Speaker 1: This is cut to It with Steve Smith Senior at
Speaker 1: production of The Black Effect and I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Steve Smith Senior and I'm John and this is cut
Speaker 1: to it. Good do it, Good do it. They's getting
Speaker 1: down to do it. Good do it. We asked the
Speaker 1: questions you always want to know, but no one ever asked,
Speaker 1: let's cut to it. You ain't heard am about it,
Speaker 1: then we're about to let you know. It's all. You're
Speaker 1: just getting back in the swing of things. Took a
Speaker 1: little break. Um, took a little break, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. Um can't. Nobody saidhi to me. I'm just
Speaker 1: sitting here, Oh Joe, Hey, fellas, what's going on? Stage Joe?
Speaker 1: Stage Joe, Joe, every guy? I mean my own Mike
Speaker 1: Hot because I want to be cart it since I
Speaker 1: missed y'all, Mike hutting backdoor, Joe. I'm already ready to
Speaker 1: be done with stage. That's not my stage name, Mike Hot.
Speaker 1: That's that's a that's a different ballgame, son, all right. So, um,
Speaker 1: so I had to I with the pandemic. I really
Speaker 1: kind of Me and my wife had a great understanding
Speaker 1: conversation was like, look when the pandemic is over everything
Speaker 1: we want to do traveling wise, let's do it. Because
Speaker 1: one of the things I feel like the pandemic did
Speaker 1: do it exposed blind spots and myself. I can't really
Speaker 1: say about my wife or buddies. I just say for me,
Speaker 1: and in that blind spot, I'm not really a camper.
Speaker 1: So I did some camping, camping, camping, yes, camping, like
Speaker 1: like backpacking and like r V camping, like a smart s'more,
Speaker 1: like a pull up to an RV camp and clean
Speaker 1: out the toilet and grind up the items in the toilet.
Speaker 1: It's like some MTV road Rules type stuff. No, not
Speaker 1: no role rules the Smiths. No, I didn't see that show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's new w brocome back. So so one of so
Speaker 1: one of the things I did was I went back on.
Speaker 1: I went back home and I saw some things. Um,
Speaker 1: and it was good for man. And every time I
Speaker 1: go back home. I used to go back home a
Speaker 1: lot when I was in the league. But when I
Speaker 1: go back home now, um, it's a different resett and
Speaker 1: in it, uh it energizes me, It resetsed me, gets
Speaker 1: me back on my focus to where Uh I come
Speaker 1: back hot, I come back focused and so, um, one
Speaker 1: of the things it did is it triggered and reminded
Speaker 1: me something that I experienced when I was young, when
Speaker 1: I was probably in the seventh eighth grade. And so
Speaker 1: it leads me to, um, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm
Speaker 1: always big on words and definitions, and um, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask ask both of you, two gentlemen that I
Speaker 1: called friends and brothers, what's your family heirlooms? And so
Speaker 1: I'll read up and give you the definition of where
Speaker 1: the heirloom is. So it says the first one a
Speaker 1: a piece of property such as a deed or or
Speaker 1: a chapter that descends to the air as an inseparable
Speaker 1: part of inheritance of real property. Two which I feel
Speaker 1: like this applies to something of special value handed down
Speaker 1: from run generation to another. And for me, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I realized what was handed down to
Speaker 1: me was I was handed down whether my family knows
Speaker 1: it or not. And something that I noticed is to
Speaker 1: take away that part of day dreaming, taking away of
Speaker 1: short change in yourself. When I was when we were
Speaker 1: I believe either eight or my freshman year, sophomore year.
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly what great I was in And
Speaker 1: the reason I started my foundation is my mom was
Speaker 1: fleeing a domestic domestic violence situation. And when my mom
Speaker 1: was fleeing that domestic violence situation, um um, some folks
Speaker 1: came on some church, a church that you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of went through here and there, um came home.
Speaker 1: So when she came home, she was told we told
Speaker 1: my mom came home and say, hey, we gotta go
Speaker 1: pack up all your stuff. Uh. And so when she
Speaker 1: packed up all her stuff, we had to leave. And
Speaker 1: we lived in a motel for about a week and
Speaker 1: I had to catch the bus and and then after
Speaker 1: that I went with an aunt. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say that this is his name because a little my family,
Speaker 1: uh so of my family listens to the podcast. But
Speaker 1: this aunt made me and my mom and my brother
Speaker 1: when we came there to kind of stay until he
Speaker 1: until my mom's husband, who was not my father's name
Speaker 1: was Sylvester Morris. Sylvester was very abusive. Sylvester was he
Speaker 1: was at the actually at that time he was before
Speaker 1: they you went through t s A became TS. He
Speaker 1: actually used to smuggle, he used to clean the money
Speaker 1: and basically he had going on a trip and be
Speaker 1: strapped with ten thirty thousand dollars worth of cash and
Speaker 1: then taking on site and so we used to get
Speaker 1: that money. Um. But he was also he smoked crack.
Speaker 1: He smoked weed to keep during the week. But he's
Speaker 1: smoke cracking. Every time he would go do one of
Speaker 1: those money cleaning deals on the airplane, he get missing
Speaker 1: for a couple of days. And so when he got
Speaker 1: missing this last time, my mom we was like, we're
Speaker 1: out of here. And so when we left, Um stayed
Speaker 1: in the motel and then we went with my aunt
Speaker 1: and my aunt made us clean her her duplex or
Speaker 1: her apartment in our house whatever it was. And they
Speaker 1: had three bear rooms and she made us basically to
Speaker 1: pay the rent. That was our way of pain. And
Speaker 1: why do I say that is more if I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that in a desperate time with family, my aunt
Speaker 1: made us clean her house so we can stay there.
Speaker 1: And then my mom was like, you know, Steven, if
Speaker 1: you want to make it to the league, because I
Speaker 1: was doing bad, and obviously school was a little bit
Speaker 1: of the last thing was on my mind at that time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and none of my boys back home. I was going
Speaker 1: to school with new they just thought I still lived
Speaker 1: on was half Cambridgeway, and none of them knew that
Speaker 1: we were where we were living, and so I got
Speaker 1: on a different bus stop and all that stuff. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing good at school. My mom said, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to do what you wanna do,
Speaker 1: go to school, you know, go to you want to
Speaker 1: play ball, like you said playing college. You gotta pay attention. Man,
Speaker 1: you need steve an. You need to tighten up. And
Speaker 1: Mom asked me, what do you want to do? So
Speaker 1: I want to go to the league. And I never
Speaker 1: really put it in this perspective, but I remember she saying,
Speaker 1: she told me, you need to have a more realistic dream.
Speaker 1: And bro, that crushed me. If I'm being honest to
Speaker 1: pissed me off. It pissed me off to the point
Speaker 1: of this aren't now at forty two years old. When
Speaker 1: I was in the league, she would ask me for stuff,
Speaker 1: asked me for this, asked me for that. I ain't
Speaker 1: never sign a ship for her and still having our
Speaker 1: want because I only can speak for what I know
Speaker 1: and what I've experienced, and only things that's tough is
Speaker 1: I hate the fact that we in a time where
Speaker 1: I needed someone to encourage me more. She should own
Speaker 1: my dream. And then when I made it, now she
Speaker 1: want to partake in it. And I realized, and I
Speaker 1: go back in it. And I didn't realize I even
Speaker 1: had that wound. And you know, and God has helped
Speaker 1: me deal with it. Is I realized and she showed me.
Speaker 1: She sold me short. She told me to stop daydreaming
Speaker 1: when at the time you're supposed to day dream, when
Speaker 1: you're a little kid, when your boy freshman, you get
Speaker 1: you you fleeing from your hut, your mom's husband, bad habits.
Speaker 1: That's that's all I got. And she took that away
Speaker 1: from me, hm m hm. And I hate the fact
Speaker 1: that too many adults we poop on young men and women,
Speaker 1: especially people of color, amongst our own selves, that we
Speaker 1: don't we we sure change ourselves to day dream. And
Speaker 1: so I'm telling I'm telling you, you know, till the
Speaker 1: day I died, Man, I ain't gonna shut change myself
Speaker 1: no more. I'm not gonna tell myself stop dreaming. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the family heirloom and some of
Speaker 1: my family members, because of our circumstances, we may have
Speaker 1: done to each other m hm, unconsciously that what we've
Speaker 1: handed down generation and generation has said, oh you want
Speaker 1: to be this. Uh, that's too big of a that's
Speaker 1: too big of a ask. We don't do that. I
Speaker 1: mean you asked about the heirlooms. I can't really tell
Speaker 1: you an heirloom. I know, physical, physical wise, we don't
Speaker 1: have some Some families have Bible, some families have things
Speaker 1: they've passed down. I don't have none of that. For me,
Speaker 1: UM and my wife, what's big for us is breaking
Speaker 1: generational curses. And that ain't answering your questions, but for but,
Speaker 1: but but for me, it is UM being able to
Speaker 1: pass my pass on to my kids, financial literacy, giving
Speaker 1: them UM a nest egg, being able to the generational
Speaker 1: trauma and the hurt and all these things that I
Speaker 1: hear you talking about that you experienced and and now
Speaker 1: you're able to UM almost look back and deconstruct what
Speaker 1: it is and where it came from. That kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that is very president of my family. And now, UM,
Speaker 1: you know you you've shared some stuff. I haven't sewn
Speaker 1: this podcast before, but I lost my dad a few
Speaker 1: weeks back, and even in that, what's happened is I'm
Speaker 1: able to look back the same way I'm talking in
Speaker 1: with that is be able to look back and be
Speaker 1: able to deconstruct not only his life and his impact
Speaker 1: on my life, but how it's affected my life. And
Speaker 1: all that does is really reinforced what I believe. Um
Speaker 1: I'm called to do, and I know I speak for
Speaker 1: my wife when she says the same thing is is
Speaker 1: breaking curses. So that's what I can because that's literally
Speaker 1: what this time in life is, is that generation after
Speaker 1: generation after generation of hurt, generation after generation after generation
Speaker 1: of pain, generation after generation after generation of let down,
Speaker 1: a poverty, or any of these other things that do
Speaker 1: tend to play not just not just families of color,
Speaker 1: but a lot of families. So that so that tells
Speaker 1: me my fair layerylan, my family heirloom. Until mine was
Speaker 1: a little bit of the negative thinking I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: mine's peace. That's what your family I want to know.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm not want to that's I'm going to
Speaker 1: pass along people that beats my coin collection. So no,
Speaker 1: just sit you know, Gerard and I had the luxury
Speaker 1: of you know, knowing you pretty well and knowing where
Speaker 1: you came from and knowing about your life and every
Speaker 1: once in a while I get a little nugget or
Speaker 1: a little kernel of something like, ah, I didn't know that,
Speaker 1: but now it makes sense because when I see you
Speaker 1: interact with the public and even in private, the way
Speaker 1: you treat people, and even you know, I go back to,
Speaker 1: you know, a banner that we may have talked about
Speaker 1: about some of these rising upcoming athletes. You were still
Speaker 1: positive to them, even though you did it in your
Speaker 1: own way. You didn't poop on their dream that they
Speaker 1: were going to be an athlete or they were gonna
Speaker 1: play for University of wherever. So you've taken what you
Speaker 1: said and you continue to live and it's not just
Speaker 1: a piece of verbiage from your history. And then folks
Speaker 1: that know you know what drives you like you know
Speaker 1: you were that dude. You know, look at all the
Speaker 1: athletes we've had. You know, Steve's a dog. Well, there's
Speaker 1: things in your upbringing that made you that person today.
Speaker 1: So I know it sucks, and I know it it
Speaker 1: stung you in a little bit. But the the glad,
Speaker 1: the glass half full, pieces um that drive and could
Speaker 1: partially could have been. Man, I'm gonna prove you wrong.
Speaker 1: Whether it was a coach, whether it was your aunt
Speaker 1: whomever it was. Um. So, yeah, that's horrible and that sucks,
Speaker 1: but what it's done for you that like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that, Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: hurt these people or hurt these youngsters. So, UM, I
Speaker 1: appreciate that story. And then you know, g looking at you.
Speaker 1: You know from the story you want to do is
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't have any family heirlooms, but you want
Speaker 1: to create them with your family growing up. Um. Mine
Speaker 1: is a material item. There's a couple of material items.
Speaker 1: Is a to this day, I still have this call
Speaker 1: it's like a Rambo knife. It's not a coin collection.
Speaker 1: I was trying to lighten the move a little bit,
Speaker 1: but yeah, thank you. Uh, it's this Rambo knife that
Speaker 1: my dad had. My dad was in the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: for many, many years, um, and he had this knife
Speaker 1: that when he was a young adult and he went
Speaker 1: in at sixteen years old. His mom actually signed him
Speaker 1: over and said, here you go, he's yours now. So
Speaker 1: my dad was in the military for many, many years
Speaker 1: and and for whatever reason, he kept this knife. So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'll be fifty years old next month,
Speaker 1: so I've had that knife as long as I can remember,
Speaker 1: and we take it camp in and we you know,
Speaker 1: I do tasks with it. But even when I just
Speaker 1: go cut a string, like I envisioned in my mind, Like, man,
Speaker 1: you know, Papa Joe was what we call my dad,
Speaker 1: Like what did he do with this? Some things we
Speaker 1: might not want to know, but I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the things that he did allows us and others to
Speaker 1: do what we do today, you know. So I'm very
Speaker 1: loyal to military. Even my wife. You know, we have
Speaker 1: her father who's passed away. You know, we have his hat.
Speaker 1: So you know, our family's very military driven. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny my daughter's sitting in the studio right now,
Speaker 1: Eva and like we want to pass it on to
Speaker 1: her because she knows the type of individuals they are.
Speaker 1: But like, any time I get that knife in my hand,
Speaker 1: it's a piece of my father. Any Time we look
Speaker 1: at that hat that that my wife Kim has, it's
Speaker 1: like that's a piece of her father. So those are
Speaker 1: heirlooms that aren't monetary value things, um, but they symbolize
Speaker 1: something to us. So that's kind of when you set heirlooms.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing that I thought about, like, man,
Speaker 1: I got that knife, and you know Kim has that hat.
Speaker 1: So it's it's just really cool to think what each
Speaker 1: heirloom means to each family and what they want to
Speaker 1: do with it. So you know, it's that's really neat.
Speaker 1: So you know both of you all, Like I said,
Speaker 1: I learned something every every time we talk something new
Speaker 1: about you guys, So it brings to me. Usually we
Speaker 1: do it at then, but it's the beginning when a
Speaker 1: man's willing and eager God will join in. H Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've been willing to eager to reshape chain age
Speaker 1: my perspective and thinking, and then doing that, God joined
Speaker 1: in and showed me I gotta let some things go.
Speaker 1: So today letting go. What my aunt said, I let
Speaker 1: it go. I'm exposed myself, but you're still inside in
Speaker 1: that jersey, are you? Nope? Who? We got first segment
Speaker 1: it's called get ice Stuck. It's our version of icebreakers.
Speaker 1: All right? Are you ready? Maybe? Okay, buckle, it's on you.
Speaker 1: So if you fail, it's your faults nutshell? All right?
Speaker 1: What type of sugar do you prefer? Brown sugar? Oh?
Speaker 1: White sugar? Brown sugar always brown, always? But you know
Speaker 1: you can turn white sugar into brown sugar sort of
Speaker 1: camel that. I know some dudes and their name is
Speaker 1: Pooky Richard and a whole bunch of the names that
Speaker 1: have turned some white sugar some brown sugar. Well, I
Speaker 1: think white sugars want to be brown sugar. The truth
Speaker 1: is like, brown sugar can't be turned into white sugar.
Speaker 1: So there's the authenticity. Our talent acquisition manager is not
Speaker 1: liking this conversation. You're trying to wrap us up. Nope,
Speaker 1: no can do brown sugar baby, right, all right? So one,
Speaker 1: you being a bona fide cook, one thing your family
Speaker 1: loves for you to make, but realistically you're like, do
Speaker 1: I really have to do that again? Oh m? She said, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's several things. It's a couple of things. I mean, truthfully,
Speaker 1: I see my mom so rarely that I'm always very
Speaker 1: happy to do whatever she wants me to do. Normally,
Speaker 1: it's like a giant pile of like celery and onions
Speaker 1: and carrots for Thanksgiving, Like she has given up doing
Speaker 1: the prep. She doesn't let me cook anything. It's all
Speaker 1: like Linda's Thanksgiving. But I am the hands that do
Speaker 1: all the chopping She's like, you can just get it
Speaker 1: done a whole lot faster. So I just I come
Speaker 1: into my mother's house seeing like mounds of produce that
Speaker 1: she needs me to break down for her, which I
Speaker 1: truly do not mind doing. Flex. That's all you're doing
Speaker 1: is prepping exactly. She wants me nowhere near the actual
Speaker 1: preparation of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving us like mother specific. Right, it's regional,
Speaker 1: it's mother's specific. I don't want my Thanksgiving when I
Speaker 1: go to her house. I want her Thanksgiving's like taking
Speaker 1: him a quarterback and putting them in right tackle kind
Speaker 1: of Yeah, team sucks. Dan, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I've heard and read you're spice junkie. I am what
Speaker 1: should go to spice? I have a jar of Vietnamese
Speaker 1: chili in my fridge at all times. It changes because
Speaker 1: I get I'm also I get very bored very quickly.
Speaker 1: But right now it's um. This jar of Vietnamese it's
Speaker 1: literally just red Ti chili that's been chopped up with
Speaker 1: a little bit of vinegar, salt, and sugar. What kind
Speaker 1: of sugar? Steve is furiously taking palm sugar? Actually, so
Speaker 1: it's not it's um. It's from it's from palm trees,
Speaker 1: so sugar from palm trees. We have a beat sugar
Speaker 1: at the house. Look at that. When I tell you
Speaker 1: I like to cook, girl, you beat sugar. What do
Speaker 1: you use it for you? It's like you on an
Speaker 1: episode of Chopped right now? Yeah, well we use it.
Speaker 1: I use it as a sugar suct to when I
Speaker 1: do the homemade pizza you pass? Does it turn your
Speaker 1: dough color like your dough? It's actually the bet sugar white.
Speaker 1: What does the chef think about infotshers like cookwear and knives.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't like my counters in my
Speaker 1: kitchen jumped up with a lot of stuff. I like
Speaker 1: them clean. I always feel like in cooking, whether it's
Speaker 1: professionally or at home, I feel like your head feels
Speaker 1: like your workstation looks like if stuff is just like
Speaker 1: everywhere and there's no room to work and it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel clean, you just feel really, you know, disorganized and
Speaker 1: not focus in your head. So I don't like a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff on my counters. I disagree with that.
Speaker 1: You don't like the I like the engages. Sometimes I disagree.
Speaker 1: I disagree with the splattering of papers because that's my
Speaker 1: office at my office home and get done. If I'm cooking,
Speaker 1: then it's a mess all over the place. I think
Speaker 1: it's just I didn't used to be that way before
Speaker 1: I started cooking professionally, and now cooking professionally becomes and look,
Speaker 1: I'm literally sitting at a desk with my assistant and
Speaker 1: I am, there's ship everywhere. She's looking at me like
Speaker 1: I'm the second coming of the devil. But there's stuff
Speaker 1: everywhere right now. So I am. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: dying on the hill of being the most organized person,
Speaker 1: but when I cook, I do need things organized. So
Speaker 1: back to the gadgets. Um, you guys are dudes, and
Speaker 1: dudes love gadgets like it's proven, it's science. It's just
Speaker 1: in you, guys, it's in your d n A. Um,
Speaker 1: I have been so I am. I'm totally they're profiled
Speaker 1: right there, Absolutely no gadget guy. Yeah, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: correct with it. I just delayed reaction like I was
Speaker 1: a baby hand on the stove. It's hot. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you standing up for your gender not being profiled. I
Speaker 1: will say there are obvious exceptions, but more than generally,
Speaker 1: you guys really like gadgets, So anyway, you're not disproving
Speaker 1: my point. Um there. I'm so I've been so anti
Speaker 1: gadget for so long that really coming around to them
Speaker 1: has been uh Like my first rice cooker I bought
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this we can like cook perfect rice and not just
Speaker 1: said it and walk away like that was my Like
Speaker 1: my head exploded. I've been cooking for twenty years, so
Speaker 1: I'm not generally a big gadget person. I will say
Speaker 1: I got my butt caught in a competition, and I
Speaker 1: can't go super far into this because it's about to air.
Speaker 1: Um where there was a very common gadget that I
Speaker 1: had to use, and I really was lost, Like everyone
Speaker 1: has one right now? Can we like say it? Because
Speaker 1: I'm picking up what you're putting down. It's you know,
Speaker 1: my favorite chicken is made this way? M Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ye lost. I did not use it. I had to
Speaker 1: be I it was to listen. I'll put everything in
Speaker 1: the air for her. I've heard. I'm very close to
Speaker 1: get anyone. Does your does your house smell like fried food?
Speaker 1: That's what I want to Nope, No, we're black, and
Speaker 1: if it did, I wouldn't know. We may tell you
Speaker 1: I worked as a private chef once and for a
Speaker 1: very well known black family, and I'm made the stake
Speaker 1: of frying chicken inside and oh I it was. I
Speaker 1: nearly lost my job. You can let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: What you can do for black folks. You cannot mess
Speaker 1: up no chicken. I didn't screw up the chicken. And
Speaker 1: the house smelled like chicken. They were like outside, get
Speaker 1: that outside. Yeah, we have to take a break and
Speaker 1: the morning thing, we gotta pay some bails checks. I
Speaker 1: love cut to It and I love it even more
Speaker 1: when you download us and subscribe, and you can follow
Speaker 1: us on social media too, Smithie where where at cut
Speaker 1: to It? On Instagram? What about Twitter? At cut to It? Facebook?
Speaker 1: Cut to It feature in Steve Smith Sr? What about online?
Speaker 1: And you can follow Louis at cut to It podcast
Speaker 1: dot com where you can buy merch and you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to this wherever you listen to podcasts. I got
Speaker 1: all my answers questions. Um, yeah, I got all my
Speaker 1: questions answered. That's what I'm here for. A brother, cut
Speaker 1: to a podcast dot com? Where are you from and
Speaker 1: the place you call your hometown? Um, it's one of
Speaker 1: the hardest questions, we're gonn answer. Hometown is Boston. I've
Speaker 1: been here on and off for the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's where It's what I absolutely considers home. Um, where
Speaker 1: I'm from. His harder. I grew up in a military family,
Speaker 1: so I was born in Germany. It was Germany, Texas, Oklahoma, California, Greece,
Speaker 1: and then that rotation all over again. UM, so everywhere,
Speaker 1: nowhere but Boston's home. Growing up as a milit verry kid,
Speaker 1: you moved so many times. Yeah, if you can go
Speaker 1: back in time, is there one place that you if
Speaker 1: you had to choice, you would have chosen to stay
Speaker 1: there and grow up. Oh what a good question. No
Speaker 1: one's ever asked me that, thank you. Um, different places
Speaker 1: for different things, I'll be honest. So what tell us girl, Greece? Um.
Speaker 1: And just this year it was so lovely, um, living
Speaker 1: there with such an immersive experience. UM. Culinarily, even before
Speaker 1: I knew what culinarily even meant. UM, I understood what
Speaker 1: hospitality and being really taken care of unders like meant
Speaker 1: for the first time. UM. And that's just culturally like,
Speaker 1: that's what the Greeks are. UM. And it was just
Speaker 1: the most stunning place physically, um for me specifically, UM,
Speaker 1: I mean I was lived in California for a very
Speaker 1: long time. I moved from the South from Oklahoma to
Speaker 1: California kind of somewhere right before high school. And had
Speaker 1: I not done that, I think it would have taken
Speaker 1: me a very but much. It would have taken me
Speaker 1: a lot more time to figure out who I am
Speaker 1: in terms of me as a person, um, like my
Speaker 1: own my sexuality, like all of the things that I
Speaker 1: ultimately know as myself as a whole. It would have
Speaker 1: taken a lot longer to get there because we were
Speaker 1: really ensconced in like deep deep Southern sort of Bible.
Speaker 1: Not particularly and this is not saying religion is bad
Speaker 1: at all, It was just very um. Our church was
Speaker 1: not the best place. Like there's a lot of Shenanigans
Speaker 1: that went on, So getting out of that was really
Speaker 1: good for me. So probably they're Greece or California, but
Speaker 1: ultimately I left California on my own. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all of those things are It's such a good question,
Speaker 1: and I think in terms of fantasy that the question
Speaker 1: would be Greece. But I'm so grateful for the moves
Speaker 1: that were made when they were made, and the choices
Speaker 1: that I I made in my life, I just continue
Speaker 1: to get what I needed along the way. So as
Speaker 1: lovely as the question is, I wouldn't change it. So
Speaker 1: what was Tiffany phasing like as a kid? Oh Jesus,
Speaker 1: Um sounds like precocious for sure. Um, singularly driven, Like
Speaker 1: if there was something that I wanted to do, I
Speaker 1: just it was a hundred miles an hour towards that
Speaker 1: thing until I was good at it or I stopped.
Speaker 1: So like I was an All American cheerleader. Um, I
Speaker 1: just you know, just NonStop. And then at some point
Speaker 1: in high school that sort of stopped and I started
Speaker 1: to I was in a kind of weird program in
Speaker 1: high school, and I had a really influential teacher in
Speaker 1: my life, and I started to learn how to really
Speaker 1: think critically and understand you know, the arts and literature
Speaker 1: and the world around me and what things meant politically,
Speaker 1: and um, understanding how does see the lack of justice
Speaker 1: inequality in the world. And that began to kind of
Speaker 1: really change my life. Um. And I also became like
Speaker 1: a serious troublemaker. Um. Just the worst jokes, practical jokes, ormaker.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like so this is a pretty good example.
Speaker 1: Um I was. I stopped cheerleading because I just, um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a particularly healthy environment that there was a year.
Speaker 1: It was my soft junior year, um, and I was
Speaker 1: an All American. I wasn't allowed to be on varsity.
Speaker 1: The varsity cheerleaders came to us at the end of
Speaker 1: the year and said, Hey, we're gonna have a banquet.
Speaker 1: You guys are gonna cook for us, set it up,
Speaker 1: clean up, plan, all the things. And the team looked
Speaker 1: at me because I was allowed mouth and they were
Speaker 1: ready for me to be like absolutely not. And I
Speaker 1: just said, yeah, you guys have worked really hard, let's
Speaker 1: do it. So I made the world's largest batch of
Speaker 1: ex Lax brownies for but I didn't know. But I
Speaker 1: didn't know is that there was faculty and teachers there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't know they were coming. So
Speaker 1: like a Comedy Central movie, running down for spill all that,
Speaker 1: spill it all. Well, Um, who got sick? Obviously, Um,
Speaker 1: there was someone who had some sort of like vowel
Speaker 1: issue anyway, and so it's like hauled into the principal's
Speaker 1: office and the vice principal's office, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I was told that I was attempted murder and I
Speaker 1: tried to kill this woman. I mean they didn't go, yeah,
Speaker 1: to try and store. Well, I wasn't confessing to the crime,
Speaker 1: so they were trying to give me. They trying to
Speaker 1: treat her like a black person, that's what I call.
Speaker 1: So they set me outside of the office and let
Speaker 1: me see every one of the cheerleaders walking one by one,
Speaker 1: and they questioned everyone. Then you got to interrogate it. Yep.
Speaker 1: So and I watched that. I knew who snitched. I
Speaker 1: knew I still to this day know who snitched. Well, no,
Speaker 1: but yes, it was a care It was a Karen
Speaker 1: she has Yeah, I'm not gonna she knows almost dear.
Speaker 1: She looked. She said, it's still an ex Brianie with
Speaker 1: her name on it. Oh, yes, there is. Let her
Speaker 1: Let her walk in one of my restaurants. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I would never do that in my restaurants, into her
Speaker 1: house slowly. Yeah, she see her its own site. Bet there,
Speaker 1: run it, run it. So with all that, what was
Speaker 1: the most challenging moment you overcame growing up? There was
Speaker 1: a lot of things I think. Um, I really think
Speaker 1: it was just a culmination of constantly moving right and
Speaker 1: like you're the new kid, and it's fun for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and then all of a sudden you're not. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, when people are more concerned about what people
Speaker 1: think of them. And it's high school and everyone's clicked
Speaker 1: out and in their little safe spaces and there are
Speaker 1: groups of people that feel good. So that was hard, um,
Speaker 1: which is it was also good for me. I learned
Speaker 1: how to really get outside of myself and and find
Speaker 1: a way to allow people to let me in, to
Speaker 1: try and be charming and funny and too essentially sell
Speaker 1: myself as as someone who could be a good friend
Speaker 1: and who could be someone that you wanted to be around.
Speaker 1: So I'm less good at that now as an adult,
Speaker 1: but um, I was pretty good at it when I
Speaker 1: was growing up. So I mean that was tough. My
Speaker 1: parents divorced. That was tough. But that's all like just
Speaker 1: normal stuff that I think happens in the life of kids. Now, um,
Speaker 1: you know, early adulthood. Top Chef was really hard, Like
Speaker 1: the first season of Top Chef was just really really hard.
Speaker 1: So you're a chef now and world we're now competitive
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, But what did you for myself?
Speaker 1: Being an athlete, I always wanted to play football, always
Speaker 1: want to play sports. And it sounds like for you
Speaker 1: that was not initially what you inspire to be. So
Speaker 1: grown up, what did you want to be? What did
Speaker 1: you what did you desire to be? I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a lawyer. Yeah, I wanted to be a lawyer.
Speaker 1: The thought of cooking was not ever even a twinkle
Speaker 1: in my eye, UM until much later. I had worked
Speaker 1: in restaurant since I was fourteen, and just really from
Speaker 1: making milkshakes to um washing dishes, to host a buser
Speaker 1: server bartender. UM. But I'd never really thought about going
Speaker 1: into the kitchen. It never really interested me until it
Speaker 1: did so I, UM, Yeah, I went to college and
Speaker 1: I was a competitive debater and I wanted to be
Speaker 1: an atte me. What was it about being attorney that
Speaker 1: interest you? And then it was it before after you
Speaker 1: almost got put beyond the wall? It was probably during
Speaker 1: and after. UM. I don't think one inspired the other.
Speaker 1: For me, it was a sense of UM finding justice
Speaker 1: in the world and being able to advocate for people
Speaker 1: who did not necessarily have UM adequate representation and advocacy.
Speaker 1: That was, um, as you know, appropriator excellent, as they should.
Speaker 1: You're going to college, you decide that you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you want to possibly look at being a lawyer, criminal
Speaker 1: justice justice. Yeah, you dropped out of college, you went
Speaker 1: to work as a bartender. Take us through that process. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: I never stopped working in restaurants even when I was
Speaker 1: in college. It was always the way I was paying
Speaker 1: for things. Um, for my life. I didn't have a
Speaker 1: come from a family that was able to pay for
Speaker 1: college or float me in any way or support me. Um.
Speaker 1: They loved me like crazy, but we didn't have any money.
Speaker 1: So um, anything that any decisions I made or things
Speaker 1: I wanted, including my education, was up to me. So
Speaker 1: I always worked in restaurants. Um. I was in school,
Speaker 1: and I was starting to enjoy school less and less. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a lack of creativity in in school. That
Speaker 1: and I'm also just not I'm not someone who sits
Speaker 1: still very well. Um, I'm just kind of a generally
Speaker 1: like busy anti physically. Like physically, I'm like an anti person. Um.
Speaker 1: So school didn't fit that well for me. I loved
Speaker 1: being challenged intellectually, but it was really just a lot
Speaker 1: about sitting still that I hated. So UM, I started
Speaker 1: just spending more time at the restaurant and making more money,
Speaker 1: and UM, I started dating my first girlfriend. And UM,
Speaker 1: I always thought I would go back to school, that
Speaker 1: I was just gonna, like take a break. Parents don't
Speaker 1: let your kids take break from school. They'll never go back. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not true. People do. So I took a break
Speaker 1: and my first real relationship ended, and I was pretty gutted.
Speaker 1: And my brother, I was living in Boston and he
Speaker 1: was um at Emerson and he said, you know, you
Speaker 1: can always come live with me, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm fine. And then a couple of weeks later, I
Speaker 1: packed a couple of Duffel bags and left to Boston
Speaker 1: and started working. I opened a Ritz Carlton here, like
Speaker 1: a new hotel, and I was really in over my head.
Speaker 1: September eleven happened, and I was just really unhappy and
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was out there. I knew that
Speaker 1: I was sort of managing a restaurant in a bar
Speaker 1: was more than I wanted to do at the time.
Speaker 1: So I just kind of, you know, it was new
Speaker 1: to the city, and I wanted to take time in
Speaker 1: Bartend and just hang out and get to know the city.
Speaker 1: And that did not make itself available to me. So
Speaker 1: I ended up taking a job as like a busser. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember the GM saying, really, do you want this job?
Speaker 1: Like you've been managing restaurants, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: just whatever. I just wanted to be at this specific
Speaker 1: restaurant and really didn't even know why. Um. And I
Speaker 1: ended up kind of from buster to runner to the
Speaker 1: inside expeditor, which is a really interesting position. It's the
Speaker 1: liaison between the kitchen and the dining room. It's the
Speaker 1: person that kind of calls the shots, tells the kitchen
Speaker 1: when to cook things, when to fire things, sends things
Speaker 1: out to tables. And I ended up doing that and
Speaker 1: really watching the kitchen and not knowing what I was
Speaker 1: even asking asked if I could learn a station, and
Speaker 1: you know, got laughed at. It was a professional kitchen,
Speaker 1: Like there was a bunch of like young guys running
Speaker 1: around that were straight out of like the CIA and
Speaker 1: New England Culinary School and like really great schools, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know how to chop an onion.
Speaker 1: So after like lots of begging and making fun of
Speaker 1: me laughing at me. My chef allowed me to start
Speaker 1: on a station, and I know that he thought that
Speaker 1: I would quit. Um, and I wanted to. I was
Speaker 1: really really terrible at it, like like really like just laughable,
Speaker 1: like the basic things that I just had no idea.
Speaker 1: Uh um. And again like that sort of competitive, maniacally
Speaker 1: focused person comes out of me where I either get
Speaker 1: good or I get gone. And um, it took me
Speaker 1: a while to get good. It took me probably a
Speaker 1: couple of years. Um. But it was this thing that
Speaker 1: I found myself no pun intended. It was hungry for
Speaker 1: it all the time. It was endlessly fascinating, It was physical,
Speaker 1: it was creative. Um, whatever level I could reach, there
Speaker 1: was always one more to go, right, Like there was
Speaker 1: no like I've gotten to this place and I know everything.
Speaker 1: Like the more I knew, the more I understood, how
Speaker 1: much more there is to know. And I still feel
Speaker 1: that way about it. Let's talk cooking. Yeah, let's do it, okay,
Speaker 1: she smiled to Yeah, So you said something and I'm
Speaker 1: going to repeat some things and I see some I
Speaker 1: see some a pattern here. We're talking about you're talking
Speaker 1: how you you know when Thanksgiving and your mom with
Speaker 1: the poultry and and and just all the little side items.
Speaker 1: And you said, you know, you like to have your
Speaker 1: station when you're cooking. Yep, a certain way. And you said,
Speaker 1: but you you're either you have you don't like to
Speaker 1: stay still. You always have to moving. So you're a
Speaker 1: d A D D shish And she's also seems like
Speaker 1: a little bit of um O C d ish and
Speaker 1: having everything she likes to be organized and everything in order.
Speaker 1: The diagnosis is real. We don't just break down football.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's clear, But let me lay down on this
Speaker 1: couch quick, go ahead, listen. I'm I'm an older cat
Speaker 1: in in this in this game, so my rates about
Speaker 1: three fifty and our if you're effective, it's a bargain.
Speaker 1: So let's go. You're laying on a West All couch
Speaker 1: is expensive. I know, right, Um, but you said some
Speaker 1: things I just picked up. So you add all of
Speaker 1: those issues that you are, and you add the competitiveness.
Speaker 1: You add military moving around, always having to prove your point,
Speaker 1: always not settling for what someone else puts on you,
Speaker 1: and like you said, always hungry. So when you decided
Speaker 1: and you woke up that day, you said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put myself out there. I know, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about station cooking, prepping, you know what
Speaker 1: it looks like. And I'm gonna if I fail. I failed,
Speaker 1: But I'm a felt on my terms. What really happened
Speaker 1: when you woke up that day and you said, you
Speaker 1: know what, damn, I'm cooking today. I'm going to attempt
Speaker 1: to change my career in the food industry and to
Speaker 1: the point of where I like to call them the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts, the wheels of the engine that you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times people want to be the engine
Speaker 1: or I want to be the headlights. But you can
Speaker 1: have great spark plugs, you can have a full tank
Speaker 1: of gas. But if those love nuts and those wheels
Speaker 1: ain't on a car, what car are you going? What
Speaker 1: are you driving? You ain't going nowhere? Never seen a
Speaker 1: calm bricks stroll down the street? Now, yeah, um, they were.
Speaker 1: I can give you two very specific instances. Um, and
Speaker 1: you know you you learned to crawl before you walk,
Speaker 1: walk before you run, run free jump, So I the
Speaker 1: learning to crawl was tough. It was really um In
Speaker 1: some ways, it was really humiliating because kitchens are inherently competitive.
Speaker 1: I was one a very few I was want of.
Speaker 1: I can tell you three women in the kitchen of
Speaker 1: the staff of probably like thirty. UM. And I didn't
Speaker 1: even really think about that at the time. I didn't
Speaker 1: wasn't considering like the gender and melance. UM. I was
Speaker 1: just trying to stay alive. I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was doing. I had all these guys running around me
Speaker 1: that were like not only you know, they were competitive,
Speaker 1: and they were in hindsight insecure. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: at the time. And when people are insecure, they behaved
Speaker 1: poorly towards each other and they put each other down
Speaker 1: to try and find some sort of you know, bs
Speaker 1: packing status. So UM, it was really tough. And I
Speaker 1: was constantly a target of people's of some people's um
Speaker 1: you know iron and um bad behavior and and in
Speaker 1: some ways I let that drive me as much as
Speaker 1: it pissed me off. So I remember very specifically. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like I just started cooking and like I
Speaker 1: had found this glove that fit perfectly. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: a Cinderella story. I just I just combined Cinderella and
Speaker 1: O J there. I don't know how it happened. UM,
Speaker 1: I said, glove that fit, and then I said Cinderella story.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where that came from, so so um,
Speaker 1: but I was like, like what she did? I did? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I almost quit, almost equitted myself. So um. There was
Speaker 1: a Saturday night that I just you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: good at it and I would need help from like
Speaker 1: my chef. And I was also working a really busy station.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of pickups on my station. It
Speaker 1: was monster and um my chef or so chefs would
Speaker 1: have to help me out every night and bail me
Speaker 1: out of the weeds and help me get my orders out.
Speaker 1: And I remember there was a Saturday night I came
Speaker 1: in like I was always coming in early, but I
Speaker 1: came in super early, rearranged my station. I took um
Speaker 1: tables and blocked myself in on my station where I
Speaker 1: could not leave. So I had like all of what
Speaker 1: we call mes and plus, like all the things that
Speaker 1: are prepped and ready to go to be able to
Speaker 1: cook your food when you come to the restaurant. I
Speaker 1: had stacks of mes and plaus. There's no way I
Speaker 1: was running out of anything. I was. I had just
Speaker 1: trouble shot for everything that had happened to me up
Speaker 1: to that point that was like an impetus to me succeeding.
Speaker 1: And that night just something clicked and I remember thinking like,
Speaker 1: no matter what, I'm not going down and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to need help. And you know it was it
Speaker 1: was just that mental step of saying, I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 1: And there was no like skill set that I woke
Speaker 1: up that day with that I didn't have the day before.
Speaker 1: It was just the sheer will of not failing. I
Speaker 1: think it's about that time. Just take a little breather, good, good,
Speaker 1: getting down to do it good. Hey Gerard, why did
Speaker 1: you get that T shirt? You mean, oh yes, I
Speaker 1: got it from cut to a podcast dot com where
Speaker 1: we have exclusive merchandise shout out to our guys at
Speaker 1: seven oh four shot. But yeah, you can go on,
Speaker 1: buy you a T shirt, subscribe to us wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. So then, when did you realize that
Speaker 1: cooking could be a career. I was very attracted to
Speaker 1: the idea of what I was watching around me as
Speaker 1: I was cooking. Um, I knew that I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: like a normal nine to five or kind of career.
Speaker 1: I knew I wouldn't have a normal life. I just
Speaker 1: sort of inherently knew that. Um. I was attracted to
Speaker 1: the idea that I could be creative and work with
Speaker 1: my hands in a really intelligent way that could make
Speaker 1: people happy, and I could also work. And it's very
Speaker 1: much like being on a sports team, like working a team.
Speaker 1: UM so it's it's a solo effort and it's also
Speaker 1: in a team all at the same time. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I think about two years into cooking, I looked up
Speaker 1: and thought, okay, like this, this is really what I
Speaker 1: want to do, um I mean, and I was obsessed
Speaker 1: with it, Like I would go home. This is before
Speaker 1: I mean, it's probably like a O L dial up, right.
Speaker 1: I did not have a compare at home and have
Speaker 1: the money. So I would go home at night and
Speaker 1: mostly people would go out drinking, and I would just
Speaker 1: kept a notebook on me, and every term that I
Speaker 1: heard that I didn't know, I would write down because
Speaker 1: I didn't I was shamed into not asking, you know.
Speaker 1: I'd ask what this meant, and people be like me,
Speaker 1: I don't know. So I stopped asking and started writing
Speaker 1: things down. And so I bought Larusku Astronomy, like the
Speaker 1: clearance version of it at my local bookstore, and I
Speaker 1: would go home at night and I would just open
Speaker 1: it up and start reading. One word after another would
Speaker 1: lead to something else. And so I was studying like
Speaker 1: just fastidiously during that time. And you know, that was
Speaker 1: the idea that like the more I knew, the more
Speaker 1: there was to know, and um, yeah, the world just
Speaker 1: opened itself up to me. And then it really did
Speaker 1: fit like a glove. It became my life and started
Speaker 1: to give me all these things that I enjoyed in
Speaker 1: my life, like satisfaction of others and um, creativity and
Speaker 1: being able to There's something about cooking as a profession,
Speaker 1: especially when you're aligned hook you leave feeling either completely
Speaker 1: defeated or completely accomplished like you have there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of middle ground. You don't leave going like that
Speaker 1: service was kind of okay, Like you have a great service,
Speaker 1: or you have one that's really painful. And the idea
Speaker 1: of like stringing together multiple days and months of like
Speaker 1: having great services became an addiction and an obsession. And
Speaker 1: then you know, as I was able to do that,
Speaker 1: like working harder and harder stations, I got to a
Speaker 1: point where like I just you couldn't weed me like
Speaker 1: you couldn't you could put me anywhere and let me
Speaker 1: learn the station for a week or whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: and there just was no You could not weed me.
Speaker 1: You couldn't put me in the weeds. And that was
Speaker 1: like one of the most powerful feelings I've ever felt
Speaker 1: in my life. Like I remember working on a station
Speaker 1: in Nantucket. It was the fish station. The guy next
Speaker 1: to me, as foot as he was, couldn't cook on
Speaker 1: the hot app station. I had the entree pickups and
Speaker 1: I was helping him with three of the app pickups,
Speaker 1: and you know, as frustrating as it was, I still
Speaker 1: could not be weeded. And I remember that that feeling
Speaker 1: was so deeply satisfying. That does mean I knew everything.
Speaker 1: That meant like I had figured out how to line
Speaker 1: my station up and how to work and cook things
Speaker 1: in a way that was like strategic and organized and fast.
Speaker 1: Obviously your work life, it's cooking, but you can't necessarily
Speaker 1: check out when you get home, or can you do?
Speaker 1: You know, how do how do you take off the
Speaker 1: chef how do you take off the chef hat? You know?
Speaker 1: Or do you just like you know what I'm cooking?
Speaker 1: All day when I get home microwave. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of hot dogs in my life. Um,
Speaker 1: I I'm not gonna lie a lot of hot dogs. Um,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold mustard in it. Hold on, asshall man,
Speaker 1: did you just say hot dogs in your life? Because
Speaker 1: I eat like a freaking child. It's awful. Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've been needing to change my eating habits for years.
Speaker 1: You have, and you eat? You eat hot dogs and
Speaker 1: chicken Nuggetscaroni cheese. You got the brother, yes, yes, um.
Speaker 1: And not only that, I'll put them in the mirk
Speaker 1: wave until they get triveled and blow up. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. It's the worst. I know. Stop.
Speaker 1: Are you serious? Yeah? Yeah, No. I'm really grateful when
Speaker 1: people want to cook for me, and it happens rarely
Speaker 1: because because I am a chef. Yeah, I don't want
Speaker 1: to cook for you. It's like it's a problem. My
Speaker 1: girlfriend isn't is like one of the best pastry chefs
Speaker 1: in the country. Like, girl, girlfriend, I'm talking about your ass.
Speaker 1: I don't want to cook for a world. You're gonna
Speaker 1: red line my ships to watch me play? Who wants
Speaker 1: to watch his daughter? Me? Is six? My son do
Speaker 1: six play catch when the football players right in the
Speaker 1: front porch. In fairness, but you enjoy playing catch with
Speaker 1: your daughter, of course you do. It's a totally different thing.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't have to be performative. I think it's
Speaker 1: what we're saying. Do I performatively cook for myself? No?
Speaker 1: I don't. Nope, I'll do like project cooking, especially cooking
Speaker 1: like during the pandemic, like me, because because that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and sugar packets, syrups and sugar packets, butter and sugar packets.
Speaker 1: That's what it used to be. Um. Project cooking is
Speaker 1: like multi step, multi day cooking, right Like if I'm
Speaker 1: making CARNI test, it's like four or five days. Um,
Speaker 1: if I'm making bread or doing something another slight flex
Speaker 1: just I am not a good baker. I'll say that
Speaker 1: I'm a really terrible baby. Actually does have a weakness
Speaker 1: I do. Oh god, I can't think it's true. It's
Speaker 1: too much brown sugar. Too much brown sugar. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't really, Um, unless I've like told myself that I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat healthy and that lasts for about three
Speaker 1: and a half days, and then I'll cook at home
Speaker 1: for myself. So with that being said, so is cooking
Speaker 1: an escape for you? It can be. It exists into
Speaker 1: are different worlds, right, So, like cooking professionally is completely
Speaker 1: dialed in, focused under a clock to get it the
Speaker 1: best it could possibly be to our guests, the best
Speaker 1: way we possibly can cooking at home is music and
Speaker 1: a glass of wine. And you know, I still try
Speaker 1: to be as efficient as possible and not make a
Speaker 1: giant mess. But it's a different thing, Like it's you know,
Speaker 1: there are so many things that live under the same
Speaker 1: umbrella that really are like very different things. So when
Speaker 1: I'm cooking at home and I am actually cooking at home,
Speaker 1: it's super enjoyable to me. I really, I still love it, um,
Speaker 1: I always will um. But it's just an entirely different vibe,
Speaker 1: totally different feeling from cooking at work. So then what
Speaker 1: is your escape? What's your meat time? Oh lord, um,
Speaker 1: you really think I would have found it over the
Speaker 1: past year interview? Yeah, Um, when working out, Like, it's
Speaker 1: definitely meantime, Like I go to just a different place
Speaker 1: in my head where I'm able to um, kind of
Speaker 1: get to a point where I'm not thinking that much. Um,
Speaker 1: that's when I know, like, whatever it is class i'm
Speaker 1: taking or workout is not working. If I'm like in
Speaker 1: it and I'm super thinking about work, I know that
Speaker 1: it's not. I'm not ready to be Um. I spend
Speaker 1: a good amount of time in Cape cod like on
Speaker 1: the ocean. I go clamming. That's not a euphemism. I
Speaker 1: literally dig for clams in the ocean. Um, how do you?
Speaker 1: How do you dig for go out? You you probably
Speaker 1: google me have it. I'm five nine with tattoos. Brothers.
Speaker 1: You should next time you're out, let me know, take
Speaker 1: you clamming. Um. So I'm gonna take you up on that. No,
Speaker 1: you should. It's the most fun. Okay, here's what what's
Speaker 1: my clothes? Because a Jordan's so I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: literally in ripped jeans and Jordan's right now. So for
Speaker 1: the culture, here we go. Got my ones on, um solis,
Speaker 1: but what's like what is clamming? Though? Like I don't
Speaker 1: I'm I'm being funny, but I absolutely have no idea
Speaker 1: how to claim it is? Um, We'll put you in
Speaker 1: like full waiters. So like you know, we call him
Speaker 1: wellies here like essentially like rain boots, like heavy duty
Speaker 1: rain boots and like some sort of waterproof pant or
Speaker 1: overall kind of thing um, and usually just a sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: And then depending on how cold it is, go out
Speaker 1: at low tide. So essentially like the ocean has completely
Speaker 1: receded like four as far as the eye can see,
Speaker 1: like miles out in the Myrtle Beach. So I'm I
Speaker 1: know where I know the tide change in exactly. So
Speaker 1: go out about an hour before low tide and then
Speaker 1: into low tide. Um. I usually walk about a mile
Speaker 1: and a mile and a half out, um, and I
Speaker 1: have a rake with me and a bucket, and I
Speaker 1: just start digging. And if you find a couple together,
Speaker 1: you have to be a certain size. Um, you usually
Speaker 1: find a pretty good patch. Then you just keep going
Speaker 1: and you keep digging until you have, like you know,
Speaker 1: the state a lotted amount of clams that you can have. Wow, say,
Speaker 1: I never know, Yeah, yeah, it's um. You know there's
Speaker 1: oysters out there, sometimes there's base gallops. So but it's
Speaker 1: just it's you and the ocean and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it just connects you. So for me, it's it connects
Speaker 1: me so deeply to like time and place where I
Speaker 1: am and how we get our food and um, it's
Speaker 1: really and it's gorgeous. It's just beautiful to stand out there.
Speaker 1: Do you. So I'm just thinking, do you do any
Speaker 1: gardening or anything? I do? I have a garden um in.
Speaker 1: I do mostly things that I know that I will use.
Speaker 1: A ton of Gardening for me sort of started um
Speaker 1: and I've done some farming projects, but for personally, gardening
Speaker 1: for me started with like the annoyance. I use a
Speaker 1: lot of herbs in my cooking, whether it's home or
Speaker 1: whether it's professional like, but when I'm home, I get
Speaker 1: really irritated at paying like two for a bunch of herbs.
Speaker 1: It just makes me crazy. So I grow a lot
Speaker 1: of herbs. I grow things that I know that I'm
Speaker 1: going to use. Tomatoes, herbs, chilies, those really are like
Speaker 1: the kind of the crux of the three things that
Speaker 1: I grow at home. My wife picked up gardening. She
Speaker 1: she does uh which I really wasn't into um on
Speaker 1: the garden, but she got me hooked on. We do turkey, bacon,
Speaker 1: turkey um ham and she does rainbow chart. I love
Speaker 1: rainbow chart. So it's like a really healthy version of greens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's dynamic. So with all the demands from you running
Speaker 1: a restaurant, creating a museum, the concept managing people. How
Speaker 1: do you manage your mental health? It's a great question. Um.
Speaker 1: The exceedingly honest answer right now is I don't know
Speaker 1: that I'm doing it very well. Apprecial's been honest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I go. I think there's this idea that
Speaker 1: mental health is like and managing it is a place,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate it is asking because it's such an
Speaker 1: important topic. I feel like the perception is managing mental
Speaker 1: health is like fixing a broken leg, right, like, um
Speaker 1: that once you go through all the work to do
Speaker 1: it and you get there, it's set. You're done, You're
Speaker 1: running and walking like you used to and it's fine. Um.
Speaker 1: That's not how mental health works at all. It's a
Speaker 1: constant process. And um, you know, much like rehabbing something,
Speaker 1: if you stop that rehab process, whether it's not eating
Speaker 1: well or drinking too much, or sleeping not sleeping enough
Speaker 1: for um whatever, those those pillars are that keep you healthy. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to maintain really positive and strong mental health.
Speaker 1: So we have seven restaurants. We have closed all but
Speaker 1: one of them. Um, to sort of hang on and
Speaker 1: hibernate so we can open again. Um, and right now
Speaker 1: we are at the point where we're looking to reopen
Speaker 1: all of them, and you know, opening six restaurants at
Speaker 1: one time is daunting, and so that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: something that's on my mind a lot right now, and
Speaker 1: I don't know that, um until those things are done. Like,
Speaker 1: it's really important for me to find ways to eat healthy,
Speaker 1: work out, take care of myself, drink less, drink lots
Speaker 1: of water, like and doing those things along the way
Speaker 1: will be helpful in this journey. It is my habit
Speaker 1: always to like hold my breath and try and swim
Speaker 1: underwater and not treat myself well until I feel like
Speaker 1: I can come up for air when it's all over.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's habits that I developed in my
Speaker 1: twenties and early thirties that no longer serve me in
Speaker 1: my forties. So, um, when I'm managing it well, I'm
Speaker 1: in therapy, I'm working out, I'm eating well, and I'm
Speaker 1: not drinking. Tiffany, we really appreciate your it's been you guys.
Speaker 1: This really was fun. Thank youre really I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And watching a person you know, I know for myself
Speaker 1: watching people on TV. There can't you know you you
Speaker 1: flip the coin heads. They could be a dirt bag Tails,
Speaker 1: they could be a genuinely awesome person, and I would
Speaker 1: have to say, I gotta go with Tails. You've been
Speaker 1: a genuine awesome person and love watching what you do.
Speaker 1: But now knowing the individual that I'm seeing John work,
Speaker 1: it just makes me want to just go back and
Speaker 1: go back and look at the shows and see now
Speaker 1: from what perspective you're coming from. So thank you for
Speaker 1: the opportunity of Oh my gosh, that was a hell
Speaker 1: of a compliment. You guys. This has been really really
Speaker 1: fun and interesting and the questions have been so so good,
Speaker 1: and you guys are really fun and easy to talk
Speaker 1: to and to thank you for that. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your time. Um and UM, I'm on
Speaker 1: East Coast and I love cooking. Um, I'm not a
Speaker 1: great cook, but I'm cooking well enough that I've tricked
Speaker 1: one beautiful woman into uh enjoying my cooking, and then uh,
Speaker 1: I brainwashed the other four my kids. So that's good enough.
Speaker 1: That's all you need, all I need. But I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it and appreciate your time, so you know, hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll run back into each other. But I would love that.
Speaker 1: I would love that. You are a unique person, you
Speaker 1: are well worth it, you are competent, and most of all,
Speaker 1: your lovable. I'm Steve Smith Singor I'm Gerald Little John
Speaker 1: and this is cut to It. Cut to It with
Speaker 1: Steve Smith Senior. That Is Me is a production of
Speaker 1: Cut to It LLC, Baltol Creative Media, The Black Effect
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio. For more podcast from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio Apple Apple Podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows from Cut to It.
Speaker 1: Executive producer Steve Smith Singor co hosts Gerard Little John,
Speaker 1: talent and booking manager Joe Fusci, Social media team Wesley
Speaker 1: Robinson and John Show from Balto Creative Media. Cut to
Speaker 1: It is produced by Brian Baltaschevic and Meredith Carter, with
Speaker 1: production assistance by Alex Lebrec. Production Coordinator Taylor Robinson. Theme
Speaker 1: music by Alex Johnson, lyrics and vocals by Anthony Hamilton.
Speaker 1: You ain't heard about it, then we're about to let
Speaker 1: you know. It's all