Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Cooking for 5,000 Before Culinary School Chef Chad Welch Ep. 200

Transcript

Cooking for 5,000 Before Culinary School Chef Chad Welch Ep. 200 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  There's no serious professionals that get into hospitality
• 0:05
  intentionally, at least that I've met.
• 0:08
  Hello chefs. This is Chefs PSA, and I'm your
• 0:10
  host, Andre Natera. Today my guest is Chef Chad
• 0:13
  Welch, executive chef with Horse Soldier Bourbon, who's worked
• 0:17
  alongside the Jacques Pepin Foundation.
• 0:19
  We're going to get into his storied.
• 0:21
  Career. From scaling Navy recipes for
• 0:24
  5000 troops to cutting Cornish game hens with a bandsaw on his
• 0:29
  first day ever cooking. We're going to talk about.
• 0:31
  The world of pre Google chef learning and landing with a
• 0:35
  bourbon brand that puts World Trade Center steel in every
• 0:38
  bottle. Stay tuned.
• 0:52
  I know you got started cooking on cruise ships or not cruise
• 0:55
  ships in the Navy. In the Navy, I've never talked
• 1:00
  to anyone that has like expressed what it's really like
• 1:04
  to be in the military cooking specifically in the ocean.
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  I had a friend that he was cooking on a boat recently and
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  he's saying it was like, and there was like a storm.
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  He said the fucking pots are sliding down.
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  It's like it's fucking wild. It's nuts.
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  Like for for us, an aircraft carrier doesn't move very much.
• 1:27
  Like you rarely see it moving, but like, you know, it's very
• 1:30
  similar to take a flight like just a commercial flight, like
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  when I flew here or whatever, everything has to be properly
• 1:36
  stowed and tied down and ready to encounter rough weather,
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  right? But on an aircraft carrier you
• 1:44
  never do that because it never moves.
• 1:47
  So the only time that anything like that's ever happened to us,
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  we were coming back in from a Mediterranean cruise into
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  Virginia and there is this huge storm at the in the Atlantic and
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  it rocked our ship. And I'm from California and it
• 2:02
  felt like an earthquake, but all the like the Baker's racks and
• 2:05
  roasting pans and everything just came crashing down.
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  Like because we'd never had anything stoked because it never
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  moved. And then the one time that it
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  happened almost required stitches from roasting pans just
• 2:20
  falling off top of speed racks was pretty crazy.
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  Yeah, unlike, you know, other than a pizza place like in my
• 2:32
  hometown. My first day in the professional
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  kitchen was on aircraft carrier on the USS America.
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  Day 0. Day zero.
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  Yeah. So other than, you know, we
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  went, I went to Navy culinary school in San Diego, which was
• 2:46
  basically basic knife skills and safety sanitation.
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  And then this was a 1992. So tons of longhand recipe
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  conversion. So all the, all the, all the
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  armed forces recipe cards, they're universal throughout the
• 3:03
  entire military and they're all based on 100.
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  And so you either have to scale up or scale down depending on
• 3:08
  how many people you're cooking for.
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  And the aircraft carrier has 5000, so we would always have to
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  scale up. So doing the math on scaling, I
• 3:17
  don't even remember how to do it, but scaling like one
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  tablespoon for 100 people up to 5000 portions was crazy.
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  And like going up and down it was, it was nuts.
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  But on my first day on the ship, show up completely green like
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  you would in any other kitchen and but all of your military
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  bearings and my my uniform was all white and perfect and shoes
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  polished and everything. I was clearly the new guy.
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  And we were going to see my first day on my ship was our
• 3:47
  first day at sea. And you meet up in the morning
• 3:53
  and they assign everybody a station based on what the menu
• 3:58
  is for that day, right? It's like, all right, I don't
• 4:01
  know, we're doing meatloaf, mashed potatoes and fried fish.
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  So Andre, you're on ovens, Chad, you're on fryer, you're on
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  whatever. And then you just go sort the
• 4:10
  recipe out to go over there. But since I was the new guy,
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  they put me in veg prep. They were like just, you just go
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  into that veg prep room and that was actually very nice duty
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  because it's air conditioned and all you're doing is like peeling
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  stuff and chopping stuff and whatever.
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  But that day we had Cornish game hen on the menu and I think they
• 4:32
  were just trying to make everybody feel good for it being
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  their first day at sea, right? And in order to do the Cornish
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  game hen for 5000 people, my job that day, on my first day at
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  sea, my first day in a professional kitchen, was to cut
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  the Cornish game hens in half on a band saw.
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  And I'd never worked with a band saw.
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  And I'd, I had no idea what I was doing.
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  Yeah, it was, it was wild. And you're at sea.
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  Good news is I couldn't feel the, the ship moving at all.
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  But, you know, and I was really scared.
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  I still don't mess with band saw.
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  So I didn't cut myself, thank God.
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  But it, it's treacherous, you know, like doing these frozen
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  ice cubes, basically. And we cut them while they were
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  still shrink wrapped with the guts inside.
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  And you treated them kind of like lemons, right?
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  Like you cut them in half, shake the insides out and squeeze the
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  plastic off and throw them on the Lexan on either side and,
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  and just keep it moving. So I asked because we, you know,
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  you start work at like 4 O clock in the morning because you got
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  to start for breakfast. And I asked, I was like, hey, I
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  thought we were going to see today and I don't know, we're at
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  sea. And I was like, no way.
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  So they took me up to the hangar Bay and I could see the waves
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  coming up over the side of the ship.
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  And then now all of a sudden now I can feel the ship moving and I
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  had to go back downstairs and finish doing those Cornish game
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  hens while it's defrosting. And then the little stuff is
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  accumulating at the top of the bandsaw and slowly dripping down
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  as I can just slowly feel the boat rock.
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  That was as close as I ever came to getting sick in my whole time
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  in the military and but I never did.
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  How long we were on the ship. I was on the ship for two years.
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  Yeah, cooking the entire time. Cooking the entire time.
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  And you know, like the The funny thing I think you and I were
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  talking about it before is about how like kind of everybody's
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  origin story is pretty much the same.
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  And I hate reading people's resumes or their BIOS talking
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  about how they grew up, their mother's apron strings and
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  whatever in the kitchen because like you know, you said that's
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  we all did everybody did that. Mine is a little bit different
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  because like I never wanted to be a cook.
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  Like I had tried to join the Navy as an electrician and I was
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  working at at like a quick serve place being a busser.
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  And it ended up turning into an accidental career in the Navy.
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  And then I got a job at a restaurant the first day I got
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  out. And so it seems like if you
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  follow my trajectory and kind of initially unconventional cooking
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  jobs and hospitality jobs, they were all kind of against my
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  will. So you you had no desire to be a
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  chef, You're just going into the Navy because they're just kind
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  of throwing you in. My mom started charging me rent
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  and it was time to go. Kitchens are brutal right now,
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  everyone knows it. Fewer people on the line,
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  margins tighter than ever, and somehow the expectations keep
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  going up. There's just no room to miss
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  anymore. I was talking to a chef recently
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  who said the biggest stress wasn't the volume, it was the
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  mental load. Babysitting, food, timing,
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  everything perfectly, trying to be everywhere at once.
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  And that's where equipment matters more than people want to
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  admit. Rationals technology comes up a
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  lot in those conversations. The Icon V Pro, the Ivario Pro
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  overnight roast that don't need to be checked, custom programs
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  for all your recipes, consistency without hovering
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  completely automated cleaning, monitoring everything from your
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  phone, The list goes on. And what really buys you the
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  headspace? Less standing over pans and more
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  time to leave the kitchen instead of constantly putting
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  out tiny fires. When you're down to cook, when
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  the prep list is rough, when the production ramps up.
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  Think rational. So when you got out, what is
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  what is your first cooking job right out of the Navy?
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  So I got out of the military on August 23rd, 1994 and they were
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  opening a new But you get out, it's called terminal leave.
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  You get out two weeks early just because I had basically PTO
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  saved up, right. So I get out two weeks early.
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  Took two weeks to kind of figure out where I was going to sleep.
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  And then the on August 23rd, 1994, I got a job at a
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  restaurant in Northern California where I'm from and
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  it's called the Hop Yard and I started working there that day
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  and it was all just kind of quick serve pub type food that
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  ended up being really good like it what?
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  Was pop type food in 94? It was, it was chicken wings,
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  grilled chicken sandwiches of all kinds of different
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  varieties, burgers of all kinds of different varieties.
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  But like everything, you know, Caesar salads.
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  We punched our own French fries, blanched them, did all that
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  stuff. And then, you know, in
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  retrospect, looking back at it, everything was like super
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  proper. Like it was, I didn't know what
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  I was doing, but it was like now that I do looking back on it,
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  like we didn't need to be doing everything that good.
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  And but like during that time was also the time that because
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  we were buying some stuff from Cisco.
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  And the first time that I remember like I was like the
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  kitchen manager, first time I remember my Cisco Rep bringing
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  me kind of convenience appetizers like jalapeno poppers
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  or like pre done mozzarella sticks, you know?
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  Like fucking best. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  I was just like, this is crazy, like people will do this for
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  you, like and then so then you know that I little do I know
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  that was kind of the end of mom and pop.
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  Restaurants. The fucking sampler platter.
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  Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
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  The mozzarella sticks and something else, right?
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  Yeah, but everything we did, we were doing it all from scratch
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  and potato skins and like just for example, like we made, we,
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  we had baked potatoes on our menu.
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  And so when the baked potatoes and they were stuffed with all
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  kinds of different stuff and when the baked potatoes were
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  turn like after two days or whatever, three days that you
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  couldn't serve them as a baked potato, we would take the
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  insides out, make potato skins out of the the leftovers and
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  then we made potato chowder out of the insides.
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  So like, I can't take credit for putting that menu together
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  initially, but the guy that did had all of like real restaurant
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  flow sort of stuff, even though we were just like an open bar
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  grill place, you know, like we made all of our dressings from
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  scratch, like mayonnaises, everything.
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  And it was like, good. It's, it's so funny because
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  back, back then, you know some, some of those things when you're
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  seeing them for the first time, like you said, the mozzarella
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  sticks. You, you don't know, you go to a
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  restaurant, you're a young kid. Like how do they make
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  mozzarella? Sticks.
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  You're fascinated and then you find out like, Oh my God,
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  there's a convenience product where it's like brilliant.
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  I would love to do a restaurant today that serves that kind of
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  food. Yeah.
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  You know, like, really nice. Like a nicer from scratch
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  version. Not, not frozen mozzarella
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  sticks, but like, homemade mozzarella sticks, you know,
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  pigs in a blanket. Yeah.
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  Devils on horseback. All real comfort food stuff like
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  I have I, I write concept menus all the time, just like for fun
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  for myself. And one of the ones that I wrote
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  a long time ago, it still sticks with me.
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  It is that it's just all elevated comfort food that is
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  just like, it's not super pretentious, but it's like a
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  little bit nicer of a spin on a meatloaf and like of on like a
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  sloppy Joe even. And then you know, the crazy
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  things I was, I'm really into like we had a class in culinary
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  school. I went to culinary school in San
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  Francisco and we had a class called Foods of the Americas and
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  it was all about indigenous ingredients in the in the
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  continent of America. And then following like food
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  trends around the country and like, you know, the impact that
• 12:53
  filmed the railroads did like with you'll find like amazing
• 12:57
  Chinese food in like North Dakota because of the railroads
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  and then like Mexican cuisine and then just how stuff flows.
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  And then I had a conversation with with Michelle Neshawn and
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  he was explaining to me about he opened, I can't remember which
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  one it was. Oh, the dressing room.
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  When he was open in the dressing room, he had the idea of doing
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  everything comfort food from the standpoint if American comfort
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  food was continued to be passed down through the hands of
• 13:36
  craftspeople. You know what I mean?
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  People that actually took it seriously and like, I never
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  thought about at some point and like the 60s or 70s or 50s even
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  a lot of like the craft of cooking and home making was
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  stunted by like big brains and convenience items.
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  Like we were talking about like the can can tomato sauce and
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  like, and, and it's really interesting.
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  He showed me a database and I think it was, I think it was
• 14:05
  University of Michigan. There's like an online database
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  that has kind of compiled all these original recipes that were
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  written by people that knew what they were doing.
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  And we're handing it down to other people that knew what they
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  were doing before, you know, not to disparage Chef Boyardee, but
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  before they came into play, you know what I mean?
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  So my friend Bobby, he has his pages retro kitchen recipes, I,
• 14:33
  I think on on Instagram. Sorry if I'm wrong Bobby, he'll
• 14:36
  let me know if I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure it's retro
• 14:37
  kitchen recipes he just put up. He's got a book and a lot of the
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  stuff that he does is like, I mean, first of all, he's good at
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  delivering the retro vibe on social media, like the music and
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  the look. And he's he's fucking really
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  good at it. But and, and his book is really
• 14:57
  good as well. Like I've, I've, I've already
• 14:59
  had the opportunity to look at it and but he's doing stuff
• 15:04
  that's like, you know, a lot of gelatin dishes, a lot of a lot
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  of, you know, like carpetbagger, you know, this, that, and it's
• 15:13
  like you forget about some of these things.
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  And so when I'm looking at some of this, I was like, I remember
• 15:17
  making that. I remember some of these dishes
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  were on menus. Some of that was family meal,
• 15:21
  like was the chicken tetrazzini. And yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  A lot of these old dishes that's like.
• 15:27
  Turkey tetrazini all. Those right the Turkey
• 15:29
  tetrazini, yeah yeah, a lot of these dishes.
• 15:31
  Well, he does a great job at that.
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  So for, you know, shout out to Bobby.
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  He's he's he's, I don't think anyone's doing what he's doing
• 15:38
  wrong. On, on, on bringing that sort of
• 15:40
  awareness out there. So people should follow him.
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  But it's curious to see where that food would have wound up
• 15:46
  today. Yeah, If it wasn't, if there
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  wasn't some sort of fork in the road that, you know, here comes.
• 15:52
  Here comes Monsanto. Yeah.
• 15:53
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:55
  I was thinking about it just, you know, there's there's a
• 15:59
  another funny story we were talking about gave Aralis
• 16:03
  earlier and and you know, we've only met one time.
• 16:07
  I don't know him very well when we text occasionally on on
• 16:09
  social media, But like my family is is all Mexican from my dad's
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  Greek and Irish. My mom's full Mexican.
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  My dad didn't have any brothers and sisters and my mom has a
• 16:22
  million. So you grew up Mexican?
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  I grew up Mexican and eating only Mexican comfort food.
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  And you know, my grandma was a Greek cook on my dad's side and
• 16:31
  my grandpa on my dad's side. He was remarried to an Italian
• 16:37
  before I was born. So I'm kind of taking a tangent,
• 16:41
  but he was a Baker. He opened the first bakery in a
• 16:44
  grocery store in Northern California.
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  And then him and my grandma owned a bakery in Northern
• 16:48
  California. So it was like kind of an
• 16:50
  Italian. She was Daisy Loopy.
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  Then the bakery was called Loopy's Bakery in Northern
• 16:54
  California. But so I've always been kind of
• 16:59
  surrounded by food in spite of me never wanted to cook.
• 17:01
  I don't know that I really had a choice in retrospect.
• 17:04
  But back to the the Gabe thing. So I've always had a issue for
• 17:09
  whatever reason. I don't, I don't know, I've been
• 17:11
  kind of exploring it, but like this mind block of cooking
• 17:15
  Mexican. So like whenever I have to do
• 17:17
  anything fancy or an audition or whatever, for whatever reason, I
• 17:23
  like trend Asian like towards Asian flavors.
• 17:26
  I have no experience with Asian cuisine.
• 17:28
  Like I've never worked in in there's except for like a really
• 17:33
  good teacher in culinary school. But like, for whatever reason,
• 17:36
  the flavors when I just think about doing something fancy, it
• 17:40
  would be like soy based or something, you know, and really
• 17:44
  strange. And I, I, I kind of boiled it
• 17:48
  down to like one, It's so comforting.
• 17:52
  It feels like it's not special. It's like only special to me,
• 17:55
  you know what I mean? It's like it, it seems too easy
• 17:58
  or like to kind of passe. And again, that's just me kind
• 18:02
  of analyzing my, my stance psychologically, right?
• 18:07
  But so I've never really, there's a few recipes that I do
• 18:11
  and I'll incorporate on occasion.
• 18:13
  But like I grew up my grandma, they're from Mission, TX and my
• 18:19
  grandma always made flour tortillas for us.
• 18:22
  Like I mean all day, every day. You go to my grandma's house and
• 18:25
  there was a pot of beans and a pot of rice and flour tortillas
• 18:28
  and the Kamala was always on. And then with a.
• 18:30
  Little bit of butter. Yeah, butter.
• 18:32
  Or then we'd get super crazy and fry it and put sugar and
• 18:36
  cinnamon on them, the little Bowellos, you know?
• 18:39
  But like always with butter or jam or or whatever, and always
• 18:42
  with or food, like she used to tell me that, you know, real
• 18:46
  Mexicans don't use silverware. You know, that you just got to
• 18:49
  tear the tortilla apart and eat with the tortillas.
• 18:52
  And I used to make them with her all the time.
• 18:55
  The tortillas. Yeah, yeah, all the time.
• 18:57
  And like I have this, you know, she always made it in the same
• 19:00
  bowl, in this blue bowl that like that's kind of how she
• 19:03
  measured everything. And I have this vivid memory of
• 19:07
  like my hands being in the bowl with her and getting the feel
• 19:09
  for the masa and everything. And like her telling me that
• 19:12
  water had to be as hot as your hands could stand.
• 19:16
  So you got to make it as hot as you can, but not to burn your
• 19:19
  hands and your hands stay in the ball.
• 19:21
  So I have all these memories, but I've never made flour
• 19:23
  tortillas, right? And so during COVID, I had, I
• 19:27
  had a test kitchen with the company I was working for in
• 19:30
  Louisville. And I was, I worked everyday
• 19:34
  through COVID, but largely often I was by myself in my full test
• 19:40
  kitchen and not doing what it was meant for.
• 19:43
  So it was just, but it was very therapeutic for me during COVID
• 19:46
  just to go in and cook. And I was just cooking for
• 19:48
  people. That was like running the
• 19:50
  business and it, it felt very military.
• 19:53
  But like one Saturday I went into the office and I was in the
• 19:56
  kitchen by myself and I was going to make flour tortillas.
• 19:59
  So I texted Gate. I was like, what is your flour
• 20:03
  tortilla recipe? And it, and I always feel so
• 20:05
  stupid because it's like three ingredients, you know what I
• 20:08
  mean? But I need somebody's recipe for
• 20:10
  that. Or something.
• 20:11
  And so he sent it to me and I was in my kitchen by myself.
• 20:17
  My kitchen had windows in it and I was like, sun was rising.
• 20:20
  It was like just the perfect time of day.
• 20:22
  And it was super clean. Everything was set up for me and
• 20:24
  I was by myself. I turned on mariachi music,
• 20:28
  Linda Ronstadt, the Constance de MI Patre that my mom and my
• 20:32
  family used to listen to, and I like actually FaceTime my mom
• 20:35
  and I'm and I got Gabe's recipe and I'm channelling my grandma
• 20:39
  and remembering all this stuff. And those shits didn't turn out
• 20:43
  at all. Not.
• 20:46
  Give games you the wrong fucking.
• 20:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was trying to sabotage me.
• 20:50
  No, it was definitely user error.
• 20:52
  It was definitely user error, but it was like, I just
• 20:55
  couldn't. I couldn't make it work, you
• 20:57
  know, and like, but like back to the convenience product aspect
• 21:02
  of stuff. I remember my grandma, this is
• 21:07
  like how kind of micro it can get.
• 21:09
  Like as I was thinking about the conversation with Michelle, my
• 21:14
  grandma used to toast cumin seeds and smash them in the
• 21:18
  mocahete. I don't know if she didn't have
• 21:20
  access to ground cumin, you know, or like, I don't know
• 21:25
  because, you know, it was always called comino or whatever.
• 21:28
  But eventually her recipe morphed into ground cumin, not
• 21:34
  toasted. And like, the little salsa
• 21:37
  changes would just be with things that started showing up
• 21:40
  more in Northern California, you know?
• 21:42
  So, you know, there's all kinds of crazy stuff, whether it's
• 21:45
  macaroni and cheese or toasted cumin seeds, I guess.
• 21:47
  It's, it's funny, you know, I grew up a latchkey kid.
• 21:51
  I was texting with someone about this last night.
• 21:52
  We were talking about, you know, food from our childhood and how
• 21:56
  it shaped us as chefs. I grew up as a latchkey kid.
• 22:00
  My parents divorced when I was pretty young.
• 22:02
  So I was either living with my mom or with my dad, one or the
• 22:06
  other. And the good thing about living
• 22:08
  with my dad is, you know, he would go out and party,
• 22:10
  whatever. So he wasn't coming home till
• 22:11
  2:00 in the morning. So I'd have the house to myself.
• 22:14
  And when I first learned to cook, you know, I'd invite
• 22:19
  cousins, friends over. So, you know, we're all going to
• 22:21
  stay the night. We're middle school, high
• 22:23
  school, you know, come over, stay the night.
• 22:25
  We're going to we're going to watch Goodfellas or Godfather or
• 22:29
  something like that where I'm going to cook some a a big
• 22:31
  Italian feast. We're going to play cards and
• 22:34
  we're going to like prank call fucking whoever out of the phone
• 22:36
  book or. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:38
  Yeah, but my, the, the food that I first learned how to cook when
• 22:42
  I because no one taught me how to cook, you know, I don't have
• 22:44
  that beautiful like, oh, grandmother's her mom's food.
• 22:48
  And I didn't really grow up that way.
• 22:49
  I mean, I, I ate what they fed me, but I wasn't in the kitchen
• 22:52
  with them totally. But when I learned how to cook,
• 22:55
  it was because I was like that scene in Goodfellas where
• 22:58
  Polly's slice in the the garlic or the razor blade, I'm like, I
• 23:01
  want to make that. I want to make the fucking
• 23:03
  sausage. And the so I learned how to cook
• 23:05
  that, you know, buying magazines or whatever and getting Italian
• 23:08
  recipes. So I'd make that.
• 23:11
  And that is like my food identity when I was growing up
• 23:15
  was that Italian food that I was like, Hey, we're just just like,
• 23:18
  we're going to fucking watch Goodfellas and, and.
• 23:20
  Make Italian. And fucking make Italian.
• 23:22
  Yeah. What else were we going to do?
• 23:23
  We're kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's the
• 23:25
  best. I mean, we had, I don't know.
• 23:29
  You know, The funny thing has my it was very much the same way.
• 23:36
  Like I was always surrounded by food, like, like all kinds of
• 23:40
  different flavors and and approaches.
• 23:44
  And I grew up same thing. I I like my parents were
• 23:48
  divorced when I was in 6th grade and then and I went to 9 schools
• 23:53
  and lived all over the Bay Area and did did everything a.
• 23:56
  Lot of stupid. Shit, a lot of stupid shit and
• 24:01
  but it was, you know, we had to cook for ourselves.
• 24:04
  My sister really kind of got stuck cooking for me, but it was
• 24:07
  more like I, I remember I had like, it's crazy how like you
• 24:12
  have like alcohol stories. If you get too drunk and you
• 24:15
  threw up on tequila, you never drink tequila for like years or
• 24:18
  whatever, right? My sister, we used to eat minute
• 24:21
  rice with butter and salt on it. I don't know if that's a thing,
• 24:27
  but that's what we ate when we were kids.
• 24:28
  Like when she would have to cook for me.
• 24:30
  And I loved it. I really liked it.
• 24:32
  But then one time I put too much salt on or like the top came off
• 24:38
  or something and it was like disgusting.
• 24:40
  And she was like, well, that's all you got to eat, so you
• 24:43
  better fucking eat it. So I ate it.
• 24:45
  And then I now I can't stand the smell of parboiled rice.
• 24:49
  Like, still to. Yeah.
• 24:51
  You know, it's fine. I'm like that with soy sauce.
• 24:53
  Yeah. I like soy sauce.
• 24:54
  Yeah. But when I was a kid, I went to
• 24:56
  a friend's house. I didn't know anything about soy
• 24:58
  sauce. Yeah.
• 24:59
  Yeah. I was used to eating fucking
• 25:00
  Mexican food all day. Yeah.
• 25:01
  Yeah. And so I go.
• 25:02
  I go to a friend's house and I'm, like, probably 5 or 6 years
• 25:05
  old, like, kindergarten, first grade.
• 25:06
  Yeah. And his family made Chinese
• 25:09
  food, and they had white rice, and they gave me some soy sauce.
• 25:13
  And I just doused the food in soy sauce.
• 25:17
  Like, I don't know what it is. I can't eat.
• 25:19
  It's ketchup. It's like soup at this point.
• 25:21
  Yeah, Yeah. And I remember the dad who was
• 25:25
  like, very stern, looking at me and saying, you're gonna eat all
• 25:28
  that. And I'm like, I'm a little kid.
• 25:31
  And I'm like, OK, yeah, I don't know what soy sauce is, but they
• 25:33
  see me wasting it. Yeah, it's their soy sauce.
• 25:36
  They know I'm fucking up. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:38
  And they made me. That's probably nice soy sauce.
• 25:40
  Yeah, I mean, who knows what it would keep command or whatever,
• 25:42
  but I remember they made me finish all that rice and I'm
• 25:47
  like gagging and and it's like hit the the my friend's dad.
• 25:50
  It's like a military man. Yeah, guy, I'm like 7 years old
• 25:54
  or six years old. He's like, you better eat all
• 25:55
  that rice too. I'm like gagging it down.
• 25:58
  That's the worst. I, I hate that shit.
• 26:01
  I had, I think, you know, kind of back to the alternative
• 26:10
  careers and kind of how I backed into the military and cooking
• 26:13
  just in general. It was like kind of the same.
• 26:17
  I've been in senior housing for it was just a little over 20
• 26:22
  years that I was in senior housing and it was very much the
• 26:26
  same. I had no intention of working in
• 26:29
  senior housing. It was like it was an accident.
• 26:31
  I I was working at a winery in Northern California and I
• 26:36
  changed whatever they did. The winery didn't.
• 26:41
  The management company for the catering operation fired me when
• 26:46
  I was on vacation, which was super fun, but it the I've
• 26:52
  maintained friendships with everybody though, and, and the
• 26:55
  winery is Mitchell Katz Winery. My friend Mitch passed away a
• 26:59
  couple years ago unexpectedly and his son is running
• 27:02
  everything and it's in, it's in Livermore.
• 27:05
  I just had to give them a quick shout out, but the, I was
• 27:10
  working at that winery and I didn't have a job.
• 27:13
  So I just started applying everywhere on Craigslist back in
• 27:17
  the day. And you know, going on all these
• 27:20
  interviews and printing out my MapQuest things cause like, you
• 27:24
  know, there was like there was no navigation.
• 27:26
  You know, this was like, I don't even know what year it was,
• 27:31
  early 2000s. And I got an interview for this
• 27:36
  place called Atria and I didn't know what it was.
• 27:40
  And so I went and interviewed with them and I, I saw that it
• 27:45
  was a senior living place when I pulled up and before I
• 27:48
  interviewed, actually I almost didn't go in to the, the
• 27:53
  interview at all, but it was like it was like 20-30 minutes
• 27:56
  from my house. So I was like, well, shit, I'm
• 27:59
  already out here. I better just go do it and see
• 28:01
  what's up. And I went in and I was like,
• 28:05
  there's no, no way I'm going to work here.
• 28:07
  And then I've met the people that interviewed me at the time,
• 28:11
  my former boss, and they were amazing.
• 28:16
  And then I, when I saw the senior housing, I was like, it
• 28:21
  was way different than I, what I anticipated.
• 28:24
  I thought it was going to be a what I now know is a nursing
• 28:28
  home, like a skilled nursing facility or a much more clinical
• 28:31
  environment that's more like a hospital and like people wear
• 28:34
  scrubs and tile floors. And that's, that's what I was
• 28:38
  expecting. This wasn't, this was like and
• 28:42
  you know, and again, this is 20 years ago, so there's been a lot
• 28:44
  of advancement since. But when I started, it was still
• 28:48
  really nice, carpeted floors, real dining rooms, like
• 28:52
  restaurant sorts of things, the linens people got dressed nice
• 28:56
  to come to the restaurant. And I was like, there's a lot
• 29:01
  that we can do with this place. And and I told myself, my friend
• 29:05
  that hired me still jokes with me about it, that I was like,
• 29:08
  look, I'm either going to be here for a short enough period
• 29:11
  of time that I never have to talk about it again, or I'm
• 29:13
  going to be here forever. And turns out I was there
• 29:16
  forever. It was like 20 years.
• 29:18
  You have a very interesting career that I don't know if I've
• 29:23
  ever had anyone on the podcast before that's probably worked in
• 29:27
  as many diverse areas of the industry as you because I feel
• 29:32
  like you've been in hotels, like you said you were in the Navy.
• 29:37
  You know you're in a restaurant now.
• 29:39
  Brewery. Partner in a bakery like you
• 29:41
  got. And a freestanding restaurant
• 29:44
  Freestanding like you've. Covered pretty much every aspect
• 29:48
  of the industry at that is that a chef can go into.
• 29:53
  And one of the things that I think about often is that
• 29:57
  obviously I have a podcast, so I talk about, I talk to chefs and
• 30:00
  I talk to industry. You know that that's my
• 30:03
  audience. But unfortunately we usually
• 30:06
  talk about a certain section of the industry, right?
• 30:09
  Which is like maybe 5 or 6 restaurants.
• 30:11
  Yeah, but that is 5 or 6 restaurants that are covering
• 30:14
  500 employees and there's millions of people in the
• 30:17
  business. Yeah.
• 30:19
  And, and the industry is so varied and vast.
• 30:23
  And just because something's going on in one type of
• 30:26
  restaurant doesn't mean that that the entire industry is
• 30:29
  affected by that and vice versa. I think it's super interesting.
• 30:35
  And I think for a lot of people, when you're starting your
• 30:37
  culinary career, like get, get some experience, figure out what
• 30:42
  you want to do first of all, but get some experience.
• 30:44
  Like it's we, we go into a certain, a certain in certain
• 30:49
  kitchens and we think, well, this is the best.
• 30:51
  Like, well, you can't say that if you've never worked anywhere
• 30:53
  else if you only know this, Yeah.
• 30:55
  And, and, and your exposure to different chefs, you know, like
• 30:59
  the other thing when I got out of so I, I was military 1st and
• 31:04
  then free standing restaurant for five years.
• 31:07
  We opened a second location and I got to design my first kitchen
• 31:11
  there, which was really just mild adjustments to the line in
• 31:15
  a different placement to the walk in.
• 31:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But.
• 31:19
  But still, you know, like, it was a mom and pop opening, like
• 31:23
  literally laid the foundation for the kitchen floor myself,
• 31:28
  like with a shovel, you know what I mean?
• 31:30
  Like helping out and then going to the going to The Four Seasons
• 31:37
  after culinary school and my my trajectory after I went to
• 31:43
  culinary school. Forget The Four Seasons, but
• 31:45
  after culinary school. Where'd you go to culinary
• 31:48
  school? The California Culinary Academy
• 31:50
  CCA. Yeah, CCA before the Cordon Bleu
• 31:52
  bought it. When?
• 31:53
  When? When were you there?
• 31:54
  I got out in 9899. OK, so I, I, I went to school in
• 32:01
  Portland, OR. I graduated in 9596.
• 32:04
  I don't remember. What school?
• 32:05
  It was the Western culinary. I I know.
• 32:07
  I know where it is, yeah. In Portland and.
• 32:09
  With the glass front. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:11
  I don't know what it looks like. I don't even know if it still
• 32:12
  exists, to be honest with you, but I remember our the Dean of
• 32:15
  the school had come from CCA. His name was Larry Lewis.
• 32:18
  Hit a ponytail. Yeah, Yeah.
• 32:19
  I don't know. I don't.
• 32:20
  Know if you I think it might have been before your time, but
• 32:22
  he was like the coolest dude. Yeah, and the the the CCA was
• 32:26
  great when I went but one again, I mean, it's weird when I talk
• 32:33
  about this stuff, but like I didn't want to go to culinary
• 32:35
  school like so. Why'd you go?
• 32:36
  Because everybody kind of convinced me, you know, if
• 32:39
  you're going to you're my dad had a big part in that.
• 32:43
  But everybody I just met my wife, my current, my only wife.
• 32:47
  We've been together since 96. So we just kind of got together
• 32:50
  and I was trying to figure out where we were like what I was
• 32:54
  going to do for a career. And you know, like a lot of
• 32:57
  people, I spent five years in one restaurant talking about I'm
• 33:01
  going to get a real job at some point and watching everybody
• 33:04
  around me go get a real job and finish their school.
• 33:07
  And like, that's a lot of the stuff that I teach and preach
• 33:11
  currently is like hospitality and cooking is really
• 33:16
  placeholders for people. There's no serious professionals
• 33:21
  that get into hospitality intentionally, at least that
• 33:25
  I've met, like have gotten in to either cooking or front of house
• 33:29
  management or service and been like, you know what, I'm going
• 33:31
  to do this for the rest of my life.
• 33:33
  Day one. This is what I'm doing.
• 33:34
  You know what I mean? There's a few and I went to
• 33:37
  school and started with people that had that attitude and
• 33:40
  didn't last like more than a year or so.
• 33:43
  But like when I went to culinary school, everybody was kind of
• 33:46
  trying to convince me to go. And then I had my GI Bill from
• 33:50
  the military. So I used it, went to culinary
• 33:52
  school and it was fantastic. And also before I went to
• 33:56
  culinary school, I had done 2 externships at my job.
• 34:00
  So like people would graduated from the CCA and come and done
• 34:04
  their externship with me and they couldn't cook for shit.
• 34:07
  And and I was like what, what am I going to go pay these people
• 34:10
  to show me how to work like this kid?
• 34:12
  You know, like slicing a mushroom one piece at a time,
• 34:16
  put it in a bowl like it was, it was crazy.
• 34:19
  But when I went, I was like, all right, I'm going to go and I'm
• 34:23
  going to treat this super seriously.
• 34:25
  And I'm the worst academic. I hate school and you know, like
• 34:28
  I can't but too much ADB. But you know, my wife is very
• 34:33
  academic. She helped me do my school work
• 34:36
  and did my reports and stuff and and that.
• 34:40
  But I could cook, you know? So like, I knew that I was good
• 34:43
  at cooking, and I was just going to hang out with the teachers
• 34:46
  and not try to make friends with anybody.
• 34:50
  I would say I was trying to make money.
• 34:51
  If I was going to go to culinary school, my next move was a check
• 34:56
  I didn't care about. What you were making back.
• 34:58
  Then I was making I think I was making $15.00 an hour.
• 35:02
  Damn it might have been. I think they convinced me to go
• 35:07
  salary for like 25,000 a year really or something.
• 35:10
  I remember when I was making like it was a big deal for me
• 35:13
  when I got my first $11.00 an hour job.
• 35:15
  And I well, I was in the Bay Area.
• 35:17
  Yeah, I know, I know. And I remember making $11.00 an
• 35:19
  hour. It was, it was a sous chef job
• 35:21
  and I was negotiating with the with the person.
• 35:24
  I was like, can I get like 1125? And they're like no, take it or
• 35:26
  leave it. I was like $11.00, like a $2.00
• 35:29
  raise for my $9. Yeah, I'll take.
• 35:31
  It Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's and, and that's what it was.
• 35:33
  So as soon as I got out of culinary school, I was expecting
• 35:37
  to make money like that was it and I didn't care.
• 35:40
  So I wasn't chasing. I wasn't going to go to the the
• 35:46
  fanciest play I remember. So like in culinary school, you
• 35:50
  know, you have to go find a place to do an externship.
• 35:53
  Everybody was going to French Laundry or Stars or Chez Panisse
• 35:57
  or like a bunch of my friends went to Picasso, like in Vegas
• 36:01
  and like everything was going on.
• 36:03
  I didn't. Was everyone stayed in
• 36:05
  California? Was that the like from CCA?
• 36:07
  The most, most people were, and a lot of the people that were
• 36:11
  looking for those externships weren't from California.
• 36:13
  Do you know where? So I went to a culinary school
• 36:15
  in Portland. Do you know where the hot places
• 36:17
  were? Where you're not going to
• 36:19
  believe. This where?
• 36:20
  Taco Bell. I'm not, I'm not kidding.
• 36:22
  I remember the Taco Bell person came.
• 36:24
  They were trying to recruit from culinary school and saying you
• 36:26
  know, store manager from Taco Bell.
• 36:29
  I remember the numbers making 50,000 a year.
• 36:31
  Right. Like I didn't go to school.
• 36:32
  That's where I would have been. But I'll still be a Taco Bell.
• 36:34
  Never forget, they were Taco Bells showing up trying to
• 36:37
  recruit. And a lot of kids went, yeah,
• 36:40
  they're like, fuck, that's a lot of money at Taco Bell to be a
• 36:43
  Taco Bell manager. The Benson Hotel in Portland, OR
• 36:46
  was the other one that was getting, you know, big
• 36:48
  recruitment, but the Playboy Mansion.
• 36:50
  Oh shit. The Playboy Mansion was taking
• 36:52
  and and Disney like Disney Playboy mansion, Taco Bell and
• 36:55
  and the Benson Hotel. Everyone from my culinary
• 36:58
  school's like we got to get into that Playboy mansion.
• 37:00
  It was like the fucking hottest. It was the hottest place for
• 37:03
  people to try and get an internship.
• 37:05
  Well, when, when for whatever reason, there was so many people
• 37:10
  trying to go to these spots and I didn't want to go like I had
• 37:15
  no desire. I just thought it was corny.
• 37:17
  I thought it was like I, I didn't even know anything about
• 37:21
  it, right. Because I went to stars a bunch
• 37:23
  because it was near my school and, and I had a bunch of people
• 37:26
  working there. But I like, I would go see them
• 37:28
  work in a station and like a place like stars with like the
• 37:32
  volume that stars was doing. And I was like, I don't want to,
• 37:34
  I don't want to do that. I don't want to work and one
• 37:39
  station and have one component to one dish, you know what I
• 37:42
  mean? I want to do, I want to do
• 37:44
  everything and I want to be in charge.
• 37:46
  You know how to cook. That's not the problem.
• 37:48
  The problem is getting your team to do what you want when you
• 37:51
  want it. That's leadership.
• 37:53
  My book, Culinary Leadership Fundamentals, breaks down
• 37:55
  exactly how to run a kitchen without losing your mind.
• 37:58
  Stop yelling. Start leading.
• 37:59
  Get the book at Chefs psa.com. And so like my trajectory was
• 38:06
  totally backwards. So like coming from volume and
• 38:11
  institutional and then trying to make money and then going to The
• 38:14
  Four Seasons and then starting to see like what we were talking
• 38:19
  about a little bit earlier when you, when, when I went to The
• 38:21
  Four Seasons, I was on the tail end of the change. the IT was
• 38:28
  changing. It was the Clift Hotel and it
• 38:29
  was changing from the actual Four Seasons into a Marriott.
• 38:33
  And then ultimately Schrager bought it while I was there.
• 38:35
  I did the Millennium New Year's at the at that hotel.
• 38:40
  So I didn't get to work with all of the chefs that ran it, but I
• 38:43
  got to work with all the cooks and all the servers and all the
• 38:47
  bartenders. There were like 20-30 year union
• 38:50
  employees. They knew it.
• 38:51
  They knew everything. Yeah.
• 38:53
  And. For people that don't know, we
• 38:54
  were talking about this earlier, the chef at The Four Seasons of
• 38:56
  the time, Mercer Moore, Yeah, who I met as well.
• 39:01
  We crossed paths briefly, and I remember him telling me that his
• 39:05
  sous chefs at the time at The Four Seasons in San Francisco
• 39:07
  were Michael Mina, Mario Batali. Right, right, right.
• 39:09
  Yes. And I didn't get to meet them,
• 39:13
  but there were Mario. I don't I don't remember ever
• 39:17
  hearing of him being in San Francisco, at least while I was
• 39:19
  there. By the way, I have no idea if
• 39:21
  that's true. Yeah, I'm just taking his work.
• 39:23
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so much also about like
• 39:27
  not being able to Google, you know, like I was thinking about
• 39:30
  it was. Better to lie back then.
• 39:32
  Yeah, yeah, get away with. It I was thinking about coming
• 39:34
  on here and I have like all these stories and I was like,
• 39:37
  damn, I don't even know if that's true.
• 39:39
  It's something that I've just known for my whole life.
• 39:41
  I don't even know if it's real. But but at the but Michael Mina
• 39:46
  was always around and you know, one of my he took over Charles
• 39:51
  Nob Hill at some point and and Ron Siegel from San Francisco
• 39:56
  was my he, he's he's kind of my. At that time.
• 40:00
  I'm the big fanboy. Fucking goat, right?
• 40:02
  So for people that don't know the name Ron Siegel, and I think
• 40:06
  it's important to do your homework on some of these great
• 40:08
  chefs that set the foundation for you.
• 40:10
  I don't know exactly what his relationship to the French
• 40:13
  Laundry. I don't know if he's a sous chef
• 40:14
  there or what, but he was. He went through that system and
• 40:17
  then he was the chef of the dining room at the Ritz Carlton
• 40:21
  in San Francisco. I think it might have actually
• 40:23
  been his concept. Right, right.
• 40:26
  Something like that. But he was the first American to
• 40:30
  go on Iron Chef Japan before Iron Chef America even was a.
• 40:34
  Thought it's the reason that I have ever heard of Iron Chef.
• 40:37
  It wasn't the other way around. He didn't get famous from my
• 40:40
  perspective. He didn't get famous from being
• 40:42
  on Iron Chef. Iron Chef got famous to me
• 40:44
  because he was on it right? And and watching him and like,
• 40:47
  first of all, seeing Iron Chef in that, you know, again, no
• 40:51
  Google back in the days. I, I'm just gonna sound like a
• 40:55
  old guy. But like the only way you saw
• 40:57
  that was passed around VHS tapes that cuz somebody found some non
• 41:03
  translated Japanese stadium cooking show that this dude from
• 41:08
  San Francisco went on and crushed and and won battle
• 41:12
  lobster. Well, and the crazy thing was is
• 41:14
  he was. Correct me if I'm wrong.
• 41:15
  I'm. I'm, but I believe this.
• 41:17
  The mayor of San Francisco hand selected him.
• 41:19
  So, like, probably we need a chef to represent the United
• 41:22
  States, to go to fucking Japan beyond this crazy stadium game
• 41:25
  show and fucking be the best of us.
• 41:28
  Yeah, Be the best chance we have to fucking win.
• 41:30
  And they sent Ron Siegel and he fucking won.
• 41:33
  Yeah, yeah, he fucking won. He's a total fucking gangster.
• 41:36
  And I think, I don't think that I've ever said more than high
• 41:42
  chef, big fan. Yeah, Like, I think that's my
• 41:45
  only the extent of our conversations ever.
• 41:47
  But having seen him around and like, been in the same places at
• 41:53
  the same time, you know, like, he is just the most unassuming
• 41:57
  dude and like, not that Iron Chef guy, you know what I mean?
• 42:02
  Like for him I wonder? I would love to hear his
• 42:05
  perspective on that story. Yeah, I saw what I Ron.
• 42:07
  I don't know if you listen. To the show.
• 42:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got AI got a chair for you?
• 42:10
  Yeah, I want to know what that was like.
• 42:12
  For sure and and like, you know his stuff that he did like my
• 42:17
  first. So he was at Charles Nob Hill,
• 42:20
  which Michael mean I ended up owning, I think.
• 42:23
  But my experience at Charles Nob Hill, because I was such a big
• 42:29
  fan, I proposed to my wife on our anniversary, on our dating
• 42:34
  anniversary and I was carrying around a ring with a little
• 42:38
  proposal note in the box. And she gave me my anniversary
• 42:44
  present 1st. And it was a tie and a gift
• 42:46
  certificate to Charles Nob Hill so I could go have bronze
• 42:49
  tasting menu. And it was the first fancy fine
• 42:54
  dining tasting experience that I've ever been a part of.
• 42:57
  And but it, like the the gift presentation, was overshadowed
• 43:00
  by me proposing. Was it was it a tasting menu
• 43:02
  back there or was it a la carte? Do you remember?
• 43:04
  No, it was tasting for sure. Yeah, yeah.
• 43:05
  It was like, and you had a choice.
• 43:07
  I can't remember how many courses, but it was a it was a
• 43:11
  we got the extended course, like whatever.
• 43:13
  And you know, when I met my wife when we first started dating,
• 43:17
  she was like Lean Cuisines and like a medium oil filet or well
• 43:22
  filet. And like we went there and it
• 43:24
  was like sweet breads and you know, like it just everything.
• 43:28
  And she was like a little hesitant, but she ate
• 43:30
  everything. We still, I was saying something
• 43:34
  to her during that dinner that we still use now, right.
• 43:37
  Like when we go out with people, it's like, taste it because if
• 43:40
  you don't like it here, you're never going to like it.
• 43:43
  That's that. I'll tell you.
• 43:45
  That's a fucking true statement. That's it.
• 43:46
  So if you don't like Ron Siegel's sweetbreads, you're
• 43:49
  never going to like them, so you may as well taste it now.
• 43:52
  Yeah, that's a great point. And and, you know, we're talking
• 43:55
  about back in the day, we had like the food lovers companion.
• 43:59
  What were the food lovers companion?
• 44:02
  Dictionary chefs, Yes. Library chefs, Yeah.
• 44:05
  And then, you know, the next generation was the generation of
• 44:08
  chefs that had Google for information.
• 44:11
  And then the third generation after that, the current ones,
• 44:13
  the AI generation, right? You don't need Google.
• 44:16
  But in, in my opinion, when we were coming up, I think you hit
• 44:20
  the nail on the head earlier when we were talking that one of
• 44:24
  the things that I think people miss out is you had to learn it
• 44:28
  and you had to memorize it because.
• 44:30
  You, you, you. Needed to memorize the terms and
• 44:33
  the definitions and the recipes and things like that because you
• 44:36
  weren't going to look it up on your phone.
• 44:37
  There was, if you didn't know it, there was no going back to,
• 44:41
  to, to the computer to figure it out.
• 44:43
  You needed to know that information.
• 44:45
  And I think I mean, I remember when we were cooks, we'd like
• 44:49
  quiz each other all the time. Like what is matignon?
• 44:51
  What is this, you know, tell us the five mother sauces.
• 44:53
  It was like constant, like breakdown a Chantilly.
• 44:57
  Can you use powdered sugar? Can you have to use granulated?
• 45:00
  And also because, like, it's not even if your place had recipes,
• 45:05
  they would call for hollandaise, there wouldn't be a sub recipe
• 45:11
  for the mother sauce. It would just be whatever, you
• 45:14
  know what I mean? So like, what the hell?
• 45:17
  What is that? Like, I remember I had to look
• 45:18
  up what a Dutch oven was. Yeah, because of the recipe.
• 45:21
  I was making the soup and the recipe called for a Dutch oven.
• 45:23
  I didn't know what it was. And I was like, how?
• 45:25
  And there was nowhere to go. Like I had to like, keep calling
• 45:29
  people until I found like the food lovers companion.
• 45:33
  And it's crazy because you know that that food lover's companion
• 45:35
  was like, it is it is what we fucking base you were talking
• 45:40
  about The the the in the back. There was like the grid.
• 45:42
  Yeah, not the grid, but like the the there was bring down the.
• 45:45
  Range measurement, conversion, smoke points, cuts of meat, like
• 45:49
  all that stuff. And I was talking to, I hired a,
• 45:52
  my, my new chef for the company I'm working with now.
• 45:55
  He's younger. And I was telling him how
• 45:57
  reliant I was on the food lovers companion.
• 45:59
  He was like, oh, me too. You're not that old.
• 46:01
  I was like, no, but you don't understand.
• 46:02
  Like there was no, I was known not having it.
• 46:07
  It was like having your phone. My chef would tell me something
• 46:10
  and it would just be like yes chef if.
• 46:11
  You don't know if it'll. Walk in and go look it up
• 46:14
  otherwise. And then the same thing when we
• 46:16
  were talking about having recipes passed down from people
• 46:21
  like professionals or craftspeople that did it from
• 46:23
  one person to another. I have all these notes.
• 46:27
  I remember just like standing on the line on Saute and writing
• 46:32
  down the steps of everything that went into the pan sauce,
• 46:35
  right? Like start with this, start with
• 46:37
  the, you know, next this, next this.
• 46:39
  And I would write it down on my on a post it or my little
• 46:43
  notepad. And that was my recipe.
• 46:46
  Like if there was no like referring back or being able to
• 46:49
  go ask, you know, like because they didn't want to hear from
• 46:52
  me. Not the not the OG union cooks
• 46:56
  at the hotel, you know they didn't they didn't care and.
• 46:58
  It's funny because back in the day, you know I had one of these
• 47:00
  recipe books I found like an old notebook of mine with.
• 47:04
  It wasn't even a recipe, it was just method to pick up on the
• 47:06
  saute, add garlic, add. Shallots D plays you.
• 47:09
  Know so on and so forth but a lot of times and I'm you know I
• 47:13
  talked to chefs all day you're talking about Gabe earlier
• 47:15
  sending you a recipe for tortillas right Yeah.
• 47:19
  And I, and I think what people miss is that there's no secrets,
• 47:24
  like where everyone's sharing recipes all the time.
• 47:26
  Totally. And then you don't know where
• 47:28
  they came from. And you might be in a restaurant
• 47:30
  five years later. Yeah.
• 47:31
  And then like, you've been making this recipe that was
• 47:33
  handed to you by one person, that was handed by another
• 47:35
  person by it. And then and then someone
• 47:37
  notices all that came from this cookbooks.
• 47:38
  Like, I didn't know. I never had that.
• 47:40
  Right, 100%. This was handed to me.
• 47:42
  Three or four times. Yeah, once it's out there as a,
• 47:45
  you know, in the in the public domain, yeah, it's like it's
• 47:48
  fair game at that point. Everyone's using it at their.
• 47:50
  Restaurants, I mean, there was a period of time and like the mid
• 47:53
  2000s where like the salmon cornet was everywhere with
• 47:55
  catering everywhere and, and whether it was like the actual
• 47:59
  recipe or, or whatever, they were everywhere.
• 48:03
  And then like you can buy the cornets and sometimes they're
• 48:06
  sweet. There'd be like some shitty
• 48:08
  tartar in this sweet like ice cream cone thing.
• 48:12
  And like these younger cooks would have no idea where it was
• 48:15
  from. And you, you, you know, like
• 48:18
  they think they created something or whatever.
• 48:20
  And like, you know, the other thing I had AI had kind of a,
• 48:25
  an, a, an epiphany moment when I went, I moved to New York City
• 48:29
  in 2010 and I'd been going there for work a bunch.
• 48:34
  But when I moved there in 2010, you know, I grew up listening to
• 48:39
  hip hop and punk rock. Hip hop 1st and then and then I
• 48:42
  got into punk rock because the scenes were.
• 48:45
  Very Bay Area hip hop. Yeah, no, no, no.
• 48:47
  I was East Coast hip hop. I listened to the Cole Crush
• 48:49
  brothers first, Cole Crush to Run DMC and then and I actually,
• 48:53
  I hated Bay Area hip hop. But now, you know, it's like
• 48:58
  it's my DNA. So now it's just like my
• 49:00
  childhood. So now I listen to everything.
• 49:01
  But like for years I hated, I hated West Coast rap at all.
• 49:05
  So it was all New York. But so when I went to New York,
• 49:08
  from food to music, rap, punk rock, food, it was like a museum
• 49:14
  to me. Like New York was just like, it
• 49:16
  was like Mecca, you know, like every, every street I drove
• 49:20
  past, I either had some association with food or a hip
• 49:23
  hop lyric or like something from the Beastie Boys or punk rock or
• 49:27
  or whatever. And I started going to all the
• 49:31
  restaurants that I had only read about, like in Gourmet magazine
• 49:36
  or whatever. Seen pictures because I don't
• 49:37
  read really. So the all the pictures that I
• 49:39
  saw I was going to look for. But I went to and I used to have
• 49:44
  like this progressive brunch that I used to bring people on
• 49:47
  when they'd come to visit. There's a place called Mac Bar
• 49:50
  that just served macaroni and cheese like out of this little
• 49:52
  window. And they like have the coolest
• 49:54
  merch and like they served the macaroni and cheese.
• 49:57
  I'm like this yellow half. It looked like a piece of
• 50:01
  macaroni, right? Yeah, OK.
• 50:02
  It was the coolest branding. Food was mid, but it was like
• 50:06
  kind of a a must do. So we'd go to Mac bar donut
• 50:10
  plant and then WD-50 and we'd get the eggs Benedict or like
• 50:14
  the eggs quarantine at WD-50. And I had like this love, hate
• 50:18
  relationship with the, the, you know this.
• 50:26
  Like the molecular movement? Yeah, the molecular movement.
• 50:28
  But like I went to a convert, I we had AI went to a talk with
• 50:32
  Wiley and somebody was asking him about molecular gastronomy
• 50:35
  back in the day and he like took offense to it.
• 50:39
  Like he was like, what is molecular gastronomy?
• 50:41
  And so I still haven't really come up with that answer.
• 50:44
  So I hesitate to call it the molecular movement, but I had
• 50:46
  like this, I was so impressed with like the fried hollandaise
• 50:52
  and like just the approach and making that dish and, and I went
• 50:56
  there like probably once a week to have it.
• 50:58
  It was fantastic. And but like I didn't know how
• 51:04
  he made it and I would always just try to figure stuff out.
• 51:08
  And then that same it was, I don't know if it was at the
• 51:11
  same. Well, it was around the same
• 51:13
  time period that it was Restaurant Week and I went to,
• 51:16
  while I'm trying to come to grips with my feeling about like
• 51:21
  fried hollandaise and, and, you know, things that are done so
• 51:25
  well, but from a different standpoint of craftsmanship,
• 51:29
  right. I went to Nougatine by John
• 51:33
  George for Restaurant Week and my wife and I never stuck to
• 51:36
  Restaurant Week menus. We always got all the
• 51:39
  supplements and ended up paying $1,000,000.
• 51:40
  And even though we went there for the $40 Restaurant Week
• 51:43
  menu, we just, everything was, yeah, we'll take the upgrade.
• 51:47
  But we went to Nougatine and I stuck to the the menu and it was
• 51:53
  a roasted chicken breast with chicken juice, mashed potatoes
• 51:57
  and green beans. And it was like still one of the
• 52:00
  most memorable meals that I've had in New York.
• 52:02
  And it was like because. Because it was executed, it was
• 52:05
  just. Perfect like the chicken was
• 52:08
  perfect It was moist where it was supposed to be moist.
• 52:10
  The skin was crispy mashed potatoes were velvety.
• 52:13
  The, the chicken chew was super rich and the green beans were
• 52:18
  perfect. And it was just simple.
• 52:20
  And I, I thought to myself, and I wrote it down like the
• 52:26
  difference between the two approaches is like one of the
• 52:31
  way I put it was like, you know, like a Willy Wonka is amazing,
• 52:36
  but he's not really a chef, you know, like the, the John George
• 52:41
  aspect of it. And this is nothing to take away
• 52:45
  or give too much credit to either one of the approaches,
• 52:49
  but I am way more into just the classic cooking approach.
• 52:59
  But I also found that you can't be well-rounded or talk shit
• 53:06
  about something unless you have a full understanding of how to
• 53:08
  do it. Because then it looks like
• 53:09
  you're a quitter or it looks like you're, you know, just
• 53:12
  talking shit from the outside. And it's really easy to hate
• 53:16
  when you don't know how to do something, you know what I mean?
• 53:18
  And. And Wiley is the Jean Schwarz
• 53:20
  guy. Right, right.
• 53:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you know, like the other
• 53:25
  thing was like I did an event, I do a lot of catering and event
• 53:30
  production as well. And I did an event with somebody
• 53:33
  and they were doing encapsulated that some sort of encapsulation
• 53:39
  and they were doing encapsulated ranch or and I think the same.
• 53:44
  Like reverse verification? Yeah.
• 53:47
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like, you know,
• 53:50
  there's nothing impressive about because you.
• 53:57
  Don't want to. You don't want to encapsulate a
• 53:59
  ranch on your slicer. Pizza Yeah no, I mean that does
• 54:01
  sound kind of sound bomb or at least at least efficient but the
• 54:07
  you know the the they've the people that created the sodium
• 54:14
  alginate calcium citrate situation that is genius but you
• 54:20
  got to leave it with them you know what I mean?
• 54:22
  Like or understand it and let it propel you to coming up with the
• 54:27
  next thing. But like the more you maybe it's
• 54:34
  not so much that you can't use it because it's not like I don't
• 54:37
  encapsulate stuff, but the it's more of respecting it and and
• 54:43
  treating it like, you know. Don't treat it like a joke.
• 54:47
  Yeah, don't treat it like a joke.
• 54:48
  And just because they made this thing, I mean, just think about
• 54:51
  what it takes to come up with those two things.
• 54:53
  I mean, that's not cooking. That's just brilliance and
• 54:57
  science. Like, I, it's crazy to me.
• 54:59
  Like I don't understand that aspect of things.
• 55:03
  But now that they've done it, it's really easy.
• 55:06
  Like now that I I mean. Like the person who invented the
• 55:09
  wheel. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:11
  Yeah, I think my analogy is just because you've learned how to
• 55:14
  play Stairway to Heaven doesn't mean you wrote it right, Right.
• 55:18
  Exactly. Yeah, just cuz you know how to
• 55:20
  play it soft. Yeah, you're not gonna go do
• 55:22
  open mics just playing Stairway to Heaven, Yeah.
• 55:25
  Just just because, just because you know the fucking joke that
• 55:27
  you saw on the stand up special and you're repeating it?
• 55:29
  Yeah, yeah. Isn't being you're funny?
• 55:30
  Yeah, 100. Percent right there.
• 55:32
  There's a certain, there's a certain art to it and a lot of
• 55:34
  respect to those guys that were doing that movement of, you
• 55:38
  know, we have to classify it as molecular because I don't know
• 55:40
  what else to call it. So for the audience listening
• 55:42
  like, hey, we're calling it this.
• 55:43
  Yeah. If if you have a better word,
• 55:45
  tell me. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:46
  But a lot of chefs that were doing that and I, and I was one
• 55:49
  of them. I was one of those chefs that I
• 55:50
  was, I was an early adopter of that style of food when I was in
• 55:53
  California and I was doing that and I found it fascinating.
• 55:56
  But I'll never forget when I came face to face with him.
• 55:59
  This was the reality that I faced is I remember, I don't
• 56:02
  know what I was doing. It was a mango sphere or
• 56:04
  something. It was one of these spheres
• 56:05
  reverse verification things. I remember I tasted I was like
• 56:08
  but it just doesn't taste good. Yeah, yeah.
• 56:10
  Right, right, right. Yeah, like it was like it tastes
• 56:11
  like mango with a little bit of you're.
• 56:13
  Doing it for the sake of doing it.
• 56:14
  Right. It's like, I wanted it to be
• 56:15
  interesting. I wanted to be provocative and
• 56:18
  show people things that they've never seen before.
• 56:20
  But it's like but it doesn't. It tastes as good as this.
• 56:23
  Right. And it's in my opinion.
• 56:25
  The thing about that, that was the thing about the WD-50
• 56:30
  Hollandaise, it was perfect. It tasted perfect, like, and,
• 56:36
  and it blew me away because again, I wasn't familiar enough
• 56:39
  with the technique when I used to go there and I used to try to
• 56:42
  figure out how they did it all the time, like, oh God, what do
• 56:45
  you put in that? Like how to hold its form when
• 56:48
  you fry it. Like I don't, I don't
• 56:50
  understand. And I would sit there, I would
• 56:51
  eat it every week and and you know, I've never sang with
• 56:55
  Wiley. I've never had more than like 2
• 56:57
  words conversation with him. And I would just sit there and
• 57:00
  try to understand it. And then like a drop of the
• 57:04
  hollandaise fell on my table like while I was eating and like
• 57:08
  when it gets cold it solidifies and I could feel it.
• 57:10
  It was like a dip and dot sort of thing.
• 57:12
  And I was like, huh, Well, now, I mean, now I understand it.
• 57:15
  But like, I think with places like WD-50, for example, and the
• 57:19
  stuff that, you know, all those guys that I respect the hell out
• 57:22
  of do. Yeah, The flavor is first, Yeah.
• 57:25
  And while he's a. Pioneer and now he's doing
• 57:26
  pizza. That's.
• 57:27
  That's wild. Doughnuts or whatever.
• 57:29
  Yeah, like the guy knows how to cook.
• 57:31
  Like I think people forget like they they put him into this box
• 57:34
  of like being this, but it's like the dude, this is a fucking
• 57:37
  gangster in the kitchen regard. Like in any realm.
• 57:40
  Yeah, in any realm. Like you think you can't saute a
• 57:42
  fucking? Chicken.
• 57:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think. You can't roast a chicken too.
• 57:45
  Or make a fucking espanol. I think that's probably why I
• 57:47
  was getting annoyed at the talk that I was listening to.
• 57:50
  Yeah, so you do some work with Shaka Pen.
• 57:53
  Yes. How does that come?
• 57:54
  Come to be, By the way, also a fucking legend.
• 57:56
  One of the best books ever, right?
• 57:58
  La Technique, LA, I thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:00
  I mean, I was lucky enough the, the, the one of my business
• 58:07
  partners and former head of my company obviously took a big
• 58:13
  interest in the culinary arts and, and our discipline.
• 58:17
  And I found out about Jacques de Panne Foundation at their first
• 58:23
  gala and we went and we were promoting our restaurant at the
• 58:28
  time, Butcher Town Grocery. And we got to meet Jacques, got
• 58:35
  to meet the family. And we just kind of, I don't
• 58:39
  know if it was like the first time that we went, but my wife
• 58:45
  and I kind of became fast friends with his son-in-law,
• 58:49
  Raleigh and Claudine, his daughter.
• 58:52
  And so, and we've been friends, You know, we've done a bunch of
• 58:56
  stuff since like we went to the Derby together, Kentucky Derby,
• 58:59
  all kinds of stuff. And I've been lucky enough to to
• 59:03
  be able to cook for Jacques at like the Greenwich Food and Wine
• 59:06
  Festival, and he came to the opening of our senior living
• 59:10
  restaurant and Hudson Yards and all kinds of really cool stuff
• 59:17
  has happened as a result of the JPF.
• 59:20
  And I'm lucky enough now that they trust me to kind of be an
• 59:23
  ambassador for them. So like for 90 for 90 Jacques
• 59:27
  birthday initiative that they did last year, they had 90
• 59:33
  cooking events and 90 different venues in honor of Jacques 90th
• 59:36
  birthday. So Jacques is 90 and still like,
• 59:40
  he still does demos like his. His hands are ridiculous.
• 59:45
  PBS series back in the day when when he would like teach you how
• 59:48
  to debone a chicken for Ballantine or the French and all
• 59:51
  he's just he's fucking amazing like he's.
• 59:54
  It's 1. Of the the greats, he's one of
• 59:57
  the greats. He's in his own category.
• 59:58
  Yeah, yeah. The coolest thing about being
• 1:00:00
  around, being able to be at those events is seeing Danielle,
• 1:00:09
  John George, Danny Meyer, anybody, anybody who who you can
• 1:00:15
  think of the coolest people, the people that would be the coolest
• 1:00:19
  people in any room are all. Enamored was Jacques like
• 1:00:24
  there's no he is the most respected person that I've ever
• 1:00:28
  seen in the hospitality industry and having to have had the
• 1:00:33
  opportunity to hang out with him like personally and then you
• 1:00:37
  know, like do stuff outside of events and stuff with him it he
• 1:00:42
  is the most genuine real person that I've ever been around from.
• 1:00:48
  I've never met him. It's so crazy, and it's almost
• 1:00:53
  like a negative thing because we'll sit having a conversation
• 1:00:58
  and all of a sudden we're equals in my mind because the
• 1:01:02
  conversation is so normal and chill.
• 1:01:05
  And I'm trying to relate. He was telling me about his
• 1:01:08
  garden at one point that he was taken care of.
• 1:01:10
  And I was like, yeah, would you grow?
• 1:01:11
  I had this. Whatever.
• 1:01:12
  And he was like, no, this wasn't mine.
• 1:01:13
  This is Michelle Obama's like at the White House.
• 1:01:18
  And I was like, yeah, we are not alike, but isn't.
• 1:01:22
  That so cool that like everyone sees Jacques, then you see him
• 1:01:27
  as like up here and and that's probably even better like that.
• 1:01:32
  And I'll, you know, I have a very similar situation where
• 1:01:35
  Thomas Keller sat down. I was at a table and was like
• 1:01:39
  Matthew Peters, Philip Tessier, myself, Lauren Peters, Phil
• 1:01:43
  Tessier's wife. And then Thomas came and sat
• 1:01:46
  down with us and talking and it was like one of the best moments
• 1:01:50
  I've ever had because he just was normal.
• 1:01:55
  Like, he wasn't Thomas Keller. He was just, yeah, he was just
• 1:01:58
  talking. We were just having a
• 1:01:59
  conversation about whatever we happen to be talking about.
• 1:02:01
  And I remember thinking to myself at that moment, it was it
• 1:02:04
  was a very beautiful moment. I was like, you know what?
• 1:02:08
  To me, seeing him normal is all is almost better than seeing
• 1:02:13
  Thomas Kelly, if that makes sense.
• 1:02:15
  And while you're saying that, though, that I just kind of had
• 1:02:17
  this light go off like, you know, it's the other really cool
• 1:02:21
  thing about our industry and what we do because you can just
• 1:02:26
  because we all just cook, like ultimately it's just cooking.
• 1:02:31
  And like to watch, like to see Jacques just move around like a
• 1:02:36
  house party, you know, like. And.
• 1:02:38
  And Raleigh, his son-in-law tells me that one of the best
• 1:02:42
  meals, forgive me if I'm quoting this wrong, Raleigh, but one of
• 1:02:46
  his best meals that he had was after they cooked a bunch of
• 1:02:50
  chickens for a a dinner party. Jacques took the carcasses and
• 1:02:55
  roasted them again. And they ate those as their
• 1:02:58
  dinner the next night. Wow.
• 1:02:59
  And Raleigh was like, it was like the best thing that I ever
• 1:03:02
  had. How cool is that?
• 1:03:02
  And And it's like, it's just you.
• 1:03:05
  You demystify. Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  Everything. And it's he he likes to paint,
• 1:03:09
  right? Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  So I have one of his one of his paintings that he, he did
• 1:03:15
  lithograph. Yeah.
• 1:03:17
  Yung Yun, who's part of Mentor BKB, gave it to me as a gift and
• 1:03:21
  it's like one of my prized possessions on my wall in my
• 1:03:23
  office. We have we have AI have it in my
• 1:03:26
  house now, but we we got my my buddy bought the one of the
• 1:03:32
  first Roosters the and it's this big.
• 1:03:35
  It's it's huge. And we had it hanging over the
• 1:03:38
  entrance of our kitchen at the restaurant.
• 1:03:41
  So like everybody had to pass by Jacques.
• 1:03:43
  And then when we open this place in Hudson Yards, it was behind
• 1:03:47
  the the major D stand. So like everybody, you had to
• 1:03:50
  pay homage to to Jacques every time you.
• 1:03:53
  Walk. If Jacques is ever down here in
• 1:03:54
  Texas, please invite me to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd love to
• 1:03:57
  meet. He's well the big gala is April
• 1:03:59
  9th at Chelsea Piers. Yeah in in New York.
• 1:04:02
  I, I, I, I did a bourbon experience, the best of Kentucky
• 1:04:11
  experience for an auction item for the JPF that they're going
• 1:04:15
  to be auctioning off. And I'm kind of the I'm part of
• 1:04:19
  the package as your your bourbon concierge phone a friend.
• 1:04:22
  Yeah, what's up with the bourbon?
• 1:04:23
  With the bourbon here. So having lived in Kentucky, my
• 1:04:27
  company, my senior living company, Atria and Coterie that
• 1:04:31
  I got permission to say they Adrian Coterie, that they're
• 1:04:35
  based in Louisville, KY. And so I lived there.
• 1:04:40
  I worked there for like 10 years, but actually, sorry for
• 1:04:45
  20 years, but I actually lived there for a little over 8 and we
• 1:04:49
  had a we have a restaurant there that closed and COVID, but the
• 1:04:53
  bakery is still open, Butchertown Grocery bakery.
• 1:04:56
  But I got kind of my indoctrination to bourbon with
• 1:05:00
  opening the restaurant. I see it.
• 1:05:01
  Yeah, yeah, that's for you. You can open that up.
• 1:05:04
  Thank you and people. Can see it on the camera.
• 1:05:06
  We've done we've done lots of single barrels.
• 1:05:09
  So I got to learn a lot about Kentucky and Kentucky bourbon
• 1:05:12
  and it's actually the only thing that I drink now.
• 1:05:15
  When I do, it's only bourbon and now as.
• 1:05:18
  Well, by the way, these days. Well, there you go.
• 1:05:20
  Yeah. And now I'm working for this
• 1:05:22
  company called Urban Still House and Horse Soldier Bourbon.
• 1:05:27
  So that this thing I tried to I was trying to kind of slow down
• 1:05:32
  and. People find it everywhere.
• 1:05:34
  Yeah, that's distributed everywhere.
• 1:05:37
  Horse Soldier bourbon is distributed everywhere and we
• 1:05:40
  take it out, take it out, look at the bottle because of the
• 1:05:42
  bottle is kind of cool. So this, the story about this,
• 1:05:47
  this is started, the bourbon is started by the group of Green
• 1:05:51
  Berets that went to Afghanistan after 911.
• 1:05:54
  And this is not them kind of being sponsored and figureheads
• 1:06:00
  for a bourbon company. This is them, they make it.
• 1:06:03
  They they came back. The bottle is the, is the shape
• 1:06:06
  of a canteen and it fits in a canteen holder.
• 1:06:09
  Yeah. And there's some really cool
• 1:06:13
  stories. If you you can Google it to look
• 1:06:16
  up Horse Soldier Bourbon, I will.
• 1:06:18
  And but the, the bottle itself, it's formed like all bottles are
• 1:06:26
  formed in these little bottle forms that are made of steel.
• 1:06:30
  And this one is formed with steel from the World Trade
• 1:06:34
  Center. And so every bottle touches a
• 1:06:37
  piece of the fallen World Trade Center.
• 1:06:40
  And, and this it's, I'm lucky enough to be connected with
• 1:06:44
  them. And we're kind of back full
• 1:06:45
  circle with the starting on an aircraft carrier and being a
• 1:06:49
  military cook and then learn bourbon.
• 1:06:51
  And now I'm back home in Florida and yeah, but I think this is
• 1:06:56
  one of my favorite ones. This is the the straight.
• 1:06:59
  I think I know, I think I know what I'm having for dinner.
• 1:07:01
  Today, that's what's. Up chef when we start wrapping
• 1:07:05
  up I I usually have a couple of questions that I like to ask.
• 1:07:08
  So the first one I'm going to ask you is if you have a a a
• 1:07:11
  kitchen salt that you use like your all-purpose kitchen salt
• 1:07:14
  for everything. Yes.
• 1:07:15
  Which one do you use? I think all well, my pass, I was
• 1:07:21
  just talking with my chef about this the other day.
• 1:07:24
  My pass has plain mold and smoke molding and black mold and it's
• 1:07:32
  I don't think the black is actually molding, but it's a
• 1:07:35
  black crystal salt. I use all those for finishing
• 1:07:39
  and then the kitchen is just only.
• 1:07:40
  Kosher like diamond crystal, Diamond crystal, Diamond
• 1:07:43
  crystal, yeah, yes. And do you have like a go to
• 1:07:46
  finishing acid? Like is it lemon?
• 1:07:48
  Is it vinegar? Is it something else?
• 1:07:51
  Yeah, for I am big into zest, yeah.
• 1:07:55
  And so also on my past, I have a bowl of citrus OK, and so and I
• 1:08:00
  have a just. Rasp it really quick.
• 1:08:01
  Yes yeah but I have AI always have an all-purpose vinaigrette
• 1:08:06
  that is just citrus and olive oil and salt pepper, not
• 1:08:10
  emulsified. I just use that so everything
• 1:08:12
  gets a hint of flavor. Yeah, a specific citrus or just
• 1:08:17
  any? Whatever's good, I, I vacillate
• 1:08:21
  like and usually I'll try to combine all three like lemon,
• 1:08:25
  orange and lime because I like, I like the real acidity of the
• 1:08:30
  lemon, I like the sweetness of the orange and I like the the
• 1:08:33
  limeyness of the lime. And do you do you have like a
• 1:08:37
  specific go to olive oil that you use for finishing?
• 1:08:40
  Moanin I like. And then The funny thing is I
• 1:08:43
  have a well, my, one of my, my development chef Ben has a house
• 1:08:54
  in Greece and, and he's got a little olive orchard and they,
• 1:08:57
  he'll bring me back olive oil like once a year.
• 1:09:01
  And so that, that's for the house.
• 1:09:03
  But then at work, yeah, it's I don't really have one particular
• 1:09:10
  one. I'm always into olive oil and
• 1:09:14
  finishing oils. If you had advice to give to a
• 1:09:17
  young chef, a young cook that's just starting out in their
• 1:09:19
  career, and I'm asking this specifically because you've
• 1:09:21
  worked in so many different styles of kitchens, Yep.
• 1:09:25
  Where would you advise people to kind of start making their
• 1:09:29
  bones? If if it was just a general
• 1:09:31
  person that says I don't know where I'm going.
• 1:09:33
  For me, but this is like my legit answer because I just tell
• 1:09:37
  people to go cook anywhere, like go cook in a restaurant,
• 1:09:42
  preferably not fast food, not there is anything wrong with
• 1:09:45
  fast food. And like I, I could go down how
• 1:09:47
  many rabbit holes that you made me think of with being recruited
• 1:09:51
  by Taco Bell or I'm like just, you know, there is something to
• 1:09:56
  be said for all of the studies and efficiencies that fast food
• 1:10:01
  places have made. And I geeked out on that.
• 1:10:04
  I developed a commissary and and I do all kinds of Labor studies
• 1:10:09
  and it's that I could geek out on that as much as I could geek
• 1:10:12
  out on flavors, but just cook. Go somewhere where you actually
• 1:10:17
  have to use a pan, actually have to use a flat top and burn
• 1:10:21
  yourself and cut yourself and figure out if it's you like the
• 1:10:24
  you know, I always have. My other saying is, you know,
• 1:10:28
  the the stove is the same whatever restaurant you go to.
• 1:10:33
  Like the stove with the French Laundry is the same as the one
• 1:10:36
  that Outback Steakhouse. And I'm like maybe a little bit
• 1:10:39
  different Btus and a fancier brand, but it does the same
• 1:10:43
  thing. Yeah.
• 1:10:45
  And and Jacques, back to Jacques le Pan, they have a shirt.
• 1:10:49
  He's got a saying, and I have the the shirt that says that
• 1:10:52
  we're all equals in the eyes and stuff.
• 1:10:54
  And so if, if you can, you can. If you can't, you can't.
• 1:10:58
  Right. I love that.
• 1:10:59
  And if you had your Mount Rushmore 4 chefs that should be
• 1:11:02
  on there, who are they? That's a tough one.
• 1:11:07
  Well, obviously, Ron Siegel how that we've been talking about
• 1:11:09
  him, Jacques Thomas and oh, there's so many.
• 1:11:23
  I'm just going to go Jose Andres.
• 1:11:26
  There you go, chef. Where can people find you if
• 1:11:28
  they want to follow you on social media, If they want to
• 1:11:30
  eat your food, If they want to drink some whiskey, Where?
• 1:11:33
  Where could they? Where could they follow?
• 1:11:35
  Along so you follow me at on Instagram, I'm hand that feeds
• 1:11:42
  my bakery is or the bakery that I'm partners with shout out
• 1:11:46
  Amanda Butchertown grocery bakery online and then the
• 1:11:53
  company that I'm working with now is horse soldier bourbon and
• 1:11:56
  urban still house urban still house in Saint Pete, Florida and
• 1:12:00
  one in Somerset, KY, soon to be more.
• 1:12:02
  Awesome, this was fun. Let's go get some Not a Damn
• 1:12:04
  Chance burger. Yeah, Yeah, let's do it.
• 1:12:06
  All right. Thank you.
• 1:12:07
  Cheers. All right, that's the show.
• 1:12:09
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• 1:12:11
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• 1:12:14
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• 1:12:17
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• 1:12:20
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• 1:12:21
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