Speaker 1: Hello, listeners of Four Courses with Jeffrey Z. Carrion. It's
Speaker 1: your host, Jeffrey. I'm here today to share a very
Speaker 1: special announcement. One thing you may know about me from
Speaker 1: social media is that I love meeting my friends from
Speaker 1: the food world at events around the country, and I've
Speaker 1: even made it an annual ritual to interview many of
Speaker 1: them at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami.
Speaker 1: So for the rest of this summer, we will be
Speaker 1: bringing you our Summer Series from the Beach. Eas Friday
Speaker 1: will be publishing short and intimate conversations that I've had
Speaker 1: with some of the top talent in the food world.
Speaker 1: And even beyond, the conversations you'll here for the next
Speaker 1: six weeks were recorded pool side at the w Hotel
Speaker 1: and South Beach as my friends and I enjoyed great
Speaker 1: cigars and magnums of rose as we discussed our past,
Speaker 1: present and future. Without further delay, please enjoy Summer Series
Speaker 1: from the Beach with Chef Bobby Flay. But I'll tell
Speaker 1: you something that happened there. So every night I always
Speaker 1: felt like I was literally drowned and I was sweating
Speaker 1: in the worst way because I was just trying to
Speaker 1: keep up in the restaurant was busy, and this guy
Speaker 1: walks in. He's like, is this the chef? And the
Speaker 1: owner says, yeah, this is Bobby Flay. He looked at
Speaker 1: me and he goes, are you okay? And I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1: It was Jonathan Waxman. He had just open Jams And
Speaker 1: then I went to work for Jonathan for three years
Speaker 1: after that. So you quit this job and went to Jonathan.
Speaker 1: I went to work for Jonathan. I threw away the
Speaker 1: title and the better than average salary and I went
Speaker 1: to learn how to cook. Was he was the first
Speaker 1: person to teach me about good food. It was a
Speaker 1: different world I didn't know existed. I didn't wow. Jonathan
Speaker 1: Waxman was on I think it was on the Upper
Speaker 1: east Side in the seventies, Jams seven. N Who else
Speaker 1: was working there with you? Oh my god? I mean honestly,
Speaker 1: I worked at Jams and Buds and HuLos, which was
Speaker 1: a French biech show. I worked in all the restaurants.
Speaker 1: Every single cook there, Jeffrey was like unbelievable. I mean,
Speaker 1: any one of those people could have run their own restaurants. Everybody, everybody,
Speaker 1: Jonathan was a West Coast chef and he just come
Speaker 1: to New York time. Was the first person to bring
Speaker 1: California ingredients in cuisine, and that's where I learned all
Speaker 1: about the Southwestern ingredients. The first time I saw a
Speaker 1: blue corn that wasn't in a bag and all the
Speaker 1: fresh and dried chilies. That's how I got intoxicated to
Speaker 1: open Mason Rill. I mean, we're talking probably fifteen years
Speaker 1: way ahead of its time. I mean, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the eighties, mid eighties, mid eighties. So Jonathan really seems
Speaker 1: to me, like for me, it's not just for you.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people, he was the like kickstarter
Speaker 1: for a lot of incredible careers. Yeah, and and Jonathan
Speaker 1: has the same attitude today that he had then, which
Speaker 1: was like he was like very laid back. It's hard
Speaker 1: to believe, no, No, seriously, like really laid back. And
Speaker 1: he was just like, um, so let's let's take like
Speaker 1: some like acacia honey and put some like lime in
Speaker 1: it and make a dressing and then put some rugle
Speaker 1: on top of the chicken. All right, Bobby, all right,
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna do. Like that's literally how he
Speaker 1: creates dishes, you know, it's insane, but he does it
Speaker 1: the same way today. I don't think he's ever gonna
Speaker 1: have a heart attack at all. He's just gonna fall
Speaker 1: asleep on day and that's gonna be the end of him.
Speaker 1: It's the South severid a diet to South Severda dinet, right.
Speaker 1: So that was like an incredible turning point for you.
Speaker 1: And then tell me about Miracle Grill and how that
Speaker 1: sort of happened and when when did that happen? Because
Speaker 1: Miracle Grill to me, was like where you were sort
Speaker 1: of discovered even though you've been working your your butt off.
Speaker 1: Miracle Grill was a restaurant in the East Village when
Speaker 1: the East Village was not a safe place to not
Speaker 1: at all, I mean. And I had really started to
Speaker 1: discover that I love Southwestern ingredients based on working for Jonathan.
Speaker 1: And I was working as a line cook just to
Speaker 1: make a living in some kind of like cheesy restaurant.
Speaker 1: And the person on the line next to me said
Speaker 1: she was opening a restaurant, so I just thought she
Speaker 1: was a chef, and it turned out she really wanted
Speaker 1: to needed a chef, and she wanted to open a
Speaker 1: Mexican restaurant, and I said, well, I'd like to be considerate,
Speaker 1: but I'm not cooking Mexican food. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: cook something called Southwestern. And she's like, what do you
Speaker 1: mean and I said, well, it's a contemporary version of
Speaker 1: what xkan ingredients. This was eight that's that's incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's and anyway, long story short, she said, we're hiring
Speaker 1: a seush chef. We've already hired a chef. The chef
Speaker 1: was a woman from Arcadia who had worked at Arcadia
Speaker 1: and she was gonna hire her and I said, well,
Speaker 1: let me cook for you. So I cooked her basically
Speaker 1: food that I learned cooking at Buds, which was Johnathan
Speaker 1: southwestern restaurant that I cooked at. And they were like,
Speaker 1: we'd like to offer you the sus chef job. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want it. They're like, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to be the chef somewhere
Speaker 1: and they're like, okay, well we don't have that job.
Speaker 1: Two days later they called me they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: we want to offer the chef job. So that was
Speaker 1: the beginning of Miracle Grill and I was the chef
Speaker 1: there for three years. Three years and when did you
Speaker 1: get there? Who walked in? Jerry Krashmer walked into Bar
Speaker 1: and Grill and came in and ate dinner and on
Speaker 1: the way out because Miracle Grill just had like a
Speaker 1: little like window, like a little diner window, you know,
Speaker 1: that was the kitchen. It was three of us did everything.
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he said how old
Speaker 1: are you? And I was like, I'm twenty two, twenty
Speaker 1: three at the time. He's like your twenty three. I said, yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes, you're just a baby and walks out after
Speaker 1: you're eating, didn't say it was great, nothing, And then
Speaker 1: like three days later, I get a phone called, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody wants to talk to you about opening your restaurant
Speaker 1: at twenty three. What kind of deal did you say?
Speaker 1: And how did you know what a non disturbance? How
Speaker 1: did you know what all the how did you know
Speaker 1: what kind of deal the cut for yourself? Because I'm
Speaker 1: still trying to learn that. Well. My dad, my dad
Speaker 1: has always been really good in business and always has
Speaker 1: always like you know, sort of kept me in line
Speaker 1: in terms of like his his like motto is like,
Speaker 1: you know, just do the right thing. You know what
Speaker 1: that means just do what you're supposed to do. Don't
Speaker 1: try to make every nickel, you know, the whole. That's
Speaker 1: his very conservative flat which has been really an important
Speaker 1: part of my life, and it just it makes you
Speaker 1: stay the course in the in the right way. And
Speaker 1: Jerry was really excellent to me because he's like, look,
Speaker 1: here's the way it's gonna work. I'll never forget this.
Speaker 1: He said, we're doing this together. I'm gonna take care
Speaker 1: of the financing. I'm going to sign the bank loan.
Speaker 1: You're going to create the menu. We're gonna design the
Speaker 1: restaurant together, and I'm going to get you the ink.
Speaker 1: That's what he said, the ink. Yeah, he kept his word.
Speaker 1: He kept his word, and you kept your word exactly.
Speaker 1: And we we got along because we were both total
Speaker 1: native New Yorkers. And uh. He said, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you a salary, and I'm gonna give you five percent
Speaker 1: of the restaurant to start, five percent to start, and
Speaker 1: then i'm gonna give you five percent over the next
Speaker 1: three or four years until you get to twenty. But
Speaker 1: you work into it. You don't have to put up
Speaker 1: a penny, and you'll you'll make an Okay, living salary wise,
Speaker 1: so you can like live like a human being, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to work to make your make your living.
Speaker 1: Jerry has been in It was an amazing mentor to me.
Speaker 1: Is he still a partner of yours? Yes? He still
Speaker 1: is a partner of mine in Mason Villa in Las Vegas. Yes,
Speaker 1: and everything else. You are you and Lawrence your other
Speaker 1: partner me and Lawrence was Jerry's son. That's an incredibly
Speaker 1: generous deal if you ask me. Well, but like it's
Speaker 1: a smart deal on his part too. And I think
Speaker 1: about that when I'm talking to people that I'm hiring.
Speaker 1: You want people to be happy. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: worth it like to try to beat. Like I always
Speaker 1: say in negotiation. I like negotiating, I do it all
Speaker 1: the time. But and the thing about a negotiation, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, both parties have to be
Speaker 1: happy and have to have a little pinch because otherwise,
Speaker 1: if somebody just absolutely beat you to a pulp, you're
Speaker 1: not You're not gonna be happy about it. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna work. You're gonna wake up every morning, go work
Speaker 1: a hundred hour weeks and feel like ship worth because
Speaker 1: you don't have the right deal structure, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: resent it every day you walk in and you're gonna
Speaker 1: think about it, and then you then you become a
Speaker 1: bad partner and you get then the problems happen and
Speaker 1: you can't get out of this, you can't get out
Speaker 1: of that. It's just awful. It's very rare to find.
Speaker 1: I think talk about performers, it's really very hard to
Speaker 1: find a partner that really understands that where you're gonna
Speaker 1: do this. I'm gonna do this together. We're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna make money, but we're not gonna make it right away.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do something great together. That's hard, especially in
Speaker 1: New York City because it's so expensive. And then also
Speaker 1: I met Lawrence Jerry's son day. Well, he's been my
Speaker 1: business partner and best friend for thirty five year. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't find that. You don't find a
Speaker 1: business partner that that lasts that long that you can,
Speaker 1: you know, go through the wars and and five the victories.
Speaker 1: So how old were you when you opened the Basic Rill?
Speaker 1: Your first five you're a chef partner of one of
Speaker 1: the most successful restaurants in New York City. You didn't
Speaker 1: know yet what was going to happen. No, you sort
Speaker 1: of blew the lid off of food because there was
Speaker 1: no one in New York City. I remember specifically that restaurant.
Speaker 1: Nobody serving what you were serving, not even not even close.
Speaker 1: Maybe on the West coast, Mark was not in the
Speaker 1: East coast. Well. Actually, Arizona two oh six, Brendan Walls
Speaker 1: did a really create great job. I mean honestly really great.
Speaker 1: But that's two restaurants out. I mean that's kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, and what's happened now is like every corner
Speaker 1: is served is trying to like replicate some of the
Speaker 1: stuff you did. I remember coming to your restaurant and
Speaker 1: I just opened probably the Royalton, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was doing kind of upper level French food and I
Speaker 1: would watch the food coming out of the kitchen. You
Speaker 1: would do numbers there, you would I'm like, how do
Speaker 1: you do all these covers? Three and four harder covers?
Speaker 1: And we couldn't believe it. And you said to me,
Speaker 1: the difference between my cuisine, Jeffrey, and your cuisine is
Speaker 1: you do this and I do write this, which is
Speaker 1: like two steps versus six steps I mean, your food
Speaker 1: is so beautiful and intricate. Well yeah, but we try
Speaker 1: to do it like that. But it's really come down to,
Speaker 1: like I think today your food obviously gotten simpler over
Speaker 1: way simply because I want to simpler. It's not because
Speaker 1: old the light did go off, but it was, like
Speaker 1: it's called the labor light. You're performing now as a
Speaker 1: twenty five year old with your own restaurant, and then
Speaker 1: the greatest thing that ever happened to you was probably
Speaker 1: someone walked in the door from Food Network. How'd that happened?
Speaker 1: Food Network? Okay? First of all, Food Network was a
Speaker 1: startup cable channel in Midtown, right. They had a studio
Speaker 1: on I'm gonna say, like street. No, the first one
Speaker 1: was like on thirty eighth Street and like eleventh Avenue,
Speaker 1: and they were like it was ugly. I mean it
Speaker 1: was ugly, and they had no money. So basically, if
Speaker 1: you didn't live in New York and couldn't get there
Speaker 1: by taxi, you were not going to be on the
Speaker 1: Food Network. They were not flying you in from l
Speaker 1: A to be on Food Network, that's for sure. They
Speaker 1: had no money. So it was David rosen Garden the beginning,
Speaker 1: who was it well. David rosen Garden was there, and
Speaker 1: then Robin Leach had a show with a woman named
Speaker 1: Kate Connolly who was his sidekick. It was not a
Speaker 1: good show. I'm just gonna say that. And when I
Speaker 1: say it wasn't good, it was. It was really kind
Speaker 1: of funny because Robin would go to the Knicks game.
Speaker 1: He was a huge Knicks fan, and he would come
Speaker 1: after having a couple of cocktails in the Nick game.
Speaker 1: Like the show was on at the eleven o'clock or
Speaker 1: Midnight Live for an hour and he would have like
Speaker 1: ce celebrities on because who's gonna go at eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: on four on thirty eight Street and eleven for the
Speaker 1: Food Network. Nobody even heard of the Food Network and
Speaker 1: he would interview them for like forty five minutes and
Speaker 1: then the last fifteen minutes. Could you imagine a fifteen
Speaker 1: minute food segment on the Today Show? Was never this huge?
Speaker 1: It's so much can go wrong. He had this sidekick,
Speaker 1: this incredibly upbeat, very beautiful woman named Kay Connolly, and
Speaker 1: she would do the food segments with the chef would
Speaker 1: be a chef like from New York somewhere, would like
Speaker 1: basically take the subway to get there, and they would
Speaker 1: do this these food segments, and so I did a
Speaker 1: couple of those, and then Kate and I, you know,
Speaker 1: got a little friendly and we started dating, and then uh,
Speaker 1: we had a kid. That's exactly how I went. Obviously,
Speaker 1: like so serendipitous. It's like it's opened up so many
Speaker 1: amazing doors in my life. It's crazy. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think any other chef that owns horses, race horses.
Speaker 1: Where did that happen? My grandfather, Willie Flay, Willie fla
Speaker 1: he took me to Saratoga And if you haven't been
Speaker 1: to Saratoga Springs, beautiful during this during this race meat,
Speaker 1: there's really something very magical about It's a beautiful place.
Speaker 1: And so not everything about horse racing is Saratoga Springs,
Speaker 1: but that's the thing that we all gravitate to and
Speaker 1: try to think about in that business. And now, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm in the business. We breed horses. Where do you
Speaker 1: breed horses? Kentucky? Kentucky? So describe like how that how
Speaker 1: that works? Because it sounds so daunting and expensive and
Speaker 1: like complicated. Yeah it is, but it's like a puzzle.
Speaker 1: It's a giant puzzle. First of all, the love of
Speaker 1: the animals number one, and they are just such so
Speaker 1: majestic and powerful and like my favorite thing to do
Speaker 1: is actually be in Saratoga like five or six o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning watching the horses work out, drinking a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee. Like to me, that's I look forward
Speaker 1: to that all year long, Like that week on my
Speaker 1: schedule is blocked off my calendar. Like there's basically nothing
Speaker 1: that can interfere with that at all. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a complicated thing because a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know about it. It's almost like you relate to this.
Speaker 1: If you don't play golf, you don't understand the love
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, right, you and I love to play golf.
Speaker 1: When you hit a golf ball correctly, there's nothing like it.
Speaker 1: It's been a while. You try to explain r exactly.
Speaker 1: You try to explain that to somebody. It doesn't play
Speaker 1: golf like they look at you. Cross side. Horse racing
Speaker 1: is the same thing. That whole business. Really you have
Speaker 1: to become part of it. But when I take people
Speaker 1: to like the Belmont Steaks, but they always take about
Speaker 1: people every year and they've never been to a horse
Speaker 1: race where I take them to Santa Anito or some
Speaker 1: of these beautiful race tracts with Saratoga. They then become
Speaker 1: addicted to it, and not in a bad way. In
Speaker 1: a way that is, they're interesting, much more interested in
Speaker 1: learning about it. That's kind of incredible. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: have you ever been to horse races? No? No, I haven't,
Speaker 1: first of all, and the big race is Jeffrey the
Speaker 1: fashion is it? So you're like, that's something that you love.
Speaker 1: We started off talking about performance. Obviously you performed at
Speaker 1: such a high level of TV directing everything. Opening restaurants
Speaker 1: and opening restaurants are severe on the body as well
Speaker 1: as on on the mind. But I think that really
Speaker 1: the one of the hardest things. I I know, we've
Speaker 1: known the same chefs for whatever, and we see what happened,
Speaker 1: but the wear and tear physically is just tremendous. How
Speaker 1: do you protect yourself from that? I know you're you're
Speaker 1: you're runner and you have written some books about fitness
Speaker 1: and health, one of the first chefs ever, by the
Speaker 1: way to do that. What's your daily routine? Well, I
Speaker 1: just came from Polies class just now, that's where I
Speaker 1: was by the way, plates fixed my back fixed it
Speaker 1: fixed it really. I only started really doing it not
Speaker 1: too long ago, and it's I am now addicted to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because what happens is a chef you're hunched over. And
Speaker 1: also in general, guys do not stretch. They don't and
Speaker 1: so you need something to be stretched you, whether it's
Speaker 1: yoga or the to me pilates is so that's the
Speaker 1: first thing. You don't run run you do run well.
Speaker 1: I run less now, but I I've always been a runner.
Speaker 1: When I was in high school, I was a distance runner,
Speaker 1: and then after I got out of school, I continue
Speaker 1: to run my entire life. I've run for marathons. But
Speaker 1: there is a lot of wear and tear to to
Speaker 1: running every day. And there's a lot of wear and
Speaker 1: tear standing over cutting boards for thirty five years too,
Speaker 1: and your neck in your back. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm an early morning person, so I
Speaker 1: get up very early, and the first thing is I
Speaker 1: do is I put my gym shorts on and I
Speaker 1: go do something something running. So now it's pilate, sometimes yoga,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Because it jumps starts my day. It
Speaker 1: makes me more productive, it opens my eyes up for
Speaker 1: the rest of the day and it just helps me
Speaker 1: be creative and productive. You also watch your diet. I
Speaker 1: remember about ten years ago you dropped quite a bit
Speaker 1: of weight and wait and you just I asked yourself
Speaker 1: what you do when you said, basically, I eat half
Speaker 1: as much. I hate the same thing. I just eat
Speaker 1: my horses different. It's fascinating. I have a philosophy where
Speaker 1: I eat three quarters of what's on my plate as
Speaker 1: as opposed to all of it. That's number one. So
Speaker 1: less caloric INTAKEE calories in, calories out. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: face it, that's a big part of staying in shape, right.
Speaker 1: Number two, if it's not good, I don't eat it.
Speaker 1: And that's a mistake that a lot of people make,
Speaker 1: including myself, where it's like you just eat it to
Speaker 1: eat it, even if it doesn't taste good, Like, why
Speaker 1: should we eat something that doesn't taste good? We have
Speaker 1: those choices, we do. And then here's a big one
Speaker 1: for me. Late at night. You can't eat late at night. Listen,
Speaker 1: when I was at Mason Grill and we were like
Speaker 1: rocking and rolling and we thought we were invincible. We
Speaker 1: would go out after service at midnight, go to Blue
Speaker 1: Ribbon and eat steaks and fried chicken and drinking bottles
Speaker 1: of wine till three o'clock in the morning. Not sometimes
Speaker 1: all that's no problem. You wouldn't gain announced, yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it got out of hand. I gained weight. That's where
Speaker 1: I would get out of out of shape. I can't
Speaker 1: do it anymore. You can't eat it late at night.
Speaker 1: You can't