1:11:21
  that are in it, which is what you're really tasting, are so
• 1:11:24
  minimal that you can get that in a lot of other ways.
• 1:11:27
  So your workhorse salt is going to be more.
• 1:11:29
  More than kosher. We did, we voted, we vote on
• 1:11:32
  this, right? Because it's not just me.
• 1:11:33
  So all the corporate chefs came together.
• 1:11:35
  We had some Diamond Crystal people, we had some Morton's
• 1:11:37
  things. We went through the whole thing
• 1:11:38
  and we said OK, because we want to make sure it's the same.
• 1:11:41
  We're going to stick with the Mortons.
• 1:11:43
  But the other reason is because in Grand Saline, TX, there is a,
• 1:11:49
  an actual salt mine here. It's owned by the Mortons
• 1:11:52
  company. So if you're getting a lot of
• 1:11:54
  domestic salt, the likelihood of it coming from Texas, which for
• 1:11:58
  us is really important, is very high with mornings.
• 1:12:02
  Interesting. Is there something that you
• 1:12:06
  think that is unique in your kitchen that a lot of people
• 1:12:11
  could benefit from like a technique or anything like that?
• 1:12:13
  Like for the cooks listening and say hey start doing this, your
• 1:12:16
  food will be instantly better or not instantly but you know what
• 1:12:19
  I mean. Yeah, So slightly longer here,
• 1:12:23
  but to me, I think if you think about why things were happening
• 1:12:31
  in a recipe, not just following the recipe to follow the recipe,
• 1:12:34
  but truly like what cause and reaction occurs at each step
• 1:12:38
  because of that, your understanding of it is
• 1:12:42
  significantly more, right? It's the same sort of thing.
• 1:12:45
  If you're driving a car and you're just focused on the drive
• 1:12:47
  every single time and you don't understand all the components
• 1:12:51
  and why the components go into that, your appreciation or your
• 1:12:55
  ability to adapt to seasonal changes is less.
• 1:12:59
  And so for us, we have recipes in grams, but your palate is
• 1:13:06
  always the thing that allows you to change that, right?
• 1:13:10
  Which is actually a really rare thing, right?
• 1:13:13
  Think about it, most of the chefs are like this.
• 1:13:14
  My recipe don't mess with it. But produce is different, meats
• 1:13:20
  are different, seasons are different.
• 1:13:21
  So we acknowledge that those things are constantly in flux.
• 1:13:24
  Then that means the end product that we're creating is also
• 1:13:27
  constantly in flux. And so for us, there is this
• 1:13:32
  training of here's how we do things and why we do things.
• 1:13:36
  And therefore your fat or lipid to it can change.
• 1:13:41
  Your acid agent can change as long as you're getting to the
• 1:13:44
  same pH or the same emulsification of the same
• 1:13:48
  texture of those things. Now you can't do that in our
• 1:13:51
  kitchens after a month, right? But after two or three years, we
• 1:13:55
  can have a real conversation about those things and and I
• 1:13:59
  think that's just different than how most people are really
• 1:14:01
  trained today and you get a deeper understanding and that go
• 1:14:05
  out and read this book called Ingredient by Ali Bazari.
• 1:14:10
  It's really short and it talks about the scientific levels of
• 1:14:15
  food, one step lower and when you want crispiness or texture.
• 1:14:22
  It's all quite easy to achieve if you think about it from a
• 1:14:25
  scientific level. Last question, chef, if you had
• 1:14:28
  a Mount Rushmore of four chefs that should be on there, who
• 1:14:32
  should those 4 chefs be? It's a good question.
• 1:14:37
  I'll put Renee on there. I think that he was an
• 1:14:40
  incredibly instrumental chef. Thomas Keller, also incredibly
• 1:14:44
  instrumental chef. I've been privileged to be in
• 1:14:46
  both of their spaces and spend time much more.
• 1:14:51
  Either way, both incredible. If I'm looking at the past of
• 1:15:01
  these sort of things, I would say kind of Paul Bokus, of
• 1:15:05
  course. I mean, I'm these are big time
• 1:15:07
  classic. And then and then for on Adrian,
• 1:15:11
  just how they these are all the biggest of the biggest of the
• 1:15:14
  big, which is unfortunate that it shows up that way.
• 1:15:17
  But what I think that they offer is this ability to dream a way
• 1:15:22
  that things could be and have the world follow them.
• 1:15:25
  Yeah, well said chef. Where can people find you?
• 1:15:31
  Kevin Fink TX on Instagram truly just come to the restaurants,
• 1:15:36
  spend time, go to Pullman market on there all the time.
• 1:15:41
  Do the side by side have the seafood from the gulf?
• 1:15:45
  Thanks for coming on. I know, I know how much you
• 1:15:47
  don't like being on podcasts. Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm.
• 1:15:51
  I'm shy. Yeah, I really am.
• 1:15:53
  You know, you get me talking. But.
• 1:15:54
  This. Is this like 4 years overdue?
• 1:15:56
  Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate.
• 1:15:58
  It good to see you brother. Good to see you too.
• 1:15:59
  Well, I hope you enjoyed the show.
• 1:16:01
  You know what to do and make sure you leave five stars if
• 1:16:03
  you're listening on Spotify or anywhere really.
• 1:16:05
  If you're watching on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe
• 1:16:07
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• 1:16:15
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• 1:16:28
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• 1:16:31
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  enough the session. Listen close classes Incest.