Restaurant Legends

What does it take to let the world know who you are and why you’re here? Existential questions that have plagued mankind forever. Along life’s journey we take the turns that lead us along a path. Some turns are handed to us or even forced upon us while others are all of our own making. To understand this and live a life based on this understanding is a good description of Neyah White.

The story he tells in our conversation is not so much a unique tale as it is a clear roadmap that led Neyah from the eastern shore of Maryland to a place behind a bar in San Francisco that opened the world to him. A small step that led to the wide world of cocktails as an innovator in the craft style of mixing that now permeates the better bars around the world. Then becoming a brand ambassador for Suntory Whiskey. A job that not only helped spread the word of mixology (and his humorous attitude toward the word) but also immersed him the modern Japanese culture. Then now recently back to his hometown of Chestertown, Maryland to build a business in a bar that many years ago he told the owner he would own someday.

There were too many great parts of his story that couldn’t be left on the editing room floor. So, enjoy a short bonus track of his early years only at www.restaurantlegends.com 

Photo;

Neyah White and Thomas Kaylor

https://edibledelmarva.ediblecommunities.com

Music;

Shizima3 by PeriTune | http://peritune.com

Attriibution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

There’s a moment in the life of every restaurant owner when he knows that “I can do it better than any other restaurant out there”. If that thought doesn’t exist at the core of your motivation, then you’re in the wrong business. Yiannni Kosmides had that Eureka moment when he couldn’t find the Gyros (YEE-rohs) he knew from his native Greece. Nothing he tried had the same level of quality he remembered nor the unique construction that made it a true Greek Gyro.

Coming from a restaurant family helped Yianni create and devise Apola, the burgeoning franchise centered on, as he puts it…”The most Authentic Greek Gyro you can get without buying a plane ticket!”

Apola Greek Grill

Music;

The Port of Piraeus - Konstantinos Bouzouki Orchestra

The dream of hosting a party every night playing the hippest music and pouring the perfect cocktail usually strikes someone after they’ve spent a few years toiling in the hospitality industry. Alexander was no different. His experiences prepared him well to deal with the pressures and restrictions put on a bar owner today in the age of COVID.

As a 5-year-old, Alexander created a detailed floor plan of a bar complete with handicap bathrooms. So, after spending time working with some of the best in the industry including the legendary Sasha Petraske, father of the craft cocktail movement, Alexander found his way to come home to upstate New York and build the bar he dreamed as a child.

Alexander Strauss’ journey had so many wonderful stories, we had to put a bonus track only available on the RL&L website. It details the path of the early years that brought him to the Night Owl in Saratoga Springs.

The Night Owl – Saratoga Springs

Sasha Petraske- Wikipedia

Tao Beach – Las Vegas

 

Music;

Hedge Your Bets – Track Tribe

If I had known your name was Tremayne before the interview, I wouldn’t have hired you because I don’t think a black person can handle the job. What would you do if you were a young cook trying to make a place in the industry you love and then be confronted with yet another not so subtle example of the systemic racism you’ve known all your life.

The characters may change but the story is the same. Far too often a young cook of color is inspired to learn and be great at what he loves because he would occasionally see people who looked like him cooking great food on TV with his idol Julia Child and think…”I can do that!!” But on the way there he must swallow the hurtful words hurled, sometimes with ignorance but mostly with intent, that are meant to keep him in “his place” Tre Donte Hardy’s love of cuisine, passed down to him from his mother and grandmother who nurtured Tre with the church and their food.  

Tre’s story is much more than that though. His account includes working with some great mentors and  many of the talented Chefs and cooks in the Twin Cities.

Ophelia Pop Up - Facebook

Music;

Busted – John Deley

Cash is king. A well over used axiom in the restaurant business. And even more so today when thousands of restaurants have limped along through the shutdowns, the re-openings, and even more shutdowns. So, when someone offers you access to cash…you at least listen.

Enter Johann Moonesinghe and his company InKind. Johann’s company has created a reasonable process of accessing the needed cash for opening, re-opening, capital improvements etc. outside the usual process of begging for it from banks or relatives. Go to inkind.com for more details or follow the link on our web page. www.restaurantlegends.com

Music;

Creek Whistle - Steve Adams

It’s a realtors job to keep a finger on the pulse of the real estate market. When they specialize in restaurants, they need to have another finger on the pulse of the restaurant industry as well. Dick Grones is one of those real estate guys. He is the go-to commercial realtor for restauranteurs in the Twin Cities metro. He was frank about how the condition of the restaurant real estate market changes nearly every week during the pandemic and what the result of 9 months of restricted restaurant operations has produced so far.

The term ‘brick and mortar” is a new way to describe a building, a storefront and sometimes even a space in a food court.  And there are so many ways a restauranteur can go to realize the concept in a “brick and mortar” space, too long to describe the long list of pathways. The most often used path though and the most successful way to achieve decent operating budget is to engage a commercial realtor. Their insights into the geographic locations a restauranteur is interested in placing the concept can often be the information needed to build both the capital and operating budgets that an owner needs to make critical decisions.

Music:

Movin Up - Dan Lebowitz

Reaching Out - Kevin McLeod

Mike Bausch created Andolini Pizza in Tulsa, Oklahoma on a shoestring. A quite common story in this business. It’s what he did with that shoestring that make his story something special. While he was building his mini empire of five stores and a food truck and winning awards at an international pizza competition, he wrote a book that’s part memoir and part operating manual. In, Unsliced: How to Stay Whole in the Pizza Industry, Mike freely reveals the secrets he’s discovered on his journey creating a tightly run organization. Our conversation not only the covers the pizza industry, but the restaurant business, et large, as we make our way through the restrictions and lost income related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Music;

Denver Avenue – Reed Mathis

Outlaw’s Farewell – Reed Mathis

Necessity being the mother of invention. There were plenty of reasons for Li-Ran Navon to develop a way to get his dinner order ready for pick-up or delivered to his home from his favorite restaurant with as little hassle as possible. The magic that will sometimes happen while inventive software is being created and take shape, components are added that weren’t part of the original plan. For Say2Eat, they became a seamless integration of customer, restaurant, and courier. The details of which Li-ran Navon will explain in this podcast.

Music;

Hedge Your Bets - Track Bridge

Sunday Stroll - Huma Huma

Necessity being the mother of invention. There were plenty of reasons for Li-Ran Navon to develop a way to get his dinner order ready for pick-up or delivered to his home from his favorite restaurant with as little hassle as possible. Say2eat, became a seamless integration of customer, restaurant, and courier. The details of which Li-ran Navon will explain in this podcast.

This is a replay of a recording made in April of 2020. At the time we were less than 60 days into the restrictions and mandates for curbing the Covid pandemic. At the time, everyone thought this would be over by early summer at the latest. Here we are 8 months into it and we've returned to the tight restrictions we experienced early on due to a dramatic increase in cases and deaths. (Yesterday, two days before Thanksgiving, over 2,000 deaths were reported nationwide.) 

Amy Brown, her partner Heidi Andermack and their team created Minnesota Central Kitchen in March of this year originally as a way to use up some product that had been meant for their successful catering operation that was abruptly shutdown like many other food operations. As all great ideas begin, this was a small gesture meant to get by for a few weeks. And like all great ideas, it has grown into a source of caring and hope as it employed many out of work foodservice people and just recently passed the mark of having prepared and served over 1 million meals. 

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