I'll be straight up with you in this episode. Culinary school is not for everyone, and even if it is the right school may not be near you.

DFW Culinary Schools:

Collin County Culinary Program

Dallas College Culinary Pastry Hospitality

Episode with Chef Patrick Stark who is currently a Chef Instructor at the Dallas College Culinary Program.

Chef Patrick Stark

Chef Stark also offers programs on his own for those that can cook but need to fine tune their culinary math.

Culinary Math Murder Mystery

TikTok @culinarymmmyster

Facebook @starkravingedutainment

Find Inside The Pressure Cooker Here

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Twitter: @chadkelley

Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker

Feedback: Email me!

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

Check Out my Other Projects:

Chef Made Home

Roasted Bean Freak

Experience the journey of Chef Josh Morris and his unconventional path to success as he teaches us to elevate those around us and appreciate life's blessings.

"Being a chef is about elevating everybody around you. Right. Because they've got to execute your dream, your visions. So the idea is to elevate everybody around you."

Josh Morris is a chef from Gainesville, Texas who has been cooking for 20 years. He has an obsessive personality and has been influenced by his wife and Anthony Bourdain to pursue a career in the culinary arts.

Josh Morris was always passionate about cooking, but lacked formal direction. Unfazed by the lack of formal training and with a strong puppy-love for the industry, he took it upon himself to learn and grow in the kitchen. He took on restaurant roles and quickly found himself in leadership positions, learning valuable lessons about delegating tasks and elevating those around him. When he had children, though, he found himself having to take things more seriously, as he had to provide for them. He was gifted with children, and subsequently had to adjust his priorities, his decision making process, and even become a student of books. Ultimately, this is how Josh Morris learned about delegating tasks in the kitchen.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How Do You Delegate Responsibilities as a Chef?

2. What Are the Challenges of Being an Underprivileged Chef?

3. What Are the Pros and Cons of Going to Culinary School?

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Twitter: @chadkelley

Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker

Feedback: Email me!

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Josh Morris: Balancing a chefs drive with family life

Check Out my Other Projects:

Chef Made Home

Roasted Bean Freak

Transcript:

Welcome back, everyone. We're here with Chef Josh Morris. Man, I almost lost it again. There Josh Morris. And we're doing compare. Contrast. Not even that. I'm going to kind of edit that out. All right, let's start this over. All right, everybody, welcome back. We're here with Josh Morris, and we're going to be talking paths. The path I took versus the path he took. Very different paths, but pretty much ended up in the same spot at one point. So not really a but we did. So, Morris, tell me kind of your path a little bit now. The other part to this, though, is we're not going to touch base for everybody listening on his entire kind of history. If you want to know more about Morris, go ahead and take a look at season one, episode one, and there's a full interview with him then kind of a little bit more detailed about who he is, the life of his apparent and chef and all that fun stuff. Morris, your path?

Speaker B 00:05:16

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:05:17

I mean, what got you into it then?

Speaker B 00:05:21

I grew up in Gainesville, Texas. It's a really small town just south of the Oklahoma border. Didn't have a lot of money growing up. Our meals consisted of ground beef, potatoes, cream of mushroom soup for pretty much every meal. There was no interest in food in my entire family, except my great aunt owned a diner on the town square.

Speaker A 00:05:56

Right on.

Speaker B 00:05:57

And at one point or another, everybody in my family worked there. But it wasn't like any interest in the restaurant business. It was just a way to make money.

Speaker A 00:06:07

Sure.

Speaker B 00:06:08

I even worked there a couple of times. I remember being like, nine or ten years old and standing on a milk crate so that I could reach the plates in the bottom of the three bay.

Speaker A 00:06:19

Yes.

Speaker B 00:06:23

That was pretty much the extent of it. We ate a lot of canned vegetables, but both at the grandparents had gardens, so we'd have tomatoes and peppers and onions in the summer. And I was the kind of kid that I didn't hate anything. Most kids like having a don't like broccoli or asparagus or something like that, and I just loved food all the time. It didn't really matter what it was. And I liked going out to restaurants, even though we didn't do it very often. I think because we didn't do it very often, it was much more of an experience. And I can remember as a kid being really excited to go out and meet with my parents, and my kids are most definitely not like that. We're going out to eat again. Why? I've always been a creative person as a kid. I would draw a lot. I got into music fairly early. I was a writer for a while, so I've always had that creative bug. But actually getting into the restaurant business was it was just for money. It didn't really hold any other appeal other than a nice steady paycheck at first. And then as a cook in a town that's kind of, like, known to be a drug town, got to fall into the pitfalls of that lifestyle. Like, a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs, a lot of hard partying, and your ambitions kind of fade when you're living like that. I mean, it's just like the whole point is to get fucked up. I lived that way for, I don't know, from the time I was 17 till I was, like, 20 or 21. When I turned 21, I got into a relationship with a girl that had two small kids. And I didn't get into that with any intention of becoming, like, a father figure, but that's ultimately what happened. It was a very fucked up relationship, to say the least, but she ended up being a really bad person, and she left us. She left me and the kids. So I became a single father for a while, and I was working two cook jobs at the time and taking care of kids by myself. So it was kind of a hard row for a while. But the bug, I guess, was always there for creating stuff. But I worked in restaurants where there was zero creativity. It was all about volume. Right. It wasn't until I started dating my wife now that the idea of becoming a chef really sat in. And the two people that I cannot overstate their influence on my career are my wife, who allowed me to pursue more dreams of becoming a chef, and bourdain. I think a lot of chefs of our generation can chop bourdain quite a bit. So for the first ten years, I say I've been cooking for 20 years. For the first ten years, I cooked things in a microwave. The only skill I really picked up there was how to be fast, how to be efficient, and how to cook a steak with your fingers, which is a great skill to have.

Speaker A 00:10:08

There's one good takeaway.

Speaker B 00:10:10

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A 00:10:16

Obviously, your wife was I'm assuming she was in the industry when you met her then.

Speaker B 00:10:22

Yeah, we actually knew each other at that first restaurant. We worked together, but we didn't date for the first ten years that we knew each other.

Speaker A 00:10:30

Okay.

Speaker B 00:10:31

Our path just kind of crossed back together later on in life, and things turned out okay after all that bullshit.

Speaker A 00:10:42

That I went through, what got you into cooking? What is it about her that got you into it? Was she just kind of did you cook at home and were more creative? And she's like, man, you need to drive this further?

Speaker B 00:10:58

It was certainly that. Yeah, because when I was a single dad and I had two jobs, I would have $50 to last three people groceries for two weeks.

Speaker A 00:11:11

Fucking impressive. Yeah.

Speaker B 00:11:14

I did what I had to do, but there's not a lot of creativity to be had when you have to live off the bare minimum. But once I had her second income, and we got a house, and she was a really great cook. And I was just, like, sitting in the kitchen and watch it because I was so impressed by the things that she knew. And she just learned this stuff from watching cooking shows. So I started watching cooking shows, and of course, Bourdain was the big one, even though he didn't cook that much on that show, he resonated with me because he was a rider, too. He was definitely rebellious, but he had this real empathy for other people and certain romanticism about a cook's life.

Speaker A 00:12:04

Not just a cook's life, but just the food and cultures and just so many things that were so unappreciated in the world. He definitely took us all to places that people were lack of a better term were kind of scared to go.

Speaker B 00:12:22

Yes. And it was through that kind of channel where I've always been poor and I've never had the chance to travel, or even when I started thinking about becoming a chef, I didn't have the opportunity to go stage in fancy kitchens or anything like that. I really didn't understand the means of how to even go about doing any of those things.

Speaker A 00:12:51

That makes sense. I mean, yeah, when you're getting into it, like, it takes time to really understand and then comprehend. I know this seemed like the same word, but it's almost two different words because you kind of understand what cooking is and where you're going, and then there's that next level when you're talking about going and stagging at places, and it's like, wait, what? Then there's the concept of people like, I have to do this. And you're like, no, you don't have to. Right. But it definitely helps with experience for those resume builders out there. It is.

Speaker B 00:13:39

But I've always kind of had an obsessive personality. Like, whatever I'm into, I'm 100% fully into it. So when I started thinking about food and becoming a chef, I would have dinner parties at my house, trying new things. I would get books from the library, just, like, stacks and stacks of them. And I think because of Bourdain, like, the travel shows, I really started to lean into flavors and cultures that I wasn't familiar with. So big, bold flavors really appealed to me at first. Korean food, Caribbean, African, all these ingredients and flavors that I didn't understand. And when I finally did become a soup chef and had input on a menu, even though it didn't really fit with where I was, those were the things that I would push. And that was kind of a frequent pitfall of chefs when they're coming up. I think as you start to cook for you and you don't really cook for the guest, you're just kind of like, what can I do? How can I create what's next?

Speaker A 00:14:56

Yeah, especially as a young cook in ensue, because you get so you're enamored by it all. And just your love. And it's such that almost like puppy love stage. I've always been that chef. I was in that same spot. But being that chef, having those younger cooks and Sue's that have always wanted to bring stuff to the table, and you're always kind of looking at it and you're like, man, how do I let the air out of this balloon slowly? Because it's one of those, like, man, I love this. This is great. I love the energy, but it's like, okay, it doesn't fit. So it's like, how can we keep pushing that same energy and be encouraging, but also tell them, like, there's no way in hell it's going to be on the menu.

Speaker B 00:15:54

And there were some times where I definitely had to learn the hard way, where I would do a tasting for people. They're like, there's no fucking way you can sell this good though it might be, like, it just doesn't fit concept, and it's just kind of weak. And even as a sous chef, like I said, with the obsessive nature that I had, I pushed hard. I would work 60, 70 hours, weeks. And from where I came from, I was a leader in that kind of field. But the way I got there is because I would do things that nobody else would do. And I did them fast and I did them well. So I became, like this machine of self sufficiency, but I didn't know how to delegate. And that was another pitfall that came from when I did become an executive chef, was I took that burden all on myself, and I did not let anybody else touch my shit.

Speaker A 00:16:59

No, I think that's a common one for so many people when they get into it, and even with people with experience, when they get into a new role, with new people around them not learning, but just actually delegating. Because everybody knows that you have to kind of delegate stuff out to get things done. Because it's not like you just woke up one day, never walked into a restaurant, and then you're just, hey, I'm running the show here. No, I mean, you understood. You've been a part of it. You've been delegated, too. So, I mean, there's a party to you that knew what you needed to do, but there's that fear of, like, man, this is all on me now. And so the concept of delegating becomes really, really difficult to kind of comprehend and actually deal out. I've been there. I've been in that chef and then went to a new restaurant, new town, new city, new state, and had to be that guy and the delegate things out. But I didn't trust anybody. The spotlight was on me again, right? But it was, like, on a very different platform, so there's even more pressure. And I had to fall in my face a few times. And it's part of the learning process.

Speaker B 00:18:33

Yeah, for sure. I think these are all very common problems, but they sucked at the time.

Speaker A 00:18:40

But they're not going to go away.

Speaker B 00:18:44

Failure is how you learn. So I learned a lot. And then I got promoted from sue chef to executive chef. That was a huge deal for me. And I was executive chef for probably four months, and I was really starting to find my vibe. And then Kovich shut down everything. The reason I bring this up is, aside from kind of losing my vibe, I was out of work for almost three months. For the first month, I was trapped at home with the kids. My wife was still working, her restaurant was still open.

Speaker A 00:19:23

Trapped is a good way to put it.

Speaker B 00:19:28

I really did kind of hit like a spiral of depression for a minute because it was just like there's a lot of uncertainty about where my future was, if the restaurant was going to come back, if I was going to have a job still. But once I kind of broke free of that, I really just needed something to do to keep my mind busy. So I started a garden in the backyard, and I started getting more into that. And I called you up and I borrowed some old school, like, chef books. That happened is because I was reading French Laundry book, and Thomas Keller talked about how he became an executive chef before he even really learned how to cook. And that one sentence hit me hard. I was like, oh, my God. I've just been like, snowballing all this shit that I've just kind of been teaching myself without ever really knowing any fundamentals. So that's why it hits you up to borrow, like, escophier and things of that nature. It's like reading the Bible. It's hard to sit there and just read the Staffier. You power through it and you learn. One of the bigger ones that hit me was the Irving book that you let me borrow, the secular gastronomy, which that term and modernist cuisine kind of get lumped in together when they're not the fucking same. Modernist cuisine became all the foams and the hydrocolloids and things of that nature. The actual molecular gastronomy was started in the it's just a science behind why things work the way they do. Easy stuff, too. Like, why are your mashed potatoes gloomy?

Speaker A 00:21:27

Yeah, I'm looking up to see when that book was originally published. I mean, the one that's showing me is 2002, but that's not right because I've owned that book before then. Fairly certain it was from the think so, yeah. Chef Herve, his stuff that he talks about in that book was like the concept of sou vide and so much of that. It's called molecular gastronomy, but it's almost more just like the science of cooking, right? Yeah. And it's a great book. I really enjoyed it. Another one, honestly, I don't own it, and I don't know why, but on food and cooking. Harold McGee it's essentially the American version of molecular gastronomy, right? Exploring the science of flavors. So those are both great or not research, but reference books.

Speaker B 00:22:41

Yeah. And that was I don't know, it was a big learning curve for me, like really diving into the old school French instead of the stuff that I had been doing. My interest was piqued into learning how to do that stuff, so I would practice at home. I also got really into fermentation while I was on lockdown, so I didn't have much else to do.

Speaker A 00:23:07

I'm just going to sit here and watch this thing bubble.

Speaker B 00:23:12

I got really good at making my own vinegars. That was a big one. Doing a lot of pickles. I would say that COVID for me, was actually kind of a good thing. It sucked. But at the same time, I stayed busy and I stayed learning. And I learned a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have learned if I was still so busy at the restaurant that I don't have time for reading and diving and things like that. So we came back from COVID and obviously product was hard to come by. And that was probably the funnest couple of months of my cooking career. Because we were open dinner only for a while. I brought back my top cooks. We had a skeleton crew. We changed the menu almost daily. We had a blast. We and the crew had a blast. For the first couple of months, things started to reopen. We got back into the flow pretty quickly. Business was back, it was booming. But I still had I guess my ideas were getting bigger than where I was. There were certain things that I knew I could never do at that restaurant. And I already have kind of a chip on my shoulder because I was 27 when I decided to work at a real kitchen. And like I said, I didn't have a chance to stage or anything like that. So anything that I didn't learn at that restaurant, I taught myself.

Speaker A 00:24:54

Right.

Speaker B 00:24:54

I've always felt like I was behind the eight ball, so I had a lot to prove. Still do. But out of the 20 years that I've been working in kitchens, I've only been a chef by title for almost three years. And that's another, I guess, kind of chip on the shoulder, is like, how do I still consider myself a chef? I haven't had that title for almost two years now.

Speaker A 00:25:25

It's just a title.

Speaker B 00:25:27

Yeah, I try to tell myself that I consider myself a chef and that's what's fucking important. This is what I've decided to dedicate my life to. And I do. But I still do.

Speaker A 00:25:44

No, I mean, for me, the concept of chef and the titles, the name and title gets thrown around in a lot of ways. You know what I'm talking about. And to me, the concept of a chef and being able to call yourself a chef means that you've been a part of a restaurant where you are in a leadership role that also involved creativity. Right. Okay. Being in a leadership role, that's a whole nother level of creativity. If you have ever tried to figure out the scheduling, sometimes during labor crisis and during COVID and stuff that's talk about creativity as well as just punishing yourself, but I'm talking about more creativity in the world of cooking. Right. And also being able to go to someone and almost become their mentor and be able to teach them. Because being a chef is about elevating everybody around you. Right. Because they've got to execute your dream, your visions. So the idea is to elevate everybody around you. And to me, that's a chef, someone that's in a leadership role that can elevate the people around them, that would be a better way to say it.

Speaker B 00:27:20

I like that.

Speaker A 00:27:21

Yeah. So with that, you qualify.

Speaker B 00:27:28

No, thank you.

Speaker A 00:27:34

Now that you've got my blessing. All right.

Speaker B 00:27:44

That's where we're at.

Speaker A 00:27:47

Grew up, we'll say underprivileged no real direction, and finally kind of found that direction. Did not go to any kind of formal culinary training. Informal culinary training. All your training was just self taught.

Speaker B 00:28:13

Yeah.

Speaker A 00:28:17

And then finally just the whole, like, okay, time to get into restaurants. Like, lack of a term. A real restaurant. Real restaurant, meaning a scratch kitchen that did not own a microwave. Right. And then just learning the ropes.

Speaker B 00:28:39

Yeah. And I pushed just as hard as I did when I was executive chef, but I didn't really have a lot of backup because my soup chefs were guys that were still running the line. They still had to run chefs. They were part of the cooking crew, so I couldn't put too much on their plate as far as, like, ordering and inventory. I kind of did a disservice to them. I'm not going to lie by not teaching them those things. But at the same time, it was just kind of, like, head down, do it. I worked sick. I worked 70 to 80 hours a week sometimes. I worked a couple of 36 hours shifts. And those are the things you do because you love it. You will literally drive yourself into a fucking hole. But it's all for the love.

Speaker A 00:29:39

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:29:46

I think to a normal person, hearing that you worked a 36 hours shift is so mind blowing. You worked almost 40 hours in two days. Yes, I did.

Speaker A 00:30:04

There's so many people that aren't familiar with the industry that if they happen to be listening to this, are going to call bullshit on that too, because they're like, It's not possible. And it's like, yeah, actually it is. And it's pretty easy, man. So our path, we just kind of recapped yours versus mine. I grew up, and I was just working fast food, kind of, and went to culinary school. I was able to do that. And honestly, I probably went to culinary school sooner than I should have because I didn't have any real, as I put it, real restaurant experience, other than just knowing that there was something about it that was like, Hell, yeah. And then just kind of bounced around the country until we kind of finally met. But it's a very interesting where I was fortunate, where I didn't have anything kind of holding me back and was never really into any kind of relationship of any kind for very long because my relationship was with restaurants and cooking. And so honestly, when it came to the concept of dating or going out, it was just never a factor for me. I couldn't well, when am I going to go? I'm always working. Not working. I'm studying. And I had no desire to do anything other than work and study for decades.

Speaker B 00:32:02

It's definitely a different spin with a lot of people that get into this industry. They want to become chefs, and they have that opportunity to stage or travel or work multiple places and sometimes work for free just to get experience. And when you're a parent, you have to think about money first, and you have to think about their well being first. So your priorities are really out of whack. Everyone else's.

Speaker A 00:32:35

Absolutely.

Speaker B 00:32:36

The goal is nonetheless the same.

Speaker A 00:32:40

I remember when we had our first daughter, or only daughter, my first kid, it was a moment of like, oh, shit. Okay, got to take things a little bit more seriously, right? And it's like, okay, still bounced around a little bit. Not too bad. And then when we had our second kid, the moment I found out that we were going to have two, it was scarier than the first one because it was like, I really can't fuck up. No, I can't just on a whim say, hey, fuck you, and I'm going somewhere else, because I didn't like the way you looked at me today. It was like, no, it's time to take things a whole lot more seriously. Some of the frustrations and all that stuff just had to be like, well, I can suck it up, right? Work through it, but just also learn to communicate some of that stuff as well. Once you start adding kids to it, mouse to feed and the cost to just have not just to have them in your life, especially when you start talking like daycares, man, I don't think people really understand how much that costs, depending on what part of the country you're in. I mean, you're easily spending $10,000 a year per kid in daycare so you can work.

Speaker B 00:34:31

So that you can pay for daycare. It's a really good thing.

Speaker A 00:34:35

So, I mean, when you take how much someone makes let's call it a sue happens to be bringing in 45 to 50 maybe right after taxes and everything, and then take out daycare, and that's like maybe 25 grand a year of spending money that doesn't include mortgage or rent groceries. Children are amazing. They're an incredible blessing. They helped me. They changed me in a lot of good ways. And some of it was subconsciously, too. And I am incredibly grateful for them, even when they pissed me off. It changes your decision making process and your priorities to a degree.

Speaker B 00:35:51

Sure.

Speaker A 00:35:56

Kids. So with that, don't have kids until you're ready. Yeah, but sometimes you're gifted with them. And I know that you love those kids more than anything, too.

Speaker B 00:36:14

I do like my children.

Speaker A 00:36:18

On most days.

Speaker B 00:36:20

Most days. As a child, I always tell myself that I would never have kids, which is hilarious. I now have four.

Speaker A 00:36:34

Yes, that is funny. Well, that's for me, not kids, but as a student. I was a horrible student in so many ways. I didn't read a book like any book through school without all my tests and all that stuff, for all the reading they're supposed to be doing. It was based off, like, Cliff Notes and all that stuff. But I didn't read a book until I was out of high school. And now I've got a library and.

Speaker B 00:37:13

I read every day.

Speaker A 00:37:13

Now I'm not just talking culinary, but just everything. So it's funny how life changes.

Speaker B 00:37:22

I was always a big reader. What was that horrible at math, though? I'm still terrible at math, but I have to use it every fucking day. Conversions and such.

Speaker A 00:37:36

Oh, conversions.

Chad Kelley, a former teddy bear-turned-grillmaster, navigates the high-stakes, high-pressure culinary world as he strives to build his own beer-centric restaurant, learning the hard way how to balance intensity and professionalism.

"I found something here. There's something. And I was like, I should probably follow this up with a more bachelor's based degree, because I also found that I was very good at not just the cooking side of things, but the financial side of things as well. As most people are a lot of chefs out there are great chefs, great cooks. But when it comes to managing numbers and all that stuff, they know fucking nothing." - Chad Kelley

Chad Kelley is a chef from Southern California who has worked in seafood restaurants in Dallas, San Francisco, and Indianapolis. He has worked his way up from line cook to executive sous chef and has experience in both the cooking and financial sides of the business.

Chad Kelley was born and raised in Southern California but didn't take school seriously, instead preferring to work and have fun. When his cousin suggested culinary school, Chad realized it was something he could excel in and found himself in San Francisco at the California Culinary Academy. After bouncing around to different jobs in the kitchen, Chad found himself back in Southern California where he worked for a real housewives of the OC restaurant. He then moved to Indianapolis and later Dallas, where he became the youngest executive chef in the company. While in Dallas, Chad took charge and didn't take any nonsense from his cooks, and eventually he opened a beer centric restaurant with 100 taps, proving his success in the culinary world.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How did Chad go from a high school student working at In-N-Out Burger to becoming a successful chef?

2. What is it like to work in a high-volume kitchen and how to handle the high pressure?

3. How did Chad transition from working in the kitchen to becoming the executive chef of a beer-centric restaurant?

Check Out my Other Projects:

Chef Made Home @Instagram

Roasted Bean Freak @Facebook

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Ariel Guivi, Part 1: What is a Chef?

Patrick Stark: The Untouchable Egos

Josh Morris: Balancing a chefs drive with family life

More Links for You

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker

Feedback: Email me!

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

Transcipt

And welcome back to season two. And so today we're going to be talking really more about my background, my history, and how I how I grew. Originally, I was going to break this up into the interview where we are going to be looking at both Morris and I kind of at the same time as we grew, where our backgrounds, where we came from, and how we ended up at the same restaurant. But the more I kind of listened and started looking at these things, it was like, man, it doesn't make sense. So we're going to go ahead and drop these episodes separately just to make sure we can do each its own justice without just editing the shit out of it and turning it into something it's not. You guys listen to this because it's more raw, and creating something super edited is not something that I want to do or something I think you want to listen to.

Speaker B 00:01:15

All right, welcome back. We're here with Josh Morris and today's session, if you will, episodes. Morris is going to grill me.

Speaker C 00:01:32

It's not really a grilling. We'll compare and contrast our paths as chefs, I think.

Speaker B 00:01:40

Okay, that works. Compare and contrast. Yeah. The different perspectives. I mean, we kind of talked a little bit about that last week, where it was definitely much more old school in a lot of ways. It served me well for a long time. It got me into plenty of trouble as well, especially as my career progressed. And there were more and more bitches coming into the kitchen. When I say that, I'm not talking about the females. They were much stronger. I will tell you. We're 100% I would rather have an all female kitchen than some of the all male kitchens I've had is less drama. I mean, they were there to fucking work, and they were kicked ass. Some of the guys are just fucking little dramatic assholes. They were my bitches. They were the dramatic bitches. So I need to clear that up before I got in fucking trouble on that one. So the Morris, take it away.

Speaker C 00:02:45

Well, we've known each other for six years or so, maybe seven, somewhere in there.

Speaker B 00:02:54

Okay, sounds about right.

Speaker C 00:02:57

I know that you grew up in Southern California, and I know that you worked in Dallas at mostly seafood restaurants. Everything else about your career is a fucking mystery to me, and I know you personally, so let's dive into that a little bit. Where did you come from and how did you get here?

Speaker B 00:03:18

Where did I come from? I came from the shadows. Yeah. Having my voice a little jacked up, that worked pretty well there. So I came from Southern California. Born and raised southern California. Orange county. And no, I didn't surf. No, I didn't skateboard. I did spend plenty of time on the beach. I would frequently ditch high school and go hang out at the beach. And that's something that was possible there, because in high schools, a lot of high schools back then were open campuses. You can drive on, drive off whenever you want. So it was good and bad. And I was working for in and out at the time, and I was enjoying working a whole lot more than I was enjoying going to school. School was always busy work for me.

Speaker C 00:04:25

Did your family is it like a foodie kind of a family?

Speaker B 00:04:31

No. My grandmother was in charge of the catering at her church. My mom and my aunt at one point did some catering. Very small scale kind of thing. But at no point were anybody in my family were they really involved in cooking.

Speaker C 00:04:59

Okay.

Speaker B 00:05:01

But anyway, after high school, I was still working in and out. I just didn't give a shit. I was having fun time. Everybody else was doing their own thing. And my cousin, who he's been on the show, Jeff, mentioned going to culinary school. And then at that point, something just snapped. Like, that light bulb. It didn't come on all the way, but the dimmer hit switch. Someone hit the dimmer switch, and all of a sudden, it was like, hey, there's something there. And it was just like, okay. And I started exploring it, and the more I dug into it, the more it was like, this is kind of cool. And this was late ninety s I want to say 97, right? Is probably when I started digging into it. And I looked at several schools, whether it's the CIA there was a school in Arizona. I don't remember what it was called. And then I ended up going to California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. It was downtown. And this was before it was bought by La cordon Blue. That was cool. Living in downtown San Francisco for a little over a year was pretty badass, man. Sorry, I was just hearing noises. I'm like, what is that? Living downtown San Francisco, going to school in this old building. It was just French and austrian chefs and a couple of germans thrown in there just for fun. And it was just it was the time of my life. I mean, I absolutely hated school in every traditional form because I learned quickly, and I apply what I learn quickly, right? And I could not figure out for the fucking life of me what I was learning in high school. Had zero application on what I was doing in my everyday life.

Speaker C 00:07:13

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:07:18

It was just like, what the fuck is the point of this? But when I got into a culinary school and it was intense, it was just an intense and large volume of knowledge just being fucking shoved down your throat. And it was like, either retain it and move on and do well, or you don't. You fail and you go back and do it again. And so there's a lot of pressure to stay with your class, and so every week to two weeks, you go to your new class. And so it wasn't like a college curriculum where you have, hey, today at 03:00, we're doing French, and then whatever. You didn't bounce around. Like, there was two sessions at the campus. There's the morning and then the evening sessions. And you just rotated some semesters, it was the morning. Some there were at nights. But for eight, 9 hours a day, that's all you did. You took one lunch break or dinner break, and then that's it. And you just did nothing but execute or learn the theories. And I just fucking loved it. I took it all in, and I was like, this is it for me. And I found it was one of those I excelled. And I'm like, okay, this is cool. I can do this. So that's kind of where I ended up after school.

Speaker C 00:08:50

All right, what about first jobs in kitchens that were not in and out?

Speaker B 00:09:02

Probably. So I did bounce around. I worked at a couple of places in San Francisco just very short term, doing some stage kind of things. Nothing of any importance or note, but it was just there to kind of get some experience. And then Northern Arizona I ended up going to nau Northern Arizona University after culinary school because I'm like, okay, I found something here. There's something. And I was like, I should probably follow this up with a more bachelor's based degree, because I also found that I was very good at not just the cooking side of things, but the financial side of things as well. As most people are a lot of chefs out there are great chefs, great cooks. But when it comes to managing numbers and all that stuff, they know fucking nothing. And that's unfortunate because that's a huge part of the business. Sometimes it's too much. But hey, if there's no money in the bank, you can't buy shit. You can't fucking operate anyway. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go there. And nau kind of worked out okay, but same thing turned into this. Like, this is doing nothing for me. I'm paying you guys to teach me something that I already know, and I'm going to work over here. And it was a brew pub and working 40 plus hours a week over there while taking a full load at school. And I was breezing through school, but I was getting paid to learn in the restaurant, right? And I'm like, so why am I going to school again? Thing. And I was like, okay. So I finished that off. I didn't end up I didn't get the degree. But it was just like, okay, I'm just going to stick with that. And I was I started there as just as a cook and grew to, like I guess it would be the equivalent of a sue pretty quickly. But this was also a smaller college town, and 99% of the cooks that were there were college kids that just didn't have the charisma to be in the dining room. So I became sue, not just because of work ethic and all that stuff, but also because it was like, okay, you're not really going anywhere anytime soon. And then from there, I ended up back in California, Southern California, and did a couple of different things there. I actually worked as a front of the house for a while just to kind of get some money. And I hated serving. I hated it. I could do it, and I was all right with it, but I just hated it. And then I did a job where it was weird. It was like Real housewives of Orange County kind of shit. And honestly, I think she was on the show, too, when it finally came into that area where her husband had some software company or something, just tons of money. And so he bought her a restaurant so she would have something to do, all right? And it was a ground up construction, and they had someone that they knew that was helping them, but they also hired a consultant. And so I worked with a consultant, got to know him pretty well, and we had a pretty good relationship. And I will never forget this one. We were handed a manila folder with just tear outs from magazines of recipes. And it's like, this is our menu. We covered the walk in parchment paper, right? And then just put and just drew a bunch of fucking squares and then the titles of all the recipes. And then just me and a couple of other guys would then go through and then work on scaling those recipes into professional recipes. And, like, okay, this works. This doesn't. Because it's like you don't go and it's like you're making something. You're like, okay, I need a cup of butter. What the fuck is a cup of butter? But also, just as you know, too, when you go to scale things and scale spices, they don't always scale the same way. But there was this one recipe, it was like some kind of shrimp dish. And the way they described it versus what the recipe was written, like, we could never get it right because we never knew what the finished dish was supposed to be. And they would try to tell us, and we would try to execute, and we were executing what they were saying, but it was always wrong. And they would come back all the time like, what the fuck is this? And this but nobody's like, I don't know. And they would just get so pissed about that stuff. But it was like one of those things that's like, I don't know what to tell you. And they react, fix it. I'm like, I don't know what I'm fixing. I don't know what it's supposed to be. But, yeah, that was a very interesting get right there, and then from there, I ended up in Indianapolis. Did not have a job or anything lined up over there. Moved there for other reasons and just got a job once I landed. And it was at the Oceanaire and they were building out, right? They were getting ready to open. So I was kind of a late hire to them as well. And I was joined them as a saute cook. And I remember in the elevator with the chef, and he's like, you ever done any volume cooking? And I instantly was like, oh, shit. Because I kind of done some, but not to the scale that we were about to do. But oceanaire, I was a saute cook, man. I got fucking my shit kicked in on a daily basis. A lot of that stuff is very saute heavy, two, three pan pickups, pan sauces, all that fun stuff. And it was fun. You definitely learned to cook differently. When you're doing seafood, there's a ton more finesse that's involved. Your margin of error is much less. And when it comes to creating elements that go with seafood too, you also got to be much more careful because you can overpower fish very fast, right? But we were creating for 500 cover nights, and everything came in fresh. Everything was butchered in house. Man, those butcher shifts sucked whenever the butcher was out. When I was finally a sue over there or a lead cook, I kept a duffel bag in the office, which is fucking long johns because the butcher you worked, it was an eight to ten hour shift in a walk in, right? And the butcher table and sink and all that stuff was in the walk in. Sometimes you'd be working and you'd see blood on your hand and you weren't sure where it came from. Did I cut myself? The fish have the blood. It's the same color. And you're just like, oh, fuck, where did this come from? You couldn't feel your fingertips.

Speaker C 00:17:44

I've never seen anything like that.

Speaker B 00:17:46

That's cool. Yeah. And then so I was there for about a year and a half or no, close to three years, and just worked my way up through the ranks there, you know, from line cook, lead line, sous chef, execs sue. I helped them open up the restaurant in San Diego as a saute trainer. That was fun. But I was always very intense, always very intense person. And I'm a big guy, and so people have always been scared of me, which I'm just a fucking teddy bear, right? But like any teddy bear, you just don't want to piss me off. But no, there's a few times they're like, hey, dude, take it easy. We don't need these guys quitting yet. But I was just like, dude, come on. You're getting ready to open. And every time we'd fire something, they'd have to stop and look at their notes. I'm like, no, come on, let's let's go. Go. Let's go. I've always been that way. Mike, you got to start trusting yourself. You can't stop and look at your notes every time you got to do something right? Guess what? You're going to fuck up. I guarantee it. But that's also how you're going to learn. If you don't screw up, then you don't know how to fix anything because you've never screwed it up. And if you don't know how to fix it, then you're in worse shape than you've ever been in now. You're going to have to rely on other people. But anyway, so no. And then I moved down from Indianapolis to Dallas when the exec position opened up. And so I was 29. I was the youngest exec in the company at that time. And they just said, Fix it. Things were not as oceanaire as they needed it to be, right? That was the way they put it. They were burning stuff and sending out burnt stuff and it's like, man, it's we're too high scalable place and to be sending out food that's burnt. And so I did, and we kind of brought it back and we had a lot of fun. And then the company itself started going through some hardships. I was struggling as well with the company because just of my personality, my intensity, and there was a lot of that, why are you mad all the time? Kind of shit. And I'm like, I'm not. I'm making sure I'm hurt. But I also didn't take shit. I did not take any shit from anybody. I had two brothers that worked for me that got into a fight on the line on Mother's Day brunch. It was like one of the fucking two days of that year we did brunch and they started to get into a fight on who was doing the poached eggs or whatever, and I fucking kicked them both off the line. Get the fuck out of here. I didn't take shit. Right? That's part of as a younger cook as well, in a lot of ways, where I believed in a lot more structure and a lot more I want to say a lot more structure. But structure needed to be there. The level of fuck off. You can have fun, but at a certain point, hey, time to buckle up, time to be professional, right? Yeah. It's time to get your head in the game. You should always have your head in the game, right? But there are times when you can be a little bit more relaxed. And that restaurant, for the longest time was very relaxed. The GM, he made his decisions by whoever kicked up the most dust got the fucking candy. And that is not how I work. Whoever kicks up the most dust is most likely to get my fucking foot up their ass. And so it just became a very confrontational environment for everybody. So I left and got the opportunity to build out a restaurant down in Dallas, the Metals of Mouth. So that was the opening chef for that one. And that one was a lot of fun. It was the first real ground up build that I've done where I was 100%, had the input on what was going on and working with the owners on creating the menu and then the actual physical space.

Speaker C 00:22:45

That was like a brew pub, too.

Speaker B 00:22:48

We didn't brew anything there. It was a beer centric, right? We had maybe 100 taps or something. There was a lot, right? 50 somewhere in that range. Somewhere in the range of just, that's a lot. And damn, that's a lot, right? But it was all beer centric, right? Very small wine. People weren't drinking wine. They came there for the different beers. And we did beer dinners. I did beer dinners with garrett Oliver from Brooklyn Brewing. Met him. Fantastic guy. Ken with sierra Nevada, guys like Bob Ross. He's very quiet, but that was colby. He's very much a recluse, right? And so to get him out and do a dinner with him was a lot of fun. Adam avery with Avery brewering. We can go on and on, but at the time, this was 2010, beer was a very big thing, and a lot of these big name breweries were coming there, and they were coming to Dallas to do dinners with us. They weren't hitting other places. That was a lot of fun. We were doing beer dinners all the time, so we were always creating. People would come to us and be like, hey, I want to do a beer dinner for ten over in the private room, kind of thing. It was like, Cool, let's do it, right? We did it. But that one was just, holy shit. The kitchen was fucking tiny. The size of a bedroom, of a normal bedroom, I think it was. By the time it was all said and done, it was like 13 deep by 18 wide or something. But that was the prep kitchen, too. Like, once you go behind it, where you'd think some prep and other stuff was going on. No, that was just a dishwasher. It wasn't big enough to do anything else with the space. There's no refrigeration back there either. I think there was maybe a couple of countertops work tops, but that's it. And dude, from the time we opened, the time we closed, it was packed, and we were losing cooks because it was too busy, and because a lot of these guys are it's their second job, and it was just a fucking beating because everybody knows the same. If you're not a day ahead, you're a day behind on your prep, right? So all the prep you're doing today should be to set you up tomorrow. So you're not behind, right? You're always working that day ahead. Well, at the end of the night, yeah, we would have no product left because we weren't allowed to 86 stuff. And so many times we were making stuff to order. And so by the end of the night, like, everything's just cleaned out. Like the walk in is empty. I mean, we are getting deliveries daily just because one, our walk in was fucking tiny shit. These guys, they had done bars. All they had done before was bars. This is their first restaurant. I was their first chef. And they're like, this isn't a restaurant, this is a bar. We're only going to do about 40%, 30% food out of here anyway, so that's what they built for. Even though there is a reservation system and a hostess and everything that a restaurant has, bars don't. So they called a restaurant now, but I think it took them like ten years. But no, that thing just kicked ass. From the day it opened. We were in the running for best new restaurant. We lost out. I think we essentially just came in second place for that. But that was kind of a pretty cool thing to do. But we wanted to try to be more I don't want to say edgy, but aggressive with the food, right? It was probably one of the first places, really, that we had bone marrow, sweet breads. I'm trying to remember other stuff we were playing with lambs tongue. Those were all on your appetizer list. Not separately, but on the same day. You want the sweet breads, the marrow or the lambstone? But we wanted to be kind of aggressive in that means of just kind of bringing new foods to Dallas that weren't necessarily scary. I mean, the rest of the world was eating it, but they kind of get people involved in it and they did really well. It was definitely one of those people were getting stuff just to fucking I bet you can't eat this kind of thing. And then all of a sudden, they were fucking loving it. It was like dealing with fucking 30 year old fucking children. Just eat it. I know you're going to like it's. Pretty good. Yeah, I love that scene when people would say something like, oh, it's actually pretty good. Also. You expected it to suck. No, that's not what I said. I'm like, yeah, it is. You expected it to suck because it was actually good. But no, the moth was great. And creating a lot of attention for myself kind of gave me onto the chef list of Dallas, if you will, just because I was more aggressive with food and we were having fun. But it got to the point where every time one of the owners would come in, I just saw Red. All I could see was myself just grabbing him by the throat. And it sucks because he's a good person and I learned a lot from him, but it was just our relationship had come to an end and so I moved on. I was going to actually open up my own place at that point. And we had scouted the properties and we had a signed lease. My wife is an architect, and so the firm she was with, we had set plans that cost us nothing, right? We had the full plans, everything you need to do to build out. And we even had some investors lined up. And then it just got to the point, after six months of dealing with the landlords in the city, it was no longer feasible for us to continue because it was just more political shit involved. And it was like, well, I can't just sit here and wait for you guys to work out the politics. What area was it in, lois? greenville.

Speaker C 00:30:24

Cool.

Speaker B 00:30:27

That area is popping now, but we went into it back when. So that area, it was a ton of clubs at one point.

Speaker C 00:30:41

Mostly just bars.

Speaker B 00:30:43

Yeah, but it's surrounded by neighborhoods, family neighborhoods all around it. And so they finally just went in after lots of police activity. One of the bar owners was, I don't know, they caught him with like a fucking trunk full of drugs and some other stuff. I don't remember all the details. He was selling out of the club. So they pretty much went in and put in an ordinance that no bars could be opened past like ten or eleven. Most of those places didn't open until like ten or whatever it was. And so you had to apply for a special permit if you wanted to be open past until 02:00. Right? And just everything that came in there, like denied, denied. So they ran everybody out, but the city was working on revamping that whole area. And we were like, hey, timing is there. And we're the kind of restaurant that is going to fit what you're looking for. We're not going to be a family restaurant necessarily. We're not going to have a fucking playground in the back. But you got kids, come on in. We can cater. We wanted to build like a neighborhood restaurant, just your neighborhood bistro kind of thing, but that just all fell through. But during that time though, I started working with a place called The grape and been there for about 40 years, I think. And the chef that was running it, Brian, was just known as like the chef's chef. And I was only working there kind of part time, picking up grill, chefs kind of thing, and I fucking loved it. It took me back into and reminded me how much I just loved to cook. I got so caught up in management and running things and other stuff that I kind of forgot what it was to love cooking. And then after that, that was a short period of time. And then my daughter was getting close to being born, and then I was like, well, I kind of need to have a real paycheck. And then I ended up at another Dallas institution, cafe Pacific same thing that had been there for I think it's been there since 1980. And they brought me on, and they're like, hey, we need to kind of bring in some new energies, some fresh life. That's what I did. We went in, reformatted the entire menu when I was there. When I got there in 2012, the menu folders or whatever it is, are the same ones that they'd use from 1980.

Speaker C 00:33:51

Wow.

Speaker B 00:33:52

Right? Yeah. They weren't updating anything, so we went in and updated everything, changed up some wineless stuff and just made it much more presentable. Kind of gave it a steak house feel. But with the seafood presentation, it started to do a much better and still has a very old clientele. He got to meet a lot of rich Dallas money. The owner would be like, there's like four billionaires in here right now. Okay. And then from there, I ended up working with you. And it was actually because of the moth, because the guys were like they specifically said, hey, we want to do the moth, but up here. And the guy they were talking to, the recruiter, was like, okay, I know, guy. So he gave me a call, and I was like, okay, let's do it.

Speaker C 00:35:00

When you signed on for that, was the idea just to do the one restaurant, or was it pretty laid out that we're going to do multiple concepts right off the bat?

Speaker B 00:35:16

Yeah, that's the best way to put it. I knew they wanted to do multiple concepts. There was like, hey, we're hiring you to do this one concept. And but there's potential to do some other stuff. Right. They wanted to kind of fill me out a little bit, which makes sense. But before we even got the first one open, they had me on a plane out to fucking Seattle, go test drive and learn how to use these pizza ovens for this other restaurant they were working on. So it was like, well, shit. All right. I guess that test drives over. Before the first one was open, I was already working on the second restaurant.

Speaker C 00:36:06

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:36:10

Well, that's my story. I'm sticking to it.

Speaker C 00:36:19

What about what happened there since then? Do you want to touch on that?

Speaker B 00:36:25

What happened there? I feel like you're fishing for something here. What are you fishing for?

Speaker C 00:36:36

Well, there's a reason we're talking on this podcast right now, right? You're not still in the kitchen.

Speaker B 00:36:43

Well, yeah, no, I retired from the kitchen. From the kitchen? Really? Two years ago. And I don't want to say that it was the restaurants that did it to me. It was me that did it to me. It just happened to be where I was at. And in the timing of it all, my personality is very much head down, let's go. You can either follow me, or I just can run you the fuck over. And that personality still exists today? Very much so. But. I didn't have an on off switch necessarily. I didn't have different gears. I couldn't downshift as much as I would try. But I always took a lot of responsibility making sure that people were taken care of as well. So when COVID hit and we laid off, I forget what the final number was, but it was several hundred people, even though I had no impact on that. We didn't lay anybody off because of any decision that I made. Right. I mean, this was just happening nationwide, but I felt a lot of pressure, I felt a lot of responsibility. And it was kind of a weird sense of failure and responsibility of like, okay, how do I get these people back to work now? And then at that point, I didn't even know how long I was going to have a job for. I went through and we laid some people off and then it was like, okay, now what? We went right back to getting things open. And I just worked nonstop at that point, just trying to figure out how we could reopen each concept in a drive through format. Right. Luckily, by the time we got to the last one, things were opening up a little bit more. Still hard. But we were also faced with the challenge of how do we also keep numbers down? Like, we're not going to have the volume, so how do we I don't want to say it, but there's a lot of like, how do we take shortcuts? I was not vibing with that, and I wasn't that was kind of annoying some people, but they let me do my thing. But the other part that was a challenge for me is I wasn't getting a lot of feedback from anywhere else. So I spent probably, god, I don't know, close to a year, right, eight months, not knowing if I was going to be fired tomorrow. And that kind of weighed on me a little bit, but it was like, okay, fuck it. Let's just keep going. And then finally it got to the point where my body just broke. Mentally and physically, it just broke. So this is during COVID and it kind of sucks because instantly everything was just covered. Then if you had something.

Speaker C 00:40:49

Looked at you real weird.

Speaker B 00:40:51

Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, you kind of had a COVID. shove something up your fucking nose and see if you got COVID, man. I've had some brutal COVID tests. Next thing I know, I'm locked up in my room, but I wasn't getting any better. And so one did a COVID test. A couple of days go by, it's negative talking to me. Still have a bunch of the symptoms of how I'm feeling. Go back, take another COVID test, and I drive up to the COVID test because everything was drive through at that point still. The nurse was out there. And this is my doctor's office, the one I was going to I wasn't going to another clinic or something. I went to the people I knew and she's like, you look like shit. I was like, thank you. And so does the COVID test. And she's like, hey, I'll be right back and grab some other stuff. grabs my blood pressure, does the pulse ox and all that stuff. And my blood pressure was like I don't remember what it was, but it was low. And my pulse ox was really low. So my oxygen in my blood was low. My blood pressure was low. Apparently I was really white and I just had these cold sweats going on. But I felt normal, right? I was functioning. I was like, no, I feel a little crappy. And she's like, you need to get to the yard now. She's like, do you need me to call someone to come get you? And all of a sudden I just panic set in. I'm like, Fuck, no, I can get there. But so I drove over to the er and they checked me in, obviously. So I go in and you have to check in out front. And like, no, I'm here because yada, yada, yada. Next thing I know, like, they've got like, this fucking armband on me. And then people are coming out and like has mad suits and shit to take me into this fucking room. And it was just like, damn. But I mean, it was all precaution. I get it. And fucking did a rotor ruder job on my nose just to fucking get a COVID sample. I mean, my nose was bleeding for a couple of minutes after this COVID test. And the guy was like, COVID test is only as good as a swab. Damn. So within an hour or two later, that comes back negative. Still hazmat suits come off. They start doing blood cultures, blood work. They come in, they had me do an X ray. Then they took me in for a ct scan of my lungs. They had me on oxygen the whole time. And over the period of about 6 hours, my oxygen and blood pressure slowly recovered. I was there for about 6 hours getting fluid and oxygen. And the nurse comes in. He's like, so the doctor tell you what happens if this comes back positive? Like, no. And this is before. He's like, yeah, so if you come back positive, we're sending you to this hospital over here in plano. And it was this was also during the time where if you were admitted to a hospital, you didn't leave. And then it was like, well, shit, if I would have known this, I want to fucking come here. But my oxygen wasn't recovering either. So finally blood everything like, okay, we're not going to admit you with COVID You're not getting transferred anywhere. But we couldn't get my oxygen up. And so they're like, okay, we're going to admit you for that. And I was like, Fuck, was like, well, it's very dangerous because your body will essentially just start doing a lot of damage. But anyway, so finally they got to the point where they're like, okay, we're going to let you go. I think they just didn't want to admit me, but if you ever start feeling xyz, come back immediately. I was like, sure, not going to happen. And then but that was it. And then shortly after that, a couple of weeks after that, my wife and I decided to take a vacation. We just need to get away. And we did. We ended up in Colorado. lestes park, and Rocky Mountain National Park had just reopened, and we were up there with my family, and it was great. Just got grounded. I'm very much one of those people. I'm not a hippy kind of thing, but there's something about being out in a forest. It's the vitamin D, the sun energy. It helps reground you. And I just felt better and came back after about a week and felt good. Went back to work, came home that day, and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm done. We started talking about it, and the reason for that is I knew that if I kept going back, that I would put myself right back to where I started, because I didn't have that control. And two, I didn't have what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know, but just my work ethic and who I was, and I didn't have the resources outside of work to kind of control stress, right? And so I would have just put myself right back to where I started. I would have been burned out again. I would have just had this short fuse, and it would have happened really quick. And I saw that and I was just like, this isn't for me. And then at that point, just more things started happening. This was probably maybe August or something of 20. And then October of that year, my dad passed natural causes wasn't COVID. He actually just said, I'm done. He had been locked up for a while. Not locked up, he was in a home, but nobody could go visit him, so he just refused meds and just checked out. And then six weeks after that, my father in law passed away from COVID related symptoms the day after Thanksgiving. And then it was just all this stuff was going on, and then people were passing away that were close, and it was like, yeah, we're making the right decision. And also, luckily, my wife has got a great career, and she was with a firm that really appreciated her and was helping her grow. And so if it wasn't for her being in the position where she was at, it would have been a much harder decision for us to make. But we went from a two income household down to one, but that one income was still solid enough, right? Yeah. We still need to make some adjustments, and we're working through that. We had some money in the bank, but that's kind of drying up. So that just made that decision. It's like, okay, let's step away. We'll figure out what we're going to do. But first things first is like, let's start getting healthy ish right. But my wife, her thing, too, was she did not want me just to completely walk away from restaurants. She's like, there's no way you can there's no way you can completely walk away from just cooking. And the other part, she put she's like, we've also invested too much in you and kind of building a brand for myself in the Dallas area to just give that all up. So we need to kind of make sure we stay involved in that. So that's kind of where Chef made home, then came along. Now I'm here today, correct? Yeah. That sounds long winded to some, but that's the short story, too.

Speaker C 00:49:36

Well, I enjoyed it.

Speaker A 00:49:37

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode on season two and learning a hell of a lot more about me than you probably realized you wanted to know. And next up, we're going to be talking a little bit about Morris and more detail of his growth, and then we'll kind of we start tying that together in the next episode. All right, once again, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Chad Kelly with Josh Morris. This is inside the pressure cooker.

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Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Ariel Guivi, Part 1: What is a Chef?

Patrick Stark: The Untouchable Egos

Josh Morris: Balancing a chefs drive with family life

Transcript:

Hey, and welcome back to Inside the Pressure Cooker. My name is Chef Chad Kelly, and I know it's been a couple of weeks since we put anything out there. We've actually been in the process of working on some new formatting. And the reason for this is we've had some really great guests on, we've had some really great shows and but unfortunately, we're only able to kind of hit the surface level of topics without having a show run hour and a half plus, which nobody really has the time for. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be revisiting some previous guests and we're going to be doing more of a host co host kind of situation where we're going to be over the period of several weeks producing episodes that will allow us to do a little bit of a deeper dive into the topic. Thank you for listening. Welcome back. Enjoy the show.

Speaker B 00:01:06

All right, Josh. So kind of a new format, right, where it's not necessarily chef interviews, so to speak. It's more chef topics, current events, and kind of compare and contrasting to talking various, you know, your perspective versus my perspective. Right. I've got I'm much more of the old school chef mentality. The chef bringing, you know, even in culinary school, when I was going to culinary school, I had the threat of 64 ounce ladles being thrown at me if I put my foot on the counter when I was chopping. I'm not even kidding. This was like the second week of school and being yelled at by big Austrian guys and French guys, that was just kind of my upbringing. So obviously a lot of that has been ingrained in me and who I am. That's just kind of what I understand the industry to be. It's a very different world now. You grew up in this industry with kind of a different perspective and growing up. So the whole thing about this is going to be kind of talking the different perspectives. Right. All right. So topic at hand, art versus suspended suspension. Sustenance.

Speaker C 00:02:39

There you go.

Speaker B 00:02:39

Right? It's just more fun to say it my way. Suspects. It's like saying Warshire.

Speaker C 00:02:48

Worcester.

Speaker B 00:02:49

Yeah. Warchester Shire. I know. They're all wrong, and I don't care. It's just fun. So art versus Sussex. Where do we want to go with this? Kick this off.

Speaker C 00:03:04

It was just kind of a title to give. It kind of a broad scope because there's no telling where this conversation might go. No idea. Started was recently I saw the menu. Have you seen the menu yet?

Speaker B 00:03:20

I have not.

Speaker C 00:03:21

All right, well, it was marketed as, like, a horror movie when they were showing the previews. Right? Yeah. They really kind of geared it towards, like, it was going to be a horror movie. And that movie, it is hilarious. It is insanely funny. But the reason it's so funny is because it pokes so much fun at fine dining while also empathizing with the people that work there. Okay, so a lot of the guests I know you haven't seen the movie, but they have a very short guest list. There's only twelve guests, and you kind of want them to die. You kind of want bad things to happen to them just because there's, like, rich assholes who don't really give a shit about food. They're just there for the exclusivity of this. And while I was talking about this movie with some friends at work, this other thing came up where you might remember this, too. About a year ago, a little over a year ago, there was a chef in Italy, I think it was a Michelin starred restaurant, who served a citrus foam in a mold of his own mouth, and he didn't serve it with utensils. He told the diet to lick the foam out of the plaster molds. And it kind of spiraled into this conversation about, like, where does food end and art began and vice versa.

Speaker B 00:04:57

Well, and at what point is that art? And what point of that is just kind of a fuck you to the guest.

Speaker C 00:05:02

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:05:08

Because cooking itself is an art. It's a beautiful art. It's a combination of art and science. Right?

Speaker C 00:05:16

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:05:17

You really have to have a foot in both worlds unless you're in the pastry, and at that point, you're just man almost all science and doing lines of fucking all purpose flour in the back. They're a whole nother breed. Yeah. So if you're a pastry person, you want to get on the show, defend yourself. Hit me up. God. Lost Chuck. There. No, but I mean, it's all an art, right? But it's all about the guest. But at a certain point, the guest starts to weigh on you as a chef, where you're just kind of that, you know what? Fine. I'm going to do this. But it's just despite you, it's like, oh, yeah, you want to see how far we can go with it here? Fine. Fuck you. Oh, now you want to bitch about it? But then there's also was that chef so egotistical that he thought that was a good idea, too.

Speaker C 00:06:33

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:06:34

Which one is it?

Speaker C 00:06:36

I don't know, because it does seem kind of like a fuck you to the guest. If you're thinking about it just from a food perspective, that's pretty disgusting. But if you're thinking about food as art and you want to push art into a more progressive area, you're going to have to make some people uncomfortable. You're going to have to ruffle some feathers. Was that the best way to go about it? Probably not.

Speaker B 00:07:09

It got them attention.

Speaker C 00:07:10

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:07:11

Who knows? Maybe that was the only point of it. I mean, in today's world where people become so fucking desensitized to so many things because of the Internet and all this social media crap, that I mean, you actually need to have something pretty significant to shock people into reality.

Speaker C 00:07:35

Yeah. So a fan of punk rock, that guy, like, literally spit in people's faces to make a statement. But I don't know, it comes off kind of pretentious at the same time, too. None of it's like a justification or is he right or is he wrong? No, it was a strange thing to see, and it kind of got me thinking about that. Plus, watching the menu is like, how much justification of quote unquote art is there? I know you haven't seen the movie, but there is a scene where a cook shoots themselves in the dining room and the diners are like, oh, it's just part of the theater. I mean, they're literally saying, like, a chef could literally get away with murder as long as it's on the menu. I thought that was a very funny but thought provoking thing.

Speaker B 00:08:41

God. And it's also so fucking sad at the same time.

Speaker C 00:08:45

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:08:46

Because at that point, everything that I'm hearing so far and the reason I haven't watched it is, honestly, I've been avoiding all those shows because I can't stand the sensationalized versions of what's going on in The Kitchen and The Bear. I watched a few episodes and it was good. I got it. But then I was like, you know what? I lived that life for the last 20 years. I don't need to fucking watch it.

Speaker C 00:09:20

Yeah, I watched the first episode of The Bear Ride after I had gotten home from work.

Speaker B 00:09:27

Why would you do that?

Speaker C 00:09:28

It was like I was right back at work. It was perfect.

Speaker B 00:09:32

No, absolutely. I mean, I had been out of the industry for a year, and man, it brought back all the feelings, all the emotions, and I was just like, oh, God, Mike, I don't want to go through this again. And not in a bad way, right. But I was just like, no, I've lived it. I don't understand it. This is a whole another show is talking about that and people's reactions to it. Because when we start talking art versus sustenance, now we're also talking the types of restaurants because you're going to have your restaurant, which is I mean, it's just fuel, right? Food is fuel. And then you're going to have restaurants that kind of are in that middle world between fine dining and fuel, where they're putting a little more give a shit into the food. It's a little bit more plating. But they probably don't have the fine dining budget. They didn't have the fine dining clientele. And so there's adjustments. They've got to make sure they want to be creative and artistic. But it's all within that realm of what is feasible for that time and what's the guest can accept. Because at the end of the day, it still has to be good, right?

Speaker C 00:11:15

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:11:21

I've never lived in that world of the art. Food is art and not food. I've always poked fun at the tweezer chefs, and I know I do that at their expense, but it's a different world. I've just never been a part of it. And I understand parts of it for them, but it's never made sense to me because it goes against a lot of what I've known about food. Yeah, you're taking too damn if you need tweezers, you are taking too long to get that plate out. I've done way too much volume cooking to be like, okay, hold on. I need tweezers to put the garnish on.

Speaker C 00:12:08

Yeah. Two different places where they kind of utilize tweezers a lot more. And it was a very weird feeling once you get into the groove of it. And, like, this is something that they do, so they want you to do it, too. Yeah, it's fine. But coming from a background where you didn't even own a set of tweezers, it was strange.

Speaker B 00:12:31

But you get to like it, honestly. And I get it. Tweezers are just variations on chopsticks. And chopsticks were probably the earliest known forms of cooking utensils. I mean, chopsticks weren't eating utensils. They were cooking utensils that eventually became eating utensils. So they've just been Americanized by putting a little hinge on the back. I want to know the first person that started using tweezers. Like he went through his girlfriend's fucking cosmetics and shit. Yeah, I'll let that sink in for a minute. But, I mean, the two different worlds and where my mind is going on this art versus the sustenance is I kind of want to focus on the art a little bit, because, one.

Speaker C 00:13:37

I.

Speaker B 00:13:38

Understand it, but the art is much more that fine dining world. And Noma is closing at the end of the season. They put it out there because it's like, hey, this is just no longer sustainable for us. And then in Bon Appetit recently, there was an article that it was fine dining is dead, or something like that, or dying, and I'm glad I was like, I was part of it. I read it, and I was pissed off reading it because the person that wrote it, yes, they worked probably at the laundry or something. And a lot of what they talk about, like, listen, there's a lot of people out there. We all suffer from various physical conditions. Some do, some don't. That's the way it's always been. And over periods of time, stress catches up with the body. Right. How do we handle certain things? How do we take care of ourselves outside of the restaurant? Those are all pretty significant factors. And so if we don't take care of ourselves outside the restaurant, we can't put all the blame on the restaurant. We can't put all the blame on the industry. But I was just kind of annoyed because it seemed like some of this arrogance of calling out, like they were talking about the bear and how it brought out all the hostile work environments of kitchens and I was like, It's not a fucking hostile work environment. Yeah, it was intense. There's a lot of stress. What got me is like, listen, we all do this for the love, right? It's a passion. It's part of us. It's in our blood. As much as we want to say it's, the only thing we know, because it is part of us, and part of that as well, is also understanding that we are cooking for somebody else. We're not doing this for ourselves. I mean, to a degree, but we're doing it to make other people happy. We're doing this for the clientele, for the guest, right? And if it's not for them and they're not coming in, then we can't get paid. So no matter what the pay rate is, you can argue that all day long, but it doesn't matter if people aren't coming in. But there is this element of, like, it's stressed because every time a ticket comes in, there's a timer that starts. And if you don't have that sense of urgency, that sense of, I got to get on it, I can't get behind, it's an internal stress, right? You feel it. The person next to you feels it. All of a sudden, everybody's feeling it, right? And then all of a sudden, the machine starts going and it doesn't stop. Literally doesn't stop, right? And everybody is just looking at it like, I'm going to rip that thing out of the fucking wall. And that doesn't mean does that mean it's a hostile work environment? Because now you've got an inanimate object that's creating stress for you because people are coming in the door. Because now, at that point, everybody's stress levels are high.

Speaker C 00:17:30

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:17:31

Right. There's communication in the kitchen that's happening. Hey, I need this work, or that, hey, why are we lagging over here? One station starting to fall behind, so that causes more pressure on other people. So where's the hostility?

Speaker C 00:17:49

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:17:52

I get it.

Speaker C 00:17:53

I've been there. This is a long thing, because I think before COVID most people didn't give a shit. Restaurants were just restaurants and no one cared. For some reason, COVID happened, and then a bunch of people left the industry and it started opening up this wound, and people were like, oh, these are hostile work environments. They're not hostile necessarily. They are stressful, because we put a lot of stress on ourselves to do a good job. We're a fucking lot, most of us. If you want to be a professional cook or a chef, you have to invest yourself a lot to move to the next stage in your career. And if you don't, that's cool. If it's just a paycheck, that's cool for you too. But you have to pull your own weight, too.

Speaker B 00:18:47

Yeah. And I mean, that's pretty much many of the times where I've lost my shit, you've been there for some where it's just dealing with people that didn't give a shit. Right? And they were just blatantly like, fuck you, I don't care. And it's like, no, I've got way too much invested in this for you to fuck this up for everybody else and me, whether it was the front of the house or the back of the house. And I know we're kind of getting a little bit off tangent here, but I think it's all relevant to the conversation of art versus sustenance.

Speaker C 00:19:21

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker B 00:19:24

So art moves a little bit of a slower pace, so to speak, I would assume, because you've got more tension on each plate. But that doesn't mean that stress has gone away either, though.

Speaker C 00:19:38

Yeah. And going back to Noma closing, I was never under any pretense that I was ever going to eat at Noma. I never bought book. Like I like Renee Redepi. I bought the Fermentation book. That helped me a lot. But I mean, for the past almost 20 years, renee Reddeppi has been making people think differently about food. He's been a huge inspiration. But now the same media outlets that were calling him a culinary demigod ten years ago are fucking crucifying him. Yeah, they're crucifying him for having unpaid stages and interns. Every place has unpaid stages and interns. And you can criticize that system all you want, but at the end of the day, they volunteered to be there to join us. It's not like Renee Redzepi went and gathered village children and turned them into slaves, especially at a place like Noma. If you're going to go across, like, from America to Copenhagen and stage for a year for free, you either have some rich as parents or you did something really right in your life to have that kind of financial freedom. So I don't get where all this thing about the unpaid stages and the.

Speaker B 00:21:10

Interns no, honestly, there was a lot of unpaid interns and stages. To me, it's like one of the same intern and stage, which it wasn't because they weren't actively recruiting for that either. That's the one part that nobody talks about. People came to them and said, I want to work. I want the experience. I want to be a part of this. Right.

Speaker C 00:21:48

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:21:50

They created that spot for these people. Now, even then there's a certain point where there's just too much right. But then you're always going to have that one, maybe more. That is bitter about the fact that they weren't, like, in full production. All I sat there and just made like, I don't know, cucumber roses or something and it's like, well, it's kind of doing your part. I don't know what to say about that because I've never been in that spot. But that's the same thing. Did you allow yourself to be the victim? Was that the only task you were given? Because maybe you got there and went, shut the fuck up and nobody wanted to deal with you. Yeah, but yet so now you're bitter about it, and you're telling everybody, and all of a sudden it becomes a news article. Fuck you, man.

Speaker C 00:22:55

And because we live in an age where everybody's opinion is now validated because of social media, you have thousands upon thousands of people attacking Renee Red Zeppe, who has, like, he's openly come out and said, yeah, I was a dick. Sorry about that. But you have to have nothing to do with the restaurant industry. They're just coming up and bitching and bitching about it. It's upsetting. Yes, this is a hard industry, but you don't understand the love and the camaraderie that comes with it, and they don't touch on that in any of these shows either. The Bear there's a little bit how they're all pretty close, but really, for the past ten years, the best friends that I have are from work. I don't hang out with anybody that's not in the restaurant industry. I don't even know how that outside life works. It's too far out there for me. I think that happens to a lot of restaurant people. And it's not elitist.

Speaker B 00:24:04

No, not at all.

Speaker C 00:24:06

I don't think outside people get it.

Speaker B 00:24:09

No, they don't. They don't understand you. For the longest time, I never had friends outside the restaurants either. Honestly, the only reason I've got friends outside the restaurant now is just my wife. But that's the thing. They don't understand me, right. And I can't there's nothing that we have no relation. There's nothing that there's no common ground in so many things. You know, they've got what I've laughed about, you know, real jobs with the air quotes, right? And they just don't get it, and they never will. And so it's one of those there's nothing about there's not yeah, the common ground. I beat that one there. But I know we're talking about Red Zeppe here and the interns and all this stuff, and there's a couple of things that come to mind, is I feel for the guy, right, because he has done so much for this industry, and he has grown it quite a bit and just created so much attention. And I mean, his organization mad, right? Almost like on the political side of things that he is for that nobody ever talks about. And all that takes money. So sometimes, yeah, that someone's going to be unpaid, but because they volunteered for it, right? Like, we've already covered that, and then all of a sudden, he starts just getting fucking skewered and dealing with people bitching. Whether it was from the media, his staff, who knows? Maybe it's the next generation of staff coming in. It's almost to the point where I feel like he's closing, not because he's saying it's unsustainable to continue this model of paying everybody, but still charging $500 a person for dinner without any kind of wine or anything, right? You're easily talking about $1,000 a person just once you're there and have, like, 60 cooks or something executing that plus your chefs. And I mean, that takes a lot to execute at that level. And I honestly think that he's wrapping it up just because the love has been taken out of it for him, because he's like, you know what? We're going to finish off the season, which just pretty much says, we're going to finish off the reservations on deck and then, fuck you all. I'm going to go play in my kitchen and have fun again, because you I obviously don't appreciate it. And then the other part that nobody I don't see nobody, but I haven't heard anyone talk about, right. Is where did Red Zeppe learn so much of this? El Bulli. Fran andrea.

Speaker C 00:27:33

Yes.

Speaker B 00:27:35

I'm pretty sure we're going to go out on a limb here and say it was the exact same model.

Speaker C 00:27:43

Yeah, El Bulli closed, like, 15 years ago. And that was before I started really paying much attention to fine dining restaurants like that. But I would be willing to bet that when Ferrant Audrey said that he was going to pack up shop, everyone was just, like, at a loss. There's a huge loss to the culinary world. And no one was out there screaming at him or berating him for having an unpaid stage in his kitchen if.

Speaker B 00:28:18

It wasn't for him. Like, dude, I mean, you could go down the list of people that would not exist. I mean, okay, fine. There are people that exist, okay? Let's not get into that fucking whatever. Millennial just got pissed off at me. But as a chef, right? Jose Andreas Maximo.

Speaker C 00:28:41

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:28:42

Right? Red Zeppe. I mean, there's three people right there that are all products of frenandrea. I would say products, but he parked, he passed, he carved the path. That was fucking hard, right? And he created this world that chefs of that mindset all of a sudden just took off and allowed them to really grow. And he pretty much said, hey, you know what? This is okay. You can execute this. You can do this. But if it wasn't for him, we'll just call it ultra fine dining, if you will. There's no way to exist.

Speaker C 00:29:39

Yeah. And because of what he did, all the what do you call the hydrocolloids everyone basically uses now? Xanthem gum and agar. Agar. It's all Ferrant. He did all of that. And to produce another chef like Jose Andres, who's, like, he's taking his fame as a chef and turned it into what they called the World Kitchen.

Speaker B 00:30:06

World central kitchen or something like that. Yeah.

Speaker C 00:30:08

He travels the world feeding people in areas that are war torn or have had natural disasters. That's a pretty big fucking deal, man.

Speaker B 00:30:21

Oh, you know what, though? You know what really sucks? We better get media involved in this. Everybody that goes out there and works for Jose Andreas at the World Central Kitchen, they don't get paid. Yeah. Who do we call for that? Is that like, the UN? Who do we bitch to about someone going in and feeding millions of people after their country has been completely devastated and they just need the help? How do we get them paid?

Speaker C 00:30:55

I think it would be the UN.

Speaker B 00:30:57

Yeah. Okay.

Speaker C 00:30:58

International thing.

Speaker B 00:30:59

Yeah. There should be a number, just an 800 number out there. It just says, hey, we want 800. Fucking nobody cares. No, but to me, that's almost like the same thing, right? And honestly, if I was in a different situation and I didn't have younger kids, the amount of times I would have volunteered to go out and cook just because I've got the ability, why wouldn't I? And I've got no expectation of what I would or wouldn't be doing at that point. You're just, hey, you know what? You're a fucking mule. You get off the plane, say, what can I do? But that's the same mentality that I would have taken into any of those other stylish places wherever I went.

Speaker C 00:31:47

What do you need help with?

Speaker B 00:31:48

What can I do? Because that's how you learn.

Speaker C 00:31:51

Whatever it is, it is a learning.

Speaker B 00:31:55

Moment and appreciate being there.

Speaker C 00:31:59

Yes, it gets hard sometimes. Everyone gets burned out after a little while, but a lot of that is perspective, and you have to fight with that, too. As a chef or as a career cook, there's going to be moments where you're just like, Fuck this.

Speaker B 00:32:20

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker C 00:32:22

But, yeah, you really got to kind of take a step back and be like, you know what? This is where I wanted to be. I'm here. I'm learning. So isn't really that bad, but that's.

Speaker B 00:32:35

Another well, it's the world we live in. And I've said that many times. Every person I've interviewed, I've asked that same question because I know we've all been there, right? And if you tell me you haven't been there, you're lying. Because we've all just been in that spot where we just get home at the end of a shift. You may have fucking sliced your hand open or something, and you are just physically and mentally just done. And you just look at yourself and you're like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, you know, and it could just be after, like, a couple days of just getting your shit kicked in, and you're just like, there's got to be something better. And you know what? The grass isn't greener.

Speaker C 00:33:24

Yeah.

Speaker B 00:33:24

You know, and and I say that we ask ourselves that question all the time because it's just the life we live. But who's to say someone in another life, they're the lawyers or the jobs that we think the green or grass, right? I know they're asking themselves the same question, right? But it's still something I love.

Speaker C 00:34:03

You kind of go through little ways. I think it's like something like that after having three or four days of just getting absolutely crushed, sometimes you need something to kind of just give you a little break, a day off or whatever it is, and then you're right back at it because you love it. There is nothing else you would rather do. And I don't think a lot of people understand that either, the stressful situations than the hostile environments. I mean, it's just part of the part of it. It's not a negative thing. We thrive off that.

Speaker B 00:34:38

We live off that's fuel for us.

Speaker C 00:34:41

Yeah, I guess. But yeah, I was going to say, too, the other part to doing a good job after you have a service, whether it was like, okay, if you have a bad service, it's a bad feeling. But after a flawless service that high that you get, it can't be any different than a lawyer winning a case or a director finishing a film or something like that. It's got to be along those lines.

Speaker B 00:35:14

Absolutely. I was kind of laughing where you'll understand this. And some people were staying at home was more work and more hostile than I hope my wife doesn't listen to this one in more hostile than staying Home. I'd rather go to work because it didn't matter what was going to happen at work. I was in control. I've got amazing wife and kids, so I'm not saying anything negative about them. But there's no rest and relaxation at home because as a chef, like, when you're home and you've got kids, you don't get rest. You're not allowed to rest because you've been gone a lot. And so that's the hard part. When kids would be in school, that would be the best thing ever. But chances are I'd be at work. Sometimes home was more hostile than hostile. Being not physically, I didn't feel endangered or I didn't feel like, what the hell? I'm leaving this place. I'm not going to pay for this shit. But it was just mentally, it was harder to be home than it was to be at work.

Speaker C 00:36:48

Been there many times.

Speaker B 00:36:50

Fuck you all. I'm going to work. It's your day off. They just called me.

Speaker C 00:36:55

They need me.

Speaker B 00:36:58

Oh, somebody just called off. I got to go. Yeah. So how does this all tie into art versus sustenance?

Speaker C 00:37:11

I told you, man. It was a broad scope. Where we start and where we end up, don't really know. One thing I was going to bring up about Nova, which I didn't really think about before, but it was kind of interesting, was that he took that look of war thing, and he took it to a whole another level. And while Noma might be one of the most expensive restaurants there is or was as far as, like a per person average, they don't really use any luxury ingredients, which has been such a safety net for a lot of fine dining kitchens for such a long time. That's one of the things that kind of was really special about Renee recipe and Noma, and that's not. A shot at anybody. I mean, Thomas Keller serves fucking caviar and foie gras in his restaurants. It's part of the luxury that comes with fine dining. And now I will never say ever a bad word about Thomas Keller. I love that guy, but it gives you a whole new way of thinking when it comes to ingredients versus technique. I went out to eat with my wife not that long ago. We went to a restaurant that had just been, like, raved about. Right. We ordered damn near everything on the menu, and the best dishes were dishes that were just ingredient driven and not technique driven. And it became kind of depressing. You could put enough uni and caviar to make anything taste good. Where's the technique?

Speaker B 00:39:03

That's an interesting concept there.

Speaker C 00:39:05

Yeah. If you like fog. Do pretty much anything with fog raw. Just don't fuck it up. But it is what it is. There's nothing special about it here than at a different place. It's still just foie gras, but you take somebody like Renee Redzepi who can serve you a plate of fucking moss and make it taste amazing for pretty much the same price point.

Speaker B 00:39:38

Yeah, no, it's interesting. I didn't put those two together because you're right. Because so much of that fine dining out here. Once again, this is a broad paint stroke here, is about just the Japanese wagu caviar foie, regardless of how you feel about it.

Speaker C 00:40:07

Fucking truffles.

Speaker B 00:40:09

Truffles? Yeah. Lobster. Lobsters. I don't know why people still eat that fucking cockroaches.

Speaker C 00:40:24

I don't understand truffle.

Speaker B 00:40:28

No, I've been in that spot where I was at a restaurant in Dallas, and it was, hey, if we want to be at this level, I'm like, then we need to play this game, too. So why did it tell you how the travels came available? And I bought a pound for two grand. I think I was selling it. I think it was like a $40 up charge, and we just go out there and shave it at the table. I don't get it.

Speaker C 00:41:02

I don't understand.

Speaker B 00:41:03

No, don't get it. To me, it didn't do anything for me.

Speaker C 00:41:07

It doesn't really add anything special. No, but that's part of the fine dining world, right? It's the exclusivity. And I think the article you were talking about, that's why people want fine dining to die is because it's like it's only a little microcosm of inequality.

Speaker B 00:41:31

You mean it's elitist?

Speaker C 00:41:33

Yeah. Like, in this charge, $500 a person, and this other restaurant only charged $50. Well, there's a lot of shit that goes into that that you can't really just lump it into categories like that. And fine dining has had this criticism forever. At least in America, I think, where if you're going somewhere specifically for luxury and you can afford it, how can you justify that to yourself when there's restaurants that are just as good, if not better, down the street at a fraction of the price point, that are suffering because no one wants to eat there? No one knows about it. They don't have the same marketing team and the same big name chef and the same wine list and things like that. But it's not an easy answer. There's nothing that you can say that's going to fix the situation where it's $1,000 tasting menu here and $100 tab over here. It's just part of what goes into it. But when you take away those luxury ingredients, like I was saying, can you still charge that goddamn much? Yeah, you can. I think that's another was a big deal when Eleven Madison Park decided to go vegan. When you take away the safety net of all those luxury ingredients and you have a restaurant like Eleven Madison Park, do you know how fucking insanely creative you have to be to make an all vegan pacing menu and still charge the same price point?

Speaker B 00:43:30

Who is that? I'm going blank. The French chef that did that.

Speaker C 00:43:39

Lane Ducos, I think was the one.

Speaker B 00:43:41

Yeah, like overnight. Yeah, I mean, three Michelin stars and just overnight we're going vegan. And everybody was like, the fuck you are. And I mean, this was, god, 20 years ago. It was a while ago. And all of a sudden everybody's like, well, what about your stars? Are they going to keep your stars? I mean, are they going to take them? What's going to happen? Just because he's not serving the duck press anymore, the foil and all that stuff? Everything takes the same amount of attention. And in a lot of ways, vegetables, to become that star of the show, almost need a little bit more attention because they're not as forgiving no.

Speaker C 00:44:31

Yeah, okay.

Speaker B 00:44:33

One way you had that head turn, like yeah, but still I appreciate it because at that point, too, for me to go to Eleven Madison, it's now more of a commitment to go for the art, and I appreciate 100% of what's going on there. But there's also other places where, I mean, yeah, I'd love to go and have I don't know, when they were still doing meets and stuff, and they're pretty iconic for their duck. Right. But that's just me, though. That's like, where's my protein? And can they put enough in a way, animal fats or not in animal fats, but animal fats are what kind of create that fullness in a lot of people, right? So when it's just being vegan only, are you going to finish off a 20 course meal and then being like, hey, let's go grab a burger at Shake check right in that store?

Speaker C 00:45:55

At that point, you're right. You have to be more committed to the art than the sustenance. Hypothetically. I'm sure they've figured out a way to make you full from 20 courses of vegetables.

Speaker B 00:46:11

You've already finished digesting your first course by the time you got to ten.

Speaker C 00:46:16

That mentality is not just going to be you. That's going to be a lot of people.

Speaker B 00:46:20

Yeah, but that's the mentality of I'm paying to feel satisfied, like, almost physically as well as your soul satisfying. Right. Everybody needs a level of physical satisfaction when you're going out to eat. Right, your body's got to feel but I mean, there's plenty of other vegans out there that will argue that. I don't know. It's just never been a diet that I've chosen to go down. I have a hard time with that one.

Speaker C 00:47:04

Yeah, I try to do mostly vegetarian at home because it makes me feel better. Eating a lot of vegetables makes me feel better than eating a lot of meat just does. And you do have to be a little more creative. But I can't go vegan. Man, I love butter and eggs too much.

Speaker B 00:47:27

Yeah. No. What about your kids? Do they eat that same?

Speaker C 00:47:34

They'll try anything, but it's kind of a 50 50. And like, my my youngest, he loves, like, soups, like vegetable soups. Don't know why. He just likes the texture of it, I guess. And then my other one's a little more picky. But they'll try it. At least they're open to trying things.

Speaker B 00:47:58

You're somewhat lucky. I say somewhat because no, I've got my son that you just can't tell with him sometimes what he'll eat and what he won't eat. But at the end of the day, he's just a straight carnivore. And then you got my daughter that'll eat like Tom cow soup. But other stuff is gross to her. She'll do over easy eggs on toast. Loves it, right? Tom Cobb. But try to feed her anything else fucking gross. She'll make a face. And I was just all you can think of is like, you'll eat this, but not this. How is this? I wish I had a better example. But it's like very safe food. And they're like, no, that's gross. No, it's not. This is called entry level right here. The other stuff you eat is considered gross by a lot of people.

Speaker C 00:49:13

Well, they don't appreciate the art, do they?

Speaker B 00:49:18

Man, I'll tell you right now, my kids don't appreciate the art or the sustenance.

Speaker A 00:49:26

I hope you enjoyed episode one of the new format. Next week we're going to be talking about we get into my history of kind of where I don't want to say my resume, but just kind of where I started and my progress through my culinary career. And then we'll be following that up with Morris and his growth of where he came from. We've got two very different worlds that we came from, two very different pasts. But in a lot of ways, we kind of met right there in the middle. So look forward to those episodes coming up. We're going to be recording those over the next week or so. That's it. So thank you again. I hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget, leave a five star review if you don't like this and you don't want to leave a five star review, don't leave a review at all. Five stars help us quite a bit if you're able to write out a quick review as well. Even better, and make sure you follow us on your podcasting platform of choice. That way, you get alerted whenever a new podcast episode comes out. Especially with our new formatting, we might be seeing more throughout the week. Thank you again for listening. Don't forget to like us, follow us, share us. Until next time.

In a post-COVID world, Eric Hasse, a seasoned chef and cook, navigates the hostile kitchen culture and questions the concept of meritocracy as he battles with an exodus of restaurant workers, rising meat prices, and a new generation of distracted cooks.

"The way you move up in kitchens is you've got to do your job and the job of the guy in front of you. Eventually the job of the guy in front of you, you keep that job, and then you start shaving off your line cook duties, right? You're doing the job, and then one day it's like, oh, hey, by the way, you're a sous now, or you're a lead." - Eric Hasse

Eric Hasse is a professional chef with experience running kitchens and being an executive chef on four different occasions. He is an advocate for the meritocracy of the restaurant industry and believes in the importance of hard work, dedication and a good attitude.

Eric Hasse was discussing the state of the restaurant industry post-COVID with a chef in Malta. He shared his experience with a harsh kitchen culture in the past, where one had to work hard and outwork those in front of them to move up. He speaks of how restaurants are now expecting more coddling of their staff, yet the expectations remain the same. He compares a professional kitchen to the military and how it requires discipline and resilience in order to succeed.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. What is the unique bond shared by wine, cooks, and chefs?

2. What is the state of restaurants post-COVID?

3. What is the difference between the old and new kitchen culture?

Resources:

Eric Hasse on Instagram

Chef Eric's Links

Sweet Mama Hot Sauce on Instagram

Sweet Mama Hot Sauce: Order Here

Official Patriot Gear -10% OFF with code CHEFHASSE

Official Patriot Gear on Instagram

Chef Life Clothing

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Ariel Guivi, Part 1: What is a Chef?

Patrick Stark: The Untouchable Egos

Josh Morris: Balancing a chefs drive with family life

Connect with me: 

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Twitter: @chadkelley

Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker

Feedback: Email me!

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

Transcript:

[00:00:03]

Over the last 20 years working in restaurants, I met a lot of really interesting people. Bourdain called us pirates and misfits, and he couldn't be more right. We really were. I say were. We are a hodgepodge of cultures and backgrounds, and we get to play with food all day, and we get to make a living doing that, and it's pretty damn awesome.

[00:00:27]

This is what inside the Pressure Cooker is all about. It's about making some new friends and sharing some stories with some old friends. And listen, we all know that life inside a kitchen is not for everyone. We've seen plenty of people come and go that thought they could hack it and they couldn't. It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos, but it's pretty damn controlled.

[00:00:58]

And then just the constant pressure and the stupid hours you put in, not to mention it can be a very thankless job. Before you know it, it's all in your blood, and it's the only thing you know and you need more. It's an addiction. This is the bond that all wine, cooks and chefs share. It's becoming the heartbeat of the kitchen, as cliche as that fucking sounds.

[00:01:22]

But it's in our blood, which means it's fucking pulsing through our veins, and it's what we live for. A quick interruption before we jump on to the rest of this, two things. First, there's a link in the show notes that well, it's not really a link. It's my email. Please.

[00:01:42]

I want to hear some feedback from you all. What do you love? What do you not love? This is how I learn. And the second part I've set up a patreon account for this podcast.

[00:01:52]

The link is also in the show notes below. Please, if you're able to, we would love any contribution you're able to support us with. We all have costs that we need to try to cover with this show, and any sport would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

[00:02:10]

Right. Where is that? That sounds so familiar.

[00:02:17]

Are we Googling this right now? No. I mean, if you want to. I'm just writing it down to look it up, man. So where do you think the state of the restaurants, like, post COVID restaurants are just in?

[00:02:46]

It's a mess. It's a mess everywhere.

[00:02:53]

I was actually talking with the gentleman chef in Malta this last week, too, and he pretty much said the same thing, and it was very interesting to have a conversation with him, talking both kind of people as well as product, and he's on the other side of the world, and it's the exact same story. I think we're on the upswing. Minus the mandates are gone. That's a whole different topic for me. Like, those mandates were bullshit to begin with, and the whole shipping things back and forth and, like, supply chain crisis and all that bullshit.

[00:03:43]

Like, I feel like we're being led to a place where it's purposely less meat driven.

[00:03:59]

Like prices are going up. I remember paying fucking $8 a pound for wings and then going down from like eight to six to fucking three. And like $3.69 for a pound of wings was like, incredible. I was like, oh, shit. I guess they're going back on the menu.

[00:04:18]

But like, the porter houses and the tomahawks that we sell, we make no money off that shit.

[00:04:29]

You're not making money off that $140, you know what I mean? We make what change compared to the pork shank we put out this weekend and sold that out as a special. And it was literally $5 to put on the plate and he sold it 32, 36, 40. You know what I mean? You make your money with that.

[00:04:57]

Yeah. And you're not too worried if one comes back either because he fucked it up. He can't well, they're all ready to go, dude, I can't cook it anymore. Well, something happens. But yeah, I always hated those really high end things that I was just like, man, don't fuck that up.

[00:05:20]

Yeah, we got a new guy on Broiler and he's pretty much there with his temperatures, but he's under more than he is over. I've yet to see him go over. We can always bring it up attempt, but he can't bring it down. Yeah, I'll take under any day of the week. Yeah, exactly.

[00:05:49]

With staffing and all this, we're kind of talking. So there is that great. We'll just call it exodus for the restaurant industry, mainly because everybody's living paycheck to paycheck and then all of a sudden there is no paycheck, even though there's stimulus and other money coming. Like, for a lot of people, it just wasn't enough. So other people just found other jobs.

[00:06:15]

Whether they thought it was temporary or permanent, nobody knows. Who even knows what they do? But things are opening up and fewer and fewer people are coming back. Now, some people are saying it's the culture. I understand concept of that, but I'm still going to call bullshit on that because the culture is what it is.

[00:06:36]

The kitchen culture or the outside of the kitchen culture? No, the kitchen culture. Oh, yeah, kitchen culture now is fucked. Well, before, yeah, it was a harsh environment. It's always been a harsh environment.

[00:06:49]

Right? Me and you are probably more of the old school chef's mentality. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I was trained by Germans and French and Austrian guys and what they grew up with as well was you want to talk about hostile fuck? I mean, they were probably shoveling coal as their intern, right? Yeah.

[00:07:11]

I've gotten plates of fucking plates of perfect risotto fucking thrown at my feet, just knocked out of the window, saying, like, give me something I can fucking sell. Like I can't make it any better. Than this. What the fuck are you looking for? I'm looking for this guy to fucking put up the fish at the same time, and now this risotto is cold, so fuck it.

[00:07:29]

Make another one. There was no caring about your feelings. That just wasn't a thing. Yeah, just put your head down. Fucking do your best.

[00:07:39]

Now it's on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, hrs. Get involved. Mean, he made me cry. That's his fucking job, dude. It's his job.

[00:07:50]

Fucking shut up and cook. That's it. Yeah. To me in the kitchen. Yes, it was a harsh environment, and we all had expectations of ourselves, but there was expectations of the team, right?

[00:08:06]

And so I expected myself to perform at a better level than I was at, because that was me just pushing me. How am I getting better today? Right? And just never being complacent. That's exactly what I did.

[00:08:19]

And it's the total opposite now. Now it's like, I got to get home, because fucking Housewives of whoever gives the Fuck is on. It's not a thing, dude. I'm sorry. I've seasoned tickets to the Giants.

[00:08:31]

I don't fucking care, dude. You work in Sundays. Like, welcome to the club, dude. This is what it is. So I want to know how a line cook has seasoned tickets to the Giants.

[00:08:42]

Oh, my God.

[00:08:46]

It's like a running joke in the restaurant because he's, like, friends with another guy that worked there. And our chef Keith was going away on his honeymoon. They needed, like, extra hands, and they got this guy Brian to come in, and he was dog shit. His fucking work ethic sucked. The way he talked about his mom and his sister was just, like, crazy.

[00:09:05]

Like, this bitch, this content. I'm like, oh, my God, dude, you live with these people. This is your family. This is how you talk about them. Then you come here and you bitch to us, and it's like, I can't wait until November is here, because I'm not doing this, and I'm not doing that.

[00:09:20]

Who the fuck do you think you are, dude? You're 30 years old. You don't know shit about shit. Like, you think we're here to pick up your slack? That's just not how it works, dude.

[00:09:28]

Eric doesn't help with the floors. So fucking what, dude? Get a broom. I've never once chased if I saw one of my chefs pick up a broom or a mop, it was instinct to be like, hey, don't worry, chef. I got that.

[00:09:41]

Yeah, right. You know what I mean? Like, I got that. Go back to the office. Go fucking organize your fantasy football league, whatever.

[00:09:49]

You got more important shit to do than mop the fucking floor and babysit these kids. If the guy above you, whatever position you're in starts to help you or get involved in your job, that means you're not performing. Exactly. You need to study. He's like, what do you want me to do?

[00:10:07]

I said, how about fucking update your resume, dude, because this fucking job is not for you. Get on, learn Microsoft Word, get in there and start fucking typing, because cooking is just not your thing. That requires, like, he's not there anymore. No longer my problem, if I have to reiterate. What should I do next?

[00:10:32]

If I say update your resume, the fucking clock is ticking, right? At no point should we be outworking them. I was taught that if you want to get to where the guy above you is that you need to hustle and work your ass off and be better than that guy. And if you can't go in every day and try to be better and learn something new and shave a minute off of this pickup time or change the prep on this to get it done faster with the same or a better result, if you can't adjust, then you're not doing anything, right? You're just showing up.

[00:11:09]

The way you move up in kitchens is you've got to do your job and the job of the guy in front of you. Yeah. Eventually the job of the guy in front of you, you keep that job, and then you start shaving off your line cook duties, right? You're doing the job, and then one day it's like, oh, hey, by the way, you're a suit now, or you're a lead. And so the promotion and the title or the name on the jacket is, if anything, that's just kind of formality.

[00:11:42]

The name on the jacket is, like, irrelevant to me. Yeah, but you should be doing the job well ahead of time. So the whole idea we're going to make you a sue chef shouldn't be fucking surprise you or anybody else. I've run kitchens. I've been the executive chef at Kitchens on four different occasions.

[00:12:02]

And it's great, but it's only as good as the staff behind you 100% if the owners aren't there to back you up or they're so they're just, like, clinging on to dishes of fucking restaurant past and like, oh, we should do this. No, we shouldn't do that. Shit is garbage. Like, nobody wants to see a fucking giant meatball in this tiny little fucking clay pot. Like, that shit has played out.

[00:12:26]

Like, let's move forward. You know what I mean? Like, we don't need to do this anymore. Like, let's do something else. Like, every restaurant on this block serves that dish.

[00:12:35]

No, we don't need another arugula salad. Like, fucking get out of here. I'm perfectly content, like, where I am. I think I'm happier as a sous chef to go in and be the pit bull that doesn't give a fuck too. I can be the animal.

[00:12:51]

You know what I mean? Keith is a great guy, but he's way more timid than I am. And he has a kind of gentler approach and I just don't if I rip you a fucking new asshole, don't expect me to rub your back and tell you it's okay. Afterwards. You might get like, listen, you know, it's just a work thing at the end of the week, but I'm going to beat you up all week.

[00:13:14]

That's how it was done to me, and that's what worked. It was like that whole military aspect of break you down to build you back up again. Sometimes you need to see that, like, all right, cool. I guess I suck at this, and maybe I should be a little bit better, or what can I do to get better? How do I get better?

[00:13:32]

Do I ask more questions? What do I need to learn? Just when I go off the deep end, it was more about when people would stop caring. I wasn't necessarily the pit bull. I mean, I'm a bigger guy.

[00:13:47]

My voice carries, and I've always been told, like, hey, why are you yelling? I'm like, no, I'm not yelling. I'm making sure I'm hurt when I yell. You're going to fucking know. Yeah, that's a good line for me, too.

[00:14:01]

But the moment when they just stop caring and are just blatantly, like, Give a fuck. When did you give up? And then when everything starts to be sacrificed, it's like, Listen, I've worked way too fucking hard for you to fuck this up, right? And so if you don't want to put the work into it and you don't want to try, then why am I trying to help you? Why am I trying to pay you?

[00:14:27]

Yeah, 100%. So it's like, no, get the fuck out of here. Yeah, I've got no patience for that. Yeah, I lose it with that whole thing. I don't have enough time in my day to worry about that kind of petty bullshit if you can't care in the slightest.

[00:14:50]

If I went to work and didn't give it my all, I was in fear of my job. I would have been shit canned immediately. It doesn't matter, like, how good you can cook if you can go in there and cook good, but not consistently and have a shit attitude and, like, all that garbage that comes with it, you can only put up with that shit for so long. Well, the other part is, like, so they say it's the restaurant culture and the abuse, so to speak, that is toxic. But I want to ask the question, what fucking industry or what job can you go to where the attitude you portrayed that got you into this hostile situation would be okay?

[00:15:34]

Because I'll go, sign me up. It's only okay in restaurants. I mean, to me, it's like, that's just if I walk into a restaurant, I expect it to be like that. Well, no, I'm talking about someone that can walk in and not give a shit and then complain that they weren't getting paid enough. It was too hostile.

[00:15:54]

They got yelled at. They weren't trying every day. They just kind of would come in and just like, hey, how under the radar can I stay? Where's my cruise control? And then bitch like, hey, I'm not getting paid more.

[00:16:07]

I'm not getting promoted. I'm not doing this. Fucking chefs yelling at me. And it's like, well, apply everything you just said to me to any other career. And would you expect a different result?

[00:16:16]

No.

[00:16:19]

It'S work ethic. Yeah. And we as chefs are just like it's literally with the last meritocracy left. How many other jobs can you go to? This lengthy application, 17 fucking interviews and all this other bullshit.

[00:16:35]

Like, you walk in, it's like, all right, dude. Like, alright, so go on the walk in and fucking make me something. Right? Like yep. Like, profession, like professional artists.

[00:16:43]

Like, there's no fucking place to go into be like, all right, we'll paint me something. Like that doesn't happen. Not just like, all right, go in and fucking what's his name, banksy or whatever. You're not like, getting a job. And like, all right, we'll go fucking paint something on the wall here.

[00:16:58]

It's just like, all right, there's the walk in. We got a whole bunch of shit. Fucking make it taste good and look nice. And then do that every single night, every single day for the remainder of your time here. Like that or better, it's judged on merit.

[00:17:11]

Like, what can you do that post today? That true cook thing. Like, all right, the new guy. I talk all this shit, right? That was great.

[00:17:20]

And then you fucking sync, dude, and then I'm bailing you out if I got to come and do your fucking job. Like, we have a problem. That was a great post. It was a good one. That's the thing.

[00:17:33]

It's become so obscene that they come in with this attitude just like, I need to fucking coddle you. No, I don't. I don't need to coddle you. Nobody coddled me. And I fucking turned out just fine.

[00:17:43]

Guess what? If you work the fucking fry and plancha station, you better be fucking prepped, because I'm not coming to do it for you. There is no cuddling in a kitchen. It's not. But, like, it's expected these days.

[00:17:55]

It's 100% expected. They think that people are just going to get, like, a little pat on the ass and be like, all right, it's okay, buddy. We'll get them next time. And that's not how it works, dude. It's just not.

[00:18:06]

These guys will come in, like, at 03:00 all fucking stoned or fucking working off a hangover from the night before. And I've already fucking I got home at one, I've been up at seven, hit the gym, and already got to work fucking 5 hours before you even decided to show up. Opened everything, the whole fucking line set up and nobody has to worry about shit. But that's not for you, dude. That's for me.

[00:18:29]

I don't do that shit for anyone else. I do it for me first. And foremost, this is what I need to do. And how close do you think kitchens, like true professional kitchens are to like, the military? Oh, they're fucking neck and neck.

[00:18:44]

They're right there. I know there's the whole brigade system and stuff that we work on. But I mean, for the most part, not too many kitchens still use that. Not anymore. Now he's going to be listening to this, but I'm going to say it.

[00:18:58]

We just had a guy leave. He's moved to Pennsylvania. And he's like he got hired as, like, the sous chef in this place in Pennsylvania. And it's like the guy that fucking hired you as a sous chef probably doesn't even understand what a real sous chef there's no concept of, like, those titles anymore. Like, you see the ads on Indeed.

[00:19:15]

It'd be like, oh, we're hiring a fucking pizza chef. No, dude, it's not a pizza chef. Like, you're a fucking cook. Like, you make pizzas. You know what I mean?

[00:19:24]

If you have an ad up for Domino's and you're fucking posting a pizza chef and you walk in and change your shit on Facebook and fucking Instagram and be like, I'm a pizza chef at Domino's, like, no, dude, you're a fucking robot. You're a useless robot at this point. It's not what it was. You don't start from the bottom and work your way up anymore. And it's not like unfortunately, it only goes so far.

[00:19:47]

There's very few restaurants where it's like, okay, that cook is really good. We're going to bump him up and you're going to be the sous chef. People go in and it's like you said before, it's just like, I just need to make ends meet. I'm just doing this because I have to pay my fucking outstanding Netflix bill or whatever. I can't go home and watch fucking House of Dragons unless I get these, like, 3 hours of overtime.

[00:20:09]

I don't fucking care about you and your house and dragons, dude. What have you done for anyone else lately? Hey, man, I need to pick up some overtime. My my only found's account was locked. Yeah.

[00:20:19]

Looks like so ridiculous at this point. Well, no, I asked the kind of the military thing because to me that it's like the line is like the trench, right? And I mean, it almost feels like the guy next to you is like your battle buddy. And I mean, I didn't serve any military, but that camaraderie that comes out of it as well at the end of the shift, I mean, it's like coming out of a firefight where it's just like, you just look at each other and like, fuck yeah, right? And you should be proud about it as opposed to looking at the guy next to you and you'd be like, one more shift like that and you're going to have a fucking knife in your side, dude.

[00:20:55]

Yeah, there's been plenty of night. It's like all those things have happened regularly. It happens constantly. It's like, dude, fucking how long? Six minutes.

[00:21:04]

Okay, well, your fucking six minutes is actually twelve, so you want to meet somewhere in the middle, like, let's figure this shit out. At least they told you six. Six is actually 1212 is 24. When I say how long? And your answer is melting cheese, I'm like, that's not a fucking time, actually.

[00:21:22]

How long? It's coming. It's coming. So is fucking Christmas, dude. Let's get that shit in the fucking window.

[00:21:29]

To me, I love the other 130 seconds. It's like, okay, well, 30 seconds means half of it's on the plate. I don't even see the plate down. Yeah. As they're like bending down to pull a burger out of the draw and fucking throw it like a frisbee onto the flat top, I'm like, come on, dude.

[00:21:44]

Like fucking nowhere close to three minutes, it's never going to happen. That's the how long? Two minutes. So is it working, Porterhouse? Medium well.

[00:21:56]

How long right now? As it's like, going in the broiler, I'm like, oh, come on, dude. Just say you forgot it. Just just fucking be honest, man. That should have been the first one off the ticket.

[00:22:05]

Oh my God. Sometimes, I mean, we get some crazy nights where it's just like it's Porterhouse, Porterhouse, Porterhouse, tomahawk, Tomahawk, tomahawk. And they're like, non stop. Just non stop.

[00:22:18]

So how much longer before chefs and cooks? I shouldn't say chefs, but eventually it will be chefs. But it cooks, replaced by robotics and AI. It's already happening some places. Oh, yeah.

[00:22:37]

I mean, fast food places. Yeah, it's happening. I know. White Castle. Yeah, white Castle is a bunch of McDonald's and stuff like that.

[00:22:45]

Yeah. Their friars are essentially all automated now. It's all robotic. They have that one. I think that robot is called Flippy or something like that that will cook burgers and steaks and shit.

[00:22:59]

I don't see it happening in like I don't think like, eleven Madison Park is going to get any fucking Flippies anytime soon. But there's going to be restaurants that are going to be like, probably the last man standing kind of thing, right? I could almost see it where at one point in our future where there's going to be restaurants that are all, it's robotic, there probably won't be a soul in it. Right? That person is probably like just the tech guy that's there to fix a robot if it breaks, couldn't tell you anything about it.

[00:23:35]

And then there's going to be restaurants that can be staffed with true cooks chefs, but there's not going to be any middle in between. I think that's pretty fucking depressing.

[00:23:53]

That's a really fucking depressing thing to think about. The thing is, like, people put like, their heart they put all of themselves into this job. And to think that someone is so fucking brazen and be like, oh, we're just going to cut the middleman out. We're just going to have this robot flip burgers and fucking cook steaks and drop fries or whatever. That was someone's fucking dream, you know what I mean?

[00:24:24]

And you just replaced it by a goddamn robot.

[00:24:31]

I've been seeing the writing on the wall for so long, where it was harder and harder, pre coded, just with product costs, right? Yeah. And I was part of a group, so we always had contracts in place. So I was paying like 1015 percent less than just the mom and pop place. So the larger your buying power was obviously dollars, the less you paid, which is I understand, but it's like, man, so all the places that need the help are the ones paying the most.

[00:25:11]

100%. It's already hard enough to stroke, the struggle to get by. And then so COVID happens, and they probably had bills racked up. And then we finally get out of COVID We kind of all right, things are somewhat stabilized, right? But that pricing is just fucking through the roof.

[00:25:30]

It's crazy. And then they raise your minimums, and then they tell you, I mean, we had a company in Boston that was like we were set up for like, three days a week delivery, and it kept, like, a good rotation of stock. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, we're not coming on Wednesday. The fuck you mean you're not coming on Wednesday? What do we pay you for?

[00:25:48]

Everything will be there Friday. I'm going to fucking need double that on Friday. It got so obscene where it was just like, oh, we don't have enough truck drivers. We don't have enough this. We don't have enough this.

[00:25:57]

Oh, here's the $80 fuel surcharge. Here's, this. Here's, tax on this, tax on this. It became insane. Not like the prices of the product through the roof.

[00:26:08]

Yeah, but you know what? All of your chain places, they're getting their deliveries. Of course they are. Now all of a sudden, the chain. People basically survive on serving fucking prison food.

[00:26:21]

Applebees is going to get a fucking delivery over, like, a place that gives a shit. And they're going to pay 20% less, if not less than that. And the price on their menu, you're going to look at it and you're going to be like, it almost cost me that to put it on a plate. Yeah. It's like, how are you supposed to compete with that?

[00:26:43]

Because now people are coming into your place and they're like, well, dude, why is your burger $15? I can go over here and get it for nine. And I've heard this. I've done some consulting and just working with some of these guys, and that's just how it is. We have a meat market, like, right down the street from us.

[00:27:02]

And they're great. And they're like they service all of Long Island incredible products. And they have this great burger blend. Literally. It's $5 to break it down.

[00:27:13]

It's $5 per patty just to put on the plate. So what are you left with a $20 burger at the end after you throw all this shit on there and then add like, slab bacon and this and that and all this, you know what I mean? And like labor and overhead. Like it all adds up. Yeah.

[00:27:32]

And who right now can go out to dinner and have a $20 burger when they just spent like $160 to fill up their gas or have a fucking $900 oil bill? The ones that came in for the two Tomahawks. Yeah, it's crazy. It's just not so bad. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying.

[00:27:52]

The longer this plays out, the more we're going to start seeing the more just the graveyards filled up with the mom and pop places. And the smaller restaurants, the medium sized ones will struggle to get through. But that's why I'm saying soon enough it's going to be all corporate chains operated by machines. And then you're going to have your standalones that are just going to be kind of the last of the mohicans kind of shit that are just going to be your true chefs. And there's always going to be just some of the stand outs and who knows, maybe some pop ups where it will be a thing again.

[00:28:29]

Underground dinner becomes like an actual thing. We're going rogue. Yeah, the whole thing. And like the ghost kitchens and shit that are popping up now. People want to rent space.

[00:28:42]

There's like a place down the road for me. I go on Grubhub and it's like and you look at the address. It's like three addresses for like the same one address for like three different places. Yeah. How is it even possible that's like a Boston market that's like three different chicken places out of one restaurant with the fucking get out of here.

[00:29:00]

They started doing that in San Francisco. They actually opened up. It was someone they opened just a ghost kitchen. It was a warehouse. And that's all they were doing.

[00:29:10]

I forget how many kitchens were in it, but at one point they had eight different restaurants that were executing just out of that. And that was their only location. It wasn't like, hey, some of them were like, oh, we're just going to do our take out delivery out of there so they can focus on the kitchen. Which was like, hey, that would be nice. Not have to deal with fucking take out delivery out of the restaurant.

[00:29:35]

But some of them are just it's amazing. It went over the top. I know. When COVID hit, I was still in Boston and nothing was open. Everything was shut down.

[00:29:49]

Everything was closed. So there was all these Bertucci's restaurants. They're like all over. It's like Olive Garden in New York. They're fucking everywhere.

[00:29:59]

But they were all closed. So then Eric Greenspan started that thing, mr. Beast Burger. And they were all working out of fucking. All the Bertucci, they were, like, basically paying the rent there.

[00:30:11]

Go in and serve takeout and send out burgers to everybody. And that's just what happened. And it took off and it just, like, escalated from there. Now everything's a ghost kitchen. Everyone's like, got some little second restaurant inside a restaurant selling basically the same food or like, different products or different wrappers.

[00:30:30]

To me, people are paying for a full scale, like, a full restaurant experience through a ghost kitchen. The quality is not going to be there. We all know that once you put something into go box, quality drops significant, right? Yeah. And then once you start adding on time for delivery and all that stuff, you're going to get maybe 10% of the quality that you started with.

[00:30:58]

Yeah. I think it just opens the door for more complaints. Well, yeah, if we run a restaurant, you have, like, nachos. I'm not even putting nachos on it to go menu. It's not even going to be an option for you to take on.

[00:31:16]

My chips are soggy yeah, I bet they were. What can I do for you every time? Can I get, like, a muscle pot to go? No, you can't, dude. You fucking can't.

[00:31:26]

That sounds horrifying. Go sit down in a restaurant and eat them. And thank you for listening to this episode Up Inside the Pressure Cooker. If you enjoyed this episode and feel like you're able to take something away from it, please go to Apple podcasts and rate and review us. If you don't use Apple podcasts, please follow us as well as share this episode with a friend.

[00:31:51]

This is a publication by Rare Plus Media, hosted and produced by me from Rare Plus Media and myself, Chad Kelly. Thank you for listening. Keep kicking ass.

"Experience the flavor of Chef Eric's kitchen, where the heat is as 'Hot as F*ck' and the passion is real."

"I go into every day just wanting to be better. So much of what I see now is it's, like, too focused on the show. It's a marketing scheme compared to as opposed to the actual caring about the cooking. Sure, it can look good, but does it fucking taste good?" - Chef Eric

Chef Eric has been cooking since he was a child, when his mother taught him to make a meatloaf. When his son was born, Eric decided to switch to cooking as a career and has been doing so for 17 years. On the East Coast he has worked for various restaurants, including DBGB, but has seen many restaurants close due to COVID. He finds that many restaurants focus on the show rather than the taste of the food and is inspired to do better each day.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. The unique bond shared by line cooks, and chefs.

2. The challenges of running and surviving a restaurant during the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. The creative and entrepreneurial success story of a chef who created his own hot sauce.

Resources:

Eric Hasse on Instagram

Chef Eric's Links

Sweet Mama Hot Sauce on Instagram

Sweet Mama Hot Sauce: Order Here

Official Patriot Gear -10% OFF with code CHEFHASSE

Official Patriot Gear on Instagram

Chef Life Clothing

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Ariel Guivi, Part 1: What is a Chef?

Patrick Stark: The Untouchable Egos

Josh Morris: Balancing a chefs drive with family life

Connect with me: 

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Twitter: @chadkelley

Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker

Feedback: Email me!

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

Transcipt:

[00:00:03]

Over the last 20 years working in restaurants, I met a lot of really interesting people. Bourdain called us pirates and misfits, and he couldn't be more right. We really were. I say were. We are a hodgepodge of cultures and backgrounds, and we get to play with food all day, and we get to make a living in that, and it's pretty damn awesome.

[00:00:27]

This is what inside the Pressure Cooker is all about. It's about making some new friends and sharing some stories with some old friends. And listen, we all know that life inside a kitchen is not for everyone. We've seen plenty of people come and go that thought they could hack it and they couldn't. It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos.

[00:00:56]

But it's pretty damn controlled. And then just the constant pressure and the stupid hours you put in, not to mention it can be a very thankless job. Before you know it, it's all in your blood. And it's the only thing you know and you need more. It's an addiction.

[00:01:13]

This is the bond that all wine, cooks and chefs share. It's becoming the heartbeat of the kitchen, as cliche as that fucking sounds. But it's in our blood, which means it's fucking pulsing through our veins. And it's what we live for. A quick interruption before we jump on.

[00:01:31]

To the rest of this, two things. First, there's a link in the show notes that well, it's not really a link, it's my email. Please. I want to hear some feedback from you all. What do you love?

[00:01:45]

What do you not love? This is how I learn. And the second part I've set up a patreon account for this podcast. The link is also in the show notes below. Please, if you're able to we would love any contribution you're able to support us with.

[00:02:01]

We all have costs that we need. To try to cover with this show, and any sport would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

[00:02:10]

Chef Eric, 32nd elevator pitch. Who are you? I am Chef Ericos father. I'm a chef and I am a patriot. And that's pretty much it.

[00:02:25]

All right. How old are your kids? 1610 and two. You're covering the gamut there? Yeah.

[00:02:35]

Papa was a rolling stone.

[00:02:41]

So tell me then, how long have you been cooking? What got you into it? I've been doing this forever, man. We moved to Massachusetts when I was, like, eight, I think. And we took over my family's taxi company.

[00:02:57]

And mom was working and stepfather was working. And it was a phone call on, like, a phone on the wall that you had to, like, answer and be home for. And this is what you do. And you make a meatloaf, and I'd get the whole thing. She'd read me a recipe.

[00:03:14]

You're writing this down. You're writing this down. And I would do it and I enjoyed it. And the more that that went on, I kind of fell in love with it.

[00:03:28]

That's fine.

[00:03:33]

When did you realize it was going to be a career? Jesus.

[00:03:41]

I kind of switched permanently to it being a career. About 17 years ago, I was going to go to the army. We found out that my ex was pregnant with my oldest son, and things just kind of shifted gears. I always tried to stay out of the cooking business because I thought if I did it every day, it would ruin it for me.

[00:04:08]

I wouldn't get as much enjoyment out of it. There's truth there, you know? And like, I grew up in a house like, my father owned three delis. He worked himself to death. He was a shit bag, whatever.

[00:04:20]

He wasn't around. And it was what it was. And I thought if I worked in the industry, it would just make it all tainted. But it actually became quite the opposite.

[00:04:38]

I can understand that. It's almost one of those, like, he didn't want to follow in his footsteps. Yeah, 100%.

[00:04:47]

Okay, so right now you're cooking your soup and you're in Farmingdale, New York. You've been out in the East Coast the entire time. Yeah, new York. I work in the city for Danielle Bald.

[00:05:10]

A few restaurants here on the island. I was in Boston for a little bit, and then last November, I came back to Long Island. Okay. Dug in back here. Now.

[00:05:25]

Were you at barbalude? No. Is it DBG. Bees. Oh, nice.

[00:05:32]

I like that blue. Our commissary was you opened the front door to the commissary and it was the back of the iconic CBG. Bees. Like punk rock. Yeah.

[00:05:45]

A few trips I made to New York, actually there, I think, twice.

[00:05:52]

I like the feel to it. It's a different animal now, though. The city. It's become just disgusting. Oh, the city.

[00:06:01]

The city has just become disgusting. Yeah. This whole COVID thing just ruined so many restaurants. There like Michelin Star restaurants are shutting down. It just became abysmal.

[00:06:11]

That was like, the tough time in Boston. Like, I left there to come down here because at the end of COVID with all the restrictions and everything, nobody could offer the pay, nobody could offer the hours and everything. Rent moratoriums were up, and it was just got insane. Yeah. I don't know how restaurants I mean, it was impossible for so many places to survive and pay people because restaurants aren't exactly known to have, like, large vaults of cash just hanging around waiting for this stuff to happen.

[00:06:45]

Especially in New York or the East Coast, where just the rents are fucking ridiculous as it is. Even with the moratorium, at a certain point, it's like, hey, everybody's got to be able to pay something here. Yeah, I got a little obscene. What's the one restaurant you were sad to see go? I don't know.

[00:07:08]

There was a few there was a couple nice little, like a couple of quiet joints in Boston that were just it was like a good place to go get, like, a bowl of ramen or some nice sushi or something like that. And they were closing left and right. Little, like, no name, hole in the wall places that would go to after work. You know what I mean? Yeah, those places where I mean, they were kind of the definition of restaurants that were survived paycheck to paycheck kind of thing.

[00:07:34]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They were probably floating checks for a while. Yeah, that's unfortunate because all those places are usually pretty legit. And it was the smallest places and the best food we could leave.

[00:07:49]

I was, like, working in Brookline. It's a place called the Public House for, like, a great set of owners. This guy David loved food, loved everything. We did, like, a barbecue Sunday. We'd have people coming in just for that on Sundays.

[00:08:03]

And then you get to end the shift and go out and hang out with the guys and go get a fucking bowl of noodles and just wind down from a crazy week. And then all of a sudden, that shit wasn't there anymore. What did you guys do after that? Then it was just like, hop on the green line to the red line and go back to Dorchester and hang out. That's unfortunate.

[00:08:23]

Yeah, it was pretty shitty. So tell me about a time when you're cooking and you just kind of question everything, where you're just like, man, am I really in the right spot? Is this my career? Should I be looking for something else? I think that's happened a couple of times.

[00:08:38]

The first time was like, when I started in Delhi's, and I just got tired of it. Like, the hours, the bullshit, it became a lot. And then when I went to work for Danielle valud, it was a whole different animal. It was like, I have to inspect this guy's, like, parsley schiff and odd right now. Is this what I want to do?

[00:08:56]

I don't want to be the chef with the pair of tweezers and the fancy little shit on the plate. That's just not me. I'm never going to be a tweezer chef. I'm a fucking bull in a china shop. I come in, and if you're in my way, I'm mowing you down.

[00:09:14]

I have a very strong point of view on walking into a kitchen and like to see these cooks that just, like, have this I don't give a shit attitude. Like, oh, don't worry. It's not my job. Somebody else will do it. If I did that in any of the restaurants that I worked at, like, the places I work, like, none of those chefs picked up a broom or a mop.

[00:09:32]

You're lucky if you're going to get him out of the office, let alone mop up after you. And these guys are like, oh, he doesn't even help with the floors. He doesn't do this. I'm like, God, give it a rest, dude. Like, this is not how the world works.

[00:09:44]

Like, I broke my balls to, like, get where I am, and you're here fucking three days a week, showing up at 03:00 in the afternoon. Like, what do I care how you feel? It literally doesn't matter to me. Just shut the fuck up and mop. Yeah.

[00:09:55]

Oh, man. But, like, working for DB was just, like, insanity because, like, he has all these corporate chefs around him, and you have to go in, and they're like, all right, well, it has to be done like this, and it has to be done like this. And you got to follow around seven guys that you can barely communicate with because they're either Haitian or we had, like, a bunch of Albanians when I first started there, and nobody spoke English. So it would just have to be, like, visual demonstrations, like how to shift a Nod parsley, how to properly cut the chives so, like, Chef Rob didn't come in and throw everything in the garbage and make you redo it. So is there, like, a corporate chef that would just come in before service and do is walk through and then leave?

[00:10:32]

Yeah. So I was, like the opening suit. I would come in and I took care of, like, all the sauces. I managed all that stuff. I had 13 guys in the kitchen, and it was massive.

[00:10:44]

They had, like, six on the weekends. They had, like, six people on Garden alone. The restaurant isn't that big. The line was huge. The hotline had six, and then we had a roundsman that would jump between and fill holes, and then we had six on Garden.

[00:11:00]

Jay. Okay, that whole back room is, like, a chef's table and all that stuff. Like, Jim Gaffegan lived across the street and used to come in on Sundays for, like, brunch with his family and hang out back there. And then you got four cooks just, like, going it was obnoxious. We would do 300 people for brunch and then, like, another 300 for dinner, easy on a slow day.

[00:11:22]

I didn't think it was that big, but obviously I'm wrong. It was a decent sized restaurant. So what inspires you now? Change. I go into every day just wanting to be better.

[00:11:34]

So much of what I see now is it's, like, too focused on the show. It's a marketing scheme compared to as opposed to the actual caring about the cooking. Sure, it can look good, but does it fucking taste good? You know what I mean? Are you ordering shit product?

[00:11:52]

Is every fucking delivery coming from Cisco and their garbage? You know what I mean? We can bleep out Cisco, but they're fucking legit trash. As a broad liner. It's insane.

[00:12:05]

I would never order produce from them. No, absolutely not. Some of their stuff is fine. I mean, when you're talking about just all your dry stuff, whatever, but chemicals and whatnot. Yeah, I don't think in every location of them is kind of a little different, but yeah, I wouldn't be ordering any fresh product.

[00:12:27]

And then to bastardize it. You get it. And even if it's like half trash and you can make it into something, why order in massive quantities from Cisco and then produce this servable food to store it in the freezer for three months and then pull it out and court by court by court? I've seen chefs do that, and that shit is just so unappealing. I get it.

[00:12:53]

I get it's, like production based, but it doesn't have to be like that, right? Yeah. If you're starting with quality to begin with, I mean, you're going to have a hell of a lot less waste. Yeah. Your freezer is going to be smaller, too.

[00:13:08]

Yeah. At Harley's we have one chest freezer, and it's for fries.

[00:13:17]

Fries and like, I think lobster tails right now for New Year's Eve, but everything else. Yeah, I would say last few restaurants I built out, we didn't put freezers in them for anything for a couple of reasons. One, I also didn't want to deal with ice cream and desserts because I'm like, okay, listen, to get into that, it's like, now you need a dipping. Well, you need somewhere on the line for that. I'm like, I don't want to fucking deal with that shit.

[00:13:48]

No. I'm like, hey, listen, there's a great place about a block down. Yeah, they make fantastic ice cream. Go get yourself an avocado or something.

[00:14:03]

Avocado? No, avocado. The Italian ice cream with the espresso.

[00:14:16]

But you know what though? It's probably an avocado ice cream that they're looking for, though. That shit is so played out. I'm so fucking tired of avocados. It's like avocado is like the dried parsley on the rim of a plate for me right now.

[00:14:29]

Like a fucking nauseating to look at. I don't even want to see that shit. Yeah, you've got your late eighty S. Ninety S plating where every plate had the paprika and the parsley around the rim. I worked for this lady in Massachusetts, and it was like a breakfast and brunch pot.

[00:14:53]

I just got there, and then it was like this sushev position, and she was like all excited. And I go in and she's like, explaining the garnishing shit to me, everything.

[00:15:11]

It was just like purple kale. Purple kale on everything. And then she fucking sprinkles the dried shit around the plate. She's like, I like to call it Jazz fetty. And I'm like, Are you fucking kidding me?

[00:15:25]

Like, you don't name confetti after yourself, let alone fucking dress a plate like that just simple is so much easier. That's good. Yes, fetty. Yes fetty. My buddy Joe appreciate that because she's like, trying to sue him over a hot sauce recipe right now.

[00:15:48]

Good luck. She's like grasping for straws desperately yeah. At this point her lawyer is just stringing her along for cash then. Yeah, definitely. He probably should have told her that when it comes to recipes and intellectual property, unless somebody signed something that said, you own everything I create, or if it hits the menu for whatever reason, you own it.

[00:16:14]

But even then, prove it. No, she can't. He was just asking me if I want to be, I guess get deposed if I want to be a character witness or whatever. And this whole little lawsuit. I said, sure, sign me up, dude.

[00:16:33]

You know what? I give the guy credit because he took a step back from a restaurant. They stole a bunch of his shit. He went through with all these lawyers or whatnot. And when he sat home waiting for all this to do, him and his wife made this hot sauce called Sweet Mamas.

[00:16:50]

And they're selling the shit out of it. And they're going to like hot sauce expeditions. And they're winning and winning and winning. And she's jealous. And I know for a fact it's not her recipe.

[00:17:01]

Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. And even then, if she wants to say it's her recipe, legally you only have to change like one third of the recipe to create to make it unique, which is fucking easy to do. When I walked in that restaurant, her hot sauce recipe, she had this guy Tony there who was just like he was a fucking clown. There was no way. He was like, I've been an executive chef for six years.

[00:17:30]

I'm like, you're fucking 23, dude. Like you don't know shit about shit. Like you're trying to mulchify fucking stems right now. What are you doing? Like fucking strain the sauce.

[00:17:41]

Act like a professional for like 3 seconds. All you taste is hot. You don't taste any flavor whatsoever. It was a mess. Well, I mean, that's just kind of what everybody looks for these days.

[00:17:56]

Everybody just looks for straight heat. I don't know of any hot sauces out there that I actually enjoy because look at all the peppers that are they were going after the Carolina Reapers and this and that. Okay. Outside of putting you in the fucking hospital, what is that really going to do? Yeah, seriously.

[00:18:14]

I mean, we made sauces. We did a barbecue competition. This restaurant was with SmokeShack Blues and I named it Hot as Fucking. I had to wear a gas mask, like a whole respirator just to fucking just to mix it wearing like goggles because the fumes were just like massive. Yeah, it was like unbearable.

[00:18:37]

Oh, yeah, you smoked out the whole kitchen. Everybody saw it. Great. We'd make it like come in at 07:00 in the morning and have it on the stove just going and simmering in the back. And we'd have to open all the front windows, the doors, the back door just to let it all out.

[00:18:54]

Because you couldn't even have a customer walk in the building at 11:00 in the morning because their fucking eyes are burning. I just love to do that. Sometimes you get the little chilly vinegar bombs and then all of a sudden you just hear people on the other line. You're just like, yeah, talk some more shit. Exactly.

[00:19:17]

Oh, this isn't that hot. Okay, wait a second. This one's a fucking creeper. And then all of a sudden they're on the floor.

[00:19:28]

You mentioned this earlier, but cooking for theater instead of flavor. And this is kind of an interesting thing because I don't want us to blame social media, right? But there's that, hey, we got to make that Instagram worthy food, but it's got to taste great. And so everything's got to be like I remember documents. Hey, there's got to be Instagram.

[00:20:06]

Picture the owners. Can we put this picture on Instagram? If this goes to a guest and they take a picture of it? And I'm like, why did Instagram start driving so much fucking traffic for us? It just did, man.

[00:20:21]

It's crazy because you see, I'll go through my Instagram and it's like, what the fuck am I doing? These guys you got these idiots that just go on TikTok and fucking dance and they're making millions of dollars and I break my ass. You know what I mean? I break my ass to fucking bring in a paycheck and pay for my kids and pay for my apartment and enjoy my life. And these guys just fucking do nothing.

[00:20:48]

And then you get, like it, like, broke down someplace. There was like this fucking massive fallout where it didn't have to taste good anymore. It was just about, like how pretty the plate is. Well, it wasn't even how pretty it was. It was like how over the top.

[00:21:08]

Like, how ridiculous could it be? Yeah, I don't want fucking goldflake on my goddamn dessert. Like, get that shit out of here. Why do we need that? What about your 32 ounce tomahawk that's wrapped in goldflake?

[00:21:23]

Yeah, that's fucking so stupid. It gets so ridiculous and over the top. That's cool. Dude, you can wear sunglasses and fucking shaving face like Antonio Banderas and sprinkle salt and shit. I don't fucking care.

[00:21:38]

What does the steak taste like? What does it taste like? If it's cooked well, you don't need all this bullshit sauce, dude. We go out to the table at a tomahawk or a porter house. We throw an herb butter on it, we'll torch it and bring it up to Temp table side.

[00:21:53]

And that's it. That's it. It just needs butter. It needs butter and fucking love. That's it.

[00:21:58]

You just have to pretend to give a shit for 5 seconds and fucking cook it properly. Just care about what you're doing. And that's literally it. These guys are just like, I got to have the fanciest fucking chef coat and my apron needs to be tits, and I got to go out there, and I got to be fucking perfect. You don't, man, just go in the kitchen, put your head down, and fucking cook.

[00:22:18]

Do your goddamn job like you're here to fucking serve the people. It's not about your ego. It's not about a lot of the bullshit. You're here for customers. And like you said, it's not about ego, but it's more about just giving a fuck for those 5 seconds.

[00:22:33]

It's like giving a fuck for everything and being excited about everything. Exactly. These cooks that we've been getting rid of at the restaurant, I came in at the right time, I think. I think I joined the team at Harley's at the perfect time. It was like, Keith's a great guy, and he was running himself ragged, and he had no help.

[00:22:57]

He was fucking not, like, treading water, but he was, like, fighting because he had a good vision of where we should go and how to get there. But there was just, like, missing pieces. Yeah. There's only so much one person can do. I'd like to think that I stepped in at the right time to help get that forward.

[00:23:22]

And now it's like, before, it used to be the kitchen can't keep up with the dining room. Now it's the dining room can't keep up with the kitchen. There you go.

[00:23:33]

And that's now becomes a whole new list of problems to solve because now the kitchen is, like, where it needs to be, but the front of house staff can't, like, get their shit together. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, have they ever yeah, no, we do. We have some really great servers, but there was a time where it was like, okay, this one's here for a week and gone. This one's here for a week and gone.

[00:24:01]

People can only work two days a week, and it's like, how much do you really give a shit if you're only here two days a week? The restaurant is just an ATM for them. Yeah. They come in, put in their time, walk out with their cash. Exactly.

[00:24:16]

But they're kids. It goes back to that. Like, kids in the kitchen shit. Like, they come back and they just, like they think, like, we're there to serve them. I'm like, that's not how this works, dude.

[00:24:28]

That's not how any of this works. We are here to serve the people you're serving. So if we don't all work together, you're fucked. We're fucked. And they go home miserable and with a comp meal.

[00:24:41]

Yeah. So many different places I want to go with this because it's like, all right, how do we want to unpack this? Because you're right. There's this new generation that's coming in that is very entitled. So entitled.

[00:25:00]

It's, like, such a disgusting trait to see that. I'm like I just, like, question, like, why would you choose this business if you're not about serving other people? Why are you here? Why are they here? I mean, have you asked anyone that?

[00:25:15]

I ask them all the time. Like, what are you doing here, dude? What do they say? Oh, I got to pay for school. What school?

[00:25:23]

Dude, you go to fucking school online. Like, get out. Do something. Like, fucking do something with your life. This is not the like, you get people coming in that like the fucking Miami Dolphins do.

[00:25:32]

They keep playing football. They know football is not the path they should be taking, but they keep trying.

[00:25:41]

You a Miami fan then, huh? No, just saying. It's like, do you want to get up and be the fucking best at what you can be, or do you want to go in and half ass everything? I don't half ass anything. You get up and I don't know who the fuck said it.

[00:26:00]

There's some saying about being in the jungle. Whether you're a lion or a gazelle, the first thing you do when you wake up is you fucking run. That's the one thing you know that you have to do, is you're fucking running. You either running to not be fucking food or you're running to get food. And, like, I'm not going to be the fucking gazelle.

[00:26:16]

And thank you for listening to this episode of Inside the Pressure Cooker. If you enjoyed this episode and feel like you're able to take something away from it, please go to Apple podcasts and rate and review us. If you don't use Apple podcasts, please. Follow us, as well as share this episode with a friend. This is a publication by Rare Plus Media, hosted and produced by me from Rare Plus Media and myself, Chad Kelly.

[00:26:44]

Thank you for listening. Keep kicking ass.

When Kaitlynn Wood, a five foot one restaurant worker and survivor of sexual abuse, strives to create a professional and safe work environment, she must confront her own PTSD and the hostile environment of an industry that has been historically enabling of predators.

"We need to set a standard. We need to start today, and we need to make it a priority to not accept that kind of behavior. Period. End of story. Clock out and get the fuck out of my kitchen."

Kaitlynn Wood is an experienced restaurant professional who has worked in the industry for over 20 years. She is passionate about creating a safe and respectful work environment for all, and is an advocate for seeking mental health support.

Kaitlynn Wood shares her experiences of working in restaurants over the last 20 years, which she explains is full of a diverse group of people who create an interesting and chaotic environment. She encourages people to seek mental health help if they are struggling, as she did, and to practice compassion and humility. She also talks about her experience with sexual harassment in the workplace, how she reacted and how it can be difficult for victims to speak up. Despite the challenges, she emphasizes the importance of setting a standard of respect and creating a culture of acceptance.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. "The Bond That All Line Cooks and Chefs Share: What Is It, and How Does It Affect Success in the Kitchen?"

2. "The Impact of Mental Health on Kitchen Performance: How Can Therapy Help?"

3. "Tackling Sexual Harassment in the Kitchen: How Can We Create a Culture of Respect?"

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Jeff Platt

Mario Orozco

Suki Otsuki

Connect with me: 

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Twitter: @ChadKelley

Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Feedback: Email me!

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

Transcript:

[00:00:03]

Over the last 20 years working in restaurants, I met a lot of really interesting people. Bourdain called us pirates and misfits, and he couldn't be more right. We really were. I say were. We are a hodgepodge of cultures and backgrounds, and we get to play with food all day, and we get to make a living doing doing that, and it's pretty damn awesome.

[00:00:27]

This is what inside the Pressure Cooker is all about. It's about making some new friends and sharing some stories with some old friends. And listen, we all know that life inside a kitchen is not for everyone. We've seen plenty of people come and go that thought they could hack it and they couldn't. It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos, but it's pretty damn controlled.

[00:00:58]

And then just the constant pressure and the stupid hours you put in, not to mention it can be a very thankless job. Before you know it, it's all in your blood, and it's the only thing you know and you need more. It's an addiction. This is the bond that all wine, cooks and chefs share. It's becoming the heartbeat of the kitchen, as cliche as that fucking sounds.

[00:01:22]

But it's in our blood, which means it's fucking pulsing through our veins, and it's what we live for. A quick interruption before we jump on to the rest of this, two things. First, there's a link in the show notes that well, it's not really a link. It's my email. Please.

[00:01:42]

I want to hear some feedback from you all. What do you love? What do you not love? This is how I learn. And the second part I've set up a patreon account for this podcast.

[00:01:52]

The link is also in the show notes below. Please, if you're able to, we would love any contribution you're able to support us with. We all have costs that we need to try to cover with this show, and any sport would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

[00:02:10]

Well, this is one of the topics I really like to talk about, which is therapy. So there's a manager where my husband works, and she runs off a lot of employees, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Okay? But from my experience, I've been through a lot of shit, so I've been in her shoes. I know a lot about how she's feeling and what she's thinking, but I've been through therapy, and that's how I was able to change and stop being a raging bitch in the kitchen.

[00:02:57]

So I encourage anyone to go to therapy. If you have some stuff you haven't dealt with, if you find that you're an asshole at work and you want to stop being an asshole, if you just want to learn how to communicate better, go to therapy. We do not take care of our mental health enough. We're under so much pressure. We work long hours.

[00:03:26]

We're tired. We get burnt out, and we still got to do it anyway. That's going to make for some short tempers.

[00:03:36]

I've broken up a few fights before they started in kitchens. Yeah. No, I remember. But just because before I left because they were tired. Yeah.

[00:03:47]

When I finally left, I had zero views, man. It did not take anything to really set me off, but I knew it, and I was just like, this is I just look back in the mirror afterwards. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why did I just lose it like that? So anybody listening, please go to therapy.

[00:04:11]

It will help you, and it will not hurt you. I promise. Yes. And I love how therapy and seeking mental health is so much more embraced right now than it has been in the past. Where I'm Gen X and my generation, therapy was considered not was is considered a weakness.

[00:04:45]

It's like, why do you need therapy? Just fucking figure it out.

[00:04:52]

Quit bitching and just get back to work. You'll be better later. Go grind the walk in. You know what? Take a mob with you.

[00:05:02]

I've been that guy, too. I've been the person that said that, because at that time, though, I didn't have any mental issues, at least not that I know of.

[00:05:16]

But now, after experiencing, I mean, just a complete mental and physical collapse yeah, I get it. We're not as strong as we think we are. No. And you never know what someone else is going through. I love that road because it's such a taboo subject.

[00:05:43]

Yeah, I love that line, you never know what someone else is going through.

[00:05:52]

What was the first time I saw it? I don't really remember, but I saw it on a shirt recently. It was actually for a veteran support group kind of thing. And it's just like, hey, you don't know what kind of shit I've been through, so leave me alone kind of thing.

[00:06:13]

But yeah, and it's just practice compassion.

[00:06:20]

And practice some humility, too.

[00:06:28]

Like, we're not all that in a bag of dicks. None of us are.

[00:06:35]

I like to think I am.

[00:06:45]

I love this industry because it really turns everything on its head.

[00:06:51]

Like, you can have a young kid teaching an older person, and our industry is usually a second choice for a lot of people. Yeah, we're fucking pirates. Which means it found us. We didn't find it. There was nothing else available.

[00:07:14]

And it was like, Well, I got to do something.

[00:07:18]

There it is. Go get a job in a restaurant. Yeah. I had an assistant when I was the catering coordinator at a big hospital, and I was teaching my assistant, who was, I don't know, probably in her 50s. He was close to retirement age, and I was teaching her how to cook.

[00:07:50]

How do you do this? How do you do that? What is this called? And she had progressed so much by the time I got promoted that it was just awesome to see. But she is also really old school, so I actually learned some very useful things from her.

[00:08:14]

And I just think that is such a great thing about our industry, because we always have something to learn. Yeah, we're always learning. Especially those that are really taken off with this industry and recognizing it's for them. And they want to grow, and they recognize that they can learn from everybody. Because at that point, you know, the smart ones, you can tell the cokes that are going to be good.

[00:08:47]

How I could tell cooks that were going to be worth a shit later on is just how humble they were, but also how they were always watching other people and willing to take in feedback whether they agreed with it or not. But also just being able to see other people and adapt to what they were doing and apply it to their own knowledge and then in execution. So there's a lot to be said there with that. Yes. So I'm five foot one, aka almost a dwarf.

[00:09:29]

Three inches, by the way. Three inches for being legally a dwarf. So the thing that I always have to have is a pair of tongues because I can't reach shit. Especially not the top shelf of a dunge rack. Are you kidding me?

[00:09:45]

There ain't no way. So even when I was in culinary school, I learned how to use tongs and ladles to get stuff to where I could reach it. And I showed a whole bunch of people how to make their lives easier just with a pair of tongs. They work smarter, not harder. Yes, exactly.

[00:10:10]

And like, I'm not going to wait on some taller person to get something down from here. Are you kidding? I'd have five and six caterings that had to be out between eleven and 12:00. And I'm only one person with two legs and two arms. No excuses.

[00:10:28]

Yeah, no excuses. You had to figure it out for sure. It makes me laugh every time I hear people talk about it and they say, you got to figure it out, and I automatically just go back to FIFO. Yes. Figure it the fuck out.

[00:10:46]

Yeah, I really like that one.

[00:10:51]

It's not about rotations. It's just fucking figure it out, man. Nobody's going to be holding your hand through everything.

[00:11:00]

Things are going to happen. Yeah. Things are going to happen. Mistakes are going to happen. It's okay.

[00:11:07]

Right? Don't try to sweep it under the rug. Don't hide anything. Learn from it. Move on.

[00:11:12]

Be a better person from it. Yes. Roll with the pond.

[00:11:19]

That's life. Not just cooking. Yeah. And keep your head on a swivel. Otherwise you're going to establish yeah, they didn't move fast enough.

[00:11:33]

That wasn't my fault. No. I used to scare people, actually, because I was so comfortable with the knife in my hand. I would like to use my knife to, like, point, and I wasn't going to hurt them. The knife is an extension of my hand and they're just, like, shrinking back like I'm an alien.

[00:11:53]

And I'm just like, what is your deal?

[00:11:59]

This is like your best tool in the kitchen and you're scared of it. How is that going to work?

[00:12:08]

I'm really not that scary. I mean, I'm shorter, so I'm a little closer to hell, but come on, man.

[00:12:20]

That's why all the short people are always angry. Oh, man. So what happens if you're short and vegan?

[00:12:29]

Oh, my goodness.

[00:12:36]

You're going to be really mad and really bitter.

[00:12:42]

Yeah, you just go to therapy.

[00:12:47]

Maybe you'll change your mind about it. Oh, man.

[00:12:53]

Well, this is great. What are we missing here? What are we not talking about?

[00:13:05]

PTSD.

[00:13:09]

That's a can of worms right there. That is a can of worms. But the more we talk about it, the more we desigmatize it. So when I first started with Compass Group, I had just gotten away from the really abusive person in my life. And I was terrified out of my mind.

[00:13:36]

And I'm trying to work in a busy kitchen, I'm learning a new job. And I was in that place where I needed some understanding and I just didn't get it. And this guy preyed on all the new girls and he sexually harassed me. And I just about lost my shit. And I went to Chef No, I went to his manager and I was just like, hey, this is going on.

[00:14:20]

And he said, well, can you describe the noises? And I'm just like, no, because I was still in that place in my mind.

[00:14:38]

And that manager did nothing because I wouldn't describe the noises.

[00:14:50]

And it was like, I don't know, three, two, three weeks later. And he pinned this girl to a wall at work on the weekend because nobody was there on the weekend. So he felt that he could get away with it. But because I spoke up about what this person did, she came to me and she was like, what do I do? I was like, you have to speak up about it.

[00:15:22]

You have to say something because it is not fair. It is not right for someone to treat people this way.

[00:15:34]

So we went to the manager together and after three days, they finally fired him.

[00:15:46]

That's ridiculous.

[00:15:52]

That's ridiculous. Was this at the hospital? Did they have cameras in the area?

[00:16:01]

See, that's where he was smart. He did it in an area that didn't have cameras.

[00:16:09]

That's sad. Yeah. And what is really sad is that I put up with a certain level of sexual harassment because I felt like after that incident that nothing was going to be done about it because they just said something to me. There was this one guy who said to a lot of girls that he just wants them to pee on him.

[00:16:45]

There is another one that would refer to our genitalia when talking to us.

[00:16:57]

The statistics is one in three women now are going to experience some form of sexual assault. That number was one in 620 years ago. Wow. So these people that were they professionals? I say professionals like they're working there, but were they just kind of random people off the street, just needed jobs kind of thing and put to work?

[00:17:27]

Like they were just there punching clocks? Well, one of them was a contract worker, so it's a lot harder to get rid of him, according to the manager. And then another one was under that same manager that didn't do anything about the cook that was harassing me before. So that's why I didn't really say anything was because I had already seen his behavior. I'd already seen how he would react.

[00:18:04]

So after that other guy was fired, was there any change in some of the attitudes and some of the other men that were there? No. Oh, man. So they didn't fear the manager or any of the repercussions? No, not at all.

[00:18:28]

So if someone reacts in a way that seems incongruent with the situation, just take a moment pause and ask yourself why people aren't going to generally open up to you and tell you stuff like this. Right. Because we've been taught that it's shameful.

[00:19:01]

I just think that we need to have more compassion, like we said earlier. But just because you think someone's response isn't appropriate doesn't mean that there's not a reason for it.

[00:19:37]

I'm not sure what to say. That because I mean, there's appropriate and there's not. And some of what you just said is very inappropriate, but yet I can't think of what anybody would be going through that would justify that though, or make it appropriate.

[00:20:01]

I was more talking about the responses of I'm just going to say victim, even though I hate that word. Okay, I got you. But I will say that sexual assault against males is the most underreported crime in the country. And if they do not get treatment, the majority of them go on to be perpetrators themselves, which does not excuse their behavior, but it is somewhat of an explanation.

[00:20:38]

But this needs to stop. In our industry, there is no room for that kind of behavior in a kitchen. We can't afford to be bigots.

[00:20:59]

We're such a melting pot of different cultures, languages, customs, food.

[00:21:09]

But we need to set a standard. We need to start today, and we need to make it a priority to not accept that kind of behavior. Period. End of story. Clock out and get the fuck out of my kitchen.

[00:21:32]

God. I'm just thinking it's hard for me to see it from because obviously I've never experienced this being a male, but I've also been in that leadership role where I didn't tolerate any of that shit.

[00:21:58]

And I made sure that if there was something going on, or if you kind of start to hear something, I automatically would put somebody in check where, whether it was a joke or not kind of thing, it's just like, no, none of that here. I mean, you can use whatever language you want, right? I'm not going to tell everybody you can't cuss kind of thing, but we're all going to respect the shit out of everybody that's here. We're all here doing the same job.

[00:22:28]

I've always been the professional, hiring people that I believed were professionals and treating everybody with respect. It starts at the top. So the fact that you got to create that culture but even if it doesn't start at that top, if you're working in that environment where it's there and you see it not necessarily at the top, but where it's just being ignored or swept on. The Rogue, like you said. People really need to ask themselves if they're in the right place.

[00:23:08]

What else is going on? Right? And has that manager done themselves?

[00:23:20]

Yes, because of that same manager that wouldn't fire that guy and those other two people. All right, so I ended up in the executive chef and the sous chef. So that same guy, I was sitting in the office with the executive chef and the sous chef. And he put his hand on the back of my neck while I was turned around. Now that's a trigger for me.

[00:23:50]

The executive chef saw my expression change and saw that I did not like that. I spun around and I looked at him dead in the face and I said, do not do that again. Oh, he did. And he just like, acted like he was like, play fighting me. He said, well, what you're going to do if I do that?

[00:24:10]

And I said, do not do that again. And he continued to act like it was just a joke. Oh, God. And it was not a joke. And executive chef and the south chef were about ready to punch him in the face or drag him out of the office.

[00:24:28]

But because he was somebody's in administration, he was like somebody's cousin or some crap like that, which was why he was still employed, because he was dumb as a buyer. Rocks for sure. And I'm just one person. I'm just one example. Just imagine how many others are out there.

[00:24:50]

And my small circle of friends, all three of us, including my male friend, has been sexually assaulted. Yeah, those numbers are awful. And I really feel like our industry kind of perpetuates the problem because we tell people to suck it up, get over it. So if you're telling people to suck it up or get over it over something else, how are they going to feel when something like that happens? How are they going to be able to reach out and speak up?

[00:25:28]

I've never put those two together like that. But you're right, because once you tell someone to get over it. They're not going to speak up anymore. I'm just laughing because all of a sudden all I think of every place I've ever been corporate, non corporate, everybody has that open door policy, right? That's copy and pasted from every other fucking employee handbook out there.

[00:25:53]

It really means nothing if leadership does not believe in treating everyone equally with respect and with compassion. But I think above all, respect. If you respect someone and they respect you, they are more likely to be open and honest. Yeah. It's so weird that we've got to be able to tell people out there that you have to treat people with respect.

[00:26:23]

I don't even know what to say to that. That's the way we're treating. I've got two kids, seven and ten and that's the way they're raised. There is no other way about it. I mean, you treat everybody with respect.

[00:26:37]

You talk to someone, you look them in the eyes, you grab a problem. You don't go complain somewhere else kind of thing. I shouldn't say complain somewhere else, but you confront it, so to speak. You don't try to hide something. But it's so weird that it feels weird to me that it's an issue.

[00:26:59]

I get it. I know it's an issue. I don't say I get it and I know it's been going on for so long, but it's like mentally I have a hard time understanding it because my brain just doesn't think that way. And it's sad that other people right? I mean are they just really that shady as fuck?

[00:27:16]

Well, it starts very early. It starts with how your parents are and what they teach you. So consent I did not understand what consent was until I was like 23, 24 because I was abused and what I went through boundaries. My boundaries were stepped on. I had no boundaries.

[00:27:41]

I didn't have any personal space. I didn't have anything really. So if you don't teach what boundaries are and what consent is, then they're not going to respect other people's boundaries. So if you don't truly understand what consent is, then how can you approach life with can't think of the word with intent. You have to be intentional.

[00:28:15]

I don't know if I have anything else to really add to that. I mean, it's very it's very nice to hear, you know, your perspective and to know that see another example of not all men are that way and women are perpetrators too. But after I moved away from that person, I was terrified of men. I never thought that I was going to get married, especially not to a man. I can understand that.

[00:28:50]

And my husband is just a wonderful person. He is amazing. But his mother was the one that taught him this is what you do. This is what you don't do. And if you weren't taught that, reach out, look it up, read a book, read some articles, go get therapy, right?

[00:29:13]

Yeah. All we ask for is for you to try. If you see someone that looks uncomfortable or scared, change what you're doing. Make a change. Yeah.

[00:29:27]

Obviously you're doing something wrong. So I guess the first part is understanding being able to there's so much of that before you get too far into that, I mean, there's got to be so much self exploration that someone needs to be doing on themselves to kind of whether you go through therapy for it or not. I did a ton of self exploration with myself when I was younger, where it was just like, why do I act certain ways? Why do I do things? And it led me to have a deeper understanding of myself triggers.

[00:30:10]

But it also helped me understand people more, and that, in turn, allowed me to be a much better person, a better communicator. I think everybody really needs to learn how we work or spend some time on it, whether it's a class and I don't even know what it would be, but just understanding how our brain works, how other people work, so we can understand the concept of compassion and how to apply it and how to read it. So you're writing a book? I am writing a book. Tell me about that.

[00:30:48]

I love to read. I have, like, seven bookcases of books, and I still have more books that are becoming furniture.

[00:30:57]

I'm writing an urban fantasy series where the magical and the human community are currently trying to integrate. I'm going to explore the socio political views, throw some mystery in. There nothing about romance because that drives me nuts. And one of my main characters is going to be a survivor with PTSD. Okay.

[00:31:29]

Because that is very much so underrepresented, especially in Sci-Fi and fantasy. And obviously, I have personal experience with this, and I just I hope that I'm going to receive, you know, some positive some positive feedback, but I'm trying really hard. And of course, one of my characters is going to be a chef. That goes without saying. Is the chef the PTSD, or is he the mentally unstable character?

[00:32:15]

So the female lead is actually going to be the one with PTSD. Okay. And the male lead is actually going to be a werewolf that is an owner operator of a kitchen. So, yeah, the mentally unstable one.

[00:32:37]

Yeah, we are pretty mentally unstable. Those shirts they came out with is like, I'm a chef. I survive on chaos, cuss words, and caffeine. I think that describes quite a few of us. Yeah.

[00:32:54]

You have to be just a little bit insane to thrive in that kind of environment. Yeah. There's already something wrong with you for you to get into restaurants and kitchens and enjoy it and love it. So well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Yes.

[00:33:10]

I've greatly enjoyed talking with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you for listening to this episode. Up inside the pressure cooker.

[00:33:19]

If you enjoyed this episode and feel like you're able to take something away from it, please go to Apple podcasts and rate and review us. If you don't use Apple podcast, please follow us as well. Share this episode with a friend. This is a publication by Rare Plus Media hosted and produced by me from Rare Plus Media and myself, Chad Kelly. Thank you for listening.

[00:33:43]

Keep kicking ass.

In this podcast episode, Kaitlynn Wood, a headstrong 30-year-old female chef, struggles to survive and thrive in the chaotic and thankless world of the restaurant industry, where pirates, misfits, and White Collar pressures clash with her own grit and ambition.

"It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos, but it's pretty damn controlled."

Kaitlynn Wood has spent the last few years working in restaurants, and has seen firsthand the 'pirate' and 'misfit' culture of the industry, as well as the transition to the 'white collar era'. She has seen people come and go who thought they could handle it, but it takes a special type of person to thrive in the chaotic, yet controlled environment with long hours and often thankless work. Kaitlynn is a 30 year old female chef who is currently disabled and a survivor of abuse. She has experienced the pirate era of yelling and being called every name in the book, as well as the more recent corporate era where she had to be careful not to swear or call her coworkers 'idiots'. Despite the pressure and the difficulties, she has found joy in

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How has the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in the restaurant industry and creative approaches to food?

2. What are the differences between the pirate era and the white collar era in the restaurant industry?

3. How has the introduction of robots and AI into restaurants impacted the amount of creativity needed to succeed?

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Suki Otsuki the Yoga Chef

The Lady Line Cook on Developing Her Leadership Style

Connect with me: 

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Twitter: @chadkelley

Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker

Feedback: Email me @ [email protected]

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

[00:00:03]

Over the last 20 years working in restaurants, I met a lot of really interesting people. Bourdain called us pirates and misfits, and he couldn't be more right. We really were. I say were. We are a hodgepodge of cultures and backgrounds, and we get to play with food all day, and we get to make a living in that, and it's pretty damn awesome.

[00:00:27]

This is what inside the Pressure Cooker is all about. It's about making some new friends and. Sharing some stories with some old friends. And listen, we all know that life inside a kitchen is not for everyone. We've seen plenty of people come and go that thought they could hack it and they couldn't.

[00:00:47]

It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos, but it's pretty damn controlled. And then just the constant pressure and the stupid hours you put in, not to mention it can be a very thankless job. Before you know it, it's all in your blood, and it's the only thing you know and you need more. It's an addiction. This is the bond that all wine, cooks, and chefs share.

[00:01:17]

It's becoming the heartbeat of the kitchen, as cliche as that fucking sounds. But it's in our blood, which means it's fucking pulsing through our veins, and it's what we live for. A quick interruption before we jump on to the rest of this, two things. First, there's a link in the show Notes that well, it's not really a link. It's my email.

[00:01:41]

Please. I want to hear some feedback from you all. What do you love? What do you not love? This is how I learn.

[00:01:48]

And the second part I've set up a patreon account for this podcast. The link is also in the show notes below. Please, if you're able to we would love any contribution you're able to support us with. We all have costs that we need to try to cover with this show, and any sport would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

[00:02:10]

Let's kick off, then. Kaitlynn, give me your 32nd elevator pitch. Who are you? I am a 30 year old female chef. I am actually currently disabled.

[00:02:26]

I got sick in 2020, and I have not been able to return to work. I'm headstrong, I'm very strong willed, stubborn, hardworking. I don't know when to quit, and I am also a survivor of abuse, which has really shaped my life. Yeah, I can imagine. So let's talk a little bit.

[00:02:53]

You mentioned a little bit, kind of offline, that you're kind of a product of the pirate era and the white collar era. They kind of expand on that for me. Yeah. Okay. So Anthony Bourdain was the one that called his pirate.

[00:03:09]

So my chef instructors and my mentors obviously were older than me, so they were a product of the pirate era yelling at you, I got a knife thrown at me. One time for dropping a $30 piece of fish. I've had plates flung at me. I've been called every name in the book and I've given back as well as I've gotten too much to their chagrin. But for the last six years, I worked in corporate and corporate now as a whole kettle of fish.

[00:03:39]

I can't tell you how many times I got called into the office and they were just like, can't call them a fucking idiot. No matter what they're trying to do. You can't do that and like, yes, chef, that's great. You can't tell them to get the fuck out of your way. I'm like, what am I supposed to say then?

[00:03:57]

I said, Excuse me three times and they still won't get the fuck out of my way. I got shit to do. You can't say that. So how long did you last in the corporate world then? Six years, actually.

[00:04:11]

I was with Compass Group about a year after I graduated culinary school. I started out as a part timer, one of their US concepts, which is like a retail kitchen, basically. And you have contracts? We had a contract with a bank in Charlotte. Basically, they paid us to be there to feed their employees, but we still had to make a profit.

[00:04:39]

So Compass Group is actually like the number 7th employer in the world or something like that. They have a lot of different sectors, obviously. It sounds like it was more of a cooking was like a release for you to kind of get rid of that pressure and that tension and it just made you feel good. But cooking in the industry is very different. So how did you know, though, once you were cooking and you were professionally cooking, so to speak, that it's like, okay, I made the right decision.

[00:05:12]

Like, I'm in the right spot. How did you know? Did you know? I did. Okay, so my mom left us kids when I was six.

[00:05:23]

My brother was six months old and my sister was nine. Right. And we had to have dinner on the table by six. So I cooked a lot. And I absolutely loved it when people would eat my food and they would be happy.

[00:05:40]

After I was in the industry, through all the stress and the pressure, just seeing someone love my food is just the best. Just to see people happy. I 100% understand that. I really feel like we feed the soul. Oh, yes, absolutely.

[00:06:02]

Sometimes we're just providing fuel for people, but that feeds our soul. And sometimes we're cooking for other people's soul.

[00:06:15]

We've got Thanksgiving and Christmas where everybody kind of gets together. There's always something that's going on, but a lot of times all those traditional dishes that are out there, they're more there for nostalgia and to kind of feed your soul a little bit, because that reminds you of the nostalgia. It takes you back to someone's house or that memory so food is a very powerful element. It is. It's very connected to memory, especially smell.

[00:06:48]

Yeah, I remember reading something about that, where food, like food has got one of the strongest triggers for any memory because it involves essentially all the senses. Yeah. And being transported back to that time when you were happy or when you were with friends. So it can be a really great mood booster. And I feel like mental health and depression doesn't get talked about enough.

[00:07:21]

And like we've said, like you guys have said on the podcast before, is that drugs and alcohol is only going to drag down well, but behind every addiction is a problem with your mental health. Is that why it's stressy? Yes, it is why you stress eat, especially chocolate, because chocolate metabolizes into serotonin, which is to get happy drug. But all of your serotonin is made in your gut. It's all made in the gut.

[00:07:55]

So that's why it is learn something every day. I did not know that. This is why I like the science of food. It's very interesting. I'll start taking better care of my gut.

[00:08:07]

That's a whole other story there. Oh, yeah. That's the one thing that still has not recovered from my illnesses from 2020. Trust me, nobody wants to hear about that. Well, that's fantastic.

[00:08:21]

I mean, so it sounds like you've got I mean, you're obviously a product of your past. We all are, whether we really know it or not. But you definitely have seen a lot of adversity and challenges.

[00:08:38]

You definitely are not the type of person, just from talking to you, that's going to let that dominate you or let you play the victim by any means. Oh, hell no. I learned from an early age that when you get knocked down, you get back up. And that's what grit is. And you have to have grit.

[00:09:00]

That's a great word to be able to survive. And the restaurant industry, if you don't have grit, it will eat you alive and it will spit you back out. There was this one kid that I went to school with. He started his first job in a restaurant after we graduated, and he could only do one dish at a time. Now, that one dish was beautiful, but they gave him some feedback and he just kind of fell apart because we were competitive and cold.

[00:09:38]

Was the feedback something like, hurry the fuck up. Yeah. And he just kind of fell apart. And I was just shaking my head. Like, dude, he should be going to food styling, not commercial production.

[00:09:53]

Yes. Go somewhere where you can just make food look pretty. How many people from your class, whether it's a number or percentage, do you think are still cooking today from your culinary school? Statistically between 5% and 8%. Okay, that sounds about right.

[00:10:11]

Well, yeah, that number might have dropped a little bit since 2020. Yeah. It's funny how COVID it almost needs to be renamed, like, the Great Alignment or Realignment. Yes. There was, you know, a big shift in a lot of Pivoting during 2020, and, you know, even those of us who had it together and was rolling with the punches, some of us got sick and were not able to cook in the kitchen anymore, and that just sucked.

[00:10:46]

There's so many great chefs and great people that we have lost, and I really feel like our industry is really in danger right now because there are labor shortages everywhere across the country. No matter how well you pay, no matter what your benefits are, they're starting to mechanize a lot of stuff. Even in, like, casual dining restaurants, you're. Starting to get into some. Yeah.

[00:11:16]

What was it Patrick and I were talking about conspiracy theories here.

[00:11:23]

No, I know. I joke about it, but how AI, though, is coming into so much more. And, man, I mean, those MIT students are creating robots to essentially take over cooking. There's robots that are out there already in use in restaurants right now.

[00:11:49]

The only thing they got to do is change a fire oil, maybe, or just hit the button to turn it on and get it programmed. But it's out there, and it's real, and it is actually happening right now. Yeah. My husband, he actually works in a casual dining restaurant, and they're a test kitchen because they're just so shorthanded all the time that they're introducing, like, a warmer drawer that keeps the potatoes warm for X amount of time after you pull them out. Just other little things like that that reduces labor.

[00:12:32]

Yeah, I bet there's been a lot of people having to go back to the drawing board and just, hey, everything was designed to do this. Now we needed to do this. It's almost like NASA astronauts, like, scrambling.

[00:12:46]

We're running out of gas. What do we do? Yeah, so this time has definitely really tapped into creativity, especially for owner operators. It's funny you say that, because creativity has suffered in some ways, but it hasn't in others. We've had to get more creative in just different ways.

[00:13:14]

And so sometimes the food can be just as creative for chefs that are able to put some of their input into it and be creative with it. Some of them had to get more creative because of whether it's less people and also just trying to make their margins on even less or make up for some food cost just as those prices go up. But then there's also just getting creative on figuring it out, like, how is this all going to work when if someone doesn't show up? So, I mean, but I also know what you're saying, because in some ways, it creative is suffered because they're not able to. In some ways, it's become where there was creativity.

[00:14:07]

It's been more standardized to eliminate creativity because a lot of ownership always believe that creativity caused food costs to go up. Yeah, that's their impression, but it's really not true. I have noticed on menus, I've seen a lot more cross utilization of ingredients. That's a trend I've definitely been noticing. And then they're working the people that they have to death trying to use up every little scrap that they have, turning into something new.

[00:14:48]

And I found that to be very interesting. It's definitely something that I worked on in 2020, they're really going back to more old school methods. Like, we have this fat from I don't know, we cut off some fat from a ribeye. Well, they're rendering it down to use for cooking now. But granted, I worked in a hospital that was in the middle of Podunk, so they loved country cooking, which was so boring.

[00:15:28]

So fucking boring. Even at a hospital.

[00:15:34]

When Compass Group, when they have a contract with the hospital, they don't just feed the patient. They also have a retail area that feeds the employees. No, I've just known in general, there's so much of that. Even with the employee side of things, everything is so there's not a lot of effort. I think that would be the best way to put it.

[00:15:59]

And I've spent some time in hospitals. My son got some long term medical issues. And like this last summer, we spent two weeks in a hospital just for a couple of surgeries. So I had plenty of hospital food during that time. So I get it.

[00:16:17]

Yeah. That was my first chef manager job, which was really hard for me. That transition was very difficult. And believe it or not, I had an all female staff. There's a lot more women in health care than there generally are in other sectors.

[00:16:40]

But having an all female staff with a whole different kettle of fish than 2020 hit. And then you got to make this change, and that change. And even though I just finished that, I got to go back and do this. So I would wear three and four hats a day. Chef manager, grill, cook, patient cook, and to have to take trays up to the patients.

[00:17:06]

Okay, five, because I had wash dishes, too. Why do you think there is more females in the hospital sector than whether it's catering or restaurants? It's kind of interesting, maybe. Was it just that area, or is that statistically pretty common? That's statistically pretty common that there's a lot more females in health care.

[00:17:33]

So in the first kitchen that I worked in, there was the first healthcare kitchen I worked in. So there's politics everywhere, right? And I hate politics with a burning passion. But some of those politics and policies in place protect the female employees more because they have somewhere to go if they're being sexually harassed or intimidated or whatever, and there's more support for females in general. Interesting.

[00:18:13]

So it's just a safer place is what you're saying, then. Yes, absolutely.

[00:18:20]

With my experience across the board. That was definitely a place where I could make my voice heard. And I think that's why females stay in those kitchens, because there's a lot of women that will quit from, like, casual dining or fine dining simply because of harassment or being talked down to or not being appreciated. It comes down to culture. How much of that culture you think is kind of that pirate era?

[00:18:56]

You mentioned the pirate era in the beginning versus the white collar era, where definitely more white collar in hospitals, for obvious reasons. You've got HR people that are watching you all the time, and in smaller restaurants, you're not going to have that. But there's an age difference as well. There's a generational difference that is expecting kind of the white collar, we'll just say treatment. But a lot of people that are still running the restaurants and owners are very much so in the pirate era.

[00:19:30]

Would you agree with that? Absolutely. And that's kind of where that disconnect is, maybe. Yes. And some of the chefs have made that transition and some of them have not.

[00:19:41]

And the ones that I see that have not made the transition is, like you said, in places that have less oversight. Yeah, I can see that, because if. You'Ve got someone in HR across the hall from your kitchen that you can go talk to, then, especially in a hospital setting, they're going to have to do something about it. There's a zero tolerance policy, not just with the hospital, and that's a contract. When you sign the contract, you agree to those terms.

[00:20:12]

It's a zero tolerance policy. Now, when you get away from hospitals and healthcare facilities, schools, and you go into even casual dining, you don't have an HR person in the building the majority of the time. You just have whoever the kitchen managerial staff is, and they're going to be your older, more piratey chefs for sure. Because in regular kitchens I'm going to put it that way. Can I start over?

[00:20:47]

Sure. So in like, restaurant kitchens, there's a lot more pressure, there's a lot more chaos, there's less organization, and there's less structure. I don't know if I'd necessarily agree with that part, though. What I mean by that is the patients have to be fed at a certain time. The patient count fluctuates some from day to day.

[00:21:09]

Okay, I got you. And then retail has to open by a certain time every day. Yeah. Restaurants are a lot more free for. All ebb and flow.

[00:21:19]

Okay, I'm sorry. Keep going. So even if the chef isn't complicit, you can't be everywhere at once. You can't see everything. So I feel like those kinds of complaints are a lot easier to sweep under the rug.

[00:21:37]

Right. Because it's a person versus person, she said. And more people have their heads down just trying to do their work. They're not really paying attention. Yeah, I'd hate to think that.

[00:21:56]

It's just always a he said, she said. I mean, obviously, whenever there's an accusation, you know, there needs to be some form of follow up. But to me, that's also just I think you've mentioned this as well. That's just 100% a culture thing, regardless of the size of your restaurant.

[00:22:19]

Honestly, I think that's a big issue with a lot of these so called I don't want to say so called, but, like, staffing issues.

[00:22:31]

I've gone to some places where they're short staffed, they're struggling, and you can just tell and you can also feel a difference, and then you'll go somewhere else and you get to look around and you're like, staffing is not an issue here. But it also feels different. And it's just they're staffed because people want to be there without turning into a big corporate behemoth where everything is about, oh, man. I don't want to say rules and regulations because that's it.

[00:23:16]

What's the solve for that? You think outside of just God, how do you even answer that? How does anyone answer that? And thank you for listening to this episode Up Inside the Pressure Cooker. If you enjoyed this episode and feel like you're able to take something away from it, please go to Apple podcasts and rate and review us.

[00:23:39]

If you don't use Apple podcasts, please follow us as well as share this episode with a friend. This is a publication by Rare Plus Media, hosted and produced by me from Rare Plus Media and myself, Chad Kelley. Thank you for listening. Keep kicking ass.

"Discover the bonds of the kitchen and the passion of cooking with Inside the Pressure Cooker - a show dedicated to the misfits, pirates and chefs who thrive in the chaos of the culinary world."

"It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos, but it's pretty damn controlled."

Steve Lawson is a chef and restaurateur with 25 years of experience in the industry. He has a passion for mentoring the next generation of chefs and is an avid environmentalist, gardener, and seafood enthusiast.

Steve Lawson has worked in restaurants for the past 20 years and has seen a range of people come and go, who thought they could hack the job but couldn't. Through his experiences, Steve has discovered his passion for cooking and mentoring, particularly with seafood. He recommends finding a good chef knife and shoes for the job and for anyone interested in entering the culinary world, he advises to learn discipline and reach out before you move to another location, as well as staging in unfamiliar places. Through his story, Steve encourages others to take the time to explore and find their passion.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. The unique bond shared by cooks, and chefs and how it's in their blood.

2. The importance of having good shoes in a kitchen, and the differences between steak and seafood when it comes to technique.

3. Exploring the culinary scene of the Pacific Northwest and the benefits of staging in a new place.

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

The Lady Line Cook

Austin Maynard

Ariel Guivi

Connect with me: 

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Twitter: @chadkelley

Patreon: @insidethepressurecooker

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Feedback: Email Me!

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

[00:02:37]

This was kind of a funny question I asked you. I said, So you've been in Denton for a while. You've been down to Dallas for a while. You've been out there studying some food. You've been to a couple of restaurants, working?

[00:02:51]

I should say so. I was curious, like, what do you see is overplayed? And your answer was food served on planks. Yes. Food on served on wood is overrated.

[00:03:02]

I'm tired of it. Wood is disgusting. You can't get a clean. Is this based on your history at a restaurant that served a lot of food on wood boards? Yeah, and it's been every restaurant I've worked at.

[00:03:17]

Really? Yeah, they did it at the hotel and they do it here, too, at my current place. Why do you think everybody's putting food on the boards? I feel like it's good for color, contrasting. But you can make a plate any color, and you can clean a plate properly, or a piece of ceramic or glass or whatever with those boards, people are cutting into it and food is going down those cracks.

[00:03:45]

You can't do anything to clean that. Yeah, no, there's certain food I didn't mind putting onto a board, but when it came to the point where someone was going to need a knife to cut, I was just adamant about putting it onto a plate just for that reason. But I always lost that battle. Always. I get it.

[00:04:10]

The other part, too, is like serving steaks on a board, which if the steak didn't have time to rest once you start cut into it, or if you've got a sauce, the shit's just running everywhere for sure.

[00:04:26]

At the hotel, we had a big old 48 ounce drive and it came with a poison, and you would pour that on there and it just goes all over everything, dude. Because there's nothing to catch the sauce. Did they do that at the table? It was an aramic, and the table would do it to themselves.

[00:04:48]

Why would you put the sauce for the steak on the side?

[00:04:55]

It's because we did it on a board. If we did it on a plate, we could report it on there.

[00:05:02]

That's what I'm saying. Desk the damn boards. I hate them.

[00:05:08]

Yeah, go ahead. And it's killing all the trees.

[00:05:16]

I don't think that the boards are killing the trees, but it's probably the paper. Yeah, that's fair. No, actually, a lot of the boards were made from fallen timber, are just older. Like the boards that we were using were just fallen oaks and pecan that are just prominent in this area. Well, that's cool.

[00:05:44]

At least we're recycling, I guess. Yeah.

[00:05:50]

That's interesting, though. Would you consider yourself environmentalist? As much as I can be. I still indulge in stuff that I can't recycle, but I do my best to recycle and compost. Compost?

[00:06:04]

Do you compost at home? I've been trying to during the summer, yes. I've been starting to do a little garden. I got a lot of plants around the house, so I feel that I can. What do you have in your garden?

[00:06:17]

This year I did peppers and squash and zucchini. I did some herbs like dill and terragon and mint. That was pretty much it. Okay. You can expand that at all.

[00:06:31]

Was that all indoors or was it outdoors? It was outdoor. Okay. The summer heat killed it, but I. Had a good spring yeah, that's why I was wondering about all that.

[00:06:44]

Interesting. I never thought of you as the gardener. I evolved, you know? Oh, absolutely. You all have.

[00:06:53]

After working in Dallas, I started to appreciate food a lot more, or I guess I would say after COVID. And we really may respect what I did because I didn't cook over the pandemic or half of it. I did not. Right. So what did you do during the pandemic?

[00:07:14]

I was stocking shelves at a grocery store, and then I ended up working at a food truck later on part time before I got back on at our place. Okay, so you had the chance, you went and did something else, but yet you came back to the restaurants. Yeah, because stock and shelves is not fun. It's very simple work. Well, even then, like, a lot of people in COVID were laid off and went and found other work.

[00:07:44]

Some enjoyed it, some didn't. But at that point, a lot of people took that opportunity to kind of find themselves again and search after something else. Did you ever feel that or did you know that you're going to be right back in the restaurants when it hit? I don't know. Whenever I was talking to the shelves, all I thought about was cooking.

[00:08:04]

So I never thought about myself doing anything else. I know. I didn't want to work in a grocery store. That was awful. Yeah, I couldn't imagine I couldn't do that either.

[00:08:18]

It's just such mundane work. Yeah. Just putting stuff, putting boxes on the shelf. People took it really seriously too, but I was like, I'm used to doing so much more.

[00:08:31]

So what do you geek out on now? You've really discovered the culinary world, right.

[00:08:43]

You've made your own path for yourself. You didn't have the traditional background, whatever the hell that traditional schooling meant for some people. And you kind of fell into cooking, and then you just knew it was for you and you really missed it during the pandemic. And you're really pushing yourself to grow and learn now. So what is it like you geek out on the most when it does come to cooking?

[00:09:09]

I geek out on pasta ever since I worked at the hotel. We did a different pasta quite often, and I just fell in love with different noodles, shapes, different stuffings, different sauces, different pan sauces. It's all so much fun. And I also learned to love seafood. We did a different fish every week at the hotel.

[00:09:30]

We cooked a lot of scallops and mussels, and seafood became a big part of what I like to cook too. That's good, because honestly, seafood is a great one to learn to cook and to cook properly because as you found out, it's a lot more delicate. It's temperamental. Temperamental, sure. But you've got to use a a of hell lot more finesse with a seafood.

[00:09:58]

With a seafood. Wow. You've got to use a lot more finesse with seafood than you do with that 64 ounce fucking porterhouse. For sure. Obviously, night and day differences there, but seafood is a good one to learn to work with because, yeah, you've got to be quick, and you've got to pay attention to it.

[00:10:21]

You're right. It's temperamental because you don't have that margin of error that you will with, like, a steak. And also, you got to know you got to be able to tell if a muscle is bad or oyster is bad. You can get someone really sick. It takes a lot more handling all around, from raw to cooking.

[00:10:39]

And then pairing seafood with essentially their garnishes and veg and proteins and all that stuff is a different art and science to itself, because you can easily overpower fish if you're not careful with what you're pairing it with. That's cool. I wish we had more seafood in the North Texas area. I understand why we don't. We're kind of landlocked.

[00:11:04]

I feel like we got some pretty cool stuff at the hotel. We had a lot of golf caught fish, which was kind of cool. Lots of grouper, lots of tile fish. We had amber, jack. All that stuff was pretty cool.

[00:11:20]

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of fun stuff you can play with out of the Gulf or the Third Coast, they would also call it. Yes. So based on your experiences, what would be the word of advice that you would give to someone walking in the door that was you eight years before? I would tell them, hey, you're going to have a lot of fun, but you're also going to have a lot of hardship, but it's going to be worth it because it's going to make you stronger, and you're going to learn some discipline, which is definitely what I needed whenever I started cooking. How are they going to learn discipline.

[00:11:50]

By getting yelled at? As soon as I asked that question, I was like, I don't know if I want to know the answer for sure.

[00:11:58]

Okay. What books are you reading right now? I've been reading the whole fish and Maddie Madison to cookbook. All right. And then one of the last few questions I ask is, outside of a chef's knife, right?

[00:12:13]

You're opening up your toolkit. You bust out your chef knife. Now everybody has to have a quality chef knife that they're working with, so that's kind of taken out of the equation here. What's the next thing out of your kit? I think on my answer, I said shoes.

[00:12:31]

My birkenstock. You got to have shoes in your kit, bro. But it's still a tool, though. Okay. If we're going for tools, I like my own fish spatula.

[00:12:42]

Okay. But I'm going with shoes. Shoes. You got to have good shoes to work in the kitchen. Your backs may kill you if you don't.

[00:12:47]

You said you wear burks. I do wear burks. You wear just Burkies? I wear the super grip boston burks. Yeah.

[00:12:53]

I went through a phase where, man, it took me a long time to figure out what kind of shoes worked for me. I did the Burke's, and then I did just other styles of Burke burgund stocks before I finally finished. I say finished, but ended on clogs sunita. And there's another popular one, I don't remember, but once you learned to walk in them and they saved my knees and my back so much, they were actually pretty damn comfortable shoes. I mean, they're heavy for sure, but I hear you, man, because I was having just constant back pains.

[00:13:24]

My knees hurt all the time. And then I also didn't realize that your knees and your lower back are connected. So when one hurts, the other one, they work together. They go hand in hand, you know? Yeah.

[00:13:36]

I was wearing walmart shoes before I started wearing perks. And whenever I switch over to perks, I was like, wow, what have I been doing for the last fucking six years? I hate to say it, but I mean, you're right. Then I guess the next investment out of a chef knife would be shoes. That does make a lot of sense.

[00:13:54]

I will give you that one. Yeah. Because I went from paying $20 a pair to birks are $150. But they last you four times longer. Yes.

[00:14:04]

As long as you take care of them. I've seen them. They can get haggard for sure. Yeah, that's why I like my Burkies. If they just kind of got ugly, I would literally just take out the insoles and run them through the dishwasher.

[00:14:17]

Nice. That's what's up.

[00:14:25]

Then I just kind of throw them in the back of the car and they'd be dry the next day. I mean, you're a crazy cat lady. We cover that. I am a crazy cat lady. I do love my cats.

[00:14:35]

I guess it's like what the future holds for me. I'm hoping I can get onto this new fine dining spot and work there for about a year. I would like to get out of Texas at some point. Where do you want to go? I think Pacific Northwest.

[00:14:52]

Like Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, montana? Somewhere up there. Colorado wouldn't exactly be the northwest, though, right? That's fair. But it's still right there.

[00:15:05]

Everything is a lot closer together up there, so it doesn't really matter.

[00:15:11]

You know people out there. I've got a few friends in Colorado. Okay. It always helps to kind of know someone wherever you're going to land for sure. Just so when you get there, you least got a place to crash and someone to help you kind of that knows what's going on.

[00:15:35]

I will say the restaurant is big of a place. It is. It's a very small world. But each little individual, city and state, so to speak, has its own little niches. And when you first get into it, you can easily get into the wrong spot just because you don't know for sure.

[00:16:00]

Yeah, reach out before you move. I know it's not anytime soon, but for anybody, just reach out to other people through social media or something like that and just kind of, hey, I'm coming. What's the deal? And also, if I do end up going out there, I would like to go out there beforehand and scope out the cooking scene, see what's hot and what's not. Yeah, it wouldn't be a bad time to stage as well at that point, for sure.

[00:16:30]

That'd be fun, man. Yeah. I've lived in Texas. I've lived in Texas my whole life, so I would like to go somewhere else eventually. No, it's good.

[00:16:43]

I mean, you should travel, man. Talk about you enjoy seafood and some of that stuff. The seafood up in the Northwest is just fucking amazing. Yeah, it's right up there next to the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, well, I mean, it's just the Northwest because they get a lot more product out of Alaska as well.

[00:17:04]

So Southern California and some of those areas, they do have some pretty good seafood, but it's not just as prominent as it is up in the Northwest. I don't know why exactly.

[00:17:21]

That is strange. I know Seattle has a huge fish market up there. Yeah. Well, Steve, I wish you all the best. Wherever you go, you're definitely on the rise.

[00:17:34]

You've got the right mindset and the right work ethic for it. So good luck to you, brother. Thank you, sir. And thank you for listening to this episode of Inside the Pressure Cooker. If you enjoyed this episode and feel like you're able to take something away from it, please go to Apple podcast and rate and review us.

[00:17:54]

If you don't use Apple Apple podcast, please follow us as well as share this episode with a friend. This is a publication by Rare Plus Media, hosted and produced by me from Rare Plus Media and myself, Chad Kelly. Thank you for listening. Keep kicking ass.

When Steve Lawson, a degenerate misfit, falls in love with cooking despite his initial dreams of becoming a business marketer, he finds himself addicted to the camaraderie, self-accomplishment, and the pressure of working in the grueling, chaotic environment of a restaurant kitchen.

After starting as a dishwasher in a cool new spot, he quickly moved up through the line and fell in love with the job. After a busy shift, he realized this was what he wanted to pursue for the rest of his life. During the holidays, he found that the clientele could be grumpy, but he and his fellow cooks and chef found time to enjoy each other's company and get through the shift together. Despite the pressure and long hours, Steve found that the camaraderie and constant challenge of improving his craft kept him coming back for more.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. Exploring the unique camaraderie between cooks, chefs, and those in the restaurant industry; 2. Understanding the journey of a chef, from dishwasher to sauté chef, and the passion that inspired the transition; and 3. Examining the difficulties of working during the holiday season, from the perspective of a chef in an open kitchen.

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

The Lady Line Cook

Austin Maynard

Ariel Guivi

Connect with me: 

Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker

YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker

Twitter: @chadkelley

Patreon: @insidethepressurecooker

Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com

Feedback: Email Me!

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.

[00:02:38]

All right, Steve. Tell everybody. Who are you? Hi, I'm Steve Lawson. I've been cooking for about eight years.

[00:02:46]

I really enjoy it. And besides cooking, I just hang out with friends and just be me. Just be you. All right, so you've been cooking for eight years. What got you into cooking?

[00:03:00]

I worked in fast food first, and that was just a bullshit high school job. And then there's a cool new spot opening up in Denton, one of my buddies is going to be a buster up there. And he said they were hiring and paying pretty well, so I was like, I'm going to try that. I'll be a dishwasher. And cooking was never supposed to be my ideal job, but I ended up falling in love with it.

[00:03:25]

What was your ideal job then? Just working in an office, I guess. We're business, marketing. Marketing, okay. Yeah.

[00:03:36]

You went to school, right? You got a degree? Yeah, I did go to school. Okay. No degree.

[00:03:40]

Oh, no degree. What were you studying before that then? Business and marketing. Oh, business and marketing. So you just wanted to get into business and Marketing?

[00:03:47]

Yeah. Okay. I want to own my own business. I don't know what, but something. All right, and then you just kind of fell into cooking then, huh?

[00:03:56]

Yeah, I started dishwashing. Got a lot of prep thrown at me. Like, not a lot of prep, but a lot of bullshit prep, like cutting fries and making little sauces. Eventually moved up through the line up to sushi, and I really enjoyed it all. Nice.

[00:04:16]

How did you know us for you then? I mean, you were going to go to school for marketing. You're in business, you thought there was something there, otherwise you wouldn't have. And then you just kind of fell into cooking. Just literally fell into it.

[00:04:31]

How did you know? I guess after the first couple of years when I got on the line, I noticed a lot of people were like me, just like kind of degenerate. I've always kind of been a degenerate a little bit. And I was like, all these people are really cool. I can go out and have some drinks.

[00:04:50]

I was always with my friends, so that's why I enjoyed it. And then that made me love the job. Okay, so is that what you're going to it for every day then? It's like the camaraderie of it all. The camaraderie back then, but now I take it very seriously.

[00:05:08]

Well, we all kind of take it seriously. The camaraderie kind of gives you an almost an excuse and why you enjoy it, but even then there's that. It keeps me coming back. Yeah. All right.

[00:05:26]

Is there a specific moment that you can think of that you are just like, fuck, yeah, this is it. This is fuck the business, fuck the opening, all the other stuff I wanted to do. I'm cooking. I'm going to be a chef.

[00:05:41]

I guess my first busy night on flat Top or Saute. Slinging out a busy shift flawlessly is one of the best feelings in the world. And then I was like, this is for me. I think this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Nice.

[00:05:59]

Just getting your ass kicked one day and you're just like, this is it. I want more of it. Yeah, this is fun. I mean, just the self accomplishment. All right, and the fact that you can always get better at it.

[00:06:13]

Yes, absolutely. I love that. And it's so earlier, we kind of talked offline. I asked kind of what inspired you, and you said yourself to get better. You're always after that chase to get better.

[00:06:32]

How are you working on that right now? I just go into work every day and try and get better at what I'm doing. I'm working saute right now at the place I'm at, and I just try to make every dish better every time I go in. When you say better every time, translate that you're following a specific recipe, right? Oh, for sure, yes.

[00:06:55]

But just making sure it's consistently plated every time, garnished the right way and looking nice, and also efficiency and speed at it. Okay. Do you do anything at home or when you're not at work to kind of improve yourself with that? I've been trying to cook more at home, and I feel like cooking at home helps you be better at work. It's sometimes hard, though, just like for everyone else.

[00:07:22]

Sometimes you just don't want to cook. No, no. Yeah, I get it. Even here for me with my wife and all her friends are like, oh, you must cook all the time. I mean, I do now, but back up until a few years ago, no, I never cooked at home, and it was just like, Cobblers son has no shoes, so I get it.

[00:07:46]

When I was cooking full time too, I think I'd come home, my dinner would be like, a beer and an easy mac for sure. Or just, like, fast food or ramen or just like, sometimes no food at all. Yeah, because I would remember you cook all day, and you've got the adrenaline, everything's going. You finally leave, and then it would take me about half an hour or so, 40 minutes, and then all of a sudden, I'd be like, fuck, I'm hungry. I realized I hadn't actually eaten anything, and then that's when I'd pick up fast food and, yeah, the healthiest diet ever, for sure.

[00:08:25]

So what else inspires you? There's got to be something out there that you're just like, man, this is awesome. I love this. I mean, you're chasing a dream now. In a period of eight years, you've gone from dishwasher to a souf.

[00:08:39]

I mean, you're as a soup at a pretty high end hotel in Dallas. So, I mean, you're doing a lot of things right. What's pushing you more to I like it. It comes back to me being better and just, like, going to the next level of cooking. I've done the approachable fine dining.

[00:09:00]

Now I'm pushing for the fine dining. That way, I'm pretty well rounded in all aspects to be an actual soup chef. Approachable fine dining. That's the first time I've heard that term. Yeah, it's what my chef said it, and honestly, it made, like, perpetuity.

[00:09:18]

It's right there on the bubble of being fine dining, but it's not like I don't know, it's normal people. It's not pretentious. It's not pretentious. Yes, I got you. So, I mean, it's great food, presented well without the pretentiousness, but probably the fine dining price tag.

[00:09:35]

Exactly. It's still very expensive. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk shifts. This is probably at the hotel as well, the shift that no one speaks of.

[00:09:46]

Now there's probably plenty of brunt shifts that you can recall for sure, but what are some other nightmare shifts where you're just like, I just don't even want to revisit those anymore. Honestly, I worked every holiday last year, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Year's, Valentine's Day, and Thanksgiving and Christmas shifts were like the saddest and roughest shifts I've ever had in my life. Just because it's all these lonely people coming out to eat because they don't have any family to go to or whatever. And also everyone I don't know, I feel like the worst people come out. Really?

[00:10:27]

Yeah, it was not fun. We also did over 500 coverage. God. So it was just busier than shit. And the clientele there is just they just weren't happy.

[00:10:42]

I get it. Obviously Christmas and I was by myself mentally. You're going to be not in the greatest of places for the most part. Everybody's used to spending some time with family. Exactly.

[00:10:55]

But did you have a lot of single diners or was it smaller groups? We had a lot of couples. We had a couple of single diners and we had a lot of families that seemed like they just did not enjoy each other's company. Kids. That's called the holidays, man.

[00:11:13]

Yeah, for sure. But I don't know, I grew up holidays being the whole family together and having a good time and not like it might have been a facade, but it was still fun. No family. It's always great to get back together with some family for a period of time. But my grandmother had the greatest quote, family is like seafood.

[00:11:42]

After about three days, they start to stink for sure. But yeah, even then, that was back when we all kind of lived in the same area where I grew up in California. Now we're kind of spread out a little bit, so usually there's more traveling that's involved. So if it's us staying at my in laws or if they're coming up to here, yeah, everything works out well, and then all of a sudden it's like, all right, time for you. Could I please go home?

[00:12:11]

Yeah, just you could tell it starts working on my wife's nerves and I'm like, oh man, something's going to happen for sure. Did you guys run like prefix during that time or was it just still full menus? It was like partially full menu. We have like a special dinner plate and a special Thanksgiving plate. So you're still serving Thanksgiving dinner then?

[00:12:34]

Yeah, but it was a little bit more like we did like a turkey rollad with some nice cranberry sauce and like glazed carrots and pumpkin or like sweet potato puree. I got you. You've got a little yeah, for sure. And Christmas, we just did a bunch of specials. I got you.

[00:12:55]

I did a couple of pasta specials. Like a duck ragu and pasta special. Man, it just seems odd that people would be so grumpy during that time and just working. I mean, I understand why that day would suck to work with, especially you being a football fan and missing your Cowboys during that day, for sure. But I know in general, during the holidays, people seem to be grumpier.

[00:13:26]

I know comps and complaints always went up for this time of year, but it seems like the day of at least people would kind of just get through. I mean, you would think so, but honestly, Thanksgiving was the worst. Christmas wasn't as bad, but Thanksgiving was for sure one of the saddest days I've ever worked. Yeah, that kitchen was an open line so you could see everything, right? Oh, yeah, that is sad.

[00:13:53]

But on the bright side, me and the cooks and the chef all had a good time because we're not going to be miserable. We're working. We're having a good time. It was a hard shift, though. Did you know that you're going to be that busy?

[00:14:08]

Were you able to prep for it? Or was it just like, oh, shit, what just happened? We didn't know exactly how busy we were going to be, but we knew we were going to be busy. But it was definitely unexpected on how busy we got. And also it didn't help because the front of house was doing all that whole flat seating shit, like where they sit the whole restaurant once, which was not fun either.

[00:14:32]

They're just trying to keep it interesting for you, for sure. Right around 1230, man, the whole restaurant was full and there was no food out there. Yeah, no, there's I would I don't know if you've learned this yet, but whether it's you're in the kitchen or if you're in the past where you just listen to the dining room and the louder it gets in the dining room, the worse it's about to be in the kitchen. For sure. Right?

[00:15:01]

Because if it's loud, it means people are talking, having a good time, but they're not actually eating. When everybody is eating the decibels drop, it gets quieter. So it's one of those you learn to listen to that kitchen to kind of forecast your shit moments. It's like, hey, man, you hear a lot of noise, start bringing some shit in. We're not doing anything right now.

[00:15:25]

It's even worse than when you're in an open kitchen because you can see it happening. At least when you're in the closed kitchen, you can kind of like it's a little bit more of a surprise. Whenever it's open, you can see all the servers go from table to table writing down a bunch of stuff and then go on the computer and just read it all in at once.

[00:15:44]

The joys. The joys. Well, at least they weren't doing it all. I know everybody now wants to go to using, like, handheld devices, mobile devices, to order stuff to save servers time running back and forth. And the part that I don't like about that and I know you weren't doing that at the hotel.

[00:16:05]

I don't think they were, but I know that was something we dealt with, building restaurants with that group. But that time where the server stops and walks away kind of creates like a natural what do you want to call it? Buffer barrier or something? Time gap? Yeah, at least a good five minutes.

[00:16:24]

You know, not even that, you know, but it's something as opposed to just someone just standing there typing send, type, send, type, send, and all of a sudden it doesn't stop and it's like, okay, listen, this isn't fucking Chickfila, right? We're cooking food back here. Yeah. Not even cooking it, but then plating it and plating it properly. This isn't just scooping shit onto a plate and sending it out and four different versions of a mash.

[00:16:53]

Like, no, all this stuff takes time to do well and execute well. So, yeah, I couldn't stand that. It's the same thing, like, hey, man, how fast can we get this out? And it's like, that's not the point, right? Yes, we want to create an experience for the guests.

[00:17:11]

We don't want them to sit there for 3 hours. But there's a realistic time frame that we can make this all happen in. And yeah, this isn't a fast food nation. And the other part, even though Chickfila, they do all that stuff and everybody raises about them, they're not that fucking fast. And they only have two things.

[00:17:32]

Fried chicken, real chicken. Wait, I'll add salad on there. There's three things. They're french fries. Oh, so I'm a bitch.

[00:17:39]

French fries. All right, we're up to four, right? That's it? Really? That's it.

[00:17:44]

And I mean, they're not cooking to order. It's ready to go. There's mass amounts of it. Yeah. And it's not like they've got such a huge menu that you can order something and then modify the fuck out of it.

[00:17:56]

It's like, do you want your sandwiches pickles or no pickles? How many tickets trips do you want? Three or four? Yeah. And so even with that, they're not that fast.

[00:18:08]

So what makes you think that we can apply that same thing to a restaurant? You can't. The place I'm working right now, that's what they're ideal, is, like, having food out within ten to 15 minutes, which I try to do, but when we have a rail full of tickets, I can't do that. Well, nobody can. No, realistically, that's like, okay, if you've got a couple of tables in and you're not doing a whole lot.

[00:18:39]

Depending on the menu. A ten to 15 minutes pickup for an entree is potential. Right. There's potential there. But once again, it depends on the menu, how you execute it, the size of the menu.

[00:18:55]

But at a certain point, it changes as the more tables come in and the more tickets start lining up. Yeah, that ten to 15 minutes starts dragging out. Now you're eleven to 16, now you're 20 or 30. Yeah, potentially. I mean, obviously once you get into that 30 minutes range, it's just like, oh shit.

[00:19:17]

But then again, that also needs, hey, give us some help, seat a little bit differently. You see a hole in the ground, don't just stick a chair in there. For sure, kind of create a pattern. And it makes it easier for everybody because otherwise you've got that hill where the service gets slammed, then the bar gets slammed and the kitchen gets slammed, and then the service gets slammed again. And it's just a constant cycle.

[00:19:47]

It is so much that vicious cycle. And then everybody looks around at each other like, what the fuck? And then all of a sudden you find out that the guests didn't have a good experience, everybody's hurried, and you did three quarters of the sales that you thought you could do well. Servers are so busy, they're not trying to sell or upsell. And when they're also hurrying and the guest feels hurried, they'd order differently.

[00:20:15]

Right? Maybe the server couldn't get back to another round of drinks. Like, there's so many different variables to it. So it's like just mellow things out, create a flow, and all of a sudden everybody's going to have a better shift, the food is going to be better, the service is going to be better, the guest is going to have a better experience, and the restaurant is going to bring more cash. Yeah, as long as if you're on a consistent set of flow and you're all working together, it's better for everyone involved.

[00:20:43]

Always the guest, you the bartenders, servers, host. If you're all working together, it's always better. Yeah. Communication is key. Hey, thanks for listening to part one.

[00:20:54]

Part two will be coming out tomorrow. Keep an eye out for it and. Don'T forget to rate and review us five stars. And if you don't want to put five stars, just don't leave anything.