October 9, 2025 • 37 mins
This is a Vintage Selection from 2007
The Banter
The Guys kick off the show discussing date night plans that don’t involve food. Spoiler, there aren’t many.
The Conversation
The Restaurant Guys welcome back Nicholas Harary, owner of Restaurant Nicholas. The Guys quip that newborn Nicholas Jr. may start work in the kitchen immediately then they discuss the balance of family and work in a life of hospitality. The conversation moves Harary's passionate tirade against the state of culinary education and what he’s doing at his place to improve the experience for everyone.
The Inside Track
The Guys have known fellow New Jersey restaurateur Nicholas for years. While he is a culinary school graduate, he speaks out against the current institution and says this about its students.
“They’re going to the best schools in the world to learn their craft. They’re getting charged ridiculous amounts of money, but they’re not being prepared to do anything,” Nicholas Harary on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2007
Bio
Nicholas Harary is an award-winning chef and restaurateur best known for founding Restaurant Nicholas, one of New Jersey’s most acclaimed fine-dining destinations. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Harary earned top honors from The New York Times and Zagat before reimagining his concept into Barrel & Roost, a modern, chef-driven comfort food restaurant in Red Bank. Alongside his wife Melissa, he also runs Nicholas Creamery, offering artisanal small-batch ice cream. Harary is a published cookbook author and passionate about food, family, and hospitality.
Info
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark (00:42):
Morning there, Marky.
Good morning, Francis.
How are you this morning?
I'm doing
Francis (00:45):
great.
Really good.
I, I wanna discuss something.
It was an interesting emailcorrespondence and, and
correspondence I had with acousin of mine mm-hmm.
Who made a reservation in therestaurant.
I, uh, and he said, cousinFrancis, you gotta help me out
here.
I want a great date, want aspecial night?
How do I make this nightspecial?
Was someone he cared about.
Mm-hmm.
A great deal.
Mm-hmm.
(01:06):
And it got me to thinking about,so you needed,
Mark (01:09):
he needed his, your A material, you needed my A
material, you needed your beststuff.
Francis (01:12):
And, but, so we got him a reservation in the restaurant,
and it was, and he's a, he's areally great guy.
Mm-hmm.
And he got her flowers and therewere flowers waiting for her at
the restaurant.
That's a stuff, nothing tooostentatious, not a dozen roses.
Four roses, two pink, two red,classy guy.
Right.
And I got to thinking about whatpeople do for dates and it's
about restaurants.
(01:33):
Mm-hmm.
Most, most of what we do is wego out to dinner, but sometimes
I feel that it can all be justgoing out to dinner.
You know, and so I lookedonline.
Well,
Mark (01:42):
dinner, I mean, dinner is a good place to go out,
obviously for a date.
It's, it's wonderful becauseit's totally interactive and you
talk, you, you have, you talk,but you also have something to
talk about.
Mm-hmm.
Things keep changing in front ofyou.
Yeah.
You have a, you have the sceneryof what's around you.
You have the people that arearound you.
You have the people who keepinterjecting into your meal.
you know, the waiter comes overand talks about, and the food is
(02:03):
different in the wine, the hebeor some new.
Fish that you've never heard of.
So you have something there.
There's a lot to talk about whenyou're at a restaurant
Francis (02:09):
or even, or even if it's just a pizza.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, as the food goes by you.
But what, what I thought wasinteresting was I said, you
know, when I think about it,when we get together with
friends.
If I go out on a date, um, mostoften that's the default date is
dinner.
Mm-hmm.
Or food or something foodrelated.
Right.
And I think that's, that's veryprimal.
You know, we all come togetheraround the communal fire, you
(02:29):
know, that's very, very
Mark (02:30):
primal.
Well plus,'cause you and I neverdo anything for like 20 minutes,
so it's gotta be four hourslong.
So you gotta think, well, whatcan I do for four hours?
Right.
Francis (02:37):
So eat is the answer.
But I looked online to, to lookat what people would do.
I was curious of what peoplewould do.
Without dinner for a date if youwanna go on a date for
non-restaurant dates.
Right.
So I came up with, at msn.com, Icame up, uh, Lisa Ola Cher, um,
I'm not getting her name right,but Lisa we're sure of that.
Cher wrote an article called Inthe Dating and relating
(03:02):
section@msn.com called NineGreat Non Dinner Dates.
And I thought, oh, I found itthe Holy Grail.
We're gonna find some stuffthat's, you know, not, not
restaurant related, right?
Doesn't have any, anything to
Mark (03:13):
do with food or you want, you wanna
Francis (03:14):
check out what the top nine non dinner days, all you
wanna check'em out?
Tell me.
Ready?
Number nine, go on a food tour.
Isn't that going to arestaurant?
That's what I do.
I your walking shoes have thetasting menu and it's a food
tour and get ready to discoverit's parts of your neighborhood
where they have all sorts oflocal food.
Okay.
Number eight for the non dinnerdates go off for tapas.
Mark (03:39):
Well, it's not dinner.
It's kind of like hor d'oeuvres.
It's, you know, it's not quitethere.
We're not getting
Francis (03:43):
away from the food and drink thing.
This number seven.
Number seven in the non,non-food, uh, tea.
Go to a tea shop.
Mark (03:50):
And shop for tea or drink tea?
No.
Drink tea.
Drink tea.
That's rather, rather thancoffee house tea shop.
Tea shops and tea shops arecoming up all over the place and
they're really cool and I thinkpeople are really starting to
appreciate tea.
Francis (04:01):
Not really a He-Man date though.
I gotta, I like tea Man.
Take it easy on me.
I, I gotta take, I really liketea.
You three 30 pounds and you werea heavyweight wrestler.
Why you, why you gotta pick Ontthough?
Because you're three 30 poundsand you were a heavyweight
wrestler.
No, you can wear a pink shirttoo.
Me?
I can't pull off the pink shirt.
All right.
Tea shops.
Um, I'm not fat enough.
You gotta exaggerate my weight.
(04:22):
Know.
Stop it.
Okay.
Um, amusement parks.
We have a non dinner date.
We have a non dinner date.
Amusement parks.
That's good.
You can have the hotdog and thelike.
So we have, one of these isnon-food related.
Mark (04:33):
Well, except you have to have popcorn and cotton candy
and hot, hot dogs at the musicpark.
Yeah, it,
Francis (04:37):
it's the rise, uh, non dinner date.
Uh, idea number five.
Food festivals.
This lady's really not achievingher her goal in this article,
but I understand it because I dothe same thing.
I'm like, well, where could wego?
We could go here for dinner.
Well, the
Mark (04:53):
problem is you take somebody out to a movie on a
date and you spend two hourslooking at the movie and you
don't spend any time interactingwith the person.
Right.
And I, after all, what is datingabout?
It's about getting to know theperson that you're with.
Francis (05:05):
Yeah.
It's about getting fat with theperson you're with.
That's all you do is go out andeat.
Lemme read the rest.
Non dinner date number four.
Go to a wine tasting or beertasting.
Well, it's not, it's not food.
It's, you better eat some foodwhen you go there.
Number three, and this isincreasingly popular as we see
more of these around our area,especially in New York, is, um,
non non dinner date.
Uh, idea number three, go for adessert bar.
Mark (05:26):
Well, that would be after the dinner date, you could go to
dessert bar.
One of the things that, uh, hasreally popped up and is popping
up more and more around the cityis the dessert bar.
And I, and I think that's, Ithink that's cool.
And I, you know, what I thinkwould be a great dinner date.
What?
Go out, make some, make dinnerat home and then when you're
done with dinner at home, go outto a dessert bar.
I mean, I think, I think thatmight be a lot of fun.
Francis (05:48):
I prefer they go out to dinner and then come home for
dessert.
Mark (05:51):
Oh, you, you what?
Dirty man.
I'm chased.
You're dirty.
Francis (05:56):
Uh uh.
Non dinner Date number two.
Id number two in the countdown.
Go to a farmer's market and buysome food.
Mark (06:04):
But then what do you need to do?
And then well go home and cookit.
Which, which by the way, I thinkis a, is a great date.
Yeah.
I love cooking.
Okay.
Going and picking out the foodwith whoever you're, you're
going out with and gonna havethe date with prepping the meal,
doing the meal.
Having the meal together, that'sa great way to get to know
somebody.
Well, that's a great way tolearn about, because what are
(06:24):
you gonna learn when you're outshopping for food?
You're gonna learn about wheresomebody came from.
You're gonna learn about theirfamily.
You're gonna learn about theirtraditions.
You're gonna learn about thefoods.
They, as a kid, you're gonnalearn about the things that are
important to them.
Francis (06:36):
And even if, and even if you're not, you're not both
cooks.
And one of you is cooking dinnerfor the other'cause I've been in
that situation where I'm cookingand somebody's sitting having a
glass of wine while I cook.
That's really nice way to spendtime together.
Mm-hmm.
That's a really nice way tospend time together, but still
food related does not work.
So the number one non dinnerdate idea on msn.com was pick
your own produce.
(06:56):
Don't know like what they mean.
Well, you know, I
Mark (06:59):
like the last weekend I went to Whiteman's Farms and we
went to Apple picking.
You know, that's, it's a lot offun.
I took, well of course we tookthe kids and the kids enjoy it
more than, than the adults.
But you know, you get yourlittle apple picker and you each
way up there and you, it's allfood.
And you pick your apple and thenyou sit down on a little bench
and you eat an apple that yousmuggled that you didn't pay for
yet, and it taste all thebetter.
(07:20):
'cause you're stealing it.
You're a complete dork.
You realize that?
Yeah, you're a complete dork.
Come on, apple pickings fun,pumpkin chicken's.
Fun.
That's why these places are sopopular.
Their work.
Can I just tell you, interjectfor one second?
Yes.
We went to Whiteman's Farm,which is in, in Morristown, New
Jersey.
I'm telling you, there were5,000 people.
(07:42):
I, I mean, I've been to baseballgames where there haven't been
this many people.
Just apple picking.
On a Sunday afternoon, there wasa line to.
Earn.
So you could pay for the rightto go pick apples.
Mm-hmm.
Then you went and pick apples.
Then there was a line to pay forthe apples that you picked for,
I mean like half an hour lines.
Then if you wanted to go buy anapple pie, you stood on another
(08:03):
line.
If you wanted to go on ahayride, you had to stand on a
line to buy a ticket, to standon a line, to go on a hayride.
It was a zoo.
Francis (08:11):
Um, and I think it's a great idea for a date.
All I'm saying is we are so foodcentric in our, in our country,
and that's, that's not a badthing.
Mm-hmm.
That this woman wrote thisarticle trying to come up with
the same idea that I was with,with, you know, dates that don't
resolve, revolve around food.
And yeah, there's kayaking andbowling and, uh, you know, stuff
(08:31):
like that, which is, which isfun too.
Mm-hmm.
But most of, when we cometogether, and I think this is
the point of this article, andI'm trying desperately to find a
point in this segment, is, isthe, the point is that we come
together over food and wine andthat's a good thing.
And that's very basic.
And that's why we do this show.
And that's, that's, that's whatwe talk about all the time.
And we'll be talking more aboutthat.
(08:51):
You're listening to theRestaurant Guys, And today we're
talking yet again with, uh, oneof our favorite restaurateurs in
New Jersey.
He is actually our favorite restrestaurateur in New Jersey after
ourselves, Nicholas Ferrari ownsRestaurant Nicholas, uh, in
Middletown.
Hey, Nicholas.
How's it going today?
Mark (09:06):
How's it going, Nicholas?
I'm doing well.
Yeah.
Nicholas had some big news.
We'll, we'll share with ourlistenership recently had a, uh,
his first child, Nick Jr.
Speaker (09:15):
Don't call him.
Mark (09:19):
I was gonna send you a T-shirt, I have to tell you.
So,
Francis (09:21):
so Baby Nicholas isn't how long till you make him start
working in the restaurant?
Nicholas (09:24):
Uh, he's already been here once or twice.
He's got a little uniform andeverything, you know?
I have believe you.
And that's sick.
Francis (09:32):
actually I think one of the things that's very
interesting is you had the babywith your wife, thank Kevin, who
was also your partner in therestaurant.
That's gotta be a big adjustmentfor the both of you.
Nicholas (09:40):
Yeah, it is a little bit, you know, we've been
planning for it for a whilethough, so, um.
We, we had systems in placethat, uh, handle that.
And actually, um, Melissa stillcomes in in the evening for a
couple hours to help me with thebooks and do kind of stuff.
You're tough.
Yeah.
Well, that's how we roll here.
Here's what I'm
Mark (09:58):
gonna tell you, Jennifer.
My wife did that as well.
Uhhuh, until our second childwas born.
Who's talking about two?
We have one.
And then she told me to go away.
Yeah.
Nicholas (10:07):
Now, but Melissa's a big piece of the restaurant.
We can't just pull her out andjust expect everything's the
same.
So, um.
That's not how we did it.
And, we live very close to therestaurant and, you know, we
have full-time help at the houseto help, uh, with this.
And, you know, we're gonna,we're gonna, uh, try to do it
the old European way.
Mark (10:23):
I have, I have no doubt that your restaurant won't
suffer.
Francis (10:26):
I, I think it's very interesting.
People may not realize, and ofcourse, Nicholas, you do and
Mark, you do, and, and, and somany of our friends do that
restaurant people.
Have to, you know, we havefamilies that we love.
We're all about communal meals,yet we miss many of the meals
with our families.
And making a family work with arestaurant business is maybe,
(10:48):
uh, we have some differentchoices to make and some
different challenges than peoplewho may own, own a store that's,
that closes at five o'clock oreven six or seven or eight
o'clock at night.
There's a huge challenges withhaving family and restaurant.
I mean, don't you guys find, Imean, you're, you're more
qualified to talk about thatthan both of you.
Nicholas (11:04):
Well, mark probably is right now more than I am.
But, um, yeah, there's obviouslyhuge sacrifices that need to be
made and, uh, our, our plan, ourhopes are to, you know, have a
balanced situation, uh, withthe, uh, understanding of the
fact that we are restaurateurs.
We actually have a table in thekitchen that, uh, I, when I
originally thought of it, I didthink of it as a table that, uh,
Melissa and I and uh, Nicholaswill have dinner.
(11:26):
Um, you know, once he gets to acertain age and, and we, we have
a house close to the restaurantfor that reason so that I can go
home in the middle of the dayand, and see him and, you know,
I do want to be, uh, part ofhis, uh, his growing up.
Um, and you know, that's theplan.
Mark (11:40):
Yeah.
And at the same time, at thelevel at which we work.
It is a lot of hours.
It's very demanding.
And if you want to be great, ifyou want to be great at this, at
at Restauranting, then you haveto make certain sacrifices.
But at the same time, you needto kind of put a wall up and
say, I this line, we can'tcross.
But
Francis (12:00):
I also see with both of you guys, and especially you,
mark, I mean for those of youout there who don't know, mark
has four kids and Nicholas hasjust joined the, the team of
restaurateurs with kids.
Pretty soon they'll be able tofeel the baseball team among
them for the, with theirfamilies only if Nicholas is
Mark (12:13):
gonna have four more, the uh, well, the moms and dads can
play too.
Francis (12:16):
But the challenge, I think there are unique
challenges to the fact that arestaurant.
Is not like, I mean manybusinesses are nine to five, but
you can come in later, leaveearly and, and most of the rest
of the support systems thatsociety gives us are to support
families that are nine to five.
So childcare is, if you wantdaycare, for example, you can
(12:37):
find daycare.
Well, you can't find night care.
You know that there are no nightcare facilities for respirators
to drop off their kids at threein the afternoon.
Yeah.
They're called grandparentsFrancis.
Exactly.
So I don't know.
I think that's very interestingand I It must be very, very
challenging.
Good luck to you guys.
Well, it's been exciting so far.
Good luck to you guys.
My plans are doing Yeah, you'restill on that honeymoon period
though.
My, my plans are doing justfine.
Mark (12:59):
Nicholas, so you and I were having a little discussion
just uh, off the cuff the otherday.
As you want to do, as we havewant to do.
You know, we're, we're friends,we've been friends for a long,
long time, and you got on alittle tirade about restaurant
schools and, uh, some of thethings where you feel that
restaurant schools aren't worththe money that they're charging.
You wanna talk about that forjust a moment or two or 10?
Nicholas (13:21):
Yeah, sure.
Um.
My comment is on culinaryschools.
Um, I've kind of been observingthis, uh, for the last few years
and I just think it'sprogressively getting worse.
Mark (13:29):
Now.
You went to restaurant school,you went to ccia?
Yeah, I went to Culinary.
Nicholas (13:32):
Oh yeah.
I, I don't normally say thatanymore'cause I've taken it off
my resume, but I am not proud ofthe students that I've been
seeing, um, coming from thatschool or most any school.
And it's, I don't necessarilyblame the students for it.
I, I think it's the curriculum.
It hasn't changed.
I graduated in nine, uh, 15years ago, whatever, how many
years ago that was, but, uh, 929 3.
Speaker (13:52):
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas (13:53):
Um, and the curriculum's the same today as
it was then, and that'sunacceptable.
Um, the difference however, iswhen I went to culinary school,
I paid$30,000 for the wholeprogram, which was a lot of
money back then.
Sure.
But that's what I paid the kidstoday.
I know I have externs, I havekids who come outta school.
They pay a hundred thousanddollars to go to the same, it's,
Mark (14:13):
it's 90 plus to go to, to go to culinary students.
Right.
Now, here's
Nicholas (14:16):
the problem.
They are not preparing them towork in a restaurant like this.
They're not preparing'em to workin a restaurant like yours.
Mm-hmm.
But they're also not preparingthem to work in, um, corporate.
Uh, contract dining, which iswhere 50% of these kids go now,
because these, these corporatecontract, uh, dining
(14:38):
institutions go up to schools,recruit them, and then offer
them far more than a restaurantcould offer them.
Right.
It's, it's not
Mark (14:45):
just recruit them, it's, it's, it's offering them the
salaries that they need in orderto pay off the loans that
they've accrued.
Nicholas (14:52):
That's correct.
And here is the giganticproblem.
What did you go to culinaryschool for?
If you were gonna go work in aplace that you are going to open
up cans and boxes of mixes andwork with bases instead of
making real stocks.
Speaker (15:06):
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas (15:06):
And this is the problem, you would not go to MIT
to go work at Best Buy sellingcomputers.
You would not go and have a, uh,criminal justice degree and go
be a security officer in ashopping mall.
And that's exactly what thesekids are doing.
They're going to the bestschools in the world.
I'm not just talking about theschool I graduated from.
Mm-hmm.
I'm talking about most culinaryschools that I've run across.
(15:26):
They're gonna the best schoolsin the world to learn their
craft.
They're getting charged, um,ridiculous amounts of money, but
they're not being prepared to doanything.
And this is, this is the problemin schools these days, they.
Teach the same things they wereteaching me when I was in
school.
That stuff was already out ofdate.
Mm-hmm.
Um, they were teaching stuffthat you would be working with
in the seventies.
I was in the early nineties.
(15:47):
Now they're teaching stuff thatwould be in the seventies and
we're in the year 2007.
These kids learn how to makebechamel sauces and volute days
and all kinds of great things.
Francis (15:54):
When's the last time you went to a restaurant and saw
Bechamel on the menu?
Well, here's, here's what
Nicholas (15:58):
I say to my guys.
You know, talked to my, myentire kitchen staff graduated
from a culinary school and we'vetalked about this at length.
And they said, yeah, but don'tyou think you need to know those
things?
And I said, yeah, I don't thinkthere's a problem with learning
those things.
Mm-hmm.
I have no problem with that.
But they spend ridiculous amountof time studying these classic
sauces.
And the problem is, is if you goto work in a place that still
uses those classic sauces, Ipromise you, they don't make'em
(16:19):
from scratch.
They use bases and all kinds ofmixes.
Because if you're in a placethat's still working in these,
right, because
Mark (16:24):
those are out of date,
Nicholas (16:25):
they're out of date, that they obviously aren't as
concerned with.
With the way, uh, you know,things are being done today, it
doesn't, it doesn't make senseanymore to learn those.
Well, if you know them and yougo to a place like Restaurant
Nicholas, we're never gonna makethose kind of sauces in that
style.
So therefore, you've wastedtime.
Now catch this.
When you're in culinary school,you spend six weeks.
Six weeks studying just the baseof those sauces on how those
(16:48):
sauces are made, and then theentire rest of the time you're
there.
You talk about those sauces, butsix weeks times that now, right.
You need, you need
Mark (16:54):
to look at those sauces from a historical perspective.
That's exactly right.
But looking at them as a, aspart of what most restaurants,
high end restaurants in thecountry are doing right now
doesn't make sense.
Francis (17:03):
We're gonna leave this Nicholas as a cliffhanger.
Today we're talking with ourfriend Nicholas Harra.
Nicholas owns, we think, thethird best restaurant in New
Jersey.
No, that's not that for our own,of course.
No.
Nicholas is unquestionably oneof the best restaurateurs
anywhere.
We were talking before the newsabout how Nicholas feels and he
(17:24):
is making some darn good pointsabout how culinary schools may
not be worth it.
They're, they can cost you ahundred thousand dollars to send
your kid through a whole programand.
People may come out of culinaryschools with information that's
really not relevant or useful.
You were saying before thebreak, Nicholas, that these
students spend six weeks workingon the basic sauces that you
(17:45):
would find in old Frenchtextbooks, which really aren't
made anymore.
Nicholas (17:48):
Right.
And roughly that cost them$6,000.
Francis (17:51):
To learn how to do sauces that no one uses
Nicholas (17:53):
them.
They come to my restaurant, I'llteach'em for 50 bucks and a half
an hour, how to make sauces thatyou'll never, how to make when
you go, when you go to, um,accounting school, they don't
teach you not to use acalculator because we've
invented something called acalculator that you, you have to
use with the, the tools and thetechniques that are modern.
But in this old classic style,they teach it that way.
(18:15):
And the big problem, like Isaid.
$30,000 to go to school for, youknow, you get a degree and and
you come out.
I'm all for that.
I have no problem with that.
If there's a school out therethat still costs that amount of
money, I think it's a goodthing.
I don't think schools are a badidea.
I think when you're gonna pay ahundred thousand dollars to go
to school, what it's forcing thekids to come out and do is take
a job they not normally wouldhave to take.
And I have all these kids whocome to me with, with degrees
(18:38):
from culinary schools and theywanna work and.
They, they wanna start as souschefs, and I gotta tell you
there's not, and it's not gonnahappen.
And I then understand theirposition.
Their position is that I have tomake this amount of money
because I have all this debt topay off.
Mark (18:52):
Well, what happens is, and I, and I'll tell you from my
experience as a restaurantowner, what happens is these
kids come outta school and theydon't have the practical skills
that they need.
They, they are at a level of theguy who should be picking the
good berries from the badberries sometimes.
That's exactly right.
And.
That's, you know, and not thatnecessarily a bad thing.
We all need to start somewhere.
(19:13):
Not, not only, but if they don'thave restaurant experience in
addition to their culinaryexperience, they, and they, and
you're right, they come in andthey say, okay, I'm ready to be
your sous chef, which is, whichis your second or third in
command.
Mm-hmm.
And.
They really are only qualifiedto be one of your, your entry
level people.
Francis (19:29):
Well, not only not give them the skills to come in and
be even a line cook on yourline.
And I find that, you know, andI'm sure Nicholas, you find the
same things.
These kids are very oftensurprised, especially the ones
that went to culinary schoolwith very little restaurant
experience.
Beside
Nicholas (19:43):
that, which is everybody now, right?
Mm-hmm.
So everybody wants to be thenext Bobby Fla in Amarillo
Coffee.
Francis (19:48):
Well, and, but they come out of culinary school and
they, they're, you know, you'remaking salads.
I, you don't know how to workthe line No.
On an a la carte restaurant.
And so you're gonna
Nicholas (19:56):
be paid as such.
And here's the thing.
The best chefs in America whoare American chefs did not go to
culinary.
Or you can start naming them allday long.
But I mean, Thomas Keller,Charlie Trotter, Patrick
O'Connell, these guys did not goto culinary school.
They did a European styleapprenticeship.
If you look at the best chefs inAmerica who are not.
American, John George, EricRepair.
(20:16):
You know, you go on down thelist.
These guys did European styleapprenticeships.
Mm-hmm.
They did not go to specificculinary schools because a
culinary school has its merits,but it is not to be a great
chef, it's to do other things.
If you want to be in contractservice dining, um, in some
corporate, um, you know, officebuilding somewhere where you
feed 1200 people in a half anhour, that might be the best
(20:38):
thing to do.
But I think that these.
Kids watch their food networkand they want to be the next
grade chef and they watch IronChef and they can't wait to do
all this stuff and they go toculinary school and they think
that's what they're gonna learn.
because the schools promote howthey're the best at this and the
other things, and they, theydon't do those kinds of things.
So at Restaurant Nicholas, whatwe started was a apprenticeship
program.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh.
(20:59):
It's a two year program.
And my promise is that someonespends two years here learning,
first of all, they'll have ahundred thousand dollars more in
their pocket when they're donebecause they're not gonna have
to pay it off to a culinaryschool.
And they will learn 10 timeswhat they would learn in a
culinary school and be able towork in a restaurant of the
caliber of restaurant Nicholas.
as soon as they're done.
Now, what they won't know how todo is they won't know how to do
(21:20):
contract court for dining.
'cause I don't do that and Idon't have any desire to teach
that.
And if somebody wants to go anddo that, then they should.
What they should do is not go toculinary school.
They should go to like some kindof school, go to
Mark (21:30):
EXO and do it.
Yeah.
Nicholas (21:31):
And they should go to some kind of management school,
but I don't understand why kidspay so much money and I have so
many parents who ask me, whatschool should my.
Son or daughter goes to, and Ifeel badly because everybody
thinks their kids should go toschool of some sort because
that's how we do things inAmerica.
Everyone's some kind of college,but this is a trade.
You would not go to be a mastercarpenter by going to school for
(21:51):
it.
You would go and do anapprenticeship and that's how
it's still done in America withunions and plumbers and.
builders of all sorts, that it'snot something you read out of a
book.
It's something that your, yourhands, your muscle reflex, your
muscle memory needs to be taughton how this stuff is done and
it's an apprenticeship.
Mark (22:05):
Here's one place where I'm gonna disagree with you
slightly.
I think that everybody who goesinto the restaurant business
should take some accountingclasses.
I think that everybody who goesinto the restaurant business
should take some business,business law classes.
I think that everybody, yeah,when
Nicholas (22:20):
I went to the culinary, uh, when I went to the
school, I went to, um.
I spent seven days in businesslaw and I spent.
Seven days in an accountingclass.
Mm-hmm.
14 days.
Mm-hmm.
That's what you're taught.
Mark (22:31):
Yeah.
That's great.
Do you wanna go wrong with that?
No, that's, well, I, I think itshould be more than that.
Well,
Nicholas (22:34):
no, it's not.
And you see, here's the, you seewhat I'm saying?
Yeah, of course.
Sure.
That's why, that's the problem.
It's not that, and I don'tdisagree with you.
I just don't know that youshould be gonna culinary school
paying a hundred thousanddollars.
Oh.
What I'm,
Francis (22:43):
what I'm saying is I think that you should take those
sorts of classes.
Nicholas (22:47):
You can go to your local community college.
Francis (22:49):
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
And I think that there are a lotof folks who, who, I mean, you
and I both know Nicholas, or allthree of us know who.
Are very good at cooking, arevery good at managing the
kitchen, but then they want togo and open their own place and
you know, if you want, if youraspiration is to be a chef and
that's what you want to be,that's.
That's one set of skills.
(23:09):
But if your aspiration is alsoto own your own business, at
some point you've gotta learn alittle bit about real estate,
business law, cash flow.
You don't teach static in
Nicholas (23:16):
culinary school
Francis (23:16):
law, but no, no.
What I'm saying is not fromculinary school.
I think you should look, seekschooling for that elsewhere in
addition to your, but even as a
Mark (23:23):
chef Nicholas, you're using math and accounting and
and cost benefit analysis and100%
Nicholas (23:28):
I absolutely am, but I did not learn that in culinary
schools.
What I'm trying to say to you, Idid not, of course.
I did not learn that there, um,I learned that in the field and
when I was in school, I had todesign a restaurant that was,
you know, had to be a successfuloperating restaurant.
It was like a 6,000 square footrestaurant.
Um, it had like a 4,500 squarefoot kitchen.
It was gonna, it was gonna makea hundred thousand dollars a
(23:50):
year.
And I got an A on the projectand I look back and I still save
it.
It's still in, uh, my office athome, you know, and it's a joke.
Francis (23:56):
It's funny, uh, I know someone who, who handed in a
business plan that looked muchlike the stage left business
plan, but because as we wereformulating it for a long time,
uh, yeah.
And the, and the professor cameback and said, that's
ridiculous.
It'll never
Mark (24:09):
work.
I'm gonna tell you that my wifeworked with us in, in
formulating the business planfor, for stage left, and she
handed it in to her professor.
Mm-hmm.
Who, uh.
Was actually told herridiculous.
Told her it was a ridiculousplan, gave her like a C minus on
it and said, go back to thedrawing board.
Forget about it.
Francis (24:24):
We've invited him in for dinner, but he hasn't come.
That's funny.
Well, now when you, you've setup this apprenticeship program,
who are the takers?
Where are you finding the peopleto, to, to get, to jump on
basically
Nicholas (24:35):
how, um, we, we, how it's worked is we have someone
who comes to us a, a young.
A student, a prospective studentwho says, I wanna spend two or
three months in a kitchen likeyours to really see what it's
like before I go to culinaryschool.
And then I read them the riotact and tell'em what I think.
Uh, of that.
And, uh, they have a decision.
Of course, it's volunteer, youknow, you wanna do it or don't.
(24:55):
and you can take a look at itfrom the merits of the program.
If I have to talk to parentsabout it, I, I will.
like I said, I'm disgusted atthe fact that these kids, these
parents of kids are spending thekind of money that it, that you
could, you know, you can go to,uh.
For school and then come out andbe able to make five times what
a chef makes.
Mm-hmm.
And nine outta 10 people whograduate from these schools that
(25:18):
cost a hundred thousand dollarsa year.
This is a real statistic.
Nine out of 10 of them inside of10 years will not be cooking.
Mark (25:23):
Wow.
Nicholas (25:24):
Now.
Mark (25:25):
That's a scary statistic, man.
Now
Nicholas (25:26):
I have 15 people who work in the kitchen of
restaurant Nicholas.
15 people, every one of'em aculinary school graduate.
So in essence, I have$1.5million of education
Speaker (25:35):
walking around the
Nicholas (25:36):
kitchen.
Now, every one of them had tostart in the same station and
learn the same things, and.
Every one of my guys wentthrough the, the A system to
learn.
Mark (25:44):
Nicholas actually you have $15 million of culinary,
culinary education.
'cause for the 10 guys you havethere are 90 not cooking now.
Nicholas (25:51):
Yeah.
Well that's, and so when youlook at it like that and you
start realizing, you know, whenyou watch the Food Network, it
has been great for our industry.
I don't think there's anythingwrong with it.
With the food arts and the allkinds of things that are going
on, it's all been great for ourindustry.
It's been great for the culinaryschools pockets.
They're making huge dollars now.
Mark (26:07):
Nicholas, when we come back from a break, I want to
talk about something even beforethis conversation that I thought
was the biggest restaurantschool scam going, and I'm gonna
talk about that as soon as wecome back and in the
Francis (26:17):
radio business that's called the Cliffhanger.
We'll see you in a minute,
Mark (26:20):
Nicholas, we were talking before the break and throughout
most of the show aboutrestaurant schools and how you
really feel that they're kind ofa sham at this point in the fact
that they're, these students arespending so much money and not
getting the appropriateeducation and that
apprenticeships are probably abetter way to go as long as
they're apprenticing in theright types of places
Nicholas (26:38):
and as long as they wanna actually be a chef.
Mark (26:40):
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas (26:40):
I mean, that's, that's the thing.
If you wanna be a chef, theapprenticeship is the way to go.
If you wanna be a restaurant.
Manager of a, you know, bigchain restaurant on some highway
somewhere, you should probablygo to some kind of culinary
school.
But you know what should gohundred thousand?
Frankly,
Mark (26:54):
those big chains have have their own programs managing, I
doubt.
I
Nicholas (26:57):
don't doubt that they do.
Mark (26:58):
What I talked about right before the break is what I, one
of the biggest scams that I'vealways felt that restaurant
schools have gotten away with,and I never understood how they
get away with it.
You take a school.
That, and let's say they'recharging$40,000, uh, or$20,000 a
semester.
Well, for most of one of yoursemesters you need to do an
externship at one of, at one ofour restaurants.
(27:21):
Right.
Okay.
And, and you've had externs andwe've had externs and uh, you
know, it's basically one ofthese apprenticeships.
Right.
But for 18 weeks at a time for,for 18 weeks.
And what you get to do whileyou're doing this apprenticeship
in one of our restaurants is youget to pay the restaurant
school.
For your time that you'respending as an apprentice.
Francis (27:42):
Yeah.
That I teach you.
Nicholas (27:43):
Well, you know what's funny?
And they want the restaurateurto pay the student to learn from
us.
Francis (27:49):
See, now that's, now that that's something that is
different.
When we first started in 92,mm-hmm.
Uh, certain culinary schoolsused to send us externs, and the
externs of course wouldn't bepaid, but we would take them on
because sometimes.
About
Mark (28:00):
one in 10 times, that person would be good enough to,
to continue to work in yourrestaurant at some point later.
And you would
Francis (28:05):
offer them, and we would sometimes offer people a
job after they graduated orsometimes even in the middle of
an externship, we'd go up tosomeone and say, you know what?
You took a free externship, butyou're actually being
productive, so we're gonna payyou.
But nine times outta 10 thereare drag on the organization
and, and
Mark (28:19):
truly, nine times out of 10.
Francis (28:20):
They're making your, your trained guy less productive
'cause he's teaching this moronhow to do something.
Sorry, that's a little, alittle, little much.
Nicholas (28:28):
Well, the, the reason why a restaurateur.
Um, we do it.
I can tell you why we do it.
It's because the hopes are, andthe reason why I am talking out
now about the culinary schoolsand why we wanna do
apprenticeships is the hope isthat if enough people will wake
up and, and take a look and seethe way it is, and if you can
train enough people that theindustry will become a better
(28:49):
industry.
They'll be more trained peoplein it, as opposed to more kids
that come out who are so far indebt that they have no choice
but to do things that theywouldn't have chosen.
Oh.
Francis (28:59):
I think it's, it's absolutely great and we love to
do it, but I, I remember whenthey changed it around and we,
we were interviewing somestudents who came and they
trailed and they asked us to doan externship.
And we said, okay.
'cause we hadn't done it for acouple of years.
We had changed chefs and theysaid, great, pay me$10 an hour.
And I said, pay you, pay you.
(29:21):
You know, you're a pain in mybutt.
I'm not paying you.
Why don't you pay me?
Nicholas (29:26):
You should take a look at what the list of places are
that accept externs now.
Francis (29:30):
Well, sure.
Um,
Nicholas (29:30):
it's all, it's all those big giant places, um,
that, uh, because who would paya student$10 an hour for 18
weeks to, you know, you knowthis, but
Mark (29:39):
now this, but this goes back to the problem that you
were talking about earlier.
You, you already have a hundredthousand dollars debt from your.
School.
Right.
You can't, there's no possibleway you can afford to work for
free for 18 weeks.
Francis (29:52):
Right.
So you don't learn anything andyou can't learn anything.
Nicholas (29:54):
That's, this is, this is the problem.
And I'm gonna tell you that outof a hundred, out of a hundred
people, one of them that makesit through this and just does,
does well for themselves.
The other 99, I am telling you,they all see it.
You know, people aren't stupid.
They realize, they see it.
They're like, what am I gonna dohere?
I'm a hundred thousand dollarsin debt.
The places that I really wannawork in, are gonna, you know,
(30:16):
pay me.
18, 22, 20$3,000 a year to, tocome in and work minimum wage
because I don't know enough towork in it.
Mm-hmm.
You think you're gonna go toDanielle or Jean George or La
Bernadin or a place likeRestaurant Nicholas and get a
job right outta school and get agood paying job.
When you don't really have anyskill, the job
Francis (30:31):
is like, okay, you can clean this finish.
Okay.
That's your job.
Mark (30:34):
Alright, so Nicholas, what are the redeeming qualities?
What, give me a reason whysomebody should go to to school.
Culinary school.
Culinary school.
Nicholas (30:43):
Um, I would, I would say the only thing I can think
is the same reason why, um,someone should go to any college
that I think that you probablydevelop social skills.
You know, you, you, you know,you get away from home, you
develop, you grow, you mature alittle bit.
That would be the one and onlything I can think that would be
different.
Francis (31:00):
Well, and you can do that for a heck of a lot less
than a hundred thousand dollarsat a cooking school.
You know, I, I agree with youand I, I, for a long time have
thought.
That it's disturbing whathappens in culinary schools.
It's very disturbing to me tosee these young people come out.
And we, we interviewed for apastry position last year, mark.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And the woman was, you know,she's just outta school.
She had done a little bitexperience.
(31:21):
She knew how to make some thingsand she was gonna come in under
our executive chef and we weregonna develop her into, into the
position.
And she wanted an obscene amountof money.
She has
Nicholas (31:30):
to be paid it.
Because of what her debts are.
Francis (31:32):
And so we, we couldn't, we couldn't hire, so what's
happening is we have CIAgraduates in our, our kitchen as
well, but they're the top cooksand the sous chefs.
Mm-hmm.
And, and frankly, they've
Mark (31:40):
had, and usually they've had six or seven year seasoning
in some other place.
Nicholas (31:44):
Right.
But they're six and seven yearsout.
I'm telling you, I looked at, at1200 resumes, 1200 resumes this
week.
from Monster.
Mm-hmm.
And, and anyone who graduatedfrom the, the, the top expense
schools, they all had on theirresumes.
Every one of them were, uh,working in corporate dining
situations, working in, bighouses like, uh, you know, the,
(32:07):
the big chain restaurants andall that kind of stuff.
And I know it, you can see it.
Mm-hmm.
You can see why.
They go to work.
Sure you have to Disney Worldand all kinds of stuff like
that.
And I'm telling you, there'snothing and I want everyone to
understand there is nothingwrong with gonna work in those
places.
I don't look down upon those inany way.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I just simply say what I saidbefore, there's no way you
should have a degree from MIT sothat you can go sell computers
(32:28):
at Best Buy.
Right.
Don't be, dont be.
Mark (32:29):
Don't be forced into that because of the school you chose.
When, when that may not be whatyou were looking
Francis (32:35):
for.
And even if you're stillthinking about culinary school,
I think spending some time in akitchen like Nicholas's or a
kitchen like ours, you'll, beable to make a more informed
decision as to whether you wantto go or not.
It's a big, big commitment.
Hey Nicholas, we need to leaveit there, but I wanna thank you
for taking the time outta yourschedule to be with us.
My pleasure.
Mark (32:50):
Thanks Nicholas.
We'll talk again soon.
Francis (32:51):
Alright.
We'll be down to see you soon.
(33:21):
we were talking with NicholasFerrari of Restaurant Nicholas,
down in Middletown.
Great restaurant.
Love it.
Love it.
He's
Mark (33:26):
really down on restaurant schools.
I'm, you know,
Francis (33:27):
I, you know who I was thinking of as the archetypal.
Guy, there was another, there'sanother sort of a smarty pants
guy who comes outta restaurantschools.
And by the way, we've had a lot,I, we have a lot worked with a
lot of people who, who are greatchefs who've come out of
culinary schools, but usually along time ago.
Mm-hmm.
And again, it's that, you know,getting into the real world.
A lot of guys we know who aregreat chefs who came outta
culinary school.
They came outta culinary schoolway in debt.
(33:48):
Mm-hmm.
And then they took a job forminimum wage Right.
For three years and stayed indebt for three years and then
slowly and got further in debtfor three years.
Mm-hmm.
And, and worked their way up.
And that's, and those guys allfeel the pain of the, of, of the
choices they made there.
But I'm thinking of one guy inparticular who came to work for
us.
he had gone to culinary school.
He was very well read, and hehad a great presence about him
(34:10):
in the kitchen.
Mm-hmm.
His whites were spotless.
That's the uniform.
He was, were spotless.
He was meticulously organized.
His workspace was perfect.
He couldn't do a thing.
He talked, he interview, youknow what I, I remember one of,
one of the things he interviewedso well, he knew everything,
couldn't do a thing.
Mark (34:25):
Just one of the, the little skills that a chef will
do is as he's sauteingsomething, he'll take the
boiling juices of whatever he'sthe butter or whatever he's.
He's sauteing and he'll spoonthem over the top and it's
called quale and he'll spoonthem over the top of, of
whatever he's cooking in orderto have them kind of melt into
the top of what he's searing thebottom of.
(34:46):
And, and this kid, as the kidyou're talking of, and I'm sure
it's the same kid, was, wasdoing that, except for one
thing, he was spooning thejuices, but kind of around the
meat.
Instead of on top of the meat,and it really wasn't doing
anything at all except goingfrom the top of the pan to the
bottom of the pan and nottouching the meat at all.
Just to let you know,
Francis (35:04):
the line cooks who are listening just are laughing like
crazy at that joke and nobodyelse knows what the heck you're
talking about.
Well, you know, what can I tellyou?
This is really a restaurantshow.
You just are the only joke ever,ever made on broadcast radio and
Uline cooks out there.
It is funny, isn't it?
Everybody else.
Sorry, I go to the video.
Hope you've enjoyed the hourwith the restaurant guys.
I'm Francis Shot.
And I'm Mark Pascal.
(35:25):
We are the restaurant guys,central Jersey 1450.
The time is 12 noon.
Morning there, Marky.
Good morning, Francis.
How are you this morning?
I'm doing
Francis (00:45):
great.
Really good.
I, I wanna discuss something.
It was an interesting emailcorrespondence and, and
correspondence I had with acousin of mine mm-hmm.
Who made a reservation in therestaurant.
I, uh, and he said, cousinFrancis, you gotta help me out
here.
I want a great date, want aspecial night?
How do I make this nightspecial?
Was someone he cared about.
Mm-hmm.
A great deal.
Mm-hmm.
(01:06):
And it got me to thinking about,so you needed,
Mark (01:09):
he needed his, your A material, you needed my A
material, you needed your beststuff.
Francis (01:12):
And, but, so we got him a reservation in the restaurant,
and it was, and he's a, he's areally great guy.
Mm-hmm.
And he got her flowers and therewere flowers waiting for her at
the restaurant.
That's a stuff, nothing tooostentatious, not a dozen roses.
Four roses, two pink, two red,classy guy.
Right.
And I got to thinking about whatpeople do for dates and it's
about restaurants.
(01:33):
Mm-hmm.
Most, most of what we do is wego out to dinner, but sometimes
I feel that it can all be justgoing out to dinner.
You know, and so I lookedonline.
Well,
Mark (01:42):
dinner, I mean, dinner is a good place to go out,
obviously for a date.
It's, it's wonderful becauseit's totally interactive and you
talk, you, you have, you talk,but you also have something to
talk about.
Mm-hmm.
Things keep changing in front ofyou.
Yeah.
You have a, you have the sceneryof what's around you.
You have the people that arearound you.
You have the people who keepinterjecting into your meal.
you know, the waiter comes overand talks about, and the food is
(02:03):
different in the wine, the hebeor some new.
Fish that you've never heard of.
So you have something there.
There's a lot to talk about whenyou're at a restaurant
Francis (02:09):
or even, or even if it's just a pizza.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, as the food goes by you.
But what, what I thought wasinteresting was I said, you
know, when I think about it,when we get together with
friends.
If I go out on a date, um, mostoften that's the default date is
dinner.
Mm-hmm.
Or food or something foodrelated.
Right.
And I think that's, that's veryprimal.
You know, we all come togetheraround the communal fire, you
(02:29):
know, that's very, very
Mark (02:30):
primal.
Well plus,'cause you and I neverdo anything for like 20 minutes,
so it's gotta be four hourslong.
So you gotta think, well, whatcan I do for four hours?
Right.
Francis (02:37):
So eat is the answer.
But I looked online to, to lookat what people would do.
I was curious of what peoplewould do.
Without dinner for a date if youwanna go on a date for
non-restaurant dates.
Right.
So I came up with, at msn.com, Icame up, uh, Lisa Ola Cher, um,
I'm not getting her name right,but Lisa we're sure of that.
Cher wrote an article called Inthe Dating and relating
(03:02):
section@msn.com called NineGreat Non Dinner Dates.
And I thought, oh, I found itthe Holy Grail.
We're gonna find some stuffthat's, you know, not, not
restaurant related, right?
Doesn't have any, anything to
Mark (03:13):
do with food or you want, you wanna
Francis (03:14):
check out what the top nine non dinner days, all you
wanna check'em out?
Tell me.
Ready?
Number nine, go on a food tour.
Isn't that going to arestaurant?
That's what I do.
I your walking shoes have thetasting menu and it's a food
tour and get ready to discoverit's parts of your neighborhood
where they have all sorts oflocal food.
Okay.
Number eight for the non dinnerdates go off for tapas.
Mark (03:39):
Well, it's not dinner.
It's kind of like hor d'oeuvres.
It's, you know, it's not quitethere.
We're not getting
Francis (03:43):
away from the food and drink thing.
This number seven.
Number seven in the non,non-food, uh, tea.
Go to a tea shop.
Mark (03:50):
And shop for tea or drink tea?
No.
Drink tea.
Drink tea.
That's rather, rather thancoffee house tea shop.
Tea shops and tea shops arecoming up all over the place and
they're really cool and I thinkpeople are really starting to
appreciate tea.
Francis (04:01):
Not really a He-Man date though.
I gotta, I like tea Man.
Take it easy on me.
I, I gotta take, I really liketea.
You three 30 pounds and you werea heavyweight wrestler.
Why you, why you gotta pick Ontthough?
Because you're three 30 poundsand you were a heavyweight
wrestler.
No, you can wear a pink shirttoo.
Me?
I can't pull off the pink shirt.
All right.
Tea shops.
Um, I'm not fat enough.
You gotta exaggerate my weight.
(04:22):
Know.
Stop it.
Okay.
Um, amusement parks.
We have a non dinner date.
We have a non dinner date.
Amusement parks.
That's good.
You can have the hotdog and thelike.
So we have, one of these isnon-food related.
Mark (04:33):
Well, except you have to have popcorn and cotton candy
and hot, hot dogs at the musicpark.
Yeah, it,
Francis (04:37):
it's the rise, uh, non dinner date.
Uh, idea number five.
Food festivals.
This lady's really not achievingher her goal in this article,
but I understand it because I dothe same thing.
I'm like, well, where could wego?
We could go here for dinner.
Well, the
Mark (04:53):
problem is you take somebody out to a movie on a
date and you spend two hourslooking at the movie and you
don't spend any time interactingwith the person.
Right.
And I, after all, what is datingabout?
It's about getting to know theperson that you're with.
Francis (05:05):
Yeah.
It's about getting fat with theperson you're with.
That's all you do is go out andeat.
Lemme read the rest.
Non dinner date number four.
Go to a wine tasting or beertasting.
Well, it's not, it's not food.
It's, you better eat some foodwhen you go there.
Number three, and this isincreasingly popular as we see
more of these around our area,especially in New York, is, um,
non non dinner date.
Uh, idea number three, go for adessert bar.
Mark (05:26):
Well, that would be after the dinner date, you could go to
dessert bar.
One of the things that, uh, hasreally popped up and is popping
up more and more around the cityis the dessert bar.
And I, and I think that's, Ithink that's cool.
And I, you know, what I thinkwould be a great dinner date.
What?
Go out, make some, make dinnerat home and then when you're
done with dinner at home, go outto a dessert bar.
I mean, I think, I think thatmight be a lot of fun.
Francis (05:48):
I prefer they go out to dinner and then come home for
dessert.
Mark (05:51):
Oh, you, you what?
Dirty man.
I'm chased.
You're dirty.
Francis (05:56):
Uh uh.
Non dinner Date number two.
Id number two in the countdown.
Go to a farmer's market and buysome food.
Mark (06:04):
But then what do you need to do?
And then well go home and cookit.
Which, which by the way, I thinkis a, is a great date.
Yeah.
I love cooking.
Okay.
Going and picking out the foodwith whoever you're, you're
going out with and gonna havethe date with prepping the meal,
doing the meal.
Having the meal together, that'sa great way to get to know
somebody.
Well, that's a great way tolearn about, because what are
(06:24):
you gonna learn when you're outshopping for food?
You're gonna learn about wheresomebody came from.
You're gonna learn about theirfamily.
You're gonna learn about theirtraditions.
You're gonna learn about thefoods.
They, as a kid, you're gonnalearn about the things that are
important to them.
Francis (06:36):
And even if, and even if you're not, you're not both
cooks.
And one of you is cooking dinnerfor the other'cause I've been in
that situation where I'm cookingand somebody's sitting having a
glass of wine while I cook.
That's really nice way to spendtime together.
Mm-hmm.
That's a really nice way tospend time together, but still
food related does not work.
So the number one non dinnerdate idea on msn.com was pick
your own produce.
(06:56):
Don't know like what they mean.
Well, you know, I
Mark (06:59):
like the last weekend I went to Whiteman's Farms and we
went to Apple picking.
You know, that's, it's a lot offun.
I took, well of course we tookthe kids and the kids enjoy it
more than, than the adults.
But you know, you get yourlittle apple picker and you each
way up there and you, it's allfood.
And you pick your apple and thenyou sit down on a little bench
and you eat an apple that yousmuggled that you didn't pay for
yet, and it taste all thebetter.
(07:20):
'cause you're stealing it.
You're a complete dork.
You realize that?
Yeah, you're a complete dork.
Come on, apple pickings fun,pumpkin chicken's.
Fun.
That's why these places are sopopular.
Their work.
Can I just tell you, interjectfor one second?
Yes.
We went to Whiteman's Farm,which is in, in Morristown, New
Jersey.
I'm telling you, there were5,000 people.
(07:42):
I, I mean, I've been to baseballgames where there haven't been
this many people.
Just apple picking.
On a Sunday afternoon, there wasa line to.
Earn.
So you could pay for the rightto go pick apples.
Mm-hmm.
Then you went and pick apples.
Then there was a line to pay forthe apples that you picked for,
I mean like half an hour lines.
Then if you wanted to go buy anapple pie, you stood on another
(08:03):
line.
If you wanted to go on ahayride, you had to stand on a
line to buy a ticket, to standon a line, to go on a hayride.
It was a zoo.
Francis (08:11):
Um, and I think it's a great idea for a date.
All I'm saying is we are so foodcentric in our, in our country,
and that's, that's not a badthing.
Mm-hmm.
That this woman wrote thisarticle trying to come up with
the same idea that I was with,with, you know, dates that don't
resolve, revolve around food.
And yeah, there's kayaking andbowling and, uh, you know, stuff
(08:31):
like that, which is, which isfun too.
Mm-hmm.
But most of, when we cometogether, and I think this is
the point of this article, andI'm trying desperately to find a
point in this segment, is, isthe, the point is that we come
together over food and wine andthat's a good thing.
And that's very basic.
And that's why we do this show.
And that's, that's, that's whatwe talk about all the time.
And we'll be talking more aboutthat.
(08:51):
You're listening to theRestaurant Guys, And today we're
talking yet again with, uh, oneof our favorite restaurateurs in
New Jersey.
He is actually our favorite restrestaurateur in New Jersey after
ourselves, Nicholas Ferrari ownsRestaurant Nicholas, uh, in
Middletown.
Hey, Nicholas.
How's it going today?
Mark (09:06):
How's it going, Nicholas?
I'm doing well.
Yeah.
Nicholas had some big news.
We'll, we'll share with ourlistenership recently had a, uh,
his first child, Nick Jr.
Speaker (09:15):
Don't call him.
Mark (09:19):
I was gonna send you a T-shirt, I have to tell you.
So,
Francis (09:21):
so Baby Nicholas isn't how long till you make him start
working in the restaurant?
Nicholas (09:24):
Uh, he's already been here once or twice.
He's got a little uniform andeverything, you know?
I have believe you.
And that's sick.
Francis (09:32):
actually I think one of the things that's very
interesting is you had the babywith your wife, thank Kevin, who
was also your partner in therestaurant.
That's gotta be a big adjustmentfor the both of you.
Nicholas (09:40):
Yeah, it is a little bit, you know, we've been
planning for it for a whilethough, so, um.
We, we had systems in placethat, uh, handle that.
And actually, um, Melissa stillcomes in in the evening for a
couple hours to help me with thebooks and do kind of stuff.
You're tough.
Yeah.
Well, that's how we roll here.
Here's what I'm
Mark (09:58):
gonna tell you, Jennifer.
My wife did that as well.
Uhhuh, until our second childwas born.
Who's talking about two?
We have one.
And then she told me to go away.
Yeah.
Nicholas (10:07):
Now, but Melissa's a big piece of the restaurant.
We can't just pull her out andjust expect everything's the
same.
So, um.
That's not how we did it.
And, we live very close to therestaurant and, you know, we
have full-time help at the houseto help, uh, with this.
And, you know, we're gonna,we're gonna, uh, try to do it
the old European way.
Mark (10:23):
I have, I have no doubt that your restaurant won't
suffer.
Francis (10:26):
I, I think it's very interesting.
People may not realize, and ofcourse, Nicholas, you do and
Mark, you do, and, and, and somany of our friends do that
restaurant people.
Have to, you know, we havefamilies that we love.
We're all about communal meals,yet we miss many of the meals
with our families.
And making a family work with arestaurant business is maybe,
(10:48):
uh, we have some differentchoices to make and some
different challenges than peoplewho may own, own a store that's,
that closes at five o'clock oreven six or seven or eight
o'clock at night.
There's a huge challenges withhaving family and restaurant.
I mean, don't you guys find, Imean, you're, you're more
qualified to talk about thatthan both of you.
Nicholas (11:04):
Well, mark probably is right now more than I am.
But, um, yeah, there's obviouslyhuge sacrifices that need to be
made and, uh, our, our plan, ourhopes are to, you know, have a
balanced situation, uh, withthe, uh, understanding of the
fact that we are restaurateurs.
We actually have a table in thekitchen that, uh, I, when I
originally thought of it, I didthink of it as a table that, uh,
Melissa and I and uh, Nicholaswill have dinner.
(11:26):
Um, you know, once he gets to acertain age and, and we, we have
a house close to the restaurantfor that reason so that I can go
home in the middle of the dayand, and see him and, you know,
I do want to be, uh, part ofhis, uh, his growing up.
Um, and you know, that's theplan.
Mark (11:40):
Yeah.
And at the same time, at thelevel at which we work.
It is a lot of hours.
It's very demanding.
And if you want to be great, ifyou want to be great at this, at
at Restauranting, then you haveto make certain sacrifices.
But at the same time, you needto kind of put a wall up and
say, I this line, we can'tcross.
But
Francis (12:00):
I also see with both of you guys, and especially you,
mark, I mean for those of youout there who don't know, mark
has four kids and Nicholas hasjust joined the, the team of
restaurateurs with kids.
Pretty soon they'll be able tofeel the baseball team among
them for the, with theirfamilies only if Nicholas is
Mark (12:13):
gonna have four more, the uh, well, the moms and dads can
play too.
Francis (12:16):
But the challenge, I think there are unique
challenges to the fact that arestaurant.
Is not like, I mean manybusinesses are nine to five, but
you can come in later, leaveearly and, and most of the rest
of the support systems thatsociety gives us are to support
families that are nine to five.
So childcare is, if you wantdaycare, for example, you can
(12:37):
find daycare.
Well, you can't find night care.
You know that there are no nightcare facilities for respirators
to drop off their kids at threein the afternoon.
Yeah.
They're called grandparentsFrancis.
Exactly.
So I don't know.
I think that's very interestingand I It must be very, very
challenging.
Good luck to you guys.
Well, it's been exciting so far.
Good luck to you guys.
My plans are doing Yeah, you'restill on that honeymoon period
though.
My, my plans are doing justfine.
Mark (12:59):
Nicholas, so you and I were having a little discussion
just uh, off the cuff the otherday.
As you want to do, as we havewant to do.
You know, we're, we're friends,we've been friends for a long,
long time, and you got on alittle tirade about restaurant
schools and, uh, some of thethings where you feel that
restaurant schools aren't worththe money that they're charging.
You wanna talk about that forjust a moment or two or 10?
Nicholas (13:21):
Yeah, sure.
Um.
My comment is on culinaryschools.
Um, I've kind of been observingthis, uh, for the last few years
and I just think it'sprogressively getting worse.
Mark (13:29):
Now.
You went to restaurant school,you went to ccia?
Yeah, I went to Culinary.
Nicholas (13:32):
Oh yeah.
I, I don't normally say thatanymore'cause I've taken it off
my resume, but I am not proud ofthe students that I've been
seeing, um, coming from thatschool or most any school.
And it's, I don't necessarilyblame the students for it.
I, I think it's the curriculum.
It hasn't changed.
I graduated in nine, uh, 15years ago, whatever, how many
years ago that was, but, uh, 929 3.
Speaker (13:52):
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas (13:53):
Um, and the curriculum's the same today as
it was then, and that'sunacceptable.
Um, the difference however, iswhen I went to culinary school,
I paid$30,000 for the wholeprogram, which was a lot of
money back then.
Sure.
But that's what I paid the kidstoday.
I know I have externs, I havekids who come outta school.
They pay a hundred thousanddollars to go to the same, it's,
Mark (14:13):
it's 90 plus to go to, to go to culinary students.
Right.
Now, here's
Nicholas (14:16):
the problem.
They are not preparing them towork in a restaurant like this.
They're not preparing'em to workin a restaurant like yours.
Mm-hmm.
But they're also not preparingthem to work in, um, corporate.
Uh, contract dining, which iswhere 50% of these kids go now,
because these, these corporatecontract, uh, dining
(14:38):
institutions go up to schools,recruit them, and then offer
them far more than a restaurantcould offer them.
Right.
It's, it's not
Mark (14:45):
just recruit them, it's, it's, it's offering them the
salaries that they need in orderto pay off the loans that
they've accrued.
Nicholas (14:52):
That's correct.
And here is the giganticproblem.
What did you go to culinaryschool for?
If you were gonna go work in aplace that you are going to open
up cans and boxes of mixes andwork with bases instead of
making real stocks.
Speaker (15:06):
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas (15:06):
And this is the problem, you would not go to MIT
to go work at Best Buy sellingcomputers.
You would not go and have a, uh,criminal justice degree and go
be a security officer in ashopping mall.
And that's exactly what thesekids are doing.
They're going to the bestschools in the world.
I'm not just talking about theschool I graduated from.
Mm-hmm.
I'm talking about most culinaryschools that I've run across.
(15:26):
They're gonna the best schoolsin the world to learn their
craft.
They're getting charged, um,ridiculous amounts of money, but
they're not being prepared to doanything.
And this is, this is the problemin schools these days, they.
Teach the same things they wereteaching me when I was in
school.
That stuff was already out ofdate.
Mm-hmm.
Um, they were teaching stuffthat you would be working with
in the seventies.
I was in the early nineties.
(15:47):
Now they're teaching stuff thatwould be in the seventies and
we're in the year 2007.
These kids learn how to makebechamel sauces and volute days
and all kinds of great things.
Francis (15:54):
When's the last time you went to a restaurant and saw
Bechamel on the menu?
Well, here's, here's what
Nicholas (15:58):
I say to my guys.
You know, talked to my, myentire kitchen staff graduated
from a culinary school and we'vetalked about this at length.
And they said, yeah, but don'tyou think you need to know those
things?
And I said, yeah, I don't thinkthere's a problem with learning
those things.
Mm-hmm.
I have no problem with that.
But they spend ridiculous amountof time studying these classic
sauces.
And the problem is, is if you goto work in a place that still
uses those classic sauces, Ipromise you, they don't make'em
(16:19):
from scratch.
They use bases and all kinds ofmixes.
Because if you're in a placethat's still working in these,
right, because
Mark (16:24):
those are out of date,
Nicholas (16:25):
they're out of date, that they obviously aren't as
concerned with.
With the way, uh, you know,things are being done today, it
doesn't, it doesn't make senseanymore to learn those.
Well, if you know them and yougo to a place like Restaurant
Nicholas, we're never gonna makethose kind of sauces in that
style.
So therefore, you've wastedtime.
Now catch this.
When you're in culinary school,you spend six weeks.
Six weeks studying just the baseof those sauces on how those
(16:48):
sauces are made, and then theentire rest of the time you're
there.
You talk about those sauces, butsix weeks times that now, right.
You need, you need
Mark (16:54):
to look at those sauces from a historical perspective.
That's exactly right.
But looking at them as a, aspart of what most restaurants,
high end restaurants in thecountry are doing right now
doesn't make sense.
Francis (17:03):
We're gonna leave this Nicholas as a cliffhanger.
Today we're talking with ourfriend Nicholas Harra.
Nicholas owns, we think, thethird best restaurant in New
Jersey.
No, that's not that for our own,of course.
No.
Nicholas is unquestionably oneof the best restaurateurs
anywhere.
We were talking before the newsabout how Nicholas feels and he
(17:24):
is making some darn good pointsabout how culinary schools may
not be worth it.
They're, they can cost you ahundred thousand dollars to send
your kid through a whole programand.
People may come out of culinaryschools with information that's
really not relevant or useful.
You were saying before thebreak, Nicholas, that these
students spend six weeks workingon the basic sauces that you
(17:45):
would find in old Frenchtextbooks, which really aren't
made anymore.
Nicholas (17:48):
Right.
And roughly that cost them$6,000.
Francis (17:51):
To learn how to do sauces that no one uses
Nicholas (17:53):
them.
They come to my restaurant, I'llteach'em for 50 bucks and a half
an hour, how to make sauces thatyou'll never, how to make when
you go, when you go to, um,accounting school, they don't
teach you not to use acalculator because we've
invented something called acalculator that you, you have to
use with the, the tools and thetechniques that are modern.
But in this old classic style,they teach it that way.
(18:15):
And the big problem, like Isaid.
$30,000 to go to school for, youknow, you get a degree and and
you come out.
I'm all for that.
I have no problem with that.
If there's a school out therethat still costs that amount of
money, I think it's a goodthing.
I don't think schools are a badidea.
I think when you're gonna pay ahundred thousand dollars to go
to school, what it's forcing thekids to come out and do is take
a job they not normally wouldhave to take.
And I have all these kids whocome to me with, with degrees
(18:38):
from culinary schools and theywanna work and.
They, they wanna start as souschefs, and I gotta tell you
there's not, and it's not gonnahappen.
And I then understand theirposition.
Their position is that I have tomake this amount of money
because I have all this debt topay off.
Mark (18:52):
Well, what happens is, and I, and I'll tell you from my
experience as a restaurantowner, what happens is these
kids come outta school and theydon't have the practical skills
that they need.
They, they are at a level of theguy who should be picking the
good berries from the badberries sometimes.
That's exactly right.
And.
That's, you know, and not thatnecessarily a bad thing.
We all need to start somewhere.
(19:13):
Not, not only, but if they don'thave restaurant experience in
addition to their culinaryexperience, they, and they, and
you're right, they come in andthey say, okay, I'm ready to be
your sous chef, which is, whichis your second or third in
command.
Mm-hmm.
And.
They really are only qualifiedto be one of your, your entry
level people.
Francis (19:29):
Well, not only not give them the skills to come in and
be even a line cook on yourline.
And I find that, you know, andI'm sure Nicholas, you find the
same things.
These kids are very oftensurprised, especially the ones
that went to culinary schoolwith very little restaurant
experience.
Beside
Nicholas (19:43):
that, which is everybody now, right?
Mm-hmm.
So everybody wants to be thenext Bobby Fla in Amarillo
Coffee.
Francis (19:48):
Well, and, but they come out of culinary school and
they, they're, you know, you'remaking salads.
I, you don't know how to workthe line No.
On an a la carte restaurant.
And so you're gonna
Nicholas (19:56):
be paid as such.
And here's the thing.
The best chefs in America whoare American chefs did not go to
culinary.
Or you can start naming them allday long.
But I mean, Thomas Keller,Charlie Trotter, Patrick
O'Connell, these guys did not goto culinary school.
They did a European styleapprenticeship.
If you look at the best chefs inAmerica who are not.
American, John George, EricRepair.
(20:16):
You know, you go on down thelist.
These guys did European styleapprenticeships.
Mm-hmm.
They did not go to specificculinary schools because a
culinary school has its merits,but it is not to be a great
chef, it's to do other things.
If you want to be in contractservice dining, um, in some
corporate, um, you know, officebuilding somewhere where you
feed 1200 people in a half anhour, that might be the best
(20:38):
thing to do.
But I think that these.
Kids watch their food networkand they want to be the next
grade chef and they watch IronChef and they can't wait to do
all this stuff and they go toculinary school and they think
that's what they're gonna learn.
because the schools promote howthey're the best at this and the
other things, and they, theydon't do those kinds of things.
So at Restaurant Nicholas, whatwe started was a apprenticeship
program.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh.
(20:59):
It's a two year program.
And my promise is that someonespends two years here learning,
first of all, they'll have ahundred thousand dollars more in
their pocket when they're donebecause they're not gonna have
to pay it off to a culinaryschool.
And they will learn 10 timeswhat they would learn in a
culinary school and be able towork in a restaurant of the
caliber of restaurant Nicholas.
as soon as they're done.
Now, what they won't know how todo is they won't know how to do
(21:20):
contract court for dining.
'cause I don't do that and Idon't have any desire to teach
that.
And if somebody wants to go anddo that, then they should.
What they should do is not go toculinary school.
They should go to like some kindof school, go to
Mark (21:30):
EXO and do it.
Yeah.
Nicholas (21:31):
And they should go to some kind of management school,
but I don't understand why kidspay so much money and I have so
many parents who ask me, whatschool should my.
Son or daughter goes to, and Ifeel badly because everybody
thinks their kids should go toschool of some sort because
that's how we do things inAmerica.
Everyone's some kind of college,but this is a trade.
You would not go to be a mastercarpenter by going to school for
(21:51):
it.
You would go and do anapprenticeship and that's how
it's still done in America withunions and plumbers and.
builders of all sorts, that it'snot something you read out of a
book.
It's something that your, yourhands, your muscle reflex, your
muscle memory needs to be taughton how this stuff is done and
it's an apprenticeship.
Mark (22:05):
Here's one place where I'm gonna disagree with you
slightly.
I think that everybody who goesinto the restaurant business
should take some accountingclasses.
I think that everybody who goesinto the restaurant business
should take some business,business law classes.
I think that everybody, yeah,when
Nicholas (22:20):
I went to the culinary, uh, when I went to the
school, I went to, um.
I spent seven days in businesslaw and I spent.
Seven days in an accountingclass.
Mm-hmm.
14 days.
Mm-hmm.
That's what you're taught.
Mark (22:31):
Yeah.
That's great.
Do you wanna go wrong with that?
No, that's, well, I, I think itshould be more than that.
Well,
Nicholas (22:34):
no, it's not.
And you see, here's the, you seewhat I'm saying?
Yeah, of course.
Sure.
That's why, that's the problem.
It's not that, and I don'tdisagree with you.
I just don't know that youshould be gonna culinary school
paying a hundred thousanddollars.
Oh.
What I'm,
Francis (22:43):
what I'm saying is I think that you should take those
sorts of classes.
Nicholas (22:47):
You can go to your local community college.
Francis (22:49):
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
And I think that there are a lotof folks who, who, I mean, you
and I both know Nicholas, or allthree of us know who.
Are very good at cooking, arevery good at managing the
kitchen, but then they want togo and open their own place and
you know, if you want, if youraspiration is to be a chef and
that's what you want to be,that's.
That's one set of skills.
(23:09):
But if your aspiration is alsoto own your own business, at
some point you've gotta learn alittle bit about real estate,
business law, cash flow.
You don't teach static in
Nicholas (23:16):
culinary school
Francis (23:16):
law, but no, no.
What I'm saying is not fromculinary school.
I think you should look, seekschooling for that elsewhere in
addition to your, but even as a
Mark (23:23):
chef Nicholas, you're using math and accounting and
and cost benefit analysis and100%
Nicholas (23:28):
I absolutely am, but I did not learn that in culinary
schools.
What I'm trying to say to you, Idid not, of course.
I did not learn that there, um,I learned that in the field and
when I was in school, I had todesign a restaurant that was,
you know, had to be a successfuloperating restaurant.
It was like a 6,000 square footrestaurant.
Um, it had like a 4,500 squarefoot kitchen.
It was gonna, it was gonna makea hundred thousand dollars a
(23:50):
year.
And I got an A on the projectand I look back and I still save
it.
It's still in, uh, my office athome, you know, and it's a joke.
Francis (23:56):
It's funny, uh, I know someone who, who handed in a
business plan that looked muchlike the stage left business
plan, but because as we wereformulating it for a long time,
uh, yeah.
And the, and the professor cameback and said, that's
ridiculous.
It'll never
Mark (24:09):
work.
I'm gonna tell you that my wifeworked with us in, in
formulating the business planfor, for stage left, and she
handed it in to her professor.
Mm-hmm.
Who, uh.
Was actually told herridiculous.
Told her it was a ridiculousplan, gave her like a C minus on
it and said, go back to thedrawing board.
Forget about it.
Francis (24:24):
We've invited him in for dinner, but he hasn't come.
That's funny.
Well, now when you, you've setup this apprenticeship program,
who are the takers?
Where are you finding the peopleto, to, to get, to jump on
basically
Nicholas (24:35):
how, um, we, we, how it's worked is we have someone
who comes to us a, a young.
A student, a prospective studentwho says, I wanna spend two or
three months in a kitchen likeyours to really see what it's
like before I go to culinaryschool.
And then I read them the riotact and tell'em what I think.
Uh, of that.
And, uh, they have a decision.
Of course, it's volunteer, youknow, you wanna do it or don't.
(24:55):
and you can take a look at itfrom the merits of the program.
If I have to talk to parentsabout it, I, I will.
like I said, I'm disgusted atthe fact that these kids, these
parents of kids are spending thekind of money that it, that you
could, you know, you can go to,uh.
For school and then come out andbe able to make five times what
a chef makes.
Mm-hmm.
And nine outta 10 people whograduate from these schools that
(25:18):
cost a hundred thousand dollarsa year.
This is a real statistic.
Nine out of 10 of them inside of10 years will not be cooking.
Mark (25:23):
Wow.
Nicholas (25:24):
Now.
Mark (25:25):
That's a scary statistic, man.
Now
Nicholas (25:26):
I have 15 people who work in the kitchen of
restaurant Nicholas.
15 people, every one of'em aculinary school graduate.
So in essence, I have$1.5million of education
Speaker (25:35):
walking around the
Nicholas (25:36):
kitchen.
Now, every one of them had tostart in the same station and
learn the same things, and.
Every one of my guys wentthrough the, the A system to
learn.
Mark (25:44):
Nicholas actually you have $15 million of culinary,
culinary education.
'cause for the 10 guys you havethere are 90 not cooking now.
Nicholas (25:51):
Yeah.
Well that's, and so when youlook at it like that and you
start realizing, you know, whenyou watch the Food Network, it
has been great for our industry.
I don't think there's anythingwrong with it.
With the food arts and the allkinds of things that are going
on, it's all been great for ourindustry.
It's been great for the culinaryschools pockets.
They're making huge dollars now.
Mark (26:07):
Nicholas, when we come back from a break, I want to
talk about something even beforethis conversation that I thought
was the biggest restaurantschool scam going, and I'm gonna
talk about that as soon as wecome back and in the
Francis (26:17):
radio business that's called the Cliffhanger.
We'll see you in a minute,
Mark (26:20):
Nicholas, we were talking before the break and throughout
most of the show aboutrestaurant schools and how you
really feel that they're kind ofa sham at this point in the fact
that they're, these students arespending so much money and not
getting the appropriateeducation and that
apprenticeships are probably abetter way to go as long as
they're apprenticing in theright types of places
Nicholas (26:38):
and as long as they wanna actually be a chef.
Mark (26:40):
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas (26:40):
I mean, that's, that's the thing.
If you wanna be a chef, theapprenticeship is the way to go.
If you wanna be a restaurant.
Manager of a, you know, bigchain restaurant on some highway
somewhere, you should probablygo to some kind of culinary
school.
But you know what should gohundred thousand?
Frankly,
Mark (26:54):
those big chains have have their own programs managing, I
doubt.
I
Nicholas (26:57):
don't doubt that they do.
Mark (26:58):
What I talked about right before the break is what I, one
of the biggest scams that I'vealways felt that restaurant
schools have gotten away with,and I never understood how they
get away with it.
You take a school.
That, and let's say they'recharging$40,000, uh, or$20,000 a
semester.
Well, for most of one of yoursemesters you need to do an
externship at one of, at one ofour restaurants.
(27:21):
Right.
Okay.
And, and you've had externs andwe've had externs and uh, you
know, it's basically one ofthese apprenticeships.
Right.
But for 18 weeks at a time for,for 18 weeks.
And what you get to do whileyou're doing this apprenticeship
in one of our restaurants is youget to pay the restaurant
school.
For your time that you'respending as an apprentice.
Francis (27:42):
Yeah.
That I teach you.
Nicholas (27:43):
Well, you know what's funny?
And they want the restaurateurto pay the student to learn from
us.
Francis (27:49):
See, now that's, now that that's something that is
different.
When we first started in 92,mm-hmm.
Uh, certain culinary schoolsused to send us externs, and the
externs of course wouldn't bepaid, but we would take them on
because sometimes.
About
Mark (28:00):
one in 10 times, that person would be good enough to,
to continue to work in yourrestaurant at some point later.
And you would
Francis (28:05):
offer them, and we would sometimes offer people a
job after they graduated orsometimes even in the middle of
an externship, we'd go up tosomeone and say, you know what?
You took a free externship, butyou're actually being
productive, so we're gonna payyou.
But nine times outta 10 thereare drag on the organization
and, and
Mark (28:19):
truly, nine times out of 10.
Francis (28:20):
They're making your, your trained guy less productive
'cause he's teaching this moronhow to do something.
Sorry, that's a little, alittle, little much.
Nicholas (28:28):
Well, the, the reason why a restaurateur.
Um, we do it.
I can tell you why we do it.
It's because the hopes are, andthe reason why I am talking out
now about the culinary schoolsand why we wanna do
apprenticeships is the hope isthat if enough people will wake
up and, and take a look and seethe way it is, and if you can
train enough people that theindustry will become a better
(28:49):
industry.
They'll be more trained peoplein it, as opposed to more kids
that come out who are so far indebt that they have no choice
but to do things that theywouldn't have chosen.
Oh.
Francis (28:59):
I think it's, it's absolutely great and we love to
do it, but I, I remember whenthey changed it around and we,
we were interviewing somestudents who came and they
trailed and they asked us to doan externship.
And we said, okay.
'cause we hadn't done it for acouple of years.
We had changed chefs and theysaid, great, pay me$10 an hour.
And I said, pay you, pay you.
(29:21):
You know, you're a pain in mybutt.
I'm not paying you.
Why don't you pay me?
Nicholas (29:26):
You should take a look at what the list of places are
that accept externs now.
Francis (29:30):
Well, sure.
Um,
Nicholas (29:30):
it's all, it's all those big giant places, um,
that, uh, because who would paya student$10 an hour for 18
weeks to, you know, you knowthis, but
Mark (29:39):
now this, but this goes back to the problem that you
were talking about earlier.
You, you already have a hundredthousand dollars debt from your.
School.
Right.
You can't, there's no possibleway you can afford to work for
free for 18 weeks.
Francis (29:52):
Right.
So you don't learn anything andyou can't learn anything.
Nicholas (29:54):
That's, this is, this is the problem.
And I'm gonna tell you that outof a hundred, out of a hundred
people, one of them that makesit through this and just does,
does well for themselves.
The other 99, I am telling you,they all see it.
You know, people aren't stupid.
They realize, they see it.
They're like, what am I gonna dohere?
I'm a hundred thousand dollarsin debt.
The places that I really wannawork in, are gonna, you know,
(30:16):
pay me.
18, 22, 20$3,000 a year to, tocome in and work minimum wage
because I don't know enough towork in it.
Mm-hmm.
You think you're gonna go toDanielle or Jean George or La
Bernadin or a place likeRestaurant Nicholas and get a
job right outta school and get agood paying job.
When you don't really have anyskill, the job
Francis (30:31):
is like, okay, you can clean this finish.
Okay.
That's your job.
Mark (30:34):
Alright, so Nicholas, what are the redeeming qualities?
What, give me a reason whysomebody should go to to school.
Culinary school.
Culinary school.
Nicholas (30:43):
Um, I would, I would say the only thing I can think
is the same reason why, um,someone should go to any college
that I think that you probablydevelop social skills.
You know, you, you, you know,you get away from home, you
develop, you grow, you mature alittle bit.
That would be the one and onlything I can think that would be
different.
Francis (31:00):
Well, and you can do that for a heck of a lot less
than a hundred thousand dollarsat a cooking school.
You know, I, I agree with youand I, I, for a long time have
thought.
That it's disturbing whathappens in culinary schools.
It's very disturbing to me tosee these young people come out.
And we, we interviewed for apastry position last year, mark.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And the woman was, you know,she's just outta school.
She had done a little bitexperience.
(31:21):
She knew how to make some thingsand she was gonna come in under
our executive chef and we weregonna develop her into, into the
position.
And she wanted an obscene amountof money.
She has
Nicholas (31:30):
to be paid it.
Because of what her debts are.
Francis (31:32):
And so we, we couldn't, we couldn't hire, so what's
happening is we have CIAgraduates in our, our kitchen as
well, but they're the top cooksand the sous chefs.
Mm-hmm.
And, and frankly, they've
Mark (31:40):
had, and usually they've had six or seven year seasoning
in some other place.
Nicholas (31:44):
Right.
But they're six and seven yearsout.
I'm telling you, I looked at, at1200 resumes, 1200 resumes this
week.
from Monster.
Mm-hmm.
And, and anyone who graduatedfrom the, the, the top expense
schools, they all had on theirresumes.
Every one of them were, uh,working in corporate dining
situations, working in, bighouses like, uh, you know, the,
(32:07):
the big chain restaurants andall that kind of stuff.
And I know it, you can see it.
Mm-hmm.
You can see why.
They go to work.
Sure you have to Disney Worldand all kinds of stuff like
that.
And I'm telling you, there'snothing and I want everyone to
understand there is nothingwrong with gonna work in those
places.
I don't look down upon those inany way.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I just simply say what I saidbefore, there's no way you
should have a degree from MIT sothat you can go sell computers
(32:28):
at Best Buy.
Right.
Don't be, dont be.
Mark (32:29):
Don't be forced into that because of the school you chose.
When, when that may not be whatyou were looking
Francis (32:35):
for.
And even if you're stillthinking about culinary school,
I think spending some time in akitchen like Nicholas's or a
kitchen like ours, you'll, beable to make a more informed
decision as to whether you wantto go or not.
It's a big, big commitment.
Hey Nicholas, we need to leaveit there, but I wanna thank you
for taking the time outta yourschedule to be with us.
My pleasure.
Mark (32:50):
Thanks Nicholas.
We'll talk again soon.
Francis (32:51):
Alright.
We'll be down to see you soon.
(33:21):
we were talking with NicholasFerrari of Restaurant Nicholas,
down in Middletown.
Great restaurant.
Love it.
Love it.
He's
Mark (33:26):
really down on restaurant schools.
I'm, you know,
Francis (33:27):
I, you know who I was thinking of as the archetypal.
Guy, there was another, there'sanother sort of a smarty pants
guy who comes outta restaurantschools.
And by the way, we've had a lot,I, we have a lot worked with a
lot of people who, who are greatchefs who've come out of
culinary schools, but usually along time ago.
Mm-hmm.
And again, it's that, you know,getting into the real world.
A lot of guys we know who aregreat chefs who came outta
culinary school.
They came outta culinary schoolway in debt.
(33:48):
Mm-hmm.
And then they took a job forminimum wage Right.
For three years and stayed indebt for three years and then
slowly and got further in debtfor three years.
Mm-hmm.
And, and worked their way up.
And that's, and those guys allfeel the pain of the, of, of the
choices they made there.
But I'm thinking of one guy inparticular who came to work for
us.
he had gone to culinary school.
He was very well read, and hehad a great presence about him
(34:10):
in the kitchen.
Mm-hmm.
His whites were spotless.
That's the uniform.
He was, were spotless.
He was meticulously organized.
His workspace was perfect.
He couldn't do a thing.
He talked, he interview, youknow what I, I remember one of,
one of the things he interviewedso well, he knew everything,
couldn't do a thing.
Mark (34:25):
Just one of the, the little skills that a chef will
do is as he's sauteingsomething, he'll take the
boiling juices of whatever he'sthe butter or whatever he's.
He's sauteing and he'll spoonthem over the top and it's
called quale and he'll spoonthem over the top of, of
whatever he's cooking in orderto have them kind of melt into
the top of what he's searing thebottom of.
(34:46):
And, and this kid, as the kidyou're talking of, and I'm sure
it's the same kid, was, wasdoing that, except for one
thing, he was spooning thejuices, but kind of around the
meat.
Instead of on top of the meat,and it really wasn't doing
anything at all except goingfrom the top of the pan to the
bottom of the pan and nottouching the meat at all.
Just to let you know,
Francis (35:04):
the line cooks who are listening just are laughing like
crazy at that joke and nobodyelse knows what the heck you're
talking about.
Well, you know, what can I tellyou?
This is really a restaurantshow.
You just are the only joke ever,ever made on broadcast radio and
Uline cooks out there.
It is funny, isn't it?
Everybody else.
Sorry, I go to the video.
Hope you've enjoyed the hourwith the restaurant guys.
I'm Francis Shot.
And I'm Mark Pascal.
(35:25):
We are the restaurant guys,central Jersey 1450.
The time is 12 noon.
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