Hanalei Souza is the sous chef, author, and content creator behind @ladylinecook, one of the most recognized culinary humor and leadership voices on Instagram with 88,000 followers. She has been in the industry since 2018, has worked at the same restaurant for seven years in a mountain town, and is the self-published author of the kitchen memoir "Nice Work, Boys!" She started making cooking videos on YouTube at age 14, posted with no audience for 11 years, and went viral on Instagram in 2022. She was flown to Texas by commercial kitchen equipment brand Cuchimix, which is how she ended up at Just Push Record Studios in Austin for this episode. The episode was also recorded twice because André forgot to press record the first time.

This episode opens with the night a man was literally on fire outside her restaurant. Hanalei grabbed a kitchen fire extinguisher, pulled the pin, chased him down the street, helped save his life, and then went back inside to finish the last three hours of service. That is the opening story. It gets better from there.

• Why a title earns zero automatic respect in a kitchen and how the only path to genuine authority is being the person who can actually do every job in the building
• What the night she burned $300 in New York strips as a new sous chef taught her about leadership, integrity, and why a good chef does not fire you for one mistake
• Why creators who build their platform by complaining about the industry are doing more damage than the toxic kitchens they claim to expose

André Natera and Hanalei Souza cover the clipboard fear she had as a line cook and why she now runs four of them, why 80 percent of her job as sous chef is still hands on the food, the transition from being everyone's friend on the line to being the person responsible for their stations, and the social media conversation that the culinary world needs to have about what viral actually means and who it serves. The episode closes with her Mount Rushmore of chefs, her Mount Rushmore of culinary content creators, and a shoutout to Cuchimix and the women's chef coat she co-created with Funky Chef.

Guest

• Hanalei Souza on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/ladylinecook/
• Lady Line Cook Website → https://www.ladylinecook.com/

Links

• Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
• Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
• Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/
• Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef