July 23, 2021 • 16 mins
This episode of “Summer Series: From The Beach” was recorded poolside at the W Hotel South Beach on a breezy Miami day in February of 2020.
Since then, Bobby Flay has opened a new restaurant in Las Vegas called Amalfi. Follow along for updates here: https://www.instagram.com/amalfilasvegas
For more updates on “Four Courses with Geoffrey Zakarian”, follow Geoffrey on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/geoffreyzakarian
“Four Courses with Geoffrey Zakarian” is a production of iHeartRadio and Corner Table Entertainment.
Four Courses is created by Geoffrey Zakarian, Margaret Zakarian, Jaret Keller, and Tara Halper. Our executive producer is Christopher Hassiotis. Four Courses is produced by Jonathan Hawes-Dressler. Our research is conducted by Jesslyn Shields.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, listeners of Four Courses with Jeffrey Z. Carrion. It's
your host, Jeffrey. I'm here today to share a very
special announcement. One thing you may know about me from
social media is that I love meeting my friends from
the food world at events around the country, and I've
even made it an annual ritual to interview many of
them at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami.
So for the rest of this summer, we will be
(00:23):
bringing you our Summer Series from the Beach. Eas Friday
will be publishing short and intimate conversations that I've had
with some of the top talent in the food world.
And even beyond, the conversations you'll here for the next
six weeks were recorded pool side at the w Hotel
and South Beach as my friends and I enjoyed great
cigars and magnums of rose as we discussed our past,
(00:44):
present and future. Without further delay, please enjoy Summer Series
from the Beach with Chef Bobby Flay. But I'll tell
you something that happened there. So every night I always
felt like I was literally drowned and I was sweating
in the worst way because I was just trying to
keep up in the restaurant was busy, and this guy
(01:07):
walks in. He's like, is this the chef? And the
owner says, yeah, this is Bobby Flay. He looked at
me and he goes, are you okay? And I was like, yeah.
It was Jonathan Waxman. He had just open Jams And
then I went to work for Jonathan for three years
after that. So you quit this job and went to Jonathan.
I went to work for Jonathan. I threw away the
title and the better than average salary and I went
(01:30):
to learn how to cook. Was he was the first
person to teach me about good food. It was a
different world I didn't know existed. I didn't wow. Jonathan
Waxman was on I think it was on the Upper
east Side in the seventies, Jams seven. N Who else
was working there with you? Oh my god? I mean honestly,
I worked at Jams and Buds and HuLos, which was
a French biech show. I worked in all the restaurants.
(01:51):
Every single cook there, Jeffrey was like unbelievable. I mean,
any one of those people could have run their own restaurants. Everybody, everybody,
Jonathan was a West Coast chef and he just come
to New York time. Was the first person to bring
California ingredients in cuisine, and that's where I learned all
about the Southwestern ingredients. The first time I saw a
blue corn that wasn't in a bag and all the
(02:12):
fresh and dried chilies. That's how I got intoxicated to
open Mason Rill. I mean, we're talking probably fifteen years
way ahead of its time. I mean, you're talking about
the eighties, mid eighties, mid eighties. So Jonathan really seems
to me, like for me, it's not just for you.
For a lot of people, he was the like kickstarter
for a lot of incredible careers. Yeah, and and Jonathan
(02:32):
has the same attitude today that he had then, which
was like he was like very laid back. It's hard
to believe, no, No, seriously, like really laid back. And
he was just like, um, so let's let's take like
some like acacia honey and put some like lime in
it and make a dressing and then put some rugle
(02:53):
on top of the chicken. All right, Bobby, all right,
that's what we're gonna do. Like that's literally how he
creates dishes, you know, it's insane, but he does it
the same way today. I don't think he's ever gonna
have a heart attack at all. He's just gonna fall
asleep on day and that's gonna be the end of him.
It's the South severid a diet to South Severda dinet, right.
So that was like an incredible turning point for you.
And then tell me about Miracle Grill and how that
(03:15):
sort of happened and when when did that happen? Because
Miracle Grill to me, was like where you were sort
of discovered even though you've been working your your butt off.
Miracle Grill was a restaurant in the East Village when
the East Village was not a safe place to not
at all, I mean. And I had really started to
discover that I love Southwestern ingredients based on working for Jonathan.
(03:36):
And I was working as a line cook just to
make a living in some kind of like cheesy restaurant.
And the person on the line next to me said
she was opening a restaurant, so I just thought she
was a chef, and it turned out she really wanted
to needed a chef, and she wanted to open a
Mexican restaurant, and I said, well, I'd like to be considerate,
but I'm not cooking Mexican food. I'm gonna I'm gonna
cook something called Southwestern. And she's like, what do you
mean and I said, well, it's a contemporary version of
(03:59):
what xkan ingredients. This was eight that's that's incredible. I mean,
that's and anyway, long story short, she said, we're hiring
a seush chef. We've already hired a chef. The chef
was a woman from Arcadia who had worked at Arcadia
and she was gonna hire her and I said, well,
let me cook for you. So I cooked her basically
food that I learned cooking at Buds, which was Johnathan
(04:21):
southwestern restaurant that I cooked at. And they were like,
we'd like to offer you the sus chef job. I said, no,
I don't want it. They're like, what do you mean.
I was like, I want to be the chef somewhere
and they're like, okay, well we don't have that job.
Two days later they called me they're like, all right,
we want to offer the chef job. So that was
the beginning of Miracle Grill and I was the chef
there for three years. Three years and when did you
get there? Who walked in? Jerry Krashmer walked into Bar
(04:42):
and Grill and came in and ate dinner and on
the way out because Miracle Grill just had like a
little like window, like a little diner window, you know,
that was the kitchen. It was three of us did everything.
And he looked at me and he said how old
are you? And I was like, I'm twenty two, twenty
three at the time. He's like your twenty three. I said, yeah.
He goes, you're just a baby and walks out after
(05:04):
you're eating, didn't say it was great, nothing, And then
like three days later, I get a phone called, you know,
somebody wants to talk to you about opening your restaurant
at twenty three. What kind of deal did you say?
And how did you know what a non disturbance? How
did you know what all the how did you know
what kind of deal the cut for yourself? Because I'm
(05:24):
still trying to learn that. Well. My dad, my dad
has always been really good in business and always has
always like you know, sort of kept me in line
in terms of like his his like motto is like,
you know, just do the right thing. You know what
that means just do what you're supposed to do. Don't
try to make every nickel, you know, the whole. That's
his very conservative flat which has been really an important
part of my life, and it just it makes you
(05:46):
stay the course in the in the right way. And
Jerry was really excellent to me because he's like, look,
here's the way it's gonna work. I'll never forget this.
He said, we're doing this together. I'm gonna take care
of the financing. I'm going to sign the bank loan.
You're going to create the menu. We're gonna design the
restaurant together, and I'm going to get you the ink.
That's what he said, the ink. Yeah, he kept his word.
(06:08):
He kept his word, and you kept your word exactly.
And we we got along because we were both total
native New Yorkers. And uh. He said, I'm gonna give
you a salary, and I'm gonna give you five percent
of the restaurant to start, five percent to start, and
then i'm gonna give you five percent over the next
three or four years until you get to twenty. But
you work into it. You don't have to put up
a penny, and you'll you'll make an Okay, living salary wise,
(06:31):
so you can like live like a human being, but
you're gonna have to work to make your make your living.
Jerry has been in It was an amazing mentor to me.
Is he still a partner of yours? Yes? He still
is a partner of mine in Mason Villa in Las Vegas. Yes,
and everything else. You are you and Lawrence your other
partner me and Lawrence was Jerry's son. That's an incredibly
generous deal if you ask me. Well, but like it's
(06:53):
a smart deal on his part too. And I think
about that when I'm talking to people that I'm hiring.
You want people to be happy. I mean, it's not
worth it like to try to beat. Like I always
say in negotiation. I like negotiating, I do it all
the time. But and the thing about a negotiation, at
the end of the day, both parties have to be
happy and have to have a little pinch because otherwise,
(07:14):
if somebody just absolutely beat you to a pulp, you're
not You're not gonna be happy about it. It's not
gonna work. You're gonna wake up every morning, go work
a hundred hour weeks and feel like ship worth because
you don't have the right deal structure, and you're gonna
resent it every day you walk in and you're gonna
think about it, and then you then you become a
bad partner and you get then the problems happen and
you can't get out of this, you can't get out
of that. It's just awful. It's very rare to find.
(07:36):
I think talk about performers, it's really very hard to
find a partner that really understands that where you're gonna
do this. I'm gonna do this together. We're gonna we're
gonna make money, but we're not gonna make it right away.
We're gonna do something great together. That's hard, especially in
New York City because it's so expensive. And then also
I met Lawrence Jerry's son day. Well, he's been my
(07:57):
business partner and best friend for thirty five year. It's incredible.
I mean, you don't find that. You don't find a
business partner that that lasts that long that you can,
you know, go through the wars and and five the victories.
So how old were you when you opened the Basic Rill?
Your first five you're a chef partner of one of
the most successful restaurants in New York City. You didn't
(08:18):
know yet what was going to happen. No, you sort
of blew the lid off of food because there was
no one in New York City. I remember specifically that restaurant.
Nobody serving what you were serving, not even not even close.
Maybe on the West coast, Mark was not in the
East coast. Well. Actually, Arizona two oh six, Brendan Walls
did a really create great job. I mean honestly really great.
But that's two restaurants out. I mean that's kind of like,
(08:39):
you know, and what's happened now is like every corner
is served is trying to like replicate some of the
stuff you did. I remember coming to your restaurant and
I just opened probably the Royalton, and you know, I
was doing kind of upper level French food and I
would watch the food coming out of the kitchen. You
would do numbers there, you would I'm like, how do
you do all these covers? Three and four harder covers?
(09:00):
And we couldn't believe it. And you said to me,
the difference between my cuisine, Jeffrey, and your cuisine is
you do this and I do write this, which is
like two steps versus six steps I mean, your food
is so beautiful and intricate. Well yeah, but we try
to do it like that. But it's really come down to,
like I think today your food obviously gotten simpler over
way simply because I want to simpler. It's not because
(09:22):
old the light did go off, but it was, like
it's called the labor light. You're performing now as a
twenty five year old with your own restaurant, and then
the greatest thing that ever happened to you was probably
(09:44):
someone walked in the door from Food Network. How'd that happened?
Food Network? Okay? First of all, Food Network was a
startup cable channel in Midtown, right. They had a studio
on I'm gonna say, like street. No, the first one
was like on thirty eighth Street and like eleventh Avenue,
and they were like it was ugly. I mean it
(10:05):
was ugly, and they had no money. So basically, if
you didn't live in New York and couldn't get there
by taxi, you were not going to be on the
Food Network. They were not flying you in from l
A to be on Food Network, that's for sure. They
had no money. So it was David rosen Garden the beginning,
who was it well. David rosen Garden was there, and
then Robin Leach had a show with a woman named
Kate Connolly who was his sidekick. It was not a
(10:27):
good show. I'm just gonna say that. And when I
say it wasn't good, it was. It was really kind
of funny because Robin would go to the Knicks game.
He was a huge Knicks fan, and he would come
after having a couple of cocktails in the Nick game.
Like the show was on at the eleven o'clock or
Midnight Live for an hour and he would have like
ce celebrities on because who's gonna go at eleven o'clock
(10:48):
on four on thirty eight Street and eleven for the
Food Network. Nobody even heard of the Food Network and
he would interview them for like forty five minutes and
then the last fifteen minutes. Could you imagine a fifteen
minute food segment on the Today Show? Was never this huge?
It's so much can go wrong. He had this sidekick,
this incredibly upbeat, very beautiful woman named Kay Connolly, and
(11:08):
she would do the food segments with the chef would
be a chef like from New York somewhere, would like
basically take the subway to get there, and they would
do this these food segments, and so I did a
couple of those, and then Kate and I, you know,
got a little friendly and we started dating, and then uh,
we had a kid. That's exactly how I went. Obviously,
like so serendipitous. It's like it's opened up so many
(11:31):
amazing doors in my life. It's crazy. I don't know,
I think any other chef that owns horses, race horses.
Where did that happen? My grandfather, Willie Flay, Willie fla
he took me to Saratoga And if you haven't been
to Saratoga Springs, beautiful during this during this race meat,
there's really something very magical about It's a beautiful place.
(11:54):
And so not everything about horse racing is Saratoga Springs,
but that's the thing that we all gravitate to and
try to think about in that business. And now, I mean,
I'm in the business. We breed horses. Where do you
breed horses? Kentucky? Kentucky? So describe like how that how
that works? Because it sounds so daunting and expensive and
(12:16):
like complicated. Yeah it is, but it's like a puzzle.
It's a giant puzzle. First of all, the love of
the animals number one, and they are just such so
majestic and powerful and like my favorite thing to do
is actually be in Saratoga like five or six o'clock
in the morning watching the horses work out, drinking a
cup of coffee. Like to me, that's I look forward
to that all year long, Like that week on my
(12:37):
schedule is blocked off my calendar. Like there's basically nothing
that can interfere with that at all. And so, yeah,
it's a complicated thing because a lot of people don't
know about it. It's almost like you relate to this.
If you don't play golf, you don't understand the love
of it. Okay, right, you and I love to play golf.
When you hit a golf ball correctly, there's nothing like it.
(12:57):
It's been a while. You try to explain r exactly.
You try to explain that to somebody. It doesn't play
golf like they look at you. Cross side. Horse racing
is the same thing. That whole business. Really you have
to become part of it. But when I take people
to like the Belmont Steaks, but they always take about
people every year and they've never been to a horse
race where I take them to Santa Anito or some
of these beautiful race tracts with Saratoga. They then become
(13:18):
addicted to it, and not in a bad way. In
a way that is, they're interesting, much more interested in
learning about it. That's kind of incredible. I mean, that's
have you ever been to horse races? No? No, I haven't,
first of all, and the big race is Jeffrey the
fashion is it? So you're like, that's something that you love.
(13:48):
We started off talking about performance. Obviously you performed at
such a high level of TV directing everything. Opening restaurants
and opening restaurants are severe on the body as well
as on on the mind. But I think that really
the one of the hardest things. I I know, we've
known the same chefs for whatever, and we see what happened,
but the wear and tear physically is just tremendous. How
(14:08):
do you protect yourself from that? I know you're you're
you're runner and you have written some books about fitness
and health, one of the first chefs ever, by the
way to do that. What's your daily routine? Well, I
just came from Polies class just now, that's where I
was by the way, plates fixed my back fixed it
fixed it really. I only started really doing it not
too long ago, and it's I am now addicted to it. Yeah,
(14:29):
because what happens is a chef you're hunched over. And
also in general, guys do not stretch. They don't and
so you need something to be stretched you, whether it's
yoga or the to me pilates is so that's the
first thing. You don't run run you do run well.
I run less now, but I I've always been a runner.
When I was in high school, I was a distance runner,
and then after I got out of school, I continue
(14:52):
to run my entire life. I've run for marathons. But
there is a lot of wear and tear to to
running every day. And there's a lot of wear and
tear standing over cutting boards for thirty five years too,
and your neck in your back. I mean, it's just
you know. So I'm an early morning person, so I
get up very early, and the first thing is I
do is I put my gym shorts on and I
(15:13):
go do something something running. So now it's pilate, sometimes yoga,
I don't know. Because it jumps starts my day. It
makes me more productive, it opens my eyes up for
the rest of the day and it just helps me
be creative and productive. You also watch your diet. I
remember about ten years ago you dropped quite a bit
of weight and wait and you just I asked yourself
(15:34):
what you do when you said, basically, I eat half
as much. I hate the same thing. I just eat
my horses different. It's fascinating. I have a philosophy where
I eat three quarters of what's on my plate as
as opposed to all of it. That's number one. So
less caloric INTAKEE calories in, calories out. I mean, let's
face it, that's a big part of staying in shape, right.
Number two, if it's not good, I don't eat it.
(15:55):
And that's a mistake that a lot of people make,
including myself, where it's like you just eat it to
eat it, even if it doesn't taste good, Like, why
should we eat something that doesn't taste good? We have
those choices, we do. And then here's a big one
for me. Late at night. You can't eat late at night. Listen,
when I was at Mason Grill and we were like
rocking and rolling and we thought we were invincible. We
(16:16):
would go out after service at midnight, go to Blue
Ribbon and eat steaks and fried chicken and drinking bottles
of wine till three o'clock in the morning. Not sometimes
all that's no problem. You wouldn't gain announced, yeah, no, no, no,
it got out of hand. I gained weight. That's where
I would get out of out of shape. I can't
do it anymore. You can't eat it late at night.
You can't
Hello, listeners of Four Courses with Jeffrey Z. Carrion. It's
your host, Jeffrey. I'm here today to share a very
special announcement. One thing you may know about me from
social media is that I love meeting my friends from
the food world at events around the country, and I've
even made it an annual ritual to interview many of
them at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami.
So for the rest of this summer, we will be
(00:23):
bringing you our Summer Series from the Beach. Eas Friday
will be publishing short and intimate conversations that I've had
with some of the top talent in the food world.
And even beyond, the conversations you'll here for the next
six weeks were recorded pool side at the w Hotel
and South Beach as my friends and I enjoyed great
cigars and magnums of rose as we discussed our past,
(00:44):
present and future. Without further delay, please enjoy Summer Series
from the Beach with Chef Bobby Flay. But I'll tell
you something that happened there. So every night I always
felt like I was literally drowned and I was sweating
in the worst way because I was just trying to
keep up in the restaurant was busy, and this guy
(01:07):
walks in. He's like, is this the chef? And the
owner says, yeah, this is Bobby Flay. He looked at
me and he goes, are you okay? And I was like, yeah.
It was Jonathan Waxman. He had just open Jams And
then I went to work for Jonathan for three years
after that. So you quit this job and went to Jonathan.
I went to work for Jonathan. I threw away the
title and the better than average salary and I went
(01:30):
to learn how to cook. Was he was the first
person to teach me about good food. It was a
different world I didn't know existed. I didn't wow. Jonathan
Waxman was on I think it was on the Upper
east Side in the seventies, Jams seven. N Who else
was working there with you? Oh my god? I mean honestly,
I worked at Jams and Buds and HuLos, which was
a French biech show. I worked in all the restaurants.
(01:51):
Every single cook there, Jeffrey was like unbelievable. I mean,
any one of those people could have run their own restaurants. Everybody, everybody,
Jonathan was a West Coast chef and he just come
to New York time. Was the first person to bring
California ingredients in cuisine, and that's where I learned all
about the Southwestern ingredients. The first time I saw a
blue corn that wasn't in a bag and all the
(02:12):
fresh and dried chilies. That's how I got intoxicated to
open Mason Rill. I mean, we're talking probably fifteen years
way ahead of its time. I mean, you're talking about
the eighties, mid eighties, mid eighties. So Jonathan really seems
to me, like for me, it's not just for you.
For a lot of people, he was the like kickstarter
for a lot of incredible careers. Yeah, and and Jonathan
(02:32):
has the same attitude today that he had then, which
was like he was like very laid back. It's hard
to believe, no, No, seriously, like really laid back. And
he was just like, um, so let's let's take like
some like acacia honey and put some like lime in
it and make a dressing and then put some rugle
(02:53):
on top of the chicken. All right, Bobby, all right,
that's what we're gonna do. Like that's literally how he
creates dishes, you know, it's insane, but he does it
the same way today. I don't think he's ever gonna
have a heart attack at all. He's just gonna fall
asleep on day and that's gonna be the end of him.
It's the South severid a diet to South Severda dinet, right.
So that was like an incredible turning point for you.
And then tell me about Miracle Grill and how that
(03:15):
sort of happened and when when did that happen? Because
Miracle Grill to me, was like where you were sort
of discovered even though you've been working your your butt off.
Miracle Grill was a restaurant in the East Village when
the East Village was not a safe place to not
at all, I mean. And I had really started to
discover that I love Southwestern ingredients based on working for Jonathan.
(03:36):
And I was working as a line cook just to
make a living in some kind of like cheesy restaurant.
And the person on the line next to me said
she was opening a restaurant, so I just thought she
was a chef, and it turned out she really wanted
to needed a chef, and she wanted to open a
Mexican restaurant, and I said, well, I'd like to be considerate,
but I'm not cooking Mexican food. I'm gonna I'm gonna
cook something called Southwestern. And she's like, what do you
mean and I said, well, it's a contemporary version of
(03:59):
what xkan ingredients. This was eight that's that's incredible. I mean,
that's and anyway, long story short, she said, we're hiring
a seush chef. We've already hired a chef. The chef
was a woman from Arcadia who had worked at Arcadia
and she was gonna hire her and I said, well,
let me cook for you. So I cooked her basically
food that I learned cooking at Buds, which was Johnathan
(04:21):
southwestern restaurant that I cooked at. And they were like,
we'd like to offer you the sus chef job. I said, no,
I don't want it. They're like, what do you mean.
I was like, I want to be the chef somewhere
and they're like, okay, well we don't have that job.
Two days later they called me they're like, all right,
we want to offer the chef job. So that was
the beginning of Miracle Grill and I was the chef
there for three years. Three years and when did you
get there? Who walked in? Jerry Krashmer walked into Bar
(04:42):
and Grill and came in and ate dinner and on
the way out because Miracle Grill just had like a
little like window, like a little diner window, you know,
that was the kitchen. It was three of us did everything.
And he looked at me and he said how old
are you? And I was like, I'm twenty two, twenty
three at the time. He's like your twenty three. I said, yeah.
He goes, you're just a baby and walks out after
(05:04):
you're eating, didn't say it was great, nothing, And then
like three days later, I get a phone called, you know,
somebody wants to talk to you about opening your restaurant
at twenty three. What kind of deal did you say?
And how did you know what a non disturbance? How
did you know what all the how did you know
what kind of deal the cut for yourself? Because I'm
(05:24):
still trying to learn that. Well. My dad, my dad
has always been really good in business and always has
always like you know, sort of kept me in line
in terms of like his his like motto is like,
you know, just do the right thing. You know what
that means just do what you're supposed to do. Don't
try to make every nickel, you know, the whole. That's
his very conservative flat which has been really an important
part of my life, and it just it makes you
(05:46):
stay the course in the in the right way. And
Jerry was really excellent to me because he's like, look,
here's the way it's gonna work. I'll never forget this.
He said, we're doing this together. I'm gonna take care
of the financing. I'm going to sign the bank loan.
You're going to create the menu. We're gonna design the
restaurant together, and I'm going to get you the ink.
That's what he said, the ink. Yeah, he kept his word.
(06:08):
He kept his word, and you kept your word exactly.
And we we got along because we were both total
native New Yorkers. And uh. He said, I'm gonna give
you a salary, and I'm gonna give you five percent
of the restaurant to start, five percent to start, and
then i'm gonna give you five percent over the next
three or four years until you get to twenty. But
you work into it. You don't have to put up
a penny, and you'll you'll make an Okay, living salary wise,
(06:31):
so you can like live like a human being, but
you're gonna have to work to make your make your living.
Jerry has been in It was an amazing mentor to me.
Is he still a partner of yours? Yes? He still
is a partner of mine in Mason Villa in Las Vegas. Yes,
and everything else. You are you and Lawrence your other
partner me and Lawrence was Jerry's son. That's an incredibly
generous deal if you ask me. Well, but like it's
(06:53):
a smart deal on his part too. And I think
about that when I'm talking to people that I'm hiring.
You want people to be happy. I mean, it's not
worth it like to try to beat. Like I always
say in negotiation. I like negotiating, I do it all
the time. But and the thing about a negotiation, at
the end of the day, both parties have to be
happy and have to have a little pinch because otherwise,
(07:14):
if somebody just absolutely beat you to a pulp, you're
not You're not gonna be happy about it. It's not
gonna work. You're gonna wake up every morning, go work
a hundred hour weeks and feel like ship worth because
you don't have the right deal structure, and you're gonna
resent it every day you walk in and you're gonna
think about it, and then you then you become a
bad partner and you get then the problems happen and
you can't get out of this, you can't get out
of that. It's just awful. It's very rare to find.
(07:36):
I think talk about performers, it's really very hard to
find a partner that really understands that where you're gonna
do this. I'm gonna do this together. We're gonna we're
gonna make money, but we're not gonna make it right away.
We're gonna do something great together. That's hard, especially in
New York City because it's so expensive. And then also
I met Lawrence Jerry's son day. Well, he's been my
(07:57):
business partner and best friend for thirty five year. It's incredible.
I mean, you don't find that. You don't find a
business partner that that lasts that long that you can,
you know, go through the wars and and five the victories.
So how old were you when you opened the Basic Rill?
Your first five you're a chef partner of one of
the most successful restaurants in New York City. You didn't
(08:18):
know yet what was going to happen. No, you sort
of blew the lid off of food because there was
no one in New York City. I remember specifically that restaurant.
Nobody serving what you were serving, not even not even close.
Maybe on the West coast, Mark was not in the
East coast. Well. Actually, Arizona two oh six, Brendan Walls
did a really create great job. I mean honestly really great.
But that's two restaurants out. I mean that's kind of like,
(08:39):
you know, and what's happened now is like every corner
is served is trying to like replicate some of the
stuff you did. I remember coming to your restaurant and
I just opened probably the Royalton, and you know, I
was doing kind of upper level French food and I
would watch the food coming out of the kitchen. You
would do numbers there, you would I'm like, how do
you do all these covers? Three and four harder covers?
(09:00):
And we couldn't believe it. And you said to me,
the difference between my cuisine, Jeffrey, and your cuisine is
you do this and I do write this, which is
like two steps versus six steps I mean, your food
is so beautiful and intricate. Well yeah, but we try
to do it like that. But it's really come down to,
like I think today your food obviously gotten simpler over
way simply because I want to simpler. It's not because
(09:22):
old the light did go off, but it was, like
it's called the labor light. You're performing now as a
twenty five year old with your own restaurant, and then
the greatest thing that ever happened to you was probably
(09:44):
someone walked in the door from Food Network. How'd that happened?
Food Network? Okay? First of all, Food Network was a
startup cable channel in Midtown, right. They had a studio
on I'm gonna say, like street. No, the first one
was like on thirty eighth Street and like eleventh Avenue,
and they were like it was ugly. I mean it
(10:05):
was ugly, and they had no money. So basically, if
you didn't live in New York and couldn't get there
by taxi, you were not going to be on the
Food Network. They were not flying you in from l
A to be on Food Network, that's for sure. They
had no money. So it was David rosen Garden the beginning,
who was it well. David rosen Garden was there, and
then Robin Leach had a show with a woman named
Kate Connolly who was his sidekick. It was not a
(10:27):
good show. I'm just gonna say that. And when I
say it wasn't good, it was. It was really kind
of funny because Robin would go to the Knicks game.
He was a huge Knicks fan, and he would come
after having a couple of cocktails in the Nick game.
Like the show was on at the eleven o'clock or
Midnight Live for an hour and he would have like
ce celebrities on because who's gonna go at eleven o'clock
(10:48):
on four on thirty eight Street and eleven for the
Food Network. Nobody even heard of the Food Network and
he would interview them for like forty five minutes and
then the last fifteen minutes. Could you imagine a fifteen
minute food segment on the Today Show? Was never this huge?
It's so much can go wrong. He had this sidekick,
this incredibly upbeat, very beautiful woman named Kay Connolly, and
(11:08):
she would do the food segments with the chef would
be a chef like from New York somewhere, would like
basically take the subway to get there, and they would
do this these food segments, and so I did a
couple of those, and then Kate and I, you know,
got a little friendly and we started dating, and then uh,
we had a kid. That's exactly how I went. Obviously,
like so serendipitous. It's like it's opened up so many
(11:31):
amazing doors in my life. It's crazy. I don't know,
I think any other chef that owns horses, race horses.
Where did that happen? My grandfather, Willie Flay, Willie fla
he took me to Saratoga And if you haven't been
to Saratoga Springs, beautiful during this during this race meat,
there's really something very magical about It's a beautiful place.
(11:54):
And so not everything about horse racing is Saratoga Springs,
but that's the thing that we all gravitate to and
try to think about in that business. And now, I mean,
I'm in the business. We breed horses. Where do you
breed horses? Kentucky? Kentucky? So describe like how that how
that works? Because it sounds so daunting and expensive and
(12:16):
like complicated. Yeah it is, but it's like a puzzle.
It's a giant puzzle. First of all, the love of
the animals number one, and they are just such so
majestic and powerful and like my favorite thing to do
is actually be in Saratoga like five or six o'clock
in the morning watching the horses work out, drinking a
cup of coffee. Like to me, that's I look forward
to that all year long, Like that week on my
(12:37):
schedule is blocked off my calendar. Like there's basically nothing
that can interfere with that at all. And so, yeah,
it's a complicated thing because a lot of people don't
know about it. It's almost like you relate to this.
If you don't play golf, you don't understand the love
of it. Okay, right, you and I love to play golf.
When you hit a golf ball correctly, there's nothing like it.
(12:57):
It's been a while. You try to explain r exactly.
You try to explain that to somebody. It doesn't play
golf like they look at you. Cross side. Horse racing
is the same thing. That whole business. Really you have
to become part of it. But when I take people
to like the Belmont Steaks, but they always take about
people every year and they've never been to a horse
race where I take them to Santa Anito or some
of these beautiful race tracts with Saratoga. They then become
(13:18):
addicted to it, and not in a bad way. In
a way that is, they're interesting, much more interested in
learning about it. That's kind of incredible. I mean, that's
have you ever been to horse races? No? No, I haven't,
first of all, and the big race is Jeffrey the
fashion is it? So you're like, that's something that you love.
(13:48):
We started off talking about performance. Obviously you performed at
such a high level of TV directing everything. Opening restaurants
and opening restaurants are severe on the body as well
as on on the mind. But I think that really
the one of the hardest things. I I know, we've
known the same chefs for whatever, and we see what happened,
but the wear and tear physically is just tremendous. How
(14:08):
do you protect yourself from that? I know you're you're
you're runner and you have written some books about fitness
and health, one of the first chefs ever, by the
way to do that. What's your daily routine? Well, I
just came from Polies class just now, that's where I
was by the way, plates fixed my back fixed it
fixed it really. I only started really doing it not
too long ago, and it's I am now addicted to it. Yeah,
(14:29):
because what happens is a chef you're hunched over. And
also in general, guys do not stretch. They don't and
so you need something to be stretched you, whether it's
yoga or the to me pilates is so that's the
first thing. You don't run run you do run well.
I run less now, but I I've always been a runner.
When I was in high school, I was a distance runner,
and then after I got out of school, I continue
(14:52):
to run my entire life. I've run for marathons. But
there is a lot of wear and tear to to
running every day. And there's a lot of wear and
tear standing over cutting boards for thirty five years too,
and your neck in your back. I mean, it's just
you know. So I'm an early morning person, so I
get up very early, and the first thing is I
do is I put my gym shorts on and I
(15:13):
go do something something running. So now it's pilate, sometimes yoga,
I don't know. Because it jumps starts my day. It
makes me more productive, it opens my eyes up for
the rest of the day and it just helps me
be creative and productive. You also watch your diet. I
remember about ten years ago you dropped quite a bit
of weight and wait and you just I asked yourself
(15:34):
what you do when you said, basically, I eat half
as much. I hate the same thing. I just eat
my horses different. It's fascinating. I have a philosophy where
I eat three quarters of what's on my plate as
as opposed to all of it. That's number one. So
less caloric INTAKEE calories in, calories out. I mean, let's
face it, that's a big part of staying in shape, right.
Number two, if it's not good, I don't eat it.
(15:55):
And that's a mistake that a lot of people make,
including myself, where it's like you just eat it to
eat it, even if it doesn't taste good, Like, why
should we eat something that doesn't taste good? We have
those choices, we do. And then here's a big one
for me. Late at night. You can't eat late at night. Listen,
when I was at Mason Grill and we were like
rocking and rolling and we thought we were invincible. We
(16:16):
would go out after service at midnight, go to Blue
Ribbon and eat steaks and fried chicken and drinking bottles
of wine till three o'clock in the morning. Not sometimes
all that's no problem. You wouldn't gain announced, yeah, no, no, no,
it got out of hand. I gained weight. That's where
I would get out of out of shape. I can't
do it anymore. You can't eat it late at night.
You can't
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