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. Each 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 my dear, dear friend, Chef Michael Simon.
Speaker 1: How do you do it all? First of all, let's
Speaker 1: talk about your organization, because everyone's fascinated by that. What
Speaker 1: is I mean? We all say, it's a random bunch
Speaker 1: of misfits that we all come together and when we
Speaker 1: do right, we create. Oh yeah, it's the people rest
Speaker 1: business in the land of misfit toys, you know. And
Speaker 1: and I think that's the one thing that you have
Speaker 1: to accept right away. I've been cooking. I've owned restaurants
Speaker 1: for twenty five years with my wife Liz and our
Speaker 1: business partner Doug. Same business point you've had the whole time.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I learned early on was
Speaker 1: one of the keys I think in life, not just
Speaker 1: in the restaurant business, but is at some point your
Speaker 1: career you get the confidence to surround yourself with people
Speaker 1: that know what you don't and then you need to
Speaker 1: listen to those people you know, as hard as it
Speaker 1: is to do. It's hard because I think when you're younger,
Speaker 1: you think you know everything, and then you know, as
Speaker 1: you age, you realize maybe I didn't know as much
Speaker 1: as I thought I did. Um. But I think the
Speaker 1: key to being to have some kind of success in
Speaker 1: life in general is is really to put people around
Speaker 1: you that know what you don't know, and then listen
Speaker 1: to what they have to say when they're advising you.
Speaker 1: On the things that you don't know, and you have
Speaker 1: a great team behind you to do that well. We
Speaker 1: have great people and we have longevity. Like our corporate
Speaker 1: chef Derek, who's here this weekend with me, has been
Speaker 1: with me seventeen years. My culinary director Katie has been
Speaker 1: with me fifteen years. Frankie Ritz who you know who
Speaker 1: now ran runs Angeline, has been with Liz and I
Speaker 1: for twenty seven years, you know. So we have a
Speaker 1: lot of fifteen to fifteen year plus employees that has
Speaker 1: allowed us to grow and give them more responsibility as
Speaker 1: we've grown, which really, I think in the for our
Speaker 1: restaurant side of things, has that's been that's been our
Speaker 1: secret sauce? When did you know? When did that switch
Speaker 1: go off for you? Fifteen years ago, twenty years ago
Speaker 1: when you knew that, you know, the New York market
Speaker 1: was something you wanted to be in and that you
Speaker 1: saw a market not only that could have been in
Speaker 1: the food world, but now mostly in the television world.
Speaker 1: Because you really have done both very well and for
Speaker 1: a long time. You have There's not many chefs that
Speaker 1: have as many establishments and have as many TV successes
Speaker 1: as you have. What was that time was it when
Speaker 1: you came to New York with ches? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there were like success and failures a little bit
Speaker 1: like anything else, and that aha moment kind of always happens. Gosh, Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: I really don't know. I don't know if I've had
Speaker 1: a full high yet in my life. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we've like we opened a restaurant, we opened Lola
Speaker 1: twenty almost twenty four years ago. We didn't open our
Speaker 1: second restaurantuntil ten years later, you know, and now since
Speaker 1: then we've opened fifteen more. But you know, we waited
Speaker 1: ten years to get the number two, and then we
Speaker 1: grew and then like my life changed, My life changed
Speaker 1: started to change a lot. When you know, I was
Speaker 1: in Cleveland and having some success in Cleveland as a chef,
Speaker 1: and then in Food and Wine named me one of
Speaker 1: their best new Chefs, which no one from Ohio had
Speaker 1: ever won that prior to that. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: then I'm on a national stage with you know, chefs
Speaker 1: from other cities, and I go to the Aspen Food
Speaker 1: and Wine and that something, you know, sort of that
Speaker 1: was the ten year anniversary, so they put the chefs
Speaker 1: on the cover. Back then it was the first time
Speaker 1: chefs had ever been on the cover. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, having lunch with Drew and with
Speaker 1: Thomas Keller and Charlie Palmer and all, you know, all
Speaker 1: these chefs that you looked up to when you were
Speaker 1: younger and Danielle and that was a special moment. And
Speaker 1: then shortly after that, I started becoming a guest on
Speaker 1: Food Network shows. And then the first show I hosted
Speaker 1: on Food Network was a show called The Melting Pot,
Speaker 1: and that was I believe in ninety eight, maybe late
Speaker 1: in the early ninety nine, and I you know, I've
Speaker 1: been doing things on an offince Food Network ever since.
Speaker 1: And I never looked to be on TV. I just
Speaker 1: ended up on TV. And I think that's maybe the
Speaker 1: difference on you had successful restaurants, and he always fell
Speaker 1: to you you didn't like, you know. And I still
Speaker 1: think of myself as a chef, like people go, I'm
Speaker 1: a chef, you know, So I always think of myself
Speaker 1: as a chef before anything else. And then I mean,
Speaker 1: the chew happened like it was hilarious, Like Gore Nelly
Speaker 1: had called me up one day, were two days away
Speaker 1: from opening up a restaurant, and you know, he said,
Speaker 1: h hey, I want you to read for the show
Speaker 1: I'm doing for ABC. I said, what. He goes, it's
Speaker 1: called a chew It's gonna be a daytime talk show.
Speaker 1: ABC is green lit it, but they want us to
Speaker 1: get different hosts. I go, when do you need me
Speaker 1: in New York? He said tomorrow. I said, we're sending tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I'm eating up a restaurant in the day. He goes,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send he had a plane. He goes, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna send you a plane. You're gonna get in the plane,
Speaker 1: you're gonna come here, you're gonna read, and I'll have
Speaker 1: you back by dinner. Wow, that's fairytale. Yeah. Crazy, And
Speaker 1: then fift episodes later just incredible. Yeah, really really wild.
Speaker 1: So your daily routine performance is something to me that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: We talk about working hard, it's not just about working hard,
Speaker 1: it's about out performing someone. As we know a lot
Speaker 1: of hard workers. We could not get where we are
Speaker 1: without people that work really hard. Nope. But there's a
Speaker 1: different strata of performance that happens five years, ten years,
Speaker 1: fifteen years, twenty five years, in your case, thirty years,
Speaker 1: thirty five years in a case of Alpha Portal you
Speaker 1: know everything and and John George, it's just kind of remarkable.
Speaker 1: How do you start your day when you wake up
Speaker 1: and I'm responsible for X y Z, I gotta get better,
Speaker 1: but your mind, Like I wake up every morning, I
Speaker 1: usually I'm up at thirty, which I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of us are at my double Espresso right there, double. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what I always do in the morning, even before
Speaker 1: like I read the news, is I make my list
Speaker 1: for the day. And I do it old school. I
Speaker 1: don't do it on a phone or a computer. And
Speaker 1: I always look from the list to day before to
Speaker 1: see if there's anything I didn't get done. So I
Speaker 1: kind of make my I make my list here's what
Speaker 1: today entails. And I just started, like even if there's
Speaker 1: only four things on it, you make a list. Make
Speaker 1: a list. But that's one of those things that creates
Speaker 1: a performance test for you. Don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: it because you've written it down, so you've imprinted it
Speaker 1: in your head. It's on a piece of paper. I
Speaker 1: like to do a list and I have it on
Speaker 1: my calendar, so I have a backup, because I don't
Speaker 1: trust backup. I don't trust the calendar, the iPad. I
Speaker 1: don't trust it. It's getting older. We could lose the list.
Speaker 1: The list exactly. So do you exercise every day? What
Speaker 1: do you do? I know you do yoga. I don't
Speaker 1: do as much yoga as I used to. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: do meditate every day every day. So you know, I
Speaker 1: usually make my list that I'm meditate, what type, what
Speaker 1: type of menute? I just do like deep breathing meditation. Simple, simple,
Speaker 1: very like what I learned how to do in yoga.
Speaker 1: I just I always do that. Um I lift like
Speaker 1: two days a week. I stretched one or two days
Speaker 1: a week. And you know, I keep it pretty simple
Speaker 1: like that. You've been working on. You worked on a
Speaker 1: book that was incredible best seller New York Times bestseller, Congratulations.
Speaker 1: It talked about your your lifelong battle with the rheumatory
Speaker 1: authoritis and lupus. And now you sort of really took
Speaker 1: your diet and wrestled it to the ground basically without
Speaker 1: you moderated it a lot, but you wrestled it to
Speaker 1: the ground. And I noticed I was watching your your
Speaker 1: reset show you did on Instagram, and it was day
Speaker 1: I think he did ten days, ten days, uh, and
Speaker 1: that was fascinating because it was a very engaging information
Speaker 1: medical but it was also really delicious food. It was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem like it's a stretch or you're not
Speaker 1: like you're not missing anything. No, we want to come.
Speaker 1: I mean if I got diagnosed with r A and
Speaker 1: external lupus when I was like twenty, and I think, like,
Speaker 1: so you've been just eating and drinking the entire life. Correct,
Speaker 1: And I think what happens with when you're young, you
Speaker 1: just grunk through can a little more. You're like, this hurts,
Speaker 1: who cares? Let's go? This hurts? Who cares? Let's go?
Speaker 1: And then as you get a little older, you get
Speaker 1: a little acre And I mean we're chefs. So at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I'm like, I know that
Speaker 1: there's probably things I could do with adjusting my diet
Speaker 1: and it will affect the way I feel. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just kind of common sense. And unfortunately, I think
Speaker 1: what's happened with food now is eliminating certain things from
Speaker 1: your diet has become trendy not healthy. Correct. You know,
Speaker 1: like people are like, I'm gluten free, why are you, Celia? No,
Speaker 1: I'm just gluten free, man. I can't gluten, you know,
Speaker 1: and then that's so they go on this gluten free kick,
Speaker 1: and then they go to the grocery store and they
Speaker 1: buy a bunch of process food that says it's gluten free,
Speaker 1: but then they're really just eating a bunch of process
Speaker 1: ship and they're not going to feel better than a
Speaker 1: lot of rice. That's actually was the worse thing louting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then we went through the whole like fat free Atkins,
Speaker 1: like we could name as when you are a chef
Speaker 1: of a restaurant, you can name every fat diet doesn't
Speaker 1: last for about five years and customers make you insane.
Speaker 1: You know, for five years we didn't sell a single
Speaker 1: carb in the restaurant, and now it's carbs of back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like it just so goes for this thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, let's do this in a way where
Speaker 1: I just I'm not going to write a cookbook if
Speaker 1: the food is not good, if I can't make food
Speaker 1: that's gonna make me feel better than taste. Right, Quite honestly,
Speaker 1: I'd rather feel like ship because I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go through my life eating not tasty food. But you
Speaker 1: you're Sicilian and Greek, so if you just went back
Speaker 1: to your roots. Isn't that half well for me? So
Speaker 1: the way that the reset works is you pretty much
Speaker 1: eliminate everything for ten days everything ten days? What is everything?
Speaker 1: You're basically a vegan for ten days vegan to figure
Speaker 1: out what you can add back. And then after the
Speaker 1: ten days are up, as a carnivore, after the ten
Speaker 1: days are up, you're angry, but you feel very good,
Speaker 1: like your body feels good, but you're pissed because you
Speaker 1: want to steak. Like that's how pretty wauch how I
Speaker 1: kind of was feeling every day, Like I'm thinking to myself, Man,
Speaker 1: my wife is a vegetarian and she's been vegan, and
Speaker 1: she doesn't seem anger. She must be angry inside. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but like, and so after the ten days
Speaker 1: is up, for two days, you start adding back one
Speaker 1: trigger at a time, Like how did you know what
Speaker 1: triggers they were? Sugar? For the elimination, you eliminated meat,
Speaker 1: all meat, no fish, nothing, all meat. You eliminated all meat.
Speaker 1: You eliminated sugar, dairy, alcohol, and wheat and wheat for
Speaker 1: ten days, I mean ten days. You could do anything
Speaker 1: for ten days, um, well, not at our age, not anything,
Speaker 1: but you could do most things attended. So when you
Speaker 1: say trigger, what's a trigger for you? Minor dairy and sugar?
Speaker 1: So you found that out. I found it out because
Speaker 1: when you said you didn't know, no, I didn't know
Speaker 1: because I was eating everything, So how was I supposed to?
Speaker 1: So you loved cheese, love cheese. You've ben eating cheese
Speaker 1: since I've known you. I mean, you're cheese cheese and
Speaker 1: I love ice cream, by the way, like my favorite
Speaker 1: thing eating the world. So you don't eat cheese and
Speaker 1: ice cream anymore, very rarely. But what I explained in
Speaker 1: the book and how I feel is like, look, my
Speaker 1: livelihood is food, and I am going to enjoy life.
Speaker 1: And I think of it kind of like you think
Speaker 1: of drinks. We know that if we have two bourbons,
Speaker 1: were good, If we have five bourbons, we're gonna feel
Speaker 1: a little hungover the next day. So as long as
Speaker 1: you know what your triggers are, so like, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be days where I'm gonna eat ice cream, but I
Speaker 1: know now the next day I'm gonna not feel great
Speaker 1: because of what I ate, and then you just eliminate
Speaker 1: it again, you know. So it's just about knowing what
Speaker 1: kind of gets you off kilter. You went from eating
Speaker 1: everything to like moderating sugar, dairy and anything else. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's it. So you can have wheat, but what but
Speaker 1: I also I I don't eat wheat that's been bleached
Speaker 1: or bromated to you very particular. I'm very particular. So
Speaker 1: when you look at the Greek and Sicilian diet, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much moderation, fish, omega, trees, poultry, a little lamb
Speaker 1: when you can get it, because lamb is expensive, but
Speaker 1: not da but all the hard cheese is too, don't
Speaker 1: hurt you as much. And all the dairy, though is grazed.
Speaker 1: Cows and sheep that eat they don't eat ship and
Speaker 1: you you don't process anything. There's no process in it.
Speaker 1: So it's really you've gone way backwards. Hunt to go
Speaker 1: back and say, okay, you know what, if I just
Speaker 1: ate like my grandmother ate, I would probably be half
Speaker 1: that perfect, but way ahead of the way ahead of
Speaker 1: the game's kind of remarkable. It is kind of remarkable percent,
Speaker 1: you know. And then like my grandfather who's from eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: you know, I watched how he's he's from the Carpathian
Speaker 1: Mountains and he made party, made his own wine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's but he'll eat a ton of meat and
Speaker 1: none of that stuff affects him. So I do think
Speaker 1: there probably is a connection between your heritage and what
Speaker 1: has to be there has to be. But you know
Speaker 1: right now that you're gonna, like once in a while
Speaker 1: go off huc off the track. Yeah, hundred percent. My
Speaker 1: son oled a dolt on ice cream shop. I mean
Speaker 1: there's gonna be days I sugar and dairy. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a great donut chat. When you're bringing that to like
Speaker 1: New York City, I can talk to him. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, that's his world out mine. But I'm happy
Speaker 1: for So you just recently signed to be You're on
Speaker 1: Kiki and Michael and uh Sarah, I'm Straight Morning. I'm
Speaker 1: Good Morning America's new resident shop. Yes, so that's exciting.
Speaker 1: It's exciting for me. So, yeah, you're down the street
Speaker 1: from I do. I do g M A sometimes, I
Speaker 1: do Sarah's straight hand sometimes. But yeah, it's fun. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna actually start doing a weekly food thing for g
Speaker 1: M A and Serence straight and so it's a good time. No,
Speaker 1: it's great. And although everyone now is if they don't
Speaker 1: have a robust food element and entertaining and drinks element.
Speaker 1: It's just it's one of the biggest parts of the show.
Speaker 1: It used to be get one minute here too many
Speaker 1: a talk about Yeah. Now it's a full segment, sement
Speaker 1: and a half. Well they have you know, they go
Speaker 1: back to back. Rachel Ray is one of Thank god,
Speaker 1: she what she's done is amazing. Rachel is like eighteen
Speaker 1: minutes of like talking about food and preparation and problem.
Speaker 1: I mean the you was an hour we talked about
Speaker 1: food for an entire show. It's just so fascinating. What's happened.
Speaker 1: What's on the horizon for you? As far as restaurants,
Speaker 1: what about the Burgers show? You gonna like blow that out,
Speaker 1: not do it anymore of them work? You know? Why
Speaker 1: is that we're in a pretty comfortable place right now.
Speaker 1: I think that the world changes a little bit. Like
Speaker 1: we opened our first burger place ten years ago, you know,
Speaker 1: and as you know better than anybody, beef prices have
Speaker 1: doubled in tenure. You can't double. Burger prices can't alastic.
Speaker 1: I mean in the Midwest, I can't say, yeah, the
Speaker 1: Hamburgers sixteen dollars, so the burger prices have doubled and
Speaker 1: labor is tripled. Yeah, and the burgers that one can't
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, it's not. I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: good growth model, so to speak. What is next for
Speaker 1: you is to sign I'm not sure, you know. We
Speaker 1: just opened two restaurants in Las Vegas at the Palms,
Speaker 1: which I'm enjoying very much. We did a Mabel's there,
Speaker 1: which is our barbecue concept, and then we did a
Speaker 1: little It's very you would love it. It's a very
Speaker 1: table side. It's a thirty five set Martini brow back restaurant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's small, shaved prime rib. I'd love it as small.
Speaker 1: A small restaurant, by the way, makes it very little
Speaker 1: money money. It's a lot of fun and you can
Speaker 1: control everything and it's sort of like you do it
Speaker 1: when you can. Yeah. Mark Vtory just opened up a
Speaker 1: fourteen seat restaurant. He's my idol fourteen seats where in Philly.
Speaker 1: He writes a menu every day at Chalkboard Menu. He
Speaker 1: puts on one salad, seven pastas in a dessert, first come,
Speaker 1: first serve. Menu changes every day. They open it five
Speaker 1: by four o'clock. There's fifty people in line, which is
Speaker 1: pretty much half the night service. And you know they
Speaker 1: sit at the bar, they cook them pasta and they go, wow,
Speaker 1: I mean that's just that, that's a passion play. Oh man,
Speaker 1: it's a dream. That's well, he's amazing. You're amazing. Thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on, man, thank you. Cheers, cheers. Pay
Speaker 1: t