May 30, 2026 • 40 mins
How do you actually get started in the restaurant business? This week, we’re going behind the scenes of the jobs that make restaurants work — from the first kitchen shift to the first night behind the bar, and all the chaos in between.
We start in the kitchen with the big question: is culinary school worth it? Tanner breaks down the pros and cons, how professional kitchens are organized, and what those jobs are really like once service starts. Then we move to the front of house to talk servers, bartenders, barbacks, hosts, and why some of the least celebrated jobs are often the ones holding the whole place together.
From there, we get into the owner’s side of the business: raising money for a bar, figuring out staffing, and the uncomfortable question of how — or whether — you’re going to pay yourself. Plus, Short Order Cooking is back with last meals, famous musicians, and Jerry putting Tanner’s mind-reading abilities to the test.
The Amuse Booze this week is a Bourbon Sidecar.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
All episodes produced and owned by Tanner Agar. All rights reserved.
We start in the kitchen with the big question: is culinary school worth it? Tanner breaks down the pros and cons, how professional kitchens are organized, and what those jobs are really like once service starts. Then we move to the front of house to talk servers, bartenders, barbacks, hosts, and why some of the least celebrated jobs are often the ones holding the whole place together.
From there, we get into the owner’s side of the business: raising money for a bar, figuring out staffing, and the uncomfortable question of how — or whether — you’re going to pay yourself. Plus, Short Order Cooking is back with last meals, famous musicians, and Jerry putting Tanner’s mind-reading abilities to the test.
The Amuse Booze this week is a Bourbon Sidecar.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
All episodes produced and owned by Tanner Agar. All rights reserved.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode of Flavor Files. I'm Jerry Yegar, broadcaster,
but my partner here on Flavor Files is my son,
Tanner Rigar, who is a restaurant tour a chef and
a bartender. And Tanner I wanted to do an episode
that is perhaps a particular interest, at least in the
first three segments here for anybody who thinks they might
want to get into the business. It's one thing to
(00:20):
watch these shows on television, but what's it really like
to work in a restaurant? What is required in order
to get a job in a restaurant. We've got the kitchen,
we've got the bar in the front of house, and
then we've got the finances and all of that. And
i'd like you, from your now many years of experience
and having had to do all of those things, to
explain the various aspects of it. So we're going to
(00:42):
do that. But you always start with an amused booze.
And now we've just been doing this so long, I thought,
at least once it could be my turn to come
up with a cocktail.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I'm excited to see what you've got.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Well, and it came up because this is a couple
of days ago, I just felt like making a cocktail
at home instead of I don't drink most nights, I
would like to point out, but I just oftentimes because
I like whiskey, I'll just have it neat or maybe
a little bit of ice, depending on the alcohol content.
And I thought i'd make a cocktail. Okay. So I
looked and I thought, well, primarily what I have here
(01:15):
is bourbon, I have some rye what else do I have?
So I did a quick Google check what can I
make if I have bourbon and triple sack? And what
I found was a bourbon sidecar. Okay, oh nice? Okay. Yeah.
So it's two ounces of bourbon and it's one ounce
of triple sack, and it's one ounce of fresh lemon.
(01:35):
And I made one. It's good. But here's my thing.
I think if I tried it again, and this is
just a personal thing, I might try it with half
an ounce of the fresh fresh lemon is pretty powerful,
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It kind of sounds like if you throw an egg
white in there, shake up, or some bitters on top,
you've made a whiskey sour.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well, there's all kinds of ways to change it up anyway,
that's what I did. All right. So segment here of
our exploration into the real radio or the real restaurant business,
we'll talk about the kitchen jobs in the kitchen. Is
it necessary to go to culinary school? I think the
answer is no, because you didn't. That's true.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I did not, And a lot of the most famous
chefs did go to culinary school. And a lot of
the most famous chefs did not go to culinary school,
and pretty much most of the TikTok Instagram food chefs
did not go to culinary school. Okay, do you need
to go to culinary school?
Speaker 1 (02:30):
No, you do not.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Do I think it's bad if you go to culinary school. No,
not necessarily. I don't think it's bad. I think you
might spend a lot of money to eventually have the
skills that you could have learned while you were working.
One of the things that culinary school will set you
up for is if you work at a restaurant. The
restaurant has no incentive to make sure that you have
any understanding of food as a whole. Their only incentive
(02:55):
is to make sure that you can make the food
on your station and get it out timely. Okay, Now,
when you go to culinary school, They're not necessarily teaching
you how to make the same thing over and over
and over again in six minutes all night long for
hundreds of people. You don't necessarily get that experience. You
get the experience of making it, making good and different
(03:16):
culinary schools are of different qualities, of course, and there
are great culinary schools. But lots of times in my experience,
culinary school kids come out and they think, I'm a chef,
I know what to do, I'm very good. And many
times they don't actually know how to handle the pressure
of a true restaurant service. And they also don't know
how to have the pressure of the first time a
(03:37):
chef's actually mean to them.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
They're not mean to you in culinary school. I think.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I'm sure they must hire mean people. They're trying to
get you ready for the job. It's full of very
mean chefs. However, I will tell you, if you gave
me the choice, this guy has been at these two
restaurants that are well esteemed in Dallas for the last
four years, and this guy has been a culinary school
I can guarantee you the culinary school kid's gonna cry
(04:06):
before the other guy, and the one who's faster will
be the one who is at the restaurant. So I
think you could save your money, or you could do
what I did, which is go to a business school
during the day, learn to cook at night at restaurants,
and when you graduate, you'll have all the youthful excitement
and arrogance that you too can be twenty five year
old and think I'm definitely need I had definitely have
(04:28):
all the skills I need to open a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And maybe you will be right, and maybe you won't
be and maybe you won't have the money, and we'll
get into that in the third segment here. But there
are quite a few jobs in a kitchen, and I
just found a list, and it's probably not exhaustive, but
I want to go through some of it. The chef,
the actual chef. People will get called chef in a kitchen,
(04:53):
but the chef is the man in charge. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, chef means boss or chief. It's a technically right.
So the way it used to be is no one
was called chef except for the very head boss, the
actual boss. Then there were the Sioux chefs and you'd
call them chef, but like I mean, I've worked in
restaurants where like everybody had the exact same uniform, but
(05:18):
the soux chefs and the chef wore a different uniform.
Their apron was a different color, their hat was a
different Uh. They didn't actually have to wear hats at
that place, but like, it was very much like you
walked in and you knew who the peons were me,
and you knew who the bosses were not me.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Okay, what's the difference between a chef and the soux chef.
Sioux chef means under chef.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So if the chef is the general, the sioux chef
is I don't know the lieutenant general.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I should have used this analogy.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I don't know a colonel about the military, Okay, the colonel,
they're the colonels. This actually, this whole setup was set
up by a guy called the Scaffier. Uh. He really
regimented this. He had experience in the French military and said,
if you want to run a restaurant, you should run it,
and you should be organized this way, and this is
how you should rank things. And what's very funny about
that system is he created it. He wrote a textbook
(06:09):
on it and then pretty much everyone everywhere copied it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
All right, what's the chef de partie?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Chef de partee is what it sounds like is chef
of the party, which is the chef I always want
to be. But the chef de petee, it's basically you're
like of a station. And so sometimes chef de petties
like they rotate around to different stations and they're helping
different people. Sometimes it means, oh, I'm kind of a chef.
It's basically like I'm a chef in charge of some things,
(06:38):
but like I'm not the sioux chef where I'm really
the underboss. I'm like maybe just in charge of my station.
But I'm also not like the saucier, right, which is
another one you have in your list here. The saucier.
That's the guy who's in charge of sauce. All he
does all day is think about sauce, because, especially in
French style, cooking, sauce is incredibly important. And I've worked
(07:01):
in kitchens where there is a full time sauce guy
and he doesn't cook a he doesn't touch steak, he
doesn't touch duck, he doesn't touch lettuce. He basically just
touches butter and alcohol and stock, and he just basically
just does variation varying levels of that all week, seventy
hours a week, all right, pastry chef and baker.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
That seems kind of obvious. What does a line cook do?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So the line cooks these are the guys that are
they're called line cooks because professional ketchouts are generally set
up in a line. So you have the grill right
next to where you might have your flat top grill,
and then you would have your saute station. That's where
you have like when you think of a stove, you know,
places you put pans. That's what you call the saute
station because they're working saute. Then you might have the
(07:49):
fryars next to that, and then next to that you
might have the guy who does steak, tartar and oysters
and crudo, and then next to that you have the
guy who does salads. And it's just one long line.
And line cooks are people who work on the line,
and line cooks are Line cooking is an amazing position
to have. It's such a cool you can have so
(08:11):
much fun. It doesn't pay anything. But line cooks tend
to be like they kind of come into two camps.
They're either like swashbuckling, smoking cigarettes, don't care about anything else,
probably have an alcohol problem, probably sleeping with a host
that your restaurant or a restaurant nearby. And it's just
the pirate ship.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Boys, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And the only other version of line cooks are people
generally immigrants, who are like just older killers who don't
care about any of the nonsense that the young guys
are into. They're just guys who've been cooking for a
long time, and they're animals and they're amazing.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
The way that Anthony Bourdain puts it in his Kitchen
Confidential is these guys come in and they set up,
they get all of their stuff in place, and they're
ready to go. And I'm working on my drug problem,
I'm working on my relationship. My life is falling apart,
but damn it, I can do this. Yeah, cooking.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I mean, what's really funny is pound for pound, lots
of times, chefs and Sioux chefs are always great cooks.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
That's how they got the job.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But the people who can actually move the fastest do
the most you're generally gonna find on the line. Because
cooking is a young man's game. Yeah, And I mean
Mark McEwan, who has been on the show, has talked
about this. Eric Repere, who's a fairy famous chef, has
talked about this.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Can I do it? Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Could I do it night after night the way the
guys on the line do it? Absolutely not. And being
in my thirties, I look at the line cooks and
I think I can't do that anymore. I'm amazed by
some of the guys who are older than me and
can still do it every night.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
All right, So I had this list here chefs, soue, chef, chef, departies, sausage, pastry, chef,
line cook, baker, fry cook, fish cook, roast cook. Most
restaurants could possibly have that many people working there. What's
it really like in a restaurant?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Some if you're really big, super formal, that's the only
way you're going to have these. The general kitchen approach
is everybody does a bit of everything. We don't have
enough guys, we don't have enough money to pay more guys,
and just, oh my god, every night trying to get
as much food out. I mean, it's basically organized chaos
on a near constant basis. Everybody stressed out, running around
(10:26):
trying to cover being being on the line cook Being
a real working chef is an incredibly physical, stressful, demanding
job because everything is coming out later than you want
it to. Your food is constantly going bad. And I
don't mean like when you're cooking it. I just mean
the second food gets to me is the best it's
ever going to be. And my job is to get
(10:47):
out as fast as possible. So when somebody and I
won't say who, at my restaurant ordered three times as
many oysters as they were supposed to, our restaurant has
to do two dollars oysters over the weekend to get
rid of all of them, which meant poor Wan is
now sitting back there all night long, shucking as fast
as he possibly can. There's three hundred people at apothecarry
(11:11):
ordering two dollars oysters, and one has become an amazing
oyster shucker.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
What I'm trying to point out here is there are
people who will want some of these TV shows, and
I'm not talking about The Bear maybe you should watch it,
but you watch some of these TV shows and it
just looks like so much fun, and there's a huge
element of it being fun. But if you're not a
person with a capacity for pressure and hard work, then
(11:36):
that kitchen is not for you. So let's talk about
then the part that people really see, and that is
the bar and the front of the house. Bartender, Is
there a difference between working a cocktail bar like you
have tanner and slinging beers and one in one by
which I mean like rum and coke mixed drinks at
a regular bar. Yeah, these are different. I mean, at
the end of the day, in a way, they're the same.
(11:58):
I have a product, I have to get it out
to you.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I have to get it to you quickly, and I
need to treat you nicely. The question is just what
are you selling. There's bars that specialize in having all
types of beers, and you need to know a lot
about beer. You can know a lot about beer, and
if you come to a place like a Pothecarry, which
is a cocktail lounge, your beer knowledge is basically worthless.
Our staff drinks more beer than we sell. We have
(12:20):
a negative cost of sales on our beer.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Okay, you only have it there because after work you
close the door and put the blinds down, and the
wait staff bops a beer.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
I think if they were just popping a beer, wouldn't
cost me.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So much money, all right, Well, okay, if that attracts
you to the restaurant and bar business, then there you go.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
There's actually a really famous chef in Iceland and he
kind of like helped start like burgers being popular in Iceland,
And when asked why he became a chef, he said,
it's the only job I could find where it was
acceptable to be half drunk most of the time.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We're not condoning that, as we're just pointing out that
that's a little bit of how it goes. All right, Well,
wharing you're in a bar, it's quite obvious there's the
job bartender. What's a bar back.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So the bartender that's the guy who's actually making you
the drinks. That's the person, you know, who's making things
happen for you, who's talking to you, who's keeping you entertained.
That's one of the hardest parts about bartending. A lot
of people who are an incredibly talented restaurant people who
could be good technical bartenders, choose to stay in the
kitchen because they don't want to deal with the public.
(13:30):
The bar back that's the person if you're ever sitting there,
and it only happens in larger bars. This is the
person who's probably doing a ton of polishing glassware, loading
up a dishwasher, washing it, polishing it, putting it back,
filling up bottles. When this tequila runs out, they're the
one who immediately grabs a bottle and sticks it back
in the well. They're so they're the ones sort of
(13:52):
facilitating everything the bartender is doing. Because there are places
who pass pretty strict rules, ours is a more soft
rule that a bartender should never turn their back to anyone. Oh,
so the bartender can never turn their back to the guest. Well,
who's the person who's going up on the shelf and
getting that top bottle of whiskey that somebody ordered. Who's
the person who's going to the kitchen because we need
(14:13):
more lime juice. Who's the person squeezing all of those
damn lines to make the lime juice. It's the bar back.
They're really like this engine that's pushing it forward. It's
almost like that's what the bar back position is. It's
a line cook position that's just pumping all day long.
I don't get to stop. I just move, move, move,
facilitating the bar experience.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
I look at this and I think about an analogy
for football. So many guys on the line that are
not famous, like the receivers and the quarterback and some
of those people, but they're so vitally important. And that's
a bar back and a line cook.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Well, and that's an amazing analogy actually, because it's funny.
Not every quarterback, not every running back, right, but the
ones who are good, the ones who last a long time,
the ones who really make a great career, are generally
very willing to say, those are my guys. They protect me.
I run through the holes, but those guys make the holes.
(15:10):
Good bartenders share that glory with the bar pack.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
You know, they tip them out.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Our bartenders are required to give money to the bar
back to compensate them for those big, heavy nights, and
most bartenders over tip out their bar back. Actually, you
want to hold on to a good one, and almost
like this sports analogy, it's funny. You don't want your
bar back getting traded to another bar. You'll work hard
to make sure your bar back stays happy at your bar,
(15:36):
because you know, having been a bartender for many years,
A great bar back is a person who sees a
guest order something, and while you start grabbing ingredients, has
already filled an old fashioned glass with a clear ice
cube and slipped it right in front of you, so
all you have to do is put it together, pour it,
and serve it. They might even have the garnish sitting
(15:58):
right next to it, so you don't even move. You
never leave your station. Your two feet stay planted the
whole night while your bar back moves around you. And
the minute that guy decides that he's going to make
an extra ten bucks a night at the bar next
to you and you get some random high school kid,
you realize how much a bar back is worth.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Front of house in a bar or restaurant. Let's talk
about these positions and what's the qualification. Well, manager, I
would hope has been around for a little while and
really knows the business. Well.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
The best two ways to get the job of manager
are be related to the owner.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Or be the owner or be the owner.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, and unfortunately, and this is crazy, you know, you
didn't rate owner on here, but the qualification for owner
is basically have money.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's the only qualification.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Now we'll talk about finances a little bit later, but
for some reason, rich people love starting restaurants, and they
hate in general, doing a good job running their restaurants.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
You have some great managers. You have Amanda. Amanda's not
a part of our family. Amanda is not a relative
of yours. You're not rich. She's not rich. So where
did that come from.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Actually, good managers are people who start in the restaurant
and they work themselves up, and they tend to establish
themselves as being incredibly capable in one of two areas.
Some managers are promoted because of their ability to create
great cocktails and provide a great guest experience. Some managers
are promoted because they're incredibly good at keeping things organized.
(17:30):
Some managers are promoted because they're great at making the
team happy and keeping people together as an organization. But
the best managers are people who've had the jobs. One
thing I wanted to do before I own my own
restaurant was have every single job at a restaurant you
could have. So I was getting paid to learn how
to do the job. So when I had the job,
I could be an effective manager and effective trainer and
(17:53):
effective coach. And I think that was really worth it.
And that's part of the reason when I joke that
rich people own restaurants and they do bad jobs is
because they haven't then gone through that step of doing that.
They haven't hosted at the door, they haven't taken the
trash out at the end of the night. They haven't
gotten on their knees and scrubbed down a dirty kitchen.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Vitally important, and what's the qualification for wait staff?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
What you expect at the high end steakhouse in your
neighborhood is different than what you expect at the sexy
modern cocktail lounge, which is different you expect from the
place which is basically a dog park that serves beer.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
At the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
When we're hiring people, I'm I'm kind of known for
giving tough interviews, but tough because I'm going to ask
you questions till I figure out where your knowledge level
is going to end. I'm going to ask you what's
the difference between Bourbon and Ryan Scotch, And if you
can answer, then I'm going to ask you harder.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
One.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's not necessarily totally about to me what it is
that you know. What's almost more important to me is
how do you handle not knowing? How do you communicate
what you do know and overall, what's the best qualification?
Do I think you're a person who's going to work
well with a staff? Do I think you're a person
who seems honest and hard working and eager to do
(19:04):
a good job because I can teach you everything you
need to know about cocktails. In fact, your first day
you get a twenty eight page packet I wrote of
all cocktail information that you need to know so that
I can train.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
You on the menu. My job to train you.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
But if you're a person who isn't going to hustle
and doesn't seem that you've got the ability with patience
and humility to work on a team and serve people,
you're never going to make it in the front of
house because people are mean, and you need to be
a person who can work with mean people and let.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It just roll off your back with a smile. That's
the number one qualification. Tell me if I'm wrong here,
and I probably am host. This is the person you
meet at the door. I think the qualification for host
is to be a pretty seventeen to twenty two year
old who's still in school and looking for a job,
because it's mostly are you pleasant and somewhat competent, and
(19:55):
it's maybe a best foot into a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
It is a good place to start in a restaurant.
I'm most restaur have who you just described, but people
who take hosting seriously, who have the expectation that I have.
That's not who's standing at.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
The front door.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Who's standing at the door as people who treat it
like a professional job. They treat themselves more like matre D's.
They want to run this place and see this place.
They see themselves as the commander of the operation. And
you can have hosts that have never had a job before,
but they don't necessarily, but they're not going to know
how to run a restaurant, and a host should be
(20:27):
running the restaurant. Lots of times you'll see me at
my host desk, because the very first person you see
sets the tone for your whole night, and if your
reservation's behind, your reservations bungled. A host is an incredibly
important job, and I'm grateful to have professional level hosts
that host in our restaurant and make the place work,
because without them, no one's getting SAT, and no one's
(20:48):
getting sat, no one's spending money, and a restaurant with
no one spending money is a short term restaurant.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Indeed, all right, you started your first restaurant at the
age of twenty five. You're not rich. I'm not rich.
People thought I gave you all the money. I did not.
So how do you start a bar a restaurant and
you don't have loads and loads of money? How do
you get the money to open a bar a restaurant?
You were twenty five years old, Tanner. You're not going
(21:13):
to get the money from your parents to start a restaurant.
You weren't a connected person with all kinds of rich friends.
You know, people will look at that, and they'll look
at the fact that you did this many years ago
and you're still there. Yeah, well, I'm not that lucky.
I don't have money. In fact, I think there was
some people around the Kidney, Texas when you first opened
who actually thought that I bought the restaurant for you.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, which is not the case. You did participate and appreciated,
but not large amount of money. That's a Restaurants are
really expensive, and so it's very hard to get the
money to do it. And I was twenty five, which
is laughably young. I do not recommend starting a restaurant
when you were twenty five years old for the record,
(21:56):
In fact, just so it said, well, we're talking about
you know, how to pull this off as a career.
Whenever somebody asked me to talk to their niece or
their nephew or whomever and say they want to be
a chef or a restaurant tour like you, I always
ask them the same question, So if you weren't going
to do this for a living, what would you do?
And they say, oh, I would be great, then you
know exactly what you're gonna do, because this is a
(22:19):
business for people who have no other choice, either because
they're obsessed like me, or they can't do something else
for whatever reason. But to gets you the question, you know,
where do you get the money? The best place to
get the money. An old joke, of course, is how
do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It start with a big one. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
That of course was not my situation, like you said,
So we raise their money literally from my regulars. It
was people who would come, they would sit down in
my bar, I would make drinks for them, I would
chat with them, and they just kept coming back and
I kept on waiting on them, and I kept on
taking a great care of them.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
The way.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I've only done two rounds of fundraising in my career,
and the first one was my bar regulars, and the
second time was my bar regulars joined by more bar regulars.
And so, if you're a person listening to this show
and you're thinking, I'm a chef, I'm a bartender. How
could I ever get the half million dollars, I think
(23:17):
I'm gonna need to open my spot, take great care
of people, and establish a reputation for being great. This
is going to be easier if you're a front of
house employee because you interact with more people, but you
can do it from the kitchen. You're just going to
need to work hard to network outside of your kitchen shifts.
And you're gonna have to get yourself to the chef
(23:38):
position because once you're the chef, everybody wants to meet you.
Line cooks are the heroes to restaurant people, but a
lot of people who don't understand how a restaurant works
thinks the chef is back there doing every single thing. Now,
if you are the chef and you're trying to raise money,
you can use that bias to your advantage, but it's
just it isn't true.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Well, I think what happened to because you built those reputations.
I always say when somebody says, oh, it's all about
who you know, I always say, that's not quite true.
It's who you get to know. And you made it
your purpose to get to know people, to serve people
very very well. And people will always say the worst
investment you can make with your money is invest in
a restaurant, and especially a first time restaurant owner who's
(24:18):
not opening a chain. You didn't get a McDonald's franchise
or something like that, which is a safer investment. Those
people didn't invest in Rye restaurant McKinney. They invested in
Tanner Regar because you got to know them and they thought,
this is a hard working, pleasant guy. I think you
might make it. I'll give him a few bucks.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Exactly what you're probably going to do when you go
raise money is you're probably going to raise not very
much money from quite a number of people. And there's
good things and bad things about this.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
The good thing is if you lose the money. People
didn't lose so much money that they're going to hate
you forever, or at least hope not. The bad news
is you might have a lot of people that are
not very experienced investors who are constantly asking you questions
and bothering you. And I've had both. I've had the
people who don't care about the money and they leave
(25:06):
me alone. I've had the people who won't stop talking
to me because they don't understand exactly how businesses really work.
And it's tough. I mean, people say restaurants are the
most failing. It's actually not that. It's women's apparel companies.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Okay, so there you go.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
We're already not the worst. But why do people give
you money? They give you money because they see that
you're doing something that they love, that they believe in,
that they want to be a part of that, They
think should expand that more people like how can more
people not like this?
Speaker 1 (25:36):
This is so great? And I want to be a
part of it.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Good investors are a part of your business. They are
people you go to when you say, how do I
sell more corporate dinners? There are people you go to
when you say I need eight thousand dollars to fix
a fridge and I need it tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
They're your partners.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They're your business partners, and you need to pick them
with the care that you pick your life partners, because
trust me, when you you decide you don't like each
other anymore, it's a painful experience.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
If the thing does go down, they've invested, and everybody
walks away and thinks, well, that didn't work out the
way we wanted it to go. But they are investors,
and if it's successful, they own a chunk of the business.
If a bank gives you the money, all they're concerned
about is a payback. They don't own part of the business.
But if you're just starting out, the bank is probably
not going to be participating.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
The bank loves giving money to people who don't need money.
I don't know a single person who has gotten a
bank loan until they've already proven that they're successful in
the restaurant business. And by the way, people always think
this is a thing that really bothers me. They think,
you know, oh, well, you just make everything the business
and if you go bankrupt, you know the business went bankrupt. No,
(26:45):
I have been successful. I'm very fortunate. No bank will
give me a loan, no landlord will give me a
lease unless I signed for it as Tanner Agar personally.
So if I close my restaurant, I can be sued
to pay the rent on that building for the next
however many years. I can be sued by the bank
for the construction loan that they gave me. I am
(27:06):
on the hook for everything. I am literally the bag man.
It's not just me. I mean I have partners obviously,
and the investors can get pulled along with that. But
that's one of the downsides. If you take investor money,
you might feel guilty, but you can't end up in
court unless you committed like real, straight, genuine fraud. But
the bank, the bank will come after you. I don't
(27:28):
like getting calls for my bank because they've never called
me with good news.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Not once, Hey, Tanner love that article about your cocktail award.
No no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
They only ever called to say are you aware you've
been overdrafted? And you're like, yes, I'm aware of my
situation and I'm working on it.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
So when you start out, then you'll have all kinds
of expenses, one that can be somewhat manageable. How do
you know how many people hire you have?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Honestly, no idea how many people to hire. When you
are trying to choose how many people to hire for
your restaurant, you're basically guessing.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Now you should have created a pro forma.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
The pro forma is a guess of what your financials
are going to look like for your restaurant.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
But that's at the end of the day all it is.
It's just a guess.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
So you're trying to guess how many people are gonna
come so that way there's enough money to pay all
of these people. You can basically only said how good
is my marketing, how good is my personal brand? When
I open up a restaurant with no reputation, how many
people are gonna come?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Zero?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
If I open up a restaurant in a terrible location, zero.
But I have a great location, but I have no reputation,
All right, then some I have a great reputation but
a terrible location. Some But how do you qualify some?
It's really difficult, and one of the reasons restaurants in
their first year experience such massive turnover is it's pretty
(28:50):
much impossible to get that formula right unless you know
you're going to be slam and busy, which basically You're
only going to know if you have other rests, restaurants
that already have great reputations. And now, I mean think
about it. The first time somebody opens up a Chick
fil A in their neighborhood, everybody knows the new Chick
(29:10):
fil A is going to be slammed. So Chick fil
A overstaffs it because Chick fil A can get away
with it. Jerry's Chicken Shop, it's going to be a
little bit of a question. How many people trust Jerry's Chicken. Obviously,
as the esteemed host of Flavor Files, I'm sure you
would have lines out the door.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I'm going to tell you this, A smart person wouldn't
go to Jerry's Chicken. He'll go to Chick fil A.
So quickly, one last question here on this. You got
to pay all those people. How do you pay yourself
without hurting the cash flow in the beginning?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh, well, so you're going to be the hardest working
person who has all the pressure on them, and then
you only get paid when there's extra money. And for
the first while there's never extra money, there's only negative money.
Maybe the way you pay yourself as you do what
I did for a while, which is.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
I used to.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
My original salary was zero dollars and then changed to
two thousand dollars a month. But I could eat all
the food that was going bad at.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
The restaurant I wanted. So, if you thought about it,
my bills were fairly low. Hey, that guide table four
sent the steak back tenner goes.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yes, No, I did not eat food from strangers. No,
I ate the steak nobody was ordering. It was gonna
go bad. Okay, it's very different exactly. I don't eat
spittle from other people.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So this segment of flavor files to end it out
today is something we call short order cooking we do
every once in a while. Where I asked ten or
ten questions in ten minutes. So here we go. Question
number one, If you were on death row, what's your
last meal?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
My last meal would be the longest thing I could
think of at the time. I would just tell them
I'm very religious, and I celebrate this holiday which includes
eight days of feasting, and I must have all eight
days or they haven't satisfied my final wish.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
That is what my last meal would be. Yeah, very fancy.
You're on death row. Okay, you're going to have an hour.
What do you want?
Speaker 2 (31:02):
If I had to choose what I was going to
eat at the end, I think I would want pastrami
slash Reuben sandwich for sure. I would definitely want a
fresh sea urchin. I would need to have grilled duck,
of course, croissants with black currant jam and butter. I
would one hundred percent require a couple different varietals of muscal,
(31:29):
probably a bottle of French wine red definitely, as well
as a bottle of champagne, of course, and then I
would want to finish it off, likely with a koluga
caviar served on top of a basque cheesecake with a
red wine caramel.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
All right, Well, don't kill anybody, all right. You don't
think that they would give that to me. You have
many things to ask for, interesting to hear. What you
like to eat? What's a dish that you love but
you just can't get people to order it? Organ meat? Oh?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
People have been so terrorized by eating liver, And I
don't mean me. You know, you never serve it to
me because of being terrorized. But you know, things like
heart is delicious, but people don't really want.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
To eat it.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Brains can be great there's so many wonderful things awful
as good sweetbreads are good, which there's so many wonderful
things inside of the animal that people just find very
strange because they just want to eat tenderloin, which is
like the least flavorful cut you can get.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
You had a chicken heart dish for a while at
your restaurant, which was very very good. Who is the
most famous guest you have served?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I think it's Justin Bieber. Yeah, I've served Justin Bieber. Yeah,
I've met Justin Bieber. If for him, Yeah, which is
funny because he was super nice to me, like he
was super nice to all of us, and I think people,
I think people have kind of come around with Justin Bieber.
But there was a while where people loved him, but
he was like two teeny bopper, and so there were
also people who loved hating on Justin Bieber. But look,
(33:06):
my thing is if if you're nice to me, then
that's all that matters. So Drake would be the other person.
Drake is not nice to me. In fact, he was
kind of a jerk the entire time. So I banned
Drake music from my restaurant. And I know it's cool
now to not like Drake because of everything and like
(33:27):
to side with Kendrick Lamar in their beef. But just
so you know, I didn't like Drake in twenty eleven
when it was cool to like Drake. So and I
know he lives in Toronto and I hope he's listening
to this show. If money were no issue, what kind
of restaurant or bar would you open? I would build
the kind of restaurant that could win World's fifty Best
(33:48):
or the like the bar version of fifty Best. I
would build a place where everything was so precise, where
everything was so dialed in that everything could be perfect
at every single moment, all the time. But the problem
is the struggle of the restaurant tour is making it
what you want it to be on the budget you
(34:10):
need to follow, and it's so very difficult to make
those two things fall into harmony. And if I didn't
have to worry about money, it's amazing how good I
could make my apothecary.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
How often do you change your restaurant's menu? Same with
a bar.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
A menu should change as often as the guests demand it.
So there are restaurants who say, whoa we change it
four times a year. Other restaurant people have told me
that no one cares if they only change their menu
two times a year. That's a pretty popular thing. Now
do a spring summer menu and do a fall winter menu,
because then your menu does change. Restaurants that change their
menu every week or more often, I don't think this
(34:49):
is necessary at all, because how many people go to
a restaurant every week. If someone goes to a restaurant
four times a year, they go to that restaurant a lot.
In your mind, as the paying the bills, they don't
come a lot, they don't come enough, but as up
in their mind, they come all the time, right, sure,
And so you really only need to change it as
much as the restaurant demands. So we don't have set
(35:11):
rules at my restaurant.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
For when we change it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
We change it when we feel the guests are ready
for something new, or we're so tired of this damn
menu that we're ready to do something new.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Well, that's important too, because you have to be enthusiastic
about it. Do customer complaints influence you and your restaurant
or bar.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
They influence my mood because many times they just make
me angry, and they make me want to write mean
things on the internet. They don't necessarily influence what we
do or what we serve.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
One of the hardest things is about this, and I've
talked about this on the show before. People love to
write one star reviews at places that they're mad at.
People that love a place almost never write five star
reviews because they don't think of it. Everything was great.
They're so wrapped up in the magic of their evening thinking.
And how can I promote this to other people on
the internet, whereas people that are mad are thinking about
(36:05):
ways to tear you down. And so what I try
to do is if somebody writes a bad review, well,
I might think that person's an idiot.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I don't change anything.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
If I get multiple complaints about the same thing, that's
when we have to start to have a conversation with it.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Why has this.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Server gotten three complaints in a two week span? Why
has this dish been really well not received? So I
would say I would never allow interviews to change the
concept of what we came here to do, but I
will allow it to fine tune some of the things
like tuning a guitar, a guitar will never be a banjo,
(36:42):
and it doesn't matter how much you hate. Guitar won't
become one. But I could put it in tune and
help it be a better thing.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
All right. On a scale of one to ten, How
picky an eater are you?
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I think in terms of picky, I won't eat that
like a one. I will put almost anything in my mouth.
I am an enthusiast for flavor, and I think it's
important to try things that aren't edible sometimes just so
you know what they taste like, so you can recognize
those flavors and other things. Right when people say this
wine tastes like fall foliage, how do you know? Have
(37:18):
you ever put old leaves in your mouth? Because I have,
so I know what fall foliage tastes like.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
The best restaurant experience you've ever had, or the best
experience I've ever had, is Oriol in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
It has two Michelin stars. I don't know why it
doesn't have three. I finish the meal. You asked how picky?
Speaker 1 (37:37):
I am? Okay?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
But in terms of like it should be good? Why
is it like this? Why isn't it better? Probably like
a ten? So enthusiasm to try stuff versus pretentiousness are
almost like other ends of the spectrum, you know, so
like I won't eat ketchup just like flat out won't
eat it cause I think it's rips. But in terms
of like this place Oriole, it was so amazing, it
was so good. I went with my best friend, I
(37:59):
went with Grace. I don't know what it's like any
other time because I've only been the one time. But
when you're with your best friend, when you're with your partner,
when the kitchen's firing on all cylinders. We had I
don't know how many courses, so many cocktails, so much wine.
Then they just absolutely delivered on every single level. Incredible restaurant.
Oriol like the cookie Oriole, No oriol like the bird,
(38:20):
oh oriol in. Yeah, please please don't start telling people
my favorite place ever is the Oreo Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
All right, do you put any attempt into making drinks
and dishes instagrammable?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I know that the cool chef thing to say is
I never think about social media. But the reality is
we talked about how I started the restaurant at twenty five.
No one knew who I was. No one cared who
I was? How are you gonna get people to care
who you are? Instagram and TikTok is the best way
to make people care about who you are. So on
the one hand, I try, We try to make things
(38:57):
that are beautiful and good and make you want to
eat them, so you want to eat them. But the
overlap of this looks cool, so hopefully people will take
pictures and then post it to their friends. You know,
those things coalesce, right? Do we try to create things
just because it'll make Instagram and TikTok successful. That's never
something I've really worried about. And then we followed a
(39:19):
TikTok trend, and then we sold two thousand of that
TikTok cocktail in a month. And now I'm starting to
think about TikTok a hell of a lot more. So
hit me up in a few months and I'll let
you know if I've become more influenced. That was the
soft Serve Margarita. Absolutely, yeah, all right, And the final question,
for no good reason, what drink am I thinking of?
(39:41):
I think right now you're thinking of soft serve, Margarita.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Do you see? It was my reverse psychology to inserted
into your mind that wasn't gonna be what it was.
But you're right. Actually I got tricked. I won. I've
done it, I've beat the game. Thanks very much for listening,
and that's FLA Gaver files for this week.
On this episode of Flavor Files. I'm Jerry Yegar, broadcaster,
but my partner here on Flavor Files is my son,
Tanner Rigar, who is a restaurant tour a chef and
a bartender. And Tanner I wanted to do an episode
that is perhaps a particular interest, at least in the
first three segments here for anybody who thinks they might
want to get into the business. It's one thing to
(00:20):
watch these shows on television, but what's it really like
to work in a restaurant? What is required in order
to get a job in a restaurant. We've got the kitchen,
we've got the bar in the front of house, and
then we've got the finances and all of that. And
i'd like you, from your now many years of experience
and having had to do all of those things, to
explain the various aspects of it. So we're going to
(00:42):
do that. But you always start with an amused booze.
And now we've just been doing this so long, I thought,
at least once it could be my turn to come
up with a cocktail.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I'm excited to see what you've got.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Well, and it came up because this is a couple
of days ago, I just felt like making a cocktail
at home instead of I don't drink most nights, I
would like to point out, but I just oftentimes because
I like whiskey, I'll just have it neat or maybe
a little bit of ice, depending on the alcohol content.
And I thought i'd make a cocktail. Okay. So I
looked and I thought, well, primarily what I have here
(01:15):
is bourbon, I have some rye what else do I have?
So I did a quick Google check what can I
make if I have bourbon and triple sack? And what
I found was a bourbon sidecar. Okay, oh nice? Okay. Yeah.
So it's two ounces of bourbon and it's one ounce
of triple sack, and it's one ounce of fresh lemon.
(01:35):
And I made one. It's good. But here's my thing.
I think if I tried it again, and this is
just a personal thing, I might try it with half
an ounce of the fresh fresh lemon is pretty powerful,
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It kind of sounds like if you throw an egg
white in there, shake up, or some bitters on top,
you've made a whiskey sour.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well, there's all kinds of ways to change it up anyway,
that's what I did. All right. So segment here of
our exploration into the real radio or the real restaurant business,
we'll talk about the kitchen jobs in the kitchen. Is
it necessary to go to culinary school? I think the
answer is no, because you didn't. That's true.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I did not, And a lot of the most famous
chefs did go to culinary school. And a lot of
the most famous chefs did not go to culinary school,
and pretty much most of the TikTok Instagram food chefs
did not go to culinary school. Okay, do you need
to go to culinary school?
Speaker 1 (02:30):
No, you do not.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Do I think it's bad if you go to culinary school. No,
not necessarily. I don't think it's bad. I think you
might spend a lot of money to eventually have the
skills that you could have learned while you were working.
One of the things that culinary school will set you
up for is if you work at a restaurant. The
restaurant has no incentive to make sure that you have
any understanding of food as a whole. Their only incentive
(02:55):
is to make sure that you can make the food
on your station and get it out timely. Okay, Now,
when you go to culinary school, They're not necessarily teaching
you how to make the same thing over and over
and over again in six minutes all night long for
hundreds of people. You don't necessarily get that experience. You
get the experience of making it, making good and different
(03:16):
culinary schools are of different qualities, of course, and there
are great culinary schools. But lots of times in my experience,
culinary school kids come out and they think, I'm a chef,
I know what to do, I'm very good. And many
times they don't actually know how to handle the pressure
of a true restaurant service. And they also don't know
how to have the pressure of the first time a
(03:37):
chef's actually mean to them.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
They're not mean to you in culinary school. I think.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I'm sure they must hire mean people. They're trying to
get you ready for the job. It's full of very
mean chefs. However, I will tell you, if you gave
me the choice, this guy has been at these two
restaurants that are well esteemed in Dallas for the last
four years, and this guy has been a culinary school
I can guarantee you the culinary school kid's gonna cry
(04:06):
before the other guy, and the one who's faster will
be the one who is at the restaurant. So I
think you could save your money, or you could do
what I did, which is go to a business school
during the day, learn to cook at night at restaurants,
and when you graduate, you'll have all the youthful excitement
and arrogance that you too can be twenty five year
old and think I'm definitely need I had definitely have
(04:28):
all the skills I need to open a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And maybe you will be right, and maybe you won't
be and maybe you won't have the money, and we'll
get into that in the third segment here. But there
are quite a few jobs in a kitchen, and I
just found a list, and it's probably not exhaustive, but
I want to go through some of it. The chef,
the actual chef. People will get called chef in a kitchen,
(04:53):
but the chef is the man in charge. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, chef means boss or chief. It's a technically right.
So the way it used to be is no one
was called chef except for the very head boss, the
actual boss. Then there were the Sioux chefs and you'd
call them chef, but like I mean, I've worked in
restaurants where like everybody had the exact same uniform, but
(05:18):
the soux chefs and the chef wore a different uniform.
Their apron was a different color, their hat was a
different Uh. They didn't actually have to wear hats at
that place, but like, it was very much like you
walked in and you knew who the peons were me,
and you knew who the bosses were not me.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Okay, what's the difference between a chef and the soux chef.
Sioux chef means under chef.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So if the chef is the general, the sioux chef
is I don't know the lieutenant general.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I should have used this analogy.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I don't know a colonel about the military, Okay, the colonel,
they're the colonels. This actually, this whole setup was set
up by a guy called the Scaffier. Uh. He really
regimented this. He had experience in the French military and said,
if you want to run a restaurant, you should run it,
and you should be organized this way, and this is
how you should rank things. And what's very funny about
that system is he created it. He wrote a textbook
(06:09):
on it and then pretty much everyone everywhere copied it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
All right, what's the chef de partie?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Chef de partee is what it sounds like is chef
of the party, which is the chef I always want
to be. But the chef de petee, it's basically you're
like of a station. And so sometimes chef de petties
like they rotate around to different stations and they're helping
different people. Sometimes it means, oh, I'm kind of a chef.
It's basically like I'm a chef in charge of some things,
(06:38):
but like I'm not the sioux chef where I'm really
the underboss. I'm like maybe just in charge of my station.
But I'm also not like the saucier, right, which is
another one you have in your list here. The saucier.
That's the guy who's in charge of sauce. All he
does all day is think about sauce, because, especially in
French style, cooking, sauce is incredibly important. And I've worked
(07:01):
in kitchens where there is a full time sauce guy
and he doesn't cook a he doesn't touch steak, he
doesn't touch duck, he doesn't touch lettuce. He basically just
touches butter and alcohol and stock, and he just basically
just does variation varying levels of that all week, seventy
hours a week, all right, pastry chef and baker.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
That seems kind of obvious. What does a line cook do?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So the line cooks these are the guys that are
they're called line cooks because professional ketchouts are generally set
up in a line. So you have the grill right
next to where you might have your flat top grill,
and then you would have your saute station. That's where
you have like when you think of a stove, you know,
places you put pans. That's what you call the saute
station because they're working saute. Then you might have the
(07:49):
fryars next to that, and then next to that you
might have the guy who does steak, tartar and oysters
and crudo, and then next to that you have the
guy who does salads. And it's just one long line.
And line cooks are people who work on the line,
and line cooks are Line cooking is an amazing position
to have. It's such a cool you can have so
(08:11):
much fun. It doesn't pay anything. But line cooks tend
to be like they kind of come into two camps.
They're either like swashbuckling, smoking cigarettes, don't care about anything else,
probably have an alcohol problem, probably sleeping with a host
that your restaurant or a restaurant nearby. And it's just
the pirate ship.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Boys, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And the only other version of line cooks are people
generally immigrants, who are like just older killers who don't
care about any of the nonsense that the young guys
are into. They're just guys who've been cooking for a
long time, and they're animals and they're amazing.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
The way that Anthony Bourdain puts it in his Kitchen
Confidential is these guys come in and they set up,
they get all of their stuff in place, and they're
ready to go. And I'm working on my drug problem,
I'm working on my relationship. My life is falling apart,
but damn it, I can do this. Yeah, cooking.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I mean, what's really funny is pound for pound, lots
of times, chefs and Sioux chefs are always great cooks.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
That's how they got the job.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But the people who can actually move the fastest do
the most you're generally gonna find on the line. Because
cooking is a young man's game. Yeah, And I mean
Mark McEwan, who has been on the show, has talked
about this. Eric Repere, who's a fairy famous chef, has
talked about this.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Can I do it? Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Could I do it night after night the way the
guys on the line do it? Absolutely not. And being
in my thirties, I look at the line cooks and
I think I can't do that anymore. I'm amazed by
some of the guys who are older than me and
can still do it every night.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
All right, So I had this list here chefs, soue, chef, chef, departies, sausage, pastry, chef,
line cook, baker, fry cook, fish cook, roast cook. Most
restaurants could possibly have that many people working there. What's
it really like in a restaurant?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Some if you're really big, super formal, that's the only
way you're going to have these. The general kitchen approach
is everybody does a bit of everything. We don't have
enough guys, we don't have enough money to pay more guys,
and just, oh my god, every night trying to get
as much food out. I mean, it's basically organized chaos
on a near constant basis. Everybody stressed out, running around
(10:26):
trying to cover being being on the line cook Being
a real working chef is an incredibly physical, stressful, demanding
job because everything is coming out later than you want
it to. Your food is constantly going bad. And I
don't mean like when you're cooking it. I just mean
the second food gets to me is the best it's
ever going to be. And my job is to get
(10:47):
out as fast as possible. So when somebody and I
won't say who, at my restaurant ordered three times as
many oysters as they were supposed to, our restaurant has
to do two dollars oysters over the weekend to get
rid of all of them, which meant poor Wan is
now sitting back there all night long, shucking as fast
as he possibly can. There's three hundred people at apothecarry
(11:11):
ordering two dollars oysters, and one has become an amazing
oyster shucker.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
What I'm trying to point out here is there are
people who will want some of these TV shows, and
I'm not talking about The Bear maybe you should watch it,
but you watch some of these TV shows and it
just looks like so much fun, and there's a huge
element of it being fun. But if you're not a
person with a capacity for pressure and hard work, then
(11:36):
that kitchen is not for you. So let's talk about
then the part that people really see, and that is
the bar and the front of the house. Bartender, Is
there a difference between working a cocktail bar like you
have tanner and slinging beers and one in one by
which I mean like rum and coke mixed drinks at
a regular bar. Yeah, these are different. I mean, at
the end of the day, in a way, they're the same.
(11:58):
I have a product, I have to get it out
to you.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I have to get it to you quickly, and I
need to treat you nicely. The question is just what
are you selling. There's bars that specialize in having all
types of beers, and you need to know a lot
about beer. You can know a lot about beer, and
if you come to a place like a Pothecarry, which
is a cocktail lounge, your beer knowledge is basically worthless.
Our staff drinks more beer than we sell. We have
(12:20):
a negative cost of sales on our beer.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Okay, you only have it there because after work you
close the door and put the blinds down, and the
wait staff bops a beer.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
I think if they were just popping a beer, wouldn't
cost me.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So much money, all right, Well, okay, if that attracts
you to the restaurant and bar business, then there you go.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
There's actually a really famous chef in Iceland and he
kind of like helped start like burgers being popular in Iceland,
And when asked why he became a chef, he said,
it's the only job I could find where it was
acceptable to be half drunk most of the time.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We're not condoning that, as we're just pointing out that
that's a little bit of how it goes. All right, Well,
wharing you're in a bar, it's quite obvious there's the
job bartender. What's a bar back.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So the bartender that's the guy who's actually making you
the drinks. That's the person, you know, who's making things
happen for you, who's talking to you, who's keeping you entertained.
That's one of the hardest parts about bartending. A lot
of people who are an incredibly talented restaurant people who
could be good technical bartenders, choose to stay in the
kitchen because they don't want to deal with the public.
(13:30):
The bar back that's the person if you're ever sitting there,
and it only happens in larger bars. This is the
person who's probably doing a ton of polishing glassware, loading
up a dishwasher, washing it, polishing it, putting it back,
filling up bottles. When this tequila runs out, they're the
one who immediately grabs a bottle and sticks it back
in the well. They're so they're the ones sort of
(13:52):
facilitating everything the bartender is doing. Because there are places
who pass pretty strict rules, ours is a more soft
rule that a bartender should never turn their back to anyone. Oh,
so the bartender can never turn their back to the guest. Well,
who's the person who's going up on the shelf and
getting that top bottle of whiskey that somebody ordered. Who's
the person who's going to the kitchen because we need
(14:13):
more lime juice. Who's the person squeezing all of those
damn lines to make the lime juice. It's the bar back.
They're really like this engine that's pushing it forward. It's
almost like that's what the bar back position is. It's
a line cook position that's just pumping all day long.
I don't get to stop. I just move, move, move,
facilitating the bar experience.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
I look at this and I think about an analogy
for football. So many guys on the line that are
not famous, like the receivers and the quarterback and some
of those people, but they're so vitally important. And that's
a bar back and a line cook.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Well, and that's an amazing analogy actually, because it's funny.
Not every quarterback, not every running back, right, but the
ones who are good, the ones who last a long time,
the ones who really make a great career, are generally
very willing to say, those are my guys. They protect me.
I run through the holes, but those guys make the holes.
(15:10):
Good bartenders share that glory with the bar pack.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
You know, they tip them out.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Our bartenders are required to give money to the bar
back to compensate them for those big, heavy nights, and
most bartenders over tip out their bar back. Actually, you
want to hold on to a good one, and almost
like this sports analogy, it's funny. You don't want your
bar back getting traded to another bar. You'll work hard
to make sure your bar back stays happy at your bar,
(15:36):
because you know, having been a bartender for many years,
A great bar back is a person who sees a
guest order something, and while you start grabbing ingredients, has
already filled an old fashioned glass with a clear ice
cube and slipped it right in front of you, so
all you have to do is put it together, pour it,
and serve it. They might even have the garnish sitting
(15:58):
right next to it, so you don't even move. You
never leave your station. Your two feet stay planted the
whole night while your bar back moves around you. And
the minute that guy decides that he's going to make
an extra ten bucks a night at the bar next
to you and you get some random high school kid,
you realize how much a bar back is worth.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Front of house in a bar or restaurant. Let's talk
about these positions and what's the qualification. Well, manager, I
would hope has been around for a little while and
really knows the business. Well.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
The best two ways to get the job of manager
are be related to the owner.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Or be the owner or be the owner.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, and unfortunately, and this is crazy, you know, you
didn't rate owner on here, but the qualification for owner
is basically have money.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's the only qualification.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Now we'll talk about finances a little bit later, but
for some reason, rich people love starting restaurants, and they
hate in general, doing a good job running their restaurants.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
You have some great managers. You have Amanda. Amanda's not
a part of our family. Amanda is not a relative
of yours. You're not rich. She's not rich. So where
did that come from.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Actually, good managers are people who start in the restaurant
and they work themselves up, and they tend to establish
themselves as being incredibly capable in one of two areas.
Some managers are promoted because of their ability to create
great cocktails and provide a great guest experience. Some managers
are promoted because they're incredibly good at keeping things organized.
(17:30):
Some managers are promoted because they're great at making the
team happy and keeping people together as an organization. But
the best managers are people who've had the jobs. One
thing I wanted to do before I own my own
restaurant was have every single job at a restaurant you
could have. So I was getting paid to learn how
to do the job. So when I had the job,
I could be an effective manager and effective trainer and
(17:53):
effective coach. And I think that was really worth it.
And that's part of the reason when I joke that
rich people own restaurants and they do bad jobs is
because they haven't then gone through that step of doing that.
They haven't hosted at the door, they haven't taken the
trash out at the end of the night. They haven't
gotten on their knees and scrubbed down a dirty kitchen.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Vitally important, and what's the qualification for wait staff?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
What you expect at the high end steakhouse in your
neighborhood is different than what you expect at the sexy
modern cocktail lounge, which is different you expect from the
place which is basically a dog park that serves beer.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
At the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
When we're hiring people, I'm I'm kind of known for
giving tough interviews, but tough because I'm going to ask
you questions till I figure out where your knowledge level
is going to end. I'm going to ask you what's
the difference between Bourbon and Ryan Scotch, And if you
can answer, then I'm going to ask you harder.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
One.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's not necessarily totally about to me what it is
that you know. What's almost more important to me is
how do you handle not knowing? How do you communicate
what you do know and overall, what's the best qualification?
Do I think you're a person who's going to work
well with a staff? Do I think you're a person
who seems honest and hard working and eager to do
(19:04):
a good job because I can teach you everything you
need to know about cocktails. In fact, your first day
you get a twenty eight page packet I wrote of
all cocktail information that you need to know so that
I can train.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
You on the menu. My job to train you.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
But if you're a person who isn't going to hustle
and doesn't seem that you've got the ability with patience
and humility to work on a team and serve people,
you're never going to make it in the front of
house because people are mean, and you need to be
a person who can work with mean people and let.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It just roll off your back with a smile. That's
the number one qualification. Tell me if I'm wrong here,
and I probably am host. This is the person you
meet at the door. I think the qualification for host
is to be a pretty seventeen to twenty two year
old who's still in school and looking for a job,
because it's mostly are you pleasant and somewhat competent, and
(19:55):
it's maybe a best foot into a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
It is a good place to start in a restaurant.
I'm most restaur have who you just described, but people
who take hosting seriously, who have the expectation that I have.
That's not who's standing at.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
The front door.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Who's standing at the door as people who treat it
like a professional job. They treat themselves more like matre D's.
They want to run this place and see this place.
They see themselves as the commander of the operation. And
you can have hosts that have never had a job before,
but they don't necessarily, but they're not going to know
how to run a restaurant, and a host should be
(20:27):
running the restaurant. Lots of times you'll see me at
my host desk, because the very first person you see
sets the tone for your whole night, and if your
reservation's behind, your reservations bungled. A host is an incredibly
important job, and I'm grateful to have professional level hosts
that host in our restaurant and make the place work,
because without them, no one's getting SAT, and no one's
(20:48):
getting sat, no one's spending money, and a restaurant with
no one spending money is a short term restaurant.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Indeed, all right, you started your first restaurant at the
age of twenty five. You're not rich. I'm not rich.
People thought I gave you all the money. I did not.
So how do you start a bar a restaurant and
you don't have loads and loads of money? How do
you get the money to open a bar a restaurant?
You were twenty five years old, Tanner. You're not going
(21:13):
to get the money from your parents to start a restaurant.
You weren't a connected person with all kinds of rich friends.
You know, people will look at that, and they'll look
at the fact that you did this many years ago
and you're still there. Yeah, well, I'm not that lucky.
I don't have money. In fact, I think there was
some people around the Kidney, Texas when you first opened
who actually thought that I bought the restaurant for you.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, which is not the case. You did participate and appreciated,
but not large amount of money. That's a Restaurants are
really expensive, and so it's very hard to get the
money to do it. And I was twenty five, which
is laughably young. I do not recommend starting a restaurant
when you were twenty five years old for the record,
(21:56):
In fact, just so it said, well, we're talking about
you know, how to pull this off as a career.
Whenever somebody asked me to talk to their niece or
their nephew or whomever and say they want to be
a chef or a restaurant tour like you, I always
ask them the same question, So if you weren't going
to do this for a living, what would you do?
And they say, oh, I would be great, then you
know exactly what you're gonna do, because this is a
(22:19):
business for people who have no other choice, either because
they're obsessed like me, or they can't do something else
for whatever reason. But to gets you the question, you know,
where do you get the money? The best place to
get the money. An old joke, of course, is how
do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It start with a big one. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
That of course was not my situation, like you said,
So we raise their money literally from my regulars. It
was people who would come, they would sit down in
my bar, I would make drinks for them, I would
chat with them, and they just kept coming back and
I kept on waiting on them, and I kept on
taking a great care of them.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
The way.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I've only done two rounds of fundraising in my career,
and the first one was my bar regulars, and the
second time was my bar regulars joined by more bar regulars.
And so, if you're a person listening to this show
and you're thinking, I'm a chef, I'm a bartender. How
could I ever get the half million dollars, I think
(23:17):
I'm gonna need to open my spot, take great care
of people, and establish a reputation for being great. This
is going to be easier if you're a front of
house employee because you interact with more people, but you
can do it from the kitchen. You're just going to
need to work hard to network outside of your kitchen shifts.
And you're gonna have to get yourself to the chef
(23:38):
position because once you're the chef, everybody wants to meet you.
Line cooks are the heroes to restaurant people, but a
lot of people who don't understand how a restaurant works
thinks the chef is back there doing every single thing. Now,
if you are the chef and you're trying to raise money,
you can use that bias to your advantage, but it's
just it isn't true.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Well, I think what happened to because you built those reputations.
I always say when somebody says, oh, it's all about
who you know, I always say, that's not quite true.
It's who you get to know. And you made it
your purpose to get to know people, to serve people
very very well. And people will always say the worst
investment you can make with your money is invest in
a restaurant, and especially a first time restaurant owner who's
(24:18):
not opening a chain. You didn't get a McDonald's franchise
or something like that, which is a safer investment. Those
people didn't invest in Rye restaurant McKinney. They invested in
Tanner Regar because you got to know them and they thought,
this is a hard working, pleasant guy. I think you
might make it. I'll give him a few bucks.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Exactly what you're probably going to do when you go
raise money is you're probably going to raise not very
much money from quite a number of people. And there's
good things and bad things about this.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
The good thing is if you lose the money. People
didn't lose so much money that they're going to hate
you forever, or at least hope not. The bad news
is you might have a lot of people that are
not very experienced investors who are constantly asking you questions
and bothering you. And I've had both. I've had the
people who don't care about the money and they leave
(25:06):
me alone. I've had the people who won't stop talking
to me because they don't understand exactly how businesses really work.
And it's tough. I mean, people say restaurants are the
most failing. It's actually not that. It's women's apparel companies.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Okay, so there you go.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
We're already not the worst. But why do people give
you money? They give you money because they see that
you're doing something that they love, that they believe in,
that they want to be a part of that, They
think should expand that more people like how can more
people not like this?
Speaker 1 (25:36):
This is so great? And I want to be a
part of it.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Good investors are a part of your business. They are
people you go to when you say, how do I
sell more corporate dinners? There are people you go to
when you say I need eight thousand dollars to fix
a fridge and I need it tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
They're your partners.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They're your business partners, and you need to pick them
with the care that you pick your life partners, because
trust me, when you you decide you don't like each
other anymore, it's a painful experience.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
If the thing does go down, they've invested, and everybody
walks away and thinks, well, that didn't work out the
way we wanted it to go. But they are investors,
and if it's successful, they own a chunk of the business.
If a bank gives you the money, all they're concerned
about is a payback. They don't own part of the business.
But if you're just starting out, the bank is probably
not going to be participating.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
The bank loves giving money to people who don't need money.
I don't know a single person who has gotten a
bank loan until they've already proven that they're successful in
the restaurant business. And by the way, people always think
this is a thing that really bothers me. They think,
you know, oh, well, you just make everything the business
and if you go bankrupt, you know the business went bankrupt. No,
(26:45):
I have been successful. I'm very fortunate. No bank will
give me a loan, no landlord will give me a
lease unless I signed for it as Tanner Agar personally.
So if I close my restaurant, I can be sued
to pay the rent on that building for the next
however many years. I can be sued by the bank
for the construction loan that they gave me. I am
(27:06):
on the hook for everything. I am literally the bag man.
It's not just me. I mean I have partners obviously,
and the investors can get pulled along with that. But
that's one of the downsides. If you take investor money,
you might feel guilty, but you can't end up in
court unless you committed like real, straight, genuine fraud. But
the bank, the bank will come after you. I don't
(27:28):
like getting calls for my bank because they've never called
me with good news.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Not once, Hey, Tanner love that article about your cocktail award.
No no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
They only ever called to say are you aware you've
been overdrafted? And you're like, yes, I'm aware of my
situation and I'm working on it.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
So when you start out, then you'll have all kinds
of expenses, one that can be somewhat manageable. How do
you know how many people hire you have?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Honestly, no idea how many people to hire. When you
are trying to choose how many people to hire for
your restaurant, you're basically guessing.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Now you should have created a pro forma.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
The pro forma is a guess of what your financials
are going to look like for your restaurant.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
But that's at the end of the day all it is.
It's just a guess.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
So you're trying to guess how many people are gonna
come so that way there's enough money to pay all
of these people. You can basically only said how good
is my marketing, how good is my personal brand? When
I open up a restaurant with no reputation, how many
people are gonna come?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Zero?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
If I open up a restaurant in a terrible location, zero.
But I have a great location, but I have no reputation,
All right, then some I have a great reputation but
a terrible location. Some But how do you qualify some?
It's really difficult, and one of the reasons restaurants in
their first year experience such massive turnover is it's pretty
(28:50):
much impossible to get that formula right unless you know
you're going to be slam and busy, which basically You're
only going to know if you have other rests, restaurants
that already have great reputations. And now, I mean think
about it. The first time somebody opens up a Chick
fil A in their neighborhood, everybody knows the new Chick
(29:10):
fil A is going to be slammed. So Chick fil
A overstaffs it because Chick fil A can get away
with it. Jerry's Chicken Shop, it's going to be a
little bit of a question. How many people trust Jerry's Chicken. Obviously,
as the esteemed host of Flavor Files, I'm sure you
would have lines out the door.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I'm going to tell you this, A smart person wouldn't
go to Jerry's Chicken. He'll go to Chick fil A.
So quickly, one last question here on this. You got
to pay all those people. How do you pay yourself
without hurting the cash flow in the beginning?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh, well, so you're going to be the hardest working
person who has all the pressure on them, and then
you only get paid when there's extra money. And for
the first while there's never extra money, there's only negative money.
Maybe the way you pay yourself as you do what
I did for a while, which is.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
I used to.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
My original salary was zero dollars and then changed to
two thousand dollars a month. But I could eat all
the food that was going bad at.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
The restaurant I wanted. So, if you thought about it,
my bills were fairly low. Hey, that guide table four
sent the steak back tenner goes.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yes, No, I did not eat food from strangers. No,
I ate the steak nobody was ordering. It was gonna
go bad. Okay, it's very different exactly. I don't eat
spittle from other people.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So this segment of flavor files to end it out
today is something we call short order cooking we do
every once in a while. Where I asked ten or
ten questions in ten minutes. So here we go. Question
number one, If you were on death row, what's your
last meal?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
My last meal would be the longest thing I could
think of at the time. I would just tell them
I'm very religious, and I celebrate this holiday which includes
eight days of feasting, and I must have all eight
days or they haven't satisfied my final wish.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
That is what my last meal would be. Yeah, very fancy.
You're on death row. Okay, you're going to have an hour.
What do you want?
Speaker 2 (31:02):
If I had to choose what I was going to
eat at the end, I think I would want pastrami
slash Reuben sandwich for sure. I would definitely want a
fresh sea urchin. I would need to have grilled duck,
of course, croissants with black currant jam and butter. I
would one hundred percent require a couple different varietals of muscal,
(31:29):
probably a bottle of French wine red definitely, as well
as a bottle of champagne, of course, and then I
would want to finish it off, likely with a koluga
caviar served on top of a basque cheesecake with a
red wine caramel.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
All right, Well, don't kill anybody, all right. You don't
think that they would give that to me. You have
many things to ask for, interesting to hear. What you
like to eat? What's a dish that you love but
you just can't get people to order it? Organ meat? Oh?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
People have been so terrorized by eating liver, And I
don't mean me. You know, you never serve it to
me because of being terrorized. But you know, things like
heart is delicious, but people don't really want.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
To eat it.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Brains can be great there's so many wonderful things awful
as good sweetbreads are good, which there's so many wonderful
things inside of the animal that people just find very
strange because they just want to eat tenderloin, which is
like the least flavorful cut you can get.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
You had a chicken heart dish for a while at
your restaurant, which was very very good. Who is the
most famous guest you have served?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I think it's Justin Bieber. Yeah, I've served Justin Bieber. Yeah,
I've met Justin Bieber. If for him, Yeah, which is
funny because he was super nice to me, like he
was super nice to all of us, and I think people,
I think people have kind of come around with Justin Bieber.
But there was a while where people loved him, but
he was like two teeny bopper, and so there were
also people who loved hating on Justin Bieber. But look,
(33:06):
my thing is if if you're nice to me, then
that's all that matters. So Drake would be the other person.
Drake is not nice to me. In fact, he was
kind of a jerk the entire time. So I banned
Drake music from my restaurant. And I know it's cool
now to not like Drake because of everything and like
(33:27):
to side with Kendrick Lamar in their beef. But just
so you know, I didn't like Drake in twenty eleven
when it was cool to like Drake. So and I
know he lives in Toronto and I hope he's listening
to this show. If money were no issue, what kind
of restaurant or bar would you open? I would build
the kind of restaurant that could win World's fifty Best
(33:48):
or the like the bar version of fifty Best. I
would build a place where everything was so precise, where
everything was so dialed in that everything could be perfect
at every single moment, all the time. But the problem
is the struggle of the restaurant tour is making it
what you want it to be on the budget you
(34:10):
need to follow, and it's so very difficult to make
those two things fall into harmony. And if I didn't
have to worry about money, it's amazing how good I
could make my apothecary.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
How often do you change your restaurant's menu? Same with
a bar.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
A menu should change as often as the guests demand it.
So there are restaurants who say, whoa we change it
four times a year. Other restaurant people have told me
that no one cares if they only change their menu
two times a year. That's a pretty popular thing. Now
do a spring summer menu and do a fall winter menu,
because then your menu does change. Restaurants that change their
menu every week or more often, I don't think this
(34:49):
is necessary at all, because how many people go to
a restaurant every week. If someone goes to a restaurant
four times a year, they go to that restaurant a lot.
In your mind, as the paying the bills, they don't
come a lot, they don't come enough, but as up
in their mind, they come all the time, right, sure,
And so you really only need to change it as
much as the restaurant demands. So we don't have set
(35:11):
rules at my restaurant.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
For when we change it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
We change it when we feel the guests are ready
for something new, or we're so tired of this damn
menu that we're ready to do something new.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Well, that's important too, because you have to be enthusiastic
about it. Do customer complaints influence you and your restaurant
or bar.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
They influence my mood because many times they just make
me angry, and they make me want to write mean
things on the internet. They don't necessarily influence what we
do or what we serve.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
One of the hardest things is about this, and I've
talked about this on the show before. People love to
write one star reviews at places that they're mad at.
People that love a place almost never write five star
reviews because they don't think of it. Everything was great.
They're so wrapped up in the magic of their evening thinking.
And how can I promote this to other people on
the internet, whereas people that are mad are thinking about
(36:05):
ways to tear you down. And so what I try
to do is if somebody writes a bad review, well,
I might think that person's an idiot.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I don't change anything.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
If I get multiple complaints about the same thing, that's
when we have to start to have a conversation with it.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Why has this.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Server gotten three complaints in a two week span? Why
has this dish been really well not received? So I
would say I would never allow interviews to change the
concept of what we came here to do, but I
will allow it to fine tune some of the things
like tuning a guitar, a guitar will never be a banjo,
(36:42):
and it doesn't matter how much you hate. Guitar won't
become one. But I could put it in tune and
help it be a better thing.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
All right. On a scale of one to ten, How
picky an eater are you?
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I think in terms of picky, I won't eat that
like a one. I will put almost anything in my mouth.
I am an enthusiast for flavor, and I think it's
important to try things that aren't edible sometimes just so
you know what they taste like, so you can recognize
those flavors and other things. Right when people say this
wine tastes like fall foliage, how do you know? Have
(37:18):
you ever put old leaves in your mouth? Because I have,
so I know what fall foliage tastes like.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
The best restaurant experience you've ever had, or the best
experience I've ever had, is Oriol in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
It has two Michelin stars. I don't know why it
doesn't have three. I finish the meal. You asked how picky?
Speaker 1 (37:37):
I am? Okay?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
But in terms of like it should be good? Why
is it like this? Why isn't it better? Probably like
a ten? So enthusiasm to try stuff versus pretentiousness are
almost like other ends of the spectrum, you know, so
like I won't eat ketchup just like flat out won't
eat it cause I think it's rips. But in terms
of like this place Oriole, it was so amazing, it
was so good. I went with my best friend, I
(37:59):
went with Grace. I don't know what it's like any
other time because I've only been the one time. But
when you're with your best friend, when you're with your partner,
when the kitchen's firing on all cylinders. We had I
don't know how many courses, so many cocktails, so much wine.
Then they just absolutely delivered on every single level. Incredible restaurant.
Oriol like the cookie Oriole, No oriol like the bird,
(38:20):
oh oriol in. Yeah, please please don't start telling people
my favorite place ever is the Oreo Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
All right, do you put any attempt into making drinks
and dishes instagrammable?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I know that the cool chef thing to say is
I never think about social media. But the reality is
we talked about how I started the restaurant at twenty five.
No one knew who I was. No one cared who
I was? How are you gonna get people to care
who you are? Instagram and TikTok is the best way
to make people care about who you are. So on
the one hand, I try, We try to make things
(38:57):
that are beautiful and good and make you want to
eat them, so you want to eat them. But the
overlap of this looks cool, so hopefully people will take
pictures and then post it to their friends. You know,
those things coalesce, right? Do we try to create things
just because it'll make Instagram and TikTok successful. That's never
something I've really worried about. And then we followed a
(39:19):
TikTok trend, and then we sold two thousand of that
TikTok cocktail in a month. And now I'm starting to
think about TikTok a hell of a lot more. So
hit me up in a few months and I'll let
you know if I've become more influenced. That was the
soft Serve Margarita. Absolutely, yeah, all right, And the final question,
for no good reason, what drink am I thinking of?
(39:41):
I think right now you're thinking of soft serve, Margarita.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Do you see? It was my reverse psychology to inserted
into your mind that wasn't gonna be what it was.
But you're right. Actually I got tricked. I won. I've
done it, I've beat the game. Thanks very much for listening,
and that's FLA Gaver files for this week.
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