February 7, 2019 • 50 mins
Josh and Jason talk to two of the most famous chefs of today, Daniel Boloud and the international superstar Jamie Oliver. Boloud discusses his second round of parenthood and what he learned along the way, while Oliver lets us know that it's okay to fail. In between, our hosts talk about their own fatherly practices in the kitchen, and we find out that imaginary restauarants are far more common than one would think.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to the Fatherly Podcast. I am your host,
Joshua david Stein, and I'm joined by my co host,
a man named Jason Gay. Hi. Thank you. That was
a very jaunty hello. You began with Joshua. You know,
day to you, sir too. I started off on a
low note. Today low energy and now all of the coffee.
(00:33):
So today's episode is kind of like a chef special.
I don't know if you know this about me, but
I come from a food world and over the years
have met and interacted with many chefs. And we're going
to visit one of my friends, or I guess I'm
going to visit you weren't here for this. My friend
Danielle Blud, who has a restaurant called Danielle. He's kind
(00:54):
of famous. Yeah, I'm kind of like Joshua David Stein
is two sports version to food. I'm aware of the names,
but I cannot give you specific details. You mentioned some restaurants, yeah,
that I've never heard of, probably will never go to.
So yeah, yeah, I mean now, now I don't your
(01:16):
superpower restaurant. I can eat um. So Danielle is interesting
because he has a grown up daughter and then two
young kids, second relationship, Um the reboot, Yeah, and um,
so I go. We had lunch the other day and
I talked to him about what's it like being a
(01:36):
dad for a second time when you're older. Also things
like how he brings the the lessons he learned in
the kitchen, in his kitchens home, his home kitchen. And
then there's this dude, Jamie Oliver, who's well known chef,
the Naked Chef. He's mostly a UK guy, but I
think people know who Jamie Oliver. Yeah. No, No, he's
(01:58):
a thing everywhere. So he has many books, Joshua, thanks
that un true. He has a new book called Five Ingredients,
Quick and Easy Recipes, which just came out from Flat Iron.
It's a cookbook and he's in town doing press for that.
But I did not want to ask him about that.
(02:21):
Jamie Oliver has had a tough year. I've had a
tough year. I want to know about what it's like
to fail in some parts of your life. So we
went up to his hotel room and we asked him that, Yeah,
thank you for your help on that. You steered it
back to kids in a nice way. I'm always about
(02:42):
the kids, Joshua, You should know that about me. We'll
be back with Daniel Balloud and me, but then we
hook up with Jamie Oliver later in the show. Welcome
to Fog the podcast. I hope you're enjoying this show.
So you know that I work at Fatherly and I've
(03:03):
known you actually since before I was a dad, not
before you were a dad, because I wasn't that first
you became a dad. Then I really became a dad
two times over. Um, But I've been really curious for
a while now to talk to people like you who
are super accomplished in their professional world and are also
(03:24):
fathers about what you've been able to learn and what
you've been able to take from your professional success and
how you bring that home and vice versa. Give me
the brief rundown of your family. What's your family situation right? So? Um,
I had the daughter who is twenty nine. Now I
(03:46):
just got married, yes, thank you, and so I feel
like she left the nest and now I have two
young children four and a half years old, Juliette. So
my daughter. The daughter is Alex and was born in
New York with Micki, my first wife, and born in
(04:07):
New York, born and raised went to the frenchly say uh.
And then I remarried five years ago and I have
a four and I have your boy, Julian and a
eighteen months old girl, Georgiana, who is gig How old
are you young enough to have children? Kind a little
(04:32):
older than you, I push over the sixty. Yeah, well,
I'm just like off the bat, like, what were your
thoughts about becoming a dad for the second time as
an older I think, first, I love children. I love family.
I mean I come from a family where with my
(04:53):
parents and my brother, we were five siblings. And when
we all get together with nephew and niece and all
the added parts of brother in laws and things, we're
about sixty people. So and I cook for them and
I love it. So Uh. Children are I don't know
(05:14):
to me as give me a lot of energy and
give me also a lot of motivation. And I think also,
you know, we only live once, and I think it's
important to have children like when you so Alex was
pretty much grown, was growing up. We only had one
(05:37):
child with Mickey, and I love my daughter, but I
didn't have a son, and I felt like, you know,
I'm single, and now I'm falling in love and I
want to get remarried and a kids. So I have
a boy and another girl. So I'm blessed. What was
(06:00):
the difference between raising Alex as a dad and raising
when he had Julian And Well, interestingly, I mean, I
don't know if it's a benefit to my children, but
it's a great benefit to me and my children. It's
then I live right above Danielle, so my apartment is
(06:22):
right above the kitchen of Danielle. My office is at Danielle.
And so I had this very close family life despite
the fact that I worked my sixteen hours a day.
I can just ride up the twenty step and see
them and kiss them every night before bed and and
at breakfast with them, and then maybe at five o'clock
(06:43):
I want to just come and say I spend you know,
alf an hour with them. And so those little moments
are yet very there's a proximity. Who helped create those
valuable moments with the children? Where were you in your
career when Alex was born versus where are you in
your career when when Alex was born? Well, yeah, I
(07:07):
mean you're still no. But when Alex was born it
was in eighty nine and she's going to turn thirty
this year. And she was the chef at Lasiak at
the time, and I was living on about three blocks away,
so it was not too far. Um. But so Alex
(07:28):
grew up as a young child, but not close to
the restaurant as much at the beginning. And it's only
when I moved Danielle ten years later from where Cafee
beuaries today. I moved restaurant Danielle to sixty five set,
where the older ship was and I had took an
(07:50):
apartment there. So that's when Alex was about ten years
old when she moved above the store with us as
a family. In terms of like like taking a whale
a little from the idea of her relationship to the
restaurant and your relation to the restaurant as a dad,
did you find yourself you know, what's a division of labor? Different?
(08:11):
You know, almost thirty years ago, was what was expected
of you as a dad? Different? Were you more patient?
Were you less patient? Were you you know what I mean?
I think um first, I mean I always uh. You know,
you're in a business where you always dream than maybe
your your child will like to be interested by your
(08:34):
business and take over and Alex was interested to do
cookies for her friends at school. So she will go
to the kitchen and with the page we chef make
cookies as a child and bring that to school for
or she will come and have lunch here at cafe.
I will do a table of twenty kids for lunch
(08:55):
and all her friends from school. Yeah, like and of
school or things like that where all the friends from
school would have launched. I mean I have a picture
of this very cute scene of the kids being outside. Um,
and she always came too many occasions. I mean she
was connected with what I do and all that. But
(09:16):
like I mean, like, were you changing diapers and were
you doing all those things thirty years ago or was
that something that you know when you had your When
you have your two youngest kids, did your role as
a dad shift significantly? Yes, I think I'm more. I
don't know if I'm more involved, because my wife would say, no,
(09:39):
it's not, I'll never do enough. But I I am
quite I'm quite a good dad today. And I think
I was hustling and and and and trying to build
a business twenty nine years ago. I was trying to
build a name for myself putation and then raise money
(10:02):
and opened my first business and worked very very hard.
And so I feel, um, maybe I didn't give to
my daughter what I'm able to give to my two
young children today the time. But we took a lot
of vacation and travel together and I have what I
(10:23):
love is to look at the picture from the time
she was a baby and how many places we went
and how much fun we had and all that. So
I I felt and my today because we have two
young kids. And Katherine, the mother of Julia and Georgiana,
(10:43):
she she was a chef now she's her mother, but
also learning to become a dietitian and she she really
cared about how we feed our children and she cooked
for them all the time. And Julian love to cook
(11:03):
with her. And I am not invited because it's basically
Julian cooking at home with her mother. I don't want
to get involved in the middle. But so Julia is
on the on the chair, on the stool and it's
got the big spotul and is making you know, lamb shanks.
There's like eight lamb shank on the pot. Because Katherine
(11:26):
is very well organized when it comes to nutrition and
um and she potioned that. She makes batch of fish
or meat or vegetables or grains and she potioned them out,
and then after she has this different selection of different
(11:47):
proteins or grains or vegetables, and she composed the meal
every day with it, not every day, but when she
don't need to cook for them. And then I live
right above the restaurant, so it's easy to bring also
any each Are your kids adventurous eaters? Yeah? They eat
everything everything, I mean crazy stuff um, but to them
(12:09):
not crazy like with the tongue and they that I
mean they would eat it. Yeah, pigs as um, birds
and and snail and caviare I mean, it's uh, it's
very adventurous. But then after there's typical kid you know studently,
(12:33):
is there is the color or the taste. It's not
the color because he like pumpkin, but you don't like
carrots right now, so I don't know. Maybe it's a
hue of orange. Yeah, that's it. I mean, I think
going back to the thing you said about the difference
between Alex like that first time in the second time,
sometimes I think if my kids are only five and seven,
(12:54):
but if I have and I'm not going to have
kids again. But if I could have kids again now
seven years after, it's like, I think I'm so much.
I'm in such a different place, like emotionally and in
terms of like knowing myself two and and and they's
definitely I mean our daughter was h was a learning
experience for me. Our children now it's learning experience for
(13:18):
Katherine more and for me. Um. I don't know if
I recall ah fun it wasn't our heart. It was
sometimes because uh, you know, having having a boy also,
it's stance at home. It's much more adtense than a
girl and two boys who just oh they're like cats.
(13:41):
You know, they're one moment they're kissing and like touching
each other's faces. In the next moment, like on the
way to school today, We're getting off the bus and
I turned around and they were in a full on
fist fight, and all these like middle schoolers were around them,
being like, guys, come on, Julia. Als always feel it's
somebody's he will climb anywhere. I mean, it's like a
(14:04):
high can you go all the time? It's Um, Is
there anything that you've kind of taken from your world,
your professional world and been able to apply at home.
That's been helpful for you as a dad. Um, Yeah,
to build a nice kitchen, and the kitchen is differently
the center of our life. We spend a lot of
(14:27):
time in our kitchen clearly and UM and do some
planning on the meals for the children. I think it's important. Uh,
there's nothing worse than, you know, a family where they
don't know what they're going to give to their kids
that night. And I think planning is key. And I
(14:47):
think with Katherine, she's very well organized, but I'm always
there also to support and Um and having a good
plan for the week. That's a little bit like a
restaurant where you right your menu in advance a little
bit so you know what you're gonna be expected to
do and you can communicate that to the team. Here,
(15:08):
you communicate that to yourself. We'll be back with more,
Danielle Ballud after a word from our sponsors. You grew
up on a in a pretty rural area in Leon
(15:32):
on a farm, right, and you had five brothers and sisters. Um,
your kids are growing up in like a vastly different world.
You know, how do you make sense in your own
mind of kind of like the difference of this urban
environment they're growing up in versus your kind of rural
(15:52):
like so much of what you so like from an
outside just knowing you and your work, so much of
what you love and sort of sell le bread is
that Leones lifestyle and Chucky Tree and you know, and
of course, I mean, of course it's fine dining, but
you know, you really celebrate this rustic and rural and
(16:13):
and I think, uh, it's to me. Uh, there's not
only the food, but it's also the lifetime my family,
I'm sure than what I spend in the day he
had to live in New York, they spend it in
the months in my village. And your kids are growing
(16:35):
up kind of you're the only one in the States, right, Yeah, absolutely,
your kids are growing up like American and like New
York City kids. Yeah, regret do you like it? I mean,
but I remember Alix, who is American, very American, but
went to the French. She says, so she's very French too,
and she with her cousin and all that, she will
(16:58):
always notice than uh, you know, maybe the parents give
up too much there, you know, the parents give up
too much and the kids are not always super disciplined.
Or they are already too distracted by uh, you know,
(17:18):
things who are materialistic or or like you know, iPads
or things like that. Country. Yeah, but at the same time,
the importance of reading books. Uh it's it's important. And
I don't think they're reading of books there in France.
So they're comparing, you know, they upbringing with their are
(17:39):
bringing there, and uh it's different. It's a little more rural,
it's a little more uh sampler also and but for example,
for now Catherine with Julia and we just read books
after books and reading. Oh, I mean the love uh galaxy. Now,
(18:00):
it's crazy about galaxy. So any books we can find
on the cosmos and all that, I love it. So
he's into that. But for me, as a kid, I
don't wish any of my kids to live the life
I had as a kid, because I love my life.
But that's not something I wanted to you know, it
(18:22):
was not like you know, I was. My parents were lawyer,
doctors or whatever, and I grew up as a kid
playing tennis and golf and and and being in pretty school. No,
I was working, born on the farm and helping my parents.
(18:43):
And so you know, Easter vacation that will be um
in a garlic field and taking out the weeds and
the entire gallic field for me. For us, that's like, oh,
it's so beautiful and rustic and traditional. But I'm sure
it's like an eight year old year like, man, yeah,
this is slavery. Ye, but I never complained and uh,
(19:06):
and I think that was just my life and there
was one way of my parents to keep me busy
and not in trouble as well. And you also began
apprenticing when you were really young, and that was back
in like I don't know if you read Jack Papan's
Um The Apprentice, but he talks about like it's a
pretty rough and then of course um Erica pair talks
(19:30):
about it about his like pretty traumatic kitchen experiences. Yeah,
no rest for I mean fourteen, it is fairly young,
I mean yeah, but it's very especially in New York,
especially in the States, to think of a fourteen year
old kid being in a serious work environment like a kitchen. Oh, absolutely,
and that that was a serious kitchen where I was
(19:50):
also a where they were really a brigade. And so
when you were the first year apprentice and tell me
the name of where and then they are and so
as an apprentice, the first year basically you get the
beat up from the second year apprentice and the third
year uh so much. And uh, you know we had
(20:13):
I had a fight one time by an apprentice second year.
Then they had to get rid of that apprent. Thanks god,
they didn't get rid of me, but they get rid
of that guy because he was you know, giving it
to me as a younger. And like physical fights. Yeah, yeah,
we have physical which happened, Like yeah, it happens, but
(20:34):
like when it's within a system where it's kind of encouraged,
you know, like yeah, it was not encourage it was
more like it was it was a bad guy guy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
I mean it's just also so different from right now
we're living through a pretty dramatic shift in restaurant culture
and in kitchen culture in particularly away from that like
(20:57):
very so much better. I mean I see, for example, uh,
in all our restaurants we have a lot of women
working in the kitchen as well, chef women chef, and
and it's just it's it's so good the environment. I
think it's, uh, it's very rewarding for us that you know,
(21:19):
there's good harmony and good respect and and uh and
good friendship. In a way, we have a lot of
couples who either are borne into the restaurant or come
as a couple to work for us. So sometimes they work,
they sometimes not work in the same restaurant. But like
(21:40):
we have some people in service in service here who
have their boyfriend who work at at danielle Um in
the kitchen, and many restaurants like that are like that.
And I think it's it's good. It's good culture. It's
you know too uh to respect everyone and as long
(22:01):
as you know their life is not bothering them at
work and all that, it's it's good. Um. Last question,
are you gonna encourage your kids to go into the kitchen?
I don't know, but Julia love it. He comes every night.
Uh he calms down to say good night to me
(22:21):
if I didn't get up to say good night. But
he also want to say good night to the chefs.
So he knows all the chef and all the trick.
He has all kind of hand trick with everyone's And
then he knows where the cheese cut is, so he
run the cheese cut, got a piece of cheese cut.
Then he goes to pastry, beg for chocolate before you
(22:42):
go to bed. But I think he likes to go
to the kitchen more for the begging and for the
stealing of cheese. Being the chef's son is a good
thing to be, but I think he is. He loved
the environment. He has his own chef jackets sized up
for him and nah, and he love to cook. He
(23:02):
cook a lout with my wife and we don't bring
him in the kitchen yet, but he will. He will definitely.
But now does it need to be a chef? No?
But does he need to know what to cook? Yes?
Awesome chef, Thank you so much. This is really fun.
Let's have our kids together, Yeah, we can. They can
have a little like Top Chef battle. Absolutely will do that. Well,
(23:34):
what's your home kitchen food? Sitch? We are a modest
but very active kitchen. I wouldn't say that either. My wife,
for myself, is a terribly experienced cook. We probably make
what you would consider to be rather simple and crude food.
But the kids are enthusiastic and to my wife's credit,
(23:58):
like everything in our child wearing tech chnique, she is
the brave, adventurous one who gives them sharp objects and
I'm the one who takes the sharp objects away and says,
what are you doing? But yeah, my five year olds
out there like, uh, you know, throwing things in pans
and buttering up stuff and hot pans, hot pants. Yeah,
we don't know the rules so far seems to be
(24:19):
do not let them turn on the oven, but if
the ovens on, they can stick their head in it
or whatever. Yeah, I mean, and and and and I
think that it's paying some dividends because they have what
every parent likes, just a reasonably broad palette. You don't
want that kid who just eats chicken nuggets for a year.
(24:41):
My kid, I was that kid. You know, that's not
that's a drag well kind of hilariously. Uh you know.
I was a restaurant critic for a long time, and
I wrote a kid's book based on my older son
Achilles is um picky eating called Can I Eat That?
And it was you know, it's done pretty well. I
(25:02):
wrote a sequel called What's Cooking? Like it's kind of
become my stick. Like these kids cookbooks, and people always
they're not cookbooks, these children's books about food, And I
think people assume that I've somehow figured it out, Um,
and no, I haven't. My kids. My older son Achilles
only eats uh chicken mockney from this one restaurant near
(25:26):
us in Brooklyn. Um rice sometimes just bread with nothing
on it and no greens and candy. And Aggie only
eats chicken and meat anyway, So they're picky eaters. You know.
I wish that we cooked more. But um, you know,
(25:48):
I get home at six and they go to bed
at seven and they eat it like five. Have you
taken your kids? Have you taken Achilles like fine dining? Ever? Yeah?
I think we've gone to like one or two fancy restaurants.
I will say neither Achilles nor Augy cook. But Achilles
in particular is amazing at plating, like he Um. He
(26:13):
has restaurant concepts. He has his restaurant concept is called
the Rose r O Sse and it's prefix only, and
it's part of a hotel that he has in his
mind that is all tree houses and you get to
eat for free as long as you're a guest for
the hotel, which makes a lot of sense. But oftentimes
I'll wake up and he will have written beautifully like
(26:35):
a full on menu of things with price tags sometimes
a full on menu that I can order from, and
there's always things like a slice of dried mango with
a little bit of cinnamon. The other day I ordered
breakfast from that menu, and then like three hours later,
it's like, oh, yeah, that you owe me twenty dollars
(26:56):
and that was like wise, like, didn't you see that
that was a twenty dish with tip that's good to
it included. Yeah, it's um. If you're not a parent
and you hear Joshua telling this story, it may strike
you as bizarrely eccentric, But I have the same kind
of set up in my home. My son Jesse has
a kitchen of his own called Tuxedos. Okay, we've gone
(27:19):
so far as to make a sign that says, well,
welcome to Tuxedos, which we hang in the kitchen, and
he does the same kind of thing. He doesn't seem
to have the elaborate kind of menus that Achilles has,
but he has the same kind of creative spirit and
it is his establishment, his rules, his menu. Okay, we're
(27:40):
gonna take a quick break. We'll be back with Jamie Oliver.
The way my life works is working family. Really, there's
not much time for anything else. So work has to
(28:00):
fulfill the friends and family bit. Really, I mean, like
old friends and stuff. I have to carve out time.
But do you have a hard time being, you know,
having achieved like a measure of success and fame relating
or having you know, sometimes I talked to um like
actors and whatever through work, and it's hard for the
(28:24):
act Actually, athletes is where it really comes out. And
I'm sure you can wait in on this too. It's
like it's relating to those folks who used to hang
out within the neighborhood, like, you know, because the circumstances
have changed so much, you don't know if they want
something from you. You know, it gets complicated. I think, yeah,
I mean, I think my job is weird in the
sense of um. For twenty years, I've been building a
(28:47):
fairly deep relationship with people that are growing up and
becoming you know, a lot of my audience originally was
like first time cooks and the youth and men and
then um, you know, they become parents, h and beyond
um And that's generalizing massively, but that's probably bang on.
And then I put a lot of hours in and
(29:09):
I've been very experimental in many different methods of conveying
food and try and getting as many people to try
cooking or jump on the stepping stones of the cooking
journey as possible. So um, therefore it's just works relentless.
But I love it. And I've got five kids and
a very hands on sort of family life which is relentless.
(29:33):
I've got teenagers, seven year old bread and a baby. Yeah.
What's the spread of the OVA household? Well, Poppy is sixteen,
Daisy is fifteen, but Petal is nine, buddies eight and
River is two and a half. Yeah, that's it's a
(29:54):
lot of It's a lot of bums and a lot
of mouths to feed, and a lot of emotions and
a lot of there's three years of children. So you know,
a lot of my parenting friends generally seemed to have
a huddle that kind of huddle through at the different
genres together. But I've got three to have teenagers and
babies and eight and seven year olds and it is tough. Actually,
(30:18):
did you? Um? I mean you're now a dad five
times over, so I hear maybe six in the off thing?
Maybe where does your Google news alert? Um? Google might
tell me when it's going to happen. Well, certainly there's
an algorithm somewhere that's like Jamie Oliver will produce again.
It's like funk off Alexa, No, not again. Um, did
(30:40):
you always want a family that big? No? I thought
I was in for two. But you know, I've been
with my misses since I was eighteen and we've been
married for eighteen years. And um, she was I was
very adamant about putting the graft in for being a chef,
(31:00):
a very demanding job to get anywhere. Um, and she
was always adamant about creating a family. But your own
evolution as a parent as it relates to your work,
you know, I can imagine that, you know, as your
family has gotten bigger as you've gotten older, maybe you're
looking to spend more time at home. At the same time,
(31:21):
your businesses have diversified in a million different ways. You've
had successes, you've had things that didn't work out. How
do you manage that kind of volatility and sort of
keep things somewhat stable at home pretty much structurally is
a good start. So, you know, making sure that you know,
(31:42):
school holidays are kind of reflected upon. And I can
kind of like Duck and dive out of those holidays,
sometimes a whole week, sometimes a couple of days a
week within a summer holiday, or you know, grab the
holidays within that, getting to things like the parents evenings,
kind of booking it in way in advance months and
kind of those concerts and things that you just got
(32:02):
to be in um and then just you know, having
my time managed really really well. And the old days
I used to kind of like scoot around in our
scooter going to different meetings, this set and the other.
And you know, finally after you know, we've been basically
like a blend of startups for the last fifteen years,
and we're a little patchwork quilt of shitty little offices
and and now we have a nice office and it's
(32:25):
like been built for purpose. And we were like twenty
eight different businesses and now we're six and we said
we've had a spring clean. And like you say, we've
had incredible successes but also incredible failures. So I think
the Jamie that was twenty to thirty was different to
thirty to forty. And now I'm forty, I'm kind of
I'm done with a lot of the stuff that you know,
(32:46):
I feel I feel good about being very experimental and
very entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial from my thirties to forties, but also,
you know, a lot fifty pent of it was fucking painful,
and I don't want to do that again. And now
I've got I want to do things differently from my
forties to my fifties. So I think with regards to
(33:07):
sort of time, we just protect it. And it's nearly perfect,
if there is such thing as perfect. I think I
get my weekends unless something goes wrong. I kind of
get eight weeks holiday a year, and then I worked
fucking really hard the rest of the time. And if
it's eighteen nowadays, I'm in. I start my days at
(33:31):
I'm in the office at five thirty and I'm normally
done by nine at night. So I'm the first one in,
I'm on the last one out. So and um, if
I've got to be at a school thing, I will um.
And I've got five kids, so there's a there's a yeah,
it's I'm not going to say it's easy, but I'm
(33:52):
really happy with my lot. I mean, I think you know,
who gives a ship if you work hard doing something
you love, If you've got eight weeks holiday. I mean,
who really a ship and its a way worse than
us on holiday. I mean, you're slave drivers. It's true.
But there's also something I think to be said about,
like interspersing those moments during the day that it's not like, hey,
it's a vacation, Dad's home, but just like, oh yeah, Dad,
(34:15):
I wake up, Dad's around. It's not a big deal.
You know. I'm definitely like a Friday to Sunday dad,
you know, unless it's a holiday, I can't lie. I mean,
if I can try and get you know, they're getting
to an age now where i'll see them at sort
of like eight nine at night if I'm back around
that time. But I've got to put I've got to
(34:36):
put the miles in Monday to Thursday really, and then
Friday I'll try and take the kids home, um, and
we start the weekend, you know, maybe a bit earlier
on Friday. Actually, maybe I'm back at like five six
o'clock and that's when the fund starts. But I'm generalizing massively,
but I think I don't know. It's like, also, I'm
lucky because like my wife doesn't work. She works one
(34:57):
day a week, so she's a very hand or mum um,
and so her being that allows me to sort of
intensify that and I don't feel guilty and I don't
feel their missing out because they've got her. So I
don't know. I kind of feel like when I was
with the first two, I think I wound it down
(35:18):
too slowly. I thought that being away three months of
the year didn't matter. It did so, so not that
it's an issue, but I think like I'm definitely closer
to this to the third and the fourth in a
slightly different way. And of course it's all good, but
like I think like I was around loads more for
for the third and the fourth definitely, Yeah, I thought
(35:41):
it wouldn't matter because they were just little things that
had like memories like finding Nemo. Right, I wanted to, um,
there's something that you said that was really interesting to me,
and it was about like fift of being painful and
you being very entrepreneurial and spring cleaning and that kind
of thing. Obviously, um, like in the last year, there
has been You've faced some last eleven years. Last eleven
(36:04):
years you faced challenges kind of like specifically in the
restaurant world. So like I'm a writer, I'm not a chef,
I'm not a restaurateur, and I'm a dad, and I'm
a was a husband, and like, um, I'm thirty seven now,
(36:25):
and I'm realizing some of my limitations and some of
the ways that I've I've failed, you know, And it's
been a lot of to incorporate a sense of like, hey,
this is something I failed at. Its hard because when
you try to think of yourself, you think of yourself
as a success, and then you have something that you
just frankly funked up. You're you operate on such a
(36:50):
massive scale, like when you funk up, when like something
goes wrong, it's very visible and a lot of people
are affected. At the same time, you have so many
other things going and that if not like the end
of the world. But how have you dealt with seeing
this the struggle and the struggle and store is closing?
And well it's a big question really, I mean I think, um, um,
(37:18):
I've every time I've made some money, I've generally i
have never squirreled away cash, you know, and had like
a kind of smug sort of you know kind of
all Look, you know, I'm theoretically rich, and people are
always saying I am this or that or worth this
or that. Pretty much anything I've ever earned, I've reinvested
(37:38):
in people or ideas or projects. So like, you know,
certain things, um, you know, we created like the Ice
Store of cooking, you know, and it was essentially three businesses,
like a cafe, restaurant, retail and cookery school. You know,
(37:58):
it was massive, it was epic. It was a failure.
That's seven million quid um, okay, So but there was
always that nearly everything I've sucked up on has had
been a gym of genius. So now I have two
cookery schools that are brilliant and I can now replicate
those and the culture within the team and the staff
is genius. And it's kind of the price of a
(38:19):
nice cinema ticket, and it's an hour and a half
of entertainment. You learn some stuff and you eat what
you cook, and it's really civilized, and it's like a
really brilliant expression of middle class learning. And middle class
learning is important also because you know, for certainly a
lot of the States and Britain, that's most people, and
(38:40):
most of those people didn't learn to cook at home
or at school. So there is a disservice to that
kind of sector with regards to sort of the people
that are in sort of hard to reach areas and
struggling and unemployed. And you know, I'd already answered that
question with the Ministry of Food Centers and we have
ten recipes to save your life and you get into
free and we do but just to bring it back.
(39:02):
So you're saying that basically the insn't as you failed,
you've been able to take something something. But also from
my from my generalizing massively, from my twenties and my thirties,
no one believed me. So I spent all my energy
trying to convince people that there was something good in this,
and then I'd go and smash it. And then from
(39:24):
my thirties, literally the thirty birthday, everyone decided they start
believing me out of nowhere. And then I spent my
thirties doing loads of ship that should have been like interrogated,
probably a lot more, but it was all with good
heart and good will. It was nothing commercial or kind
of like I'm going to overtake the world. It was
just like, oh here'n another little cool way to express
like food or learning. And but also I was being first,
(39:48):
and I realized that, you know, being first is kind
of a mug's game. You know, it really is complete.
You know, being first is for the big guys, for
the Samsungs. It's for people that have the back end
to kind to lose, you know, seventeen million quid in
or seventy or seven million quid um so um. So
I think like second man's advantage is definitely And also
(40:12):
like I'm a person, I'm not a business and I'm
not a corporation. So you know, although I have resource
and capacity, like, it's still very much limited. So I think, um,
luckily I've had you know, as long as the pie
chart's favoring success as opposed to drastic failure. I think,
I think everything I'm expressing is actually like part of
(40:35):
whether it's discussed or not, the American dream anyway, that's
it's very I think that my spirit is way more
American than than classic British. But I think with family
in the mix as well, like, um, how did it
I keep it very separate. I think work is you
probably know more about my work than my wife's. And
(40:56):
I actually mean that if you've done like twenty it's
research on me. You probably know more than my wife,
but she's known you before, so to you, you're not
Jamie Oliver chef. Yeah, I mean even like the mechanics
of work and business, So I don't I do not
go home and discuss work when I get home. How
did you deal? I mean, I think one of my
(41:17):
questions is also emotionally you are very like you are optimistic.
I think, like exude optimism, and your career has been
very entrepreneurial, which belies to certain optimism. But when faced
with those kinds of struggles, did it ever shake how
(41:39):
you saw yourself? Not? Really no, because I think I
think also I find it fascinating how humans sort of
class success or failure, you know, whether it's financial or
a test or a cause. You know, so I'm surround
you know, so whether it's dyslexia or whatever, I don't know.
But like I see, I know, I see ship differently.
(42:01):
I mean I I sit down oft them with like
super like classic clever people, and I say, we're going
to cut this meeting because you're all too clever. Let's
just regroup in an hour, because like you ain't seeing this,
they do not. We're not the same. So I think
like the concept of fail or win is very different
to me. Like I think for me, like if you
just take everything I've done and like turn it into
(42:23):
a smoothie, Like there's definite progress. What does progress mean?
In my world? It's you know, more people beginning to cook,
people talking about cook, more conversation about cook, welfare, animal standards, legislation,
like kind of the kind of ecosystem, the environment of
food progressing. You know, did Mayor Bloomberg failed? Yes he failed,
(42:45):
No he didn't. Yes he did, he failed, No he didn't.
He was probably forty months too early. But his ripples
were way more powerful than his splash. The dudes are dude,
you know, Like so like so you're talking ship, I
know better than you. Like, if he hadn't done that
ten other people in ten different counts, you wouldn't have
done X, Y and Z, and like so I'm really
kind of into the ripples of moving the food conversation along.
(43:08):
And therefore, if you're if what I've tried to do,
I'm like, we have acted, and we have been a
start up for fifteen years, and we have been disruptors
for fifteen years. And I think bread and Butter sort
of and belt embraces and kind of like slowly slowly sustainable,
like are you call you call? Like you know business?
(43:31):
I mean, you know, I don't know if there's any
difference between R and D or failure, do you know
what I mean? So you know, like if you look
at what some companies right off as R and D,
you could like cut out those experiments and say that's
a failure. So and so I don't act how you
use it. It's what you do with a failure. Yeah,
(43:53):
I mean, I don't like fucking things up, but I'm
more upset about it when I've learned nothing from it.
And thus far, I've always learned very very valuable things
from everything that I've done. And there's a very obvious
thread to parenting too, which is the idea of risk
and and and you know what you impart to children
(44:14):
in terms of their own experience as their own kind
of adventures and misinventures. And you know, I think about
your story about how you came up and you know,
succeeded at a very early age. But with your children,
do you encourage that? I mean, how do you sort
of balance like the protectiveness that a parent will feel
naturally versus knowing that it's oftentimes those risks and doing
(44:36):
things differently that make the people what they are. Yeah,
I think, I mean, I think, I mean in a
funny position. I mean, I I think that my my
first and foremost passion in parenting is trying to propagate
empathy and people and kindness. You know. I think that
(44:58):
that's for me, that's currency. I mean, honestly, although I
might have a few quid to my name and done
a few cool things, I swear to God, if it
all went tips up, I'd be really happy in a
really tiny home. And I cook nice food with no money.
You don't need loads of money to cook nice food.
And I know that the love of a good family
is worth more than anything. So it's so I think
(45:20):
the concept of currency is not just cash. I think
that's actually the opposite. I think. I'm really I just
want my kids to be kind and I want them
to understand that hard work is is like important, but
doing something that you love is really important. And I think, um,
(45:42):
I struggle it with it a bit because I had
a terrible time at school and I wasn't academic. Um,
so I've got a couple of kids that are academic
and they put the hours in, so I have no
reference point because I wasn't that kid. There are a
couple who are an academic. Yeah, and I have a
couple that struggled badly and guess what, have dyslexia and
see things very differently and including humor and all kinds
(46:05):
of things. And it's really fascinating to see exactly the
same parenting and exactly the same home and the same
family meals, same holidays and the same love. You know,
um churn out these different genetic animals that that are
just completely unique. And I think, you know, generalizing the
(46:25):
male and female differences aside, it's the nuance of the personality.
So you know, but I think, you know, uh, I've
you know, I've I've got kids that are I've got
kids that are up front openly like kind like kind
so kind like a cry, you know, but consistently by default.
(46:48):
And I know that I've got ones that I'm constantly
teaching it, teaching it and and and you have to
re teach it and teach it and so it's a
kind of weird. It's it's a really interesting an age thing,
like I've no, I don't think it's age at all. No,
I shouldn't. I shouldn't, but I think I think what's
interesting is that I don't think it's about age. I
(47:08):
think it's it's um possible. I don't. It might be
their position in the family and the hierarchy, but the
idea of like, you know, having one that's always happy
to compromise, the one that's always happy to take the
back seat or the smaller portion or the slightly ship
shittier ride. You know you can't help, but that break
(47:30):
your heart, you know, And then we both have too,
and like just to see the dynamic, the power dynamic
and the kind of dynamic and two they have five
is like an exponential dodecahedron of And I think it's
but but I think that there also that there is
no perfect So I think, like I think, I think,
don't you know, not sweating the small stuff is is important,
(47:54):
but it's also easier, easier to say, you know, when
you're in the thicker parenting and you tired or just
a bit piste off, or you know, it's you know,
I have complete admiration for my wife. She's very, very patient.
And also we play different roles. And I think that's fine,
you know, Like, you know, I don't mind being a hardass.
(48:19):
I don't mind taking everything out of her bedroom and
locking it away and saying there's you do the and
there's your sheet, like like, I don't mind. I don't
mind that, you know, as long as they're safe and fed,
I'm kind of doing my bit right. So yeah, it's
a nice dever and a lovely pillow. But I think
it's it's um, you know, having rules and stuff. I
(48:41):
think it's kind of important having consequence. I think it's important.
What's hilarious now is like what you know, WiFi is
way more powerful than kind of any kind of like
punishment or naughty step or anything like that. It's just
like everyone was trying to invent things to kind of
put people on the naughty step all you know, tell
them off, and everyone had their way that they had
(49:03):
it done to them when they were a kid, and
it's just like just WiFi off then pass. Yeah. But yeah,
I love Famili It's a beautiful thing. That was our show.
(49:23):
That was our show. That was our show, Foodie, Were
you satisfied it? As a as a food critic, that's
kind of a murderers row you had there below into
Jamie Oliver. You know, quite a combo. I have like
been around chefs and working the chefs for a long time. Basically, Yeah,
(49:43):
it's interesting that they're chefs, but they're really just people,
you know, and I'm just curious about them as people.
I'm sure I was curious to hear from Daniel what
it's like to have two kids in different parts of
his life, and curious to hear about Jamie what it's
like to face failure. And oh, if you have any
questions about being a dad, email me then j d
(50:03):
s at fatherly dot com and they might end up
on air. Also, that's it, that's it. Okay, you weren't
gonna it. Sounded like you had a big reveal coming. Also,
we'll be back next week. Oh got you
Hello, and welcome to the Fatherly Podcast. I am your host,
Joshua david Stein, and I'm joined by my co host,
a man named Jason Gay. Hi. Thank you. That was
a very jaunty hello. You began with Joshua. You know,
day to you, sir too. I started off on a
low note. Today low energy and now all of the coffee.
(00:33):
So today's episode is kind of like a chef special.
I don't know if you know this about me, but
I come from a food world and over the years
have met and interacted with many chefs. And we're going
to visit one of my friends, or I guess I'm
going to visit you weren't here for this. My friend
Danielle Blud, who has a restaurant called Danielle. He's kind
(00:54):
of famous. Yeah, I'm kind of like Joshua David Stein
is two sports version to food. I'm aware of the names,
but I cannot give you specific details. You mentioned some restaurants, yeah,
that I've never heard of, probably will never go to.
So yeah, yeah, I mean now, now I don't your
(01:16):
superpower restaurant. I can eat um. So Danielle is interesting
because he has a grown up daughter and then two
young kids, second relationship, Um the reboot, Yeah, and um,
so I go. We had lunch the other day and
I talked to him about what's it like being a
(01:36):
dad for a second time when you're older. Also things
like how he brings the the lessons he learned in
the kitchen, in his kitchens home, his home kitchen. And
then there's this dude, Jamie Oliver, who's well known chef,
the Naked Chef. He's mostly a UK guy, but I
think people know who Jamie Oliver. Yeah. No, No, he's
(01:58):
a thing everywhere. So he has many books, Joshua, thanks
that un true. He has a new book called Five Ingredients,
Quick and Easy Recipes, which just came out from Flat Iron.
It's a cookbook and he's in town doing press for that.
But I did not want to ask him about that.
(02:21):
Jamie Oliver has had a tough year. I've had a
tough year. I want to know about what it's like
to fail in some parts of your life. So we
went up to his hotel room and we asked him that, Yeah,
thank you for your help on that. You steered it
back to kids in a nice way. I'm always about
(02:42):
the kids, Joshua, You should know that about me. We'll
be back with Daniel Balloud and me, but then we
hook up with Jamie Oliver later in the show. Welcome
to Fog the podcast. I hope you're enjoying this show.
So you know that I work at Fatherly and I've
(03:03):
known you actually since before I was a dad, not
before you were a dad, because I wasn't that first
you became a dad. Then I really became a dad
two times over. Um, But I've been really curious for
a while now to talk to people like you who
are super accomplished in their professional world and are also
(03:24):
fathers about what you've been able to learn and what
you've been able to take from your professional success and
how you bring that home and vice versa. Give me
the brief rundown of your family. What's your family situation right? So? Um,
I had the daughter who is twenty nine. Now I
(03:46):
just got married, yes, thank you, and so I feel
like she left the nest and now I have two
young children four and a half years old, Juliette. So
my daughter. The daughter is Alex and was born in
New York with Micki, my first wife, and born in
(04:07):
New York, born and raised went to the frenchly say uh.
And then I remarried five years ago and I have
a four and I have your boy, Julian and a
eighteen months old girl, Georgiana, who is gig How old
are you young enough to have children? Kind a little
(04:32):
older than you, I push over the sixty. Yeah, well,
I'm just like off the bat, like, what were your
thoughts about becoming a dad for the second time as
an older I think, first, I love children. I love family.
I mean I come from a family where with my
(04:53):
parents and my brother, we were five siblings. And when
we all get together with nephew and niece and all
the added parts of brother in laws and things, we're
about sixty people. So and I cook for them and
I love it. So Uh. Children are I don't know
(05:14):
to me as give me a lot of energy and
give me also a lot of motivation. And I think also,
you know, we only live once, and I think it's
important to have children like when you so Alex was
pretty much grown, was growing up. We only had one
(05:37):
child with Mickey, and I love my daughter, but I
didn't have a son, and I felt like, you know,
I'm single, and now I'm falling in love and I
want to get remarried and a kids. So I have
a boy and another girl. So I'm blessed. What was
(06:00):
the difference between raising Alex as a dad and raising
when he had Julian And Well, interestingly, I mean, I
don't know if it's a benefit to my children, but
it's a great benefit to me and my children. It's
then I live right above Danielle, so my apartment is
(06:22):
right above the kitchen of Danielle. My office is at Danielle.
And so I had this very close family life despite
the fact that I worked my sixteen hours a day.
I can just ride up the twenty step and see
them and kiss them every night before bed and and
at breakfast with them, and then maybe at five o'clock
(06:43):
I want to just come and say I spend you know,
alf an hour with them. And so those little moments
are yet very there's a proximity. Who helped create those
valuable moments with the children? Where were you in your
career when Alex was born versus where are you in
your career when when Alex was born? Well, yeah, I
(07:07):
mean you're still no. But when Alex was born it
was in eighty nine and she's going to turn thirty
this year. And she was the chef at Lasiak at
the time, and I was living on about three blocks away,
so it was not too far. Um. But so Alex
(07:28):
grew up as a young child, but not close to
the restaurant as much at the beginning. And it's only
when I moved Danielle ten years later from where Cafee
beuaries today. I moved restaurant Danielle to sixty five set,
where the older ship was and I had took an
(07:50):
apartment there. So that's when Alex was about ten years
old when she moved above the store with us as
a family. In terms of like like taking a whale
a little from the idea of her relationship to the
restaurant and your relation to the restaurant as a dad,
did you find yourself you know, what's a division of labor? Different?
(08:11):
You know, almost thirty years ago, was what was expected
of you as a dad? Different? Were you more patient?
Were you less patient? Were you you know what I mean?
I think um first, I mean I always uh. You know,
you're in a business where you always dream than maybe
your your child will like to be interested by your
(08:34):
business and take over and Alex was interested to do
cookies for her friends at school. So she will go
to the kitchen and with the page we chef make
cookies as a child and bring that to school for
or she will come and have lunch here at cafe.
I will do a table of twenty kids for lunch
(08:55):
and all her friends from school. Yeah, like and of
school or things like that where all the friends from
school would have launched. I mean I have a picture
of this very cute scene of the kids being outside. Um,
and she always came too many occasions. I mean she
was connected with what I do and all that. But
(09:16):
like I mean, like, were you changing diapers and were
you doing all those things thirty years ago or was
that something that you know when you had your When
you have your two youngest kids, did your role as
a dad shift significantly? Yes, I think I'm more. I
don't know if I'm more involved, because my wife would say, no,
(09:39):
it's not, I'll never do enough. But I I am
quite I'm quite a good dad today. And I think
I was hustling and and and and trying to build
a business twenty nine years ago. I was trying to
build a name for myself putation and then raise money
(10:02):
and opened my first business and worked very very hard.
And so I feel, um, maybe I didn't give to
my daughter what I'm able to give to my two
young children today the time. But we took a lot
of vacation and travel together and I have what I
(10:23):
love is to look at the picture from the time
she was a baby and how many places we went
and how much fun we had and all that. So
I I felt and my today because we have two
young kids. And Katherine, the mother of Julia and Georgiana,
(10:43):
she she was a chef now she's her mother, but
also learning to become a dietitian and she she really
cared about how we feed our children and she cooked
for them all the time. And Julian love to cook
(11:03):
with her. And I am not invited because it's basically
Julian cooking at home with her mother. I don't want
to get involved in the middle. But so Julia is
on the on the chair, on the stool and it's
got the big spotul and is making you know, lamb shanks.
There's like eight lamb shank on the pot. Because Katherine
(11:26):
is very well organized when it comes to nutrition and
um and she potioned that. She makes batch of fish
or meat or vegetables or grains and she potioned them out,
and then after she has this different selection of different
(11:47):
proteins or grains or vegetables, and she composed the meal
every day with it, not every day, but when she
don't need to cook for them. And then I live
right above the restaurant, so it's easy to bring also
any each Are your kids adventurous eaters? Yeah? They eat
everything everything, I mean crazy stuff um, but to them
(12:09):
not crazy like with the tongue and they that I
mean they would eat it. Yeah, pigs as um, birds
and and snail and caviare I mean, it's uh, it's
very adventurous. But then after there's typical kid you know studently,
(12:33):
is there is the color or the taste. It's not
the color because he like pumpkin, but you don't like
carrots right now, so I don't know. Maybe it's a
hue of orange. Yeah, that's it. I mean, I think
going back to the thing you said about the difference
between Alex like that first time in the second time,
sometimes I think if my kids are only five and seven,
(12:54):
but if I have and I'm not going to have
kids again. But if I could have kids again now
seven years after, it's like, I think I'm so much.
I'm in such a different place, like emotionally and in
terms of like knowing myself two and and and they's
definitely I mean our daughter was h was a learning
experience for me. Our children now it's learning experience for
(13:18):
Katherine more and for me. Um. I don't know if
I recall ah fun it wasn't our heart. It was
sometimes because uh, you know, having having a boy also,
it's stance at home. It's much more adtense than a
girl and two boys who just oh they're like cats.
(13:41):
You know, they're one moment they're kissing and like touching
each other's faces. In the next moment, like on the
way to school today, We're getting off the bus and
I turned around and they were in a full on
fist fight, and all these like middle schoolers were around them,
being like, guys, come on, Julia. Als always feel it's
somebody's he will climb anywhere. I mean, it's like a
(14:04):
high can you go all the time? It's Um, Is
there anything that you've kind of taken from your world,
your professional world and been able to apply at home.
That's been helpful for you as a dad. Um, Yeah,
to build a nice kitchen, and the kitchen is differently
the center of our life. We spend a lot of
(14:27):
time in our kitchen clearly and UM and do some
planning on the meals for the children. I think it's important. Uh,
there's nothing worse than, you know, a family where they
don't know what they're going to give to their kids
that night. And I think planning is key. And I
(14:47):
think with Katherine, she's very well organized, but I'm always
there also to support and Um and having a good
plan for the week. That's a little bit like a
restaurant where you right your menu in advance a little
bit so you know what you're gonna be expected to
do and you can communicate that to the team. Here,
(15:08):
you communicate that to yourself. We'll be back with more,
Danielle Ballud after a word from our sponsors. You grew
up on a in a pretty rural area in Leon
(15:32):
on a farm, right, and you had five brothers and sisters. Um,
your kids are growing up in like a vastly different world.
You know, how do you make sense in your own
mind of kind of like the difference of this urban
environment they're growing up in versus your kind of rural
(15:52):
like so much of what you so like from an
outside just knowing you and your work, so much of
what you love and sort of sell le bread is
that Leones lifestyle and Chucky Tree and you know, and
of course, I mean, of course it's fine dining, but
you know, you really celebrate this rustic and rural and
(16:13):
and I think, uh, it's to me. Uh, there's not
only the food, but it's also the lifetime my family,
I'm sure than what I spend in the day he
had to live in New York, they spend it in
the months in my village. And your kids are growing
(16:35):
up kind of you're the only one in the States, right, Yeah, absolutely,
your kids are growing up like American and like New
York City kids. Yeah, regret do you like it? I mean,
but I remember Alix, who is American, very American, but
went to the French. She says, so she's very French too,
and she with her cousin and all that, she will
(16:58):
always notice than uh, you know, maybe the parents give
up too much there, you know, the parents give up
too much and the kids are not always super disciplined.
Or they are already too distracted by uh, you know,
(17:18):
things who are materialistic or or like you know, iPads
or things like that. Country. Yeah, but at the same time,
the importance of reading books. Uh it's it's important. And
I don't think they're reading of books there in France.
So they're comparing, you know, they upbringing with their are
(17:39):
bringing there, and uh it's different. It's a little more rural,
it's a little more uh sampler also and but for example,
for now Catherine with Julia and we just read books
after books and reading. Oh, I mean the love uh galaxy. Now,
(18:00):
it's crazy about galaxy. So any books we can find
on the cosmos and all that, I love it. So
he's into that. But for me, as a kid, I
don't wish any of my kids to live the life
I had as a kid, because I love my life.
But that's not something I wanted to you know, it
(18:22):
was not like you know, I was. My parents were lawyer,
doctors or whatever, and I grew up as a kid
playing tennis and golf and and and being in pretty school. No,
I was working, born on the farm and helping my parents.
(18:43):
And so you know, Easter vacation that will be um
in a garlic field and taking out the weeds and
the entire gallic field for me. For us, that's like, oh,
it's so beautiful and rustic and traditional. But I'm sure
it's like an eight year old year like, man, yeah,
this is slavery. Ye, but I never complained and uh,
(19:06):
and I think that was just my life and there
was one way of my parents to keep me busy
and not in trouble as well. And you also began
apprenticing when you were really young, and that was back
in like I don't know if you read Jack Papan's
Um The Apprentice, but he talks about like it's a
pretty rough and then of course um Erica pair talks
(19:30):
about it about his like pretty traumatic kitchen experiences. Yeah,
no rest for I mean fourteen, it is fairly young,
I mean yeah, but it's very especially in New York,
especially in the States, to think of a fourteen year
old kid being in a serious work environment like a kitchen. Oh, absolutely,
and that that was a serious kitchen where I was
(19:50):
also a where they were really a brigade. And so
when you were the first year apprentice and tell me
the name of where and then they are and so
as an apprentice, the first year basically you get the
beat up from the second year apprentice and the third
year uh so much. And uh, you know we had
(20:13):
I had a fight one time by an apprentice second year.
Then they had to get rid of that apprent. Thanks god,
they didn't get rid of me, but they get rid
of that guy because he was you know, giving it
to me as a younger. And like physical fights. Yeah, yeah,
we have physical which happened, Like yeah, it happens, but
(20:34):
like when it's within a system where it's kind of encouraged,
you know, like yeah, it was not encourage it was
more like it was it was a bad guy guy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
I mean it's just also so different from right now
we're living through a pretty dramatic shift in restaurant culture
and in kitchen culture in particularly away from that like
(20:57):
very so much better. I mean I see, for example, uh,
in all our restaurants we have a lot of women
working in the kitchen as well, chef women chef, and
and it's just it's it's so good the environment. I
think it's, uh, it's very rewarding for us that you know,
(21:19):
there's good harmony and good respect and and uh and
good friendship. In a way, we have a lot of
couples who either are borne into the restaurant or come
as a couple to work for us. So sometimes they work,
they sometimes not work in the same restaurant. But like
(21:40):
we have some people in service in service here who
have their boyfriend who work at at danielle Um in
the kitchen, and many restaurants like that are like that.
And I think it's it's good. It's good culture. It's
you know too uh to respect everyone and as long
(22:01):
as you know their life is not bothering them at
work and all that, it's it's good. Um. Last question,
are you gonna encourage your kids to go into the kitchen?
I don't know, but Julia love it. He comes every night.
Uh he calms down to say good night to me
(22:21):
if I didn't get up to say good night. But
he also want to say good night to the chefs.
So he knows all the chef and all the trick.
He has all kind of hand trick with everyone's And
then he knows where the cheese cut is, so he
run the cheese cut, got a piece of cheese cut.
Then he goes to pastry, beg for chocolate before you
(22:42):
go to bed. But I think he likes to go
to the kitchen more for the begging and for the
stealing of cheese. Being the chef's son is a good
thing to be, but I think he is. He loved
the environment. He has his own chef jackets sized up
for him and nah, and he love to cook. He
(23:02):
cook a lout with my wife and we don't bring
him in the kitchen yet, but he will. He will definitely.
But now does it need to be a chef? No?
But does he need to know what to cook? Yes?
Awesome chef, Thank you so much. This is really fun.
Let's have our kids together, Yeah, we can. They can
have a little like Top Chef battle. Absolutely will do that. Well,
(23:34):
what's your home kitchen food? Sitch? We are a modest
but very active kitchen. I wouldn't say that either. My wife,
for myself, is a terribly experienced cook. We probably make
what you would consider to be rather simple and crude food.
But the kids are enthusiastic and to my wife's credit,
(23:58):
like everything in our child wearing tech chnique, she is
the brave, adventurous one who gives them sharp objects and
I'm the one who takes the sharp objects away and says,
what are you doing? But yeah, my five year olds
out there like, uh, you know, throwing things in pans
and buttering up stuff and hot pans, hot pants. Yeah,
we don't know the rules so far seems to be
(24:19):
do not let them turn on the oven, but if
the ovens on, they can stick their head in it
or whatever. Yeah, I mean, and and and and I
think that it's paying some dividends because they have what
every parent likes, just a reasonably broad palette. You don't
want that kid who just eats chicken nuggets for a year.
(24:41):
My kid, I was that kid. You know, that's not
that's a drag well kind of hilariously. Uh you know.
I was a restaurant critic for a long time, and
I wrote a kid's book based on my older son
Achilles is um picky eating called Can I Eat That?
And it was you know, it's done pretty well. I
(25:02):
wrote a sequel called What's Cooking? Like it's kind of
become my stick. Like these kids cookbooks, and people always
they're not cookbooks, these children's books about food, And I
think people assume that I've somehow figured it out, Um,
and no, I haven't. My kids. My older son Achilles
only eats uh chicken mockney from this one restaurant near
(25:26):
us in Brooklyn. Um rice sometimes just bread with nothing
on it and no greens and candy. And Aggie only
eats chicken and meat anyway, So they're picky eaters. You know.
I wish that we cooked more. But um, you know,
(25:48):
I get home at six and they go to bed
at seven and they eat it like five. Have you
taken your kids? Have you taken Achilles like fine dining? Ever? Yeah?
I think we've gone to like one or two fancy restaurants.
I will say neither Achilles nor Augy cook. But Achilles
in particular is amazing at plating, like he Um. He
(26:13):
has restaurant concepts. He has his restaurant concept is called
the Rose r O Sse and it's prefix only, and
it's part of a hotel that he has in his
mind that is all tree houses and you get to
eat for free as long as you're a guest for
the hotel, which makes a lot of sense. But oftentimes
I'll wake up and he will have written beautifully like
(26:35):
a full on menu of things with price tags sometimes
a full on menu that I can order from, and
there's always things like a slice of dried mango with
a little bit of cinnamon. The other day I ordered
breakfast from that menu, and then like three hours later,
it's like, oh, yeah, that you owe me twenty dollars
(26:56):
and that was like wise, like, didn't you see that
that was a twenty dish with tip that's good to
it included. Yeah, it's um. If you're not a parent
and you hear Joshua telling this story, it may strike
you as bizarrely eccentric, But I have the same kind
of set up in my home. My son Jesse has
a kitchen of his own called Tuxedos. Okay, we've gone
(27:19):
so far as to make a sign that says, well,
welcome to Tuxedos, which we hang in the kitchen, and
he does the same kind of thing. He doesn't seem
to have the elaborate kind of menus that Achilles has,
but he has the same kind of creative spirit and
it is his establishment, his rules, his menu. Okay, we're
(27:40):
gonna take a quick break. We'll be back with Jamie Oliver.
The way my life works is working family. Really, there's
not much time for anything else. So work has to
(28:00):
fulfill the friends and family bit. Really, I mean, like
old friends and stuff. I have to carve out time.
But do you have a hard time being, you know,
having achieved like a measure of success and fame relating
or having you know, sometimes I talked to um like
actors and whatever through work, and it's hard for the
(28:24):
act Actually, athletes is where it really comes out. And
I'm sure you can wait in on this too. It's
like it's relating to those folks who used to hang
out within the neighborhood, like, you know, because the circumstances
have changed so much, you don't know if they want
something from you. You know, it gets complicated. I think, yeah,
I mean, I think my job is weird in the
sense of um. For twenty years, I've been building a
(28:47):
fairly deep relationship with people that are growing up and
becoming you know, a lot of my audience originally was
like first time cooks and the youth and men and
then um, you know, they become parents, h and beyond
um And that's generalizing massively, but that's probably bang on.
And then I put a lot of hours in and
(29:09):
I've been very experimental in many different methods of conveying
food and try and getting as many people to try
cooking or jump on the stepping stones of the cooking
journey as possible. So um, therefore it's just works relentless.
But I love it. And I've got five kids and
a very hands on sort of family life which is relentless.
(29:33):
I've got teenagers, seven year old bread and a baby. Yeah.
What's the spread of the OVA household? Well, Poppy is sixteen,
Daisy is fifteen, but Petal is nine, buddies eight and
River is two and a half. Yeah, that's it's a
(29:54):
lot of It's a lot of bums and a lot
of mouths to feed, and a lot of emotions and
a lot of there's three years of children. So you know,
a lot of my parenting friends generally seemed to have
a huddle that kind of huddle through at the different
genres together. But I've got three to have teenagers and
babies and eight and seven year olds and it is tough. Actually,
(30:18):
did you? Um? I mean you're now a dad five
times over, so I hear maybe six in the off thing?
Maybe where does your Google news alert? Um? Google might
tell me when it's going to happen. Well, certainly there's
an algorithm somewhere that's like Jamie Oliver will produce again.
It's like funk off Alexa, No, not again. Um, did
(30:40):
you always want a family that big? No? I thought
I was in for two. But you know, I've been
with my misses since I was eighteen and we've been
married for eighteen years. And um, she was I was
very adamant about putting the graft in for being a chef,
(31:00):
a very demanding job to get anywhere. Um, and she
was always adamant about creating a family. But your own
evolution as a parent as it relates to your work,
you know, I can imagine that, you know, as your
family has gotten bigger as you've gotten older, maybe you're
looking to spend more time at home. At the same time,
(31:21):
your businesses have diversified in a million different ways. You've
had successes, you've had things that didn't work out. How
do you manage that kind of volatility and sort of
keep things somewhat stable at home pretty much structurally is
a good start. So, you know, making sure that you know,
(31:42):
school holidays are kind of reflected upon. And I can
kind of like Duck and dive out of those holidays,
sometimes a whole week, sometimes a couple of days a
week within a summer holiday, or you know, grab the
holidays within that, getting to things like the parents evenings,
kind of booking it in way in advance months and
kind of those concerts and things that you just got
(32:02):
to be in um and then just you know, having
my time managed really really well. And the old days
I used to kind of like scoot around in our
scooter going to different meetings, this set and the other.
And you know, finally after you know, we've been basically
like a blend of startups for the last fifteen years,
and we're a little patchwork quilt of shitty little offices
and and now we have a nice office and it's
(32:25):
like been built for purpose. And we were like twenty
eight different businesses and now we're six and we said
we've had a spring clean. And like you say, we've
had incredible successes but also incredible failures. So I think
the Jamie that was twenty to thirty was different to
thirty to forty. And now I'm forty, I'm kind of
I'm done with a lot of the stuff that you know,
(32:46):
I feel I feel good about being very experimental and
very entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial from my thirties to forties, but also,
you know, a lot fifty pent of it was fucking painful,
and I don't want to do that again. And now
I've got I want to do things differently from my
forties to my fifties. So I think with regards to
(33:07):
sort of time, we just protect it. And it's nearly perfect,
if there is such thing as perfect. I think I
get my weekends unless something goes wrong. I kind of
get eight weeks holiday a year, and then I worked
fucking really hard the rest of the time. And if
it's eighteen nowadays, I'm in. I start my days at
(33:31):
I'm in the office at five thirty and I'm normally
done by nine at night. So I'm the first one in,
I'm on the last one out. So and um, if
I've got to be at a school thing, I will um.
And I've got five kids, so there's a there's a yeah,
it's I'm not going to say it's easy, but I'm
(33:52):
really happy with my lot. I mean, I think you know,
who gives a ship if you work hard doing something
you love, If you've got eight weeks holiday. I mean,
who really a ship and its a way worse than
us on holiday. I mean, you're slave drivers. It's true.
But there's also something I think to be said about,
like interspersing those moments during the day that it's not like, hey,
it's a vacation, Dad's home, but just like, oh yeah, Dad,
(34:15):
I wake up, Dad's around. It's not a big deal.
You know. I'm definitely like a Friday to Sunday dad,
you know, unless it's a holiday, I can't lie. I mean,
if I can try and get you know, they're getting
to an age now where i'll see them at sort
of like eight nine at night if I'm back around
that time. But I've got to put I've got to
(34:36):
put the miles in Monday to Thursday really, and then
Friday I'll try and take the kids home, um, and
we start the weekend, you know, maybe a bit earlier
on Friday. Actually, maybe I'm back at like five six
o'clock and that's when the fund starts. But I'm generalizing massively,
but I think I don't know. It's like, also, I'm
lucky because like my wife doesn't work. She works one
(34:57):
day a week, so she's a very hand or mum um,
and so her being that allows me to sort of
intensify that and I don't feel guilty and I don't
feel their missing out because they've got her. So I
don't know. I kind of feel like when I was
with the first two, I think I wound it down
(35:18):
too slowly. I thought that being away three months of
the year didn't matter. It did so, so not that
it's an issue, but I think like I'm definitely closer
to this to the third and the fourth in a
slightly different way. And of course it's all good, but
like I think like I was around loads more for
for the third and the fourth definitely, Yeah, I thought
(35:41):
it wouldn't matter because they were just little things that
had like memories like finding Nemo. Right, I wanted to, um,
there's something that you said that was really interesting to me,
and it was about like fift of being painful and
you being very entrepreneurial and spring cleaning and that kind
of thing. Obviously, um, like in the last year, there
has been You've faced some last eleven years. Last eleven
(36:04):
years you faced challenges kind of like specifically in the
restaurant world. So like I'm a writer, I'm not a chef,
I'm not a restaurateur, and I'm a dad, and I'm
a was a husband, and like, um, I'm thirty seven now,
(36:25):
and I'm realizing some of my limitations and some of
the ways that I've I've failed, you know, And it's
been a lot of to incorporate a sense of like, hey,
this is something I failed at. Its hard because when
you try to think of yourself, you think of yourself
as a success, and then you have something that you
just frankly funked up. You're you operate on such a
(36:50):
massive scale, like when you funk up, when like something
goes wrong, it's very visible and a lot of people
are affected. At the same time, you have so many
other things going and that if not like the end
of the world. But how have you dealt with seeing
this the struggle and the struggle and store is closing?
And well it's a big question really, I mean I think, um, um,
(37:18):
I've every time I've made some money, I've generally i
have never squirreled away cash, you know, and had like
a kind of smug sort of you know kind of
all Look, you know, I'm theoretically rich, and people are
always saying I am this or that or worth this
or that. Pretty much anything I've ever earned, I've reinvested
(37:38):
in people or ideas or projects. So like, you know,
certain things, um, you know, we created like the Ice
Store of cooking, you know, and it was essentially three businesses,
like a cafe, restaurant, retail and cookery school. You know,
(37:58):
it was massive, it was epic. It was a failure.
That's seven million quid um, okay, So but there was
always that nearly everything I've sucked up on has had
been a gym of genius. So now I have two
cookery schools that are brilliant and I can now replicate
those and the culture within the team and the staff
is genius. And it's kind of the price of a
(38:19):
nice cinema ticket, and it's an hour and a half
of entertainment. You learn some stuff and you eat what
you cook, and it's really civilized, and it's like a
really brilliant expression of middle class learning. And middle class
learning is important also because you know, for certainly a
lot of the States and Britain, that's most people, and
(38:40):
most of those people didn't learn to cook at home
or at school. So there is a disservice to that
kind of sector with regards to sort of the people
that are in sort of hard to reach areas and
struggling and unemployed. And you know, I'd already answered that
question with the Ministry of Food Centers and we have
ten recipes to save your life and you get into
free and we do but just to bring it back.
(39:02):
So you're saying that basically the insn't as you failed,
you've been able to take something something. But also from
my from my generalizing massively, from my twenties and my thirties,
no one believed me. So I spent all my energy
trying to convince people that there was something good in this,
and then I'd go and smash it. And then from
(39:24):
my thirties, literally the thirty birthday, everyone decided they start
believing me out of nowhere. And then I spent my
thirties doing loads of ship that should have been like interrogated,
probably a lot more, but it was all with good
heart and good will. It was nothing commercial or kind
of like I'm going to overtake the world. It was
just like, oh here'n another little cool way to express
like food or learning. And but also I was being first,
(39:48):
and I realized that, you know, being first is kind
of a mug's game. You know, it really is complete.
You know, being first is for the big guys, for
the Samsungs. It's for people that have the back end
to kind to lose, you know, seventeen million quid in
or seventy or seven million quid um so um. So
I think like second man's advantage is definitely And also
(40:12):
like I'm a person, I'm not a business and I'm
not a corporation. So you know, although I have resource
and capacity, like, it's still very much limited. So I think, um,
luckily I've had you know, as long as the pie
chart's favoring success as opposed to drastic failure. I think,
I think everything I'm expressing is actually like part of
(40:35):
whether it's discussed or not, the American dream anyway, that's
it's very I think that my spirit is way more
American than than classic British. But I think with family
in the mix as well, like, um, how did it
I keep it very separate. I think work is you
probably know more about my work than my wife's. And
(40:56):
I actually mean that if you've done like twenty it's
research on me. You probably know more than my wife,
but she's known you before, so to you, you're not
Jamie Oliver chef. Yeah, I mean even like the mechanics
of work and business, So I don't I do not
go home and discuss work when I get home. How
did you deal? I mean, I think one of my
(41:17):
questions is also emotionally you are very like you are optimistic.
I think, like exude optimism, and your career has been
very entrepreneurial, which belies to certain optimism. But when faced
with those kinds of struggles, did it ever shake how
(41:39):
you saw yourself? Not? Really no, because I think I
think also I find it fascinating how humans sort of
class success or failure, you know, whether it's financial or
a test or a cause. You know, so I'm surround
you know, so whether it's dyslexia or whatever, I don't know.
But like I see, I know, I see ship differently.
(42:01):
I mean I I sit down oft them with like
super like classic clever people, and I say, we're going
to cut this meeting because you're all too clever. Let's
just regroup in an hour, because like you ain't seeing this,
they do not. We're not the same. So I think
like the concept of fail or win is very different
to me. Like I think for me, like if you
just take everything I've done and like turn it into
(42:23):
a smoothie, Like there's definite progress. What does progress mean?
In my world? It's you know, more people beginning to cook,
people talking about cook, more conversation about cook, welfare, animal standards, legislation,
like kind of the kind of ecosystem, the environment of
food progressing. You know, did Mayor Bloomberg failed? Yes he failed,
(42:45):
No he didn't. Yes he did, he failed, No he didn't.
He was probably forty months too early. But his ripples
were way more powerful than his splash. The dudes are dude,
you know, Like so like so you're talking ship, I
know better than you. Like, if he hadn't done that
ten other people in ten different counts, you wouldn't have
done X, Y and Z, and like so I'm really
kind of into the ripples of moving the food conversation along.
(43:08):
And therefore, if you're if what I've tried to do,
I'm like, we have acted, and we have been a
start up for fifteen years, and we have been disruptors
for fifteen years. And I think bread and Butter sort
of and belt embraces and kind of like slowly slowly sustainable,
like are you call you call? Like you know business?
(43:31):
I mean, you know, I don't know if there's any
difference between R and D or failure, do you know
what I mean? So you know, like if you look
at what some companies right off as R and D,
you could like cut out those experiments and say that's
a failure. So and so I don't act how you
use it. It's what you do with a failure. Yeah,
(43:53):
I mean, I don't like fucking things up, but I'm
more upset about it when I've learned nothing from it.
And thus far, I've always learned very very valuable things
from everything that I've done. And there's a very obvious
thread to parenting too, which is the idea of risk
and and and you know what you impart to children
(44:14):
in terms of their own experience as their own kind
of adventures and misinventures. And you know, I think about
your story about how you came up and you know,
succeeded at a very early age. But with your children,
do you encourage that? I mean, how do you sort
of balance like the protectiveness that a parent will feel
naturally versus knowing that it's oftentimes those risks and doing
(44:36):
things differently that make the people what they are. Yeah,
I think, I mean, I think, I mean in a
funny position. I mean, I I think that my my
first and foremost passion in parenting is trying to propagate
empathy and people and kindness. You know. I think that
(44:58):
that's for me, that's currency. I mean, honestly, although I
might have a few quid to my name and done
a few cool things, I swear to God, if it
all went tips up, I'd be really happy in a
really tiny home. And I cook nice food with no money.
You don't need loads of money to cook nice food.
And I know that the love of a good family
is worth more than anything. So it's so I think
(45:20):
the concept of currency is not just cash. I think
that's actually the opposite. I think. I'm really I just
want my kids to be kind and I want them
to understand that hard work is is like important, but
doing something that you love is really important. And I think, um,
(45:42):
I struggle it with it a bit because I had
a terrible time at school and I wasn't academic. Um,
so I've got a couple of kids that are academic
and they put the hours in, so I have no
reference point because I wasn't that kid. There are a
couple who are an academic. Yeah, and I have a
couple that struggled badly and guess what, have dyslexia and
see things very differently and including humor and all kinds
(46:05):
of things. And it's really fascinating to see exactly the
same parenting and exactly the same home and the same
family meals, same holidays and the same love. You know,
um churn out these different genetic animals that that are
just completely unique. And I think, you know, generalizing the
(46:25):
male and female differences aside, it's the nuance of the personality.
So you know, but I think, you know, uh, I've
you know, I've I've got kids that are I've got
kids that are up front openly like kind like kind
so kind like a cry, you know, but consistently by default.
(46:48):
And I know that I've got ones that I'm constantly
teaching it, teaching it and and and you have to
re teach it and teach it and so it's a
kind of weird. It's it's a really interesting an age thing,
like I've no, I don't think it's age at all. No,
I shouldn't. I shouldn't, but I think I think what's
interesting is that I don't think it's about age. I
(47:08):
think it's it's um possible. I don't. It might be
their position in the family and the hierarchy, but the
idea of like, you know, having one that's always happy
to compromise, the one that's always happy to take the
back seat or the smaller portion or the slightly ship
shittier ride. You know you can't help, but that break
(47:30):
your heart, you know, And then we both have too,
and like just to see the dynamic, the power dynamic
and the kind of dynamic and two they have five
is like an exponential dodecahedron of And I think it's
but but I think that there also that there is
no perfect So I think, like I think, I think,
don't you know, not sweating the small stuff is is important,
(47:54):
but it's also easier, easier to say, you know, when
you're in the thicker parenting and you tired or just
a bit piste off, or you know, it's you know,
I have complete admiration for my wife. She's very, very patient.
And also we play different roles. And I think that's fine,
you know, Like, you know, I don't mind being a hardass.
(48:19):
I don't mind taking everything out of her bedroom and
locking it away and saying there's you do the and
there's your sheet, like like, I don't mind. I don't
mind that, you know, as long as they're safe and fed,
I'm kind of doing my bit right. So yeah, it's
a nice dever and a lovely pillow. But I think
it's it's um, you know, having rules and stuff. I
(48:41):
think it's kind of important having consequence. I think it's important.
What's hilarious now is like what you know, WiFi is
way more powerful than kind of any kind of like
punishment or naughty step or anything like that. It's just
like everyone was trying to invent things to kind of
put people on the naughty step all you know, tell
them off, and everyone had their way that they had
(49:03):
it done to them when they were a kid, and
it's just like just WiFi off then pass. Yeah. But yeah,
I love Famili It's a beautiful thing. That was our show.
(49:23):
That was our show. That was our show, Foodie, Were
you satisfied it? As a as a food critic, that's
kind of a murderers row you had there below into
Jamie Oliver. You know, quite a combo. I have like
been around chefs and working the chefs for a long time. Basically, Yeah,
(49:43):
it's interesting that they're chefs, but they're really just people,
you know, and I'm just curious about them as people.
I'm sure I was curious to hear from Daniel what
it's like to have two kids in different parts of
his life, and curious to hear about Jamie what it's
like to face failure. And oh, if you have any
questions about being a dad, email me then j d
(50:03):
s at fatherly dot com and they might end up
on air. Also, that's it, that's it. Okay, you weren't
gonna it. Sounded like you had a big reveal coming. Also,
we'll be back next week. Oh got you
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