Anthony Bourdain, Leadership Lessons From the Kitchen, 2006

[Applause] welcome fellow vegetarians i gave this uh something strange happened a while back after i wrote kitchen confidential i woke up one day to find harvard business review on the phone wanting to talk about my interesting theories on uh management principles uh team building uh you know crisis management uh i thought this was you know fairly hilarious and and inappropriate to say the least apparently the business community people you know who don't work in the restaurant business anyway i guess they saw kitchen confidential as sort of like pornography in the sense that you know you're watching people do things on film or reading about things that you'd kind of like to do but probably won't be doing yourself anytime soon and it seemed to have some uh some resonance with them so what i'm i i thought i'd talk a little bit about today or you know what are those those those principles i mean is the restaurant kitchen a microcosm an example like a test lab or an alternate universe of management principles you know can you apply those rules to other other businesses or not and who really cares um i guess what i'm really talking about is you know what is a chef a chef is a cook who leads and uh in my own not particularly my long but not particularly distinguished career i there are a few things i i believe to be true uh that i've learned and i thought i'd share them with you now for an employee manager the restaurant business can be a best case scenario or a worst case scenario i mean in the best case you are of course for the most part unless you're working for a major hotel free of the annoying you know human resource departments fair hiring practices normal constraints political correctness uh you know it's potentially a free market wonderland merit it's a meritocracy you're no good you're fired you know you show up late too many times you're out you can't make the food consistently you're gone clean out your locker um in the worst case scenario of course you are dealing with a labor pool or traditionally well let's face it the refuge you know the the restaurant business for centuries has been a refuge for a motley crew of international misfits refugees quasi or illegal immigrants transients criminals semi-literates most of whom have poor social skills and unlovely personal habits and you know let's face it when you're if you're running a kitchen chances are your staff does not look like those squeaky clean kids on uh you know top chef they look more like the dirty dozen or a mexican prison gang so how does this apply to you know my situation i mean uh if you're if you're not in the restaurant business i don't think anything i i say really in this talk should apply to your business because you'll you'll probably spend the rest of your life in court certainly my billy joel grateful dead rule in my kitchen in which if you are seeing to visibly enjoy the works of billy joel or the grateful dead you were immediately fired uh would probably not do well in the like banking sector casually referring to an employee to their faces a genitally challenged lower than whale by valve whose parents probably commingled with livestock is probably not advisable if you're running a law firm but i found that there are two schools of of of chefs two schools two management schools there's the gordon ramsay school which i for better or worse pretty much came up in that school uh and then there's the joe torre thomas keller school now you know unless you're thomas keller thomas keller presumably or some of the chefs in this room you really don't need to yell at anybody you know in the per se kitchen i'm willing to bet that if you didn't do a you didn't satisfy the chef he doesn't have to yell at you you're lucky enough to be working at per se if on the way out of of the day's work you nod at chef keller and say good night chef and he doesn't even look up or say good night to you back you probably want to go home and hang yourself in the shower that's that's motivation enough he doesn't need to bully or yell now considering the dysfunctional group of people who've traditionally been attracted to the restaurant business so let's be honest um there are a very high number of of employees with you know less than good reading skills uh who are uncomfortable with you know certainly the outside world normal social interaction you know it is no coincidence that again and again and again wherever you go in the world or whatever kitchens you find similar personality types and yet the business has managed to survive and and even prosper sometimes to ever greater prestige i mean to the point that that chefs are actually celebrities now in an unthinkable scenario a few years back you know in spite of a business with a huge failure rate fierce competition and an ever-changing capricious market people still do it people still show up and manage to produce a completely perishable non-transferable product consistently again and again over time and this using a labor force that requires of these same misfits that i'm talking about a complex skill set that that you're both you know you're using all of your your all of your senses uh you you're you're doing something that's very delicate and precise it requires a certain level of brutality uh strength the ability to take enormous pressure and requires the use of all your senses taste smell touch uh you know a visual sense as well if you're in any kind of management position a sous chef or a chef to party you're essentially expected to be a mix of both artist and air traffic controller and one wouldn't think that those two things necessarily go together so how do you manage or more to the point how do i think you should manage how do you build a team how do you keep a team how do you deal with hundreds of crises a day chances are you can't there there are two kinds of people in this world there are people who like the relentless futility heat pressure uh the madness uh the the the insanity uh of of of restaurant kitchens and and then there's everybody else you know normal people for whom that that isn't attractive so what first if you are a chef you know what do you look for in an employee you know personnel selection is everything okay i like to say that i can teach you to cook in my restaurant okay i'll teach you how to cut the damn onion um i'll i'll teach you how to make my food but uh you know i can teach cooking i cannot teach character okay that's what i'm looking for first the ability to you know be an adult a grown-up uh to show up on time with a good attitude to endure so i you know there there are a couple of things i look for first of all i don't care who you are okay what's great about this business the very the things i'm talking about being a refugee a misfit all of those things that's the best thing about our business because it is a it is the last meritocracy i don't care whether you were convicted of arson your your sexual preference your sex your race your nation of origin your legal status your unlovely personal habits life i don't care about any of those things all i care about is what can you do so in that sense it you know it is it is it is a wonderful place it is a melting pot it is a unique workspace unlike any other where you are essentially forced to work with people who in any other industry you might not ever be friends with be intimate with be close to trust and communicate with you know hence the large proportion of migrants emigrates and even illegals in this business which i'm going to talk about later on the other hand um so you know you're looking for an adult someone with character or of course you're looking for someone fresh out of school you know young impressionable some dumbass kid who you can mold and twist into your own little robo-chef blind obedience let's be honest here employee must what what what do i require of an employee when they show up to work first did you bring a pen okay my old mentor bigfoot used to put an ad in the paper and uh for waiters and maybe 10 20 30 waiters would show up and he'd hand out the applications they'd all sit at the bar and then the ones that asked for a pen he said you know what spare us all you know you don't have to fill out you can go home now you're gonna be a waiter right for instance you're gonna fill out an application it is a reasonable expectation that you might require a writing implement you know you've just separated out the you know the the chaff from the wheat right away did you bring a pen number two arrival time particularly in the kitchen can you be trusted to show me the respect and the people you work with on either side of you to just show up on damn time every day that's what i'm looking for right away somebody who shows up reliably i never have to look at the clock wondering if so and so is going to show up you know what i know something about them important already something really fundamental that they have that respect for themselves for the people we they work with and the people they work for to at least show up on time to be able to figure out hey you know i might run into traffic i better leave a little earlier arrival time is everything you show up two three times in a row late you're out you're fired can you take pressure let's face it this this job making the same thing ten things at a time again and again and again consistently where in a business where everything is likely to go wrong probably will go wrong and will probably go wrong all at the same time that's pressure sometimes people in the restaurant business are not nice sometimes they're not fair can you take that hence the gentle art of hazing now i'm not saying you should ever bully anyone out of sheer joy of you know of being a a cruel and sadistic bastard but there is in fact a a sort of natural progression here i mean you're working in kitchens new guy shows up you'll notice nobody calls them by their name everybody's kind of pushing them why and i'm sure many of the chefs here have seen this again and again as i have you know some perfectly reasonable well-paid adult you know maybe they worked in a stu in a wall street sector they decided you know they saw rachel ray on tv they just said i want to be a chef you yeah so they use all their savings they go to a high-priced cooking school then they show up with their little knife roll up and the coffee filter on their head in my kitchen and they want to do their apprenticeship and they're all psyched and they've blown all that money and they've taken all our time off and they're working like dogs and then a week and a half later it's saturday night and i look across the line into their eyes and i see the dream die they realize yeah this business is hard you know i thought it was gonna be glamorous you know i've been peeling shallots for a week and a half people are saying mean about me behind my back i don't like this this isn't fun um you would rather find that out not only as a chef but as a cook someone who has to work next to these people i'd like to find out now this is there are no secrets in the chef business there are no secret recipes this is a mentoring business okay chefs one at a time teach someone they they invest their time in or they they see as worthwhile we teach them everything we know and everything we have learned about everything over a 20 25 30-year career all those things that we have learned often quite painfully and a great personal expense so i would rather note now before i take time or before my saucier takes the time to to that they don't have to step away from their station or away from their mise-en-place or away from their tasks to reproduce to teach somebody again and again through repetition because that's the way we all learn repetition repetition repetition i would like to know now or as soon as possible if you're going to start crying and freaking out or you're suddenly going to shave your head into a mohawk and climb a tower you know on the first busy saturday night i want to know as soon as possible so if i have to push you a little bit and if the other people in the kitchen are pushing you a little bit you know let's be realistic like i said we're we're just separating you out from the herd again a natural process are you realistic are you are you an adult we talked about before can you take responsibility can you work well with others okay let's face it in the kitchen we are working with knives many knives sharp objects many blunt objects and boiling liquids and flames my cooks need to get along together okay i can't have feuds in the kitchen i can't have a simmering you know resentment that just waiting for you know one overcooked order a flounder to you know set off apocalypse now can't have it can you get along with others at least during the work you know during the service period you want to shank each other after work on the subway be my guest finally do you have a sense of humor because if you don't have a sense of humor in this business you may as well get out now too or work for charlie trotter you have to be used to and endured to the the fact that you were working in a business where the very day that the boss tells you i'm sorry we're gonna have to lay out we know lay off some of the you know the minimum wage prep cooks and one of the dishwashers you desperately need were really going through some tough times and at the same time their russian prostitute girlfriend drives up in a new jag they just bought them hey that's the restaurant business if you're the sort of person who's going to go home freaked out at how unfair you know how horribly horribly unfair and grotesque that dichotomy is you are not going to last in the restaurant business because it is a another argument for people from other countries it is why people like me when they're looking down that line and thinking well gee am i going to take some sensitive young soul out of cooking school grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth uh you know outraged by by unfairness injustice and inequality and are going to go home grinding their teeth and railing at god uh you know every time they see that um or i'm i'm or i'm gonna you know spend my time wait a minute my dishwasher's been with me a long time he comes from a culture where he knows life is unfair he calls the cops they rob him you know he's used to he comes from a culture where food is already important where he's already chances are responsible for other people maybe family members back in mexico family members here uh where comes from a culture that revolves largely around food who's used to looking after others and it was also used to the fact that that of la puta vida this of a life they you know comes from a culture where they write songs about who can find beauty and irony and and something to even you know something beautiful in this often tragic and almost always unfair world hugely hugely important now what do you want to do you know to to create this kind of environment as a chef as a leader camaraderie is everything everything the work is often brutal degrading underpaid under appreciated and you were working in an uncomfortable hot smelly workspace it helps if you feel go at the end of the night like an elite you you may go home stinking like smoked salmon and garlic but you feel like you were the toughest ass on the subway you feel like you deserve that seat you worked harder than anybody you're stronger you're faster you know how to do something that other people can't do and by any means necessary to build that kind of camaraderie within your crew is a very very desirable thing without camaraderie you don't have pride without pride you have bad food nothing nothing worse in this world is see than seeing an employee or a cook lose their pride you know it's the days when you know it is no coincidence that we're actually eating better as as annoying as this celebrity chef phenomena is as excruciating as i might find the naked chef the uh you know you got to admit we're eating better now why because people aren't would never think of spitting in the soup anymore it's been 25 years since i've seen anyone spit in this in ensue why because there's actually for the first time you know a real chance of advancement hope prestige and money attached to this business that helps so make your team feel like an elite i you know the marine corps is not a bad analogy you know traditionally it's a sector of the military who've taken the most casualties had the stupidest command sent out on the worst missions and yet they also have the highest highest esprit de corps because they've learned to take pride in the very sense that they are again and again screwed and stand up to the job so you know i use that as a model both in management as well as the rich vocabulary of the marine corps is very useful in the kitchen if you've ever seen full metal jacket you know what i mean reward merit and punish errors consistently and evenly you know hard work and loyalty should be rewarded the fact that you can't make a hollandaise sauce or you break the burbland every time you make it is something that can be forgiven in the middle uh you know in in the beginning you know showing up late looking like you don't care should be punished and consistently doesn't matter with whom should you socialize with crew yes hold on a second yo guys can we keep it down a little thanks thank you shouldn't you socialize with crew yes you should after work a really hard evening you know on the job yeah i see nothing wrong with well it's the old british naval model of you know rum buggery and the lash rum when you're good buggery in the lash when you're bad uh meaning after work bringing your cooks out for a beer is a perfectly acceptable thing rewarding your your crew with liquor i see nothing wrong with that they should however know that just because we had drinks last night and said i love you man at four in the morning while playing air guitar does not mean that i will not fire your ass today if you show up you know late i believe also in marx's self-criticism sessions after work meaning um if something went wrong it's about momentum we can't have the chef whinging and considering gee i don't know should i you know should i put the parsley puree on this plate oh we're out of parsnip puree what do i do uh let's talk about it you you have to make a decision and work through it it might well turn out that that decision in the heat of the moment is a bad decision it is not time to discuss it during the service period afterwards when we're having a beer we can all sit down and talk about you know that you know move into the parsnip puree you know that was a really lousy idea or you're uh you know putting the apricot jelly just didn't work with the with the mackerel uh let's let's talk about that after work you know what what sucks about the saucier last night better sitting down having a beer than in the heat of the moment where it's about getting food out leave from the front of course and lead by example what the cooks want to see they want to see the chef show up earlier suffer more and leave later than they do period okay uh generally it's very tough to maintain a you know to really run a kitchen if you are seen as having any outside interest at all you know you're writing books or you're making tv shows or do you even have a serious love affair that you're very happy about you know god forbid a hobby your cooks really don't want to hear about that they want to make sure that that mom or dad whoever's running the kitchen are are at least enduring the same or worse uh you know if you expect your cooks as i do you know the the the grease trap overflows hey you're getting in there all right uh i i will do it too um i will drain the fryer later you know if if i'm gonna ask it of others on the other hand you can't do everything yourself you have to be able to delegate if you're one of these one of these chefs who insists on just doesn't trust anyone to do anything uh insists on doing everything themselves uh you will you will burn out go insane uh drive others crazy and not make it uh you you need people you can trust who you can delegate other responsibilities to be decisive i mentioned this before don't be afraid of making wrong decisions on the fly you know it happens much better to be decisive and work through the mistake than stand there and and dither be prepared to admit being wrong really important you know if you ream somebody out in the heat of the moment you know and you go over the line uh you know sometimes it's necessary you know you smash a plate you scream at a vegetable cook you go over the line here's the bottom line for me at the end of the night there is no one front of the house or back of the house who i feel i should not be able to have a friendly beer with after work and laugh about the evening's activities i may hate your guts for three minutes and you may hate mine during the service period that's okay but if you go home at the end of the night feeling like a fool feeling like a fool for working hard for me for putting in all those hours for for for giving me your loyalty your hard work the benefit of your experience for putting up with with you know whatever i might have put you through if you go home feeling like a fool for that then i have failed as a as a chef and and and if if you do go home feeling like a fool then i will i will apologize to you and i will do so on my knees if necessary uh rather rather than let that happen ultimately you know be fair you know the kitchen must remain a meritocracy you want happy workers ultimately whatever it takes some people you know it's a balance i i have the luxury of not being a a great chef so given a choice between am i going to make my cooks you know peel the fava beans while they're still raw or am i just going to buy them frozen in a bag it's all up you know happier cooks and you know happy cooks versus slightly happier customers i'm gonna usually come down on the side of my my cooks that's me and us and them mentality in the kitchen is not always a bad thing now we may say unkind things about our customers some people were horrified in kitchen confidential the the dismissive way i talked about people who order egg white omelets or or you know vegetarians and it is not unusual let's face it take this you know take this order out to the on table seven do we we don't really mean that but it's kind of useful to remind people that there's us and those like us in the kitchen and then there's everybody else that's to me that leads to a spree decor and that sense of being an elite and apart and better and let's face it as chefs we all know that we are establish unwavering standards i mean whatever the standards are in my case it means my french fries my freits better be goddamn good uh in in other chess cases it obviously they're they're they're quite high if you teach people this is the way to make a stock that should be the way you always make it uh realistic goals should go with that meaning you know you're working in a tiny box-like kitchen uh you know you've got two cooks maybe 30 menu items is is too much and and and maybe you know making fresh lamb stock every day is is not not the way to go and then of course be prepared to break all the previous rules i just talked about there is always room for one exceptional person in your kitchen be it a conciliare uh i call them as a there's a classic character in french culinary history called the debris yard capable of of something called system d uh standing for de melde an extricator to pull you out and this this person is someone who will with plausible deniability do what you as the chef cannot be seen to do meaning your blend blender breaks in the middle of the shift there's a restaurant next door where they're not too attentive about such things you know you you know you need someone now and again who can get beer from the bar regardless of front of the house policy um you need someone who can do those little those little things uh they are an exception uh to the rule however in order for them to be accepted and that creature this sergeant bilco like character to be accepted within this structure i'm talking about they can only be accepted by also betraying you a little bit as the leader meaning if they're getting special treatment um you know there are some things i i've i've found anyway that it's you know useful to to overlook and like your employees of course you know it is you as a leader and as a chef must must must have a sense of humor if you don't find you know the worst part of your job funny at least in retrospect after a couple of beers you don't belong in the restaurant business and finally let us all acknowledge and understand at all times who is actually working in our kitchens okay who is at least somewhere between 17 and 68 of the workforce in this business that we all claim to love you know if you've been to the james beard awards uh you know as i have and looked out and you know i've never seen so many white people in one room as at the james beard awards let us remember that between 17 and i've heard as high as 70 percent of the workforce in our kitchens are largely latinos from mexico uh el salvador and central and south america that's who is there day in and day out that is who is the bat like it or not that is the backbone of our business in a business that we're talking about mentoring the strongest person in the kitchen when you come in as a young pup and are assigned to a station and someone takes the time to show you where things are and how to do it again and again in my life that person has been from outside this country and of varying legal status whatever you may feel i mean that's my final comment on this whatever you may feel about immigration policy what we should do about it in the future border control all the rest all i ask and like to remind people is ultimately who is doing the cooking in this country now who has been doing it for some time and i think led us at at least acknowledge that uh before you know we move the discussion or the argument you know any forward and i think also it would be useful to to be grateful enormously grateful for that on that note i thought we'd take some questions thanks you know this may be a glamour profession but you know if every mexican cooking in new york decided to not show up to work tomorrow we're all out of business yes we are doing questions now we are doing questions now for you um everybody again if you if you're too shy or you don't want to something tells me you're not going to be shy about asking tony questions but jump up raise your hands we have people in the audience who can help go for it attack yeah just raise your hand and yeah so i see who i'm talking to yep there's gonna be a pissed off rachel ray fan or a vegetarian in here somewhere step up the um hold on as soon as i get my stick together i'll ask you all sorts of rude things uh i'm just curious do you think it's possible to run a restaurant where because i know there's usually a higher uh the front of the house will make more money than the back of the house pretty much universally right is it possible to pay even wages across the board split tips 50 50 or would you get anybody to work there no waiters should be compensated for the fact that they have to deal with the general public that is a misery none of us in the kitchen could bear let's face it it's why we're in the kitchen in the first place the poor people can only hack three four or five shifts a week anyway um yeah let them get paid for that let them get paid for what they do uh end of the day no i don't think so i don't i don't really like the idea of tipping out kitchen either you know ours is an honorable and noble uh profession uh i i don't think we should rely on the directly on the caprices of customers no don't like it yeah have you ever found yourself having to back off on your standards a little bit as far as as far as employment okay i'll tell you what it's been a tough year for hiring and we're getting some very average applicants and oftentimes as much as i'd like to say right fourth time fifth time you're late you're out of here i don't have any anybody else to fall back on right uh yeah it happens you lower your standards but what does that mean that means that you've got to step up now and put in the extra work to to to essentially try and change somebody's life you know you got to take somebody and change and and change their character a little bit or do the best you can at least long enough you know you can find somebody who knows how to do the job uh the way you like it sure it happens it it happens all the time don't like to do it uh i believe you know if you can't choice a promote from within choice b steal somebody good from a chef friend uh you know it's nothing personal about that it's business um you know unknown quantity and then see you know you take the applicant who comes in the door all you know all hopeful and delusional any other questions right here thank you well i i guess i just want to say let's face it we know who we are in this business and we certainly know how we talk after work so there's always been a dichotomy between you know the public perception of chefs i mean they may teach media training in in in culinary school now and that's probably a good idea that's the world we live in where we need to present ourselves to the general public as well different than we really are uh but we know who we are um and and to me the real joy of being in this business one of the many real joys is sitting around with a bunch of other chefs after work and and you know being ourselves um so you know that it just that just comes naturally it's a part of the business you know i love the i fell in love with the restaurant business honestly and the people who the system and the people who work in it long before i really fell in love with food that kind of snuck up on me i fell in love with this business for the lifestyle and i guess maybe that's just me but i doubt it everywhere you go in this world you know you i i seem to end up getting drunk at three o'clock in the morning with chefs and uh it doesn't matter what country or culture it seems there's this amazing consistency if you go back and read orwell it took place in paris in the 20s or further back you know this could have happened yesterday thank you though any other questions over here oh what do i think culinary colleges can do better uh to give their um to give their kids you know reasonable expectations right come out uh well i think they should demand that listen before you spend money on culinary school you should spend at least a month in a very busy restaurant working as a dishwasher or as a prep cook whether for free or for money just by the end of that time you're gonna know do i like this business is it for me can i survive in it before you waste the money what can they do i think schools are getting better at it i know that cia i can tell you i've been up a few times are getting much better about telling you what the real world's going to be like and their requirements for externships and and uh so i think just telling people up front this is a hard unglamorous business um i think that has to go hand in hand with the with the media training right that's something we get as much experience as much exposure encourage people to travel and and just scare the hell out of them early do you really want to be a chef you know this is what it's going to be like you know um show them gordon ramsay's boiling point first season you know it's like a highway safety film for chefs that was when he wasn't playing himself you know that was when it was for real that is an amazing show yeah louisa i know that you didn't travel very much before you got into this afterlife but can you talk a little bit about the how to for people to travel and develop their pallet internationally um jesus be grateful you know if you have the opportunity to travel you know you are lucky you are fortunate you know go if you're lucky enough to go to thailand or singapore or spain uh you know don't go there sitting down and saying i'd like a tuna sandwich or a club sandwich or a hamburger you're there to experience as much as you can free of fear and prejudice never say no to anything uh eat as much of whatever's around as you can drink all of the local beverage that's offered to you get drunk with strangers and be grateful for the fact that that you're lucky enough to do it and show that appreciation food is the best purest example and expression of a of an entire culture a cultural and regional identity so to turn your nose up that the notion of like woody harrelson did reportedly you know sitting in thailand and eating the same raw food salad every single day in his 6 000 year old incredibly varied food culture that really offends me be i guess my my answer would be be a grateful and and polite guest i think that's the best you could hope for don't you know just because it looks squiggly and and and frightening doesn't mean it's not good or that you can't learn to love it chances are the country you're eating and has been doing been cooking a hell of a lot longer than ours good to see you louisa yep how you doing good i listened to you speak in uh south beach food and wine festival and you were speaking of the virtues and the nobleness of dealing with as a chef dealing with uh tough cuts that no one wants to deal with you spoke of uh you know show me here's a here's a beef chuck you know make this tender here's a lamb shank and it almost seemed like you were talking that the culinary world is going into some kind of retro phase where we're dealing with these tougher cuts of meat i have a colleague here in new york who works at a restaurant that's dealing with a lot of chemical compositions and a lot of stuff that we're seeing out of uh some in spain and he talks about these things that they just like blow up with this chemicals and they float away and stuff like that i just want to know if you think that the culinary world is going into that direction as he's very adamant about telling me or are we going back to our roots where you know food's not going to change it was previously alive and we just have to cook it better i listen i think there are two major schools right now of of uh of of cooking uh you know there are a lot of i believe you know there's the fergus henderson school and by the way you know the the the you know we'll be talking with fergus and chris costantino on the subject of exactly that tough cuts and organ meets shortly i mean you really can't find any better or more influential uh uh sources to talk about that with and that's coming up shortly and then there are a lot of people uh the modernist i don't know what you fair on and uh uh what grant's doing in chicago and others listen they're two very different styles but they eat each other's food and and like it at the end of the day we're all cooks um what you what you choose to cook and and what you what you love you you express in very different ways um you know i i think there's a certainly a shared appreciation in both of those schools of of you know shanks and and and and bellies and organ meat because we all of us who love to eat and to cook we believe that's have to be the good stuff any can be taught to grill a filet mignon that's mindless repetition it takes some craft and artistry to coax flavor and texture out of out of a tough cut and that's in fact real cooking because that's what people because they're hungry have been doing for hundreds if not thousands of years that's how we all learn to cook how do i keep it without a refrigerator how do i make it edible how do i feed my family of six out of something intended for for two that all of the basic culinary techniques more of classic french and italian techniques are rooted in exactly those kind of problems and exactly those kinds of meats and i think because we can now because guys like mario batali can actually decide what you're going to eat next year because he's that influential we're seeing a lot of chefs flexing and saying you know what next year god damn it it's going to be rabbit kidneys and they have the juice to pull it off i just don't i don't see a dichotomy between the two i they're two very different types of eating dining experiences for sure but i don't see them as opposed to each other and i i think that you know variety is a good thing i hope that answers your question i would add uh in the same way that you the vogue telephone book you know out this month how many of you like go to a runway show and buy you know alexander mcqueen dresses but it does filter down eventually 10 years ago you couldn't buy soy sauce in supermarkets 10 mirror you could buy flank steak at the stop and shop all of this stuff does trickle down and as antoinette said in her opening speech all of you have actually reported that the basic food stuffs remain the same but you're still influenced by so i'm i'm with you on that one you know anything that increases options as a diner and as a chef and and increases the the the the possibilities of of the ways that you're able to express yourself or experience food is absolutely for the good um it's you know these are good times to good times to be eating uh and and uh you know definitely good times to be cooking you would have ever thought we live in a country where people eat calamari i remember when calamari was thrown out and i remember when tuna was sold directly for cat food no one would think of eating it uh to me if there was one tipping point in american gastronomy of the over my career it was when suddenly and for whatever reason probably for the wrong reasons uh sushi became popular americans overcame a lifelong revulsion an aversion to raw fish suddenly they wanted it now did they go to the first sushi bar and decided they like it because their friends thought it was cool because some knucklehead on tv said uh i eat it uh uh because it was pretty uh who cares the fact is suddenly people were eating sushi bars and that lifted all boats for everybody suddenly french at italian chefs the quality of fish that we saw on the market shot through the roof our expectation of quality went up the variety of fishes that we could serve in our restaurants increased because you know things like eating mackerel once unthinkable suddenly became potentially desirable so you know any anything that adds something new to the picture is is a positive thing beef cheeks who would have thought beef cheeks you know it's about time you know it was five years ago you know the sushi thing is definitely incredible the kids won't eat they won't eat liver but they'll eat raw fish well the next big thing and i'm telling you my chicken sasha me oh yes it's a late night there's a lot of late night uh yakitori joints springing up and i'm getting into the the you know for the breastbone skin cartilage kebabs and chicken sashami and you know you go there at this one place it was like 11 o'clock at night and it's half japanese and half like you know american chefs all sitting around really getting into that so maybe that's the next big thing maybe that raw chicken we can't wait see you in the hospital in the morning yeah i guess we should stick to healthier safer stuff like spinach yes exactly any other questions for tony while we have him excuse me um how do you reconcile the uh variety and the quality of the food that we have now um with the highest number of obese people in the world uh i think that you know the real trial if you go to houston airport and you walk around you can walk for two hours and not see a single person with a neck um hey it's okay to get big but you know at least get big on on stuff that gives you pleasure i think a lot of people it this is a lifestyle thing not it's not about food at all um i think it's possible certainly if europe is in the french have shown us anything it's possible to you know eat huge amounts of incredibly rich food all day long uh seemingly you know they don't snack in these other cultures they're sitting around eating cheetos joylessly chawing at crap food i mean all this stuff that's so super fattening is is not even good that's a that's a tragedy you know get big on good pasta fine you know getting big on you know ho hoes and and mcnuggets uh that's something grim and i i'm convinced that people who are eating that stuff and drinking you know if you're drinking you know six liters of diet coke a day you know you're not thirsty you're up and i also believe let's bring ridicule back to the school okay now mcdonald's has sensibly targeted children they put up signage in return for giving money to school districts as i understand it they very sensibly made ronald mcdonald i think the most recognizable uh figure in the world you know wouldn't it be great if you know kids started bullying other kids at https you know you smell you've probably got cooties too you know you're an idiot uh you know using juvenile cruel children can be so cruel let's turn that to you know force to good you know make ronald evil in the minds of small children you know start calling you know crack for kids and uh you know maybe that will will have some help but because i think it's a lifestyle choice it has to do with snacking not moving uh and filling some empty space in your soul it has nothing to do with hunger i mean oh also and people just aren't smoking enough yeah they definitely get insulted remember that mcdonald's remains the world's largest restaurant corporation so there are no rush to make there the evil empire it's it's i believe it's been already made our most dangerous export we could have saved a lot of money on the cia and nuclear power if we just opened up mcdonald's franchises in the you know uh you know in our target country it is we're exporting exporting it to india and china at the moment we'd be able to smoke them out of their holes if they couldn't get their asses in in the first place [Laughter] there you have it we will have more of tony we have guts and glory his discussion on waffle which i'm excited about with chris costano and fergus henderson my favorite restaurant in london perhaps and my favorite restaurant in the world saint john we toning our agreement on that one where i live when i'm there so we'll have plenty plenty more time with anthony and um in the meanwhile we are getting ready to have albert adria who's going to have jose andres um gotta get you got to get that down who's going to translate for him and they will show you the most exciting techniques for making pastry that are ever possibly could be invented so we'll have we have that coming up in just a few minutes tony is not going anywhere so you can keep asking questions um the other thing that i'm supposed to mention on pain of death is um joshua shellis and a whole bunch of other chefs have posted a board in the nespresso lounge which is back there in the product uh division with recommendations they want all of your recommendations tony of course has indicated that we're all um foodies and so over the next few days if you go to any off the beaten path restaurants in new york um check in while you're in town just put it into this board so that i guess every day they're gonna check this board and see where you've all been eating and being sorted or staying out until late night establishments and we want to know where all that is um uh do keep that in mind um also um antoinette being the clever lady that she has wanted me to remind you all that star chefs is coming out with his first book do you know that i i did not know that neither did i starships.com and there's a blad the that's industry lingo for and what does blad stand for it's a few pages of the oh it's the thing that they sell to you know to to get it into bookstores and stuff so it's floating around with floating around the shop so take a look at it so if you'd like to order the book you can and without much further ado i think we have jose and albert ready did you know an albert's um thing he talks about being thrown out of gym class so you're right it's about the lifestyle we have so much in common i know if you can take one out of gym classes

Channel: StarChefs

Views: 167,900

Keywords: starchefs, star chefs, culinary magazine, culinary world, culinary, food blogs, food blog, food video, culinary video, culinary demonstration, culinary demos

Id: dVDkmJuEdDo

Length: 46min 50sec (2810 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020