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From Celebrity Chef to a Bigger Mission. David Bull Episode 202 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey, why don't you see what you can do to get me on Iron Chef
• 0:02
  America? And she's like, OK, I didn't
• 0:04
  think anything of it. And literally like 3 months
• 0:06
  after. So like you're, you're on.
• 0:08
  Hello chefs. This is Chefs PSA and I'm your
• 0:10
  host, Andre Netera. Today my guest is Chef David
• 0:13
  Bull. He competed on Iron Chef
• 0:15
  America. He's received recognition from
• 0:17
  Food and Wine as best new chef. He's currently the vice
• 0:20
  president of food and beverage from La Corsia Hospitality.
• 0:23
  He's opened up many restaurants. And today we're going to talk
• 0:26
  about all of that, including some great business advice for
• 0:31
  the chef, entrepreneur, and the very important topic surrounding
• 0:34
  mental health. Stay tuned.
• 0:48
  What was it like being the first chef from Austin, TX on Iron
• 0:55
  Chef? What's going through your mind
• 0:56
  when you walk into Kitchen Stadium?
• 0:58
  Gosh, can you set the stage? First of all?
• 1:00
  How did that? Maybe you can start out like the
• 1:02
  the phone rings. Yeah, well, that was kind of the
• 1:06
  the after part of winning Best New Chef Food and Wine magazine.
• 1:10
  So you win best new best new chef Food and wine magazine What
• 1:13
  year is? This 2003. 2003 and I bet you
• 1:15
  that that was a while ago. A ton of doors.
• 1:17
  Right, a ton of doors. And that was the phone call from
• 1:19
  Dana Cowan. And that was the random phone
• 1:21
  call that that began to change everything and and.
• 1:25
  By the way, for for context, how old are you at this time?
• 1:27
  You're in Austin, TX. Oh my gosh, you're a young buck.
• 1:30
  You just leave the mansion on Turtle Creek, right?
• 1:32
  Yeah, the mansion was, gosh, 1994 to 1999.
• 1:38
  And so I started at the Driscoll in Austin in the middle of 1999.
• 1:43
  So it's been a couple decades and I was 20.
• 1:47
  I was 23 years old from my new my first executive chef at the
• 1:50
  Driscoll Hotel. Holt 23 Wow, that's young.
• 1:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's young.
• 1:54
  But you're coming from the mansion on.
• 1:55
  Turtle, I was, I was super green and super super unprepared for
• 2:03
  what I was walking into. And that was the learning curve
• 2:05
  for sure. And then after two or three
• 2:07
  years in that I think gosh, food and Wine magazine was 2003.
• 2:11
  So 4 years into the Driscoll is that's how long it took to
• 2:15
  really turn everything around and and really fall into some
• 2:18
  kind of a rhythm. And then the call came in and at
• 2:21
  that time we just, we didn't know what was going on.
• 2:23
  And we had one, you know, the Austin American Statesman Award
• 2:28
  and you know, that whole getting the newspaper thing and getting
• 2:31
  those, those five star reviews and Texas Monthly noticed us and
• 2:35
  then we don't want to call them. And I remember taking the call
• 2:38
  from day and I was like then complete shock.
• 2:41
  It was great. It was really great.
• 2:43
  Yeah, so I'm assuming you're like on cloud 9 especially
• 2:45
  you're 2324 years old, right? Like hot shit, right?
• 2:48
  Yeah, yeah, you're 23. And you know, it's funny, I I
• 2:51
  think back I won some awards in Dallas at the time, So it was
• 2:55
  like 2003 and I had one the rising star chef in Dallas and I
• 3:00
  had one another. I had won another award.
• 3:02
  So those like two major awards at that time in Dallas that I
• 3:05
  had one. And I remember talking to my
• 3:07
  mentor at the time, I said, I don't know what to do next.
• 3:09
  I think I'm going to give up. Like where do I go from here?
• 3:12
  Like I'm already on top. Little did I know, right?
• 3:17
  So the phone call, you get to go on Iron Chef America, and this
• 3:21
  is like for people that weren't watching food TV at that time,
• 3:27
  like there was nothing bigger, nothing bigger than nothing
• 3:30
  bigger. Like you're on.
• 3:31
  Iron Chef, We were on super excited about the original Iron
• 3:34
  Chef. And so that was that was kind of
• 3:37
  a cult favorite for us watching the original.
• 3:39
  And then honestly, I made a joke to our marketing person.
• 3:41
  I said, Hey, why don't you see what you can do to get me on
• 3:44
  Iron Chef America? And she's like, OK, I didn't
• 3:46
  think anything of it. And literally like 3 months
• 3:48
  after she's like you're, you're on.
• 3:50
  I was like, you got to be kidding me.
• 3:51
  Like there's no way. What do you mean?
• 3:52
  I'm on. So that's how it kind of
• 3:54
  happened. And then all the details kind
• 3:56
  of. What's, what's the behind the
• 3:57
  scenes? So like you when you arrive,
• 3:58
  like I'm sure there is a little bit more than the grand reveal.
• 4:02
  You have a little bit of preparation.
• 4:03
  What was your strategy? So we arrived the day forward
• 4:06
  and we actually got to watch an episode prior and I forgot who
• 4:10
  it was, but we were actually in the studio watching all of it go
• 4:13
  down and Alton Brown and and all that.
• 4:16
  The it's funny because I think I've got a confidentiality
• 4:19
  agreement still. So I don't know how much I can
• 4:21
  say. OK, so I know I signed
• 4:24
  something, but I'll, I'll see if I could be careful on it.
• 4:26
  But the whole thing takes, I mean, it took like 8 hours,
• 4:30
  right? The taping takes out of eight
• 4:31
  hours. The cooking part is, is
• 4:33
  definitely 60 minutes, but and then the judging is another
• 4:36
  couple hours. So there's, there's that walk
• 4:38
  that you see with all the big lights and the reveal and that
• 4:41
  that was like an hour and a half or two hours like that whole
• 4:44
  setup. Who did?
• 4:45
  Who did you go with? Like how are you selecting your
• 4:47
  team? Well, I picked my my CDC and
• 4:49
  sous chef from the Driscoll at the time, Josh Watkins and Jason
• 4:53
  Maddie, both who are incredible people and incredible cooks to
• 4:56
  this day. And yeah, we were all just when
• 4:58
  I watched the video, I mean, we were, we were super young.
• 5:00
  It was. It was, yeah, no doubt in my
• 5:04
  mind that those two guys had to come with.
• 5:05
  And, and you're battling Bobby Flay.
• 5:07
  Was it boar? It was wild boar.
• 5:09
  Wild boar actually, from Broken Arrow Ranch, the ranch down
• 5:11
  here. In South Texas and back then for
• 5:13
  people to know, like, I don't, I don't remember what the records
• 5:16
  were, but like, Bobby Flay was like, had like a super high
• 5:18
  winning rate, right? Yeah.
• 5:19
  Yeah, definitely a high rate. Yeah, Yeah.
• 5:22
  And we always joke that, well, you can't have a losing Iron
• 5:24
  Chef. So I mean, he he definitely had
• 5:27
  some wins. Yeah.
• 5:28
  You know. But what?
• 5:29
  What was the the aftermath of that?
• 5:32
  Man, the first and foremost, we wanted to give just a shout out
• 5:35
  to, to our local folks and people that that made, made that
• 5:40
  possible. And so we rented out I think the
• 5:42
  original Alamo Drafthouse. And so when it when it aired, we
• 5:46
  had a party and and we showed the episode of the Drafthouse.
• 5:49
  Which was super cool. Yeah, that's super.
• 5:51
  Cool. So that was that was really
• 5:52
  great. And you know, nobody knew the
• 5:54
  outcome, so it was a little disappointing.
• 5:56
  You know what? Was it like.
• 5:59
  I'm just curious because at this time you've now won, you've
• 6:04
  received food and wine's best new chef, you're on an Iron Chef
• 6:07
  and back then this is pre social media.
• 6:09
  Yeah. So you're, you're kind of, you
• 6:12
  are a celebrity chef at this time.
• 6:13
  And by the way, you're probably the only celebrity chef in
• 6:16
  Austin at this time. It kind of felt that way.
• 6:19
  I mean, it's, you know, I've always not really, you know, I
• 6:23
  guess falling into that in my own mind because there's just
• 6:26
  way too many people that that made that possible.
• 6:28
  But yeah, I mean, back in the day, that whole celebrity chef
• 6:31
  thing was definitely kicking off and I was just happy to.
• 6:33
  It was funny because nobody thought Austin was a food scene
• 6:38
  at that time. Nobody.
• 6:39
  Everybody questioned why I was going from Dallas to Austin.
• 6:42
  So there felt like a definitely a like, well, this is This is
• 6:45
  why. So I felt I felt good about
• 6:47
  bringing attention to this to the city because it was an
• 6:51
  incredible place, like the a mini melting pot in Texas.
• 6:56
  And I was like, what what I mean, it was I wasn't proving
• 6:58
  anybody wrong. It was just like, now this is
• 7:01
  this is where I needed to be. This is what needed to happen.
• 7:03
  And I just felt that there was some movement that was happening
• 7:06
  in Austin at the time. So for people that don't know,
• 7:08
  so if we're going back, I can tell you, you know, I'm in
• 7:10
  Dallas at the time and you're you're the only name we know in
• 7:14
  Austin at this point. Like we don't know anyone.
• 7:16
  That's like what's going on over here.
• 7:17
  You know, it made us start to take a look, right?
• 7:20
  And I think it started making a lot of people start taking a
• 7:23
  look. And then the next thing you
• 7:24
  know, over the next couple of years, I would say for people
• 7:28
  that, you know, Texas history, maybe some Austin culinary
• 7:31
  history, I would say that you you were the first chef that
• 7:34
  people outside of Austin start to know.
• 7:36
  And then Tyson Cole shortly after that and then Aaron
• 7:39
  Franklin, you know, those you guys were like the first three
• 7:42
  that OK, what's going on over here?
• 7:44
  David Shanks coming over here, Anthony Bourdain's coming over
• 7:46
  here. And it's like now we're starting
• 7:47
  to discover, you know, the culinary scene in Austin and a
• 7:51
  lot of that, you know, you pioneered.
• 7:54
  So I'm, I'm super excited to have you on the show.
• 7:56
  Because of you. Yeah, because I remember,
• 7:58
  correct me if I'm wrong, you you opened up a spot in Dallas too,
• 8:00
  at a certain point? We did, yeah.
• 8:02
  And San Antonio and Big Spring and yeah, a few different.
• 8:07
  Places. What was the what was the What
• 8:09
  was the place? In Dallas, it was the Stonely
• 8:11
  Hotel. Was that the Stonely?
• 8:12
  That's right, yeah. Yeah.
• 8:13
  So it's funny because I'm at the pyramid at that time, chefing at
• 8:16
  the pyramid. And I remember when you opened,
• 8:17
  you know, at that time, you know, I had my view of my
• 8:20
  competitions, like Bruno at the mansion.
• 8:22
  And, you know, Steven Piles is doing his thing.
• 8:25
  I'm doing my thing. And then you open up with like
• 8:26
  another. It's like, oh great, no rest for
• 8:30
  the wicked. Yeah, it's like, oh geez, now we
• 8:31
  got to compete with Austin here in Dallas now.
• 8:33
  Oh my gosh, yeah, that was a good time.
• 8:35
  Kitchens are brutal right now, everyone knows it.
• 8:38
  Fewer people on the line, margins tighter than ever, and
• 8:41
  somehow the expectations keep going up.
• 8:43
  There's just no room to miss anymore.
• 8:45
  I was talking to a chef recently who said the biggest stress
• 8:47
  wasn't the volume, it was the mental load.
• 8:50
  Babysitting, food, timing, everything perfectly, trying to
• 8:54
  be everywhere at once. And that's where equipment
• 8:57
  matters more than people want to admit.
• 8:58
  Rationals Technology comes up a lot in those conversations.
• 9:02
  The Icon B Pro, the Ivario Pro, overnight roast that don't need
• 9:05
  to be checked, custom programs for all your recipes,
• 9:08
  consistency without hovering completely automated cleaning,
• 9:12
  monitoring everything from your phone.
• 9:14
  The list goes on. And what really buys you the
• 9:16
  headspace? Less standing over pans and more
• 9:19
  time to leave the kitchen instead of constantly putting
• 9:21
  out tiny fires when you're down to cook, when the prep list is
• 9:25
  rough, when the production ramps up, think rational.
• 9:28
  So I I guess as we transition from Iron Chef, from food and
• 9:35
  wine, from the Driscoll Hotel, now you start to branch out on
• 9:39
  your own. What does that look like?
• 9:41
  Because obviously for people that don't know you, you've had
• 9:45
  a very successful restaurant empire in Austin and beyond.
• 9:49
  Sure. Yeah.
• 9:49
  What does that look like? I don't even hear it as an
• 9:52
  empire. It's like it's so hard to, I
• 9:53
  mean, it's, it's looking back on it.
• 9:55
  I mean, we've since then, we've opened 16 restaurants slash
• 9:59
  hotels and most of them were historic renovations.
• 10:02
  And so, you know, and I've been part of a hospitality company,
• 10:06
  you know, the course of hospitality has been a huge, you
• 10:09
  know, partnership to be able to give me the opportunity to do
• 10:14
  the design, do the concept and do the food that I wanted to do.
• 10:17
  So that support and. Did they find you or did you
• 10:20
  form this on? We, it was, it was really Jeff
• 10:23
  Trigger who was the general manager at the mansion for over
• 10:26
  20 years when he raised his family in that hotel.
• 10:28
  And when he left Dallas to come to the Driscoll, I was like,
• 10:32
  hey, man, like can I get a letter of reference?
• 10:34
  Because what are you, what are you doing?
• 10:35
  And he's like, well, have you ever been to Austin?
• 10:37
  And I said, no, I've never been to Austin.
• 10:40
  It's like, well, why don't you come out?
• 10:41
  And at that time, 22 people, basically the entire executive
• 10:45
  team left the mansion and opened the Driscoll.
• 10:48
  And then when the Driscoll sold, actually, yeah, for that eight
• 10:51
  years of the Driscoll, it did. It did incredible.
• 10:54
  And so the owner decided to sell it and he said that, well, I
• 10:57
  don't want that to ever happen again.
• 10:59
  And so he created his own management company and it's
• 11:01
  named after his two daughters, Coralie and Shannon.
• 11:03
  So instead of being operators underneath ownership, he created
• 11:07
  a management company to protect us moving forward so that we can
• 11:10
  have long term contracts. And he asked me to be the Vice
• 11:13
  President of food and beverage. So there's only four of us,
• 11:17
  there's operations, food and beverage, our CFO and he's the
• 11:21
  president. So four of us were the core team
• 11:25
  that created that company and, and ended up managing over 16
• 11:28
  properties. Some of them we own, some of
• 11:30
  them are leases, some of them are licensing agreements.
• 11:33
  And so that's kind of where it was born.
• 11:35
  So I, I feel very blessed to be part of that because I've just,
• 11:39
  I've seen a lot of chefs try to do that on their own and it's
• 11:42
  just, it's really tough. It is really tough.
• 11:44
  What do you think was the biggest learning curve when you
• 11:48
  all were starting as a group to, to start to get those licensing
• 11:52
  deals? And how did you differentiate
• 11:54
  like, hey, this is a, a property that maybe want to look at his
• 11:56
  licensing deal and this is a, a property that maybe we want to,
• 11:59
  we want to for ourselves. I mean, it really, you know, our
• 12:03
  first gig was the San Anthony Hotel in San Antonio, right?
• 12:07
  And so a lot of it was just like when you come into an operation
• 12:10
  that is not running smoothly, it just, I mean, it takes two or
• 12:15
  three years to get all of those parts and pieces.
• 12:18
  And from a chef perspective, it's like, man, you, you walk
• 12:20
  into an existing staff, an existing concept, an existing
• 12:23
  clientele, an existing, I mean, that's the biggest challenge is
• 12:27
  to how you turn that ship and how you can do what you know
• 12:30
  needs to be done. And it takes a lot of patience
• 12:33
  and a lot of grace and a lot of forgiveness because it's like,
• 12:35
  man, the team that you're walking into usually doesn't
• 12:39
  want to see you, right, right. And so that transition is always
• 12:43
  very difficult. But yeah, I mean, that was the
• 12:47
  Saint Anthony was the first gig. And then back to Dallas at the
• 12:50
  stoning. So I was commuting, I lived in
• 12:52
  Austin. I was driving to San Antonio and
• 12:54
  flying to Dallas for like the first two or three years of this
• 12:58
  hotel management company. And for people that don't know,
• 13:00
  there's a big difference between a management and a licensing and
• 13:04
  licensing and management, right? What you know, can you can you
• 13:09
  kind of break that down for people that are listening like
• 13:11
  it when you're when you're going to the negotiating table with
• 13:13
  I'm just going to use fill in the blank hotel.
• 13:17
  What are you typically looking at that is the best structure
• 13:20
  from a chef's perspective? Is it the is it the licensing?
• 13:22
  Is it the management or is it, you know, you want to be more
• 13:26
  hands off, you want to be more hands on, and what are some of
• 13:28
  the red flags that you're looking for?
• 13:30
  Well, I think it's important and we've experienced this.
• 13:33
  I'm certainly from a chef perspective side that it's, I
• 13:35
  mean, if you're not hands on and that's where the trouble kind of
• 13:37
  started is that if I'm commuting, I remember one of the
• 13:40
  articles in Dallas from when we renovated the Stone Land, I
• 13:42
  launched that restaurant. I was never supposed to be the
• 13:44
  chef there, but that was the the market crash.
• 13:47
  And so in the article it talked about that I don't even live in
• 13:51
  Dallas is. That Leslie Brenner.
• 13:53
  Yeah, yeah, I. Think it was yeah.
• 13:55
  And so it was like, I, you know, she wasn't wrong, but it's like
• 13:58
  that was part of the, the challenge is that it's really
• 14:02
  difficult to license your brand or license the concept because
• 14:06
  the dependency on all of the other people like it's hard
• 14:09
  enough if you're there, let alone if you're not there.
• 14:11
  So we have very few licensing agreements.
• 14:13
  Most of everything requires us to be hands on.
• 14:15
  Most of them were contractual management agreements for the
• 14:18
  five years or 10 years or a situation like that, that we
• 14:21
  were working directly with the ownership.
• 14:23
  So, so for you and your company, you would prefer the licensing
• 14:26
  management deal or I'm sorry, the management?
• 14:28
  The management deal, yeah, we've got 1 license agreement still to
• 14:31
  this day that's at the airport. So second bar in kitchen is it's
• 14:34
  the Austin airport and it's more consulting, more quality
• 14:39
  control. But I am you know, I designed
• 14:41
  the kitchen, I launched it. I trained them up in the
• 14:43
  beginning and I've been there, you know, several times over the
• 14:46
  last few years to help with quality control.
• 14:48
  But I got to depend on this guy or this this girl to maintain
• 14:53
  that standard. And it has to be up to them
• 14:55
  because it's their employees. And so the challenge comes in
• 14:58
  where I mean, you and I both know that any kitchen, like if I
• 15:01
  mean that, that culture and that standardization of, of who you
• 15:05
  are and what you do and what you put on a plate, it's just if
• 15:08
  you're remote or if you're not present, even if you're there,
• 15:12
  it's really, really difficult to create that consistency and
• 15:14
  quality. And so the idea, I mean,
• 15:16
  licensing agreements are, are, are really great and they fill a
• 15:19
  purpose and it's very specific on, on that kind of stuff.
• 15:23
  But I mean, for me, we found more success in managing it
• 15:27
  ourselves and we were hoping to get really, really big.
• 15:30
  So I can kind of float around multiple locations as this, you
• 15:35
  know, that was another I, you know, unrealistic expectation
• 15:38
  because as soon as I walked away or as soon as I got distracted
• 15:41
  or as soon as other things came out, immediately quality would
• 15:45
  suffer. And then how do you pay somebody
• 15:46
  enough to maintain the quality at the location that you don't
• 15:52
  have to be there so that it offsets budget?
• 15:54
  The economics don't work again, unless you've got multiple,
• 15:58
  multiple locations and all this free flowing cash and revenue to
• 16:02
  be able to pay for that position.
• 16:03
  And it that's just didn't happen.
• 16:05
  So when what are you doing? You know, at this point all this
• 16:08
  is happening in in in your career.
• 16:11
  You have a couple, you have multiple locations.
• 16:14
  How are you scaling and maintaining brand standard?
• 16:17
  Like is it consistent recipes? Is it are you sending like
• 16:20
  photos of every dish? Are you are you just showing up
• 16:22
  and you know, losing your mind saying this is not what I said?
• 16:26
  How are you maintaining that consistency?
• 16:27
  The only brand consistency that we did was with second bar and
• 16:30
  kitchen, right? That was our first restaurant
• 16:32
  deal. That was our first big, you
• 16:35
  know, multi $1,000,000 renovation for the space and our
• 16:37
  big launch. And so we ended up having a
• 16:41
  total of 5 second mar in kitchens.
• 16:43
  I think three were operating at the same time.
• 16:45
  And because it was, it was not a cookie cutter scenario.
• 16:50
  Yes, the brand could have been, but I'm it's pizza and burgers
• 16:52
  and really great stuff. But we didn't start out
• 16:55
  expecting the expansion. And so our books and our
• 16:58
  standards and our, and all of those things like we were
• 17:01
  creating that kind of as we went along, right.
• 17:04
  And so when we expanded, all of a sudden it's like, oh, wait,
• 17:07
  no, we might not want to do that because it doesn't really work
• 17:11
  at that particular location or the equipment's different or
• 17:13
  whatever it is. And so I would definitely
• 17:16
  encourage if, if your intention is to expand, you got to start
• 17:19
  that consistent standard in your SOP's in advance of opening the
• 17:24
  first, because then everything kind of trickles back down and
• 17:26
  it falls within the parameters or the boundaries of what it is.
• 17:29
  So that anybody that goes to any of your locations experiences
• 17:33
  that same quality. Because we even had, you know,
• 17:35
  the the logo was the same, but uniforms may be different or,
• 17:38
  you know, your location is just really, it dictates a whole lot
• 17:43
  of the expectation. And so if you've got a brand
• 17:45
  that you're trying to plug in, want it.
• 17:48
  I just didn't have a lot of fun at that stuff like I, I much
• 17:51
  more enjoy the creation of the concept within the walls in the
• 17:55
  space of the location that it's in.
• 17:57
  And that's why La Corsia and the hospitality group, It's like
• 18:00
  most of it was taking existing historic properties and then
• 18:04
  figuring out, asking ourselves what is the best option of the
• 18:07
  food and beverage product that we can put into here.
• 18:10
  That's a whole lot more fun than saying we've got this brand,
• 18:13
  let's push it and plug it in into the space.
• 18:15
  Sometimes that's not the. Way to go.
• 18:17
  You know, and it's a lot more fun to create it on the spot.
• 18:20
  Something that I've, I've thought and you know you've
• 18:23
  worked in hotels and I've worked in hotels.
• 18:25
  The most recent hotel I opened, well, I mean, I opened it in
• 18:27
  20/16/2017 open the Fairmont. And when we were, when we were
• 18:32
  opening up, I mean, we have, we have the fine dining restaurant,
• 18:35
  we have the Italian restaurant, we have the Asian restaurant, we
• 18:38
  have the, the Mexican thing over there.
• 18:39
  We got the Bar and Grill over here.
• 18:41
  And so when you're opening and then you got of course the
• 18:43
  cafeteria and family meal and then you got the, the, the
• 18:48
  thousand person banquet catering operation.
• 18:50
  So you have all these moving parts.
• 18:52
  One of the things that I've thought and I'm not sure if you
• 18:55
  agree with me, but you've opened, I've opened a lot of
• 18:59
  restaurants in one building and you've opened a lot of
• 19:01
  restaurants in multiple buildings.
• 19:03
  One of the things that I've thought to myself is as a
• 19:06
  restaurant group, is it easier to open multiple restaurants at
• 19:10
  the same time? Or is it, are you, are you
• 19:12
  better off like let's open this one, stay stabilized, wait a
• 19:14
  year and then open up the second one.
• 19:16
  And the reason I ask that is because in my mind, and, and I
• 19:21
  sometimes say this when I'm consulting, it's like, well, if
• 19:23
  you're open in one open 2 like you, you only have to build the
• 19:25
  SOP twice because I know in a hotel you're opening all of them
• 19:28
  on the same day. You have no.
• 19:30
  Choice in that team. Right.
• 19:31
  You have your directors in place, but you're open like you
• 19:34
  have no choice. They're all opening on on
• 19:36
  opening day. That that gives me a little
• 19:38
  anxiety just hearing hearing that.
• 19:40
  But yeah, I would, if you have the choice, definitely at least
• 19:43
  space them out a little bit. But if it's the same brand,
• 19:46
  that's a little bit different. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's
• 19:49
  hard enough, man. You know, I'm, I'm to the age
• 19:51
  and points where it's like, man, I don't want to make things a
• 19:53
  little easier, not not challenge ourselves to, you know, to just
• 19:58
  go through that, that process. But no, I mean, you make a good
• 20:01
  point. I mean, it really depends on the
• 20:03
  location. It depends on the brand and the
• 20:04
  concept and depends on the team. Like we've, we've seen
• 20:07
  situations to where we've got a set opening date and we've got
• 20:10
  the, you know, we've got the plan in place and it's like.
• 20:14
  It's team based. I mean, me and you might be able
• 20:17
  to figure XY and Z, but we can't do every single job.
• 20:19
  So if you can't find the team and they're trained up enough,
• 20:23
  the last thing you want to do is push an opening that you're not
• 20:27
  ready for. I mean, you really, especially
• 20:29
  in a town like awesome and you get you kind of get one shot,
• 20:31
  that first impression, that first meal or that first, you
• 20:35
  know, influencer event or whatever it is.
• 20:36
  I mean, you've got to be spot on.
• 20:37
  So I think those are really risky things to put on paper.
• 20:43
  You've got to be able to, you got to be able to pivot, you got
• 20:46
  to be able to work around what cards you're dealt with.
• 20:49
  And we think that it's all going to work out, but there's always
• 20:52
  something that's going to happen.
• 20:53
  And so I think it's important to be able to pivot during those
• 20:56
  time periods. If you were giving business
• 20:58
  advice, you've opened a lot of restaurants, you had a very
• 21:01
  successful career. And if you were giving specific
• 21:03
  business advice to the people that are just starting out to
• 21:06
  say, hey, I want to open up my first restaurant or, or I'm
• 21:08
  ready to go from one restaurant to two.
• 21:10
  Maybe maybe they're looking to expand.
• 21:13
  And there's, there's a, there's a big difference between I've
• 21:16
  put all my money into this and it's mine and my partner's
• 21:19
  restaurant versus OK, now we're going in as a group and now
• 21:22
  there's partnership money. What are some of the the
• 21:25
  important things that you think people should know and things
• 21:28
  that and the questions they should be asking that they don't
• 21:31
  know to ask? Well, I think I don't, I think
• 21:35
  it might have been my boss or somebody, but I mean that the
• 21:37
  lease, if you're not buying, well, first of all, if you're
• 21:40
  buying the property or you're leasing the property, that is
• 21:43
  the number one most important thing is what does that lease
• 21:46
  look like? All of the nuances and
• 21:48
  everything that could possibly go wrong need to be addressed
• 21:50
  before you ever take the space. And so the lease is incredibly
• 21:53
  important. Can you can you talk about get
• 21:55
  more granular like what are the some of those things that need
• 21:57
  to be addressed specifically? Garbage like you know that the
• 22:00
  triple net or the it's a landlord situation and like when
• 22:03
  you talk about the exterior space, the.
• 22:05
  Cams. Yeah, the cams.
• 22:06
  Yeah, like what? Wait a minute.
• 22:08
  The sidewalk is half on the city line and half on property line.
• 22:12
  Who cleans that 3 feet of sidewalk?
• 22:14
  And when you talk about garbage and you're in a multiple complex
• 22:18
  situation, I mean, even the water meter, it's like, where
• 22:22
  does this water meter actually register?
• 22:24
  And who's paying for that part, part of the deal?
• 22:26
  Parking, Oh my gosh, parking is, is massive because you may in
• 22:30
  the least, oh, you've got 10 spots, but is that 24 hours a
• 22:34
  day? Or is it only during operating
• 22:36
  hours or where does your team park the list go on and on as
• 22:39
  far as the utilities are concerned and the expenses are
• 22:42
  concerned, they have nothing to do necessarily with running a
• 22:44
  restaurant for food and beverage.
• 22:46
  So those are some of the pitfalls and that I mean, gosh,
• 22:50
  you know, five year lease or a 10 year lease and triple net.
• 22:53
  And you know, I mean, it's you don't know what to ask for
• 22:58
  unless you've kind of already been through it.
• 23:00
  And so those are the things that I would kind of look for because
• 23:02
  it's not the people are out to get you.
• 23:03
  It's just, and sometimes the ownership or the people that own
• 23:06
  the property also don't know either.
• 23:07
  And so then when a problem happens or you're not busy or
• 23:11
  there's COVID or there's something that happens, all of a
• 23:14
  sudden now you're at a table trying to figure out, well, wait
• 23:16
  a minute, you know, and that happened, that happened to us
• 23:18
  during COVID too. It's like, wait a minute, we
• 23:20
  need rent assistance because we can't afford rent because
• 23:23
  nobody, I mean, it's shut down. Like that's not our fault.
• 23:28
  And so that that's an extreme example because nobody wrote in
• 23:31
  their lease what would happen if there was a total economic
• 23:34
  shutdown. Is that now being negotiated?
• 23:36
  I think, yeah, I think that's a deal.
• 23:38
  I think that's got to be in your new plans because you know.
• 23:42
  What is it called? A Like a force majeure or yeah.
• 23:45
  Act of God or act of nature. And it's like, yeah, that's got
• 23:48
  to be in there because, you know, we know that restaurants
• 23:52
  operate in such a slim margin. And so if you're not
• 23:54
  anticipating what happens when those margins aren't handled,
• 24:00
  you've got to have a Plan B and usually a Plan C to be able to
• 24:02
  impact that kind of stuff. And and are you looking at like
• 24:05
  like TI money? So hey, we need to take care of
• 24:08
  this before we even, yeah, before we even start this.
• 24:11
  Yeah. And how do you know TI mean
• 24:12
  what, who, who, where's that rate and what's the market on
• 24:14
  the TI? And we, we've seen it to where,
• 24:17
  Oh my gosh, we got, we don't have to worry about anything.
• 24:19
  But then we've seen it towards a white box and it's like, oh, OK,
• 24:22
  well, a white box to you might be different to me if the
• 24:25
  plumbing is stubbed out or I've got to hire now a plumber to
• 24:30
  actually do the final hookups and all that kind of stuff.
• 24:33
  So I mean, it's, it's easy to take it for granted because the
• 24:36
  chefs are so excited to get just let me cook this, let's get the
• 24:39
  stove delivered. Let's, let's get moving.
• 24:41
  But all of those pennies and Dimes really, really can add up
• 24:45
  quickly. If you're, if you're over
• 24:46
  budget, which most are, and then you start out and now you're now
• 24:49
  you've got owners and investors that are like, wait a minute,
• 24:52
  we, you promised us this return in 12 months.
• 24:56
  Where's the return? They're not looking at
• 24:58
  everything that just happened over the last 24 months to build
• 25:02
  out and all of those unforeseen circumstances.
• 25:04
  So that's, and that can be pretty conflicting because it's
• 25:06
  like, man, we still believe in you.
• 25:09
  We still believe in the concept, we still believe in the product.
• 25:11
  But now we're over budget by $200,000, which skews all of the
• 25:15
  return. Now you're working harder and
• 25:18
  trying to do more than you really were designed to do.
• 25:21
  And so that if you didn't include that into the performer.
• 25:25
  And for people that don't a little harder, can you explain
• 25:26
  what the performance is so. Performance.
• 25:28
  Basically what you think you're going to do on paper, backed by
• 25:30
  numbers and seat counts and. They're usually a little
• 25:33
  embellished. Well, yeah, they are, yeah.
• 25:36
  We're we're going to do 2 turns every night.
• 25:39
  Two turns every night, our check average is, you know, 65.
• 25:42
  And it's like, yeah, you, I mean, you embellish them because
• 25:45
  not only you're not really manipulating it, but it's really
• 25:48
  what you hope to do, you know, right.
• 25:49
  But if that's what your investment is based on and then
• 25:52
  you don't perform when you do your.
• 25:54
  Performance. Do you typically go in and say,
• 25:57
  here's my base case, here's my aggressive and yeah, here's my.
• 26:00
  Depends on who you're talking to.
• 26:01
  Depends on who we're asking money for.
• 26:02
  You know, you know, is it a bank?
• 26:05
  Is it an individual? Internally, yeah.
• 26:08
  Internally, Oh yeah, internally we got a baseline.
• 26:10
  It's break even. Like what do we need?
• 26:12
  How much do we need to do just to pay for everything and
• 26:15
  whatever that break even thing is?
• 26:18
  What are the red flags that that you're looking at that make you
• 26:21
  say I need to walk away from this deal?
• 26:25
  To me, it's always come down to trust.
• 26:27
  I think it really in every relationship, if there's a trust
• 26:31
  or an integrity issue or if you see decisions that are being
• 26:34
  made that just aren't morally correct and you don't jive as
• 26:38
  far as the ability to work stuff out.
• 26:43
  If if you're finding struggle within the basic understanding
• 26:47
  of the budgets before you even start to build or arguments on
• 26:51
  how we're going to approach things, that's a huge red flag.
• 26:54
  Because when real problems happen, if I can't trust you to
• 26:58
  help me figure out the problem or you've got your own best
• 27:01
  interest in mind that supersedes the business, then it's just
• 27:05
  going to get worse and worse and worse.
• 27:07
  So if we can't solve a small problem on what kind of cups
• 27:09
  we're going to use or we want straws or man Boo or whatever,
• 27:14
  then when something really bad happens, a lawsuit or somebody
• 27:19
  slips and falls or something like that, if you're like, you
• 27:22
  know, hands up and that's your problem, all of a sudden you're
• 27:25
  already in the middle of it. And so you really can't back out
• 27:28
  of it without ramifications. So ask those hard questions,
• 27:31
  figure out those smaller problems in advance before the
• 27:34
  deal is signed because it's all relational.
• 27:35
  I mean, the hospitality industry, I mean, it's 100%
• 27:38
  relation. And if you don't trust your
• 27:39
  partners and if you can't count on your partners to come through
• 27:42
  with real moral standards and having integrity about what is
• 27:46
  best for your customers and best for your team and best for the
• 27:48
  business, that's you. You got to, you got to step out
• 27:52
  pretty quick. As a as a chef and also
• 27:56
  restaurateur, sometimes we view things from the creative
• 28:02
  standpoint and sometimes we, we, we aren't selling that creative
• 28:05
  food, right. You meant, you mentioned earlier
• 28:08
  how you were doing pizzas and burgers and they sell every,
• 28:10
  everyone could, everyone could relate to that.
• 28:12
  That's right, right. But not everyone could relate to
• 28:14
  the very fancy foie gras dish with the Peach Jam or whatever,
• 28:18
  right? Can't relate to that one.
• 28:20
  Not everyone can. How do you know when to pull
• 28:25
  back culinary wise and show show restraint?
• 28:28
  Because I think a lot of young chefs sometimes, like, I just
• 28:33
  want to do my food. Yeah, I want, I want to do my
• 28:35
  food. That's it.
• 28:36
  Like all I care about is I can't wait to become sous chef so I
• 28:38
  can do, I can get my dish on the menu.
• 28:40
  I can't wait to be the executive chef so I can tell you exactly
• 28:43
  how I want my food. And then you.
• 28:44
  And then you realize that doesn't always work.
• 28:45
  No, no, yeah, that's a that's a hard Rd. man, because even
• 28:50
  today, like if I were open up a restaurant tomorrow, my first
• 28:53
  question is what is it that people are going to enjoy the
• 28:56
  most? What do the guests expect and
• 28:59
  how can I exceed their expectations?
• 29:01
  My food, I don't know, man. It's like, I mean, there may be
• 29:04
  a time in my, in my later years where I can open up a restaurant
• 29:07
  with 10 seats and take it or leave it, buy a ticket if you
• 29:10
  want. I'm kind of almost creating
• 29:11
  that, but I'm not there yet. But the, that's really the only
• 29:14
  platform that I see that even coming close to working.
• 29:17
  Everything else has to be what works in the setting.
• 29:20
  And I mean, my food can be a whole lot of stuff.
• 29:22
  And if you're pitching holed into doing your food, oh, I
• 29:25
  think, you know, when chefs wants to do only their own food,
• 29:29
  it it automatically like I get the feeling that you're just
• 29:32
  separating yourself from what you need because you need other
• 29:35
  people and you need happy guests and you need paying customers.
• 29:38
  And so if you're in AI mean if you're if you're not worried
• 29:41
  about revenue and if you're not worried about investment, you're
• 29:43
  not worried about how much things cost.
• 29:45
  OK, maybe, you know, we were really blessed to have second
• 29:48
  bar and kitchen and Congress in the same building.
• 29:51
  So I got to go over to Congress restaurant Congress and have
• 29:54
  chef tasting menus five nights a week, dinner only with 40 seats.
• 29:57
  Like who? I mean, that's just that's
• 29:59
  unheard of really, because that was the playground.
• 30:01
  One staff, one team, one saute cook, one food runner.
• 30:06
  So that training mechanism enabled us to do really
• 30:09
  incredible food. And because it was prefix and
• 30:12
  chef's tasting like that was the expectation.
• 30:14
  So we could do AI mean I pushed the edge quite a bit.
• 30:18
  And then in second bar it's like, OK, well, if you we give
• 30:20
  you both, if you want to have this, then go over here, have a
• 30:23
  great burger and pizza and we did pasta and yonky and all
• 30:26
  kinds of stuff. But in Congress it was like you
• 30:28
  kind of knew what you were getting.
• 30:29
  So we set that bar pretty high and set the expectation, but it
• 30:32
  still wasn't. I mean, my that approach was a
• 30:35
  collaboration between I worked with Rebecca Meeker and she was
• 30:38
  CDC for a long time for Joel Rubashon.
• 30:41
  It was like, why would I, I mean, I, I want it, I want more
• 30:44
  of that. Like how can we collaborate?
• 30:46
  And some of those dishes were collaboration, the best dishes
• 30:49
  that we've ever done because it was a mutual creative process.
• 30:53
  And I found the end result from the guest seeing that and
• 30:56
  tasting that and walking through it was just that was that stuff
• 31:00
  was pretty solid. When you look at the economics
• 31:02
  of two different restaurant models, yeah.
• 31:04
  So so you have, you know, the tasty menu restaurant and then
• 31:06
  you have the more casual spot. What are some of the pros and
• 31:11
  cons of of each one? If you were if you were talking
• 31:13
  to chefs right now that are listening that say I want to
• 31:16
  open up my restaurant, which one do I do 1st?
• 31:19
  And what are the pros and cons? The moment you became sous chef,
• 31:23
  the rules changed. You can't drink with the crew
• 31:25
  anymore. You can't look the other way
• 31:27
  anymore. You can't be liked and respected
• 31:30
  at the same time. Caesar's not above the law.
• 31:32
  And neither of you, the sous chef, blueprint the manual that
• 31:36
  nobody handed you when you got promoted.
• 31:38
  Get it at Chefs psa.com. Gosh.
• 31:41
  It was, I mean our best year in that concept I think we're at.
• 31:48
  Which concept? Second market kitchen and
• 31:50
  combined, so second in Congress, you know, through that, through
• 31:54
  that process, I think we were at like 5 and a half million in
• 31:56
  food and beverage and this was in 2000.
• 31:58
  And this combined with the two. Yeah, combined, yeah.
• 32:00
  And you know, the casual restaurant was more like 3 1/2
• 32:05
  and Congress was like 2. The amount of energy and money
• 32:09
  and staff, but also reflected that a lot more time, a lot more
• 32:13
  hours and a lot more staff to be the casual restaurant than it
• 32:16
  did for the for the high end cost percentages.
• 32:19
  As far as profit margins, same thing.
• 32:20
  Our profit margin was higher, so.
• 32:23
  Higher in the more casual, yeah. And so.
• 32:27
  So you're, you said you're doing 3 million and your profit is
• 32:29
  what you know, 1015%, yeah, or the other one's doing 2 million
• 32:33
  And is your profit 10:50 or is it smaller, smaller 2 to 3%?
• 32:37
  It's a lot of fun. Yeah, you know, so you do.
• 32:39
  Your own food. That's what I'm saying those
• 32:41
  economics really matter because how long do you really want to
• 32:43
  do your own food for and how long do you want to push that
• 32:45
  edge? And everything needs to work in
• 32:48
  order for that to be a long term deal.
• 32:50
  And we've seen them and we, we know that the top 10s in the in
• 32:54
  the world's list and stuff like that.
• 32:55
  But I mean, you, you see that outcome, but you don't see the
• 32:58
  years and planning the years and processing all the money behind
• 33:02
  what it takes for that. And then the team that you've
• 33:05
  got to have, because restaurants are only as good as your team
• 33:09
  is. And your team's based on people
• 33:11
  and people change and people grow and people break and people
• 33:14
  have issues. And so it's it's just such.
• 33:17
  A and and with which? Makes it so incredibly exciting
• 33:20
  too. But.
• 33:20
  With, with fine dining, you know, and that and that tasty
• 33:23
  menu style and looking at there's some people that have
• 33:25
  done it for years. And you know, if you look at the
• 33:27
  French laundries and the Danielles and the Jean Georges
• 33:30
  and La Bernadine. And then in Texas, you could
• 33:33
  say, well, there's probably, you know, you got Steven, you got
• 33:37
  Dean. They did it for a long time.
• 33:38
  But even that they don't do that, no.
• 33:40
  They don't do that, no. And I think things are changed.
• 33:41
  I think the time is, is saying I think people want they do want
• 33:45
  more casual. They want something that is
• 33:47
  relatable. They want to dress how they
• 33:49
  want. They want to be in and out if
• 33:50
  they choose and they want to be able to kind of decide their own
• 33:53
  adventure. And I heard it the other day,
• 33:55
  it's like, man, I don't want to go anywhere that I couldn't,
• 33:57
  that I'd know how to cook the stuff.
• 33:59
  I mean, which is kind of powerful.
• 34:01
  It's like because people are trained, I mean, in today's
• 34:03
  market, your clientele is more educated, more skillful at their
• 34:08
  home kitchen, doing their own parties, doing all of their own
• 34:10
  cooking. If they come to your restaurant,
• 34:12
  they're not going to spend 30 bucks on an entree that they
• 34:14
  just made it home three nights ago, right?
• 34:17
  So, you know, whether that's social or whether that's
• 34:20
  Internet or just people are just more encouraged from all of the
• 34:23
  information. And I mean, the love of cooking
• 34:25
  has been spread and all the tools and information are much
• 34:28
  more accessible. So you got to, you know, you got
• 34:31
  to push it a little bit, but in a setting that is approachable,
• 34:34
  acceptable, economical and just something that makes it, I mean,
• 34:39
  it's a lot of it's about a fun vibe too.
• 34:41
  You know, of course you've got to have good food and.
• 34:44
  It's a price, price of entry. Yeah, like come out.
• 34:46
  Yeah, right. I mean, that's let's, let's get
• 34:48
  real. It's not you can't succeed if
• 34:50
  you don't have those, right. But what are you going to do in
• 34:54
  as far as enticing those guests to kind of come back?
• 34:56
  I, I, I often think about and I'm, I'm, I'm penning a book
• 34:59
  right now. I'm almost done with about
• 35:00
  midway done. I'm going to give it a plug
• 35:02
  right now. It's called the sous chef
• 35:03
  blueprint. Nice.
• 35:05
  And in one of the chapters, I talk about food cost because a
• 35:08
  lot of a lot of the challenges that sous chefs, when you're
• 35:11
  going from cook to sous chef, one of the questions I used to
• 35:14
  teach me about food costs, like it's not that it's probably not
• 35:17
  as difficult as you think because it's a formula and you
• 35:21
  probably plug it into Excel and got it.
• 35:23
  But the real food cost is happening on the floor, right?
• 35:26
  It's when you cut your steaks wrong or the, or you're throwing
• 35:30
  everything away because you didn't use it.
• 35:32
  That's right. That's where the food cost is
• 35:33
  happening. Or it's the dishes that are not
• 35:35
  selling. Right, Right.
• 35:36
  So I could teach you the formula that'll take you, you know, 5
• 35:38
  minutes to learn, but it's all this other stuff that's going to
• 35:40
  take you years. Much more organic than that.
• 35:43
  Right. And so when we think about
• 35:45
  mentorship and we talk about the things that we need to teach the
• 35:48
  next generation, and I know you're big on mentorship because
• 35:51
  obviously having a lot of restaurants, that means you have
• 35:53
  a lot of people that are looking up to you.
• 35:55
  And you also have a responsibility for all these
• 35:57
  people that are looking up to you and, and seeking your time.
• 36:01
  When you walk in the kitchen, it's like, oh, can, is he going
• 36:03
  to talk to me, right? Is he going to spend a little
• 36:04
  bit of time with me? How do you view mentorship in
• 36:07
  that role? First, I want to ask you how you
• 36:10
  view mentorship in that role. And then I want to ask you how
• 36:12
  you view mentorship in the role that you're in now?
• 36:18
  I kind of was mentored in the beginning, which I think set a
• 36:23
  little bit of a standard for me. So Dean Faring in Dallas, it was
• 36:28
  the same thing. When I walked in that kitchen, I
• 36:29
  was 19 and saw this, you know, bigger than life.
• 36:34
  I mean, there was 50 cooks and I mean, they're doing 12 million
• 36:37
  in revenue. I mean, it was like, Oh my gosh,
• 36:39
  right. Just insane.
• 36:40
  You know, I think my prep list said it was 150 items or
• 36:42
  something. And I'm 19 as a veg cook making
• 36:45
  7/25 an hour, right? And I'll never forget it was
• 36:50
  like the first, the first real shift.
• 36:52
  He bee lined it towards me. Hey, how you doing?
• 36:55
  I'm Dean, good to see you. And he said hi and he said
• 36:59
  goodbye every day to every, to every cook.
• 37:02
  And I was like, man, that's that's super cool.
• 37:03
  And I still do that to this day because that that connection of,
• 37:08
  of being real with your team always, always kind of sat with
• 37:11
  me. It's a good baseline of respect
• 37:13
  established. And so he didn't run a kitchen
• 37:16
  of fear. And so I carried that with me
• 37:18
  too. It's like I wanted every every
• 37:20
  kitchen that I ran. Not only did I make one-on-one
• 37:23
  connection with the team, but I let them know very specifically
• 37:26
  that it's OK to ask a question. It's actually OK to screw up.
• 37:29
  And I want you to be comfortable in your mistakes because I'm
• 37:33
  going to find out anyway. And so let's just have a good
• 37:36
  relationship. I'm here for you, you're here
• 37:38
  for me. Let's work together, not as a
• 37:40
  dictator kind of fear based kitchen and that's that's proven
• 37:43
  to be pretty successful for my teams in the past.
• 37:45
  I'm going to go on a side tangent, a story that I think
• 37:48
  you would appreciate. So I had a restaurant in Dallas,
• 37:52
  Marquis Grill, right? And I'm, I'm the executive chef
• 37:55
  and Dean comes in with his two sons and they're having dinner,
• 37:58
  right? It's a Sunday night, restaurants
• 38:00
  pretty slow and I happen to be working.
• 38:02
  So I go and talk to Dean and he's really happy.
• 38:05
  He's liking the food. He's like, I haven't been here
• 38:07
  before because we just reconcepted.
• 38:09
  So now we have an Asian restaurant upstairs and and, you
• 38:12
  know, more American style downstairs.
• 38:14
  And he says, give me a tour. I want to see the place.
• 38:16
  Like, absolutely. So I take him upstairs and I'm
• 38:19
  showing him around. And I notice these two beautiful
• 38:22
  women sitting in the corner just looking at us like, Oh my God,
• 38:25
  that's the shaft. And I'm like, yeah, that's
• 38:27
  pretty cool. You know, like, yeah, I'm the
• 38:30
  chef, right? That's me.
• 38:31
  I have the chef and I'm showing Dean around and whatever.
• 38:33
  And then they stand up from their table and they come up to
• 38:35
  us and they say, we're so sorry. Can we get a, can we get a
• 38:38
  photo? And I'm like, absolutely.
• 38:41
  And they hand me the camera. They hand me the camera so they
• 38:44
  can take a picture. With Dean.
• 38:46
  And the two girls, and I'm like, if people don't understand what
• 38:50
  a big deal Dean was in Dallas at that time, he still is.
• 38:53
  He still is. He still is.
• 38:54
  But like, he was a legend. Like people are asking to take a
• 38:57
  picture with him in my restaurant.
• 38:59
  And it's so funny because Dean's a class act, he says.
• 39:02
  Andre's a good chef, too. Let's make sure he.
• 39:04
  Gets a good picture. And I just remember thinking,
• 39:06
  thank you, Dee, but it was like, it was like, so funny.
• 39:08
  Like they're handing me the camera so they could get a photo
• 39:11
  with me. It was too funny.
• 39:12
  But he's a great chef. He is.
• 39:15
  He is, yeah. And I mean, it was funny,
• 39:17
  though, because when when we left the mansion, I didn't know
• 39:19
  that that was part of the other 20 people.
• 39:22
  And I actually was on vacation. I came back to give my
• 39:23
  resignation, but that previous week and 15 other executives
• 39:28
  were already put in their notice.
• 39:29
  So he was already, he was already teed up.
• 39:31
  He was going to the Ritz at that.
• 39:32
  Point no, no, this is when we all when we all left to to
• 39:35
  Austin track back in backtracking a little bit.
• 39:39
  But he was one of the guys that said, why are you going to
• 39:41
  Austin? There's nothing in Austin.
• 39:43
  And so we've had conversations since then.
• 39:45
  I was like, he's like, you know, I mean, you know, we're not
• 39:47
  always, we're not always right. Well, you, you talk about
• 39:51
  licensing deals and I don't know the inner workers of Dean's deal
• 39:55
  at Ritz Carlton, but I when I remember when I saw that and
• 39:59
  that happened, he left the mansion to go to Ritz Carlton, I
• 40:01
  was like, that's the deal. That's the deal.
• 40:03
  That's the fairings at the Ritz. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's been
• 40:05
  going strong for a long time. I don't know if this is true so
• 40:08
  I'm just making shit up so people this don't take this as
• 40:11
  fact. This is just rumors, industry
• 40:12
  rumors. I've heard that Fairings is like
• 40:14
  the most profitable restaurant in Ritz Carlton.
• 40:16
  I've heard that before. I don't know if.
• 40:17
  That's true, but. Makes the most amount of money.
• 40:20
  It sounds true. That that rattlesnake bar there.
• 40:24
  Yeah, great restaurant and and Dean's a legend that going back
• 40:29
  to Iron Chef. No, no offense to to Bobby.
• 40:32
  Like he's got a podcast that's competing against mine.
• 40:34
  So sorry. Sorry, Bobby.
• 40:36
  We love you, Bobby. Yeah.
• 40:37
  Yeah, like, thank you for coming into my show into my like, you
• 40:42
  weren't winning with Iron Chef and everything.
• 40:43
  I lost. To him.
• 40:44
  So I've got to give him some a hard time because it's like,
• 40:46
  well, obviously you know, I've got some I, I wanted a rematch.
• 40:49
  No, I've, I've listened to his podcast.
• 40:50
  His podcast is good. Actually, I've, I've listened to
• 40:52
  a couple of his episodes and he's actually someone I would
• 40:55
  love to have on here because I'm sure he has stories and I feel
• 40:59
  like as he's gotten older, he's loosened up a little bit and.
• 41:03
  The growth is important because I knew what I thought and felt
• 41:07
  back then. And when you, when you have that
• 41:10
  much publicity and you have that much pressure, you have that
• 41:13
  many restaurants and everybody is just kind of all over you.
• 41:15
  So I I'm much more, I guess understanding and I've never
• 41:20
  been at Bobby's level as far as that level of attention, but
• 41:25
  I've gotten a little taste of it and I'm sure I've come across.
• 41:29
  People have their stories about you.
• 41:30
  Yeah, right. And it's like, no, that's not
• 41:32
  me, you know? That's not who I who I really
• 41:35
  AM. And so again, I, yeah, it's just
• 41:38
  one of those things, man. Yeah, it's funny.
• 41:40
  It's there's that old expression, things that you'll
• 41:42
  never remember and they'll never forget.
• 41:44
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure I've, I've
• 41:46
  run some people there. Yeah.
• 41:47
  I mean, I'm sure I'm there with you.
• 41:48
  It's I think about this often. It's like as culture has
• 41:52
  transitioned so much in culinary, when I left cooking in
• 41:55
  2022 professionally, I stopped being a chef and I walked away.
• 42:01
  I thought like, I am the best version of a chef that I've ever
• 42:05
  been. Like, like I not just culinary
• 42:08
  wise, but just understanding culture and developing talent
• 42:11
  and creating a respectful kitchen.
• 42:13
  And I, and I thought, you know what, I'm going to literally
• 42:16
  write the book, which I have. I've written several books on
• 42:18
  leadership and management, but even then I would change things
• 42:21
  down. Like I look at it's like, no, I
• 42:22
  disagree with some of the things that I thought that.
• 42:24
  Yeah, Yeah. Well, the organics of it, what
• 42:26
  we do is so it's not you just can't plug and play.
• 42:30
  I mean it's it changes all the time, right.
• 42:32
  I mean, our current environment from social and economics and
• 42:37
  and what we deal with everyday absolutely impacts the
• 42:40
  hospitality industry and we have to respond to those things,
• 42:44
  right. And you talk about culture, it's
• 42:45
  like culture changes too. We think that, you know, back
• 42:48
  that this was acceptable and this was the the right choice
• 42:50
  and this was the right environment to create.
• 42:52
  But people's lives are changing all the time, you know, and what
• 42:56
  age and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's not it's not a
• 43:00
  good. We would all benefit from
• 43:03
  understanding that the culture that we create inside of a
• 43:06
  kitchen is not a one and done thing.
• 43:08
  It has to change and it has to be transitional based on what
• 43:13
  the world is like the particular day.
• 43:16
  And with, you know, I know we were talking about AI before,
• 43:18
  before we started recording. Great example.
• 43:21
  Yeah. But I think as AI is evolving
• 43:24
  and it's evolving fast, like how quickly AI evolves.
• 43:27
  And I, I work with it on a daily basis because it helps me
• 43:31
  operate my businesses. But one of the things is I'm
• 43:35
  writing this book and I told you I'm, I'm about to release this
• 43:37
  book. One of the chapters in there is
• 43:39
  like a young sous chef or a young cook that's in the
• 43:43
  industry right now. Like, excuse me, start over.
• 43:46
  A young cook or a young sous chef that's in the industry
• 43:50
  right now. One of the things that I think
• 43:53
  is going to happen and I'm going to put a pin in it because I'm
• 43:58
  hopefully I can come back to this episode and say, Hey, I
• 44:00
  told you this is this is a reality is I think that the way
• 44:03
  AI is so advanced right now and how quickly it scrapes the
• 44:06
  Internet. Like I said, it gave me a whole
• 44:10
  30 minute podcast that I listened to on you on the way
• 44:14
  here, on the way here, right and.
• 44:18
  My favorite part is when AI is like, oh, welcome back or man,
• 44:21
  that's really good, or you're going to really like that later
• 44:24
  or whatever it is, like the compliments because it knows you
• 44:27
  and what you're doing. It's like that's that's pretty
• 44:29
  insane. So it keeps.
• 44:30
  It keeps. You, what I think AI is going to
• 44:32
  do. I I think, and I'm going to put
• 44:34
  this in the book because I think, like the Internet is
• 44:37
  filled with shitty comments. Yeah, like social media is
• 44:40
  filled with shitty comments. And I think what people need to
• 44:43
  worry about is what's going to happen when you go to a job and
• 44:46
  they interview you and they have their AI scrape all your
• 44:49
  Internet comments. Yeah, yeah.
• 44:51
  And they say, hey, before I hire this person, can you show me all
• 44:54
  his shitty comments? Oh my God.
• 44:55
  Or all her shitty comments, right.
• 44:57
  Of everything they'd. Ever said.
• 44:58
  Ever said online? Online and it's like I don't
• 45:01
  need all, I just need the shitty ones.
• 45:02
  Yeah, yeah. Just give me top 10.
• 45:03
  Give me the top 10 shittiest comments and then and then you
• 45:05
  realize, wait a minute, were you were you commented on my post
• 45:09
  two years ago about how shitty my food was and now you're
• 45:12
  applying here, right? Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 45:14
  Yeah. So as I was thinking about.
• 45:15
  Appropriate pictures too. Inappropriate.
• 45:17
  Like all this is like, you know what?
• 45:18
  Because we do that right now, you get an application, I'm
• 45:21
  going to Facebook to see your profile and all your stuff,
• 45:23
  right? But I'm doing it manually and.
• 45:25
  It's you do it manually. You know, 20 minutes per
• 45:27
  candidate. But now you could tell they just
• 45:29
  give me all the questionable things that they've ever posted
• 45:31
  online, just that and all the questionable comments they've
• 45:33
  ever shared online that and that's going to be a real thing.
• 45:36
  Yeah, that's going to be a real thing.
• 45:37
  That's. Going to be a real.
• 45:38
  Interview. Basically interview this person
• 45:39
  in advance before they show. It tell me everything I need to
• 45:41
  know about them, every. Every little shitty detail about
• 45:44
  their life, You think that's not gonna happen?
• 45:47
  That's gonna happen. That's that's three months away.
• 45:50
  Yeah, yeah. Oh my.
• 45:51
  Gosh, yeah. So for people that are listening
• 45:52
  right now, like think think twice before you comment that
• 45:55
  you didn't like that chef's sketch your.
• 45:57
  Social is pretty good. Because I'm, I'm gonna make sure
• 45:59
  I don't delete that comment anymore.
• 46:00
  I'm gonna keep it right there for everyone to see.
• 46:04
  Yeah. Good stuff.
• 46:05
  When you talk about mentorship, you know, I, I want to go.
• 46:07
  Sorry. That's OK.
• 46:08
  We we, we got off subject here. But when we're talking about
• 46:10
  mentorship, one one of the things that how do you mentor a
• 46:16
  young cook? How do you mentor a sous chef
• 46:18
  and how do you mentor an executive chef that's working
• 46:21
  underneath you? And how how different are those
• 46:23
  styles? Man, well, I think there's
• 46:26
  baseline to it. I mean, I think again that that
• 46:28
  culture, what the culture that we try to create is not there's
• 46:32
  no, what am I trying to say it it's set meaning this is the
• 46:38
  culture, this is the boundary, this is what we stand for and
• 46:40
  this is how we're going to operate.
• 46:41
  Now, within that, there's individual programs, training
• 46:47
  mechanisms, relationships that are based on the individual.
• 46:50
  And a lot of times we'll hire individuals based on who they
• 46:53
  are and what their talent is and create a position around who
• 46:56
  they are, what they're coming with.
• 46:57
  And we've had the opportunity. Not everybody has that
• 46:59
  opportunity. But yeah, I mean, a young cook
• 47:01
  mentorship is very, very different.
• 47:03
  You know, I mean, we've got to make sure that they've got the
• 47:05
  opportunity to ask all the questions and there's constant
• 47:08
  follow up and follow through and more time spent.
• 47:11
  Sous chefs should be coming with a lot more experience.
• 47:14
  And so it's refining what they are bringing to the table and
• 47:18
  it's also giving them continued education.
• 47:20
  So if they're hungry enough to already have gone through the
• 47:22
  processes and get to that level, my job is to make sure that
• 47:25
  they're continuing to learn and not just in the kitchen, but
• 47:28
  also, you know, we've, we've done the farm tour thing and
• 47:31
  we've done, you know, gone to Texas A&M and watched their
• 47:34
  entire processing. And so getting hooked up with
• 47:36
  other companies and programs that can teach them something
• 47:39
  else outside of your kitchen has been really beneficial or going
• 47:42
  and staging to other, you know, some chefs like, heck no, you're
• 47:45
  mine and you're not like we, we celebrated that.
• 47:48
  No, have it as much experience as you possibly can.
• 47:52
  And so because you're going to do that, we we thought you're
• 47:55
  going to do that anyway, right. And so whether you do it in
• 47:57
  secret or whether you do it in a program, and we want you to get
• 48:01
  as much education as you possibly can.
• 48:02
  And, and for executive chefs, it's like, man, let's have real
• 48:05
  conversations about what your goals are long term.
• 48:08
  What are you trying to contribute?
• 48:09
  What makes you tick? And how can I, how can I support
• 48:12
  you? It's, it's the irony, right?
• 48:14
  Because a sous chef is supposed to, you're supposed to make my
• 48:17
  job easier. Yes.
• 48:18
  But if I make your job easier and put you in a position of
• 48:21
  success, my job automatically gets better.
• 48:24
  So we were, we were really trying to focus on the
• 48:26
  individual's expectations again, but after the culture and
• 48:30
  boundaries and standards and expectations are set, it really
• 48:33
  becomes individualistic on who you are and what you really
• 48:37
  want. I mean, every single, you know
• 48:39
  this, I mean, every chef that you've ever worked with, it's
• 48:41
  different just because they're a chef.
• 48:43
  They come from different backgrounds.
• 48:45
  They've got different family life, they've got different
• 48:47
  cuisine in their background or taste that they're looking for.
• 48:51
  Oh my gosh. And so if you don't know that
• 48:52
  about your number one or your number twos or even your, your
• 48:56
  first line cook, the conversations end up being
• 48:59
  pretty dull and stale. And I'm just telling you what to
• 49:02
  do. And nobody really wants to be
• 49:03
  told what to do. I want you to do the work
• 49:06
  because you're excited about it. You know the expectation, you
• 49:09
  know that you're going to be held accountable, but then you
• 49:11
  get to contribute and be part of the process and not just going
• 49:17
  through the motions because you think that's what we want and
• 49:20
  expect. And we've done training guys and
• 49:22
  manuals and spent years and developing the paper side to it.
• 49:27
  And as soon as we have an opening and everybody signs off
• 49:30
  and we talked about it for three months and here's these five
• 49:32
  steps. Or, you know, second second
• 49:35
  nature hospitality we developed from from second bar.
• 49:39
  And if if you're not willing to do that every single day in the
• 49:43
  work environment, you might as well just throw the other stuff
• 49:45
  right in the trash. I, I used the, you know, in
• 49:49
  operations that I've run and even in books that I've written,
• 49:51
  I always say it's like, it's not what's written down, it's what
• 49:53
  you act upon, right? Because if the culture says
• 49:55
  these are the standards, but no one follows them, then it
• 49:58
  doesn't matter. The standards are what people
• 49:59
  act upon, right? Those are the real standards
• 50:01
  that in, in the operation. You could say this to your, you
• 50:04
  could say we always fold our towels and it's in the manual,
• 50:06
  But if no one folds our towels, it doesn't matter.
• 50:08
  It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
• 50:09
  It's. What?
• 50:10
  That's the new standard? Because that's how everybody
• 50:11
  folds the towels, right? Right.
• 50:12
  That's the new standard. What's the real standard is
• 50:14
  what's in in action. That's right.
• 50:16
  What you can see in action? Yeah.
• 50:18
  I want to ask you because you're doing something really cool
• 50:20
  right now. You've when we were, when we
• 50:23
  were talking, you're like, I'm busier than I've ever been,
• 50:25
  like, and you've kind of stepped into this whole new world.
• 50:28
  Can you tell people what's your new project?
• 50:31
  How did we get here? It's wild.
• 50:34
  It is wild, yeah. So I, you know, we've been
• 50:36
  praying to kind of get out of the business for, for a few
• 50:39
  years, you know, because it's still nice on weekends and, and
• 50:42
  all the fab and all the Expo and all the holidays.
• 50:44
  And so when we moved to Mineral Wells from Austin and opened and
• 50:49
  launched another second bar kitchen at the crazy water
• 50:51
  hotel, It's, it's got 15,000 people, right?
• 50:55
  I grew up in a small town in upstate New York, so it wasn't
• 50:57
  like a culture shock. I mean, it was from Austin to
• 51:00
  there, but I realized that our industry is somewhat broken.
• 51:06
  And I think I was put into the position and had the opportunity
• 51:11
  to finally create not just a, I guess encouraging culture, but
• 51:15
  really have a position to where I can help change a little bit
• 51:20
  of the community's expectation. Right.
• 51:22
  When you say that you feel like the industry is a little bit
• 51:25
  broken, can you be specific? Well, in, in, in mental health,
• 51:29
  right? Because part of the story and
• 51:30
  part of the answer is that my wife and I are both now
• 51:33
  Christian faith-based counselors and have created a nonprofit to
• 51:38
  eradicate the stigma mental health, and that's called the
• 51:41
  Mineral Wellness Center. And we spend a great on the
• 51:44
  executive director of this nonprofit.
• 51:45
  And we realized very quickly that not just in a small town, I
• 51:48
  think it's everywhere that people are still afraid to seek
• 51:50
  help when they have any issues from addiction or grief or
• 51:57
  things that they're encountering.
• 51:58
  And I think kitchens and restaurants and hospitality in
• 52:01
  general don't do a good job in taking care of the mental health
• 52:06
  of their of their employees. And I think it's kind of on the
• 52:09
  fringe. I think it's getting a lot
• 52:10
  better. And I just set out when we
• 52:13
  opened this last restaurant to be very open and very diligent
• 52:17
  about making sure that the mental health of our team was a
• 52:20
  priority. And very quickly it turned into
• 52:25
  a nonprofit and very quickly. I mean, I'm, I'm counseling, you
• 52:28
  know, several people a week on helping them navigate their
• 52:33
  purpose and their plan and their true identity in Christ and
• 52:37
  finding ways around what they thought their life was supposed
• 52:41
  to be and what their expectations were.
• 52:43
  And then when you, when you put into the hospitality side, we
• 52:46
  are, we are trained to grind like we're trained.
• 52:49
  I mean, burnout is almost a badge of honor versus an issue
• 52:53
  that people kind of. Recognize until it's not.
• 52:55
  Until it's not right, you know? And I think for so many years,
• 52:58
  we, we viewed burnout or, you know, like, hey, I'm not going
• 53:02
  to call off. I'm, I'm going to work through
• 53:04
  the illness or all of that until something real, real happens.
• 53:07
  And I always like to, I'll use the example of saying it's not
• 53:10
  until you feel real physical pain, real financial pain or
• 53:13
  real emotional pain that you realize like, hey, what what's
• 53:16
  going on here? Yeah, I need to address.
• 53:17
  Something I need to address something and yeah, whether
• 53:20
  it's, and, and you know, the culture of, of, you know,
• 53:24
  alcohol and drugs, I mean, it's do whatever you've got to do to
• 53:26
  show up. And I mean our slogans to make
• 53:29
  it happen, right? At whatever cost.
• 53:31
  And when does, when does cost become too much?
• 53:34
  And too often what happens is that it's such a, an expectation
• 53:40
  to do your job at all cost. When it doesn't work, you kind
• 53:44
  of your only choice is to leave and then go isolate because you
• 53:48
  can't. I mean, that failure option
• 53:50
  doesn't really exist. And so people are afraid to
• 53:53
  fail. So then all of a sudden, if that
• 53:55
  culture doesn't promote your, your mental health, there's
• 53:58
  nowhere to, there's nowhere to go.
• 54:00
  What do you say, you know, or who do you say it to?
• 54:02
  And if you're chefs and everybody else around you is
• 54:05
  like, come on, man, let's go. The idea that you're going to
• 54:08
  share something that you're dealing with just doesn't exist.
• 54:11
  And we didn't set out to like be this big, you know, we, we've
• 54:13
  got all the answers. It's just that I really, I
• 54:16
  really wanted to take the opportunity to make sure that
• 54:19
  people felt safe enough to say I'm not well.
• 54:21
  I don't, I don't feel good. I'm struggling with this.
• 54:25
  I'm experiencing this. And the end result is that, I
• 54:28
  mean, we've literally created a nonprofit specifically to help
• 54:32
  people get restored and have a safe, encouraging place that
• 54:36
  they can talk about stuff. And we've, we've seen dramatic
• 54:40
  life changes just by providing a space.
• 54:43
  And you know, we host something called Farmhouse Fellowship
• 54:46
  where we invite all of the other local nonprofits and any leaders
• 54:49
  or organizers in the community to gather around the table and
• 54:52
  just talk about what they're dealing with, what their wins
• 54:55
  are, what their struggles might be.
• 54:57
  And if in the first meeting, people are like, I don't, I'm
• 54:59
  not sharing nothing like I don't, this is my nonprofit.
• 55:03
  We, we fight for the same funding.
• 55:05
  I'm not saying anything. And now after two years, like
• 55:09
  there's connections being made between the Senior Center and
• 55:11
  Meals on Wheels and connections between Grace House Pregnancy
• 55:15
  Center and, you know, Casa. So it's, you see this life
• 55:20
  change of people, once they actually have the courage enough
• 55:23
  to speak the truth about how they feel or what they need,
• 55:26
  that's when real life change can happen.
• 55:28
  And so, yeah. And I I no longer am the
• 55:32
  executive chef or VP of I'm still the vice president of the
• 55:36
  courtship, but I'm not, this is the first time in my career that
• 55:39
  I've not been running a restaurant as a chef, and it's
• 55:43
  freaking me out a little bit. But yeah, yeah, what's that
• 55:46
  like? I don't man, at first I was
• 55:48
  like, this is terrifying. I I I was emailing myself just
• 55:52
  to make sure my e-mail was working right.
• 55:54
  Right. Because I'm like, we talked
• 55:55
  about this like where's? The 100 emails like you know,
• 55:58
  and you get used and even for me like I've got, you know, you
• 56:01
  know myself talk is good and I can talk myself out a lot of
• 56:04
  stuff. But this is, you know, I had to
• 56:05
  adjust between that high octane level of stress management to
• 56:12
  not and was it hard? Yeah.
• 56:14
  How long did it take you? Oh gosh.
• 56:16
  I think I'm still dealing with it.
• 56:17
  Yeah. How long has it been?
• 56:19
  Our last service was October 26th.
• 56:23
  Yeah. So it's been 5 months or?
• 56:24
  So it took me about 8 months to turn it off.
• 56:26
  Yeah, it's because I was. Still waking up, checking my
• 56:29
  phone. I'm still looking for.
• 56:30
  It what's the problem? And I was also still meddling.
• 56:33
  Yeah, you know what I mean? Like I was still meddling in in
• 56:36
  the operations from afar. Yeah, so I do.
• 56:38
  I mean, I, I do. I also work for our church.
• 56:41
  So I'm the, I'm the, I'm the first impressions hospitality
• 56:43
  coordinator to coordinate 120 volunteers for our local church.
• 56:47
  Executive director of the nonprofit.
• 56:49
  We're opening up a, a store slash coffee slots, coffee shop
• 56:56
  slash chef table restaurant with grab and go.
• 56:58
  It's, it's, it's, that's a crazy story.
• 57:00
  That's called R&D, not research and development.
• 57:03
  It's called restored and delivered and we're about to
• 57:05
  open like next month. And I I haven't even written the
• 57:08
  menu. Yeah, I'm sure I'm not worried
• 57:10
  about it. I'm sure you're not worried
• 57:12
  about it either. I'm not, but it's like it's such
• 57:15
  a this is the first time that I've done it 100% on my own and
• 57:18
  100% of our own money and that literally the hood's going in
• 57:21
  today. And you know, I mean, the hood's
• 57:25
  like 15 grand. Yeah, it's very expensive,
• 57:27
  right? Yeah, probably.
• 57:29
  Make sure it's probably. The cheapest hood that I've ever
• 57:31
  operated in, but it's my money so it's like, what is?
• 57:33
  This is right. What do you mean it's different
• 57:35
  when? It's 15 grand, you crazy.
• 57:36
  Thank God it's not solid fuel, right?
• 57:38
  Yeah, yeah. It's like, can I just burn stuff
• 57:40
  outside, you know? So no, it's a big deal.
• 57:43
  And that that meant going back to the mentorship, like I think
• 57:47
  it's, it's setting the tone really in any, in any
• 57:50
  profession, I think it's really important that your staff feel
• 57:53
  safe enough to talk to you about real issues and real struggles,
• 57:58
  not to be afraid to share and be vulnerable and stuff.
• 58:00
  And then we've just seen it. We've seen that happen.
• 58:03
  And as soon as that culture exists and they're safe and they
• 58:05
  don't get criticized or there's no ramifications based on it,
• 58:09
  then the team becomes tighter, productivity increases and
• 58:13
  people do. It's just a better environment.
• 58:15
  So what you're doing is incredible and very commendable.
• 58:18
  Thank you for doing that. Because I think more chefs are
• 58:22
  opening themselves up to this and more chefs are also
• 58:24
  realizing the importance of it. But with that being said, and I
• 58:29
  think you and I came up in a very similar era, there's a lot
• 58:33
  of chefs that are going to be reluctant to to hear this.
• 58:35
  And maybe you don't want to accept change there.
• 58:38
  Like we said, the industry is going this direction.
• 58:40
  The train is going that way whether you whether you like it
• 58:43
  or not. Like this is where it's headed
• 58:45
  for people that don't even know where to begin a chef out there
• 58:48
  that's listening and they want to start incorporating some best
• 58:52
  practices into their own operation.
• 58:54
  What are a couple of things that you would advise to the general,
• 58:58
  to the general chef community like, hey, here's some simple
• 59:00
  things that you could do right now to start taking care of
• 59:02
  mental health issues in your in your operation?
• 59:05
  Well, setting the standard, just like you do with your food and
• 59:09
  just like you operate as a leader, part of that needs to be
• 59:12
  also being vulnerable enough to ask yourself if I'm OK and if
• 59:17
  there's something that I need to help with myself, care or my
• 59:21
  mental health. You know, because you can't talk
• 59:25
  about it if you're not willing, you can't instigate something
• 59:27
  that you're not willing to also do yourself.
• 59:29
  And I think, you know, if the chef is never taking any time
• 59:33
  off, if he's always, if you, if you see yourself chef stressed
• 59:37
  out and burned out, you can't really that's the culture that's
• 59:41
  going to be set because all of your team is going to want to
• 59:43
  lead or live up to that expectation.
• 59:45
  So the chef actually making a decision to say no, no, there
• 59:48
  needs to be, you know, life balance.
• 59:50
  We've heard that term a million times, but actually put that
• 59:52
  into motion and encouraging people with the scheduling and
• 59:56
  time off or taking vacations. I mean, that's the baseline to
• 59:58
  it. Get rid of shift drinks will be
• 1:00:01
  a huge thing. I can't tell you how many times
• 1:00:05
  that people are in the middle of struggling with addiction.
• 1:00:08
  And the entire team or the chef has the shift drink.
• 1:00:12
  What are you going to do? Like your line cook is been
• 1:00:15
  sober for four months and everybody's having a shift
• 1:00:19
  drink. Like that stuff can't can't
• 1:00:21
  continue, right. And so, you know, that was a
• 1:00:25
  policy we instigated a long, long time ago.
• 1:00:26
  But because you've got to respect everybody else's
• 1:00:29
  journey. But if you're the boss and
• 1:00:31
  here's your after shift drink, but you're the one that's
• 1:00:33
  struggling with addiction, how does that work, right.
• 1:00:36
  And so those choices, I think are really important to make and
• 1:00:41
  and just having those one-on-one conversations, We know that one
• 1:00:44
  on ones are important and having that weekly, or I mean, at the
• 1:00:46
  very least monthly, but ask the questions, how are you doing not
• 1:00:50
  just performance in the kitchen, but hey man, what's going on in
• 1:00:53
  your life? How's your family?
• 1:00:56
  What are you doing for fun? When's the last time that you
• 1:00:58
  got some rest or took a day out? Like having real conversations
• 1:01:02
  so you can navigate from there. Most, I mean, I mean, I can't
• 1:01:07
  tell you how many times it's not really a question on how you
• 1:01:10
  know, are you, are you suffering?
• 1:01:12
  It's where are you suffering and what's hurting you the most
• 1:01:16
  right now? What is it that you need
• 1:01:17
  mentally? What do you need to be in?
• 1:01:19
  You know, how can I encourage you?
• 1:01:21
  How can I lift you up? How can I fill in and making
• 1:01:24
  that the the standard practices? Yeah.
• 1:01:27
  You know, a lot of the you know, we're referencing kitchens that
• 1:01:30
  we came up and and a lot of other people, you know, was that
• 1:01:33
  that that that grind until you drop mentality.
• 1:01:37
  But I also think like we didn't know better.
• 1:01:39
  These conversations were not being.
• 1:01:40
  Had they weren't. You know, and I sometimes I, I,
• 1:01:43
  I don't want to judge chefs of that generation harshly because
• 1:01:47
  it just, it just. We were it.
• 1:01:49
  We were. Doing wasn't a conversation.
• 1:01:51
  No, no, like there. There wasn't a conversation
• 1:01:53
  here, so the it's like you can't worry about what was what
• 1:01:57
  happened that. What can you do today, correct?
• 1:01:59
  What can you do today that's correct and start building
• 1:02:01
  systems and culture around it? That's right, chef.
• 1:02:05
  Wrap up questions. I want to ask you some specific
• 1:02:07
  food questions and pick your brain a little bit.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah, Yeah. When you're in the kitchen and
• 1:02:11
  it's your way, what kind of salt are you using?
• 1:02:14
  Oh my gosh, the salt question. The salt.
• 1:02:16
  Question. Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  I always like to have, well, three 3 salts on head at all.
• 1:02:22
  Times like What's your all-purpose workhorse?
• 1:02:23
  Kosher. Is it diamond crystal Mortons?
• 1:02:26
  Diamonds. Diamond Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:27
  And then was your finishing salt.
• 1:02:30
  And it's it's, I just love Maldon.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah, that's OK. Yeah.
• 1:02:33
  No, it's, it's that's what I use.
• 1:02:35
  Yeah. I hope it's OK.
• 1:02:36
  Yeah. Floor to cell and Maldon would
• 1:02:39
  be the would be the finishing options for sure.
• 1:02:41
  I'm a Maldon person. I like, I like crunching it a
• 1:02:43
  little bit. I like my fingers.
• 1:02:44
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:46
  And I feel like floor to cell isn't as crunchable.
• 1:02:48
  Nope, right. It's almost ready to go and I
• 1:02:50
  like the idea of of crunching it in my hands when I'm doing the
• 1:02:53
  final seasoning. When you're on your workstation
• 1:02:57
  and you have a all-purpose, a general finishing asset.
• 1:03:00
  Now I know there might be some nuance between dish if it's
• 1:03:02
  vinegar, but is it is it typically a citrus?
• 1:03:05
  Is it, is it vinegar? What do you finish most citrus?
• 1:03:08
  Yeah, yeah. Is there a preferred?
• 1:03:10
  No, well, I think it's based on the cuisine that you're cooking
• 1:03:12
  in. I mean, you know, lemon is is
• 1:03:13
  probably the easiest to go to, but not just the juice,
• 1:03:17
  certainly the Rhine and A and a quick zest on something that's
• 1:03:19
  pretty cool too, you know, and usually I'll have because we all
• 1:03:23
  going back to the food cost thing.
• 1:03:24
  You want to maximize your product.
• 1:03:26
  So whether you're making a lemon oil or a lemon garlic vinegar or
• 1:03:30
  whatever it may be, those are also some some tricks that you
• 1:03:33
  can maximize the flavor from instead of just a squeeze.
• 1:03:36
  Right, right, right. There's levels of that acidity
• 1:03:39
  that you can pre prep and pre plan and have them kind of ready
• 1:03:42
  to go and that, you know, that sometimes makes the difference.
• 1:03:45
  All the difference between a good meal and a great meal is
• 1:03:47
  the ability to finish with acid and salt.
• 1:03:50
  Do you have a specific way that you make plate wipes that you
• 1:03:52
  like them done? Oh gosh, yeah, we call them
• 1:03:57
  Brownie towels, but you know, they're they're not paper towel.
• 1:04:00
  I think they are brownie brand. But yeah, I mean, we'll cut
• 1:04:03
  them. You got to fold them the edges.
• 1:04:04
  They're like a like a torque a chick towel or something.
• 1:04:06
  Like that. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:04:07
  They got red stripes on them, but they make about 8 plate
• 1:04:11
  wipes per per towel. But they've got to be exactly
• 1:04:14
  the same. The edges got to be folded in.
• 1:04:16
  We use rubber bands to, you know, and that perfect little
• 1:04:21
  box, a little bit of water in it, ready to go.
• 1:04:23
  Straight water, vinegar, just water, just water.
• 1:04:25
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:04:27
  So is there something that you you do that might be unique to
• 1:04:30
  the kitchens that you run that you feel that bring an intense
• 1:04:33
  amount of flavor or it's like sneaky umami or anything like
• 1:04:36
  that that's like, hey, here's a little tip from me to you that
• 1:04:39
  is going to make your food taste better.
• 1:04:41
  Oh, man, we've done brown butter for quite a while, but we use,
• 1:04:47
  after we do the brown butter, we strain the milk solids out of it
• 1:04:51
  and it's the caramelized milk solids.
• 1:04:53
  And then, I mean, we just call it liquid gold because then
• 1:04:55
  we'll add a little bit of the butter back to it.
• 1:04:57
  And that spread, whether it's in sauteed vegetables or just on
• 1:05:00
  top of a piece of fish. And so, yeah, I mean, it takes
• 1:05:04
  several pounds to get a little bit and then you can dry it and
• 1:05:09
  then grind it and you crumble. Normalize milk salads.
• 1:05:13
  Let's talk about that brown butter for a second.
• 1:05:14
  Yeah, Yeah. Hot debate right now.
• 1:05:17
  It's gonna get us all in trouble.
• 1:05:19
  No. When you're making brown butter,
• 1:05:21
  do you stir it constantly or do you not touch?
• 1:05:23
  It I don't touch it. I don't touch it either.
• 1:05:25
  Good for you. I don't, you don't.
• 1:05:27
  Need to yeah we gotta start the entire time I.
• 1:05:30
  Ain't got time for you I don't get.
• 1:05:31
  To start the entire time right? I'm with you, I.
• 1:05:33
  Didn't realize there was a big. Debate, it is like I've, I've,
• 1:05:36
  I've had, you know, I've gotten into some heated debates with
• 1:05:39
  other chefs. Like, no, what do you mean you
• 1:05:40
  don't? You got to the whisk the entire
• 1:05:43
  time. That's what's making it, you
• 1:05:44
  know, whatever. When they settle they they
• 1:05:47
  brown. I think it's faster that way.
• 1:05:48
  You know, last question, chef, if there's a Mount Rushmore of
• 1:05:52
  chefs out there? Oh gosh.
• 1:05:54
  Who's the four chefs that should be on there for you?
• 1:05:57
  For me. Yeah, Well, honestly, my mom's
• 1:06:03
  got to be on there, to be honest.
• 1:06:04
  I mean, we, I grew up in an Italian American family and
• 1:06:07
  they're, my grandparents had seven kids.
• 1:06:09
  And so there was cooking going on constantly.
• 1:06:13
  And we'd go to the restaurant. They ran an Italian restaurant
• 1:06:16
  called Oliveri's in upstate New York.
• 1:06:18
  And I'm we're talking Paulie, Anthony, Tony, Loretta, Gloria,
• 1:06:23
  Teresa. And we ran the restaurant.
• 1:06:25
  And so by the time I was like 9 or 10 years old and my mom never
• 1:06:29
  stopped cooking. And so I, that was certainly an
• 1:06:31
  inspiration. So I I put her face up on there
• 1:06:34
  and can. We pause for a second.
• 1:06:35
  Sure, meatballs. Yeah, Hot topic.
• 1:06:39
  Another. How do you so regardless of
• 1:06:43
  what's in them? OK, how do you cook them?
• 1:06:45
  So oh gosh. Like what?
• 1:06:48
  What's in your restaurant? Yeah, in my.
• 1:06:51
  Restaurant back then. Back then we well, you make them
• 1:06:56
  oven roast and then you put them in the sauce.
• 1:06:59
  Oven roast them then. Oven roast and then and really
• 1:07:02
  that's just a fat thing. So you can control the amount of
• 1:07:05
  fat that's in the sauce and then you can skim it later if you
• 1:07:08
  wanted to, but then it goes. But I'd only cook them like
• 1:07:10
  6070% in the oven and then you finish braising for I mean, I
• 1:07:14
  mean, that stuff would be on the stove for 18, 10 hours.
• 1:07:18
  Yeah, just slow, slow. OK, so here's where we I say fry
• 1:07:21
  them. You say fry.
• 1:07:21
  Them. I fry them, yeah.
• 1:07:22
  SPK we fried them because they're small.
• 1:07:24
  We did the little tiny ones, Yeah.
• 1:07:25
  And actually we still we haven't roasted them, chilled them,
• 1:07:29
  fried them and then put. Them.
• 1:07:30
  Yeah, fried. Fry them in a little oil.
• 1:07:31
  Yeah. Nice and bright.
• 1:07:32
  Yeah, nice little crispy on that side.
• 1:07:33
  Yeah, anyway, we're back to Mount Rushmore, so.
• 1:07:36
  We I'd eat them. I'd eat them.
• 1:07:37
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:07:38
  Thomas Keller, I think that's kind of a go to for a lot of us
• 1:07:41
  in in this range, just because that French Laundry cookbook
• 1:07:44
  really changed a lot for me. And the other two are going to
• 1:07:49
  be tough, to be honest, because there's so many that, I mean,
• 1:07:53
  you know, Anthony Bourdain, that book also changed a whole world
• 1:07:58
  for me as well. And Charlie Trotter legends, he
• 1:08:04
  came in to the mansion on his birthday and he and Dean and
• 1:08:11
  Charlie's family or whatever they came in and ate and I was
• 1:08:15
  the one that got to cook for their dinner and just his.
• 1:08:20
  And again, I was probably 20 something or whatever, right?
• 1:08:22
  And so that was nerve racking to say the least.
• 1:08:26
  But he was just so genuine. And his signature in the book
• 1:08:29
  that he gave me afterwards and stuff.
• 1:08:31
  So that was like the purple one. Yeah, the purple one.
• 1:08:33
  And just, you know, thank you for cooking for me on my
• 1:08:35
  birthday. And, and just his, I've never
• 1:08:39
  seen any food like that. So those books, I I want to.
• 1:08:41
  Yeah. Over and over and over.
• 1:08:43
  Again, when when those books came out, there was the French
• 1:08:46
  Laundry and Charlie Trotter's books.
• 1:08:47
  I I feel like those were significant moments in culinary
• 1:08:49
  time like you there was there was before French Laundry and
• 1:08:53
  after French Laundry cookbook. It really like it changed the
• 1:08:55
  way everyone could. Same thing with Charlie Trotter.
• 1:08:58
  I went to. I never ate at Trotter's, but I
• 1:09:01
  went there recently and built Kim, who used to be the chef
• 1:09:03
  there, and Dylan Trotter. Charlie Sunday gave me a tour of
• 1:09:06
  the. Kitchen.
• 1:09:06
  Oh my gosh. It was like, very cool.
• 1:09:08
  And then going next door to his his studio apartment where he
• 1:09:11
  filmed the kitchen sessions and seeing that it was, it was super
• 1:09:14
  cool. So Charlie Trotter, I, I, I, I
• 1:09:18
  my Mount Rushmore changes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:20
  But right. Yeah.
• 1:09:21
  He's usually on you ask me this again next week, I'll probably.
• 1:09:23
  Have my change right. But yeah, Charlie's usually on
• 1:09:25
  there. So, Chef, thank you for being
• 1:09:28
  here. Yeah, where can people find you
• 1:09:29
  if they want to follow along? Yeah.
• 1:09:31
  So right now you want to follow the Mineral Wellness Center on
• 1:09:37
  facebookandits.org and then also be excited for restored and
• 1:09:43
  delivered R&D and Mineral Wells because it's the unique concept
• 1:09:47
  is it's, it's also kind of an incubator because we, we're
• 1:09:50
  partnering with a coffee shop couple that their dream has been
• 1:09:53
  to do coffee and we're partnering with a food truck
• 1:09:55
  called Smoking Three CS BBQ. And so, and in addition to that,
• 1:09:59
  my wife does plants. So it's going to be a plant
• 1:10:01
  shop, bookstore, coffee shop. And then I've got a dining room
• 1:10:04
  in the back and I get to do chef table dinners and that's cool.
• 1:10:08
  I want to. Randomly open whenever I want
• 1:10:10
  to. Open please keep me in mind I
• 1:10:13
  want I want to go check it out. And by the way, you think people
• 1:10:14
  are opinion about meatballs? Wait till you start hearing
• 1:10:16
  about BBQ. Oh my gosh.
• 1:10:18
  Oh my gosh. Yeah, for sure.
• 1:10:19
  And in Mineral Wells, you know, it's like when I tasted their
• 1:10:22
  BBQ, like, I don't think they didn't, They know it's good, but
• 1:10:26
  it's, it's super solid. So there's a lot going on in
• 1:10:29
  there. And yeah, come to town, check us
• 1:10:30
  out. But mainly just, you know, just
• 1:10:35
  ask questions, man. Just find the answers.
• 1:10:36
  And you don't have to be alone and you don't have to struggle
• 1:10:39
  through the stuff you're struggling with.
• 1:10:40
  And the more we get in a position to make mental health a
• 1:10:46
  regular topic, the better off we're all going to be, man.
• 1:10:49
  Well, well, thank you for this was fun for me, by the way, cuz
• 1:10:52
  yeah, you know, I, I think we have so much to talk about.
• 1:10:56
  Like we could have talked for hours.
• 1:10:57
  Yeah, yeah. But really, thank you for what
• 1:10:59
  you're doing with all the work that you put in.
• 1:11:01
  I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on this.
• 1:11:02
  Been a blast. Yeah.
• 1:11:03
  All right. Thank you so much.
• 1:11:04
  Have a good day. All right, that's the show.
• 1:11:06
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• 1:11:08
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• 1:11:11
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• 1:11:26
  Hit the porno music. No small drink in the kitchen.
• 1:11:29
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• 1:11:31
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  Heat enough the session. Listen.
• 1:11:34
  Close classes in session.