Cooking Up Success: A Conversation with Chef David Burke

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, everybody. Boy, do I have a great episode
for you today. I am with Chef David Burke, and
perhaps you've been in one of his many restaurants, or maybe
you attempted to cook a meal from one of his cookbooks, or
perhaps you've seen him on TV orbenefited from one of his
charitable offerings that he's done for a variety of people

(00:23):
over the years in his communities.
A little known fact, we share the same birthday but I'm older.
I don't know if he knew that, but he does know it now.
So please welcome Chef David Burke.
Thank you. Happy birthday.
We're both February 27th babies,yeah.

(00:46):
Yeah, I think Jimi Hendrix is February 27th.
Oh boy, A. Couple of people there, I forget
who exactly who they are. Yeah.
Elizabeth Taylor, I think too. Yes.
Almost sleep yet Yeah. We're.
So tell me you are one of truly one of the iconic chefs in the
country and I could probably then save the world because if

(01:07):
you're, if you make it to the top in the United States, you're
you're and well. New York's hard.
New York is hard. Yes, it is.
And you have a few restaurants here.
Tell us, give everybody we know you weren't an overnight rock
star. There was a history that built
up to this, which is what we were talking earlier before the
start. Everyone wants to believe

(01:28):
everyone else is an overnight rock star, but we know this
isn't true. So can you give us a bit of your
history? I currently have two restaurants
in New York City, and I came to New York City in 1984.
I was raised in born in Brooklyn, raised in Jersey,
started cooking in Jersey in the70s when it wasn't cool to be a

(01:49):
chef, when it was a bad decisionto be a chef.
The bad career movement, they didn't even consider it a
career. Wasn't even a profession until
78. It wasn't recognized as a
professional job anyway. Went to college for cooking.
The CIA grade school moved to Europe.
But wait a second before you just steamroll over that.

(02:11):
What? What was it appealed to you
about cooking food? You know, I worked, my mother
worked in a motor inn hotel, pretty good one actually, in
hometown New Jersey near the Performing Arts Center.
And believe it or not, I, I was cutting lawns and stuff and then
I'd go into the kitchen to get my lunch and all that.
And my mother's cousin was like a cook in there.
He's a hippie and there's a few hippies in Vietnam, vets and

(02:33):
stuff. And they're all having a blast.
They were the Big Brothers. Like they were the old guys.
I was probably 15 or 14 or 15, whatever.
I was a freshman. That's what I was in high school
And and I thought it was just a good, they were just, it was
like mash, you know, it was likea bunch of guys.
But they worked together so beautifully.

(02:54):
And again, I was a young kid. I had a paper out.
I had jobs, but you know, and finally they had an opening as a
dishwasher. I'm like, you know what, I'll do
that. I want to hang out with these
guys. And they they laughed.
They loved each other. They bust jobs and, you know,
they had a few beers and they said, but at 5:00 when the
whistle blew for dinner, man, they were on it.

(03:14):
And they put out beautiful food.Like, you know, Danny was a
chef. He was a Marine and he had it to
get a handsome guy, had a coupleof vets, couple hot babes.
I was like, you know, I want to be like Danny, you know?
OK, hey, now we're getting a little color.
Here I was. Like, and I'd watch from buying
a dish machine, you know, I'm a good worker anyway.

(03:35):
I've always been a good worker. So I'd be I'd get everything
done and then I'd start to help,you know, learn how to make a
club sandwich in a salad. And I've even something so
fundamental today to me was sucha joy to learn how to make.
If you never saw a club sandwichlike piled high with fries and
the skewers in it as a kid. They're beautiful.

(03:56):
It's an amazing thing. Yeah.
I wasn't a Country Club kid. We didn't go to, we didn't go to
those kind of places. So I kept learning and thinking,
I said I want to be, I want to learn how to cook.
They had no turnover back then. People loyal.
They they didn't quit over 2, two, $0.50 an hour, you know,
they stayed with that crew and I.
So I had to go somewhere else. And then I said I wanted to be a

(04:16):
chef. I started really studying a
little more. I signed up for some cooking
classes at a local mall. And I get bit by this whole
camaraderie and sense of accomplishment on a daily basis.
It was, I think. I think I looked at making food
like some kids my age looked at construction.
You know, they made stuff. I was making stuff.
Yeah, You know, I was also getting to eat it, but I was

(04:39):
making stuff. And it was on your feet.
It was energetic. There was something very
intriguing to me about the teamwork in a kitchen and how
people because you, you never, you wouldn't see that driving
by, right? Construction site or an auto
mechanic or a doctor's office oryou don't see that.
It was like Broadway a little too.

(05:00):
Yeah. And it was like being in a
locker room or in a sporting room.
It was a team. And that was really what was.
I can picture that. I love the restaurants or the
diners where you can sit at a counter.
Yeah, and watch the kitchen. You're just.
It's remarkable. It's like a dance.
You're watching the precision. A lot of stress.
But this humor is quackiness. This creativity is kindness.

(05:21):
There's a lot of different things.
It's mostly, you know, it's exhilarating.
It's not easy, but it's when it's part of your life.
After so many years, you grow toexpect, you live with the
stress. What stresses some people that
doesn't stress on us because it's it's experience.
You know, you know that it's going to be OK.

(05:42):
Yes, it sucks for now. We'll get through this.
You know, there's there's problems with our industry in
regard to loyalty and lack of commitment when it comes to long
term employees because there's, there's very few pensions and
and the 401K's and there's no reason for someone not to quit
if they have a better offer. There's nothing weighing them

(06:03):
down. I said, well, you know, I'm
going to lose my pension or I want to lose my tenure.
What doesn't exist really, right?
That's why that's why the transients and that's one of the
negative things about so that I started young.
I graduate high school in three years.
I was smart kid. I had my, you know, I had my
long hair, my easy widers in theback pocket and this stuff as a

(06:24):
typical 70s kid. But I folk and I liked getting
out of school early. I had a good memory.
I could memorize the test in a minute and I could read well in
math, so I was good at a lot of subjects.
But creativity was my thing. And then I sort of working.
So my Senior High School, I got to work in a Country Club,
really good one, before I went to Cook College.

(06:45):
And then I was off to the races.It was like I was into it.
I and then I got lucky enough todo well in school.
I moved to Dallas for my internship, got me a little
travel, then I moved to Europe. I got selected to work in a very
wealthy man's home family outside of in Oslo, Norway,
which interestingly enough got me to Europe.

(07:08):
Then I took a month off after that summer of working in the
mansion to travel through Franceand Italy and and Holland and
and Germany and eating and backpacking and, and I real, I
didn't eat into fat best restaurants because they have a
lot of money. But I looked in the windows and
I was like, I want to work here one day.
But I realized I could get I could go to France and get by

(07:30):
without speaking French. I could, I could go work in a
kitchen air and not be completely moronic like, you
know, like, because and that's what happens here.
The most welcoming place I've ever seen is a kitchen because
we have immigrants come work andthey don't speak English and we
teach them how to work. Here's a here's a task you do

(07:50):
that pay attention, use your eyes and your ears and pay
attention and start working. And that's kind of the
hospitality end of some of it. So when I came back, you know, I
got a job up and like, curl my hair up in Banksville wildly.
Maloof. I got that job through the
connectivity of the owner of in Norway.
He lived in Greenwich. He said I got this great French

(08:11):
restaurant. They might need a guy.
That's how I got there. From there, I got to Daniel
Blued at the Plaza Athlete 1984 before he went to the Circle.
Then I went to the River Cafe asa sous chef.
Oh my gosh, all top names one after another.
Well, they're all connected. You know, the chefs all know
each other in the top places. And then when they back then you
picked up the phone and said, hey, I need a guy.

(08:32):
You got, you know, you didn't have indeed ads and there was
no, you know, the ad, the ad, you know, it was word of mouth.
You didn't burn a bridge, You burn a bridge.
You were you didn't have reference then.
Nowadays it's easier because people don't want to check
references. We're so desperate in our
business. If you shake somebody's hand,
they got a pulse or like you're hired.

(08:52):
We need, you know, because we need so many workers and people
come and go. So you're at the River Cafe.
The River as a sous chef with Charlie and I moved back to
France, went to pastry school, worked in some good restaurants.
I wanted to learn pastry becauseI didn't know it well.
And I did learn it well and And I came.
Back won some awards for that I believe.
I went to, I came back and took over the River Cafe.

(09:15):
Charlie Palmer went to open Oriole and I stayed.
Buzzy O'Keefe gave me up. I was 26.
I was a kid. I can't believe I did that at
that age. All that by age 26 you would
worked with. I mean, I was running a place in
New York, one of the best restaurants in the in the city.
And I said, I don't know if I can do this, Buzzy.
I'm you. And he said, you can do it.

(09:36):
You're doing it kind of doing itnow.
I said, well, I what I told him was I needed to go learn pastry.
So he paid for my school in Paris because we had a few
months before the other chef hadleft because he was on the
contract. So I moved to France, I lived on
a barge, went to school, worked in bakery, worked my ass off and
I studied pastry and I worked insome good places.

(09:56):
And I came back and really changed the look of desserts
with it, as well as Jacques Torres and some other great
pastry chefs at the time of taking something, taking the old
pastry cart from the French and put it onto a plate with design.
And, you know, I created the cake pop years later, yeah,
that's a different. That was another decade.

(10:18):
So pastry is exciting. So then I get to the Roof Cafe
and we're doing well. We get great reviews.
And then I represent the US in the Olympics in Tokyo, still at
that year. And we went to to really
prestigious medals. And that kind of started the
whole, who was this guy down at the River Cafe, this kid
cooking. And then, you know, back then

(10:40):
you had wait. A second there's a cooking
Olympics. There was really it was a Nippon
Culinary Award of excellence yet.
Oh. My gosh.
And it was 15 countries and somehow through certain people,
I was nominated and represented a Great American restaurant,
River Cafe, and an American chef.
It was my first chef job, so I was lucky to get it.

(11:01):
But I was doing the, I was doinginteresting food.
I was, I have my own style because I didn't, I didn't
either. I worked in good French
restaurants. I was trained by, I work for
Charlie. And I was like, you know, what,
if I'm working for a great chef like Charlie Palmer and I take
his job, what am I going to do to make it better?
I mean, it's a tough question. How is my big question?

(11:24):
How is my steak going to be better?
How's my Creme brulee going to be better?
So I got to I got to think a lot.
I got to create like the style, the design.
You can't change the recipe Ken but how does it look better
accessories right style design flavor profiles outside the box
thinking and now I also the River Cafe is the best view in

(11:44):
America. People came there to get married
and get engaged and and romance and they they want to look out
the window. Now how do I get them to look at
my plate? So I have to architectural make
my food really stimulating visually and it's got to taste
good because I want the food to be the starting out of you.
I asked Buzzy to put curtains upwhen they laugh so loud.

(12:05):
And so that's how these little nuances shape your style, right?
Like, OK, well, if there's a high rise across street to look
at, I'm going to make my food high, right?
I'm going to make something architectural.
I'm going to make them. I made a chocolate Brooklyn
Bridge. It's just still on the menu.
I sold the Brooklyn Bridge many times, a lot of money.

(12:31):
A chocolate Brooklyn Bridge for two still on the menu.
Because that it's that sense of creativity.
I think of a way to say, listen,how about I sell you to Brooklyn
Bridge tonight? And he did and people like this.
So, so that was my my right place, right time, right

(12:52):
opportunity, hard work, paying off years and very young.
But again, I was scared. Fear is a great motivator, and
it really is because you're afraid to fail and you're
afraid, you know, And you, you know what it's like playing
baseball. That throw, that pitch is coming
fast. You better swing, right?

(13:14):
And it was like, scary. Yeah.
And. Yeah, because you're playing, I
mean, at a very young age, you're playing in really big
leagues. No, this is not like, oh, well,
he's young. You don't, don't give him a bad
review. You're you're, you're putting
your you got that stick on your shoulder.
Now it's like, knock it off. And the critics are?
Are brutal. Back then, you know, you, you

(13:35):
went, you went and waited for New York Times to come out that
night. You waited till it came off the
press and read your reviews. You were, you wouldn't take a
day off till you got reviews. You worked 95 days in a row
because you're afraid of criticsgoing to come in and you're not
there. So it was obsessive hold.
On I want to ask you a question about that.
I don't know if now's the time, but we we went from New York

(13:58):
Times kind of reviewer could make or break a restaurant.
Now you have things like Yelp. How does that work for you?
As AI know, we're kind of jumping but I can't.
Resist asking. The problem with the social
media reviews is that everyone'sa critic.
Yeah, someone might think it's expensive and it's not, right?

(14:19):
Because it's it's. Relative, right?
Right. Or they might think something's
not good because they don't really know what a good crab
cake. Or they just Or they don't like
you, right? Right.
Or they don't like your attitudeor like your hair color.
Yeah, really tough when you get into Petter Massive.
Competitor can come in and give you a bad Yum preview.

(14:40):
Anonymous, Anonymous. It's kind of everybody, nobody
there's. Yeah, you can help review your
doctor, but I don't think it's asmart idea.
But anonymous reviews should notbe allowed.
Yeah, it really should. I agree.
But that's the world we live in,that everyone's a critic, and so
it's. And then you have other the

(15:03):
reviews where if you advertise with them, they'll take down
your bad reviews. So it's a play to pay gig.
And yeah, everything's about money.
Oh yeah, everything's about money.
So. That is so true the.
Proceed for the Yelp review and and so many social media, the
reels and the influencers are they don't really have a budget
to review good restaurants. Yeah, they want a free meal and

(15:27):
they'll give you a good review. Or you pay them and they'll give
you a good review. Wait, they don't mention?
Well I can say I have been happyto pay for your burgers and you
make a great make a burger. You make great salmon too.
I've had both of those. Make a lot of good stuff, but
you got to make a good burger. The some really good burger.
Last night I I did a meet that we did a meet the lecturer at my

(15:50):
restaurant rooms in New Jersey, Red Horse.
Yeah, I've been here. Meat guy from Monmouth Meats in
Red Back. We lectured about meat and the
one guy kept saying you got the best burger.
You do. And he goes.
I mean, I eat a burger even I goto your restaurant.
I want a piece of Dover soy steak.
I'm like the burger's best. Anyway, the the interview, the
the critic part. Years ago, a good critic.

(16:13):
They had a budget for New York Times, New York magazine,
Forbes, whatever. They had a budget.
They wouldn't rate the wine list, the decor, right, the
waiter, uniforms of service and the food and in general, how you
answer the phone nowadays. Now they they talk about an
espresso martini with their Caesar sound.
It's not it's not even compatible.
Yeah, right. It's about it's amateurish, a

(16:35):
lot of it. Oh, I had the best espresso
martini and the Caesar sound, the chicken Parmesan, the die
for. And that same influencer says
that 20 times in two-month period about 20 different
restaurants. Yeah, right.
And again, takes puts paycheck in a in his or her pocket.
So so you got to read between lines a little bit, but it but
it sends people to these places.Everyone runs back and forth and

(16:59):
then they wind up selling back into what they think is their
best perceived value. And again, like like we said
that earlier, before we even andwe were talking earlier about
the people that aren't the youngsters that drink less, not
that it should in the whitelist.They like cocktails, they like
gummies, they want to eat. They'll they'll split an
appetizer. And it's a big thing in a

(17:20):
restaurant on how someone curated, let's say, their wine
list. Oh, yeah.
You know, does it have a range of prices, you know, And is that
lower bottle price? Does it taste as good as what
you're hoping it's going to taste like?
If that's what your budget is oryour middle or whatever, you
know it's. Wine lists could be intimidating
for for diners because you don'twant to buy the cheapest bottle,

(17:41):
right. Maybe you do wines by the glass
and what has happened because ofthe economics of the restaurant
industry, unless you're a fine dining restaurant or very busy
with the Sommeliers have gone right, They're intimidating for
most people. The great restaurants have been
a wonderful and most managers don't know same amount about

(18:02):
wine is a something. So somebody writes a list.
The waiters hopefully know a little enough about wine and and
people are usually looking at a label and they can Google it now
and see what the real price thatseems like.
I wouldn't do that on a date, but people cocktails are easy
and wines by the glass are easy,but having a good wine.

(18:24):
This is a is a nice sign of a good restaurant.
I'm curious how to get to your first restaurant.
How did you come to having your first restaurant?
I was at the River Cafe, Yeah. And I got a call from Alan
Stillman. I was supposed to open a
restaurant with Drew near prom. I'm sure you know.
Sure. And De Niro and we were going to
open a restaurant, Park FS we'regoing to open 2 restaurants.

(18:47):
And the funding never came through and it took too long.
So and then Drew, somehow the press got word that I was
leaving the River Cafe. Buzzy and I sat down and said
let's finish the year because now everybody knows you're
leaving. So you know, so four months
later, something, you know, after Christmas, I left and I
still didn't have a gig going. And because the deal with those

(19:07):
two guys wasn't happening that Alan Stillman called me.
Allen's the founder. TJ Fridays and Smith Wolinsky
and he had an opportunity for meas a partner in Park every Cafe,
63rd and Park. And we so we did that deal and
he was a wonderful partner and he taught me a lot about
business, etcetera. And boy do we have a good run.

(19:27):
We did 10 years together. We'll park every Cafe.
I created the swordfish chop andthe cake pop there and pastrami
salmon. And then we open Maloney
Porcelli. We did the pork Shank one best
dish in America. After fighting with him and the
other executive committee partners about they were like,
you can't put pork on a menu. I said come on.

(19:50):
I said, and I was getting reallypissed off and they're like, no
one eats pork in New York at a high end steakhouse.
I said bull and they were like, OK, put on a menu for two
months. If it doesn't sell, we take it
off. I said, OK, it wins best dish in
America. It won best dish in America.
That's the difference between a chef and knowing what he sees

(20:10):
and, and, and the vision of it and playing it safe.
Yeah, you know, and that was great.
And it was on the many of 30 years used to be $19.00.
And when a Susan won the award, it was $29.30 bucks.
And that was a fun and I'm glad I stuck to my guns because I was
adamant about it. And then we opened a few
Samantha Lenski's around the country with those guys.

(20:32):
And then I made some money. I went on my own and I opened
David Bergen, Donatella when where I became, I owned half of
that business. Then I started running my own
business, lost some of it, got some of it back.
You win some, you lose some. It's really even the even good
operators close restaurants. It's a tough, I mean, I

(20:54):
sometimes really wonder how, howdoes a restaurant succeed
between, you know, the, the transient nature of employees,
the the cost of rents, the cost of food, fluctuating labor.
I mean, there are so many. Fully insurances, yeah.
Weather, economy, all of this stuff, yeah.

(21:17):
Everything you know some people have a form of.
Rainy nights bring more people out or not?
Or is there any? Depends on where you are.
But then, then you have deliveries now, right?
You know, so you, you look at look at diners, right?
Diner. I'm a Jersey guy.
Diners were the big thing, right?
You went after, after you were partying, you went after work,
you went late at night. The diner was open.

(21:38):
You kind of knew what you were going to get.
What's that you got? You know what?
Because you can get food delivered to your house late at
night. You can go through a drive
through until 1:00 in the morning and people don't want to
get out of court. I'll be driving.
Tied that together, but it's true you don't.
Food sent to your house anytime of the night now and you can go

(21:58):
through the drive through at McDonald's or one of those.
But see, you can't do what I didwhen I was a kid in high school.
You can't cut church and stay athome and order food.
You have to cut church and go toa diner.
That's a great diner. Me and my buddy Okie, we had
this great diner scheme. We sang out.
It was a diner, a couple diners and or at least four of them in

(22:20):
our town. So he'd go into a diner at the
counter and talk about a winter night and sit at the counter and
you order a burger and fries anda milkshake or whatever.
And I'd come in and sit four seats away, then talk to him and
I'd order a cup of coffee. And then as he when he walked
past me, we switched checks. So he'd go pay for the coffee

(22:42):
right at the cash register and I'd get my bill and I'd be like,
what is this? I only had a coffee.
Then we go to the next time I goin and get the burger.
People catch on to that pretty 16 years old.
Those are the good old innocent days of trying to get a hot meal
and. Now as a restaurateur, is it an

(23:03):
investor game? Like do you try to find your
pool of investors? When you have an idea, do they
come to you? Do they say we need a chef?
Which is it, the chicken or the egg?
Happens both ways. Both ways.
Sometimes an opportunity comes by, sometimes your customers
like here's my card. If you ever I love my food, love
your food. If you have an if anything comes
up for investor food, but you know, not all investors are the

(23:24):
same either. You know, some, some investors
are, you know, they, they, they want to make money all the time.
And it doesn't, oh, you don't always make money.
You got a weather storm. There's an you know, it should
be a, you know, they shouldn't be a primary source of your
income investing in rest. It's a vanity job of investment

(23:46):
sometimes. And sometimes you do well and
we're honest and you're working hard and things go well, you
make some money. But so sometimes it's done that
way. And sometimes the developer or a
guy who owns a hotel or an inn or a building will be like, I
want perk in my building Example, I'm going to Puerto
Rico on Saturday to look at a property.

(24:08):
The guys like I eat in your restaurants.
I like what you do. I like to, I have a location in
my hotel and I could have put money restaurants here.
So we'll fly now take a look at it.
We were opening a big restaurantin North Palm Beach Gardens in
two months. Developer built a huge high
rise. Great guy called me down, made a
deal 3 1/2 years ago. And this is going to be special.

(24:30):
And you know that some of it happens that way, but that's
only happens when you have a brand where you've worked hard
and have proven yourself that you've.
You've done a great job buildinga brand Take a lot, take a lot.
How How do you how do you, what would you tell someone younger
about you know, who wants to become a chef?
Who who wants to reach the pinnacles you keep hitting and

(24:53):
raising? One of the one of the things I I
find interesting is the lack of focus on impressing the
customer. Interesting.
My goal has always been to impress the guest and impress

(25:16):
myself and impress my colleagues, right?
But in not not Nana. Some people want to cook to
impress their colleagues. I impress the guest.
That's my paycheck. I want to impress the guest.
I don't, you know, I care what other chefs think and this and
that I think and this one thing I want to impress them too.
At a certain point in your career, but after that you got

(25:36):
to the people that pay me or my people that eat my restaurant,
right? So you got to impress them and
give them what they want now. So everything can't be your way,
the highway either. You know, you, but a lot of the
younger people and the industry has changed and the social media
has changed it and Instagram, when you wanted to learn

(25:58):
something when I was, you had togo work for it, right?
You didn't just Google it. You went and you worked at the
best restaurants and you paid your dues and you worked and you
figured out OK. I remember working at the best
restaurants in France. I volunteered work for free.
I was lucky to even get a foot of them.
And when I saw the photos in thebooks, I have 1200 cookbooks,
none of which I've bought in thelast 15 years.

(26:20):
So I had a lot of books when I was, you know, and one day I'm
standing next to two of the chefs, the whose books I've had,
who I thought to me were like the coloring guys.
And they were. And I said they got two hands, 2
legs, 2 arms, two eyes, just like me, just like me.
I'm just like them. I just have don't have the

(26:40):
experience. But they're not tall.
They're not, you know, it's not basketball, right?
It's not weightlifting. You know, I like you don't.
I don't need to be a certain size to be able to do what they
do. I didn't have my smart guy and I
got stabbing and I can work hardnow.
All I need is the experience. And you look at it and say it's
so true. I love that you.

(27:01):
Know it's like you know you're not born a chef you know you're
not born because your grandmother was a good cook
doesn't mean anything right it's.
It's got to be some kind of deeppassion. 100% but there is a
passion and skill set but it's also a study you need to study.
Oh. Yeah, You know, they're saying
why the like, why are we puttingapplesauce on a pork chop and

(27:22):
nothing else in the world? Explain that to me, like why
applesauce exists for a pork chop.
It doesn't go on spare ribs. It doesn't go on bacon, it
doesn't go on pulled pork, right.
Who made that decision? No, no, but I want to.
But I will crack. You will see me put up a sauce
on a salmon one day. Oatmeal is another thing.
I want to make oatmeal sexy. That's my.

(27:45):
Teacher. So I would kind of like that.
No, but it's boring. Oatmeal just has one purpose for
breakfast. Like right.
So I made goatmeal, had a goat milk goat cheese.
I made chocolate oatmeal. People like chocolate oatmeal.
I'm like, why is that so hard for you to think about?
Right. Like, what else can you do it
oatmeal besides cookies? But an oatmeal cookie isn't even
oatmeal, right? Just that oatmeal.

(28:07):
It's like porridge. Like, how do you make that, like
risotto? Yeah, like, why wouldn't it be?
But again, you know, like. Interesting.
Everything so there's you start to I when I get an idea my head
I can't let go over for a while like dances around in my head
for months. You clearly.
Are very creative. It's like state, like there's
1000 post it notes in your hand and you pulling them down and

(28:30):
collecting them and saying, OK, I for the them of this was a a
crystal plate with a Dome on it.I'd be thinking about what would
be nice in there. So you see objects, you see
seasonality, see a new product. You see a colored plate or a
square one. Listen, it was a time when every
plate I put food on was round and had a metal lid.
Right, limited your limited. The canvas was always the same.

(28:55):
Now the canvas is different. I can serve something on a
board, a brick, a salt block, piece of metal, a backwards
license plate, right? Think about prison food on a
license plate and you call it, you know, served with prisoner
wine, right? It would just be a great little
connectivity could be a lobster roll in a bag on a license plate
and prisoners a good a good one you.

(29:16):
Could have made it in a lot of careers.
You mean because you're really you're, you're, you're CEO,
you've got the math down. You're creative.
You could have, you know, you'reclearly a marketer.
Right. Well, marketing, I learned
marketing I can do I. But you start your marketing
from the product. Just to mention prisoner wines
and a license plate in the same breakfast production.
Activity, it's kind of, to me that's a natural thing and that

(29:40):
that's what happened. But I do that with recipes all
the time, and I do that with, you know, there's a pot
involved. Like, like you're around your
bacon, you serve. In the clothesline.
Yeah, on the clothesline with the scissors.
Yeah, that's all over the world then.
That is was one of the more, yeah.
Creative things I've ever seen. And the scent, The scent of.

(30:01):
It with the Rosemary, yeah, but there's a reason.
See that came by mistake too. So that's so I was doing.
Describe that to everyone who's not seeing it at the moment.
So just I'll tell you what I didfirst.
I was doing an event in Vegas. I was in New York, my Sue
Chester down there, and we were going to do this 500 people, you
know, the big events, you walk around this 20 chef tables.

(30:23):
And so I said, I want you to put, we're going to roast 100
ducks or 50, whatever it was. And I said steal 3 or 4 of the,
you know, the luggage racks fromthe Belmont, you know, with the,
yeah, put the hangers up and we're going to hang the ducks
with hangers like like Chinatownin the window.
I'm going to blow torch him and all that fat's going to come off
the duck and go. We're going to have big pans of

(30:43):
fried rice and then we we made fruit paper out of mango and
hoisin sauce. Oh my gosh.
How little fried rice and a sliced duck.
And we were going to hand out the little like a, like a
peeking duck. Yeah, and but it said it over
the, the, the, the, the, the flour, you know, the peeking
wrapper. We're going to use this fruit
thing. So I get a call like Chef

(31:05):
Houston, we have a problem. He's like chef the paper sticky,
it doesn't won't dry too much sugar in it.
You know, like, yeah, I'm like, OK, they said I'm going to fly
down. I said you got about 8 hours.
I said go get some. You know that the towel racks,
you buy those things, you dry towels.
Oh yeah, they're like wooden. Yep, Yep.
I said go get four or five of those and lay the fruit roll ups

(31:26):
on that and get fans, put them on the table and get some blow
dryers and start drying them up.And, and it was working.
So now we have all these ducks, we got fans and we have blow
dryers back there and the it's ayellow paper and purple paper
from the hoist and. You're torching the.
Ducks there it was. Stole the show and we had close

(31:49):
Pins came with the ghost, pins came with the racks.
So we started closing the Taco. The little.
Oh, with the clothespin. I was serving it and it was
people like genius. I'm like, yeah, that's me.
And it worked. And we were sitting there after
that night having some wine. It was a brutal day.
And I said, if we can only do that at the table, you know, I

(32:11):
said, you can't put a whole duckat the table and then the fat.
And I'm like bacon. Bacon has a lot of fat and that
fat dripping down. And it also makes sense because
the bacon, now, you render it, the Pickles underneath the Rose.
So what we do is we serve. We make a little wooden
clothesline, but looks like a field goal post with a wire.
And we connect the bacon clothespins, and that's a bit.

(32:33):
And we and we use the scissors. Yeah.
And you eat it with the the clothespin is like the new
chopstick. Boy, was that a great idea.
But one thing led to another. Now, if I didn't sit there and
think about it for a few days about how good that duck was and
how do we convert that into something great that everybody
can experience at a table, then because we don't let go of
something, something that's going to be impressive, is

(32:56):
impressive. I have a when I was studying
pastry in France, you know what a petty for is, right?
Yes. What is it?
It's those little tiny looks like a little cake, right it?
Means it means small oven. That's a literal translation.
I didn't know that. I'm in pastry school.
I'm converting everything this centigrade, the Fahrenheit, all

(33:16):
this grams to this and what eachword with petty for means small
oven. I didn't know that.
Like 4 nose ovens means 4 nose an oven.
So 4 is however. They get to be called.
When does it means? Because the translation is small
baked items. Oh, right.
So small small things from the oven.
It's just that the way things translate.
But in in America, just cast iron stoves.

(33:38):
Yeah. They ever seen him Like little
toy stoves and those who were what a salesman would bring to
your house. Before Sears had his first
catalog, people used to buy their shows from a catalog.
If you lived 100 miles from the city, a salesman would go out
there. He'd have a big.
Suit. I remember the Sears.
He would have, he would have 6 little cast iron stoves and you
chose one for your house. It was called a salesman sample.

(34:00):
So I went and bought a bunch of those because I'm like petty 4,
petty 4. So I'm going to serve my petty
fours on a small petty four. Yes, it was great.
Now we put cinnamon sticks in it.
Priceless. And we blew the cinnamon stick
from Blowtorch Smoked. So now I'm at the River Cafe
Andreon, but the chance of doingthat took kahunas, because that

(34:21):
was. What the fuck?
What is he thinking? And GAIL Green, who was a great.
Food. Oh yeah.
She's like Chef David Berg is dangling from a cinnamon stick
across the river with these concoctions.
But to me, it's one of the greatest things I've ever come
up with. Now, I had 12 of the stoves.
I used to buy them and the pieces would break and, and I do

(34:42):
it sometimes on a special occasion, I go buy a couple
stoves on eBay and I have a funeral.
But that is the type of thinkingthat has helped me be successful
of connecting dots that would make somebody say, why didn't I
think of that? It's.
Showmanship too. It's not just taste good, it's
you bring this showmanship. The cleverness of it and the

(35:03):
ship, but it's a lot of extra work.
I mean, gotta go the extra mile and and like myself and I tell
some of the young chefs, so likelike they ask, well, how do you
do? Take the hard Rd.
Don't take these around. Take the hard Rd. take, you
know, shovel your neighbors sidewalk.
If you're shoveling yours, whichmy father used to make me do,
he's like, what do you shove down?

(35:23):
I said no, he's like, you know, Mrs. Smith lives next door.
She's all there. Shovel her sidewalk too.
And I'd be like bullshit. He's like bullshit.
He goes, you're going to be on one day and you might not be
able to do it. So I would.
So I always had this mentality. I'm like, just do it, do the
extra work and do it above because in order to be better

(35:44):
than the restaurant down the street, you're going to have to
do something extraordinarily different.
Because especially now we all have, we can all get the same
things on Google. We can all cut.
And there's a lot of what we call cover band chefs.
They play somebody else's dishes.
Oh yeah. And they get credit and or they
just coast along on that way. So to be original and unique and

(36:08):
what you do is really that's where the talent comes in.
And people at the higher level know that, you know.
But again, and to the credit to some of the chefs that are
playing cover band dishes is that they they'll never catch
the creative ones. Yeah, I worked for Singapore
Airlines years ago. I was their consultant chef.

(36:29):
And I said to the CEO, and then this is in the 90s.
I said, don't you get tired of getting copied?
And he goes, great question. He goes, we love getting copies.
I'm like, 'cause, you know, as achef, I get pissed off if
somebody steals my dish. He goes, we love getting copied
because they'll never beat us. If they're waiting for us to
copy us, he goes, we'll always be ahead because they're waiting

(36:50):
for us to. They want to copy us because
they're not. You know, I just read a quote
by, I think it was the head of the Louis Vuitton brand.
And they said, you know, when people walk in with the fake
version, we never critique them for it.
We viewed them as aspirational customers.

(37:12):
And then a fund manager that I knew one time said, you know,
Diane, I used to think of it as idol gossip.
Now I recognize it as idol worship.
You know, I'll flip on the word.And it really is a way of
somebody saying, you know, I'm not that creative, but boy, I, I
appreciate what. They're walking walking the
advertisement for you the same as.

(37:33):
The They're Walking advertisement.
I was in Spain and Lisbon. I'm sorry, I got a cruise ship
and Time Out magazine is in Spain and there was a picture of
my clothesline bacon on the inside cover of a restaurant
that was serving. So I went with a woman who was
speaks Portuguese and we went and she's and they serve it on

(37:54):
the ship because I write the menus for the ships.
So she said to the manager. The rest of By the way, this is
Chef David Burke, who created that bacon.
He's like, yeah, OK, no way, youknow, you know, and that's just
so yes, there's there's there's pride there, but food is meant
to be shared and it's going to get copied.

(38:15):
The fact that somebody copied the dish of mine around the
world is great. And there's not only one dish.
I have many dishes and the cake pops and I got a patent on this
thing. So that creativity exists
because. And sometimes I created this
because it was a mistake of another dish or it came from
something else. I will tell you something I came

(38:35):
I used to have a diet product them it was flavored water,
basically bacon, artificial bacon flavor in water with a
couple other shelf stable I ingredients.
You spray bacon on your eggs, fat free, Cal free carb free
diabetic friendly birthday cake,Strawberry Shortcake, bacon,
cheese, blue cheese, tomatoes, basil, all this stuff.

(38:55):
We had 30 flavors and and I wanted to get dry aged beef
flavor, which is, you know, fermented beef that you got to
put your meat in the cooler for 40 days or whatever.
And there's a lot of waste, you know, evaporation.
It's a Long story short, I gave a big hunk of prime rib to a guy
that was aged and said analyze it at the lab in Jersey and come

(39:18):
back and he gave me powdered form of that flavor, which
didn't work. Then transit, is it too hard?
There's too many different flavor compounds in this meat
because you got fresh meat, you got dry meat, you got blood, you
got fresh blood, you got amino acids, enzymes.
He goes, but the hardest thing he goes hardest thing ever
analyzed. It's like perfume factory
healthy. He got I said, well, why he

(39:38):
goes? He goes the weirdest thing is
the number one flavor in the meat you gave me was cardboard.
I said what cardboard that's just gotta be shit me.
So I got busy. You know, I'm like, I'm thinking
about it won't let it go cardboard.
So I go in my cooler next day. Cardboard's all over the floor,
that cooler, but all all I had in that cooler was meat.
That's a dry aging box. The meat has to be left alone.

(40:00):
No fish, no onions, because the meat as if the water evaporates
for the meat and absorbs the flavor whatever's in the room.
So the cardboard had enough aroma and scent or flavor.
That it went into meat. So I'm like, well, I'll be God
damn. So then I but I had so I had.
Option I could believe. That so I had this big salt

(40:20):
blocks on my desk because peoplesend me stuff because they know
creative. What can you do in a Himalayan
salt block this back in the 90s?I'm like, I'm going to build up
some wall in that cooler and thesalt is going to go in the meat
now season the thick steak. But what happens?
The salt killed the bad bacteria, let the good bacteria
grow and I got AUS patent. You have that in one of your

(40:42):
restaurants in the. City.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we have, we use the salt for
decor, but the patent is a real thing and it came, it came from
a mistake of one thing and the. But if you're not in the game
asking the questions, you're notgoing to learn.
It's amazing how you figured that out.
I mean, and it's intuitively I recently I, I bought, I was

(41:05):
running around and I was going someplace.
I'm like, oh, I know the butchersells fresh mozzarella.
So I bought this chunk of fresh mozzarella from the butcher and
that night we're eating and I'm like, I can never buy fresh
mozzarella from the butcher again because it just tasted
like raw meat to me. It was really funny how it had

(41:26):
it was wrapped it. Probably was in the same Yeah,
the iron. Something that you would know
better. No, that smell of red Yeah.
Red meat cells, right, Yeah, yeah, well, that's what happens.
You can't get soap in your home fridge.
You can. But your home fridge things move
quick. Yeah.
Hardboard. And I say that I said yes.
I was at least smart enough to look into creating some one

(41:50):
thing. We.
I'm sure there's many things that have happened that way.
Yeah. And the same as the fucking, the
vaccines and stuff. And the penicillin was
developed. Some guy left something.
Jack in pocket. No, no, But a doctor left
something. This is a great book.
I read by again. His name was Eric.
I forget his last name. The molded Dr. Someone says
pocket. That's how it was.

(42:11):
He left something in his pocket and got moldy.
That's how they created the penicillin.
The penicillin? Yeah, yeah, but yeah, but so
that's the fun stuff to the connectivity and the Aha's and
they're like, you know, but now with technology and also food
moves quick. The other thing, like I'm still
a student, I still learn. Like I'm into it.
I travel, I learn, I go out to eat.

(42:32):
I'm learning something. I want to learn some.
Do you? Have a favorite food genre?
It's a tough question, you know I can.
It's easier to tell you what I don't like.
OK. What don't you like?
Well, I don't. That's a hard one too.
I don't like okra. I don't like okra.
No matter what you do to it, I don't like okra.
I've had. It's the.

(42:52):
Only food I can think of. I don't like tripe.
Ohh I never tried that. I just can't handle the idea of
it. I like all the other inside weed
stuff. I'm not a big anchovy guy
either, but me. Neither I have enough.
I can. Have it in dressings and all
that. But to eat, you know why I got I
had a girlfriend in high school and we were drinking some
terrible beer, I guess. And she put like 30 anchovies on

(43:14):
a slice of pizza and it's me. And I was like, I was like, I
it's like your first hangover. Still taste I but I I like
unless I like good Asian food. Not not sushi, I like sushi, but
good Chinese food I like a lot. What's your favorite thing to
cook? You know, I can cook anything,

(43:35):
but I like to cook things whole,like a whole duck, a whole
Turkey, a whole fish, a whole pork, because we don't do that
in the restaurant. We make portions, right?
So when I can cook something at at home or outdoors on a spit,
there's something festive about that.
So if you're cooking Christmas dinner, yeah, what's getting
served? Beef.

(43:55):
Beef. Pasta.
OK. Clams.
Probably some shellfishes. Seafood.
Maybe the lasagna popovers. Oh, definitely.
That's an art form. Eggnog milkshakes served under
the mistletoe. My mouth is watering in and

(44:16):
puckering up at the same time. I mean, you know, see chefs, we,
you know, we work hardly. So holiday meal for us is really
we love eating at home beside the even people like, oh, I
wouldn't know what to make. I'm like, you know what?
Will you cook at home? I'll cook at home.
Yeah, I did during the pandemic.For the first time in my career,

(44:36):
I never really cooked up becauseI've been working since.
So I would never cook on them. Even my kids, I get divorced
very young. So even at home cooking, I
worked a lot. So I'd make breakfast, maybe a
BBQ. Last thing I want to do at
midday offs cooking. But during the pandemic, I
started cooking with a puppet. I have a puppet that's a
miniature version of me and him and I were during the pandemic.

(44:59):
We're teaching people how to cook for your neighbors.
Like instead of cooking one chicken, go buy 2 chickens, make
chicken soup out of this and then this and then you have
leftover. So his name was left on the
puppet. He's got his, His Instagram is
leftover by db.com. I took him on a cruise ship me
last week in Iceland and we wentto one of John George's

(45:20):
restaurants in Dublin or Belfast, I forget.
And so I'm with another guy, thechef.
And so I take the puppet out andput him on his own chair.
Fancy restaurant put the champagne in front of him in a
piece of octopus and everyone inthe, in the room was just like,
that's pretty cool. It's a little weird and you know

(45:44):
what? But you need a sense of humor
with food too. And I've always been able to add
that seriousness about like the petty force is a sense of humor,
but it's serious. And if you have a little bit of
sense of humor with the naming of a dish, whether it's, you
know, angry lobster. We had a, we, we had a vegetable

(46:04):
tour when I opened Park Ave. Cafe 1992.
We had a huge kitchen, used to be a hotel and we had a
beautiful menu and a swordfish chop, which I, which is traded
and the 1st order is a vegetableplate.
I'm like, you know, we, we're not ready for that, right?
This is 90s didn't put vegetarian dishes on yet.
There was no gluten free, there was no peanut allergies.

(46:29):
So I'm like, oh shit. So we got to run around and get
vegetables from everybody station.
You know, fish guy, the meat guy, the salad, you know, make a
vegetable platter, whatever. And that goes and next night,
same thing, 5:00 at vegetable plate.
I'm like, at 3-4 days in a row, I'm like, who is this woman?
Oh, that's Mrs. Asher. She lives upstairs.
I'm like, OK, so I designed thiscake made of vegetables,

(46:51):
polenta, spinach and onion, you know, layer cake.
Yeah. And I'm like, OK, we're going to
put that on the menu when we geta vege bite.
You put in a steamer, you steam it, take the mold off, and it
looks like a cake. But it's all vegetables.
Beautiful. Yellow pepper, vinaigrette, red
pepper. And I had the top with Carrie.
There was a good cake and but itwas substantial like people,

(47:12):
vegetarians, like I got it. I got a dish made for me.
It's not a bunch of little pieces of vegetables.
So I'm writing a menu. I'm like, well, what's the
lady's name? We have Misses Asher.
I'm sorry. I write in a menu Misses Asher's
vegetable to it like you want stop busting my job.
She loved, she even loved it for30 years later, my mother calls

(47:33):
me up and she goes, do you know what?
That I'm long gone. You know what misses Asher?
You know Misses Asher, I said yes.
Here's what her son is my doctor.
I'm like. That.
Is great, but you know, she musthave told 1000 people for her
son to know, right? Well, he probably lived in a
building, but there's a you know, there's a credit there and

(47:57):
that's hospitality. Hospitality sometimes get lost
in the restaurant business. If you think back in the olden
days, you know the owner like the Serio, Julia Perron, Tony
May, somebody's they went to front, they were the maestros.
They gave you the hospital. They remembered your name, what
you drank, who you didn't want to sit next to, who you did.
There was art to the maitre-d', the owner.

(48:19):
And they would they would have faced a business.
Chefs kind of took over because they control the money and the
quality of the food. And that's kind of how it
happened. And but that hospitality with no
one when to buy a drink or when they give someone something
someone comes in as a gas is like, oh, how's your well?
He's I'm feeling well, I'm with my sister today.
And then that that Matron D packs bag for him to take home.

(48:44):
I go here's a here's a small steak sandwich for yours.
We the the disconnectivity of the chef in the dining room
doesn't exist. So you need the communication.
But that's the hospitality that miss it gets missed in certain
restaurants. Nanny Meyer was a genius out
right somebody other. So if you don't the hot true
hospitality comes in many forms and it's not just it's on

(49:05):
Instagram. It's the personal touch, which
you'll never get be changed. You got loyalty programs, but
being able to read a table, readsomebody what they want and
overhear someone say, well, we never really had this.
It's our last day in New York and making that happen.
We're over here and it's at their anniversary and surprising
them not having them say by the way, you know, then you get the

(49:26):
the other hand. Someone says they make a res and
say it's my birthday and you forget to put a candle and they
blast you. The Kingdom, you know?
Oh. My gosh, this time goes too
quick. But I need a wrap up from you.
What are your words of wisdom? Isn't it hard to believe it's
the fastest 55 minutes on the planet?
And this has been so fascinating.
I've been speaking with Chef David Burke and loving every

(49:48):
minute of it. What's your what's your take
away for the future for the restaurant business where you're
going? What should we be watching for
you because you are a creative energy.
I want to. I got a couple more projects in
the works and I want to land myself with a cooking school A.

(50:09):
Cooking. School to do education at the
latter part of my career, eitherin a Community College or
cooking school that I could talkand educate and be able to
inspire young chefs. You would be priceless with that
because you you're such, you're so entertaining and captivating.

(50:31):
You know, I feel like at this whole interview I just kept
leaning closer because I want tohear more of what you say
because it you're a great storyteller, which is what I
thought the first time I met you.
I have been very fortunate to start young with some of the old
master chefs, so I learned the classic way of cooking, the old
French method, heavy sauces, creams, butchery, all that

(50:53):
stuff. And the reasons why applesauce
goes to pork chops we didn't even get to.
I know and they don't have to dothis again.
They don't teach that. That's you have to teach
yourself certain things. You know, they don't teach
Michael Jordan how to shoot a ball.
They teach them, but they don't perfect, right?
So you got to be inquisitive. You got to ask the whys and why
nots. And, you know, and I think it's

(51:15):
important to test kids, young, young adults about thinking
about food, the whys and why that's it like not settling, you
know, like, and if and many cultures did it for a long time,
they'll and they'll still say, Oh, we don't do that in the
Dominican Republic. That's how we do it.
Or in Irish food, that's how we do it times we don't we never do

(51:36):
that. Well, that doesn't mean never,
ever say never. You know, there's a reason for
everything and it's a reason that you don't have to do it or
reason you can keep doing it. But there's also probably a
better way. I'll give you a good example.
This is the breadcrumb that comes on the market 20 years ago
from Japan. Hanko big thick bread crumbs.

(51:58):
Think about Japanese bread crumbs.
And people pay him extra money for Japanese bread crumbs.
When was the last time you got served the role in a Japanese
restaurant? Where the hell are they getting?
All that good point. So they design A bread crumb to
mimic tempura. It's a flaky big crumb.
So we can bread it and fry it and at least have the texture of

(52:19):
tempura and brilliant idea. But I always say like thyme
bread comes, I get it. French bread comes like a
Japanese like like George Carlinwould say when he's a comedian,
but he's like he goes. When I was a kid, we never had
bottles of water. We walked from hose to hose
water fountain creeks. We found, you know, we've

(52:39):
unplugged a fucking fire hydrantbecause everyone walks around
with water like they're going todehydrate.
So you got to make fun of it a little bit like what a great
idea, but everyone like, why would I advertise Japanese
break? I'm I'm, you know, but that's
what we don't stop and think about it.
So you stop and think about it and then it helps you be
creative to me. You are too much fun.

(53:00):
Can we do this again? 100%, OK.
Thank you so much. Good to see you.
I am so glad we did this. My guest has been chef David
Burke. There are going to be all kinds
of ways. You can stay in touch with him
below this below this video or audio, whichever way you're
listening to this. Thank you so much fun and hit
subscribe and definitely follow David on Instagram or wherever

(53:25):
you follow things, check out hisrestaurants, follow what he's
doing because this is where I think we're just at the
exploring the tip of an iceberg that's just going to be
explosive as he keeps going. Thank you.

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