October 5, 2022 • 32 mins
What does it take to bring a respected 2-star brasserie to the top of the “World’s Best Restaurant” list? According to Will Guidara, former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, the key is “Unreasonable Hospitality,” also the title of his new book. Here, he talks to Martha about that meteoric rise, being mentored by restaurant royalty Danny Meyer and Daniel Boulud, and about where to find the best hot dogs up and down the East Coast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The restaurants that fully understand hospitality are ones where if
you and I go to that restaurant, we're gonna feel
more connected to one another at the end of that
meal than we did when we went into it. Will
Gadera is the former co owner and general manager of
the acclaimed Live in Madison Park restaurant in New York City. Will,
(00:23):
who like me, appreciates attention to detail, was able to
guide the restaurant from struggling to star Broscerie not bad
but not what he wanted, to a number one in
the world along with amazing food. Eleven Madison Park is
known for its legendary hospitality. Will's new book, and I
have a copyright with me, is called Unreasonable Hospitality, the
(00:47):
remarkable power of giving people more than they expect, and
it serves as a guide for business leaders in any industry.
And I'm very excited to talk to him about that
and many other things today. Will, it's my pleasure to
have you here at my farm and on my podcast.
I'm so excited to be here. Thanks. And we met
just a couple of weeks ago, formally at a party
(01:10):
for Carly close to Supermodel's thirtieth birthday. That was a
fun party. It was. It was very fun to see
you and see Christina Tosi, who's Will's wife of how
many years now? We are at six years? Oh? Really
that long? It seems like yesterday when she got married
to you and you have a child. We have one
daughter named Frankie Francis I read it. Her name was Francis.
(01:33):
We call her Frankie. She's named after my dad and
he is he Frankie. Well now his name is Francis
and we're just trying to come up with a slate
to well, No, that's very cute. I have a brother
named frank who we called Frankie for all the time
he was growing up. My dad was very happy when
when he got the nod. Oh how nice I bet
(01:54):
he was. Is that the first grandchild for him? It's
his first grandchild. That's lovely and it was great see Christina. Christina,
by the way, is the founder of the Milk Bar,
famous for her really unusual cookies. Uh. And she was
partnered originally with David Chang. Are they still partners. They're
not partners anymore. I mean they're like brothers and sisters. Yeah,
(02:18):
But Milk Bar is kind of blossomed into its own thing,
going cool, cool life and very I did very well
on the wife. I feel pretty good about that. Yeah,
you've had a really storied career so far. You went
to Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, and you interned
(02:38):
in Spain. We're in Spain. I was in the north
of Spain and in a town called San paul Um.
I went there right after I graduated college. I had
so much fun at college that I never wanted to
do a study abroad program, and then graduation was nearing
and I started to regret that a little bit. So,
you know, I just went to a hotel school in
(02:58):
the north of Spain and chopped vegetables effectively in exchange
for room and board, and was there for about three
months before four months before going back to New York
and working with Danny Meyer. So for you started right
off with Danny Meyer, the legendary Danny Meyer. Legendary Danny
who has made such an amazing career of hospitality and
(03:20):
restaurants and now, uh, the humblest of all his operations
is the Shake Shack. One of my favorite haunts. I
love hot dogs. I have this crazy love of hot dogs.
I think I got it from my mom, who also
loved hot dogs. Growing up, we had Rudd's Hut in
New Jersey. Three Yeah, they had really good hot dogs,
(03:44):
and so every now and then Mom and I would
go and get a hot dog at Rhod's Hut. So
my whole family is from New England, and so the
way that they would make hot dogs back in the
day was like butter searing the hot dogs, and then
like the the buns where it's not crusted all the
way around, it's like a split cut, yes, yes, and
then steering that and butter just mustard, and then what
(04:05):
about the baked beans, and then we have the baked
beans on the side, on the side. That's how we
had them in our house too. And although sometimes maybe
the hot dogs were boiled, my mother like boiled if
they were really good hot dogs. But then I discovered
the fried hot dog at there's a fabulous hot dog
place in fair Field right on right on Root one
(04:27):
and fair Field called Rawley's. And they made, uh, they
fried their hot dogs. First, they boiled them, then they
threw them into into hot oil and they burst a
little bit, and then they put them on buttered toasted buns.
With with they don't. They didn't have souer Kraus, so
weird because I love sour cry, but they had relish
(04:48):
mustard and bacon, and we could just spend this entire
podcast talking about hot dogs. I just love that that
that you worked for Danny Meyer when he was developed Well, no,
he had developed that after you left, right because you
were you then went to whe Cuisine. Well, yeah, I
mean when I went to eleven Madison Park to take
over as the general manager, shake Shack was open in
(05:08):
the park. It was just that one, just the one,
and we were in the burgers were still the burger
patties were being formed in the private dining room kitchen
at eleven Medicals they were, and so literally in the
middle of the lunch service you would be carrying out
carrying out trays of raw burger me through the front door.
So you went as general manager right from right from
(05:29):
working as a trainee at at Jenny's. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, no,
so my journey was I went from Spain, started with
Danny Meyer at Tabla, working with the late Floyd car
does Um, which you know, I still think bread barr
at Tabla back in the day was one of the
greatest restaurants. It was so delicious. Absolutely. Then I went
(05:52):
to work at a place called Restaurant Associates, which I'm
sure you know that's a big corporate catering and andspital
everything from the US Open to Lincoln Center to the
met Opera, where I was doing purchasing and accounting. My
dad's in the restaurant business, and he always wanted me
to learn kind of every element of the business before
I one day did my own thing. And from there
(06:14):
I opened all the restaurants again with Danny Meyer at
the Museum of Modern Art, so delicious. I love that restaurant.
I loved it was a special place. It is a
special um Before eventually in two thousand and six, going
to live, I guess that's where I first met you
at the Maybe that was when I first met you.
Probably at Moment. I was the first person to actually
(06:35):
have an office at Moment because they had closed the
museum to do the big renovation, and the restaurant people
were the first to go in. And when I first
went to MoMA, my office was on the fifth floor,
about three thousand square feet, overlook in the sculpture garden
until all the museum staff started moving back in and
then I got subsequently bumped down until I ended up
in the subseller where where my office was for the
(06:58):
rest of my time there, and then from there and
then from there to eleven Madisone Park. So that was
already a brosery that was a broserate and was that
Danielle was he running the brosery at that time, So yeah,
he had just been hired about six months before I
was Danny Meyer who owned it before I bought it
from him. Um saw the room and just wanted the
(07:20):
restaurant to be like one that could live up to
its room because the room is, you know, thirty five
foot ceilings, no extraordinary, and that building is which which
what's the name of that building? That was the original
MetLife building which one? It was being built, was meant
to be the tallest building in the world before the
recession hits. So it's only like thirty five stories. But
the lobby spaces where the restaurant is are unbelievably ground
(07:45):
they are. So you changed that brossery infested you work
to get it changed well, So we got there in
two thousand and six. I'm glad, you know, your chronology.
So well, this is this is something complicated read in
the book helped helps made to restore my memory. Um,
(08:06):
I sold the restaurant at the beginning of two thousand twenty.
So you owned the physical restaurant. Yes, okay, So I
started with Daniel whom we owned it together, partners, we're partners.
Got there in two thousand six, bought it in two
thousand eleven, um, and then it was in two thousand
seventeen that we were named the best restaurant in the world.
(08:27):
So eleven years after eleven years it took to become
number one, which is a minuscule amount of time in
the restaurant world. Wow, that was some fantastic accomplishment. And
I just I just loved eating at eleven Madison Park
when you were number one. I mean really, we had
the best meals, so so particular each dish, but not
(08:49):
so particular that it was like intimidating to eat. Everything
was so tasty and so beautifully prepared in that kitchen
with all those fantastic shifts. We had a beautiful kids,
did amazing kitchen. So you parted ways with Daniel, whom
which was surprising to everybody. Yeah, and then he turned vegan.
(09:11):
Then he went vegan. Yeah, why did you have a
life change or something? You know, I'm not sure, Like
I believe, and you know, with the focus of the
book just about like being unreasonable in pursuit of hospitality.
I believe we were the best vegan restaurant out there
when we were still serving me because that was always
(09:33):
something that was very important to me. Is no matter
what people walked into the room with, Like, I don't
think you can ever try to be all things to
all people, but if you sense that certain people are
looking to dine in a certain way, you should be
ready to deliver just as good an experience to them
as as you are anywhere else. So you started thinking
about that already before you left. Yeah, I mean never,
(09:55):
I was never a part of a conversation to go
completely vegan. But it was always important to me on
the hospitality side that no matter what your dietary restrictions were,
that we could give you the best meal that you've had.
(10:17):
We will get back to this unreasonable Now, this this
is a hard title for a book, because you're not
at all really unreasonable. You are really really encompassing the
best tenants of all for for restaurant UM development and
restaurant service and restaurant everything. So why did why why
(10:39):
did they start calling it hospitality instead of the restaurant business. Well,
it's a nice it's a nice way to call it
and to describe it. Yeah, I mean, like my, my
whole thing with even the hospitality industry to begin with,
I think most people think of the hospitality industry as
being restaurants, hotels, cruise lines a few other things like that, UM,
(11:03):
and I think, you know, simply put, I think it
was called the hospitality industry because those are the businesses
where people seem to care about hospitality and taking care
of guests, taking care of visitors, taking care of people
who are coming to eat something that's hospitality. Yeah, Well,
recognizing that hospitality is not the thing you're serving. It's
(11:27):
not how you serve it. It's the way you make
people feel when you serve it. Like service is cooking
the steak in the right way, delivering it to the
right person within the right amount of time. Hospitality is
how do you feel at the end of the night
when you leave the restaurant. If it's just that you
thought the food was delicious and it was an efficient
(11:47):
experience that was not one where you received hospitality. I
think hospitality with the ambiance of the place too. I
think hospitality, Yeah, I think the ambiance for sure, if
the person is thinking about the ambiance with the intention
of creating conditions where people can connect. My belief system
is that in a restaurant, the food, the service, and
(12:08):
the design are simply ingredients and the recipe of human connection.
The restaurants that fully understand hospitality are ones where if
you and I go to that restaurant, we're going to
feel more connected to one another at the end of
that meal than we did when we went into it. Yeah,
it's a nice way to put it, and I believe
that any business can be in the hospitality industry if
they choose to put that type of thinking kind of
(12:30):
in the center of how they make decisions. Like if
you're in an office and morale is low, don't say, oh,
have a happy hour. Yeah, fix what's making the morale
go down right, and and then create the conditions where
the people that work there feel like connected, not only
to the people they work for. Are you opening a
consulting business to help us business owners make sure that
(12:53):
we are being hospitable. I mean, I've been doing some
consulting in this middle time. Yeah, this is a good
idea which has been fun. If we're with medical institutions,
I've worked with luxury retail brands. And the reason it's
called unreasonable hospitality. And I appreciate thinking that I'm not
an unreasonable person, which I don't think I am. But
like when you look at I mean, the people that
(13:15):
are most successful are unreasonable in their pursuit of something. Right,
You've been unreasonable in your career, in your pursuit of
creating everything that you've created. You look at Lebron James,
He's been unreasonable and become the basketball player he is,
or Scorsese or Steve Jobs. And I believe that following,
(13:35):
especially in the last couple of years, where everyone feels
such a lack of connection, that it's time for more
people in their lives and as leaders of their businesses
to start being just as unreasonable in their pursuit of
how they make people feel. So being unreasonable is also
being unaccepting of mediocracy, the unaccepting of of serving something
(13:56):
that shouldn't be serving. Yes, yeah, I totally get it.
Like unwavering being fiercely dedicated, being willing to do whatever
it takes to make the people you serve and those
that you work with. Giving this booktual a lot of people,
but I'm also going to give this part of the
podcast to them. I like having this verbalized like you're
(14:20):
doing because it's so important. It really is, Like I'll
give you an example. Actually that comes down to the
hot dog because we the whole thing started because we
went to the fifty Best the fifty best wards the
first year on that list, but we came in last
place at a fifty at a fifty, which there's a
good result, but I felt demoralized, haven't Okay, so you
(14:47):
felt demoralized, Yeah, a little bit, were motivated in the
top fifty. Yeah, but in that room we were last.
Oh yeah, but guess what you know, room for improvement. Well,
and my my dad always says, adversity is a terrible
thing to waste, and you know, there's there's no there's
(15:08):
no way around. It was just embarrassing to come in
last place in that room because you're like, you're like,
all right, we're on the list now. And then that
was eleven Madison Park, So you're just a brasserie. Then yeah,
we're just a bras were. We're on our way, but
we hadn't arrived yet. But that whole number one thing.
Every restaurant that topped that list did so because they
made some impact, right front, Adrea at El Belie with
(15:30):
molecular guests. This was this was worldwide fifty restaurants. You
should have been so proud of yourself when we got there.
We really were. But you know, fron Adrea pioneer molecular gastronomy,
Renee red zepiet Noma pioneered foraging and local. And the
impact that I wanted to make was all the chefs
(15:51):
on that list were unreasonable with what they put on
the plate, and I wanted to be the restaurant that
started to be just as unreasonable and how we served
that food and York, Yeah, and so we I got
back to the restaurant and I had this idea of
unreasonable hospitality in my head, but I didn't know what
it meant. So you name that. This is way back
in two thousand and ten. You were already thinking about
(16:12):
unreasonably this idea. That's great. Um, so it's taken you
twelve years to write the book to get the book out. Great.
I started at a few different times, but it wasn't
until COVID that you got you got to do it.
You know, sometimes you need the world to slow down
enough for things to come into focus a little bit,
and yourself to slow down. Yeah, exactly. And your baby
(16:34):
gave you enough free time. My baby, my baby thankfully
was born when I was about eighty percent of the
way through it. Um. But I was in the dinning
room one day and there was a table of four
Europeans who were on vacation to New York. There were
foodies who are leaving to go back to the airport
to head home after their lunch, and I overheard them talking.
They're like, what an amazing trip We've been to all
(16:55):
the best restaurants per se Danielle Le Bernadine Mamofuku now
at the Medicine Park. And then another one jumped in.
So the only thing we haven't had is in New
York City street hot dog And so you know those
moments in a cartoon or the light bulb. Yeah, So
I walked as calmly as I could back to the
kitchen and then sprint it out the front door of
the restaurant down the block to the hot dog cart it.
I got a hot dog, brought it in, talk about
(17:17):
ten minutes to convince Daniel to serve it, and then
we cut it into four perfect pieces, putting on four
plates a little swish of ketchup, a swish of mustard,
a cannell of sauerkraut, and a cannell of relish. And
before their final savory course, we brought it out and
I said, to make sure you don't go home with
any culinary regrets in New York City hot dog. So
you took made the effort, and because you were also
(17:40):
very nosey and overhearing, you make a point of you
make a point of in the book by the way,
that it's not bad to be nosy, not bad to
over here. Well, it's I mean being nosy overhearing is
I think it's just caring enough about the relationship where
you choose to care about what they're saying and then
(18:01):
try to serve them in a way that it's unique
to them. For stock chips don't take the stock chips,
don't susts or at least do so subtly. Um. But
when I served them that hot dog, I had never
seen anyone respond to anything I'd served them like they
did to that because it was just for them. And
that's kind of the ethos of this how because by
the way, serving people as individuals, as opposed to just
(18:23):
coming up with the thing you want to serve and
serving it to everyone that is unreasonable. It takes a
lot of energy, but the look on someone's face when
they receive a gift that you're responsible for giving them
is one of the most energizing things out there. I
think part of unreasonable hospitality is taking what you do
seriously without taking yourself so seriously that you don't do
(18:45):
the things that will actually make people happy. And you
know what, I think your wife is also that way.
She's unreasonable because look at what she's done with corn
flakes and milk. If you don't know who Christina Tosi is,
you should all look her up every because she took
corn flakes, soaked them in milk, and then used that
corn flake milk in her cookies or cakes. Cake that
(19:08):
was a cake. And I, you know, I couldn't believe
it when I first read the recipe. And what did
she do with the corn flakes? She threw them away,
gave him to the pigs, but it was interesting to
start breaking them up here to your animals, my chickens
were love but but fun. You know, it's it's it's
fun and unreasonable and unexpected and successful all at the
(19:30):
same time. Well, and she has the very definition of that.
I mean, my wife is very hard working, very disciplined.
She takes what she does very seriously, but she doesn't
take herself so seriously that she can't see the beautiful
opportunities for creativity and innovation that sometimes sit right in
front of our faces. It's so great. So when you
(19:51):
were back at eleven Madison Park and changing into the
number one restaurant, what did you have to change? You
change a lot? Was it you? Was it service? Was
it ambiance? Was it the plates? We changed absolutely everything
slowly over time. You know, we didn't close it, do
a big renovation and reopen it. It was. It was
(20:13):
so incremental that at a certain point it started to
feel almost inevitable. Right. It started with uniforms, plates, the menu,
it stopped being in all the cart and then became
a price fixed before it became a tasting menu. You know,
we went from big brasso replates with the red line
around the rim to the beautiful Bernadoux. Until we finally
moved into custom made porcelain from a local manufacturer, it
(20:38):
got more and more and more the number one. Yeah,
I mean, you know, I think it's kind of one
of the beautiful things if you allow the business you're
running to start, if you start treating it like a living,
breathing organism, then you can just slowly make it better
and better and better. Educating a trial, yeah, giving them
(20:59):
more and more opportunities to learn. Yeah, if you recognize
that you're never there's no there's no concept of being done.
It's just a beautiful journey that continues in perpetuity, and
there's inflection points along that. So how did you separate
yourself from your baby? You know? Was it hard? That
was definitely hard. It was definitely hard. But were you
(21:23):
brought out? I was bought out, so that that helped.
Being brought out, that helped um and my baby actually
having a real baby helped. I think when you do
something your entire life and you're very celebrated for doing it,
it starts to become your identity, right, And so when
when I sold that company, I almost started frantically going
(21:46):
to open new restaurants, and when COVID started on March
whatever fift, I was one week away, this is not
hyperbole from signing three new restaurant leases in the city.
And then I moved up to the country and for
what I thought was going to be a couple of months,
and then I was like, you know what this is?
This is the life I want to live. So is
there a difference between service and hospitality? I mean, you
(22:09):
touched on it a little bit, but is there a difference?
There must be, yeah. So one of the things in
the book that back in the day when I was
at TABLEA, I wasn't, you know, a confident manager yet
I was a fresh out of college, and so I
always wrote interview questions when I sat down with someone. Now,
I just believe in letting a conversation flow and seeing
(22:30):
if it's someone I want to spend time with. But
that was the question I always used to ask new people,
what's the difference between service and hospitality? The best answer
I ever got was from a woman who said, services
black and white and hospitality is color. Service of the
things that we do. Hospitality is the way that we
engage with people when we do those things services putting
(22:51):
a plate down, Hospitality is the eye contact and the
connection you established with the person you're giving the plate
to when you put it down. When I was coming
up people, I was talking about excellence in hospitality. You
hire for hospitality, you train excellence. I think you can
train both. I think hospitality is just as much of
a craft as cooking or service or anything is, and
(23:15):
therefore you can teach a craft. I think one of
the best ways to teach it, though, is to encourage it.
I think it's much easier to know how good it
feels to give hospitality to extend graciousness to other people
once you first experience how good it feels to receive it,
and then I think is a part of the leader's
(23:36):
job is to encourage hospitality by delivering it to the
people that you hope will then turn around and deliver
it to your guests. There's this quote which I've come
to learn is misattributed to my Angelou, which is people
will forget what you say, they'll forget what you do,
but they'll never forget how you made them feel like
in in five years. When you're describing that meal, the
(23:59):
thing you're going to remember is how you felt, especially
the next day when you were texting with your friend.
And that has nothing to do with anything except for
hospital exactly. Go back to Cornell. You took a class
(24:20):
cold guest Chefs. Well, that's actually a really good segue.
Tell us that class inspire you and what did you
learn from that? Well, there's a classic Cornell called Guest Chefs.
They bring up a famous chef every semester and the
classes split up into three groups, management, dining room, employees,
(24:41):
in kitchen, and plays. I was in the management team
when Daniel Ballud came up and cooked at Cornell, and
my role was marketing the event now was Daniel Balloud,
which meant that it was going to sell out no
matter what. So I decided that my role was entertaining
the chef. And it was an amazing event, obviously, and
I brought Daniel Blood and his Sioux chefs and everyone
(25:02):
down to my house at one thirty College Avenue, where
I treated him to the best form of hospitality I
understood at the time, which was a keg party. Daniel
and I became close through that experience, So you had
a keg of beer, We had a keg of beer
Milwaukee's best, and Daniel made scrambled eggs and truffles for
all of the students. The reason the story is relevant
(25:25):
is because we became close enough that my mom passed
away the day after I graduated college. She had been
sick for a long time, and because of that, I
almost didn't go to Spain as planned. But my dad
encouraged me too, and by the time I went to
buy my ticket to Spain, he lived in Boston at
the time, I can only find one leaving from New York.
(25:47):
So he drove me to the airport and it felt
like the right time to call Daniel Balloud. Remember I'm
twenty one years old, but he gave me his number.
He goes anything you ever need, and so I said, hey,
I'd like to bring my dad to Danielle And so
he set us up in the sky box, which is
ere my grandchildren. There isn't that a special treat? And
(26:08):
so for anyone listening, the sky box is a room
that sits with a window overlooking the kitchen, and it's
amazing and your food is brought up to from from
all those fabulous stoves and you're watching it being cooked
and the whole thing. And this was a night where
I mean my dad's wife, my mother had just passed away.
(26:29):
It should have been one of our saddest nights, but
because of the warmth and the graciousness, the hospitality that
Danielle and his team extended to us became one of
our best nights. And your father will never forget it,
and I'll never forget you. You were taking care of him.
It was my first time taking him out to dinner.
Danielle was taking care of you both. Yeah, And it's
(26:51):
like one of the things I talked about in the
book is that in restaurants and really any customer service business,
we have an opportunity to create our own magical worlds
in a world that needs more magic, simply by virtue
of how we invest in the people around us. And
that night was the first time I recognized how powerful
(27:13):
the gifts you give through hospitality can be because you
can you can always help people celebrate moments, but sometimes
you can give people the grace, if only for a
few hours, to forget about the really hard moments. I
think that's a really beautiful thing that I hope more
people are inspired to want to do. I hope a
(27:33):
lot of restaurant terms, or but I, but I genuinely
believe that it could happen at a car dealership or
at a barbershop, or when you go to rent a
car on vacation or on the plane on your way. Like,
I just think it would be a beautiful world if
more people recognize that it's not just good on the
(27:53):
receiving end, it feels really damn good on the giving
end too. At the end, it was impossible to get
a table into leven Madison Park. The people that that
did get a table, I'm sure considered themselves lucky that
they were able to have dinner there. But it was
always very important to me that we never became the
(28:14):
kind of restaurant that treated them as if they were
lucky to be dining with us, and actually the opposite.
We always lead with gratitude that people were trusting us
with their time and their money. Why do you say
there's nothing more flattering than a guest walking into the
restaurant with luggage, well, luggage like suitcase with suitcases, Because
(28:38):
that means that they want their experience with you to
be either their first or their last memory of their trip.
So they're on their way to the airport, or they're
just they've just gotten there. They've either they either can't
wait to go, or it's the thing that they want
to have as the lasting memory of their trip. Like
I'll give you my example, which is not an eleven
(29:00):
Madison Park style example, but every time I travel to
l A. And I'm sure a lot of people do
this as well, based on how busy it is. I
get up the plan, I got directly to In and
Out Burger. I just knew you were going to do that.
In and Out Burger. Everybody, if you haven't been there,
go there double double animal style. No, no, no. And
because it's like for me, it signifies that I am
(29:24):
now in Los Angeles, and if you can be that,
it means that you represent someone's emotional connections so much
to a city. I think it's a pretty powerful thing. Yeah,
that's that's awfully nice. So you've dined in many restaurants
all over the world. Which dining experiences have impressed you
the most? And weird, I mean, there's a lot. The
(29:48):
one I'm I'm thinking about right now because out of
the corner of my eye, I see your linear cookbook.
I love the meals. I've had a line and I
love them because, Okay, he is very innovative, right, very
forward thinking. Um, but there's also like a deliciousness and
a nostalgia to his food that the last time I
(30:12):
went there. There are two courses that will never forget.
M One was a helium balloon, where the balloon was edible,
and so here's this very serious, important restaurant. It was
a dessert and so they literally it's like an apple
kind of taffy balloon, and so you'll see blown and
then filled with helium, and they bring it over and
(30:34):
then the guests inhale the helium and start talking and laughing,
and then they eat this delicious thing. So it's engaging,
it's experiential, it's funny. And then the way that they
finished the course, their final dessert, I think is so brilliant.
Everyone else looks at a table and sees the table
and then puts plates on the table. Grant looked at
(30:55):
the tables of his restaurant and saw plates. And so
they roll out a silicone mat to over the entire table,
and they take everything else off, and then they played
a giant dessert across the entire table, which I think
is brilliant. It's fun, it's entertaining, and then the way
it brings people together. You and I are both our
entire table just turned into a giant Willy Wonka style
(31:17):
dessert and you just all eat it from this and
you're just all digging in and so like the the
idea of like creating community around the table. I think
I think they do it very very well, as long
as it's not that drink where they're straws sticking into
it and you're all drinking out of this scene. No,
that's taking it too far. That's awful. You always think
who's spitting in? Think after I think that trend is,
(31:38):
I think that looks done. I think I won't. I won't.
I never did that. You say, many companies focus on products,
but I've forgotten about the people. I think that you
are remembering the people so nicely in this book and
in the work that you have done. Thank you and
the best of luck. This has been a very very
(31:59):
nice conversation, and I and I wish you well, and
I wish all of us well in all the restaurants
that we go to after they read Unreasonable, The remarkable
power of giving people more than they expect. Thank you
so much, Thank you, I appreciate it.
The restaurants that fully understand hospitality are ones where if
you and I go to that restaurant, we're gonna feel
more connected to one another at the end of that
meal than we did when we went into it. Will
Gadera is the former co owner and general manager of
the acclaimed Live in Madison Park restaurant in New York City. Will,
(00:23):
who like me, appreciates attention to detail, was able to
guide the restaurant from struggling to star Broscerie not bad
but not what he wanted, to a number one in
the world along with amazing food. Eleven Madison Park is
known for its legendary hospitality. Will's new book, and I
have a copyright with me, is called Unreasonable Hospitality, the
(00:47):
remarkable power of giving people more than they expect, and
it serves as a guide for business leaders in any industry.
And I'm very excited to talk to him about that
and many other things today. Will, it's my pleasure to
have you here at my farm and on my podcast.
I'm so excited to be here. Thanks. And we met
just a couple of weeks ago, formally at a party
(01:10):
for Carly close to Supermodel's thirtieth birthday. That was a
fun party. It was. It was very fun to see
you and see Christina Tosi, who's Will's wife of how
many years now? We are at six years? Oh? Really
that long? It seems like yesterday when she got married
to you and you have a child. We have one
daughter named Frankie Francis I read it. Her name was Francis.
(01:33):
We call her Frankie. She's named after my dad and
he is he Frankie. Well now his name is Francis
and we're just trying to come up with a slate
to well, No, that's very cute. I have a brother
named frank who we called Frankie for all the time
he was growing up. My dad was very happy when
when he got the nod. Oh how nice I bet
(01:54):
he was. Is that the first grandchild for him? It's
his first grandchild. That's lovely and it was great see Christina. Christina,
by the way, is the founder of the Milk Bar,
famous for her really unusual cookies. Uh. And she was
partnered originally with David Chang. Are they still partners. They're
not partners anymore. I mean they're like brothers and sisters. Yeah,
(02:18):
But Milk Bar is kind of blossomed into its own thing,
going cool, cool life and very I did very well
on the wife. I feel pretty good about that. Yeah,
you've had a really storied career so far. You went
to Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, and you interned
(02:38):
in Spain. We're in Spain. I was in the north
of Spain and in a town called San paul Um.
I went there right after I graduated college. I had
so much fun at college that I never wanted to
do a study abroad program, and then graduation was nearing
and I started to regret that a little bit. So,
you know, I just went to a hotel school in
(02:58):
the north of Spain and chopped vegetables effectively in exchange
for room and board, and was there for about three
months before four months before going back to New York
and working with Danny Meyer. So for you started right
off with Danny Meyer, the legendary Danny Meyer. Legendary Danny
who has made such an amazing career of hospitality and
(03:20):
restaurants and now, uh, the humblest of all his operations
is the Shake Shack. One of my favorite haunts. I
love hot dogs. I have this crazy love of hot dogs.
I think I got it from my mom, who also
loved hot dogs. Growing up, we had Rudd's Hut in
New Jersey. Three Yeah, they had really good hot dogs,
(03:44):
and so every now and then Mom and I would
go and get a hot dog at Rhod's Hut. So
my whole family is from New England, and so the
way that they would make hot dogs back in the
day was like butter searing the hot dogs, and then
like the the buns where it's not crusted all the
way around, it's like a split cut, yes, yes, and
then steering that and butter just mustard, and then what
(04:05):
about the baked beans, and then we have the baked
beans on the side, on the side. That's how we
had them in our house too. And although sometimes maybe
the hot dogs were boiled, my mother like boiled if
they were really good hot dogs. But then I discovered
the fried hot dog at there's a fabulous hot dog
place in fair Field right on right on Root one
(04:27):
and fair Field called Rawley's. And they made, uh, they
fried their hot dogs. First, they boiled them, then they
threw them into into hot oil and they burst a
little bit, and then they put them on buttered toasted buns.
With with they don't. They didn't have souer Kraus, so
weird because I love sour cry, but they had relish
(04:48):
mustard and bacon, and we could just spend this entire
podcast talking about hot dogs. I just love that that
that you worked for Danny Meyer when he was developed Well, no,
he had developed that after you left, right because you
were you then went to whe Cuisine. Well, yeah, I
mean when I went to eleven Madison Park to take
over as the general manager, shake Shack was open in
(05:08):
the park. It was just that one, just the one,
and we were in the burgers were still the burger
patties were being formed in the private dining room kitchen
at eleven Medicals they were, and so literally in the
middle of the lunch service you would be carrying out
carrying out trays of raw burger me through the front door.
So you went as general manager right from right from
(05:29):
working as a trainee at at Jenny's. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, no,
so my journey was I went from Spain, started with
Danny Meyer at Tabla, working with the late Floyd car
does Um, which you know, I still think bread barr
at Tabla back in the day was one of the
greatest restaurants. It was so delicious. Absolutely. Then I went
(05:52):
to work at a place called Restaurant Associates, which I'm
sure you know that's a big corporate catering and andspital
everything from the US Open to Lincoln Center to the
met Opera, where I was doing purchasing and accounting. My
dad's in the restaurant business, and he always wanted me
to learn kind of every element of the business before
I one day did my own thing. And from there
(06:14):
I opened all the restaurants again with Danny Meyer at
the Museum of Modern Art, so delicious. I love that restaurant.
I loved it was a special place. It is a
special um Before eventually in two thousand and six, going
to live, I guess that's where I first met you
at the Maybe that was when I first met you.
Probably at Moment. I was the first person to actually
(06:35):
have an office at Moment because they had closed the
museum to do the big renovation, and the restaurant people
were the first to go in. And when I first
went to MoMA, my office was on the fifth floor,
about three thousand square feet, overlook in the sculpture garden
until all the museum staff started moving back in and
then I got subsequently bumped down until I ended up
in the subseller where where my office was for the
(06:58):
rest of my time there, and then from there and
then from there to eleven Madisone Park. So that was
already a brosery that was a broserate and was that
Danielle was he running the brosery at that time, So yeah,
he had just been hired about six months before I
was Danny Meyer who owned it before I bought it
from him. Um saw the room and just wanted the
(07:20):
restaurant to be like one that could live up to
its room because the room is, you know, thirty five
foot ceilings, no extraordinary, and that building is which which
what's the name of that building? That was the original
MetLife building which one? It was being built, was meant
to be the tallest building in the world before the
recession hits. So it's only like thirty five stories. But
the lobby spaces where the restaurant is are unbelievably ground
(07:45):
they are. So you changed that brossery infested you work
to get it changed well, So we got there in
two thousand and six. I'm glad, you know, your chronology.
So well, this is this is something complicated read in
the book helped helps made to restore my memory. Um,
(08:06):
I sold the restaurant at the beginning of two thousand twenty.
So you owned the physical restaurant. Yes, okay, So I
started with Daniel whom we owned it together, partners, we're partners.
Got there in two thousand six, bought it in two
thousand eleven, um, and then it was in two thousand
seventeen that we were named the best restaurant in the world.
(08:27):
So eleven years after eleven years it took to become
number one, which is a minuscule amount of time in
the restaurant world. Wow, that was some fantastic accomplishment. And
I just I just loved eating at eleven Madison Park
when you were number one. I mean really, we had
the best meals, so so particular each dish, but not
(08:49):
so particular that it was like intimidating to eat. Everything
was so tasty and so beautifully prepared in that kitchen
with all those fantastic shifts. We had a beautiful kids,
did amazing kitchen. So you parted ways with Daniel, whom
which was surprising to everybody. Yeah, and then he turned vegan.
(09:11):
Then he went vegan. Yeah, why did you have a
life change or something? You know, I'm not sure, Like
I believe, and you know, with the focus of the
book just about like being unreasonable in pursuit of hospitality.
I believe we were the best vegan restaurant out there
when we were still serving me because that was always
(09:33):
something that was very important to me. Is no matter
what people walked into the room with, Like, I don't
think you can ever try to be all things to
all people, but if you sense that certain people are
looking to dine in a certain way, you should be
ready to deliver just as good an experience to them
as as you are anywhere else. So you started thinking
about that already before you left. Yeah, I mean never,
(09:55):
I was never a part of a conversation to go
completely vegan. But it was always important to me on
the hospitality side that no matter what your dietary restrictions were,
that we could give you the best meal that you've had.
(10:17):
We will get back to this unreasonable Now, this this
is a hard title for a book, because you're not
at all really unreasonable. You are really really encompassing the
best tenants of all for for restaurant UM development and
restaurant service and restaurant everything. So why did why why
(10:39):
did they start calling it hospitality instead of the restaurant business. Well,
it's a nice it's a nice way to call it
and to describe it. Yeah, I mean, like my, my
whole thing with even the hospitality industry to begin with,
I think most people think of the hospitality industry as
being restaurants, hotels, cruise lines a few other things like that, UM,
(11:03):
and I think, you know, simply put, I think it
was called the hospitality industry because those are the businesses
where people seem to care about hospitality and taking care
of guests, taking care of visitors, taking care of people
who are coming to eat something that's hospitality. Yeah, Well,
recognizing that hospitality is not the thing you're serving. It's
(11:27):
not how you serve it. It's the way you make
people feel when you serve it. Like service is cooking
the steak in the right way, delivering it to the
right person within the right amount of time. Hospitality is
how do you feel at the end of the night
when you leave the restaurant. If it's just that you
thought the food was delicious and it was an efficient
(11:47):
experience that was not one where you received hospitality. I
think hospitality with the ambiance of the place too. I
think hospitality, Yeah, I think the ambiance for sure, if
the person is thinking about the ambiance with the intention
of creating conditions where people can connect. My belief system
is that in a restaurant, the food, the service, and
(12:08):
the design are simply ingredients and the recipe of human connection.
The restaurants that fully understand hospitality are ones where if
you and I go to that restaurant, we're going to
feel more connected to one another at the end of
that meal than we did when we went into it. Yeah,
it's a nice way to put it, and I believe
that any business can be in the hospitality industry if
they choose to put that type of thinking kind of
(12:30):
in the center of how they make decisions. Like if
you're in an office and morale is low, don't say, oh,
have a happy hour. Yeah, fix what's making the morale
go down right, and and then create the conditions where
the people that work there feel like connected, not only
to the people they work for. Are you opening a
consulting business to help us business owners make sure that
(12:53):
we are being hospitable. I mean, I've been doing some
consulting in this middle time. Yeah, this is a good
idea which has been fun. If we're with medical institutions,
I've worked with luxury retail brands. And the reason it's
called unreasonable hospitality. And I appreciate thinking that I'm not
an unreasonable person, which I don't think I am. But
like when you look at I mean, the people that
(13:15):
are most successful are unreasonable in their pursuit of something. Right,
You've been unreasonable in your career, in your pursuit of
creating everything that you've created. You look at Lebron James,
He's been unreasonable and become the basketball player he is,
or Scorsese or Steve Jobs. And I believe that following,
(13:35):
especially in the last couple of years, where everyone feels
such a lack of connection, that it's time for more
people in their lives and as leaders of their businesses
to start being just as unreasonable in their pursuit of
how they make people feel. So being unreasonable is also
being unaccepting of mediocracy, the unaccepting of of serving something
(13:56):
that shouldn't be serving. Yes, yeah, I totally get it.
Like unwavering being fiercely dedicated, being willing to do whatever
it takes to make the people you serve and those
that you work with. Giving this booktual a lot of people,
but I'm also going to give this part of the
podcast to them. I like having this verbalized like you're
(14:20):
doing because it's so important. It really is, Like I'll
give you an example. Actually that comes down to the
hot dog because we the whole thing started because we
went to the fifty Best the fifty best wards the
first year on that list, but we came in last
place at a fifty at a fifty, which there's a
good result, but I felt demoralized, haven't Okay, so you
(14:47):
felt demoralized, Yeah, a little bit, were motivated in the
top fifty. Yeah, but in that room we were last.
Oh yeah, but guess what you know, room for improvement. Well,
and my my dad always says, adversity is a terrible
thing to waste, and you know, there's there's no there's
(15:08):
no way around. It was just embarrassing to come in
last place in that room because you're like, you're like,
all right, we're on the list now. And then that
was eleven Madison Park, So you're just a brasserie. Then yeah,
we're just a bras were. We're on our way, but
we hadn't arrived yet. But that whole number one thing.
Every restaurant that topped that list did so because they
made some impact, right front, Adrea at El Belie with
(15:30):
molecular guests. This was this was worldwide fifty restaurants. You
should have been so proud of yourself when we got there.
We really were. But you know, fron Adrea pioneer molecular gastronomy,
Renee red zepiet Noma pioneered foraging and local. And the
impact that I wanted to make was all the chefs
(15:51):
on that list were unreasonable with what they put on
the plate, and I wanted to be the restaurant that
started to be just as unreasonable and how we served
that food and York, Yeah, and so we I got
back to the restaurant and I had this idea of
unreasonable hospitality in my head, but I didn't know what
it meant. So you name that. This is way back
in two thousand and ten. You were already thinking about
(16:12):
unreasonably this idea. That's great. Um, so it's taken you
twelve years to write the book to get the book out. Great.
I started at a few different times, but it wasn't
until COVID that you got you got to do it.
You know, sometimes you need the world to slow down
enough for things to come into focus a little bit,
and yourself to slow down. Yeah, exactly. And your baby
(16:34):
gave you enough free time. My baby, my baby thankfully
was born when I was about eighty percent of the
way through it. Um. But I was in the dinning
room one day and there was a table of four
Europeans who were on vacation to New York. There were
foodies who are leaving to go back to the airport
to head home after their lunch, and I overheard them talking.
They're like, what an amazing trip We've been to all
(16:55):
the best restaurants per se Danielle Le Bernadine Mamofuku now
at the Medicine Park. And then another one jumped in.
So the only thing we haven't had is in New
York City street hot dog And so you know those
moments in a cartoon or the light bulb. Yeah, So
I walked as calmly as I could back to the
kitchen and then sprint it out the front door of
the restaurant down the block to the hot dog cart it.
I got a hot dog, brought it in, talk about
(17:17):
ten minutes to convince Daniel to serve it, and then
we cut it into four perfect pieces, putting on four
plates a little swish of ketchup, a swish of mustard,
a cannell of sauerkraut, and a cannell of relish. And
before their final savory course, we brought it out and
I said, to make sure you don't go home with
any culinary regrets in New York City hot dog. So
you took made the effort, and because you were also
(17:40):
very nosey and overhearing, you make a point of you
make a point of in the book by the way,
that it's not bad to be nosy, not bad to
over here. Well, it's I mean being nosy overhearing is
I think it's just caring enough about the relationship where
you choose to care about what they're saying and then
(18:01):
try to serve them in a way that it's unique
to them. For stock chips don't take the stock chips,
don't susts or at least do so subtly. Um. But
when I served them that hot dog, I had never
seen anyone respond to anything I'd served them like they
did to that because it was just for them. And
that's kind of the ethos of this how because by
the way, serving people as individuals, as opposed to just
(18:23):
coming up with the thing you want to serve and
serving it to everyone that is unreasonable. It takes a
lot of energy, but the look on someone's face when
they receive a gift that you're responsible for giving them
is one of the most energizing things out there. I
think part of unreasonable hospitality is taking what you do
seriously without taking yourself so seriously that you don't do
(18:45):
the things that will actually make people happy. And you
know what, I think your wife is also that way.
She's unreasonable because look at what she's done with corn
flakes and milk. If you don't know who Christina Tosi is,
you should all look her up every because she took
corn flakes, soaked them in milk, and then used that
corn flake milk in her cookies or cakes. Cake that
(19:08):
was a cake. And I, you know, I couldn't believe
it when I first read the recipe. And what did
she do with the corn flakes? She threw them away,
gave him to the pigs, but it was interesting to
start breaking them up here to your animals, my chickens
were love but but fun. You know, it's it's it's
fun and unreasonable and unexpected and successful all at the
(19:30):
same time. Well, and she has the very definition of that.
I mean, my wife is very hard working, very disciplined.
She takes what she does very seriously, but she doesn't
take herself so seriously that she can't see the beautiful
opportunities for creativity and innovation that sometimes sit right in
front of our faces. It's so great. So when you
(19:51):
were back at eleven Madison Park and changing into the
number one restaurant, what did you have to change? You
change a lot? Was it you? Was it service? Was
it ambiance? Was it the plates? We changed absolutely everything
slowly over time. You know, we didn't close it, do
a big renovation and reopen it. It was. It was
(20:13):
so incremental that at a certain point it started to
feel almost inevitable. Right. It started with uniforms, plates, the menu,
it stopped being in all the cart and then became
a price fixed before it became a tasting menu. You know,
we went from big brasso replates with the red line
around the rim to the beautiful Bernadoux. Until we finally
moved into custom made porcelain from a local manufacturer, it
(20:38):
got more and more and more the number one. Yeah,
I mean, you know, I think it's kind of one
of the beautiful things if you allow the business you're
running to start, if you start treating it like a living,
breathing organism, then you can just slowly make it better
and better and better. Educating a trial, yeah, giving them
(20:59):
more and more opportunities to learn. Yeah, if you recognize
that you're never there's no there's no concept of being done.
It's just a beautiful journey that continues in perpetuity, and
there's inflection points along that. So how did you separate
yourself from your baby? You know? Was it hard? That
was definitely hard. It was definitely hard. But were you
(21:23):
brought out? I was bought out, so that that helped.
Being brought out, that helped um and my baby actually
having a real baby helped. I think when you do
something your entire life and you're very celebrated for doing it,
it starts to become your identity, right, And so when
when I sold that company, I almost started frantically going
(21:46):
to open new restaurants, and when COVID started on March
whatever fift, I was one week away, this is not
hyperbole from signing three new restaurant leases in the city.
And then I moved up to the country and for
what I thought was going to be a couple of months,
and then I was like, you know what this is?
This is the life I want to live. So is
there a difference between service and hospitality? I mean, you
(22:09):
touched on it a little bit, but is there a difference?
There must be, yeah. So one of the things in
the book that back in the day when I was
at TABLEA, I wasn't, you know, a confident manager yet
I was a fresh out of college, and so I
always wrote interview questions when I sat down with someone. Now,
I just believe in letting a conversation flow and seeing
(22:30):
if it's someone I want to spend time with. But
that was the question I always used to ask new people,
what's the difference between service and hospitality? The best answer
I ever got was from a woman who said, services
black and white and hospitality is color. Service of the
things that we do. Hospitality is the way that we
engage with people when we do those things services putting
(22:51):
a plate down, Hospitality is the eye contact and the
connection you established with the person you're giving the plate
to when you put it down. When I was coming
up people, I was talking about excellence in hospitality. You
hire for hospitality, you train excellence. I think you can
train both. I think hospitality is just as much of
a craft as cooking or service or anything is, and
(23:15):
therefore you can teach a craft. I think one of
the best ways to teach it, though, is to encourage it.
I think it's much easier to know how good it
feels to give hospitality to extend graciousness to other people
once you first experience how good it feels to receive it,
and then I think is a part of the leader's
(23:36):
job is to encourage hospitality by delivering it to the
people that you hope will then turn around and deliver
it to your guests. There's this quote which I've come
to learn is misattributed to my Angelou, which is people
will forget what you say, they'll forget what you do,
but they'll never forget how you made them feel like
in in five years. When you're describing that meal, the
(23:59):
thing you're going to remember is how you felt, especially
the next day when you were texting with your friend.
And that has nothing to do with anything except for
hospital exactly. Go back to Cornell. You took a class
(24:20):
cold guest Chefs. Well, that's actually a really good segue.
Tell us that class inspire you and what did you
learn from that? Well, there's a classic Cornell called Guest Chefs.
They bring up a famous chef every semester and the
classes split up into three groups, management, dining room, employees,
(24:41):
in kitchen, and plays. I was in the management team
when Daniel Ballud came up and cooked at Cornell, and
my role was marketing the event now was Daniel Balloud,
which meant that it was going to sell out no
matter what. So I decided that my role was entertaining
the chef. And it was an amazing event, obviously, and
I brought Daniel Blood and his Sioux chefs and everyone
(25:02):
down to my house at one thirty College Avenue, where
I treated him to the best form of hospitality I
understood at the time, which was a keg party. Daniel
and I became close through that experience, So you had
a keg of beer, We had a keg of beer
Milwaukee's best, and Daniel made scrambled eggs and truffles for
all of the students. The reason the story is relevant
(25:25):
is because we became close enough that my mom passed
away the day after I graduated college. She had been
sick for a long time, and because of that, I
almost didn't go to Spain as planned. But my dad
encouraged me too, and by the time I went to
buy my ticket to Spain, he lived in Boston at
the time, I can only find one leaving from New York.
(25:47):
So he drove me to the airport and it felt
like the right time to call Daniel Balloud. Remember I'm
twenty one years old, but he gave me his number.
He goes anything you ever need, and so I said, hey,
I'd like to bring my dad to Danielle And so
he set us up in the sky box, which is
ere my grandchildren. There isn't that a special treat? And
(26:08):
so for anyone listening, the sky box is a room
that sits with a window overlooking the kitchen, and it's
amazing and your food is brought up to from from
all those fabulous stoves and you're watching it being cooked
and the whole thing. And this was a night where
I mean my dad's wife, my mother had just passed away.
(26:29):
It should have been one of our saddest nights, but
because of the warmth and the graciousness, the hospitality that
Danielle and his team extended to us became one of
our best nights. And your father will never forget it,
and I'll never forget you. You were taking care of him.
It was my first time taking him out to dinner.
Danielle was taking care of you both. Yeah, And it's
(26:51):
like one of the things I talked about in the
book is that in restaurants and really any customer service business,
we have an opportunity to create our own magical worlds
in a world that needs more magic, simply by virtue
of how we invest in the people around us. And
that night was the first time I recognized how powerful
(27:13):
the gifts you give through hospitality can be because you
can you can always help people celebrate moments, but sometimes
you can give people the grace, if only for a
few hours, to forget about the really hard moments. I
think that's a really beautiful thing that I hope more
people are inspired to want to do. I hope a
(27:33):
lot of restaurant terms, or but I, but I genuinely
believe that it could happen at a car dealership or
at a barbershop, or when you go to rent a
car on vacation or on the plane on your way. Like,
I just think it would be a beautiful world if
more people recognize that it's not just good on the
(27:53):
receiving end, it feels really damn good on the giving
end too. At the end, it was impossible to get
a table into leven Madison Park. The people that that
did get a table, I'm sure considered themselves lucky that
they were able to have dinner there. But it was
always very important to me that we never became the
(28:14):
kind of restaurant that treated them as if they were
lucky to be dining with us, and actually the opposite.
We always lead with gratitude that people were trusting us
with their time and their money. Why do you say
there's nothing more flattering than a guest walking into the
restaurant with luggage, well, luggage like suitcase with suitcases, Because
(28:38):
that means that they want their experience with you to
be either their first or their last memory of their trip.
So they're on their way to the airport, or they're
just they've just gotten there. They've either they either can't
wait to go, or it's the thing that they want
to have as the lasting memory of their trip. Like
I'll give you my example, which is not an eleven
(29:00):
Madison Park style example, but every time I travel to
l A. And I'm sure a lot of people do
this as well, based on how busy it is. I
get up the plan, I got directly to In and
Out Burger. I just knew you were going to do that.
In and Out Burger. Everybody, if you haven't been there,
go there double double animal style. No, no, no. And
because it's like for me, it signifies that I am
(29:24):
now in Los Angeles, and if you can be that,
it means that you represent someone's emotional connections so much
to a city. I think it's a pretty powerful thing. Yeah,
that's that's awfully nice. So you've dined in many restaurants
all over the world. Which dining experiences have impressed you
the most? And weird, I mean, there's a lot. The
(29:48):
one I'm I'm thinking about right now because out of
the corner of my eye, I see your linear cookbook.
I love the meals. I've had a line and I
love them because, Okay, he is very innovative, right, very
forward thinking. Um, but there's also like a deliciousness and
a nostalgia to his food that the last time I
(30:12):
went there. There are two courses that will never forget.
M One was a helium balloon, where the balloon was edible,
and so here's this very serious, important restaurant. It was
a dessert and so they literally it's like an apple
kind of taffy balloon, and so you'll see blown and
then filled with helium, and they bring it over and
(30:34):
then the guests inhale the helium and start talking and laughing,
and then they eat this delicious thing. So it's engaging,
it's experiential, it's funny. And then the way that they
finished the course, their final dessert, I think is so brilliant.
Everyone else looks at a table and sees the table
and then puts plates on the table. Grant looked at
(30:55):
the tables of his restaurant and saw plates. And so
they roll out a silicone mat to over the entire table,
and they take everything else off, and then they played
a giant dessert across the entire table, which I think
is brilliant. It's fun, it's entertaining, and then the way
it brings people together. You and I are both our
entire table just turned into a giant Willy Wonka style
(31:17):
dessert and you just all eat it from this and
you're just all digging in and so like the the
idea of like creating community around the table. I think
I think they do it very very well, as long
as it's not that drink where they're straws sticking into
it and you're all drinking out of this scene. No,
that's taking it too far. That's awful. You always think
who's spitting in? Think after I think that trend is,
(31:38):
I think that looks done. I think I won't. I won't.
I never did that. You say, many companies focus on products,
but I've forgotten about the people. I think that you
are remembering the people so nicely in this book and
in the work that you have done. Thank you and
the best of luck. This has been a very very
(31:59):
nice conversation, and I and I wish you well, and
I wish all of us well in all the restaurants
that we go to after they read Unreasonable, The remarkable
power of giving people more than they expect. Thank you
so much, Thank you, I appreciate it.
Host
Martha Stewart
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