Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Overcoming Adversity: Chef Eric LeVine's Story of Triumph Ep. 167

Transcript

Overcoming Adversity: Chef Eric LeVine's Story of Triumph Ep. 167 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chefs PSA. I'm your host, Andre Natera.
• 0:02
  Today's guest is Chef Eric Levine, Food Network chop
• 0:05
  champion, award-winning chef, author and cancer survivor.
• 0:09
  We talked about his wild journey in the kitchen, overcoming
• 0:11
  addiction and illness, why authenticity and storytelling
• 0:14
  matter now more than ever. This is a powerful episode.
• 0:17
  Stay tuned. Great restaurants don't always
• 0:36
  bring customers in. Great stories do, because in
• 0:39
  food, beverage and hospitality, what you sell is only part of
• 0:42
  the story. It's the why behind it, the
• 0:46
  authority you create and the experience that you've built.
• 0:52
  Market scale turns expertise into content that connects
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  podcasts, video series and industry education, not ads.
• 1:00
  Assets. Market scale has brought run the
• 1:05
  pass and how to manage like an executive chef to life real
• 1:08
  world examples of how great content leads the conversation.
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  Because attention is earned and the industry doesn't need more
• 1:15
  noise. It needs more leaders.
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  Chef, it's good to see you. It's.
• 1:25
  Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
• 1:26
  Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.
• 1:28
  I know there's long overdue, and we try to do it once.
• 1:30
  We had to reschedule. We're doing it now.
• 1:32
  We're finally here. We're finally here.
• 1:34
  We're finally in Austin. But you have such an interesting
• 1:37
  story about how you opened your first restaurant.
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  And because a lot of the people listening, you know, a lot of
• 1:41
  them want to open restaurants. A lot of them thinks it's easy.
• 1:44
  Oh yeah, and your story's so wild.
• 1:48
  Can you'd like take us back to Restaurant 1?
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  Sure. So that that was back in 93.
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  So I was a chef to cuisine with Marriott Marquis.
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  Way too young for the job, but. Which, by the way, for people
• 1:58
  that don't know, back in that that time, Marriott Marquis was
• 2:01
  like the place. It was a place.
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  Yeah, we did. We did like $69 million just in
• 2:05
  catering. Yeah, food and beverage and the
• 2:07
  rest of it, like another 100 million in all the restaurants.
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  So here I was 22 years old, the executive chef, Sigfried Webber,
• 2:13
  who is a mentor of mine. Like I went in for a sous chef
• 2:16
  position and I didn't think much of it.
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  Like, okay, sous chef position. He's like, no, no, come with me,
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  I need you in this position. And there's a chef de cuisine
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  position. So all the people that worked
• 2:25
  for me were 20 years older than me, wanted to test me.
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  I had a guy actually say, well, do you know how to draw butter?
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  And I'm like, sure. So I went over to the the board,
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  the white board. I just put a block of butter.
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  I go, there you go, fucker. That's how you drew up butter.
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  He's like, that's not what I mean.
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  Like I know what you mean, stupid.
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  What do you think? I wasn't going to, I'm good.
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  So I'm at the hotel. You said was this at Windows of
• 2:46
  the world? No, no, the this is the Mary
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  Marquis. What was the restaurant?
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  It was, well, there's multiple. They had that.
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  They had JW Steakhouse, they had the Encore, they had The View
• 2:55
  which was upstairs. That's the rotating 1 so.
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  That's what I'm. Thinking too.
• 2:59
  Yeah, yeah, That was wild. You know what?
• 3:02
  That experience alone made me a better caterer because that's
• 3:06
  what that that space was about. It was all electric.
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  You were 49 floors up. So if you didn't get your museum
• 3:11
  plus upstairs as you needed it and you had 200 people every
• 3:16
  hour and a half, you were done. Like you couldn't.
• 3:19
  I mean, the pastry shop had to send up plates already done.
• 3:23
  And you get all these those stack Jacks.
• 3:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1 tipped over. You were dead.
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  It was. You had to be really good at
• 3:28
  wrapping up with plastic. Yes, you had to be very careful.
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  So here I am. I'm 22 years old, chef to
• 3:33
  cuisine and and the steakhouse was my baby.
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  Yeah, this is the JW, Yeah. JW Steakhouse.
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  And it was, it was an amazing experience because being so
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  young and being responsible, I mean, I wound up getting the one
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  Spectator Award of excellence 2 years in a row.
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  And for a kid who never, you know, I was a, you know, line
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  dog and never really had the experience, but the hotel sent
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  me out to California for six weeks to do a train the trainer
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  thing and it was wonderful. I did Windows of the World with
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  Kevin Sorelli. That was amazing.
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  But I was a kid. But I got so absorbed into it
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  that the knowledge just hit. It just clicked.
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  I don't know why, it just did. And a year later, this customer
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  came in multiple times and he's like, hey, if we want to put a
• 4:15
  restaurant, let me know. And you know.
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  This is a customer. This is a customer at the hotel.
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  Comes in but hold. On I want to ask, were you out
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  there talking? To yeah, yeah.
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  So one of the things, one of the things that I truly enjoy and,
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  and I think it's a it's a great thing for customers is I always
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  go to the table and see how they're enjoying the dining
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  Smiths. I've done that my whole life
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  because I think it's a point you get feedback right away.
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  And back in those days, there was no real Yelp or there's no,
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  no of that stuff. And then they had a cell phone.
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  Social media was your. Friend now yeah, yeah.
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  So I just made it a point to talk to customers because that's
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  how you know what the experience is like, you know, and, and, and
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  a hotel, it's a major. They'll go to the you know,
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  they'll write their notes or whatever.
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  But I I always felt like the connection, you know, for a
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  customer to the chef. You know, I always like going to
• 4:59
  restaurants where I got to meet the chef.
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  Very rare back in the day, even sometimes today, you know, you
• 5:03
  very rarely see a chef coming out of the kitchen.
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  The mindsets changed a little bit.
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  I think people are more apt to talking to customers.
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  Some people don't want to do it because you just want to cook,
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  that's all. Leave me alone.
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  Don't bother me. I want to just cook.
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  But I met this guy and we talked and six months later, he's like,
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  what do you want to do? You want to do restaurant or
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  not? I'm like, sure, why the hell
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  not? So we wound up opening up in a
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  restaurant called Pleiades out in Jersey, New Jersey, and.
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  Like like the stars? Yes, well, that's exactly what
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  it was. His his wife was like the
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  stories I could tell. It's going to be in the book,
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  though, the stories I'm going to tell about that wild child.
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  So Pleiades is like the Seven Sisters of something and she but
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  I like the idea and we did it from scratch and it was a great,
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  great experience in doing that. But then you really find out at
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  a young age what people are the evil side of people.
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  So I get a call from the bank and he said, your partner just
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  came down here and just transferred all the money out of
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  the bank account. And I'm like, what?
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  I didn't prove that. So I went down to the bank,
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  showed me the letter. It was not my signature.
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  And he's like, oh, fuck. I'm like, yeah.
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  And like, now I don't know anything about business.
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  I didn't, I wasn't savvy about it.
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  I didn't understand that. Took the money, transferred it
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  all out to a bank account offshore.
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  So now I go up to in the area that he lived.
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  I went up to his big house, pulled up everything gone,
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  everything, No furniture, not even a light bulb in the window.
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  Like I'm like blown away. I'm like, holy shit, what do I
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  do? So I call my mentor Ziggy, who
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  is at the the marquee and I'm like, what do I do?
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  He's like, just don't panic, stay focused, don't do anything.
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  I got a kid coming like, you know, then all of a sudden, you
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  know, I took a couple of days and they shut it down because it
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  was like, you know, I had all this debt.
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  We had all this money out there. He wasn't paying the bills.
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  That was his part. So now, you know, we're close to
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  half a million in debt. We got liquor companies coming
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  at us and personal guarantees everything, you know, because as
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  a kid you're like outside a personal guarantee, sure,
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  nothing's going to happen. What's going to happen?
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  What's the worst going to happen?
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  My. Food's great.
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  And, you know, we got three stars from the New York Times.
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  We got four stars from the Bergen County Record, and I got
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  used to be a magazine called Food Art Magazine.
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  I. Remember, Yeah, yeah, actually I
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  had, I had them here in the studio not too long ago.
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  Okay, yeah, because the food arts is not around.
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  It it's not. Yeah, so they do this thing and
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  I've known them for years and they came in and we did a
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  podcast. They they were off camera.
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  They were off camera, but they were here in the studio when we
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  were doing the podcast. That's why so we got I so I got
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  top ten, top 10 New Chefs of America, Shut up, USA.
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  Yeah, yeah. I love that magazine, man.
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  I, I that was what that was iconic.
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  It was back in the day. It was wild.
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  I used to wait for it like. Yeah, yeah, of course.
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  We all all like waiting at. The Anyway, was it free?
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  Did we get it free? Yeah, You were free, Yeah.
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  That was the greatest part of it.
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  But it was so much information. You find out what chefs are
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  doing. There was again, no social media
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  back then. You know, you got some Internet
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  stuff, but not like, you know, like that's how I discovered
• 8:20
  Dean Ferring like that guys a like I, I have always admired
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  what he did. And I just know people like
• 8:27
  that. Just you get to see what they're
• 8:28
  doing and just learning, you know, from a, from a, you know,
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  a 30,000 feet away. But it was a great way to do
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  that. So we got, you know, from food
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  art magazine, top 10 chefs of America.
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  Then USA TODAY did a thing, top 10 chefs of America.
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  So it was great. Did my first dinner at the Beard
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  House, one of seven which is. Really.
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  How old are you at this time? At this time I'm 20. 4 It's a
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  lot of success for. 24 Oh yeah and and trust me, I was feeling
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  it yeah, like I would only were you feeling.
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  Confident or were you feeling the pressure?
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  No, I was feeling the I was feeling confident, yeah.
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  And I was feeling the ego. That bad ego, man.
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  I'm glad now I killed that ego like like in more recent times,
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  but I had to have ego death to be able to, to acknowledge all
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  my mistakes and all the things that I did wrong and be able to
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  embrace the great stuff in life, you know, And I think that's,
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  that was a learning curve for me.
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  And, and getting all that, all those accolades and all that
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  focus at such a young age, it's poison.
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  Like I I didn't understand because they didn't have anyone
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  kicking me in the ass. And because you want it when
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  you're that age, you you probably want it more at 24 than
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  you wanted at 54. Yeah, yeah, like I'm going to be
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  56 and, you know, soon. And, and like, I don't, I mean,
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  it's I, I do what I do, but my goal isn't to do that.
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  It's kind of like a Michelin star, right?
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  I never thought about it. Like I never thought I I could
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  reach that pinnacle. I've never received one, but I
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  always admired people that got them.
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  And, you know, unfortunately it's some, you go to some of
• 9:54
  these restaurants and it's disappointing and I want to, I
• 9:56
  want to see those people succeed.
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  But you go and you're like, you know, we went out to Deb and I
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  went out to a, a, a restaurant that I was pumped for two years
• 10:05
  to go to. And it was probably the, one of
• 10:10
  the single worst meals we've had together.
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  And, and, and like, it just, I was like, Oh, you see that?
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  So it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything when
• 10:18
  you when you achieve that goal, but you don't execute on it.
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  You know, my mentor, David Burke, you know, we talk about
• 10:25
  this stuff all the time. About you.
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  Could be. Crazy legendary chef.
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  Yeah, he I worked for him back in the.
• 10:30
  Not not enough people know about David Burke.
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  Wild to me because he he was like the most copied chef in the
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  universe for so long. Like the thing when I worked for
• 10:39
  him back in the 80s at, at the River Cafe, like he'll, he's the
• 10:43
  reason I think the way I do open to everything, not just the food
• 10:48
  and the creative, but how it's presented, how it's executed at
• 10:52
  the table, right. And we talked about the little
• 10:54
  time, simplicity, great food doesn't have to have all these
• 10:57
  bells and whistles and smoke and mirrors create the experience,
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  right. So in opening that first
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  restaurant, that was my mindset. Many bells and whistles I can
• 11:05
  get on the plate, 1415 items, everything.
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  And back then we didn't have tweezers.
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  You know, back then it was like just, it was a, Oh my God, it
• 11:12
  was your head. God's tweezers.
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  Yeah, God's. Tweezers, You know, I used to
• 11:15
  make my guys crazy and because each dish that we had had 14-15
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  pieces, like I wish I could go back and slap the evolving shit
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  out of me to go simple, simple. But learning from from someone
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  like Burke, that was that was the call back then.
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  Yeah, right. So you learn and you and you
• 11:34
  live. And I've opened up, you know, 20
• 11:35
  restaurants since. But do you think, you know,
• 11:37
  staying on the 2030 forty touch points on a plate?
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  Do you think? And and I know it's like I know
• 11:43
  it's bad. I would never put today 3030
• 11:46
  touch points on a player of 40, right.
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  But when you're 24, when you're 20, you learn so much because
• 11:52
  you're making 40 different things, right.
• 11:53
  So there is kind of it. It's the wrong thing to do, but
• 11:57
  there is benefit to it because you learned so much.
• 11:59
  Oh, yeah, oh, of course. But you're taking those
• 12:01
  different experiences, all those different pieces.
• 12:03
  You're like, oh, this is going to work with this.
• 12:04
  This is going to work with that. You taste it, you test it, you
• 12:06
  look at it like, awesome, now you guys got to execute it with
• 12:10
  me. They're like what?
• 12:11
  You have that. All right.
• 12:13
  You know, when we're making sausage, we make everything in
• 12:15
  house. And it was great.
• 12:16
  And we were in there, you know, 6:00 in the morning.
• 12:18
  We were getting done at 1:00 AM. And I lived in a Long Island at
• 12:21
  the time, so I had a 2 hour drive.
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  So I slept for like an hour, hour and a half right back.
• 12:27
  It was wild, like, you know, those days.
• 12:29
  Let me ask you this because when you listen to like health and
• 12:34
  Wellness podcast, they'll say you got to sleep 8 hours, right?
• 12:37
  And I always tell people like I had insomnia for a long time,
• 12:39
  like where I would literally sleep for 1/2 hour, an hour or
• 12:42
  whatever, right? And people like, that's not
• 12:45
  possible. Like I promise you it is
• 12:47
  possible. I promise you it's not just me.
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  I know plenty of people that and.
• 12:51
  All of them are probably in the industry.
• 12:52
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 12:54
  And it's it's not healthy by the.
• 12:55
  No, it's not. Trust me.
• 12:56
  Listen, I, I used to weigh 365 lbs.
• 12:58
  I can tell you how unhealthy that is, but I could tell you
• 13:00
  that even though I sleep way better now than I ever did
• 13:05
  because of my lifestyle change and also meeting my soul mate
• 13:08
  who who really balanced me like you have to learn that that's a
• 13:12
  that's a thing. You just have to give into it
• 13:15
  and and accept that OK, I need to sleep more than an hour,
• 13:18
  right? Because I could be so much
• 13:20
  better with four hours, right? 4 hours to to.
• 13:24
  To normal makes it better like your health is better and it's
• 13:27
  it's really interesting because when you don't sleep like you
• 13:30
  start to get delirious your your eyes are red you zone out like
• 13:34
  yeah, you're. In the middle of something,
• 13:36
  you're like. What am I?
• 13:36
  What am I doing to do? Why am I here and it what's?
• 13:39
  2 left shoes on. Yeah.
• 13:41
  And it's it's wild because a lot of times when I was a chef, when
• 13:44
  you were a chef, I would get off work and it's late and I'm tired
• 13:49
  and I'm walking to the car, wherever my feet hurt, my back
• 13:52
  hurt. I get home, I take a hot shower
• 13:55
  and it's like everything hurts. I go to bed, everything hurts.
• 13:59
  I wake up, everything hurts. But as soon as I get to the
• 14:02
  kitchen. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
• 14:05
  Listen, I, I, you know, I'm a six time survivor of cancer and,
• 14:08
  and I'd be the terminal 1 and every day after chemo radiation,
• 14:11
  I still went in because that was a thing that soothed me, that
• 14:16
  that helped me, that kept me going, keeping me alive in my
• 14:19
  mind, because I had a reason. That was my purse, the purpose.
• 14:22
  That was my, you know, reason. I'm deity.
• 14:24
  And that was like, if I wouldn't, if I didn't go, I
• 14:27
  would have been like everybody else.
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  And I always promised myself that no matter what happens in
• 14:31
  life, that I will never be like everybody else.
• 14:33
  Never me too. You know, it's always about
• 14:36
  evolving, always about. And and most recently in the
• 14:38
  last three years, it's changed to a whole of the level of
• 14:42
  evolution, and not just for me, but now I've proven it could be
• 14:45
  done. Now I want to help others be
• 14:47
  able to do that. And by the way, congratulations.
• 14:50
  I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm beating cancer.
• 14:52
  Thank you. Yeah, it's it's been a journey.
• 14:54
  It's but but you know what you take that that nightmare and and
• 14:57
  I'm no different than anybody else.
• 14:59
  I just know how I work and to be able to take that and go, what
• 15:04
  am I going to do with this now? OK, I, I beat a lot of things in
• 15:07
  my, my when I write the book, people's heads are going to turn
• 15:10
  even I was talking Christmas time.
• 15:11
  I was talking to my mom. I said, listen, I'm working on
• 15:14
  the book. You're going to need to know a
• 15:15
  few things before the book comes out that you didn't even know
• 15:18
  about. She's like, oh, shit, you know,
• 15:20
  so, so I kind of shared with her some of the things and she's
• 15:23
  like, I knew it. You know, she didn't know the
• 15:26
  time when I came home one night and I was out of my skull high.
• 15:31
  She was like, it was a midnight movie.
• 15:32
  We lived in Brooklyn. There was a midnight movie of
• 15:34
  Pink Floyd, The Wall. If you've never seen that movie,
• 15:38
  not high. It's trippy. well-being high,
• 15:42
  it's even worse. I mean, we were sitting in that.
• 15:44
  We went to the midnight show and I'm like freaking out, I'm
• 15:47
  sweating. I'm like grabbing on to and
• 15:49
  she's like, what's? Wrong.
• 15:49
  I'm like, I don't know, it's a wild.
• 15:51
  Movie mom, you know, here I am, I think I was 13 years old and
• 15:55
  it was just the wild. It was like the Wild West back
• 15:57
  then, you know, and then as you, as you learn, as you grow and as
• 16:00
  you evolve, you, you accept the things that you know you can't
• 16:03
  change and, and, and you know, you, you understand that you're
• 16:06
  not perfect and that life will give you what it's supposed to
• 16:10
  the universe. So at what point in your in your
• 16:13
  life because and, and when I say your life, it's also kind of
• 16:16
  your career because they're going on at the same time.
• 16:19
  At what point do you see I got to make a change?
• 16:22
  That that for me actually was November 1st, 2021.
• 16:27
  I made the decision. So there's this this guy Andy
• 16:32
  Farcella, he owns a company called first form a supplement
• 16:34
  company, but they he has a podcast called Real AF and
• 16:39
  Andy's a Monster and he's an entrepreneur.
• 16:42
  He was at 1.300 something pounds and he talked about on the
• 16:46
  podcast, he started a thing called 75 hard.
• 16:48
  Now it's a year cycle goes from 75 hard to live hard and it's a
• 16:51
  year cycle of changing your lifestyle and mindset.
• 16:55
  What year is this that you're hearing this?
• 16:57
  The first time I heard it was in 2019 when he started it and I
• 17:00
  did it and I filled the finished the year, lost some weight, put
• 17:05
  it all back on plus and and kept doing that because I didn't
• 17:10
  change my mindset, right? The mindset was everything.
• 17:14
  So finally I was like, all right, I'm 365 lbs.
• 17:18
  I got to do something because this isn't working.
• 17:21
  So that that day, November 1st, that November 3rd of 2021, I was
• 17:26
  just like, all right, go and I did it and I changed my
• 17:30
  lifestyle and I changed my mindset to the point that couple
• 17:33
  of three years later, November 3rd, 2024, I ran my first
• 17:38
  marathon, the New York Marathon, and almost died doing it because
• 17:42
  I had hypothermia at the end of it.
• 17:44
  But it was a great experience. Like it felt so good.
• 17:48
  Like to be able to accomplish that.
• 17:50
  And there's a lot of people in my life are like, you don't need
• 17:52
  to do that. What are you trying to prove?
• 17:53
  And sometimes it's not proving to any anybody, but to yourself,
• 17:57
  right? So having, you know, the drug
• 17:59
  addiction and being in cancer and doing all these things and
• 18:03
  finding myself, you know, being open to what, you know, my life
• 18:09
  is now having Deborah, my life and my, you know, soul mate, my
• 18:12
  wife, my everything. And being able to have a reason
• 18:14
  for so much more great things like being OK with being good
• 18:19
  and being happy where I didn't used to think I deserve that.
• 18:22
  So those are things that, you know, you evolved from, right?
• 18:24
  So I ran the marathon like Deb dropped me off at 8:30 in the
• 18:28
  morning, took the ferry over to Staten Island and by myself.
• 18:31
  And I was like, OK. And I had my knee was really
• 18:32
  shit because I had no cartilage on my knee, but I was still
• 18:35
  running it. I was running for a charity,
• 18:36
  which we wound up raising a million to for for Lymphoma
• 18:40
  Leukemia Society. I was doing an honor my little
• 18:43
  brother who had passed away from brain cancer a couple years ago.
• 18:45
  And you know, so there was a reason.
• 18:47
  So now I'm running it, She's tracking, Deb's tracking me.
• 18:51
  And at mile 13, my left knee blows out.
• 18:55
  It just went sideways. I'm like texting her.
• 18:57
  I'm like, I'm done. I'm.
• 18:58
  She's like, no, keep going. Remember, remember why?
• 19:02
  Remember why you're doing this. I was like, OK, like, OK, you
• 19:05
  might. She's not gonna be here till
• 19:07
  I'll be here till midnight. If it takes that long to come
• 19:09
  across the finish line, even if I'm the only person there.
• 19:11
  OK, cool. Come over the 59th St. bridge.
• 19:14
  Mile 16, tear my right groin. Now, I got 10.2 miles to go and
• 19:20
  the sun setting. And while I'm in the last group.
• 19:22
  So we start at 11:30 and yeah, I'm drinking my water and
• 19:25
  whatever, but the crowds were like motivating me.
• 19:28
  So all the pain, I was in every crowd.
• 19:30
  It was like high fives and everyone being weird and it was
• 19:33
  a great time. So there's a little bit of
• 19:35
  adrenaline. Oh, yeah.
• 19:36
  Every time I got to a group, when I was by myself and
• 19:38
  everyone was passing me by, like when I ran over the 59th St.
• 19:41
  bridge, there was that a single person that ran over with me.
• 19:44
  It was like, I thought it was like the apocalypse.
• 19:46
  It was so weird. But, you know, then it came to
• 19:48
  the 16th Mile and I, you know, pulled, pulled the grind and I
• 19:51
  was like, all right, here we go. So there's it was adrenaline,
• 19:56
  but it is also fear of not finishing.
• 19:58
  Like in my head I could not. Do you, do you have a problem
• 20:01
  with breaking promises to yourself?
• 20:04
  Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean and I and I mean
• 20:07
  not, not that you're always doing it, but once you make a
• 20:11
  promise to yourself, you. Can't break.
• 20:13
  I can't break. Yeah, Yeah, I'm driven that way.
• 20:14
  It's, it's kind of like, you know, you, you build certain
• 20:17
  businesses. Yeah.
• 20:18
  And you do everything you can and you never leave anything off
• 20:22
  the table. Like you go all in or nothing.
• 20:25
  You know, that's how Deb and I are, you know, like we're,
• 20:27
  that's a great synergy for us. Like it's all in.
• 20:29
  We're going to do everything we can to make everything we do
• 20:32
  amazing, fun, creative, exciting.
• 20:35
  Like you get up the next day, let's fucking go, you know, And
• 20:38
  that I think is what's always driven me to never slow down and
• 20:42
  never give in. And that's where you know what
• 20:43
  the cancers like I didn't I would never allow anyone to see
• 20:47
  me break. Maybe it was unhealthy.
• 20:49
  Even my mom would call up. She's like how you feeling like
• 20:51
  stop calling me, I love you, but stop calling me because I got to
• 20:54
  go through this thing. You're not I love you.
• 20:56
  You're going through you're worried about me.
• 20:57
  But like I got to deal with shit on my own because I was how I
• 21:01
  was built. I never understood like letting
• 21:03
  people in. Like I when I had my first bout
• 21:05
  of cancer, I didn't tell people for almost 8 weeks.
• 21:07
  That was going through it. When I found out I was in the
• 21:09
  terminal cancer, I didn't tell anyone for probably about a
• 21:12
  month because it was just like, it was ugly and it was like, all
• 21:16
  right, I'm going to die probably.
• 21:18
  But you know, it was like, like it was just how I dealt with it.
• 21:23
  So when I found out it was so I was on that show chopped and I
• 21:27
  found out the night before we taped that I, it was terminal.
• 21:32
  So, so my ex-wife, I got up in the morning, it's like 4:00 AM.
• 21:36
  My ex says, where you going? I'm like, I'm going to do the
• 21:38
  show. She's like, why?
• 21:38
  I go here's how I look at and you have to understand my mind
• 21:40
  is weird and said if I win and die, I want to chop champion.
• 21:44
  If I go on and lose, what are people going to say?
• 21:46
  Oh, this guy sucks. He can't be cancer or win chop,
• 21:49
  you know, so you make fun of it. Everyone's like, why did you say
• 21:51
  shit like that? Because that's how like I deal
• 21:53
  in dark humor. I've seen so much shit and so
• 21:56
  much amazing has happened to me. Like it's all funny to me.
• 21:59
  I know it's not funny to a lot of people.
• 22:01
  You know, Deb and I, you know, talk about this all the time.
• 22:03
  She's like, pot it down. Not everyone's going to get you
• 22:06
  and I, and I do. I'm better at it.
• 22:07
  I don't go to the dark side all that much.
• 22:09
  But it's kind of funny though, when you go laugh at the.
• 22:12
  Laugh. Let me ask you so you're going
• 22:14
  on chopped. You find out the day before that
• 22:16
  you have terminal cancer. Like you're you're cracking
• 22:20
  jokes about it, but where's your head at, really?
• 22:23
  My head really is like, I'm either going to either I'm going
• 22:25
  to beat this or I'm not like I can't.
• 22:27
  I won't let anything defeat me and I will fight as hard as I
• 22:30
  can, you know, and, and I had to, they switched me to a
• 22:33
  specialist because he dealt with this is called Richter syndrome
• 22:36
  is an advanced form of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
• 22:38
  And it was a stage 4. And this guy, my oncologist, my
• 22:42
  team, a doctor Nori, he, he wasn't specialized in this, this
• 22:47
  other doctor Chi, he was specialized in this and he was
• 22:50
  like, I got nothing for you. However, if you're willing to,
• 22:54
  we'll do what's called stacking where they take two chemical
• 22:57
  cocktails and they push so that that that was what we did.
• 23:02
  And it it saved me. I mean, my mindset definitely
• 23:04
  saved me. Prayers.
• 23:06
  Probably the universe was like, you got shit to do.
• 23:09
  You were not talking to you yet. You know, you got a lot of food
• 23:11
  to cook. So, you know, here I am, you
• 23:13
  know, all these years later and well.
• 23:15
  You know, you could even say what it what like thank God
• 23:18
  you're here, but the fact that you beat cancer, terminal cancer
• 23:23
  6 times. But the terminal was. 11 time,
• 23:26
  but you beat cancer 6 times, right?
• 23:28
  And the fact that you're here to tell the story, that's powerful,
• 23:33
  that's inspiration. That's hope.
• 23:34
  For a lot of people, that's, that's why I talk about it, you
• 23:36
  know, and I think like in writing my book, you know,
• 23:39
  that's what I want it to be like.
• 23:40
  I want it to be. I want people in our industry to
• 23:43
  see that this hope that there is, you know, it's like losing
• 23:45
  the weight. Like when you think about it,
• 23:47
  how many chefs will get off of work, go to the bar for a drink
• 23:51
  to to calm down, get home, take a shower, then they turn the
• 23:54
  refrigerator back. And that's what I used to do,
• 23:57
  turn that refrigerator back, eat everything I possibly could,
• 23:59
  then go to bed. Well, when you discover that
• 24:02
  that's going to kill you. And I never had diabetes.
• 24:05
  I didn't have high blood pressure, but I was overweight
• 24:07
  and I was wearing a size 50 pants, pants.
• 24:10
  And now, you know, I'm definitely far from it, you
• 24:12
  know, and and it's just a different way and different
• 24:14
  lifestyle. But it, it took the 75 hard to
• 24:16
  change my mindset because I didn't realize how bad I was
• 24:20
  because no one, everyone, my, my type, people around me, my
• 24:23
  circle, they all love me, but no one's putting the mirror in
• 24:26
  front of me and telling me the truth, right?
• 24:28
  They weren't saying, hey, buddy, you got to lose some weight to
• 24:32
  get a die. I look back at pictures.
• 24:33
  I share my social media all the time, my transformation Tuesday
• 24:37
  because I want people to see that, yeah, you can be better.
• 24:40
  If I can, if I could work seven days a week.
• 24:43
  I don't do that anymore, but seven days a week, 16 to 18
• 24:45
  hours a day, still have time to go to the gym and take care of
• 24:48
  myself. So can you because all you have
• 24:50
  is excuses. All you have is the, the, the
• 24:52
  poor me mentality. You know, fuck that.
• 24:55
  Like, you know, once you get there, I, I feel like it's a
• 24:58
  responsibility to tell other people like stop with the
• 25:00
  excuses. Stop pointing fingers at
• 25:02
  everybody else because every time you point a finger at
• 25:04
  somebody got 3 pointing back at you, stop at this shit, you make
• 25:07
  excuses. What do you do when someone
• 25:09
  sends back a dish? Do you go, ah, fucking
• 25:12
  customer's an asshole. They don't know what they're
• 25:13
  talking about. I see shows through that all the
• 25:14
  time because I also do a lot of consulting and I see that
• 25:17
  mentality like the customer is not always right, but they're
• 25:20
  always the customer. They're always the one who are
• 25:21
  sharing that you're sharing the experience with, right?
• 25:24
  So listen to your customer. I had a guy a few months ago
• 25:28
  send back a ramen and I asked the server like what?
• 25:30
  You know what, what's what's going on?
• 25:32
  What did he say? He said, I've never had ramen
• 25:34
  with noodles in it. Exactly.
• 25:36
  Right. And I'm like, what?
• 25:37
  I'm like, what? Say that again.
• 25:40
  He's like, yeah, he said he's never had ramen or noodle.
• 25:42
  I'm like, listen, if he doesn't tip you, I'll take care of it.
• 25:45
  But I got to talk to this knucklehead.
• 25:47
  So I go out and my name is Eric. I'm the chef, one of the owners.
• 25:49
  So I so I understand you really didn't enjoy the ramen.
• 25:50
  Tell me about that. He's like, yeah, I've had ramen
• 25:52
  all over the place and, and and I've never had noodles in it.
• 25:55
  I go, Sir, with all due respect, you've had soup.
• 25:58
  You've had soup or broth. He's like, no, no, no, no, I
• 26:01
  haven't had it with noodles in it.
• 26:03
  I'm like, then you haven't had ramen.
• 26:05
  He's like, are you telling me that I'm wrong as a customer?
• 26:08
  Like, you know what? The customer's always a customer
• 26:10
  and not always right. Can I get you something else?
• 26:12
  Would you like to have the soup? He looked at me like I was the
• 26:14
  asshole but wound up having something different.
• 26:16
  But it was like, you know, you, you just.
• 26:19
  One of the customers. Crazy thing to say.
• 26:21
  Well, even worse than that. I had a customer who it was like
• 26:25
  we first opened up, we had this seared tune, a salmon dish, sent
• 26:29
  it out, goes outside server comes back where he goes Chef,
• 26:32
  the customer, we don't like it. I'm like, what didn't like about
• 26:35
  it? He said, well, she said she
• 26:38
  doesn't really like salmon. She just wanted to try it.
• 26:41
  I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, she just wanted
• 26:44
  to try it. I'm like, give me the fucking
• 26:46
  dish. So I go outside.
• 26:47
  I go, hi, my name is Eric. I'm the, I'm the chef and one of
• 26:49
  the owners. I understand you don't like the
• 26:50
  salmon. She's like, yeah, I don't really
• 26:53
  like salmon, but I wanted to try it.
• 26:55
  I said, would you like me to wrap it up or throw it out?
• 26:57
  She's like, no, you can just take it off the bill.
• 26:58
  I go, well, there wasn't an option.
• 27:00
  So let me ask you a question. Now you know the movie, movie
• 27:03
  Pulp Fiction. Yeah.
• 27:04
  OK. You'll appreciate this then.
• 27:06
  So when you pulled up to the restaurant, you walked in the
• 27:08
  door. Did you see a sign that said
• 27:09
  Test Taste Kitchen? She's like, no, I go.
• 27:12
  You know why you see this? You didn't see a sign that said
• 27:14
  Test Taste Kitchen because I'm not in the business of taste
• 27:16
  testing. So would you like me to throw it
• 27:18
  out or pack it up? She's like, you don't want me to
• 27:20
  go to Yelp, do you? So I got my car to go.
• 27:23
  Make sure you spell my name right.
• 27:24
  ERICLE Capital VINEI am the chef and one of the owners.
• 27:28
  Make sure you got it right. She's like, I will.
• 27:29
  And then I turned into a 12 year old girl.
• 27:31
  I was like, fine, then do it. She's like, I will.
• 27:32
  I'm like fine. She's like good.
• 27:33
  I'm like good. And I walked away.
• 27:36
  Now here's the kicker to it. 5 minutes later I'm in the kitchen
• 27:40
  on Expo salmon, same fucking table.
• 27:43
  And I go Patrick, what is this? Why do I got a salmon to go?
• 27:47
  He's like oh the woman that was with her wanted to take one home
• 27:51
  to go. I'm like get the fuck are you
• 27:53
  out of your mind? Like why don't you just take the
• 27:55
  other one? She's like chef, if you can
• 27:56
  figure it out, you let me know. And I.
• 27:58
  This is the equivalent of meeting online trolls in real
• 28:01
  life. Oh yeah, like it's wild.
• 28:03
  Trolling in real life? Right now, now I just kind of
• 28:05
  make fun of it. Now I have AI have a chapter in
• 28:07
  the book that I'm working on is it's like things stupid things
• 28:11
  customers say to me. Yeah, I want to, I want to, I
• 28:13
  want to ask you about the book. But before I ask you about the
• 28:15
  book I want to get I I have one important question that I think
• 28:19
  a lot of people could learn from, from your perspective on
• 28:22
  this. You had mentioned that you
• 28:24
  discovered this thing and it was a mindset change.
• 28:26
  And when you go through programs like that or, or any other
• 28:29
  program, they're going to hit you with a lot of information.
• 28:32
  But the reality is not all of it's going to stick.
• 28:34
  There's going to be one thing that stuck in your head that
• 28:36
  kept you going. What was that one thing?
• 28:38
  What was that? What was that one shift in your
• 28:40
  mind? Because I'm sure that he
• 28:41
  probably has like 100 points to no.
• 28:44
  Like one thing, it's wild because the program, not only is
• 28:46
  it free, the lifestyle, the the whole thing, 75 hard, it's like
• 28:52
  the greatest. There's not one thing because
• 28:54
  you go through the whole process and you learn that there's never
• 28:58
  the right time. There's never going to be the
• 29:01
  right time to do it. You just have to do it.
• 29:03
  So part of it is you have to do 2 workouts a day, one has to be
• 29:07
  outside. What that does, summer, winter,
• 29:11
  spring, in the snow, in the rain.
• 29:14
  You have to learn how to just do it.
• 29:17
  No matter what the situation is like, you just have to learn how
• 29:21
  that it's never going to be a perfect time.
• 29:22
  I'll do it Monday. How many times do people say I'm
• 29:24
  going to do, I'm going to start Monday.
• 29:26
  Fucking start now. Start now.
• 29:28
  So the the lifestyles to teach you how to be great in any
• 29:34
  scenario, no matter what it hit you.
• 29:35
  So that probably is the biggest thing.
• 29:37
  No matter what, it's never going to be a perfect time to do it.
• 29:40
  Just do it. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:41
  Have you heard of this? I think it's called the 5 second
• 29:43
  rule, where you think of something and you have 5 seconds
• 29:46
  to act. I've done it, yeah.
• 29:47
  Yeah, like you think of it like stop just 5 seconds, do it.
• 29:51
  Leave like my now my daughter's doing it and it's like she sent
• 29:55
  me a message and then she deleted it.
• 29:57
  I didn't say anything to her. The next day she said, I just
• 29:58
  want, you know, I texted you because I needed you to motivate
• 30:01
  me. But then I realized I have to
• 30:04
  motivate myself and I was like fucking a stuff like that's
• 30:06
  great. Like that's what it's about.
• 30:08
  Like I've done 75 hard with Deborah and, and it's in the
• 30:12
  winter, in the snow, in the ice storm, in the rain, whatever.
• 30:17
  And it just teaches you to to evolve to that.
• 30:20
  Like no matter what happens in life, you're responsible for
• 30:23
  you. You're responsible for your
• 30:24
  actions. The words you say, one of my
• 30:26
  tattoos in my arm here, it has the IM to 1st power and that
• 30:30
  risk that is representative of indestructible master of one
• 30:35
  that for me is I am accountable for everything I say and I do.
• 30:38
  And there are times where I fall off of that, but now I
• 30:42
  understand what triggered that, like why I did the thing I
• 30:45
  shouldn't have done. So I'm so more so much more self
• 30:48
  aware. You know, I read a book, The
• 30:50
  Power of Now, and I've read it five times because there's so
• 30:54
  much in it that teaches you about understanding being
• 30:57
  present. And for me, you know, like, and
• 31:01
  I and I always refer, refer back to Deborah because she's had
• 31:05
  such an influence on my mindset of like being present and
• 31:09
  holding yourself accountable and seeing things past the negative
• 31:14
  or the ego of it. And everyone's driven by ego to
• 31:17
  some extent. But when you kill the ego off
• 31:20
  and you have ego death, you really understand being a
• 31:22
  present and being accountable. And and when you're with
• 31:26
  somebody, what that means, like whether it's with your spouse or
• 31:29
  your friends or your family, your work, like being present,
• 31:33
  it's the greatest gift in the universe.
• 31:34
  Like I couldn't, I couldn't be, I wouldn't be half of the person
• 31:37
  I am today without understanding that lesson from her.
• 31:40
  You know, and it's true. Like, you know, you evolve,
• 31:42
  right? You change and you, you know,
• 31:44
  change how I cook. It changes my approach to a
• 31:46
  dish. There's no ego in it.
• 31:48
  It's like, is this the best? It could be not.
• 31:50
  I made the dish the best. Yeah.
• 31:53
  Is the balance there? All the textures there.
• 31:56
  I bring my screw Chef Boris. I'm like, what do you think?
• 31:59
  And he's learned in the six years he's been with me.
• 32:02
  He doesn't tell me what I want to hear.
• 32:04
  He'll say or what if we had this and and then we riff off of each
• 32:08
  other. And that's how my kitchen staff,
• 32:10
  they're all like, they're all warriors.
• 32:12
  And they're all great at what they do.
• 32:13
  And they know that they could tell me when something doesn't
• 32:15
  work. I create a dish and I create it.
• 32:18
  Now you got to execute it, you know, so if we're doing like a
• 32:20
  simple burger or wild burger, it's stacked up 10 feet tall.
• 32:23
  Like Jose's got to take care of that.
• 32:25
  And he'll tell me you're already a fucking mind chef or OK, let's
• 32:28
  do it, you know? And it's, and I appreciate that
• 32:30
  and I respect that. And you?
• 32:32
  Need someone on your team that tells you this is a bad.
• 32:34
  Idea No, they're all they all know that they have the space to
• 32:36
  do that. Even my partners in in in
• 32:38
  especially at 317, like we talk about stuff and I have weird
• 32:41
  ideas and I'm always like, how cool can this be?
• 32:45
  Let's make it so people go, that's awesome.
• 32:47
  Not just the quality of the food, but the experience of the
• 32:49
  Dick. You know, that's one of the
• 32:51
  things I learned from Burke, like him, you know, being the
• 32:53
  biggest influence on my culinary career.
• 32:57
  Like that was the thing, like not just the experience of what
• 33:01
  the food tastes like, but the experience of the plate and how
• 33:05
  it's presented and what it makes, what it what it evokes in
• 33:08
  you. Like, is there an emotion in
• 33:10
  there? Is there, you know, there's some
• 33:11
  really talented young chefs out there that that blow me away.
• 33:14
  Like I'm like, that's a really cool idea.
• 33:17
  Like that's love that. And I always make sure that I
• 33:20
  will contact that chef. Like, you know, this guy,
• 33:24
  Charles Mitchell, he's at Saga now.
• 33:26
  He was at Clover Hill in Brooklyn, got a Michelin * James
• 33:29
  Beard award. And I reached out to him and I
• 33:31
  want one of the top 2 meals I've ever had in my fucking life.
• 33:35
  He said thank you. And then we went back and you
• 33:38
  know, like we followed him to Saga and it was a great
• 33:41
  experience. Like just to be able to see
• 33:43
  young chefs come into their own and be that kind of thing.
• 33:47
  Like it's just, I love it because I I love seeing people
• 33:50
  succeed. I've never been like, I'm better
• 33:53
  than the guy down the block. I'm always I need to be better
• 33:55
  than I was yesterday. Let let me ask you on the
• 33:58
  subject of young chefs succeeding.
• 34:00
  You've been in the industry for a long time and, and you've seen
• 34:03
  cycles, right? So you saw the you saw the the
• 34:05
  old European guard kind of fizzle away.
• 34:08
  You saw the emergence of the American chef.
• 34:10
  You saw now the emergence of the TikTok chef and, and kind of
• 34:16
  this new generation, but having been through all those things,
• 34:20
  the food will change, the styles will change, but working in the
• 34:23
  kitchen remains the same. It's still, it's still hot,
• 34:25
  you're still on your feet. You still got a coat pressure.
• 34:28
  There's still pressure and there's certain things that
• 34:29
  don't change in the kitchen. Regardless of the trends.
• 34:32
  If you had to look back and if you saw common threads with
• 34:37
  people that you've worked with that have gone on to become
• 34:39
  successful, what are some of those common threads that a lot
• 34:42
  of cooks can learn from? I think being open to, of the
• 34:48
  universe of what the kitchen is, you know, understanding that we
• 34:51
  have to evolve to become great, to become excellent, but we
• 34:56
  can't get stuck in one thing. Being able to shift a little bit
• 35:00
  and, and again back to the ego thing where you see something
• 35:04
  and you're like, how do I make it better?
• 35:05
  Stepping away from the ego and, and I think that that's the
• 35:07
  biggest for the young chefs who are, who are becoming better.
• 35:11
  They're open to everything. It's changed so much.
• 35:13
  The industry where growing up, coming in as a young kid, it
• 35:17
  was, it was brutal. It was beat.
• 35:21
  I mean, I got stabbed in my arm, punched in the face, choked, oil
• 35:25
  bottle smashed on me. It was a different world and
• 35:28
  that was the norm. It was like, you know, Bourdain
• 35:30
  talked about it. You know, his kitchen's like,
• 35:32
  you know, it's all pirates, it's all people, you know, misfit
• 35:35
  toys. And now it's the coming to the
• 35:38
  understanding of what we do is is the experience of it.
• 35:41
  And I think a lot of the young chefs are willing to test the
• 35:45
  limits of what cuisine is. And I love that because I think
• 35:48
  that they try different textures and understand different
• 35:51
  methods. You know, like it's kind of like
• 35:53
  when we went through, you know, the molecular time when, yeah,
• 36:00
  everyone's everyone. 'S making bubbles.
• 36:02
  Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a
• 36:04
  place application for those things, but it can't be the
• 36:06
  whole meal. Yeah, You know, you take a look
• 36:08
  at a chef like, like. You never wake up in the middle
• 36:10
  of the night saying I'm craving those carrot bubbles.
• 36:12
  Yeah, can I just get a bowl of ramen bubbles?
• 36:18
  I mean, I my, my first cookbook, excuse me, my first cookbook, it
• 36:23
  was geared towards. Excuse me, It was geared towards
• 36:28
  the chef. Yeah.
• 36:29
  So I had a lot of molecular in that.
• 36:31
  And I did this, you know, this mozzarella sphere with, you
• 36:34
  know, it had this prosciutto mousse in the middle.
• 36:36
  It was like, I got customers buying it with like calcium
• 36:40
  citrate. What what, what do I, what do I
• 36:42
  get that from, you know, and it's like, oh shit, you
• 36:44
  shouldn't have had that. So my second cookbook, I really
• 36:46
  geared it towards the home cook. But I think that you, you know,
• 36:50
  it evolves like everything you evolves, you know, you know,
• 36:52
  the, the, the grants, you know, he's, he's that whole other
• 36:55
  level of creative, you know, and Alinea and, and those kind of
• 36:59
  guys are those, they're very specific in how they approach
• 37:03
  which, which is creative and fun.
• 37:05
  And, you know, as a cook, as a chef, like you always like to
• 37:08
  see what other great chefs do and you want to be able to, to
• 37:12
  make your food have that reaction.
• 37:16
  You know, that's that's a big thing.
• 37:18
  It's funny, we we had a conversation the other day.
• 37:20
  I went to this restaurant and I, I walked in to date night.
• 37:26
  It's a diner sold Italian guy, 70 years old, walks in.
• 37:31
  He's like, oh, he's like, he was excited.
• 37:33
  I'd never been there. He's excited to see us, right?
• 37:35
  He's talking to us. He's excited.
• 37:39
  I see the menu and it's like all the classics, the veal veal
• 37:42
  piccata, the chicken parm, the lasagna, right?
• 37:45
  He's got the gnocchi and he's like, and everything's made from
• 37:47
  scratch. It's his wife over here and his
• 37:49
  son in the kitchen. And it's a very family, family
• 37:53
  thing, right? And this guy was so nice.
• 37:55
  He brought wine at ice cubes in the wine glass and he's swirling
• 37:58
  it to cool it down. And I'm like, like it was, I
• 38:01
  hate to say it was kind of a train wreck, but he was the best
• 38:04
  host. He's touching every table.
• 38:06
  And I'll tell you what, he came over, he's talking to us.
• 38:07
  He's telling his life story. I was like, this is what I miss.
• 38:11
  I miss the days of the maitre DI, miss the days of you walk in
• 38:15
  somewhere like like they're happy to see you.
• 38:18
  I don't like, I think about my dog, right?
• 38:20
  Like I go home, my dog, I could be gone for, you know, 30
• 38:22
  minutes. I come back home, my dog is
• 38:24
  like, I've been gone forever. He's so happy to see me.
• 38:26
  And it's like I was only gone for 30 minutes.
• 38:29
  And I miss that level of when you go into a restaurant, the
• 38:33
  way they make you feel. And so much of what I see in
• 38:35
  today's restaurants and, and I, and I get it like it's all
• 38:38
  business and people who have the right to do whatever they want.
• 38:40
  But what I see a lot in today's restaurants is it's missing that
• 38:44
  hospitality. Well, that, that's like robotic
• 38:46
  hospitality, yeah. And that well, so there's,
• 38:49
  there's some people who are doing a lot of good training.
• 38:52
  They like to to really focus on hospitality.
• 38:54
  But that's why I talk to customers.
• 38:56
  That, to me, ultimately keeps them coming back for more.
• 38:59
  They want to see what you do. Have you read that book
• 39:02
  Unreasonable Hospitality? Yes, of course.
• 39:04
  Great. Yeah, Yeah, I guess, you know,
• 39:07
  because she's involved with the restaurants, like and, and to
• 39:11
  hear her perspective and come back with like, what about this?
• 39:14
  And I'm like, yeah. And we went to a class, it's
• 39:17
  called the 30% roll. This guy, Preston Lees got this
• 39:20
  amazing. All about hospitality.
• 39:22
  And when you understand hospitality, everything else is
• 39:25
  easy. Like everything else that touch
• 39:28
  that customer connection. I tell my staff all the time we
• 39:32
  can have an off dish, but you can't.
• 39:35
  We can't afford an off service. They're there to be taken care
• 39:40
  of, right? So when I talk to a customer,
• 39:41
  especially at 317 Main St. like I'm, I have a big open kitchen.
• 39:45
  You could see and my customers will know that they could come
• 39:48
  up to the chef's table counter and say hello and ask questions,
• 39:51
  see what's going on. And that's important for us to
• 39:53
  have that communication. And I get my guys and girls
• 39:55
  involved in it. And I'm like, yeah, Jose is,
• 39:57
  he's the grill guy. He's a monster.
• 39:58
  And they're like, hey, Jose. And, you know, he gets a little
• 40:00
  shy. I'm like, hey, how are you?
• 40:02
  I'm like, Dad, talk to them, you know, and and I think that's
• 40:04
  important to bring people out of that.
• 40:06
  So like when I do events. Off site, I did something at for
• 40:12
  the James Beard Foundation and I brought my sous chef with me
• 40:15
  because I wanted him to experience that, you know, and I
• 40:17
  made him a major part of it because the new space platform
• 40:22
  that they have, I got invited to do a dinner there and it was
• 40:25
  great because he got to see something different and he got
• 40:27
  to learn and to evolve. So now you know, when I do TVI
• 40:30
  try to bring him on set with me so you can see what it's like
• 40:32
  behind the scenes. If I'm doing Fox and Friends at
• 40:34
  Channel 11, child, whatever it is like he gets to see yeah, all
• 40:38
  that stuff. And that's that's an important
• 40:40
  part of, of mentoring somebody, right?
• 40:41
  Yeah. Helping them grow and evolve
• 40:43
  into their own. Because I want, I want Boris to
• 40:45
  have his own restaurant. I want to have enough money so I
• 40:48
  can help him build his own. Yeah, you got to create that
• 40:50
  environment for them as well. To, to, to, to work under a
• 40:53
  mentor. They is teaching them that and
• 40:54
  showing them the ropes and telling them it's OK to go out
• 40:57
  and touch the table. And, and here's the impact that
• 40:59
  that that that has. You know, just to finish off
• 41:01
  what I was saying, this guy at the end of dinner, by the way,
• 41:04
  the food was mediocre. He was telling.
• 41:05
  Sure, it was the he had the tallest tails, you know, he's
• 41:09
  like, everything's made from scratch.
• 41:11
  And I, I, I was like, because I like tiramisu and cannolis.
• 41:14
  Like even the tiramisu and the limoncello cake.
• 41:16
  He's like, Oh yeah, we make it. And then I see I'm opening the
• 41:18
  box at the back and I'm like, OK, I got it, I got it.
• 41:21
  But when we're leaving and the food was OK, like it was good,
• 41:24
  but it was just OK. But the experience it was, it
• 41:26
  was like I felt welcome. And I think a lot of times
• 41:29
  restaurants are so focused on, they make you feel like it's
• 41:33
  you're privileged to be in my space and it's it should.
• 41:36
  Be the other way around, the other way around, always the
• 41:38
  other way. Around the other way around.
• 41:39
  And so when we're leaving, I don't remember, but the guys
• 41:41
  like telling us he loves us. I mean he like I've never had
• 41:44
  anyone in my life tell me that they love me after they just
• 41:47
  that's funny. I mean a couple of times.
• 41:48
  But you know, I'm going to do that next time.
• 41:50
  I'll be like, all right, have a good night.
• 41:51
  Love you. And I was like.
• 41:53
  Because what it was so hot and I was like when?
• 41:56
  We walked out. I was like but.
• 41:58
  Think about see he loves to think about think about the
• 42:00
  impact of the experience that. But I remembered I'm talking
• 42:03
  about the show yeah that's how it felt great.
• 42:05
  I. Want to ask you about the book.
• 42:06
  Yeah. And I want to ask you about the
• 42:09
  process of writing a book and what that's been like.
• 42:11
  So I've written 4 cookbooks and they've all done in different
• 42:14
  ways. So the first cookbook I did with
• 42:16
  a an organization called Cater Source, they sponsored it.
• 42:21
  Luckily for me, I'm the son of a photographer, so I did a lot of
• 42:25
  the pictures myself. In the first cookbook, that's
• 42:27
  called the Stick it Spoon to put in the glass.
• 42:30
  The process was was easy because I had a team helping me.
• 42:35
  I wrote the recipe, they redefined it, the pictures they
• 42:39
  put in place, they mapped it out.
• 42:41
  Ultimately, I had the final say, but it was great to be able to
• 42:43
  have a team on that. The second book, Small Bites,
• 42:46
  Big Flavors, my old PR firm, oddly enough called Firing Up
• 42:53
  because that's my tagline because I just always fire the
• 42:55
  shit up. They we had a, we had a
• 42:59
  publisher for it and they did a great job.
• 43:01
  The Chrissy who helped me edit everything, I'd write the
• 43:04
  recipes and she's like, OK, what do you mean by this?
• 43:07
  This is for the home cook. And I'm like, yeah, it's a half
• 43:10
  sheet pan. She said the home cook doesn't
• 43:12
  understand what a half a Bain Marie is.
• 43:14
  Put it in layman. So I had to rewrite it for that.
• 43:17
  And that was great because I got to do a cookie sheet.
• 43:19
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. 9 by 9 grease pan,
• 43:22
  you know, and then I wrote burgers, bowls and jars and I
• 43:25
  did that. That was, that was a great book.
• 43:30
  Like it is I, I go back to that book all the time and it's like
• 43:34
  it has a great, has lots of great moments in it and really
• 43:37
  broken out. And then the process was great.
• 43:39
  But I, but I, I worked with a team on that and that was the
• 43:41
  first time I ever did it on my own self published, had to print
• 43:46
  it in China because if I printed it here in America, which is I
• 43:48
  wanted to do, it would have cost me the amount that we would have
• 43:50
  sold it for. Where do you stand on self?
• 43:53
  Independent so so I so I'm going to tell you the last book that I
• 43:56
  just put out because that was a complete fucking nightmare but I
• 43:59
  just want to go back to the the burgers bowls and jars.
• 44:02
  So I never did a grassroot build it, produce it, publish it on
• 44:07
  your own thing. And I highly recommend not doing
• 44:10
  that really, because even though I had a platform with the
• 44:13
  restaurants to sell it at the online like like so like Amazon,
• 44:18
  they take a big chunk out of it, right?
• 44:20
  So you're left. With so, so does the publishing.
• 44:22
  Come right, but when? But yeah, but you get you get a
• 44:24
  siphon ahead of time, you get a big check and they go here based
• 44:26
  on what they project your sales to be.
• 44:28
  So I wrote, you know small bites, big flavors.
• 44:30
  I got a big check and the hope was that we would sell 3040
• 44:34
  thousand, which is great. But when I printed burgers,
• 44:38
  bowls and jars, I was like, all right, well, I sold 40,000 of
• 44:43
  small bites, big flavors. All right, I'm going to have to
• 44:47
  take a loan out for this because I'm doing it myself.
• 44:50
  Yeah, it cost me 1650 a buck to print.
• 44:57
  Do that by do the math on 4000. It's a hardcover, yeah.
• 45:01
  Big shot. It's a it's a beautiful book.
• 45:03
  It is he it is like beautiful and it's thick and heavy and
• 45:07
  beautiful and full of pictures and it has over 130 recipes.
• 45:11
  Each one has a picture with it and there's some stories in
• 45:14
  there also. And it's kind of funny to go
• 45:15
  back to because, you know, back then the pictures of me were,
• 45:18
  you know, the 365 dude. So now, like when people see the
• 45:21
  book, they're like, is that you? Yeah, I'm like, yeah, just move
• 45:26
  on. Just go to the recipe.
• 45:27
  So the new book forking good. So I'm going to tell people if
• 45:33
  you want to write a book, write the book.
• 45:37
  Find a good local printer. Don't ever go to this this
• 45:43
  company and ever let them touch it, put their hands on it
• 45:45
  because there's so many different ways that I got
• 45:48
  screwed on it from the actual of the printing of it, the layout
• 45:53
  of it. I mean, and I went with them
• 45:54
  because it seemed like a less expensive route and putting so
• 45:58
  much money out of my pocket. Well, they promised you this.
• 46:02
  They promised you that all of a sudden, like they sent me a copy
• 46:05
  of the book, a PDF of it. And I'm like, take this out.
• 46:09
  It didn't, it didn't flow right. You had, you know, a picture
• 46:13
  recipe, next page, recipe, next page, a top of the page that had
• 46:18
  the last few sentences on it. And then it skewed the whole
• 46:21
  book. So there wasn't like a picture
• 46:24
  recipe. It was like picture recipe blank
• 46:27
  space. It was just weird.
• 46:30
  So I had to go back and forth with them like 30 times for them
• 46:33
  to even get it right. But what they didn't do is they
• 46:35
  didn't the recipes that I extracted out of it to make a
• 46:39
  balance. They didn't take that out of
• 46:41
  the, the, the index. So the people that the table of
• 46:46
  content, sorry. So people are looking at it
• 46:48
  going this is missing 30 recipes.
• 46:51
  And I'm like. Fuck.
• 46:54
  So now all these people bought the book, this recipes missing
• 46:57
  from it, but they're really not because I the intent was to get
• 47:00
  rid of those recipes because it just didn't fit.
• 47:02
  I'll use it for another time, use it online, do it on my
• 47:03
  website. But they were getting pissed
• 47:06
  because they thought they got gypped.
• 47:07
  Yeah, we, we should talk because I've published 6 books myself.
• 47:10
  I'm the I'm the publisher and everything, the editor and I'm,
• 47:13
  I'm, I'm the one stop shop all of that.
• 47:15
  And I've and I've gotten. I don't want to say I'm like
• 47:17
  ultra efficient, but I've helped.
• 47:19
  I've done 6 on my own and I've helped several other people
• 47:23
  write their books so. Well, I won't write another
• 47:25
  cookbook, but I am the book I am working on is My Autobiography
• 47:28
  because that to me is like, that's where I want to go, you
• 47:32
  know, because I think there's there's, there's such a massive
• 47:35
  story to tell that if I could help one person through whatever
• 47:39
  that cycle. You're working on the
• 47:40
  autobiography. Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm just
• 47:42
  in the writing process right now.
• 47:43
  I'm hoping by. What's your writing process
• 47:44
  like? Chaotic chaos.
• 47:48
  Like do you, do you do you physically right?
• 47:50
  Do you type I'll? I'll type it.
• 47:51
  I, you know, I'm going to use the chat a little bit and kind
• 47:54
  of talk into it. You know, like I, I started
• 47:57
  probably two years ago working on this.
• 47:59
  So much more has happened. But you know, I have like 20
• 48:02
  chapters and none of them finished because my brain
• 48:05
  doesn't work that way. When Devin and I were talking
• 48:07
  about it, like, OK, start the process and you go back.
• 48:12
  But I was so I just got Curtis Duffy's new book.
• 48:15
  Yeah, yeah. I and I'm so I love, I love.
• 48:18
  It's called Fireproof. Fireproof.
• 48:21
  Yeah. Yeah, I need to read it.
• 48:22
  He is like I know about him, you know, we'll chat here and there.
• 48:25
  But like, I knew his story from for Grace, everything he's been
• 48:30
  through, you know, there's a chapter about, you know how when
• 48:33
  for Grace, when he walked away from it.
• 48:36
  And I was telling Deb like I had reservations the day before, the
• 48:41
  day after he walked out. And I'm because I got AI got a
• 48:44
  message from the restaurant saying, sorry, your your
• 48:47
  reservation's been cancelled. I had flights booked, hotel
• 48:50
  booked. And I texted him like, dude,
• 48:51
  what the fuck? Yeah, he's like, yeah, long or
• 48:54
  the short. I had to walk away.
• 48:55
  I got to tell you my writing process because I, I think you
• 48:58
  helped me. Yeah.
• 48:59
  I mean, I, I, I wrote six books in two years, 7 actually I wrote
• 49:02
  seven in two years, but one I gave away for free.
• 49:04
  I didn't, I didn't actually publish it.
• 49:06
  I just did as an e-book and an audio book.
• 49:09
  What I do is once I decide the type of book I'm going to write.
• 49:12
  So I'll give you the example of what I did when I wrote Culinary
• 49:15
  Leadership Fundamentals, which is, you know, kind of a leader.
• 49:18
  It's a leadership fundamental book.
• 49:20
  I got a big white poster board and I just put sticky notes on
• 49:23
  every chapter that I need a chapter on food cost, I need a
• 49:25
  chapter on labor cost, I need a chapter on culture, I need a
• 49:29
  chapter on, you know, kitchen management, whatever.
• 49:31
  So I had this big poster board with sticky notes on it, right?
• 49:34
  And then every day when I'd come in, it was on my calendar right
• 49:37
  for an hour. And I go and I just pick one
• 49:39
  sticky note off of this is all I'm going to write about the
• 49:41
  process. Stick the sticky note on the
• 49:43
  computer. And I'd for people that don't
• 49:45
  know this, you, you could do this now.
• 49:47
  You hit on a Mac, you hit, I think it's the FN key twice and
• 49:51
  the microphone. Oh shit.
• 49:53
  And I just sit there and talk and I just sit there and talk
• 49:56
  for 30 minutes about like, if I'm writing out and it's good
• 49:58
  because I could just sit there and say, OK, for so food cost,
• 50:01
  cost divided by sales equals this.
• 50:03
  And and you're going to here's the process.
• 50:05
  Fun one. And then when I'm done, I just
• 50:06
  hit end and that's it. I have.
• 50:08
  It's all written out and it has to be cleaned up and edited, but
• 50:12
  it's much easier to talk for an hour and get a whole chapter
• 50:15
  done. You know what?
• 50:16
  I started that the other day. I was in my office and I'm like,
• 50:19
  Nah, I wonder if this ChatGPT can record this.
• 50:23
  And I did. And I was like, this is how I
• 50:26
  have to do it. So like, even like the other, I
• 50:28
  think it was yesterday and you know, Deborah and I were talking
• 50:30
  about because I'm reading the book and you know, my mind, it's
• 50:33
  like I have 1000 chapters that, that I can write.
• 50:37
  And I'm like, that's, that's stupid.
• 50:38
  But then I'm reading Curtis's book and it's like there's a
• 50:41
  couple of chapters that are like 2 pages.
• 50:43
  I'm like, oh. It can't be.
• 50:45
  I guess I can do what the fuck I want to do my book, but it's so
• 50:48
  many things I want to touch on. So like getting like it's like,
• 50:53
  Oh shit, what about this? And we're talking about this.
• 50:55
  I think last night, like in getting whatever the title is or
• 50:59
  whatever the topic is on point, Like you said, like like notes,
• 51:02
  but I have it in like whatever order I have it in and going
• 51:05
  backwards and it doesn't have to be in order because who cares?
• 51:08
  It's a story. It's about life and perspective
• 51:11
  and change and and opportunity and and insanity and like, you
• 51:15
  know, being the king of the misfit toys.
• 51:17
  Like I just, you know, I, I not proud of a lot of things that I
• 51:22
  did when I was younger. None of us are by.
• 51:25
  The way but even some of the things as an adult, but but it's
• 51:27
  like, well, what you were talking about this last night
• 51:30
  and I was like, well, what about this?
• 51:31
  Is it too much? Like is it too much sharing?
• 51:35
  And there's certain things that I that I'm like, if my
• 51:40
  grandmother was alive today, would this disappoint her that
• 51:43
  much? Or would she be like.
• 51:44
  So what? So why share it?
• 51:45
  I'm just curious. I think that because someone
• 51:47
  else is going through what I went through, and if I can help
• 51:49
  save them from making that mistake, I want that.
• 51:53
  I want them to also be able to recognize the signs of what
• 51:55
  they're going through and who's around them.
• 51:57
  Like sometimes you think someone has your best interest, but all
• 52:00
  they're doing is using you to get what they want.
• 52:05
  So you get cynical on that. You're like, I don't trust
• 52:07
  anybody now. Now I got a coil.
• 52:09
  Now every now I paint myself into a corner and I come out
• 52:11
  swinging and hitting everybody, even the people who love me
• 52:15
  because I don't want to get hurt again, you know?
• 52:17
  I'll, I'll share this with you and I'm not, this isn't mine.
• 52:19
  So I, I heard it somewhere and I don't remember why I heard it,
• 52:21
  but I'll share it with you and, and the audience listening
• 52:24
  because I think it's an interesting way to, to frame
• 52:26
  perspective. You have two people.
• 52:28
  One person's a good person. One person is a bad person.
• 52:32
  The good person is a good person for their entire life.
• 52:35
  But the last five years of their life, they turn evil and they do
• 52:39
  a whole bunch of terrible, nasty shit, right.
• 52:42
  Just they're a terrible person. The last five years, you know,
• 52:44
  think of the worst things. That's who they are.
• 52:46
  The other person that was a bad person was a bad person their
• 52:49
  entire life. But the last five years of their
• 52:52
  life, they turned it around and they did all these good things.
• 52:55
  Who was the good person? It was the, it was the one who
• 52:58
  turned it around. It was the one who turned.
• 52:59
  It around that's where that's for me why I want to write.
• 53:02
  That's why I feel in the book is so and there are some things
• 53:04
  that listen, it's very I'm being very vulnerable about vulnerable
• 53:08
  about this my life, because there was a lot, man.
• 53:11
  There was a lot that we haven't even talked about.
• 53:13
  But like if I could help that one person see that good's
• 53:17
  coming, right? That it can be better that you
• 53:20
  can be better that that while you're in a shitstorm, while it
• 53:23
  all looks like it's all coming to an end, like there's hope.
• 53:28
  I'm proof of that. And if I could do it, this kid
• 53:31
  from Brooklyn who, you know, drug addiction, abuse, all this
• 53:34
  shit like, and I could turn into a better human being.
• 53:38
  You know, I'm not, I have, I am the richest human being that I
• 53:42
  know in, in, in life, right? I may not have money in my bank
• 53:46
  account, but I am the richest person in life and in love.
• 53:50
  Like, because it finally clicked, right?
• 53:52
  Those moments of like, holy, I was wasting so much time, but I
• 53:56
  didn't know it. I didn't realize it because I
• 53:58
  was in the vortex of hell of my own hell and a lot of it my own
• 54:01
  doing. Now I understand it now I get
• 54:03
  it. So how cool is it that you're
• 54:05
  able to take that and say to people, listen, it's OK to be
• 54:08
  fucked up. It's OK that things are going to
• 54:10
  happen, but what are you doing to change?
• 54:12
  Sitting in a corner crying ain't going to help, ain't going to
• 54:15
  help you. Changing your mindset, changing
• 54:17
  your approach to everything. It's like putting out a shitty
• 54:20
  dish, right? I've had the best dishes made by
• 54:25
  accident because something shifted in my mind, in my palate
• 54:30
  for a moment that made me go, oh, it's like making pasta
• 54:33
  dough, right? When you're making that pasta
• 54:35
  dough, you have the right balance.
• 54:37
  You let it rest long enough because you can't just make
• 54:39
  pasta dough and go right at it and start turning it right.
• 54:43
  If your flour's off or the hydration's off, you know if
• 54:45
  you're using. Too wet, Too wet.
• 54:47
  Stuck to the plastic when you're peeling it off, right?
• 54:49
  So it's like, it's like that, right?
• 54:50
  So how do you find the balance and what do you do to correct
• 54:54
  it? So the end result is a beautiful
• 54:56
  pasta. You know, I talk to Deb about
• 54:57
  this all the time. We go out for dinner and I'm
• 54:59
  like, OK, whether it's fresh or homemade, like you could tell
• 55:04
  the difference, but you could also tell if it's shitty pasta,
• 55:07
  right? You could just tell right off
• 55:09
  the bat. Like that cook didn't care.
• 55:12
  He or she just pulled it out of a box or didn't care about the
• 55:15
  timing of the process. Like that's love when you do
• 55:19
  that. Like when I make a result
• 55:21
  though, I'll I'll result to the fuck out of anybody any day
• 55:25
  because it's my thing. It's like I know the love and
• 55:28
  and and passion you have to. Put what's What's your risotto
• 55:30
  method? What's Share Share the.
• 55:32
  World, I mean it's share the world.
• 55:34
  It's a it's a long method. You know, you 23 minutes.
• 55:36
  It takes you a low flame. You know, you get your shallots
• 55:38
  in, you hit it with a white, you know, then you add your.
• 55:41
  Is there a ratio that you like or is it just eyeballing?
• 55:43
  No, no, I always go 4 to 1. 4 to 1, OK.
• 55:46
  But it was including what No, I let that reduce, you know, and
• 55:51
  and then making sure that you're getting a little bit of a toast
• 55:54
  on the boreal, right? So it's like the process, right?
• 55:58
  So once you get your first batch in, you, you bring it to a slow
• 56:01
  simmer, then you then you lower a little a slow boil, then you
• 56:04
  lower it and then you slowly batch it in, but using hot
• 56:06
  stock. So you're not cooling the
• 56:08
  process. But I watch people do that all
• 56:09
  the time. I'm like, stop, you don't take a
• 56:11
  cold product into a hot pan and you all you do is cooling it
• 56:14
  down. Now that that's gonna take
• 56:16
  forever. It's like when you see people
• 56:17
  saute and they're like, why do you take the pan off the fucking
• 56:20
  flame? Yeah, you have some wild,
• 56:22
  mysterious way of heating it up here.
• 56:24
  Yeah, like, yeah, just leave it on the flame.
• 56:26
  I do cooking classes. I tell people that all the time.
• 56:28
  I'm like, there's nothing here now.
• 56:30
  You created steam in your pan, but it's the process, right?
• 56:32
  You lower it and you slowly add your, your, your, your stock
• 56:35
  into it. And then you finish it like it's
• 56:37
  it's a process. You're the chef who taught me
• 56:40
  Julianna Boggioli, like he taught me that it was like a
• 56:43
  relationship or like love, right?
• 56:44
  You take your time with it, you move it, you keep it stirring,
• 56:47
  you keep it fresh. And and as you go, you'll know
• 56:50
  not by us most by seeing how it evolves.
• 56:54
  And that to me, is why when I'm making risotto, I know that
• 56:58
  there are a few people who can make it better than me or as
• 57:00
  good as me because it's a process.
• 57:02
  And I pay attention to the detail.
• 57:04
  When I make it home for Deb and the kids, like, I want it to be
• 57:07
  great. It's a simple peasant dish.
• 57:09
  But I want that dish no matter what I do when I make it for
• 57:12
  them. Yeah, I love it.
• 57:13
  I will have risotto all day and night.
• 57:15
  Of a simple parmesan risotto. I love it.
• 57:17
  Or normally when we start getting close to wrapping up I
• 57:21
  start asking some questions. So chef, one of the most
• 57:23
  important questions is if if you had Mount Rushmore of chefs that
• 57:28
  should be on Mount Rushmore, who are those chefs?
• 57:30
  So it would definitely be Burke. It would definitely Blumenthal
• 57:34
  from that duck. I got to say Curtis, Curtis
• 57:39
  Duffy, because he like his part of it's because of his life and,
• 57:44
  and understanding where he's come from and, and how he
• 57:47
  evolved as a, as a cook, as a, as a chef, as an entrepreneur
• 57:51
  and, and some similarities in, in like being in the wrong place
• 57:57
  at the wrong time with stuff. And you know, there's, there's
• 58:01
  so many other chefs, but like Bourdain, like while he wasn't a
• 58:05
  great chef, he was such a great storyteller.
• 58:09
  He brought you into a world that like for me, I never knew going
• 58:14
  to Istanbul or wherever, like different cultures and, and you
• 58:20
  know, like being being like relentless on that, like that to
• 58:24
  me, you know, I'd want to see like if I could have.
• 58:27
  And I've had meals with him because we shared the same PR
• 58:30
  firm at one point. So like I've had time to spend
• 58:33
  with him and just being with someone like that makes you
• 58:37
  better, better as a cook, better as a human being, better
• 58:40
  understanding of what you don't know, Like, and that was that
• 58:43
  that kind of stuff is. He loves food and he loves the
• 58:46
  industry. Yeah, he genuinely did.
• 58:48
  He, you know, just perspective, right?
• 58:52
  Just learning from people like that, that that to me that that,
• 58:56
  you know, my culinary Mount Rushmore, you know, there's
• 58:58
  other people out there, you know, Thomas Keller, those kind
• 59:03
  of guys who were able to, you know, Danielle Ballude, those
• 59:06
  chefs who like kind of massage the industry to make us better.
• 59:10
  You know, I think those people are important.
• 59:11
  But I would say those four were probably the people that this
• 59:15
  one. We're aspirational, you know,
• 59:16
  Thomas Keller, Daniel Blue, you know, I said this is what you
• 59:18
  could become. Yeah, I mean, just in their
• 59:20
  stories and then how they approach food and you know,
• 59:22
  Keller, I mean, it's just a monster.
• 59:24
  But think about all those chefs that came from him, right?
• 59:27
  Even I'm sorry. You know who else I'm sorry?
• 59:29
  He should be on there. Charlie Trotter.
• 59:30
  Yeah. Trotter by a long shot.
• 59:32
  Like I remember as a kid getting his books and being like the
• 59:35
  purple one. Yeah, what the fuck?
• 59:37
  Like, Oh my God, who is this monster?
• 59:39
  And years later, I went to eat Diner's restaurant, and it was a
• 59:41
  great experience. And he came around and talked
• 59:43
  and I was like, well, you're you're Charlie Trotter.
• 59:45
  And he was just cool. Yeah.
• 59:47
  Right. And then to read like, you know,
• 59:48
  Curtis's story about working for him and then how that ended and,
• 59:52
  you know, like, he like, shit, man.
• 59:54
  He was a monster. I went to Trotters in Chicago
• 59:57
  like a month ago with his son Dylan.
• 59:59
  Openly to the that pop, that Papa.
• 1:00:01
  No, it wasn't a Papa. It was closed.
• 1:00:02
  So Bill Kim, who used to be, you know, the chef at Trotters years
• 1:00:05
  ago, picked me up, took me there.
• 1:00:07
  He's like, I got a surprise for you.
• 1:00:08
  They opened it up. I I mean, it's closed, right?
• 1:00:11
  But I got to see all the awards and, you know, where he used to
• 1:00:13
  film the PBS show. It was so cool.
• 1:00:15
  Trotter, I agree. Yeah, yeah, he should put him up
• 1:00:18
  there too. Yeah, put him up, not take
• 1:00:19
  Anthony off. But no, no, no, like let's,
• 1:00:21
  let's chisel. No, but charter was.
• 1:00:24
  Like him, you know those guys, like in those days, it was like
• 1:00:27
  to see what they were coming up with and how they were
• 1:00:30
  approaching food. Yeah.
• 1:00:31
  And like, they were relentless on making excellence happen,
• 1:00:35
  right. Not good, not great, but fucking
• 1:00:37
  excellent. Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  And that was the drive. And that's what for me as a cook
• 1:00:41
  drove me like being inspired by them.
• 1:00:44
  And then when it my first place being that, that, you know, like
• 1:00:46
  just constant, constant, constant, like just evolving and
• 1:00:50
  not ever feel like I was good enough.
• 1:00:52
  And then making the dish, I was like, that's really fucking
• 1:00:54
  good. And then you're like, that
• 1:00:55
  sucks. Do it again.
• 1:00:56
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:58
  Last couple of questions, chef. What's the salt in your?
• 1:01:00
  Is it Diamond, Crystal? Is it Mortons?
• 1:01:01
  What are you guys using? For cooking, it's Diamond.
• 1:01:04
  For finishing. Well done there from Australia.
• 1:01:08
  That stuff is the greatest. The flake on there just
• 1:01:10
  finishing off there. But Diamond, Yeah, Diamond more
• 1:01:12
  the Mortons. You know, I, I had this weird
• 1:01:15
  experience, the Morton salt, like it just, it became almost
• 1:01:19
  medicinal. I don't know why, but Diamond
• 1:01:21
  for me is like in the cooking process, that's the way to go.
• 1:01:24
  Would you use like a finishing acid?
• 1:01:25
  Like is it lemon? Is it vinegar?
• 1:01:27
  Do you have like a go to if you need to lift up the acidity?
• 1:01:29
  Typically it would be vinegar. Which one?
• 1:01:30
  Yeah, probably, Probably a Sherry vinegar because I like
• 1:01:33
  it. I like it that it's got the
• 1:01:34
  sharpness to it, but it's got a little bit of a sweetness to it
• 1:01:37
  and it can elevate so many different things, especially
• 1:01:39
  fish. And are you a green tape kitchen
• 1:01:42
  or a blue tape kitchen or? I'm a white tape kitchen.
• 1:01:45
  White tape, white tape on a, on a spindle so it cuts proper.
• 1:01:49
  Yeah, yeah, I used to like the blue and then my guys, they
• 1:01:52
  couldn't read it and it was green.
• 1:01:54
  I'm like, just white tape it, man.
• 1:01:56
  White. White.
• 1:01:57
  Yeah, yeah. Is there something that you do
• 1:01:59
  in your kitchen that a lot of people could learn from?
• 1:02:02
  Like, do you have like a technique that like, you know, a
• 1:02:04
  lot of people don't do this, but a lot of people would benefit if
• 1:02:06
  they did this in their kitchen? I don't know if it's just I
• 1:02:09
  don't know if it's one thing that I think about.
• 1:02:11
  I just, you know, I just poach food, you know, like making sure
• 1:02:14
  that scallops, for instance, right.
• 1:02:16
  You know, it's basic, but a lot of people don't do it Where you
• 1:02:19
  where you, you know, when we when we get it, they're dried,
• 1:02:21
  but I dry them out a little bit more, just a little bit of salt
• 1:02:24
  on them before. Oh, the other thing that I do a
• 1:02:27
  lot more than I don't see. I don't know why people don't do
• 1:02:29
  this. I salt my oil.
• 1:02:30
  I season my oil before I start to saute.
• 1:02:33
  I salt and I season my oil. When I put it in the pan, I
• 1:02:36
  season it first. Why is that?
• 1:02:38
  Because I find that it builds the flavor better.
• 1:02:41
  And I've tried a couple. I've never seen it.
• 1:02:42
  Yeah, yeah, that's, you know, my, I, I've done a couple of
• 1:02:44
  things like I'm cooking and people are like, why are you
• 1:02:46
  seasoning it? I'm like, because think about it
• 1:02:48
  like you're seasoning your oil. So you automatically get that
• 1:02:52
  first season in a sear in a saute and then you build the
• 1:02:56
  flavor. It's like trying to, you know,
• 1:02:58
  season at the end of the dish. I'm never going to get the
• 1:03:00
  fucking flavor out of it. Like start from the get go.
• 1:03:03
  And I, it was just like a couple years ago when I started doing
• 1:03:06
  it now like my cooks do it and I.
• 1:03:08
  Notice it makes a difference. Hell yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:11
  I don't know why more people don't do that.
• 1:03:12
  Like you have this great, whether it's an olive oil or a
• 1:03:14
  blend oil, I like it just seasons.
• 1:03:19
  It's like seasoning meat, right? You don't wait till the end.
• 1:03:22
  You season while at the beginning, right.
• 1:03:25
  So I just found it that way. So I that's one of the things
• 1:03:27
  that probably most people, like you said, most people don't do.
• 1:03:29
  And I don't know why I think it happened.
• 1:03:31
  I was doing I was doing a cooking class at one of my
• 1:03:33
  restaurants. You got 80 people in there and
• 1:03:34
  I'm like season the salt and someone's like I was seasoning
• 1:03:37
  the oil. Like why do you season your oil?
• 1:03:40
  I'm like, that's a good question.
• 1:03:43
  And I'm like, I did. I was just doing it by second
• 1:03:45
  nature, but just like and build a flavor.
• 1:03:48
  Yeah, yeah. So it was just like, this is
• 1:03:50
  kind of cool and it worked out great.
• 1:03:51
  So now my guys do it. All the time.
• 1:03:52
  The chefs PSA that I posted today, I'm paraphrasing.
• 1:03:55
  I remember exactly what it was. But when you start cooking, you
• 1:03:58
  need to pay attention so you understand.
• 1:04:00
  But once you understand, you could just cook.
• 1:04:01
  Yeah, and it's into. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:03
  It's like second nature. It's like, you know, yeah, when
• 1:04:06
  that pan gets hot enough to sear into it, you know, you know,
• 1:04:09
  when the, when the water is right to drop, the, the, you
• 1:04:12
  know, the annual LOTI in it, you know, I don't want to boil it.
• 1:04:15
  I want it just at that point of almost boiling.
• 1:04:17
  Yeah, you know. I was, I was butchering
• 1:04:19
  something the other day and I had him butchered.
• 1:04:21
  I mean, like I'm a podcast, you know, chef media brand now more
• 1:04:25
  so than a chef. And so I had this thing and I'm
• 1:04:27
  looking at I was like, how do I do this?
• 1:04:29
  Like I couldn't remember and then I like, shut my brain off
• 1:04:32
  and then it all came like my hands knew.
• 1:04:33
  What second nature? My hands knew what to do, but my
• 1:04:35
  brain was like overthinking. I was like, just shut that brain
• 1:04:38
  down. The hands will know what.
• 1:04:39
  To do No, it's funny like I, I have some of my sous chef and
• 1:04:41
  one of my cooks, I taught them how to butcher properly.
• 1:04:43
  Yeah. So once in a while I'm like give
• 1:04:46
  me the salmon. They're like, I got it.
• 1:04:48
  I'm like no. And I'll knock it out 1/8 of the
• 1:04:50
  time that they do it. Yeah.
• 1:04:52
  It's just like you have a pin bone like what do you need?
• 1:04:54
  Yeah, OK. How'd you do that?
• 1:04:55
  I'm like, what I've done my whole life.
• 1:04:58
  That's all I know. Yeah, it's the only thing I do
• 1:05:00
  when I think about it is slowly. Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Yeah. Well chef, where can people find
• 1:05:04
  you if they want to follow? Along so on social media,
• 1:05:07
  Instagram is where I'm really at.
• 1:05:08
  So it's Chef Eric L Yeah, so Eric with AC and I have my
• 1:05:14
  website to chefericl.com and there's all the things that I
• 1:05:18
  do, whether it's consulting with the books or recipes and things
• 1:05:21
  like that, but I'm always around.
• 1:05:22
  And the restaurants? The restaurants are on Long
• 1:05:23
  Island, 317 Main St. Vico, Not the Irishman, the
• 1:05:26
  James Room, Recovery Room at All in Farmingdale and lots of
• 1:05:29
  really cool things coming up. So we got, I'm really excited
• 1:05:32
  about what's coming. Well, when you when the book's
• 1:05:34
  done, I wanna, I wanna get a copy.
• 1:05:35
  Oh yeah. Yeah, maybe you write the
• 1:05:36
  forward for. It.
• 1:05:37
  Yeah, Yeah. There you go.
• 1:05:37
  All right. Good seeing you.
• 1:05:39
  Thanks for coming. Thank you for having me.
• 1:05:40
  Appreciate you. Well, I hope you enjoyed the
• 1:05:43
  show, you know what to do and make sure you leave five stars
• 1:05:45
  if you're listening on Spotify or anywhere really.
• 1:05:47
  If you're watching on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe
• 1:05:49
  button. I'd completely revamped the
• 1:05:51
  chef's PSA store, shop.chefspsa.com.
• 1:05:55
  My team added a ton of new items.
• 1:05:57
  I advise you to go check it out. Just peruse, look around, maybe
• 1:06:00
  you see something nice that you like.
• 1:06:02
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• 1:06:04
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  on sub stack and Spotify for premium members.