December 17, 2021 • 24 mins
In this special three-part series of Four Courses with Geoffrey Zakarian, we’re turning the tables to learn more about Geoffrey -- his childhood, his growth as a chef and celebrity, and his reflections on balancing business and family. In this third and final episode, we hear from Geoffrey about what it means to continue to grow in the ever-shifting restaurant industry, from harnessing new audiences to inculcating a love and respect for food within his children.
Find more information on Geoffrey’s daughters’ new cookbook, “The Family that Cooks Together,” here: https://shop.geoffreyzakarian.com/the-family-that-cooks-together-the-zakarian-sisters
For more information on "Four Courses With Geoffrey Zakarian," follow Geoffrey on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/geoffreyzakarian.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Jeffrey Z Carrian, and you're listening to
four Courses with Jeffrey Zcarrian from my Heart Radio. Today
we're continuing are Turning the Table series where our executive
producer Chris Hasiotis takes over as our host and puts
me in the hot seat to answer questions about how
I got to where I am today. This is the
third and final episode in this series. If you miss
(00:26):
parts one and to make sure you check out those first,
otherwise you're going to be picking up on the story
of a pretty fleshed out version of myself, which if
you have listened to parts one and two, you know
wasn't always the case. Today, Christopher and I talked about
what I usually discussed with guests during our fourth and
final course together, the future, those tough questions about growth
(00:46):
and risk and balance between work and family that I
love to ask our guests. Towards the end of our conversations, yep,
Chris turned those back to me. Also, please enjoy. You know,
you get to a point where you've opened restaurants, you
have these relationships with hotels, and you've got to keep growing, right,
and some people are satisfied cooking opening, running restaurants over
(01:11):
and over and over again. And you did that for
a while. But I'd like to know more about what
opportunities there are for people who work in the food
world now who have had that chef experienced. You know,
these days, there's there are things like cruise ship restaurants, consultancies,
licensing deals, designing food and beverage programs for restaurants while
(01:33):
not running them. You know, this element of the business
behind the business. That's something that you seem to be
really adept at navigating. Yeah, that's a great question. It's
a big question, and I'll try to bite off a
small chunks at a time, but I think you know,
for me, I go in a restaurant, a new restaurant,
and I see it, and I hear the buzz, and
I feel a buzz and I'm like, oh god, I remember.
(01:54):
I mean, I feel it. I love it. But it's
separated now, it's compartmentalized into do I want to do
it in the same way I did it before? And
you know, it's like Billy Joel, I heard of podcast
and he's you know, I can't. I'm not gonna be
able to do any conscience anymore because I wrote that
music in my twenties when my voice was up here.
I can't hit those notes anymore. So singing it's incredibly
(02:16):
physical and difficult. I'm not at that point, but a
physicality of opening a restaurant, being there all the time
because people want to see if you put your name
on it. It's very hard, and it's probably the reason
a lot of people, a lot of chefs get physically
and emotionally run over the problem of the lifestyle and
(02:37):
the problem of the hours needed to launch yourself into
a position where you have a brand of sorts. But
I think what I've done and what I've tried to
do Christopher is okay. I love everything about the restaurant business.
I don't just love the food in the artist try.
I love teaching, so I love doing zoom classes and
teaching and I do lots of that. And I love
(03:00):
product I love everything that's about. Where is that from
this product? That I love? All that I've learned all that.
So I'm doing products now with some retail companies to
back me, and I do the products I want to do,
and I love solving problems for home cook So I
came up with some pans that like, we're teflon and
cast iron and they work, and we just created off
of that. I still do restaurants, albeit not as many
(03:24):
because they don't have the physical time or energy. But
I think that my use I want to be useful
to people and bring value to someone. So there will
be restaurants, But what kind of restaurants I'll bring We
the restaurants were was serving very simple food made very specifically,
very delicious, but a consistently great vibe in a restaurant. Hustle, bustle, bright, happy, loud,
(03:48):
that kind of restaurant. I probably won't do fine dyning
anymore because it's not who I am anymore. It's I
learned through fine dining. But now I choose to want
to do something that's more fun and more like I
can do more things with the food and have it
be laid back enough but still great food. Like you said,
in New York, the food is amazing. You can go
to food now basically sit it a an empty plawood table,
(04:13):
have a Michelin star meal and re Dell glasses and
you're in like a restaurant that was probably a deli before,
and they just like spiffed it up and it's all
is pre fixed, and that's wonderful. You know, the bells
and whistles are gone. You don't have to do all
that stuff. Really, it's about the food and the experience,
(04:33):
and they really get it and they strip it away.
So I think for those who want to do other things,
just you know, aim at something. There's so much in
the culinary world now that is like you said, behind
the scenes. It's creative, but you don't have any of
the brain damage of operating a restaurant, which is a
lot of brain damage. No one wants to talk about it.
You know. What this makes me think of, Jeffrey, is
(04:53):
when you had Gael Simmons on on your show, you
kind of had a little off handed comment in your
conversation and and maybe it was a joke, but you
said that you wanted to open an Armenian diner one day,
and she said she'd be there, And I just want
to tell you I would be there on day one two.
I think that's a great idea and I would love
to eat that simple, fun, approachable Armenian food. So I
(05:15):
just need to find four very old Armenian ladies because
that's the kind of restaurant, Well, you will have family
in the kitchen, and there are those kind of restaurants.
Not enough of that, you know what, I'll have. Our
producer Jonathan pulled the demographics of who listens to the
show and if we have enough Armenian grandma's out there listening,
(05:35):
or or if you are or have an Armenian grandma,
reach out to Jeffrey and uh I I that would
be fun because that's the kind of food. That's the
first stuff I put in my mouth, and that was
still I. I reach for those flavors. So I think
that this field someone like myself, I can only open
multiples of restaurants and I put my name on them.
(05:58):
That I'm sure I'm gonna like be good because once
you put your name on it, like they're gonna come
after you. It's just the way it is. I mean,
John George has a gigantic operation and he has thirty
five restaurants or thirty restaurants. And that might not sound
like a lot, because you know Chipotle or Sweet Green
says hundreds. You know, Shake Shack has a thousand. To
(06:19):
have thirty restaurants at that level, this astoundingly complicated. It's amazing.
If I were to do thirty restaurants would be thirty
very simple restaurants. I would aim for a hundred, but
doing very simple. So there's so much opportunity because of
the pandemic and because of how food is now so global,
(06:40):
so social, so entertainment. It's an entertainment industry. It's no
longer a food industry only Jeffrey. A lot of listeners
to this podcast probably first got to know you on TV.
You were on Iron Chef America, The Kitchen Chopped, and
these days food on TV seems like a given, but
that wasn't always the case. So I'd love it if
(07:01):
you could walk us through that decision early on when
you had an opportunity to say, is a TV career
something I, as a chef want to do. It's not proven,
but I want to dive in. What was your decision
making process like at the time. Well, I have a
couple of comments on that one. First of all, when
I grew up as a grade school student from the
(07:23):
ages I would say nine to that fourteen range, and
I used to come home for lunch at an hour
and I was ten minutes always, so I came home
a bunch your mom would make me at lunch, which
is very nice at my mom and she would have
it ready on a TV stand and I was sit
in front of the TV and watch my favorite show
at the time, which was The Galloping Gourmet. Little did
(07:46):
I know that I would be doing exactly what that
man was doing on TV and say ten years from
then going to Europe. But The Galloping Gourmet was a
show run by a gentleman named Graham Care and his
wife produced the show I Leave. It was on PBS.
It was extremely successful. I think it ran for ten
seasons and for lack of a better terminology, it's one
(08:08):
of the first cooking shows. It was that Julia child
that was it me there's nothing else. And he would
dress up in a double breasted suit and tie all
spiffy it out cravat and he would run it was
a live show on TV. He run down to his
kitchen which is an open kitchen set with a kitchen
and oven and the cabinets and bag very much like today,
(08:28):
and a table set for two in front of the kitchen,
and he would show I went to Italy and today
we're cooking. I don't know Nato, blah blah, blah, whatever
he cooked, and I want to show you what I mean.
And then in the back of screen would come up
and it was him in Europe at this restaurant, dining
with his wife and this candle life and he's eating
(08:49):
and he's showing this, and he's going in the kitchen
and this flambaying happening, and he's showing on TV video
of what he did. So he had this production company
and will go with him and everything was handle it
and he would take this bite. He would close his eyes,
put his head back, salivate and just have a glass
of wine. And like, oh my god, oh my god.
(09:09):
He was eating that dish. They panned over the audience
and people like salivate. You can see them their mouths
opening and closing. I'll never figure that as long as
I live, because at that point in time, something was
going on with me, because like, oh my god, then
you cook the dish. And then he said, come on, everybody,
I'm gonna show you how to cook this Vitello's not
and he cook it in front of you, whild drinking
(09:31):
probably a bottle of wine, and he would pull some
from the audience, tell all stories. While he was doing
so and I had this and I said, you think
that's funny? It would like begg you make fun of
people while he's cooking this. Okay, back to the veal
and then they would pull one person sit down and
that was the end of the show. I'm Graham care
cheers and clink and they would eat the dish together.
That was the show. And so I'm dying to do
that show. Hey, I've been pitching it forever and it
(09:53):
really made a huge impact on me that I carried
forward into the restaurant world. So but TV that was
the beginning. Food Howur came around the late nineties. I
think it's thirty years old. It changed the world. Now
you have instead of two patrons a day before watching
a show, there's a million or two million people watching
that show you, So there's so many more eyeballs. It
(10:15):
jumps started revved up the restaurant world. So that we
created in thirty or forty years in New York in
this country what it took three hundred years to create
in Europe. We caught up and now we surpassed them,
I believe in a lot of ways. So TV is everything.
Did I think I was gonna be on TV. No.
Was I enamored by it? Absolutely? Who couldn't be? So
(10:36):
I was named by Graham care the Wild Wild West,
James Bond, and then I ended up in France. I mean,
go figure. So I think that for me, my first
shot came. They gave me this opportunity a judge on Chopped,
and I'm like, at first, I said, what Chopped? What's this?
What's the show? I knew Bobby Flay was on TV
so and he was very successful. It was still in
(10:56):
the sort of wonky phase, but not in two thousand seven.
It was like full flight. They said, yeah, you wanted
They wanted to be on Chopped. They want a really
successful chef. And at that time I ran a lot
of restaurants and I had like a lot of good reviews,
and they wanted a food expert. They had like different personalities,
someone chef, a restaurateur, and maybe a baker or something
like that was always a mix. And I heard the
(11:19):
premise of the show. I thought it was ridiculous at first,
and then I went to do a sizzle reel. We
didn't get paid anything for it was I remember how
how wonky it was, and I'm like, this is never
gonna last. And that was twelve years, seven and fifty
episodes later, and I never forget when I was invited
after that to do Iron Chef and and I won
in two thousand eleven, and everyone said, I never knew
(11:40):
you were a chef. I thought you were a judge chopped,
and I was like, wow. It dawned on me that
perception is everything. It's perception. It's not reality, it's perception
of reality. It didn't matter how many stars I had,
how many years I cooked, thirty years, killing myself and
you know, cooking for not making any money, and that
(12:00):
didn't matter. It was like, you're on TV. Now they
know you're a chef. So it's like an aha moment, right,
So the power TV is something you need to really
use if you have the ability to use it, and
I'm blessed to have the ability to use it now.
It worked very hard to get on TV, and I'm
thankful that I got on TV because of my relationship
with food and my knowledge of restaurants and food. That's great.
(12:22):
So I am doing what I'm naturally good at doing.
So I think that there's no end now. Social media
is like really, you know, lost it and it's TikTok cooking.
There's I G t V, Facebook, Twitter, Every imaginable person
now has is a cook, Every actor is a cooked,
every author now has a favorite recipe. It's like it's
(12:45):
another part of the world that they are now allowed
to open up the world to their love of food
because it's it's ingratiating. It's shown to me, make you human,
and people go nuts. And that is why it can't end.
The paradigms change. But it's not going to end because
(13:05):
you do it three times a day, and it's one
of the most enjoyable reasons to be alive is to eat.
And the access now to with TV and social media
to food, even if you're watching someone cook or watching
someone do a kitchen hack, is remarkable. It's just remarkable, Jeffrey.
(13:51):
Anyone who has paid attention to your social media, who's
watched you on the kitchen, anyone who has even come
across your name in the past three or four or
five years, they know that family is super important to you.
Your wife, Margaret is your business partner, your daughters are
writing a cookbook. Tell me what it's like to fold
(14:12):
family and cooking and business all into the same basket.
It's a delightful basket I wake up every morning. I'm
so grateful that I have the ability to somehow pull
off my eating, love of eating into like a career
that can help provide for my family. And my family
(14:34):
is learning to provide now why writing that cookbook? And
my daughters wrote that themselves without my help, and it
became a bestseller, And I'm so proud of them. And
I'm like, well, that's a good way to get into college.
You wrote a book at twelve. That's cool, that's really cool.
And I try to tell them that whatever you want
to do, that's a cool thing to do. And you
might not know the impact of it now, but it
(14:54):
does register. And I'll go ahead and plug that for you.
Jeffrey Listeners that that book is The Family That Cooks Together.
It came out, Yeah, imagine right in the middle of
the pandemic. Family family and home cooking during lockdown became
a very very important thing. I think that's something that
you really conveyed to through your social media, through your videos,
you know, really reaching out to people during a time
(15:17):
when when we were all at home. You know, it
was one of those things like, let's take a breath.
We all took a collective breath, and you're on social media.
You're not going to work, your kids aren't going to school.
What are you doing. We're doing the same thing we
used to do, except we enjoyed it a whole hell
of a lot more. I mean, we shop, I shopped,
(15:38):
We grew a garden, We did all the things that
a munday sort of silly. You think they're goofy and
never get a chance to do it. But I'm gonna
tell you something. I challenge anybody here, the smartest person
that's listening, I challenge anybody. I challenged Jeff Bezos to
go buy an acrel land, planted himself and grow and
(15:59):
eat what he grows. It's hard. The skill of farming
is right up there. I'm sorry, I'm gonna say that.
It is so difficult, so reliant on nothing. You can't
control anything. All you can control is watering and you
know the amount amount of knowledge you get and what
(16:19):
kind of dirt to use. That's about it. You can't
control the sign, you can't control the wind, you can't
control the plant. You can't control bacteria, flies, infestation, anything.
You can't control rabbits suit. It's hard, and when you
learn how to do that, you you really have an
appreciation for what you what goes into the people that
do this for a living. It's just like you assume
(16:40):
to find these perfect peppers and package baby zucchini a
labeled and numbered and waiting and being spritsed with water.
It's just like, it's there, no problem. It's a huge problem.
You learned that during pandemic, and I think we all
learned a valuable lessons about like, all right, let's be
grateful for all we have and just see how hard
(17:01):
it is and how lucky we have it that basically
at a click you can get anything you want from
anywhere in the world. You have no idea how lucky
we are be at this juncture. So I think a
lot of that came to it. And I think the
viewers we just post me cutting an onion, and you
cut an onion, and my wife Margaret would say, like,
let me hold on a second, what are you doing.
(17:22):
I'm cutting anice and let me get that. I'm like okay,
and you'd get a d fifty thousand people liking it.
I'm like wow, And of course this is doing the
kitchen we've been working on it, but we never really
paid attention to the posting, and so now we just
do simple things that would be to me like I
don't know, like how to mow your lawn, you know,
would be that sort of mundane. But it's fascinating that
(17:44):
people I really are interested in in in the pandemic
behind the curtain. Right, It's like the Wizard of Oz.
Now you're in my in my my kitchen, you're seeing
my products, you're seeing my oven, and people comment, oh
I love that, Oh I have one of those two.
I'm using the same salt. You know. It's like this
humanity again, and it resonated and it resonated with us
as a family. My wife and I are working together
(18:06):
for years, but this year was really tough because now
we're working together and then now we're now you're on
the camera and I'm cooking and there's no prep helping.
It's like we're actually working, you know, and we're gardening
and we're raising and we're running a school. Right. I've
never worked so hard in my life. But I honestly
just to say this with all my heart, it was
it was a remarkable gift in a lot of ways,
(18:28):
and we talked about it all the time. So we
wrote a book. It was finished long before the pandemic.
We just wrote this book that we thought would be
nice to write about it. What we cooked together miraculous says,
Miraculous things happened. It was very timely. And so the
family that it cooks together, it needs together. The family
that cooks together does it together, and it's them. I
(18:49):
always say, the most important time you have is the
is the time you sit around the table and eat,
because you you need to talk. You'll fight and you'll
like want to leave the table and you'll check your
into a grand but you're like you're around the table,
and that is very important. So, like I said, I'm
blessed to have this family that's interested in this business.
I don't know how interested they're gonna but I don't
(19:10):
really care. It's like whatever makes them happy. And you know,
I think they'll find that. It took me a long
time to find it, and I thought I found an economics,
but it like kind of found me. So I hope
it happens to them in a sort of serendipitous way
like that, because it's it's really fun when it happens
when you don't know what's going to happen. Jeffrey, we
started this conversation talking about some of your earliest food memories.
(19:33):
Things that you're polish dishes, Armenia dishes, the things that
your parents, your aunt you know, your your family really
gave you these memories through dishes and and it may
have just been that something that was cooked to them,
it may have been SuperOrdinary, but to you, that's an
iconic taste. And so I think the more that you
(19:54):
and and anyone listening, but but that you have these
experiences in the kitchen with your daughters, with your son,
that's the way that you form those memories. Right we
we sit around the table, and the more you do that,
who knows what memories we will pass along to our kids.
You know, they may they may love one thing they
had one time and to you, that was a forgettable
(20:14):
dish that that really didn't you know, it's not something
you'd put back on the menu, but they loved. So
this is kind of you're taking an active hand in
building that foundation in the same way it was built
for you through family and through togetherness and through time
at the table. Yeah, and you know it also dove
tails for me into like being of use to someone
(20:36):
and being abused to yourself and what are you doing
for a living? And I think of it all the
time about like he was like, what are you driving?
You always doing this? You're doing so much? How can
you do this? You're everywhere? And I'm like, I know,
I think, I I don't think I'm everywhere. I think
I feel like I could do more. And I feel
like when I'm most satisfied, And I think that the
word happy is a minefield. But when I feel that
(20:59):
I'm being helpful helping someone, or bringing value to someone
or smile to someone's faces, when I feel that sense
of like, this is it. This is what meaning the
meaning of like content means, you're content. I'm content when
I put a piece of food down for people and
I call them around the table and they start eating it,
and I see their face and their reaction and they're
(21:21):
really eating it and really enjoying it. And for those
few moments an hour, you've made six, eight, ten people
happy and they're enjoying the process of eating because it
is a process, and that is very gratifying. I can
only tell you that's very gratifying because those things gratify me.
(21:41):
And you can tell right away when it doesn't gratify,
it just doesn't feel It's like this is I'm just
going through emotions. It doesn't feel right. So I always
try to tell people, like, find something that when you
do it, you're gratified. It brings value to someone, it
brings brings a smile. It sounds simple, but it's like
it helps the daily chaos. It really does. And then
your day has become full of gratifying moments and you
(22:05):
pass them on to your kids. And look, I'll be
crazy to tell you that I'm not trying to make
the kids understand table manners and get to the table.
They all know it's you're sitting down. We don't grab
breakfast and leave. And they understand that this ritual is
important to our family, this particular ritual. So some families
(22:27):
have different rituals, but the ritual of sitting down, pausing
and putting something that's made for you and being respectful
of the person that makes that and being respectful of,
like I said that before, the people that grow and
make this food. It's like kind of remarkable that it
all works. And I try to tell my children this
is what this means. This is what you don't get.
(22:50):
And what was wonderful is to watch them write the
book and like dad, we have to do it again.
That's yeah, the rest of me again, how many times
until it's right? Well, Jeffrey, that that makes me really
value the very first time you and I ever met,
it was over breakfast and uh and so I appreciate that. Jeffrey,
thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Chris,
(23:12):
Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses this year.
I've truly enjoyed talking with so many amazing guests. Myself
and our team are taking a short break until after
the New Year, and then we'll be back soon with
more exciting updates. Don't forget to subscribe to four Courses
on your favorite podcasting app and we'll be back before
(23:32):
you know it. Happy holiday and have a great new year.
Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses with Jeffrey
Z Carrion, a production of I Heart Radio and Corner
Table Entertainment. Four Courses is created by Jeffrey Z Carrion,
Margaret Zacarrion, Jared Keller, and Tara Helper. Our executive producer
(23:56):
is Christopher Hesiotis. Four Courses is produced by Jonathan Hawes 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. Special thanks to Katie
Fellman for help as recording engineered. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(24:19):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
My name is Jeffrey Z Carrian, and you're listening to
four Courses with Jeffrey Zcarrian from my Heart Radio. Today
we're continuing are Turning the Table series where our executive
producer Chris Hasiotis takes over as our host and puts
me in the hot seat to answer questions about how
I got to where I am today. This is the
third and final episode in this series. If you miss
(00:26):
parts one and to make sure you check out those first,
otherwise you're going to be picking up on the story
of a pretty fleshed out version of myself, which if
you have listened to parts one and two, you know
wasn't always the case. Today, Christopher and I talked about
what I usually discussed with guests during our fourth and
final course together, the future, those tough questions about growth
(00:46):
and risk and balance between work and family that I
love to ask our guests. Towards the end of our conversations, yep,
Chris turned those back to me. Also, please enjoy. You know,
you get to a point where you've opened restaurants, you
have these relationships with hotels, and you've got to keep growing, right,
and some people are satisfied cooking opening, running restaurants over
(01:11):
and over and over again. And you did that for
a while. But I'd like to know more about what
opportunities there are for people who work in the food
world now who have had that chef experienced. You know,
these days, there's there are things like cruise ship restaurants, consultancies,
licensing deals, designing food and beverage programs for restaurants while
(01:33):
not running them. You know, this element of the business
behind the business. That's something that you seem to be
really adept at navigating. Yeah, that's a great question. It's
a big question, and I'll try to bite off a
small chunks at a time, but I think you know,
for me, I go in a restaurant, a new restaurant,
and I see it, and I hear the buzz, and
I feel a buzz and I'm like, oh god, I remember.
(01:54):
I mean, I feel it. I love it. But it's
separated now, it's compartmentalized into do I want to do
it in the same way I did it before? And
you know, it's like Billy Joel, I heard of podcast
and he's you know, I can't. I'm not gonna be
able to do any conscience anymore because I wrote that
music in my twenties when my voice was up here.
I can't hit those notes anymore. So singing it's incredibly
(02:16):
physical and difficult. I'm not at that point, but a
physicality of opening a restaurant, being there all the time
because people want to see if you put your name
on it. It's very hard, and it's probably the reason
a lot of people, a lot of chefs get physically
and emotionally run over the problem of the lifestyle and
(02:37):
the problem of the hours needed to launch yourself into
a position where you have a brand of sorts. But
I think what I've done and what I've tried to
do Christopher is okay. I love everything about the restaurant business.
I don't just love the food in the artist try.
I love teaching, so I love doing zoom classes and
teaching and I do lots of that. And I love
(03:00):
product I love everything that's about. Where is that from
this product? That I love? All that I've learned all that.
So I'm doing products now with some retail companies to
back me, and I do the products I want to do,
and I love solving problems for home cook So I
came up with some pans that like, we're teflon and
cast iron and they work, and we just created off
of that. I still do restaurants, albeit not as many
(03:24):
because they don't have the physical time or energy. But
I think that my use I want to be useful
to people and bring value to someone. So there will
be restaurants, But what kind of restaurants I'll bring We
the restaurants were was serving very simple food made very specifically,
very delicious, but a consistently great vibe in a restaurant. Hustle, bustle, bright, happy, loud,
(03:48):
that kind of restaurant. I probably won't do fine dyning
anymore because it's not who I am anymore. It's I
learned through fine dining. But now I choose to want
to do something that's more fun and more like I
can do more things with the food and have it
be laid back enough but still great food. Like you said,
in New York, the food is amazing. You can go
to food now basically sit it a an empty plawood table,
(04:13):
have a Michelin star meal and re Dell glasses and
you're in like a restaurant that was probably a deli before,
and they just like spiffed it up and it's all
is pre fixed, and that's wonderful. You know, the bells
and whistles are gone. You don't have to do all
that stuff. Really, it's about the food and the experience,
(04:33):
and they really get it and they strip it away.
So I think for those who want to do other things,
just you know, aim at something. There's so much in
the culinary world now that is like you said, behind
the scenes. It's creative, but you don't have any of
the brain damage of operating a restaurant, which is a
lot of brain damage. No one wants to talk about it.
You know. What this makes me think of, Jeffrey, is
(04:53):
when you had Gael Simmons on on your show, you
kind of had a little off handed comment in your
conversation and and maybe it was a joke, but you
said that you wanted to open an Armenian diner one day,
and she said she'd be there, And I just want
to tell you I would be there on day one two.
I think that's a great idea and I would love
to eat that simple, fun, approachable Armenian food. So I
(05:15):
just need to find four very old Armenian ladies because
that's the kind of restaurant, Well, you will have family
in the kitchen, and there are those kind of restaurants.
Not enough of that, you know what, I'll have. Our
producer Jonathan pulled the demographics of who listens to the
show and if we have enough Armenian grandma's out there listening,
(05:35):
or or if you are or have an Armenian grandma,
reach out to Jeffrey and uh I I that would
be fun because that's the kind of food. That's the
first stuff I put in my mouth, and that was
still I. I reach for those flavors. So I think
that this field someone like myself, I can only open
multiples of restaurants and I put my name on them.
(05:58):
That I'm sure I'm gonna like be good because once
you put your name on it, like they're gonna come
after you. It's just the way it is. I mean,
John George has a gigantic operation and he has thirty
five restaurants or thirty restaurants. And that might not sound
like a lot, because you know Chipotle or Sweet Green
says hundreds. You know, Shake Shack has a thousand. To
(06:19):
have thirty restaurants at that level, this astoundingly complicated. It's amazing.
If I were to do thirty restaurants would be thirty
very simple restaurants. I would aim for a hundred, but
doing very simple. So there's so much opportunity because of
the pandemic and because of how food is now so global,
(06:40):
so social, so entertainment. It's an entertainment industry. It's no
longer a food industry only Jeffrey. A lot of listeners
to this podcast probably first got to know you on TV.
You were on Iron Chef America, The Kitchen Chopped, and
these days food on TV seems like a given, but
that wasn't always the case. So I'd love it if
(07:01):
you could walk us through that decision early on when
you had an opportunity to say, is a TV career
something I, as a chef want to do. It's not proven,
but I want to dive in. What was your decision
making process like at the time. Well, I have a
couple of comments on that one. First of all, when
I grew up as a grade school student from the
(07:23):
ages I would say nine to that fourteen range, and
I used to come home for lunch at an hour
and I was ten minutes always, so I came home
a bunch your mom would make me at lunch, which
is very nice at my mom and she would have
it ready on a TV stand and I was sit
in front of the TV and watch my favorite show
at the time, which was The Galloping Gourmet. Little did
(07:46):
I know that I would be doing exactly what that
man was doing on TV and say ten years from
then going to Europe. But The Galloping Gourmet was a
show run by a gentleman named Graham Care and his
wife produced the show I Leave. It was on PBS.
It was extremely successful. I think it ran for ten
seasons and for lack of a better terminology, it's one
(08:08):
of the first cooking shows. It was that Julia child
that was it me there's nothing else. And he would
dress up in a double breasted suit and tie all
spiffy it out cravat and he would run it was
a live show on TV. He run down to his
kitchen which is an open kitchen set with a kitchen
and oven and the cabinets and bag very much like today,
(08:28):
and a table set for two in front of the kitchen,
and he would show I went to Italy and today
we're cooking. I don't know Nato, blah blah, blah, whatever
he cooked, and I want to show you what I mean.
And then in the back of screen would come up
and it was him in Europe at this restaurant, dining
with his wife and this candle life and he's eating
(08:49):
and he's showing this, and he's going in the kitchen
and this flambaying happening, and he's showing on TV video
of what he did. So he had this production company
and will go with him and everything was handle it
and he would take this bite. He would close his eyes,
put his head back, salivate and just have a glass
of wine. And like, oh my god, oh my god.
(09:09):
He was eating that dish. They panned over the audience
and people like salivate. You can see them their mouths
opening and closing. I'll never figure that as long as
I live, because at that point in time, something was
going on with me, because like, oh my god, then
you cook the dish. And then he said, come on, everybody,
I'm gonna show you how to cook this Vitello's not
and he cook it in front of you, whild drinking
(09:31):
probably a bottle of wine, and he would pull some
from the audience, tell all stories. While he was doing
so and I had this and I said, you think
that's funny? It would like begg you make fun of
people while he's cooking this. Okay, back to the veal
and then they would pull one person sit down and
that was the end of the show. I'm Graham care
cheers and clink and they would eat the dish together.
That was the show. And so I'm dying to do
that show. Hey, I've been pitching it forever and it
(09:53):
really made a huge impact on me that I carried
forward into the restaurant world. So but TV that was
the beginning. Food Howur came around the late nineties. I
think it's thirty years old. It changed the world. Now
you have instead of two patrons a day before watching
a show, there's a million or two million people watching
that show you, So there's so many more eyeballs. It
(10:15):
jumps started revved up the restaurant world. So that we
created in thirty or forty years in New York in
this country what it took three hundred years to create
in Europe. We caught up and now we surpassed them,
I believe in a lot of ways. So TV is everything.
Did I think I was gonna be on TV. No.
Was I enamored by it? Absolutely? Who couldn't be? So
(10:36):
I was named by Graham care the Wild Wild West,
James Bond, and then I ended up in France. I mean,
go figure. So I think that for me, my first
shot came. They gave me this opportunity a judge on Chopped,
and I'm like, at first, I said, what Chopped? What's this?
What's the show? I knew Bobby Flay was on TV
so and he was very successful. It was still in
(10:56):
the sort of wonky phase, but not in two thousand seven.
It was like full flight. They said, yeah, you wanted
They wanted to be on Chopped. They want a really
successful chef. And at that time I ran a lot
of restaurants and I had like a lot of good reviews,
and they wanted a food expert. They had like different personalities,
someone chef, a restaurateur, and maybe a baker or something
like that was always a mix. And I heard the
(11:19):
premise of the show. I thought it was ridiculous at first,
and then I went to do a sizzle reel. We
didn't get paid anything for it was I remember how
how wonky it was, and I'm like, this is never
gonna last. And that was twelve years, seven and fifty
episodes later, and I never forget when I was invited
after that to do Iron Chef and and I won
in two thousand eleven, and everyone said, I never knew
(11:40):
you were a chef. I thought you were a judge chopped,
and I was like, wow. It dawned on me that
perception is everything. It's perception. It's not reality, it's perception
of reality. It didn't matter how many stars I had,
how many years I cooked, thirty years, killing myself and
you know, cooking for not making any money, and that
(12:00):
didn't matter. It was like, you're on TV. Now they
know you're a chef. So it's like an aha moment, right,
So the power TV is something you need to really
use if you have the ability to use it, and
I'm blessed to have the ability to use it now.
It worked very hard to get on TV, and I'm
thankful that I got on TV because of my relationship
with food and my knowledge of restaurants and food. That's great.
(12:22):
So I am doing what I'm naturally good at doing.
So I think that there's no end now. Social media
is like really, you know, lost it and it's TikTok cooking.
There's I G t V, Facebook, Twitter, Every imaginable person
now has is a cook, Every actor is a cooked,
every author now has a favorite recipe. It's like it's
(12:45):
another part of the world that they are now allowed
to open up the world to their love of food
because it's it's ingratiating. It's shown to me, make you human,
and people go nuts. And that is why it can't end.
The paradigms change. But it's not going to end because
(13:05):
you do it three times a day, and it's one
of the most enjoyable reasons to be alive is to eat.
And the access now to with TV and social media
to food, even if you're watching someone cook or watching
someone do a kitchen hack, is remarkable. It's just remarkable, Jeffrey.
(13:51):
Anyone who has paid attention to your social media, who's
watched you on the kitchen, anyone who has even come
across your name in the past three or four or
five years, they know that family is super important to you.
Your wife, Margaret is your business partner, your daughters are
writing a cookbook. Tell me what it's like to fold
(14:12):
family and cooking and business all into the same basket.
It's a delightful basket I wake up every morning. I'm
so grateful that I have the ability to somehow pull
off my eating, love of eating into like a career
that can help provide for my family. And my family
(14:34):
is learning to provide now why writing that cookbook? And
my daughters wrote that themselves without my help, and it
became a bestseller, And I'm so proud of them. And
I'm like, well, that's a good way to get into college.
You wrote a book at twelve. That's cool, that's really cool.
And I try to tell them that whatever you want
to do, that's a cool thing to do. And you
might not know the impact of it now, but it
(14:54):
does register. And I'll go ahead and plug that for you.
Jeffrey Listeners that that book is The Family That Cooks Together.
It came out, Yeah, imagine right in the middle of
the pandemic. Family family and home cooking during lockdown became
a very very important thing. I think that's something that
you really conveyed to through your social media, through your videos,
you know, really reaching out to people during a time
(15:17):
when when we were all at home. You know, it
was one of those things like, let's take a breath.
We all took a collective breath, and you're on social media.
You're not going to work, your kids aren't going to school.
What are you doing. We're doing the same thing we
used to do, except we enjoyed it a whole hell
of a lot more. I mean, we shop, I shopped,
(15:38):
We grew a garden, We did all the things that
a munday sort of silly. You think they're goofy and
never get a chance to do it. But I'm gonna
tell you something. I challenge anybody here, the smartest person
that's listening, I challenge anybody. I challenged Jeff Bezos to
go buy an acrel land, planted himself and grow and
(15:59):
eat what he grows. It's hard. The skill of farming
is right up there. I'm sorry, I'm gonna say that.
It is so difficult, so reliant on nothing. You can't
control anything. All you can control is watering and you
know the amount amount of knowledge you get and what
(16:19):
kind of dirt to use. That's about it. You can't
control the sign, you can't control the wind, you can't
control the plant. You can't control bacteria, flies, infestation, anything.
You can't control rabbits suit. It's hard, and when you
learn how to do that, you you really have an
appreciation for what you what goes into the people that
do this for a living. It's just like you assume
(16:40):
to find these perfect peppers and package baby zucchini a
labeled and numbered and waiting and being spritsed with water.
It's just like, it's there, no problem. It's a huge problem.
You learned that during pandemic, and I think we all
learned a valuable lessons about like, all right, let's be
grateful for all we have and just see how hard
(17:01):
it is and how lucky we have it that basically
at a click you can get anything you want from
anywhere in the world. You have no idea how lucky
we are be at this juncture. So I think a
lot of that came to it. And I think the
viewers we just post me cutting an onion, and you
cut an onion, and my wife Margaret would say, like,
let me hold on a second, what are you doing.
(17:22):
I'm cutting anice and let me get that. I'm like okay,
and you'd get a d fifty thousand people liking it.
I'm like wow, And of course this is doing the
kitchen we've been working on it, but we never really
paid attention to the posting, and so now we just
do simple things that would be to me like I
don't know, like how to mow your lawn, you know,
would be that sort of mundane. But it's fascinating that
(17:44):
people I really are interested in in in the pandemic
behind the curtain. Right, It's like the Wizard of Oz.
Now you're in my in my my kitchen, you're seeing
my products, you're seeing my oven, and people comment, oh
I love that, Oh I have one of those two.
I'm using the same salt. You know. It's like this
humanity again, and it resonated and it resonated with us
as a family. My wife and I are working together
(18:06):
for years, but this year was really tough because now
we're working together and then now we're now you're on
the camera and I'm cooking and there's no prep helping.
It's like we're actually working, you know, and we're gardening
and we're raising and we're running a school. Right. I've
never worked so hard in my life. But I honestly
just to say this with all my heart, it was
it was a remarkable gift in a lot of ways,
(18:28):
and we talked about it all the time. So we
wrote a book. It was finished long before the pandemic.
We just wrote this book that we thought would be
nice to write about it. What we cooked together miraculous says,
Miraculous things happened. It was very timely. And so the
family that it cooks together, it needs together. The family
that cooks together does it together, and it's them. I
(18:49):
always say, the most important time you have is the
is the time you sit around the table and eat,
because you you need to talk. You'll fight and you'll
like want to leave the table and you'll check your
into a grand but you're like you're around the table,
and that is very important. So, like I said, I'm
blessed to have this family that's interested in this business.
I don't know how interested they're gonna but I don't
(19:10):
really care. It's like whatever makes them happy. And you know,
I think they'll find that. It took me a long
time to find it, and I thought I found an economics,
but it like kind of found me. So I hope
it happens to them in a sort of serendipitous way
like that, because it's it's really fun when it happens
when you don't know what's going to happen. Jeffrey, we
started this conversation talking about some of your earliest food memories.
(19:33):
Things that you're polish dishes, Armenia dishes, the things that
your parents, your aunt you know, your your family really
gave you these memories through dishes and and it may
have just been that something that was cooked to them,
it may have been SuperOrdinary, but to you, that's an
iconic taste. And so I think the more that you
(19:54):
and and anyone listening, but but that you have these
experiences in the kitchen with your daughters, with your son,
that's the way that you form those memories. Right we
we sit around the table, and the more you do that,
who knows what memories we will pass along to our kids.
You know, they may they may love one thing they
had one time and to you, that was a forgettable
(20:14):
dish that that really didn't you know, it's not something
you'd put back on the menu, but they loved. So
this is kind of you're taking an active hand in
building that foundation in the same way it was built
for you through family and through togetherness and through time
at the table. Yeah, and you know it also dove
tails for me into like being of use to someone
(20:36):
and being abused to yourself and what are you doing
for a living? And I think of it all the
time about like he was like, what are you driving?
You always doing this? You're doing so much? How can
you do this? You're everywhere? And I'm like, I know,
I think, I I don't think I'm everywhere. I think
I feel like I could do more. And I feel
like when I'm most satisfied, And I think that the
word happy is a minefield. But when I feel that
(20:59):
I'm being helpful helping someone, or bringing value to someone
or smile to someone's faces, when I feel that sense
of like, this is it. This is what meaning the
meaning of like content means, you're content. I'm content when
I put a piece of food down for people and
I call them around the table and they start eating it,
and I see their face and their reaction and they're
(21:21):
really eating it and really enjoying it. And for those
few moments an hour, you've made six, eight, ten people
happy and they're enjoying the process of eating because it
is a process, and that is very gratifying. I can
only tell you that's very gratifying because those things gratify me.
(21:41):
And you can tell right away when it doesn't gratify,
it just doesn't feel It's like this is I'm just
going through emotions. It doesn't feel right. So I always
try to tell people, like, find something that when you
do it, you're gratified. It brings value to someone, it
brings brings a smile. It sounds simple, but it's like
it helps the daily chaos. It really does. And then
your day has become full of gratifying moments and you
(22:05):
pass them on to your kids. And look, I'll be
crazy to tell you that I'm not trying to make
the kids understand table manners and get to the table.
They all know it's you're sitting down. We don't grab
breakfast and leave. And they understand that this ritual is
important to our family, this particular ritual. So some families
(22:27):
have different rituals, but the ritual of sitting down, pausing
and putting something that's made for you and being respectful
of the person that makes that and being respectful of,
like I said that before, the people that grow and
make this food. It's like kind of remarkable that it
all works. And I try to tell my children this
is what this means. This is what you don't get.
(22:50):
And what was wonderful is to watch them write the
book and like dad, we have to do it again.
That's yeah, the rest of me again, how many times
until it's right? Well, Jeffrey, that that makes me really
value the very first time you and I ever met,
it was over breakfast and uh and so I appreciate that. Jeffrey,
thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Chris,
(23:12):
Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses this year.
I've truly enjoyed talking with so many amazing guests. Myself
and our team are taking a short break until after
the New Year, and then we'll be back soon with
more exciting updates. Don't forget to subscribe to four Courses
on your favorite podcasting app and we'll be back before
(23:32):
you know it. Happy holiday and have a great new year.
Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses with Jeffrey
Z Carrion, a production of I Heart Radio and Corner
Table Entertainment. Four Courses is created by Jeffrey Z Carrion,
Margaret Zacarrion, Jared Keller, and Tara Helper. Our executive producer
(23:56):
is Christopher Hesiotis. Four Courses is produced by Jonathan Hawes 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. Special thanks to Katie
Fellman for help as recording engineered. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(24:19):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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