Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / The Hardest Part About Being a Chef—And Why No One Talks About It – Clip from Say Grace

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The Hardest Part About Being a Chef—And Why No One Talks About It – Clip from Say Grace · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is a special episode.
• 0:02
  I was recently on the Save Grace podcast with Steve Palmer,
• 0:06
  legendary restauranteur. I wanted to share a little bit
• 0:09
  of the episode. If you want to listen to the
• 0:11
  full podcast, make sure you go to the Save Grace podcast and
• 0:14
  find my episode. It's available anywhere you
• 0:17
  listen to podcasts. Enjoy.
• 0:19
  Hi. I'm Steve Palmer and I'm very
• 0:21
  excited to welcome chef, author, and podcast host Andre De Natera
• 0:25
  to save Grace Today. Based in Austin, TX, Andre has
• 0:29
  gained a wealth of knowledge working in hospitality working
• 0:33
  in luxury hotels and high end restaurants.
• 0:36
  With his 27 year culinary career, he's cooked along
• 0:41
  Michelin starred chefs, renowned culinary experts and most
• 0:46
  recently was the culinary director of the Fairmont Austin,
• 0:50
  one of the world's largest 4 star hotels.
• 0:53
  Here he oversaw an impressive culinary program including the
• 0:58
  esteemed 4 star restaurant Garrison.
• 1:01
  Today, Andre has dedicated himself to mentoring young chefs
• 1:05
  and sharing his industry knowledge through multiple
• 1:08
  platforms. He is the current host of the
• 1:11
  Chef's PSA podcast and former host of Run the Past Podcast.
• 1:17
  He has developed an online course titled Leading Like an
• 1:21
  Executive Chef and is the author of a series of books that
• 1:24
  combine humor, practical advice for novice chefs, cooks, guiding
• 1:29
  them through the intricacies of the kitchen.
• 1:33
  Andre is also involved in Organism like the James Beard
• 1:36
  Foundation, awards mentor bTB, KB, Texas Food and Wine
• 1:42
  Alliance, and the Epicurean World Master Chef Society.
• 1:47
  His passion and experience are inspirational for leaders of all
• 1:52
  levels within hospitality. Welcome, Andre to say grace.
• 1:56
  Thank you. And you just spoke at our
• 1:59
  leadership conference yesterday and you were awesome.
• 2:02
  Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, man.
• 2:04
  Yeah, it was, it was a good group.
• 2:05
  I'll I'll tell you that when I got there.
• 2:09
  It's like, not only is it a good group, but it's such a young,
• 2:13
  vibrant group of switched on chefs, you know, because that's
• 2:17
  mostly who I was talking to. But the whole room was just
• 2:19
  engaged and sharp and I was energized when I left.
• 2:23
  I was like, and you know what was interesting?
• 2:24
  As soon as I left, I was like, I want to make friends with these
• 2:26
  people. They're really cool.
• 2:29
  We, we love making friends. Listen, Kevin Bame from Boca
• 2:33
  restaurant group who spoke the day before and Will Gedera are
• 2:37
  both friends of mine because I literally walked up and said,
• 2:40
  would you be my friend? And they're both such great
• 2:43
  humans that they, that they, that they said yes.
• 2:47
  Wow, so much to talk about. We'll start.
• 2:50
  We'll we'll kind of go chronologically.
• 2:52
  What? What made you want to be a chef?
• 2:55
  Well, here's an interesting story is I didn't want to be a
• 2:58
  chef. I was a bit of a knucklehead
• 3:00
  growing up. And me too.
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  You know, my parents were like, what are you going to do with
• 3:04
  yourself? And I, I don't know, like I, I
• 3:07
  didn't have any ambition. I you know, I'd like, wanted to
• 3:10
  honestly, what I wanted to do is I wanted to be a fighter.
• 3:12
  I wanted to be a boxer or an MMA fighter.
• 3:13
  That that was my passion. Early days of UFC is like UFC1I
• 3:17
  like that's what I want to do. But I couldn't explain that to
• 3:20
  my parents. Like what do you want to do with
• 3:21
  yourself? I want to be the next Mike
• 3:22
  Tyson. That's what I want to be.
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  And I was hanging out with one of my friends, and he says, you
• 3:28
  know, talking about girls like, like young men do.
• 3:32
  And he says, you know who girls like?
• 3:33
  I said, what do girls like? And he's like, they like chefs.
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  I said I'm going to be a chef. They do like chefs.
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  They like chefs. I, I told my mom and dad and
• 3:41
  they said, what do you want to do?
• 3:42
  And I was, I was with, you know, my girlfriend at the time.
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  And I said, I want to go to culinary school.
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  I'm sorry, I want to go to chef school.
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  And this guy was there that had a crush on my girlfriend at the
• 3:53
  time. And he says you're going to go
• 3:56
  to culinary school. I said what's culinary school?
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  And he started laughing at me and saying he's I said it's chef
• 4:03
  school. And you know, he's like this guy
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  doesn't even know what culinary school is making fun.
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  He stole my girlfriend by the way.
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  True story. Wow, 'cause he knew what
• 4:10
  culinary school? He knew what it was I.
• 4:12
  Did he knew what? It was dumb punk kid, but when I
• 4:14
  got into it, because I played sports and whatnot, I was into
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  the, the gym culture as a youth. You know, I, I boxed a lot and I
• 4:22
  realized that the kitchen culture was very similar to the
• 4:25
  atmosphere in the gym. Yes, chef, yes, coach.
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  You know, the coach is like the chef.
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  You know, the sous chefs are like the pro fighters, right?
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  You know, the line cooks are like the, the amateurs or, or
• 4:37
  the up and comers. And so I fit in really well with
• 4:40
  the kitchen culture and I, I was not afraid of hard work.
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  You know, I've been working since I was five years old and
• 4:47
  it just worked. So I was like, I like this.
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  I didn't really like cooking, but I liked the environment.
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  I got good at cooking being in the environment because I am
• 4:54
  creative and I like to like dig and how do I, how do I get
• 4:57
  better at this? I'm competitive and you've, if
• 5:00
  you put me in any environment long enough, I start slow
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  because I like to size, size it up like what's going on here.
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  But give me enough time and I'm ultra competitive.
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  Like, OK, now I understand the game.
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  Now I'm going to beat everybody. And so that's the way I was in
• 5:13
  the kitchen. Were you a saute guy?
• 5:17
  A grill guy. All of it.
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  All of it. OK, no, I I take that back.
• 5:22
  I was a saute guy, a pasta station guy.
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  Garbage. I love garbage.
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  I spent time in the pastry kitchen, banquet, catering.
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  I did not like the grill station.
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  I feel like it's kind of one or the other.
• 5:33
  You're a grill guy or you go down the everything else I was.
• 5:36
  I was more of a pot and pan guy. Yeah, I was a saucier.
• 5:39
  I the grill was like, it's not that I never worked the grill,
• 5:43
  right? I just hated when I worked the
• 5:45
  grill. Like those are the dark times in
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  my. I was a grill guy in my teens.
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  Not, not at the level that you played at, but yeah, I just, I
• 5:55
  just tired of getting yelled at and burned.
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  And, you know, it was, I was looking out in the dining room.
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  I'm like, they don't have shit all over their clothes and the
• 6:04
  pretty girls are out there. So yeah, same, same.
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  What was your first? What was the first time or where
• 6:11
  was the first time that you really knew?
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  Like I'm good at this and, and I want to, I, I think I can make a
• 6:20
  life out of this. It was, yeah, I was in.
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  I was working at an Italian restaurant in Denver, Co and it
• 6:28
  was, you know, fine dining back then.
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  And you know, when I think about the food back then, it's like
• 6:32
  fine dining. Best restaurant in the city.
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  Like it'd be a joke today. People would look.
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  And be like, that's the best restaurant in the city.
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  But back then, you know, food trends were different and
• 6:40
  cooking was different, but it was the best Italian restaurant
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  in the city. And I was like the junior sous
• 6:47
  chef. And I realized, like, I could do
• 6:50
  this. I was so intimidated to work in
• 6:52
  some other restaurants with celebrity chefs.
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  And I remember talking to my chef, and I was like, hey,
• 6:58
  they're looking for a chef here, and this guy's a celebrity.
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  And do you think I could ever be a sous chef there?
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  He's like, yeah. He's like, that guy's food's not
• 7:05
  impressive. He's like, he's a celebrity, but
• 7:06
  his food's not good. I was like, yeah, I know.
• 7:08
  But he's making, like, green beans with bacon and, like, you
• 7:10
  know, stuff that I wasn't cooking at the time was like, so
• 7:12
  complicated. So I think that's when I started
• 7:17
  to build my confidence is, like, being around these chefs and
• 7:20
  people telling me, like, no, you're good.
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  Like, you know what you're doing.
• 7:23
  We're glad when you're at work. Like things run better.
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  My confidence wasn't there as a young chef, but my skills were
• 7:31
  there and I think eventually the confidence caught up.
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  And did you find yourself gravitating towards Italian
• 7:37
  food, or was it that was the first stop on many a culinary
• 7:42
  adventure? So the the adventure went like
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  this right out of so I went to school in the Pacific Northwest,
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  in Portland OR. So the early on it was like that
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  north. Pacific Northwest, you know.
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  Morels and fish. Salmon and morels everywhere,
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  right and then. I like that cuisine.
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  That's still. I still like that cuisine, by
• 8:00
  the way. It's really good.
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  And then I moved and it was Southwest cuisine was like all
• 8:07
  the rage. Dean Fairing, Mark.
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  Miller. Miller Yeah, these.
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  Guys are changing the game at the time and while they're
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  changing the game. I never worked for any of those
• 8:17
  gentlemen, but everyone was copying them.
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  So I worked for the people that were copying those guys.
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  So I was learning, you know, hey, we're going to do the
• 8:26
  blackened swordfish with the papaya salsa on top, right, And
• 8:30
  the, and the purple mashed potatoes.
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  It was like, you know, whatever was going on at that time.
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  So I went from like Pacific Northwest to that Southwest
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  cuisine. And then I went into the Italian
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  route and then the French and, you know, kind I, I stayed the
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  majority of my career cooking outside of Southwest cuisine.
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  And it was like European, like that's what everyone kind of
• 8:50
  cooked if you weren't like a, a really interesting chef like
• 8:53
  Dean Fairing. Or like you're cooking.
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  What we called continental, right?
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  That's right here. It was classically French
• 9:01
  trained chefs using low country southern shrimp and grits.
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  She crab soup, you know. But all they were all, you know,
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  they're all the generation older than me, so they were all French
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  strained. Yeah, everyone was back there.
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  Everyone was. And when you were, when you were
• 9:16
  coming up, what was the environment in the kitchen?
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  I came in at the tail end of the European chef.
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  OK, so I'm, I'm taking it back to like mid 90s and it's a crazy
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  story. I remember the hotel where I was
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  working at, you know, European chef, old school guy calls
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  everyone into a meeting, you know, all the cooks and and he
• 9:36
  says, you know, we have this new department.
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  It's crazy when I say this story because it's going to seem like
• 9:40
  this is so normal today. But back then it calls everyone
• 9:44
  in, all the cooks, all the sous chefs.
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  And he says we have this new department in the hotel called
• 9:48
  human resources. And he says the human resources
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  director wants to sit in on my meeting.
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  I don't know why. I don't know why she's here.
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  Like he was pissed off about it. Of course, old European guy,
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  right? And, you know, I was younger, I
• 9:59
  was like 18. So I kind of I kind of get it.
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  It's like, OK, you can't, I get why they're here.
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  He didn't. And he says first order of
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  business, everyone needs to work 8 hours, no overtime.
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  And at 8 hours, if you go over, I'm going to clock you out.
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  Right. So he's saying this in the
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  meeting to everybody, the human resources, the new, the new
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  girl's like, excuse me? And he's like, yeah, she's like,
• 10:22
  you can't say that. He's like, can't say what?
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  She's like. You can't say you're going to
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  take away their pay if they work more than 8 hours.
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  And he looked at her like she had two heads, Like, I don't
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  understand what you mean. And he's like, OK, And he kind
• 10:33
  of dismissed her. And then he kept going.
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  And he says, and I need to make sure we're we're controlling our
• 10:38
  labor. So if you don't take a lunch,
• 10:40
  I'm going to take it out anyway. And she says she interrupts him
• 10:42
  again. She says, excuse me, chef.
• 10:44
  He says, yes. And she says you can't say that.
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  And he says can't say what? She says you can't take their
• 10:49
  break out if they don't take their break.
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  And he and I'll never forget this.
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  He looked at her like confused. And he says, but I'm the chef
• 10:58
  and I, I'm watching this and I said, you're done.
• 11:01
  Like I realized that that. Right, right, right.
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  You don't get it, right? Like the world is changing and
• 11:06
  you didn't, right? And it was shortly after that
• 11:08
  that you started to see 'cause you remember what it was like.
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  Oh yeah, everyone was German, Austrian, French, like the Syria
• 11:15
  chefs. Serious chefs.
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  And the Americans were kind of like, oh, you're American.
• 11:18
  Right, right, right. Yeah, the.
• 11:19
  Syria chefs, if you watched any great chefs back then, great
• 11:22
  chefs of the world, whatever. Yeah, like European guys always.
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  And I, I remember watching that and this was like my 18 year old
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  minds prediction. I was like, these guys are done.
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  The Americans are coming in. That's interesting.
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  That's what the kitchen culture was like.
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  So I was coming in at the transition of watching the
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  European, the old European guard in American kitchens leave, and
• 11:42
  then the rise and emergence of the American chef.
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  I had a similar experience. I was working in a five star
• 11:48
  hotel and our chef was French and, and it was later.
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  So it was already happening. It was just like the chef in
• 11:56
  this hotel had not caught on yet and he would throw pots and pans
• 12:01
  and all these different things. And it was, I was like, let's
• 12:05
  see, how about 90 days he was gone, you know.
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  How do you think that informed early your behavior as a cook
• 12:16
  the way you approached cooking? You know it, It made me not want
• 12:22
  to disappoint them. I never took it as like, Oh my,
• 12:25
  like, like today there's a toxic chef, hostile environment.
• 12:29
  I never took it that way because.
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  Like, neither did I, by the way. Neither.
• 12:32
  I didn't. Those terms weren't around.
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  No, I, it's just like, I was fine with it.
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  And I know this sounds stupid, but like I said earlier, I was a
• 12:41
  boxer, I was an MMA fighter. I was not afraid that the chef
• 12:44
  was going to beat me up, right? Like he wasn't going to
• 12:46
  physically hurt me. He was just yelling at me.
• 12:48
  So it didn't bother me. I was like, but that's like the
• 12:52
  father figure and I didn't want a disappointment.
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  So so if he was yelling at me, it was more of like, what did I
• 12:57
  do? Why did I disappoint him?
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  How did I mess up? I always wanted to make dad
• 13:01
  proud, right, right. Chef.
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  And so I never took it as like, you know, they, they were being
• 13:07
  mean. It was like I screwed up.
• 13:08
  I always like, what did I do wrong for him to be upset with
• 13:11
  me? I don't know.
• 13:12
  Maybe I need to go to therapy over that.
• 13:14
  But like. I was just about.
• 13:16
  So tell me about your home life, Andre.
• 13:19
  But that's the way it was, is like, like, you know, I was
• 13:21
  like, it made me better. I didn't take it the wrong way.
• 13:23
  I took it as a learning opportunity.
• 13:24
  It's like, OK, what did I do wrong?
• 13:26
  Why did, why was he upset? And it like, I, I think back to
• 13:29
  this one time the chef threw the plate at me and I cooked a steak
• 13:34
  for his friend. So he invited a friend over and
• 13:36
  he was out there sitting down in the dining room talking to his
• 13:39
  friend, not eating, but sitting with his friend.
• 13:41
  And then the line is busy. You know, I got tickets
• 13:44
  everywhere and then all of a sudden I see the, the, the chef
• 13:47
  come back with a plate and he threw it at me and he's like,
• 13:50
  you know, it's fucking burned. And I did the old trick of like
• 13:54
  burned one side and flipped it over, hoping no one would
• 13:57
  notice. You know, a total hack move on
• 14:00
  my part. But when I, when, you know, I
• 14:02
  was young and I remember like I was my, my soul was just
• 14:06
  crushed. Like I, I not only did the chef
• 14:09
  catch my screw up, but I didn't know it was for his friend.
• 14:13
  And it's like, the chef used to really like me, like I was his
• 14:16
  son, you know what I mean? And now it's like, damn it.
• 14:18
  I really I. Really just, and I'll never
• 14:21
  forget that. Like that's the way I looked at
• 14:22
  it. Like some of those moments, I
• 14:24
  remember them and I don't ever remember like that they made me
• 14:30
  feel bad because of what they were saying.
• 14:32
  I remember those moments because I was embarrassed of my failure.
• 14:37
  Yeah, it's interesting. I know for me coming up and I
• 14:40
  especially when I was working at like 5 star and relay Chateau
• 14:44
  and these different, you know, that intensity, I always said,
• 14:50
  well, that's what you have to do to be the best, you know, like
• 14:53
  it just didn't. I'm like, well, the guy I'll
• 14:56
  never get this, this new guy on, on Garmische, he burnt the foie
• 15:01
  gras. He was, it was app station.
• 15:03
  It wasn't garmage, but he, we had a foie gras app and he burnt
• 15:07
  it and the chef shoved it in his mouth and screamed at him and
• 15:11
  said, I want you to, I want you to taste what burnt foie gras
• 15:14
  looks like and taste like. And I was like, well, yeah, he
• 15:19
  won't burn it again. That's a $19.00 appetizer.
• 15:22
  But you know, like it was not necessarily kind.
• 15:27
  Yeah, no, the, the methods were unconventional.
• 15:29
  And I worked for this one chef that would carry around a rock
• 15:32
  salt in his pocket. And so if food was in the
• 15:35
  window, he would run his finger like on the on the steak or
• 15:38
  whatever, he'd taste it. And if you forgot to season it,
• 15:39
  he would take the rock salt outreach over the pass and say
• 15:42
  your taste buds are not seasoned, season your taste
• 15:45
  buds. And I remember when that first
• 15:46
  happened to me, like I didn't season something.
• 15:49
  And I'm looking at the other guys on the line, like, is he
• 15:51
  serious? And they're like, and it's like
• 15:52
  has this rock across and I'm like, you know, sticking my
• 15:55
  tongue. I got, I got I don't know how
• 15:56
  many people have been licking that rock soft, but I don't
• 15:58
  forget that. Like I never forgot to not
• 16:01
  season after. That, yeah, yeah.
• 16:03
  And it produced a result, right? Yeah, it did.
• 16:06
  I think now like I looking back on it now I'm like OK maybe I
• 16:10
  would like there's other approaches to get the same.
• 16:13
  Result. But that's, that's just what it
• 16:17
  was. And, and like, it didn't bother
• 16:18
  me. And I talked to a lot of chefs
• 16:19
  about this. A lot of them say it didn't
• 16:21
  bother them. But much like that dinosaur I
• 16:24
  was talking about earlier that didn't get that times were
• 16:27
  changing, I think chefs need to understand that times have
• 16:30
  changed. Things have moved on.
• 16:31
  People don't behave that way. This is not the way they were
• 16:33
  brought up at home, right? So they're they don't expect it
• 16:36
  at work. And also people don't put up
• 16:38
  with it. No, they don't.
• 16:39
  No. One wants to work for an
• 16:40
  asshole, right? Right.
• 16:42
  And, and as that started to change, did that change the way
• 16:45
  you saw cooking or, or did it make you less, more or less
• 16:50
  inspired to be a chef?