November 19, 2021 • 39 mins
In this episode, host Geoffrey Zakarian speaks with celebrity chef Curtis Stone. From his richly-flavored childhood in Melbourne, Australia to his early entrance into the television industry, Curtis reflects on how he resourcefully worked his way up the ladder, and what it’s meant to build a legacy for his children.
Learn more about Curtis’ kitchen products, along with his other books and recipes here: https://www.curtisstone.com/kitchen-products
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
My name is Jeffrey Z. Carrion, and you're listening to
four Courses with Jeffrey Z. Carrion from my Heart Radio
and four Courses I'll be taking you along for the
ride while I talked with the top talent of our time.
In each conversation, I focused on four different areas of
my guest life and career. And during those four courses,
I'm gonna dig deep in and cover new insights and
inspirations that we can all use to fuel ourselves to
(00:26):
push forward. My guest for this episode is an Australian celebrity,
chef and author. He got his start in London but
now owns two restaurants in Beverly Hills and after hosting
a whole show about it, he's great at surfing. Without
further delay, let's get into my conversation with Curtis Stone. Curtis,
thank you so much for joining me. It's absolute pleasure.
(00:50):
For our first course, I wanted to ask Curtis about
his childhood in Melbourne, Australia and the foods and flavors
that shaped his palette. Not everyone gets to grow up
eating excellent homecook food, but Curtis counts himself among the
lucky few, and it cheaped his colinary outlook for the
rest of his life. It's so interesting because I try
and recreate these smells for my family because they're so
(01:11):
strong to me, those memories. And you know, whether it
was coming home from school and opening the door, and
the second you'd open the door, you wouldn't be thinking
about what was for dinner, but you'd smell something, and
for me, it was a roast chicken. My mom always
would do a roast chicken, and she was a gardener,
and she'd have different vegetables or onions roasted in the
oven with a chicken, and I'd sort of i'd smell.
I'd think, oh, she's done the roast chicken, you know,
(01:32):
and then I'd run to the kitchen to go and
look in the oven because not only is that roast
chicken delicious and smells wonderful, but it was also there's
something special about a roast chicken going in the middle
of the table and her stand in their carving it
and dishing it out. You know. Then there was also
she was a great baker, so whether it was cookies
in the oven or a cake, that sweet smell, that
(01:53):
sort of permeates the house that would normally happened on
a weekend, of course, and I'd smell that and I'd
be like, oh yes, and I was greed. My mom
still says, You've always been greedy. You always will beat
so the day you die, And she's right. I'm always
the one that wants the first cookie out. I always
want the bolder lak, you know, the beats of of
just always. I've always been obsessed with how things are
(02:15):
gonna taste. And has it left me yet? There is
something about chicken fat and if any onions are around
that caramelization, it emits this potent odor of almost burnt
sugar and wood somehow marriage and it's just so delicious
and I can smell it. So that's sweet chicken onion thing.
(02:37):
And and with the with the baking, that is really intoxicating.
So so did you so I baked? My mom? I
went always to the sweet, because of course it's good.
Did you go more to a pie our savory? You know,
when you're developing recipes with your mother and your paternal
grandmother's and maternal grandmas, did you go to the baking
(02:57):
side or to go to the sort of savories I
started with the bacon for sure. Yeah. My Granny Maude,
who I named my first restaurant after, she used to
She was from the North of England originally and then
she moved emigrated to Australia, but she used to make
this sugary fudge which I've done a bit of research
on it. I think it's actually a Scottish thing that
might have migrated down into the North of England. But
(03:18):
it's a thick sugary has like little like Graham crackers
kind of broken up through it, and whew, is it good.
I mean, you know, I'm sure if you ate it
as an adult, you'd be like, wow, it's extremely sweet,
you know, But as a there's a five or six
year old, it just tasted so unbelievable. So I started there,
and I think the first recipe I ever laid claim
to was probably stolen out of my mom's Woman's Weekly cookbooks.
(03:41):
And I took like a caramel slice base out of
one recipe, and I took a caramel slice topping out
of another, which is the equivalent of like a lemon
bar or caramel bar. I made it and I said
it was mine, and you know, I thought that you know,
before I understood what plagiarism was. And you know, of
course I said, this is my Mike, our mal bar,
and everybody thought it was pretty delicious. And it was
(04:03):
because I had created it that it was what I
laid my hat on. Back at the tender age of
six or seven. I used to have it at any
of the restaurants. Now, you know what, We've played around
with it as a little Minia day and sort of
just serving a little piece of it at the end
of the evening. And it's a it's a lovely story
to tell, but we've never had an outlet that we
could sell them in a traditional form. So it sounds
(04:24):
to me like, okay, so you're in Australia in Melbourne,
so this is seventies, yes am I right? Okay, So
what's happening in the food scene in Australia in the
seventies and what were they gravitating Italian Asian? Because I
always found it a lot of Asian Italian when I
travel there. I really think they've married Italian and Asian
better than any country I've been to. Yeah, they really have.
(04:47):
There's a restaurant there called Tonka and he's a very
interesting guy. His mom is and I might get this backwards,
but I think his mom's Italian and his dad's Indian.
So he cooks this Indian food but with like an
Italian attitude. And it's like, when I say it to you,
you're like, what that sounds weird, But when you eat
his food, you're just like, oh, my goodness, I totally
(05:07):
understand your background through your food. And I think growing
up in the in the early eighties, the restaurant scene
was still very European. We had Italian influence, but you know,
it was still the better restaurants were just fancy. I
don't know that they were any good, but they were
just fancy, you know, And that was probably laying in
the French cuisine. And I think when I first started
(05:27):
cooking as an apprentice in Australia, all of the executive
chefs and head chefs of restaurants where either French or
Austrian or German or you know, a few Italians. But
it was very much the opinion that if you wanted
to be any good, Australia didn't have any good food,
and as a chef, you would have to go to
Europe to train over there. And that changed really drastically
sort of, you know, later on in my apprenticeship and
(05:49):
later in my twenties, Australia really did start having some
wonderful food. But I think that theory paid off because
all these young Aussy kids that were cooks went to
Europe and learned European cuisine and then came back and
started adapting what they learned to the Aussie ingredient, because
we have a really interesting mix of native ingredients and
different ingredients than you find anywhere in the world. And
(06:10):
I think the food scene in Australia now is is
very vibrant, and of course the Asian immigration really came
on much stronger as the years went on, and we
have a lot of Vietnamese cooks and Chinese cooks and
incredible knowledge in kitchens throughout the country, and of course
that's where you learned. Just like in southern California, we
have these young American kids learning all about the Mexican
(06:31):
cuisine because there's great Mexican cooks in their kitchens, and
we sort of did the same with Southeast Asian food.
In our second course, I had to understand Curtis's path
as one of the many kids who left home to
learn how to cook in Europe. But instead of jets
dating off to a culinary hotspot like Paris or rom
Curtis chose to study in London instead, which he says
(06:55):
was all for one man. I read a book called
Right Heat when I was a young apprentice and Marco
per Whites. He was such an inspirational chef to so
many young cooks. And I read this book and it
just sounded mad, you know, sounded absolutely crazy the way
he pushed his team, and um, it sounded like going
to play baseball for the best baseball team in the world,
(07:16):
you know. And I read this and I've never sort
of shied away from the challenge of it all. And
I was like, oh, I'm in I'm going there to
do it. And you know, Naively just packed a bag
and took off for Europe, thinking that he'd welcome me
with open arms. And I didn't even reach out. I
didn't write a letter. I mean back before we were
showed up. I just showed up and bizarrely got a job.
He just let someone go that morning and he had
(07:37):
put an apron on kid and I was standing there
on a pair of jeans and a white T shirt
and that was my first day in a three Michelin
star restaurant. You know, I put an apron on and
and I couldn't quite believe what was happening, but bizarrely,
it was always my plan. So anyway, I spent eight
years working for Marco in London, and you're right, London
wasn't the home of astronomy back then, but Marco was.
(07:58):
You know, he was the youngest guy in the world
to in three Michelin stars and a pretty interesting sort
of a character. So it was cool. As chefs, you
and myself, we all noticed people, the new ones, and
we noticed when they have talent and we're noticing how
to move, it just stands out. It's like they have
a halo around them. They're different and they're when they're good.
What did he notice about you and what did he
(08:19):
comment on what you were doing that he could see
how the corner of his eyes that you know what
you're doing, or his sous chef said, like this kid, Curtis,
he's okay, you know something like that. You don't give
you a compliment. What did he notice right away that
he said, oh, I'm going to push this kid because
he could be really really something. Look, I think it
was just such a high paced environment. I told this
(08:40):
story to a buddy the other day, and I don't
even know if you believe me. But Marco wouldn't let
us in the kitchen until eight o'clock in the morning
because he said, if you can't get your work done
between eight o'clock and when lunch starts, then you're not
good enough to be here. And I couldn't you know.
I tried a couple of days to do my knees
on plast my prep and and failed miserably. And he
would throw people out of his kitchens very very quickly.
(09:00):
You know that people either stayed for a lifetime or
they stayed five minutes and got weeded out really early on.
So I made friends. It was in a building called
the Cafe Royal, which is this beautiful old heritage building.
So I made friends with the janitor on like day two,
and I said, would it be possible to get in
a little earlier, And he goes, well, the restaurant's not open,
but you can certainly get down into the change rooms.
(09:23):
So I started going to work at six and I'd
work for an hour and a half I'd hide my prep,
I'd get changed back into my CVS and I'd go
and get a coffee and I'd walk back in with
everyone else at eight o'clock. And you know, like, I mean,
how scrappy is that? Imagine a kid doing that these things,
and I'd like hide it up the back of the fridge,
(09:44):
but I'd put some you know, some raw ingredients over
the top of it so no one would sort of
see it. And then as the time as I got
the moment, I'd sort of put it out and i'd
bring it back to my my thing. Where did you
start doing this? Oh god, I probably did it for
twelve months my first year in the kitchen. I was
still sneak and getting uh getting in front of that
that is fantastic. Yeah, And you know, I think he
(10:06):
probably saw that. He didn't see that because I would
have got in trouble if he had to see it,
But he probably in different ways saw that scrappiness, use
that desire to be there. And I think that was
the most important thing. It was that I would bet
knowing him in a million years, he knew. We just
didn't say anything because there's no way this kid get
this ready, he found a way how to do it,
or he's pay I used to pay a guy named
(10:27):
says are I swear to God as I'd pay him
twenty five a week, which was half of my paycheck
back then to do all my shalots and my garlic
and my chop chips. He was really good with a
knife because he did probably, I said, would you please?
I could never get ready and shalots take a lot
of time. It's not possible to get shipped done on time.
And you know Thomas Keller does that as well. He
doesn't let you in the kitchen early that believe it
(10:50):
will make you a more focused chef, and I'm sure
it did, right. He wouldn't let us use time as either.
I can remember him seeing somebody had snuck the time
or in and he walked from picked it up and
just threw it. In the show Fond of Water, I
was like, he's a young cock. That's you know, just
spent twenty bucks at a timer that he probably couldn't afford,
you know, so he doesn't overcook something and the chef
(11:11):
throws at the water. So but I mean that was
those days, right, and I thrived in that environment and
a lot of people talk about those days like they're
horrible or they're negative or whatever. To be perfectly honest,
I have really fond memories, and I know they were hard,
and I know that you know, it was a challenge,
and I understand why it's probably also not appropriate in
today's day and age, But personally I got a lot
(11:32):
from it. I really enjoyed it. What was he like
in the kitchen? Like, I know he's intense and he
was crazy, but what was his um What was his
trauma that meet him so good? Because you've got to
have trauma to be that and crazy. What did you
see in him that you were like, Wow? He was
very eccentric and he still is, but he had the
(11:52):
ability to do what most people couldn't, and that was
just push himself to the point where, you know, and
I'm sure that trauma come from. If you spoke to him,
he'd probably say, you know, his childhood had nothing to
do with it, but I think it probably did, you know,
And he had that ability. So because he was doing it,
everyone else just wanted to try and keep up. You know,
it's interesting. I work out in the boxing gym and
(12:14):
when there's a great boxer in that gym. Everybody else
just trains that a little bit harder, and everybody else
wants to just sort of not be the one that's
standing around, skipping around. So it's an interesting thing. And
I think Marco he was very fair. You know, he
has a big reputation for being crazy, and he was,
you know, like because he was just so passionate, and
you know, one one percent less than perfect was terrible
(12:36):
and thrown across the room. But there's something I love
about that. I still do. You know, I'm nowhere near
the artist he was, but I still take my food
extremely seriously and and I really admire people that have
that just focus. For our third course, Curtis and I
(13:04):
talked about his transition into television, which is something he
jumped into way earlier than most chefs. Turns out, his
four A into TV completely changed his career trajectory in
new and exciting ways, just as it was changing our
entire industry. So you have eight years with that, gentleman.
That's that's a that's a long time with one chef.
It really is. It's it's enough to really, I would say,
(13:27):
cement all the things you need to learn about food
and cooking your food that there could be coming from
someone so so amazing in your twenties. I believe you.
We're into this TV. How did this all happen? How
did like the show Surfing the Menu happen? Yeah? Well,
I was running one of Marco's restaurants, so I sort
of started as the most junior person in his kitchen
and ended up And that was kind of Marco right,
(13:48):
like people have moved along, which created opportunities quickly because
he if he had a bad service, two or three
might go and you'd be like, oh okay, I just
became a chef to party and he had trust in
people he'd been with for a long time. So I
was running a restaurant for him. When I was twenty five,
I was the head chef of Coo Artist in London,
so you know, I was there for a couple of
(14:08):
years and we're producing some pretty delicious food and somebody
published a book called London's Finest Chefs um and it
was maybe twenty different chefs and some of their recipes,
and they put me in that book, which I was
you know, I was looking around at the other chefs
thinking of my goodness, some of these guys, are you
know my heroes? And they asked us sort of come
to a book signing and do a TV appearance, a
(14:29):
morning show appearance, and I did that, and then I
got a phone call from the BBC the next day
and said, we'd like you to meet this lady from
Australia who's put together a show idea and we're going
to co commission it with the ABC, which is the
equivalent of the BBC back home. And the show was
Surfing the Menu, So you know, it just it happened
totally accidentally, to be honest with you. You know, I
(14:50):
was just busy working away in my restaurant. That was
my career, and that was all I was focused on.
And I mean there might have been TV chefs around,
but I can't remember them. You know. The show sur
in the Menu was based on the idea of two
Aussies who were living abroad coming back to Australia and
rediscovering Australian food while on a surf trip. So, I mean,
when you get pitched at the age of twenty six,
(15:11):
you're like, ah, you're gonna pay me to surf and
cook my way around in Australia. Sure, wins the plane
lead um, and so that was it. It's sort of
just you know how it goes. If your first show works,
then you do another season, and then another season, and
they want you to do another show, and before you know,
you're write in a cookbook and you know, one thing
sort of just led to another and it kept snowballing.
And here I am in in Brentwood, California. It is stunning.
(15:35):
But you know, you got there. I mean I tell
people like I mean, it took thirty years right for
on TV. In those thirty years before I wasn't like
sending out scripts, you know, I was like working and
it was an accident. But those accidents are fantastic. But
also I always think of like galloping or Met Graham
care one of my idols. I used to watch him.
(15:56):
I think it's remarkable how television has really changed the
paradigm for everybody. When I speak to kids and parents,
it's the children that are teaching the parents how to cook.
Now because of the Internet and the experiences of the
kids are really into it. The parents never cooked, they
were too busy working because of the generational thing. And
now the paradigm has changed. So these kids with the internet,
(16:19):
click on how to cook a steak, and they go
on this four thousand videos how to cook a steak.
If you're fifty fifty and you get it wrong, it's
still going to be pretty good. You're absolutely we didn't
have that. We didn't have that, we had to actually
cook a thousand steaks. I remember back when I started,
chefs were very protective around their recipes. I mean, now
it's cool to publish them and put them on the
internet and share them with everyone. I remember having to
(16:42):
like peek in my I worked in the pastry section
for a while and Sierry was this like incredible pastry
shift and and I just needed the recipe. Never give
it to me to always leave ingredients out or did
do the last step. And I was like, oh my god,
it would be so much easier if I had the recipe.
And I can remember peeking in these recipes but with
the fear that if he walks back in here, I'm dead,
you know. And and back before I had a phone
(17:03):
that could take a photograph, where you could just snap
a photo of you're like scribing it out as quick
as you could. You know, you remember those days where
it was recipes weren't just free for everyone, and now
they are, and the informations all there, and it's a
it's a wonderful time for these kids to be growing
up and cooking because they really have so much information.
I mean, it's what you do with that information, of course,
(17:23):
but the information is certainly there. So that's a great thing.
So you're you're having a blast surfing. You actually surf,
thoughs your surfer well, I pretended I was a bit
I'm not gonna lie. I told them they said, do
you surf? And I said absolutely, I said, come on,
all OSSI surf. But deep down I was like, you know,
I do a pretty good impersonation of a man holding
onto a plank all drowning. But I could surf, but
(17:44):
not well, you know, certainly not well enough to host
a show called Surfing the Menu. But the guy that
I was paired up with, Ben O'Donoghue, and we've never met,
he was also an azzi. Ben was this, you know,
super talented guy, very Italian and rusty cooking where mine
was a bit more you know, French and gastronomic, I guess.
But he was just a master with a surfboard. So
(18:05):
he sort of taught me how to surf along the journey.
And my joke is, and I taught him how to
clean up after himself in the kitchen, but I don't
think I succeeded at that because he's he's one of
those beautiful, messy cooks where he destroys the kitchen but
everything tastes unbelievable. How many seasons of surfing the Manager
you do? And when did you get the call to
come into the United States? We did three seasons and
(18:25):
it was one of those kind of shows where it
was a travelog and so many people would watch it overseas,
so they sold it to a variety of different territories
and and then that sort of opened some doors, I
guess or Network sort of seen it from abroad. And
I've got a phone call about a show called Take
Home Chef, which I thought was a ludicrous idea. You
know that I was back in Australia actually filming surfing
(18:47):
the menu at the time, and I got a call
from a guy saying, here's the concept of the show.
We want you to go into a grocery store. This
is you know, nearly twenty years ago, when I looked
a lot cuter than Miss Jeffrey. But he said, we
want you to go into a grocery store, or we
want you to approach a really cute young lady and
we want you to ask her if she would welcome
you into her home to cook her dinner. And I'm like, okay.
(19:09):
And then when you get back and you spend the day,
if she's married or not she has a boyfriend. When
you get back and you spend the day cookie with
her and her husband comes home, we'll all shout surprise,
and that will be the joke, you know, and then
you'll obviously serve them. And then he takes out a shotgun,
like very very ridiculous. But I was having my thirtieth
(19:32):
birthday in Las Vegas. I've never been to America before,
but I had half of my maids, of course with
British at that time, because I was living in England,
and half of them are still azzy. So I said,
let's meet in the middle and we'll do a party
in Vegas, and we planned it, but I hadn't booked
my travel and when this guy rang me about this show,
I thought to myself, you know what, I could get
him to fly me over so then I'm sure they'll
fly me business class. So I came over for a
(19:53):
free flight and that was the thing that changed my life.
You are bribing the janity to do music, getting people
to fly you over. You're very wily, scrappy, scrappy, scrappy
and wiley. I love it. So you said, yes, where
was it filmed? Because there's two that's right. Yeah, we
shot in Los Angeles and we shot it in Pasadena
(20:15):
in a gala. Yeah, And we shot it and then
I went to Vegas. I met my buddies. We had
a great time, and I went back to London and
then I got this this email through saying that they
picked up sixty episodes. And in my wildest dreams, if
they did pick it up, maybe we do ten or fifteen,
you know, but they picked up sixty right off the bat.
(20:37):
They don't do that anymore. And I looked at it
and I was like trying to figure out the dates,
and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna be there
for six months. So, you know, I had a girlfriend,
I had an apartment, I had a life in London,
a job, and suddenly I had to like change all
that because I was getting on a plane to Los Angeles,
and yeah it was. It was a real life changer.
(20:57):
But what a fabulous opportunity. So you cancel the apartment
and you canceled your job. Did you cancel the girlfriend too? Well?
We kept it going for a while, but I think
when she realized and then they picked up season two,
which was another sixty Yeah, the things things are. Things
fell away. The long distance relationship didn't work out. It didn't.
(21:17):
So you're this is two thousand two. When did you
meet your waife too? I should know that straight off
on the top of my head, shouldn't I. I wasn't
here for very long. We've got a ten year old,
so we've been together for probably twelve years. So yeah,
I was probably only here for a couple of years
when we met. Wow, So that decided right there. That's it.
I'm in I'm in Los Angeles. Yeah, well, how's our
lad treating you? Look how it has been a funny,
(21:39):
funny place the last couple of years. I've had a
bizarre relationship with Los Angeles because I sort of I
thought it was a bit of a weird city when
I first got here, and I didn't have that like
instant a love affair with it, but I did with
my wife and that's what sort of kept me here.
And it's a bit of a roller coaster of a city.
You know, you love it, you hate it, you find
it challenging. But of course now time I've been here
(22:00):
nearly fifteen years and the sun's aways shining and there's
some really nice parts to it. And there's probably some
things that you miss a little bit after living in
big cities in different parts of the world when you
come to l A. Because it's not the cultural mecca
that some other cities are. You're up in New York
and that's it's a very different type of city. But
it's fun. I like living here. So did you want
(22:20):
to do a restaurant? Because it really you're coming about
this from a TV side. It's not like it's not
like you came in open a restaurant. So how did
how did you go from this world of sixty episodes
once a week too, like you're now working very deeply,
like we are in the same company called HSN. How
did that happen? And then you you spawned a restaurant?
(22:43):
So it's sort of backwards, right, Yeah, most people have
the restaurants and then they go then they start doing TV.
It really was, and I think there's parts of that
that we're really challenging and parts of it that were
fabulous as well, because you know, when I was working
in television and I came up with the idea for
my product line back when I was working in people's homes,
and I thought to myself, I'd only ever worked in
(23:04):
professional kitchens and cooked that way, and now I'm cooking
in people's homes, and I thought, no, wonder they all
say they can't cook, that their equipment is terrible. It's
you know, they have these little cutting boards and blunt
knives and crap cookwere and no wonder it doesn't work,
you know one, No wonder people find it such a chore.
And and that sort of got me thinking, you know
what if we could create products that helped you along
(23:24):
your journey when you cook. And and so I went
on that journey of doing products and television and books,
and and then we had our first son, Hudson, and
I can remember being in a park with him, and
I was sitting there thinking about my dad and thinking
about all the things I thought about him as a
man and as a role model and what his work
ethic was like. And and I was looking at my
(23:46):
son while I was having these thoughts, because he was
probably only eighteen months or whatever, and then I thought,
I wonder what this kid's going to think of me,
you know, one day I'll be the dad. And it
was there in that park that I thought to myself,
he might just think I got lucky, you know, like
he might just think that I had a chance meeting
or whatever. And because I was never precious about the
(24:07):
cooking side of it, I knew I could cook. Like
you said, I worked for eight years with one of
the best chefs in the world, and I wasn't I
didn't have anything to prove to anyone because I knew
I could cook. But I also didn't have a restaurant,
you know, And I thought, I don't know. There was
something in me that just sort of wanted to create
a legacy for my kids that they saw their dad
get up and go to work and deal with hardship
(24:28):
and battle through things. And then of course I wanted
to sort of have that creative outlet again and be
able to cook, because cooking for someone in a home
or whatever, it's just a very different muscle, you know,
and I like to exercise both those muscles because when
you do get into a restaurant with all the technology,
all the incredible equipment, and the best quality ingredients and
all the rest of it, hopefully you can create something
(24:50):
really magical. You know. For our fourth and final course,
I got to ask Curtis about his two restaurants, Gwen
and Mod, which are both named after his grandmother's. We
talked about the pleasures and pain points of running your
(25:12):
own kitchens and what it means to deliver high quality
hospitality for your guests. I mean, you have two incredible restaurants,
uh Gwenn and Mod. Are they back open and everything's
well if you slit open and gotten things correct again? Yeah,
I feel like we were one of those UM teams
that really just tried to smuggle and juggle through the pandemic.
(25:32):
You know. We did pop ups, we changed concepts, we
did take out that we've never done before. We tried
to stay really active because you know, restaurants to me
are really fragile little ecosystems, and you've got to try
and keep that team. You've got to protect it. So yeah,
we fought to sort of keep them all together. I
feel like we went to hell and back through the pandemic,
but we're back open. Gwen's busier than it's ever been.
(25:55):
You know, we're full every night, which is uh, you
know in restaurant world, you sort of look up and
say a little prayer when it feels like that. And Maude,
we're just sort of putting the final pieces together and
will be open early next year. So there's nothing like
the feeling of walking into a restaurant when there's a
fully blown service in play. And I don't know, I've
I've always lived for it. I love it. Yeah, and
(26:16):
you see it. That's me. This is you know, you
look around like this, I'm responsible for this. The love
affair of opening restaurants. It's almost psychotic. It's almost like
there's a drug. Yeah, it's not possible to be vaccinated
against the restaurant business, you know what I mean. It's
like it's so true. It's like you watch people do
these extreme sports Jeffrey, like marathons or triathlons or you know,
(26:41):
it's they're they're really intense things, and you think, why
would anyone do that when you could go to an
airG and just in gym and get the same experience there,
and you know, we could do other businesses as well.
It's not like people that run restaurants don't have the
smarts to be in other businesses. But there's something that
drags you in. And I'm not exactly sure what it is,
that nurturing feeling that you get when you're looking at
you guts, but yeah, there is something intangible that that
(27:03):
is really lovely about them. Well you did with Modern Uh.
I've only been there once, and everything in that restaurant.
You just feel it that it's so authentic and it's
so beautiful and it's such a thoughtful way to serve people.
And I love that it's a menu, but it's not
like so long that you have to like take off
(27:24):
a week to go. Both on the financial side of
it and like who has four hours anymore to sit
and just do that. It's just not a it's not
a return to normal. It's not doing that. We might
have a bit more free time because we want to
work remotely, but I think there's a certain time in
dining that I find the magic number. It's probably ninety
(27:45):
minutes where you can really appreciate that the food it's yummy,
it has a fun element to it, and the chef
can create something that's memorable and you'll come back again.
You don't go back for a three hour experiences once
a week. It becomes something that is such a like
a church versus a restaurant. And you did not open
a church, which is very easy to do when it's
(28:07):
smile like martyrs. You know, So what were you thinking
when you opened it? Well? Look, I think that the
really interesting thing that happened was I went from being
a cook, and as you know, young cooks just first
of all, we work every Friday and Saturday night and
we don't have the money to be able to go
and eat in these extravagant restaurants. Well, because I was
over here doing television, I wasn't working on weekends, and
(28:28):
I did have a bit more cash than the most
young cooks have, so I was able to go and
dine in great restaurants. And I think that really changed
it for me because I see so many chefs cooking
from a chef's perspective as opposed to from a diner's perspective,
and I was lucky enough that I could kind of
do both. And I what I said from the start
was I wanted to be fine dining, I really do.
(28:49):
I want it to be detailed, and I wanted to
be wonderful, but I don't want all the nonsense that
comes with that. I want to find dining without the fluff,
is what we always say at More, because we wanted
to be comfortable. They wanted to be even casual in
a way, but still refined and allegant and beautiful and
served on a beautiful plate, and really some detail put
into the presentation. My my favorite ever line from one
(29:12):
of our staff. He was our familiar, and he walked
over and he dropped the plate and he said, for
your next course, there's more food, and then he walked away.
And you know that big presentation of all chefs done
this to the duck and this and that, and it's like,
it's just food. It's just food. Put it down, I
thank you, you know. And the problem is they asked
the dreaded question at the table when you forks in
(29:34):
your mouth, how is everything going so far? And you
feel like saying, would you just cough? I'm trying to eat.
Can you give us some time alone? And it's kind
of what I think it's like, why do you keep
interrupting people and asking for compliments? I totally agree, stop it.
And when my managers, I had to school them and
never ever ask anyone how everything is. If they want
(29:55):
to tell you something, they will there. It's okay to
this excuse me. If they call you over, that's yeah,
it's okay. Believe me. If you ask them how everything is,
they're gonna lie to you. They want you gone, they
want you away, they want to continue the conversation you
just interrupted, and then they're gonna go home and they're
gonna give you greeting and you're gonna wait, what happened?
Everybody said it was great. It's because they're not telling
(30:16):
you the truth. You're so right, you know. I don't
do that lap of honor. You know. You see chefs
going from table on the table, and I say to
myself and that you have guests that want to see
you in your restaurant, right, And I love that, But
to me, it's so much more meaningful if I either
walk out of the kitchen and drop some food on
their table, or if they see me behind the stove.
That's what you chef should be doing. And I've had
(30:38):
people come into my business. Even guests say, you didn't
even come out to the table, or chef, why don't
you go to each table and check in with each
each table? And I'm like, because I wanted to have
a wonderful time, and I don't want to go over
there and insist on a compliment, because that's exactly what
they'll give you. You know, I wanted to be genuine
and if they want me to come over, of course,
(30:59):
super gracious to do it, and would love to love
to go over. But it's funny, we've got a very
similar idea there. And then there's some restaurants they just
every single course, every person twice. I mean, it's like you,
we just want to And sometimes I tell the matrety,
I'm like, I'm having dinner here and I love it here,
but please don't interrupt us. Service doesn't mean you interrupt people, no, no, no, no,
(31:19):
It means the glass is empty, take it away, quietly,
pour another one. If there's something right, if they're not
eating the food, you're allowed to go over and say,
may it gets you something else quietly to them. But
if the plate's clear, you don't ask them how it was.
Why would you do that or ask them if they're done.
It's clearly done. There's nothing there come up. Don't ask
someone if they're done. You're gonna make them feel like
(31:39):
they're a glutton. It's it's all these things that like
it's not fun to eat in restaurants anymore because just
people are like there's a corporate woke mentality of how
are you supposed to approach a table? Have you dined
with us before? Is there any allergies at the table?
Believe me, if there are allergies at the table, they
would have told you when they made the reservation online. Yeah,
my name is Barry. I'm going to be a server.
(32:01):
I feel like saying, oh you are. I thought you
were going to do a performance for us. Of course,
it's so amazing, and I'm so glad that you. We
have that frame of reference in It doesn't mean you
don't neglect the customer. When I did this to my restaurants,
my waiters their chips and they thank me. Oh my god.
We don't have to go interrupt people. We don't like
(32:21):
to do it. I don't like to interrupt it. They're
having a conversation and how are we doing so far? Right?
I've been ask that question, by the way, before I've
cut into my steak, you know, and I looked and
I'm like, it's great, you know, like you're joking you.
It's such an instancere question. And that's what hospitality is.
It needs to be sincere, and you need to genuinely
(32:43):
want to create a wonderful time. And by the way,
sometimes that's different table to table. You've got to read
the play a little bit. If if your customers come
in and you guess, say, look, we're from out of
town and we just went to the theater and they
want to ask that Hamilton's they want to know, and
it's right the table, right next to them. They don't
want any conversation. You've got to be able to read that,
(33:04):
and you've got to be able to pass that communication
on through the back through the front of the house
so that you all know. You know, you don't want
to be asked three times if you drinking sparkling or still.
That's that's out to figure out which which type of
water you want, and we'll make sure that you get
it all night. You know good, I'm gonna make a
reservation as soon as they can get up. We sound
like to crotch of the old men. You know that
(33:24):
that now we're not but we're not. You know we're not.
And I think that the problem is we're raising service
to be unserviced like and inhospitable. It's not hospitable to
interrupt someone, it's just not. I mean, so learn to
be discreet. You just want to have dinner and be
really taken care of. So we both work in a
very interesting industry. UM I'd like to close on this
(33:47):
um qvc hs N. It's really fascinating. People say, well,
why do you want to be on that? Why do
you want to sell in light? Why do you want
I'm like, and I get asked the question. I understand
because when I got asked, I didn't really understand it.
But if our mission as cooks is to reach a
number of people and make things better for them, there's
no better metier or a mouthpiece than this incredible online
(34:10):
channels which very delicreate. It's just amazing the reach of
people in the numbers, the numerics of what it is.
I mean, it makes the viewership of our TV shows
look small comparatively, So for me, it's sort of this
a remarkable way of like I don't have to teach
or do anything that I don't believe in, and so
(34:31):
I'm good with it and I find it, like I
we're very refreshing. I don't find it at all. People say, well,
you sell out and all that stuff, So how how
do you look at it? Because I find it remarkable
how interesting it is. You know, I think if you
really believe in your product, and that's the first step, right,
and whether your products supplied to food or whether your
products or burrito you sell from a food truck, or
(34:51):
whether it's a pot or a pan, or a knife
or a cutting board, if you believe in that product,
and you know, the way we do it certainly is
to try and develop duct that changes things for you
in the kitchen. It either brings you confidence the mission
of our businesses to bring confidence to the kitchen and
happiness to the dinner table, because those two things to
me are very connected. And once you can do that,
(35:13):
whether it's for a product or an inspiration or a
way of using a product, people really are grateful for that.
And you know, I think if you we started this
conversation around why do we do what we do? Because
in restaurants it's so difficult, and I think the true
answer to it is because you want to help someone,
You want to help them have a nice time. You
want to create something really special for them, and it
(35:34):
can be a total stranger. Which is the interesting thing
about chefs. I think they are very nurturing by nature,
and they are very there pleases. You know, we want
to please people, and I think when it comes to product,
I've had such beautiful comments from people are bumped into
the farmer's market that say, oh mate, we never used
to cook fish in my house. We never cooked fish,
(35:55):
and we bought your pants and we saw you cook
salmon on it and it doesn't stick. And now we
do every Friday night. And you think, oh my god,
here's a family that I've never met, of no contact with,
but somehow I've had just a tiny bit of influence
in their life. They're doing something that's better for them,
that tastes more delicious, that creates a nice conversation around
the table, and I think that that is really special.
(36:16):
And you combine that power with online shopping and TV
retail and being able to speak directly to your customers,
you know, and tell them exactly like you should do
it exactly like this, as opposed to a traditional retail
model where you have to create a box and stick
it on a shelf and hope someone gets it. You know,
that's very challenging, but our models exciting made I absolutely
(36:37):
love it. Yeah, and I think that people don't ask
me is it really live or you're just taping, and like, no, no,
it's live. That's the most exciting part of it for
me because the tape stuff, I really don't like reading
teleprompters and all that stuff. I think live is the
way to go. And like you said, we are open source.
We sell instantly to people and we informed people instantly
(36:59):
so they can make a decision instantly. And that has repercussions.
I mean it's you can go on a QBC, RHR
sent them by a lot of stuff you don't need,
but there's a lot of stuff there that is really
very helpful. And I know about you. But the first
time I did it, it was I was a complete mess.
Because I've done Sharp for twelve years, I've done Iron Chef.
I'm like, yeah, I know, I got this, I got this.
(37:20):
It was nothing. It was like, oh my god, this
is I got dizzy. Trying to like follow the guy near,
follow this camera, that camera. It was like, isn't it
to describe me? The first time you did it and
what happened it was really challenging because you're so used
to it being all about the food, you know, and
you you want the cameraman to see the food, and
you want to make the food really beautiful and make
sure it's taste really great. But of course your purpose
(37:42):
have been on for me h sent and for QVC.
The purpose of it is to show them the products.
So you want them to see the product, and you're like,
the food is not that important, Yes, the process is important,
and understanding that if you cook steaks in this pan
it's not gonna stick, or if you use this cutting boarder,
this is gonna happen. But and so it makes you well,
(38:04):
the crazy thing is your brain is super active, right,
and you're thinking so many things, but you've got to
keep talking and that's you know, that's the challenging bit. Unfortunately,
I think that we're so good at what we do
is that the host will then let you, let you
go and then and it's then it's your show. They're like, oh,
I get a break here, you know, with some people
(38:25):
that are not very good, they have to keep doing it.
I gotta break. Curtis knows what he's doing. Let him
just sell. He's great, and they're looking at cards for
the next sale, and they don't realize that You're, like,
it's your show. I find that happens, and maybe that's
a good thing that we're getting good enough so that
people let us talk. But it's so true. It's a
very very difficult skill that I think I'm getting better at.
But I'll tell you it's it's a while ride. But
(38:45):
I just want to thank you for sharing your time,
and you have an incredible story and you're a great
guy and a great gentleman. Thank you so much, Jeffrey,
Thank you so much for having me made. It was
really nice spending some time with you. Thanks very much
for listening to Four Courses with Jeffreys Carrean, a production
of I Heart Radio and Corner Table Entertainment. Four Courses
is created by Jeffrey Zcarrion, Margaret Secarrion, Jared Keller, and
(39:09):
Tara Helper. Our executive producer is Christopher Hesiotis. Four Courses
is produced by Jonathan Haws Dressler. Our research is conducted
by Jesselyn Shields. Our talent booking is by Pamela Bauer
at Dogtown Talent. This episode was edited and written by
Priya Mahadevan and mixed by Joe Tistle. Special thanks to
(39:30):
Katie Fellman for help as recording engineered. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
My name is Jeffrey Z. Carrion, and you're listening to
four Courses with Jeffrey Z. Carrion from my Heart Radio
and four Courses I'll be taking you along for the
ride while I talked with the top talent of our time.
In each conversation, I focused on four different areas of
my guest life and career. And during those four courses,
I'm gonna dig deep in and cover new insights and
inspirations that we can all use to fuel ourselves to
(00:26):
push forward. My guest for this episode is an Australian celebrity,
chef and author. He got his start in London but
now owns two restaurants in Beverly Hills and after hosting
a whole show about it, he's great at surfing. Without
further delay, let's get into my conversation with Curtis Stone. Curtis,
thank you so much for joining me. It's absolute pleasure.
(00:50):
For our first course, I wanted to ask Curtis about
his childhood in Melbourne, Australia and the foods and flavors
that shaped his palette. Not everyone gets to grow up
eating excellent homecook food, but Curtis counts himself among the
lucky few, and it cheaped his colinary outlook for the
rest of his life. It's so interesting because I try
and recreate these smells for my family because they're so
(01:11):
strong to me, those memories. And you know, whether it
was coming home from school and opening the door, and
the second you'd open the door, you wouldn't be thinking
about what was for dinner, but you'd smell something, and
for me, it was a roast chicken. My mom always
would do a roast chicken, and she was a gardener,
and she'd have different vegetables or onions roasted in the
oven with a chicken, and I'd sort of i'd smell.
I'd think, oh, she's done the roast chicken, you know,
(01:32):
and then I'd run to the kitchen to go and
look in the oven because not only is that roast
chicken delicious and smells wonderful, but it was also there's
something special about a roast chicken going in the middle
of the table and her stand in their carving it
and dishing it out. You know. Then there was also
she was a great baker, so whether it was cookies
in the oven or a cake, that sweet smell, that
(01:53):
sort of permeates the house that would normally happened on
a weekend, of course, and I'd smell that and I'd
be like, oh yes, and I was greed. My mom
still says, You've always been greedy. You always will beat
so the day you die, And she's right. I'm always
the one that wants the first cookie out. I always
want the bolder lak, you know, the beats of of
just always. I've always been obsessed with how things are
(02:15):
gonna taste. And has it left me yet? There is
something about chicken fat and if any onions are around
that caramelization, it emits this potent odor of almost burnt
sugar and wood somehow marriage and it's just so delicious
and I can smell it. So that's sweet chicken onion thing.
(02:37):
And and with the with the baking, that is really intoxicating.
So so did you so I baked? My mom? I
went always to the sweet, because of course it's good.
Did you go more to a pie our savory? You know,
when you're developing recipes with your mother and your paternal
grandmother's and maternal grandmas, did you go to the baking
(02:57):
side or to go to the sort of savories I
started with the bacon for sure. Yeah. My Granny Maude,
who I named my first restaurant after, she used to
She was from the North of England originally and then
she moved emigrated to Australia, but she used to make
this sugary fudge which I've done a bit of research
on it. I think it's actually a Scottish thing that
might have migrated down into the North of England. But
(03:18):
it's a thick sugary has like little like Graham crackers
kind of broken up through it, and whew, is it good.
I mean, you know, I'm sure if you ate it
as an adult, you'd be like, wow, it's extremely sweet,
you know, But as a there's a five or six
year old, it just tasted so unbelievable. So I started there,
and I think the first recipe I ever laid claim
to was probably stolen out of my mom's Woman's Weekly cookbooks.
(03:41):
And I took like a caramel slice base out of
one recipe, and I took a caramel slice topping out
of another, which is the equivalent of like a lemon
bar or caramel bar. I made it and I said
it was mine, and you know, I thought that you know,
before I understood what plagiarism was. And you know, of
course I said, this is my Mike, our mal bar,
and everybody thought it was pretty delicious. And it was
(04:03):
because I had created it that it was what I
laid my hat on. Back at the tender age of
six or seven. I used to have it at any
of the restaurants. Now, you know what, We've played around
with it as a little Minia day and sort of
just serving a little piece of it at the end
of the evening. And it's a it's a lovely story
to tell, but we've never had an outlet that we
could sell them in a traditional form. So it sounds
(04:24):
to me like, okay, so you're in Australia in Melbourne,
so this is seventies, yes am I right? Okay, So
what's happening in the food scene in Australia in the
seventies and what were they gravitating Italian Asian? Because I
always found it a lot of Asian Italian when I
travel there. I really think they've married Italian and Asian
better than any country I've been to. Yeah, they really have.
(04:47):
There's a restaurant there called Tonka and he's a very
interesting guy. His mom is and I might get this backwards,
but I think his mom's Italian and his dad's Indian.
So he cooks this Indian food but with like an
Italian attitude. And it's like, when I say it to you,
you're like, what that sounds weird, But when you eat
his food, you're just like, oh, my goodness, I totally
(05:07):
understand your background through your food. And I think growing
up in the in the early eighties, the restaurant scene
was still very European. We had Italian influence, but you know,
it was still the better restaurants were just fancy. I
don't know that they were any good, but they were
just fancy, you know, And that was probably laying in
the French cuisine. And I think when I first started
(05:27):
cooking as an apprentice in Australia, all of the executive
chefs and head chefs of restaurants where either French or
Austrian or German or you know, a few Italians. But
it was very much the opinion that if you wanted
to be any good, Australia didn't have any good food,
and as a chef, you would have to go to
Europe to train over there. And that changed really drastically
sort of, you know, later on in my apprenticeship and
(05:49):
later in my twenties, Australia really did start having some
wonderful food. But I think that theory paid off because
all these young Aussy kids that were cooks went to
Europe and learned European cuisine and then came back and
started adapting what they learned to the Aussie ingredient, because
we have a really interesting mix of native ingredients and
different ingredients than you find anywhere in the world. And
(06:10):
I think the food scene in Australia now is is
very vibrant, and of course the Asian immigration really came
on much stronger as the years went on, and we
have a lot of Vietnamese cooks and Chinese cooks and
incredible knowledge in kitchens throughout the country, and of course
that's where you learned. Just like in southern California, we
have these young American kids learning all about the Mexican
(06:31):
cuisine because there's great Mexican cooks in their kitchens, and
we sort of did the same with Southeast Asian food.
In our second course, I had to understand Curtis's path
as one of the many kids who left home to
learn how to cook in Europe. But instead of jets
dating off to a culinary hotspot like Paris or rom
Curtis chose to study in London instead, which he says
(06:55):
was all for one man. I read a book called
Right Heat when I was a young apprentice and Marco
per Whites. He was such an inspirational chef to so
many young cooks. And I read this book and it
just sounded mad, you know, sounded absolutely crazy the way
he pushed his team, and um, it sounded like going
to play baseball for the best baseball team in the world,
(07:16):
you know. And I read this and I've never sort
of shied away from the challenge of it all. And
I was like, oh, I'm in I'm going there to
do it. And you know, Naively just packed a bag
and took off for Europe, thinking that he'd welcome me
with open arms. And I didn't even reach out. I
didn't write a letter. I mean back before we were
showed up. I just showed up and bizarrely got a job.
He just let someone go that morning and he had
(07:37):
put an apron on kid and I was standing there
on a pair of jeans and a white T shirt
and that was my first day in a three Michelin
star restaurant. You know, I put an apron on and
and I couldn't quite believe what was happening, but bizarrely,
it was always my plan. So anyway, I spent eight
years working for Marco in London, and you're right, London
wasn't the home of astronomy back then, but Marco was.
(07:58):
You know, he was the youngest guy in the world
to in three Michelin stars and a pretty interesting sort
of a character. So it was cool. As chefs, you
and myself, we all noticed people, the new ones, and
we noticed when they have talent and we're noticing how
to move, it just stands out. It's like they have
a halo around them. They're different and they're when they're good.
What did he notice about you and what did he
(08:19):
comment on what you were doing that he could see
how the corner of his eyes that you know what
you're doing, or his sous chef said, like this kid, Curtis,
he's okay, you know something like that. You don't give
you a compliment. What did he notice right away that
he said, oh, I'm going to push this kid because
he could be really really something. Look, I think it
was just such a high paced environment. I told this
(08:40):
story to a buddy the other day, and I don't
even know if you believe me. But Marco wouldn't let
us in the kitchen until eight o'clock in the morning
because he said, if you can't get your work done
between eight o'clock and when lunch starts, then you're not
good enough to be here. And I couldn't you know.
I tried a couple of days to do my knees
on plast my prep and and failed miserably. And he
would throw people out of his kitchens very very quickly.
(09:00):
You know that people either stayed for a lifetime or
they stayed five minutes and got weeded out really early on.
So I made friends. It was in a building called
the Cafe Royal, which is this beautiful old heritage building.
So I made friends with the janitor on like day two,
and I said, would it be possible to get in
a little earlier, And he goes, well, the restaurant's not open,
but you can certainly get down into the change rooms.
(09:23):
So I started going to work at six and I'd
work for an hour and a half I'd hide my prep,
I'd get changed back into my CVS and I'd go
and get a coffee and I'd walk back in with
everyone else at eight o'clock. And you know, like, I mean,
how scrappy is that? Imagine a kid doing that these things,
and I'd like hide it up the back of the fridge,
(09:44):
but I'd put some you know, some raw ingredients over
the top of it so no one would sort of
see it. And then as the time as I got
the moment, I'd sort of put it out and i'd
bring it back to my my thing. Where did you
start doing this? Oh god, I probably did it for
twelve months my first year in the kitchen. I was
still sneak and getting uh getting in front of that
that is fantastic. Yeah, And you know, I think he
(10:06):
probably saw that. He didn't see that because I would
have got in trouble if he had to see it,
But he probably in different ways saw that scrappiness, use
that desire to be there. And I think that was
the most important thing. It was that I would bet
knowing him in a million years, he knew. We just
didn't say anything because there's no way this kid get
this ready, he found a way how to do it,
or he's pay I used to pay a guy named
(10:27):
says are I swear to God as I'd pay him
twenty five a week, which was half of my paycheck
back then to do all my shalots and my garlic
and my chop chips. He was really good with a
knife because he did probably, I said, would you please?
I could never get ready and shalots take a lot
of time. It's not possible to get shipped done on time.
And you know Thomas Keller does that as well. He
doesn't let you in the kitchen early that believe it
(10:50):
will make you a more focused chef, and I'm sure
it did, right. He wouldn't let us use time as either.
I can remember him seeing somebody had snuck the time
or in and he walked from picked it up and
just threw it. In the show Fond of Water, I
was like, he's a young cock. That's you know, just
spent twenty bucks at a timer that he probably couldn't afford,
you know, so he doesn't overcook something and the chef
(11:11):
throws at the water. So but I mean that was
those days, right, and I thrived in that environment and
a lot of people talk about those days like they're
horrible or they're negative or whatever. To be perfectly honest,
I have really fond memories, and I know they were hard,
and I know that you know, it was a challenge,
and I understand why it's probably also not appropriate in
today's day and age, But personally I got a lot
(11:32):
from it. I really enjoyed it. What was he like
in the kitchen? Like, I know he's intense and he
was crazy, but what was his um What was his
trauma that meet him so good? Because you've got to
have trauma to be that and crazy. What did you
see in him that you were like, Wow? He was
very eccentric and he still is, but he had the
(11:52):
ability to do what most people couldn't, and that was
just push himself to the point where, you know, and
I'm sure that trauma come from. If you spoke to him,
he'd probably say, you know, his childhood had nothing to
do with it, but I think it probably did, you know,
And he had that ability. So because he was doing it,
everyone else just wanted to try and keep up. You know,
it's interesting. I work out in the boxing gym and
(12:14):
when there's a great boxer in that gym. Everybody else
just trains that a little bit harder, and everybody else
wants to just sort of not be the one that's
standing around, skipping around. So it's an interesting thing. And
I think Marco he was very fair. You know, he
has a big reputation for being crazy, and he was,
you know, like because he was just so passionate, and
you know, one one percent less than perfect was terrible
(12:36):
and thrown across the room. But there's something I love
about that. I still do. You know, I'm nowhere near
the artist he was, but I still take my food
extremely seriously and and I really admire people that have
that just focus. For our third course, Curtis and I
(13:04):
talked about his transition into television, which is something he
jumped into way earlier than most chefs. Turns out, his
four A into TV completely changed his career trajectory in
new and exciting ways, just as it was changing our
entire industry. So you have eight years with that, gentleman.
That's that's a that's a long time with one chef.
It really is. It's it's enough to really, I would say,
(13:27):
cement all the things you need to learn about food
and cooking your food that there could be coming from
someone so so amazing in your twenties. I believe you.
We're into this TV. How did this all happen? How
did like the show Surfing the Menu happen? Yeah? Well,
I was running one of Marco's restaurants, so I sort
of started as the most junior person in his kitchen
and ended up And that was kind of Marco right,
(13:48):
like people have moved along, which created opportunities quickly because
he if he had a bad service, two or three
might go and you'd be like, oh okay, I just
became a chef to party and he had trust in
people he'd been with for a long time. So I
was running a restaurant for him. When I was twenty five,
I was the head chef of Coo Artist in London,
so you know, I was there for a couple of
(14:08):
years and we're producing some pretty delicious food and somebody
published a book called London's Finest Chefs um and it
was maybe twenty different chefs and some of their recipes,
and they put me in that book, which I was
you know, I was looking around at the other chefs
thinking of my goodness, some of these guys, are you
know my heroes? And they asked us sort of come
to a book signing and do a TV appearance, a
(14:29):
morning show appearance, and I did that, and then I
got a phone call from the BBC the next day
and said, we'd like you to meet this lady from
Australia who's put together a show idea and we're going
to co commission it with the ABC, which is the
equivalent of the BBC back home. And the show was
Surfing the Menu, So you know, it just it happened
totally accidentally, to be honest with you. You know, I
(14:50):
was just busy working away in my restaurant. That was
my career, and that was all I was focused on.
And I mean there might have been TV chefs around,
but I can't remember them. You know. The show sur
in the Menu was based on the idea of two
Aussies who were living abroad coming back to Australia and
rediscovering Australian food while on a surf trip. So, I mean,
when you get pitched at the age of twenty six,
(15:11):
you're like, ah, you're gonna pay me to surf and
cook my way around in Australia. Sure, wins the plane
lead um, and so that was it. It's sort of
just you know how it goes. If your first show works,
then you do another season, and then another season, and
they want you to do another show, and before you know,
you're write in a cookbook and you know, one thing
sort of just led to another and it kept snowballing.
And here I am in in Brentwood, California. It is stunning.
(15:35):
But you know, you got there. I mean I tell
people like I mean, it took thirty years right for
on TV. In those thirty years before I wasn't like
sending out scripts, you know, I was like working and
it was an accident. But those accidents are fantastic. But
also I always think of like galloping or Met Graham
care one of my idols. I used to watch him.
(15:56):
I think it's remarkable how television has really changed the
paradigm for everybody. When I speak to kids and parents,
it's the children that are teaching the parents how to cook.
Now because of the Internet and the experiences of the
kids are really into it. The parents never cooked, they
were too busy working because of the generational thing. And
now the paradigm has changed. So these kids with the internet,
(16:19):
click on how to cook a steak, and they go
on this four thousand videos how to cook a steak.
If you're fifty fifty and you get it wrong, it's
still going to be pretty good. You're absolutely we didn't
have that. We didn't have that, we had to actually
cook a thousand steaks. I remember back when I started,
chefs were very protective around their recipes. I mean, now
it's cool to publish them and put them on the
internet and share them with everyone. I remember having to
(16:42):
like peek in my I worked in the pastry section
for a while and Sierry was this like incredible pastry
shift and and I just needed the recipe. Never give
it to me to always leave ingredients out or did
do the last step. And I was like, oh my god,
it would be so much easier if I had the recipe.
And I can remember peeking in these recipes but with
the fear that if he walks back in here, I'm dead,
you know. And and back before I had a phone
(17:03):
that could take a photograph, where you could just snap
a photo of you're like scribing it out as quick
as you could. You know, you remember those days where
it was recipes weren't just free for everyone, and now
they are, and the informations all there, and it's a
it's a wonderful time for these kids to be growing
up and cooking because they really have so much information.
I mean, it's what you do with that information, of course,
(17:23):
but the information is certainly there. So that's a great thing.
So you're you're having a blast surfing. You actually surf,
thoughs your surfer well, I pretended I was a bit
I'm not gonna lie. I told them they said, do
you surf? And I said absolutely, I said, come on,
all OSSI surf. But deep down I was like, you know,
I do a pretty good impersonation of a man holding
onto a plank all drowning. But I could surf, but
(17:44):
not well, you know, certainly not well enough to host
a show called Surfing the Menu. But the guy that
I was paired up with, Ben O'Donoghue, and we've never met,
he was also an azzi. Ben was this, you know,
super talented guy, very Italian and rusty cooking where mine
was a bit more you know, French and gastronomic, I guess.
But he was just a master with a surfboard. So
(18:05):
he sort of taught me how to surf along the journey.
And my joke is, and I taught him how to
clean up after himself in the kitchen, but I don't
think I succeeded at that because he's he's one of
those beautiful, messy cooks where he destroys the kitchen but
everything tastes unbelievable. How many seasons of surfing the Manager
you do? And when did you get the call to
come into the United States? We did three seasons and
(18:25):
it was one of those kind of shows where it
was a travelog and so many people would watch it overseas,
so they sold it to a variety of different territories
and and then that sort of opened some doors, I
guess or Network sort of seen it from abroad. And
I've got a phone call about a show called Take
Home Chef, which I thought was a ludicrous idea. You
know that I was back in Australia actually filming surfing
(18:47):
the menu at the time, and I got a call
from a guy saying, here's the concept of the show.
We want you to go into a grocery store. This
is you know, nearly twenty years ago, when I looked
a lot cuter than Miss Jeffrey. But he said, we
want you to go into a grocery store, or we
want you to approach a really cute young lady and
we want you to ask her if she would welcome
you into her home to cook her dinner. And I'm like, okay.
(19:09):
And then when you get back and you spend the day,
if she's married or not she has a boyfriend. When
you get back and you spend the day cookie with
her and her husband comes home, we'll all shout surprise,
and that will be the joke, you know, and then
you'll obviously serve them. And then he takes out a shotgun,
like very very ridiculous. But I was having my thirtieth
(19:32):
birthday in Las Vegas. I've never been to America before,
but I had half of my maids, of course with
British at that time, because I was living in England,
and half of them are still azzy. So I said,
let's meet in the middle and we'll do a party
in Vegas, and we planned it, but I hadn't booked
my travel and when this guy rang me about this show,
I thought to myself, you know what, I could get
him to fly me over so then I'm sure they'll
fly me business class. So I came over for a
(19:53):
free flight and that was the thing that changed my life.
You are bribing the janity to do music, getting people
to fly you over. You're very wily, scrappy, scrappy, scrappy
and wiley. I love it. So you said, yes, where
was it filmed? Because there's two that's right. Yeah, we
shot in Los Angeles and we shot it in Pasadena
(20:15):
in a gala. Yeah, And we shot it and then
I went to Vegas. I met my buddies. We had
a great time, and I went back to London and
then I got this this email through saying that they
picked up sixty episodes. And in my wildest dreams, if
they did pick it up, maybe we do ten or fifteen,
you know, but they picked up sixty right off the bat.
(20:37):
They don't do that anymore. And I looked at it
and I was like trying to figure out the dates,
and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna be there
for six months. So, you know, I had a girlfriend,
I had an apartment, I had a life in London,
a job, and suddenly I had to like change all
that because I was getting on a plane to Los Angeles,
and yeah it was. It was a real life changer.
(20:57):
But what a fabulous opportunity. So you cancel the apartment
and you canceled your job. Did you cancel the girlfriend too? Well?
We kept it going for a while, but I think
when she realized and then they picked up season two,
which was another sixty Yeah, the things things are. Things
fell away. The long distance relationship didn't work out. It didn't.
(21:17):
So you're this is two thousand two. When did you
meet your waife too? I should know that straight off
on the top of my head, shouldn't I. I wasn't
here for very long. We've got a ten year old,
so we've been together for probably twelve years. So yeah,
I was probably only here for a couple of years
when we met. Wow, So that decided right there. That's it.
I'm in I'm in Los Angeles. Yeah, well, how's our
lad treating you? Look how it has been a funny,
(21:39):
funny place the last couple of years. I've had a
bizarre relationship with Los Angeles because I sort of I
thought it was a bit of a weird city when
I first got here, and I didn't have that like
instant a love affair with it, but I did with
my wife and that's what sort of kept me here.
And it's a bit of a roller coaster of a city.
You know, you love it, you hate it, you find
it challenging. But of course now time I've been here
(22:00):
nearly fifteen years and the sun's aways shining and there's
some really nice parts to it. And there's probably some
things that you miss a little bit after living in
big cities in different parts of the world when you
come to l A. Because it's not the cultural mecca
that some other cities are. You're up in New York
and that's it's a very different type of city. But
it's fun. I like living here. So did you want
(22:20):
to do a restaurant? Because it really you're coming about
this from a TV side. It's not like it's not
like you came in open a restaurant. So how did
how did you go from this world of sixty episodes
once a week too, like you're now working very deeply,
like we are in the same company called HSN. How
did that happen? And then you you spawned a restaurant?
(22:43):
So it's sort of backwards, right, Yeah, most people have
the restaurants and then they go then they start doing TV.
It really was, and I think there's parts of that
that we're really challenging and parts of it that were
fabulous as well, because you know, when I was working
in television and I came up with the idea for
my product line back when I was working in people's homes,
and I thought to myself, I'd only ever worked in
(23:04):
professional kitchens and cooked that way, and now I'm cooking
in people's homes, and I thought, no, wonder they all
say they can't cook, that their equipment is terrible. It's
you know, they have these little cutting boards and blunt
knives and crap cookwere and no wonder it doesn't work,
you know one, No wonder people find it such a chore.
And and that sort of got me thinking, you know
what if we could create products that helped you along
(23:24):
your journey when you cook. And and so I went
on that journey of doing products and television and books,
and and then we had our first son, Hudson, and
I can remember being in a park with him, and
I was sitting there thinking about my dad and thinking
about all the things I thought about him as a
man and as a role model and what his work
ethic was like. And and I was looking at my
(23:46):
son while I was having these thoughts, because he was
probably only eighteen months or whatever, and then I thought,
I wonder what this kid's going to think of me,
you know, one day I'll be the dad. And it
was there in that park that I thought to myself,
he might just think I got lucky, you know, like
he might just think that I had a chance meeting
or whatever. And because I was never precious about the
(24:07):
cooking side of it, I knew I could cook. Like
you said, I worked for eight years with one of
the best chefs in the world, and I wasn't I
didn't have anything to prove to anyone because I knew
I could cook. But I also didn't have a restaurant,
you know, And I thought, I don't know. There was
something in me that just sort of wanted to create
a legacy for my kids that they saw their dad
get up and go to work and deal with hardship
(24:28):
and battle through things. And then of course I wanted
to sort of have that creative outlet again and be
able to cook, because cooking for someone in a home
or whatever, it's just a very different muscle, you know,
and I like to exercise both those muscles because when
you do get into a restaurant with all the technology,
all the incredible equipment, and the best quality ingredients and
all the rest of it, hopefully you can create something
(24:50):
really magical. You know. For our fourth and final course,
I got to ask Curtis about his two restaurants, Gwen
and Mod, which are both named after his grandmother's. We
talked about the pleasures and pain points of running your
(25:12):
own kitchens and what it means to deliver high quality
hospitality for your guests. I mean, you have two incredible restaurants,
uh Gwenn and Mod. Are they back open and everything's
well if you slit open and gotten things correct again? Yeah,
I feel like we were one of those UM teams
that really just tried to smuggle and juggle through the pandemic.
(25:32):
You know. We did pop ups, we changed concepts, we
did take out that we've never done before. We tried
to stay really active because you know, restaurants to me
are really fragile little ecosystems, and you've got to try
and keep that team. You've got to protect it. So yeah,
we fought to sort of keep them all together. I
feel like we went to hell and back through the pandemic,
but we're back open. Gwen's busier than it's ever been.
(25:55):
You know, we're full every night, which is uh, you
know in restaurant world, you sort of look up and
say a little prayer when it feels like that. And Maude,
we're just sort of putting the final pieces together and
will be open early next year. So there's nothing like
the feeling of walking into a restaurant when there's a
fully blown service in play. And I don't know, I've
I've always lived for it. I love it. Yeah, and
(26:16):
you see it. That's me. This is you know, you
look around like this, I'm responsible for this. The love
affair of opening restaurants. It's almost psychotic. It's almost like
there's a drug. Yeah, it's not possible to be vaccinated
against the restaurant business, you know what I mean. It's
like it's so true. It's like you watch people do
these extreme sports Jeffrey, like marathons or triathlons or you know,
(26:41):
it's they're they're really intense things, and you think, why
would anyone do that when you could go to an
airG and just in gym and get the same experience there,
and you know, we could do other businesses as well.
It's not like people that run restaurants don't have the
smarts to be in other businesses. But there's something that
drags you in. And I'm not exactly sure what it is,
that nurturing feeling that you get when you're looking at
you guts, but yeah, there is something intangible that that
(27:03):
is really lovely about them. Well you did with Modern Uh.
I've only been there once, and everything in that restaurant.
You just feel it that it's so authentic and it's
so beautiful and it's such a thoughtful way to serve people.
And I love that it's a menu, but it's not
like so long that you have to like take off
(27:24):
a week to go. Both on the financial side of
it and like who has four hours anymore to sit
and just do that. It's just not a it's not
a return to normal. It's not doing that. We might
have a bit more free time because we want to
work remotely, but I think there's a certain time in
dining that I find the magic number. It's probably ninety
(27:45):
minutes where you can really appreciate that the food it's yummy,
it has a fun element to it, and the chef
can create something that's memorable and you'll come back again.
You don't go back for a three hour experiences once
a week. It becomes something that is such a like
a church versus a restaurant. And you did not open
a church, which is very easy to do when it's
(28:07):
smile like martyrs. You know, So what were you thinking
when you opened it? Well? Look, I think that the
really interesting thing that happened was I went from being
a cook, and as you know, young cooks just first
of all, we work every Friday and Saturday night and
we don't have the money to be able to go
and eat in these extravagant restaurants. Well, because I was
over here doing television, I wasn't working on weekends, and
(28:28):
I did have a bit more cash than the most
young cooks have, so I was able to go and
dine in great restaurants. And I think that really changed
it for me because I see so many chefs cooking
from a chef's perspective as opposed to from a diner's perspective,
and I was lucky enough that I could kind of
do both. And I what I said from the start
was I wanted to be fine dining, I really do.
(28:49):
I want it to be detailed, and I wanted to
be wonderful, but I don't want all the nonsense that
comes with that. I want to find dining without the fluff,
is what we always say at More, because we wanted
to be comfortable. They wanted to be even casual in
a way, but still refined and allegant and beautiful and
served on a beautiful plate, and really some detail put
into the presentation. My my favorite ever line from one
(29:12):
of our staff. He was our familiar, and he walked
over and he dropped the plate and he said, for
your next course, there's more food, and then he walked away.
And you know that big presentation of all chefs done
this to the duck and this and that, and it's like,
it's just food. It's just food. Put it down, I
thank you, you know. And the problem is they asked
the dreaded question at the table when you forks in
(29:34):
your mouth, how is everything going so far? And you
feel like saying, would you just cough? I'm trying to eat.
Can you give us some time alone? And it's kind
of what I think it's like, why do you keep
interrupting people and asking for compliments? I totally agree, stop it.
And when my managers, I had to school them and
never ever ask anyone how everything is. If they want
(29:55):
to tell you something, they will there. It's okay to
this excuse me. If they call you over, that's yeah,
it's okay. Believe me. If you ask them how everything is,
they're gonna lie to you. They want you gone, they
want you away, they want to continue the conversation you
just interrupted, and then they're gonna go home and they're
gonna give you greeting and you're gonna wait, what happened?
Everybody said it was great. It's because they're not telling
(30:16):
you the truth. You're so right, you know. I don't
do that lap of honor. You know. You see chefs
going from table on the table, and I say to
myself and that you have guests that want to see
you in your restaurant, right, And I love that, But
to me, it's so much more meaningful if I either
walk out of the kitchen and drop some food on
their table, or if they see me behind the stove.
That's what you chef should be doing. And I've had
(30:38):
people come into my business. Even guests say, you didn't
even come out to the table, or chef, why don't
you go to each table and check in with each
each table? And I'm like, because I wanted to have
a wonderful time, and I don't want to go over
there and insist on a compliment, because that's exactly what
they'll give you. You know, I wanted to be genuine
and if they want me to come over, of course,
(30:59):
super gracious to do it, and would love to love
to go over. But it's funny, we've got a very
similar idea there. And then there's some restaurants they just
every single course, every person twice. I mean, it's like you,
we just want to And sometimes I tell the matrety,
I'm like, I'm having dinner here and I love it here,
but please don't interrupt us. Service doesn't mean you interrupt people, no, no, no, no,
(31:19):
It means the glass is empty, take it away, quietly,
pour another one. If there's something right, if they're not
eating the food, you're allowed to go over and say,
may it gets you something else quietly to them. But
if the plate's clear, you don't ask them how it was.
Why would you do that or ask them if they're done.
It's clearly done. There's nothing there come up. Don't ask
someone if they're done. You're gonna make them feel like
(31:39):
they're a glutton. It's it's all these things that like
it's not fun to eat in restaurants anymore because just
people are like there's a corporate woke mentality of how
are you supposed to approach a table? Have you dined
with us before? Is there any allergies at the table?
Believe me, if there are allergies at the table, they
would have told you when they made the reservation online. Yeah,
my name is Barry. I'm going to be a server.
(32:01):
I feel like saying, oh you are. I thought you
were going to do a performance for us. Of course,
it's so amazing, and I'm so glad that you. We
have that frame of reference in It doesn't mean you
don't neglect the customer. When I did this to my restaurants,
my waiters their chips and they thank me. Oh my god.
We don't have to go interrupt people. We don't like
(32:21):
to do it. I don't like to interrupt it. They're
having a conversation and how are we doing so far? Right?
I've been ask that question, by the way, before I've
cut into my steak, you know, and I looked and
I'm like, it's great, you know, like you're joking you.
It's such an instancere question. And that's what hospitality is.
It needs to be sincere, and you need to genuinely
(32:43):
want to create a wonderful time. And by the way,
sometimes that's different table to table. You've got to read
the play a little bit. If if your customers come
in and you guess, say, look, we're from out of
town and we just went to the theater and they
want to ask that Hamilton's they want to know, and
it's right the table, right next to them. They don't
want any conversation. You've got to be able to read that,
(33:04):
and you've got to be able to pass that communication
on through the back through the front of the house
so that you all know. You know, you don't want
to be asked three times if you drinking sparkling or still.
That's that's out to figure out which which type of
water you want, and we'll make sure that you get
it all night. You know good, I'm gonna make a
reservation as soon as they can get up. We sound
like to crotch of the old men. You know that
(33:24):
that now we're not but we're not. You know we're not.
And I think that the problem is we're raising service
to be unserviced like and inhospitable. It's not hospitable to
interrupt someone, it's just not. I mean, so learn to
be discreet. You just want to have dinner and be
really taken care of. So we both work in a
very interesting industry. UM I'd like to close on this
(33:47):
um qvc hs N. It's really fascinating. People say, well,
why do you want to be on that? Why do
you want to sell in light? Why do you want
I'm like, and I get asked the question. I understand
because when I got asked, I didn't really understand it.
But if our mission as cooks is to reach a
number of people and make things better for them, there's
no better metier or a mouthpiece than this incredible online
(34:10):
channels which very delicreate. It's just amazing the reach of
people in the numbers, the numerics of what it is.
I mean, it makes the viewership of our TV shows
look small comparatively, So for me, it's sort of this
a remarkable way of like I don't have to teach
or do anything that I don't believe in, and so
(34:31):
I'm good with it and I find it, like I
we're very refreshing. I don't find it at all. People say, well,
you sell out and all that stuff, So how how
do you look at it? Because I find it remarkable
how interesting it is. You know, I think if you
really believe in your product, and that's the first step, right,
and whether your products supplied to food or whether your
products or burrito you sell from a food truck, or
(34:51):
whether it's a pot or a pan, or a knife
or a cutting board, if you believe in that product,
and you know, the way we do it certainly is
to try and develop duct that changes things for you
in the kitchen. It either brings you confidence the mission
of our businesses to bring confidence to the kitchen and
happiness to the dinner table, because those two things to
me are very connected. And once you can do that,
(35:13):
whether it's for a product or an inspiration or a
way of using a product, people really are grateful for that.
And you know, I think if you we started this
conversation around why do we do what we do? Because
in restaurants it's so difficult, and I think the true
answer to it is because you want to help someone,
You want to help them have a nice time. You
want to create something really special for them, and it
(35:34):
can be a total stranger. Which is the interesting thing
about chefs. I think they are very nurturing by nature,
and they are very there pleases. You know, we want
to please people, and I think when it comes to product,
I've had such beautiful comments from people are bumped into
the farmer's market that say, oh mate, we never used
to cook fish in my house. We never cooked fish,
(35:55):
and we bought your pants and we saw you cook
salmon on it and it doesn't stick. And now we
do every Friday night. And you think, oh my god,
here's a family that I've never met, of no contact with,
but somehow I've had just a tiny bit of influence
in their life. They're doing something that's better for them,
that tastes more delicious, that creates a nice conversation around
the table, and I think that that is really special.
(36:16):
And you combine that power with online shopping and TV
retail and being able to speak directly to your customers,
you know, and tell them exactly like you should do
it exactly like this, as opposed to a traditional retail
model where you have to create a box and stick
it on a shelf and hope someone gets it. You know,
that's very challenging, but our models exciting made I absolutely
(36:37):
love it. Yeah, and I think that people don't ask
me is it really live or you're just taping, and like, no, no,
it's live. That's the most exciting part of it for
me because the tape stuff, I really don't like reading
teleprompters and all that stuff. I think live is the
way to go. And like you said, we are open source.
We sell instantly to people and we informed people instantly
(36:59):
so they can make a decision instantly. And that has repercussions.
I mean it's you can go on a QBC, RHR
sent them by a lot of stuff you don't need,
but there's a lot of stuff there that is really
very helpful. And I know about you. But the first
time I did it, it was I was a complete mess.
Because I've done Sharp for twelve years, I've done Iron Chef.
I'm like, yeah, I know, I got this, I got this.
(37:20):
It was nothing. It was like, oh my god, this
is I got dizzy. Trying to like follow the guy near,
follow this camera, that camera. It was like, isn't it
to describe me? The first time you did it and
what happened it was really challenging because you're so used
to it being all about the food, you know, and
you you want the cameraman to see the food, and
you want to make the food really beautiful and make
sure it's taste really great. But of course your purpose
(37:42):
have been on for me h sent and for QVC.
The purpose of it is to show them the products.
So you want them to see the product, and you're like,
the food is not that important, Yes, the process is important,
and understanding that if you cook steaks in this pan
it's not gonna stick, or if you use this cutting boarder,
this is gonna happen. But and so it makes you well,
(38:04):
the crazy thing is your brain is super active, right,
and you're thinking so many things, but you've got to
keep talking and that's you know, that's the challenging bit. Unfortunately,
I think that we're so good at what we do
is that the host will then let you, let you
go and then and it's then it's your show. They're like, oh,
I get a break here, you know, with some people
(38:25):
that are not very good, they have to keep doing it.
I gotta break. Curtis knows what he's doing. Let him
just sell. He's great, and they're looking at cards for
the next sale, and they don't realize that You're, like,
it's your show. I find that happens, and maybe that's
a good thing that we're getting good enough so that
people let us talk. But it's so true. It's a
very very difficult skill that I think I'm getting better at.
But I'll tell you it's it's a while ride. But
(38:45):
I just want to thank you for sharing your time,
and you have an incredible story and you're a great
guy and a great gentleman. Thank you so much, Jeffrey,
Thank you so much for having me made. It was
really nice spending some time with you. Thanks very much
for listening to Four Courses with Jeffreys Carrean, a production
of I Heart Radio and Corner Table Entertainment. Four Courses
is created by Jeffrey Zcarrion, Margaret Secarrion, Jared Keller, and
(39:09):
Tara Helper. Our executive producer is Christopher Hesiotis. Four Courses
is produced by Jonathan Haws Dressler. Our research is conducted
by Jesselyn Shields. Our talent booking is by Pamela Bauer
at Dogtown Talent. This episode was edited and written by
Priya Mahadevan and mixed by Joe Tistle. Special thanks to
(39:30):
Katie Fellman for help as recording engineered. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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