Brian Baxter

00:002022 is right around the corner. And when you get there, you're gonna start looking and slowing down in January and trying to figure out what can we do in 2022 to be more efficient, to be more profitable, to bring a better quality product to our guests. And I'll tell you right now, Erin Mosso and her team over at Sharpier's Bakery want to be your solution for fresh baked bread every single day. They're delivering six days a week to restaurants all over the city of Nashville, like they've done for 35 years. They are your local solution for your bakery needs inside your restaurant. Check them out at sharpier.com, that's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com. They have over 200 types of bread that they make. Give them a call, 615-319-6453. You're asking for Erin Mosso, she's the owner. Her father started the company 35 years ago and she is taking on, it's a family-owned local business.

01:01And in 2022, this is your time. It is your time to start using local bakery Sharpier's. And Sharpier's wants me to tell you that all of their local, all of their loyal customers, thank you for a wonderful 2021 and they cannot wait to serve you again in 2022. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. Today, I am here to talk to you about I am your host. Today, I am joined with our co-host, Ms. Jen Ichikawa. How's it going, Jen? Hi, good, how are you? Fantastic. So this has been an episode I've been wanting to do for a really long time.

02:02We are talking today to the executive chef at the Catbird Seat. Many people say, Nashville scene says best of Nashville, best of Nashville, best restaurant in the city. We, that was a fun, this is a fun talk. I enjoyed getting to know him. Yeah, he's super pleasant. Like he's just a very nice person. Yeah, I can tell that he's just, you said he kind of reminds you of Josh Hobbiger and I kind of see that. He's just kind of, I said Josh was gentle, was the word, I'm like, I don't know if you should describe another man as being gentle. But he was just, you know, he's not like me. He's like, hey, let me tell you, he's not gregarious, he's just kind of humble, you know? Yeah, well, he has that like quiet confidence, which I just really like, in people, in all people, I just like that a lot. Which is surprising that you like me, because I can't spell quiet confidence. Neither can my husband, who I'm married. So apparently it's just something I like in others and don't seek out in my work.

03:07It's partnerships and work partnerships, I don't know. Well, in this interview, we talk about his early days, where he grew up, where he went to school. He was a football player, kind of his competitive nature, going through where some of the restaurants he worked and then we get into all the details of the actual catbird seat. Talk about his holiday traditions, all kinds of fun stuff. Yeah, and his hobby, which was a surprise. Yeah, well, that's a good little tease, I like it. Definitely awesome and just to let you guys know out there, we will not be having, and this is the last episode of 2021, the last live interview. Coming at you in 2022 with some new stuff, some new ideas and a little bit of a different show. So we'll still have these episodes, but then there's gonna be some mix and match, some fun stuff coming on. Yep, we're excited. Yes, so tomorrow is Giving Tuesday. I mentioned this at the end of the episode. Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday. We would love for you to get out there and support some of these local charities.

04:11The Big Table Nashville is new to town. They were on our show a couple of weeks ago. Amazing people, helping people in the hospitality community. The Giving Kitchen is another one. The Giving Kitchen Nashville is helping workers who've had accidents, who need help. Again, look them up, go to their website, donate to them. CORE, Children of Restaurant Employees, is another great one that you can donate to. And then La Dame des Cafiers is doing a huge push. So if you wanna support women in the hospitality industry, that is what they are doing at La Dame des Cafiers. We are big fans of theirs and we make donations to them every time that they do a show with us. So we give them our sponsor money. So if you wanna make a donation to one of those, you don't wanna do the hassle, you don't wanna look it up, feel free to go to our Venmo at Nashville RR and make whatever kind of donation. Just put in the what it's for box, which charity that you want one of those for and I will be happy to make the donation for you.

05:13We are gonna hopefully get people that just wanna help out on Giving Tuesday, it's a big deal and we hope that you give locally and to the people in this industry who need it so, so much. So that being said, last episode of the year, this will be- It's a good note to end on. I'll do intros. So we'll keep up, we're gonna do four episodes throughout December, but they're gonna be Wednesday rewinds. We'll do kind of a best of shows here and there. So you'll get to hear a little bit of new intro type stuff. And yeah, there you go. I guess we could talk about our sponsor for this last episode right here. Go for it. Because in the show, he talks about, he goes, I've had a cold, I'm not feeling well and what you need to do, Complete Health Partners is a local company and they have three urgent care facilities right here in town, right? So if you have a cold, you don't know if you have the flu, whatever it might be, you need to go to the doctor and find out if you're contagious, if you have COVID, whatever the cases may be, you just go there, you do that.

06:20There's lots of urgent cares. What they offer to restaurants, starting at $50 per employee. So if your restaurant only has 10 employees and you really need, you wanna offer them some way to go to the doctor, there's no co-pays, you can send them to an urgent care today, get them checked out, it's unlimited visits. I think it starts at $50 an employee, which is really, really amazing. And if you need to have your whole staff vaccinated, they will come to you and do that. If you need to have your whole staff tested, they have discounts for that, they've got drive-ups. They're just amazing, amazing people and they're local. So if you can't afford major medical, this is a great opportunity for you with Complete Health Partners. What you need to do is you need to go to our website, nashvillerestaurantradio.com, click the Sponsors tab and scroll down and find Complete Health Partners, click that link and it will take you directly to the people you need to get set up for Complete Health Partners online. So again, going into the new year, we need new employees, you wanna retain people, this is a great benefit to offer people, they can go anytime they need to a local doctor.

07:27Again, thank you guys for listening, enjoy the show with Brian Baxter. Super excited today to welcome in Brian Baxter, who is the Executive Chef at the Cappard Seat. Chef, welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you for having me. So this is exciting, I went out on, I've wanted to have you on the show for a long time because obviously the Cappard Seat is, in my opinion, I think a lot of people in the nation, the best restaurant in the city and you took it over right in the middle of a pandemic. You've been absolutely killing it, you've done some amazing collaborations and I've just wanted to learn all about you and you are gonna be taking us out of 2021, our last live interview of 2021. So again, thanks for being here. Yeah, of course, a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure, yes. So Brian, tell me a little about yourself. I know that you were here in town and that you worked with Josh Hobbiger over at Bastion.

08:29I know you spent some time in Charleston working with Sean Brock. I know you came back to Nashville, you're here, you worked at a place called Cold Beer. Yeah. And that, where was that, in Atlanta? Atlanta, yeah, with Kevin Gillespie. Kevin Gillespie, that's right. What did you do, like where did you grow up? So I'm from St. Pete, Florida originally. Grew up near the beach. Played football for a long time. What position? Little linebacker, fullback. What high school did you go to? I grew up in Tampa. What's your primary school, Keswick? Yeah, I'm familiar with it, cause that's, I mean St. Pete and Tampa are obviously. Yeah. We had a woman on the show a couple weeks ago who said she's from Southern California and I said, yeah, I am too originally. We went to the same elementary school. Oh, cool. So I thought we were gonna have that moment there with you and with Josh. No, St. Pete and Tampa, it's like, it's far enough away where that would have, one of our commutes would have been real long, but they are like definitely neighbors.

09:39Big Tampa sports fans, I gotta give a shout out to the champs. Hey, you got the goat man and he produced. Well, you're a big lightning fan too, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't realize we like won all of that until somebody, I was in Florida and somebody was like, yeah, we won a bunch of stuff. And I'm like, oh, I guess I should root for the hometown team. We had a projector upstairs. We were watching playoff game. You know, when we first reopened and we started the hockey season, just watching playoff games during prep, kind of projecting at the wall, that was fun. So when you were little, cause I've said this to some of the staff here because the lightning is now good, but I think we're close in age. And when I was growing up, they weren't and neither were the Rays. And so they would put like, if you made honor roll, they would put like tickets in your honor roll thing so that you, they would just have somebody in the stadium. Like, I don't care if it's all fifth graders, like get them in the stadium. Yeah, I think my, you know, kind of like that stretch of my, when I was in high school, the lightning were good, but it was a lot harder.

10:47You know, they won their first cup in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2004, whatever it was. But when, you know, when I went off to college, it was a lot harder to watch sporting events then. So yeah, I had working as much, I didn't really get to, you know, watch them as much as I wanted. Sure. Good. I would have, I would have zero idea what they gave away to honor roll students cause I never was on the honor roll. No, they could have given anything. I definitely was. But also this is the longest sports conversation I think I've ever had in my life. Like this is, you've now officially tapped out like all of my sports knowledge. Where'd you go to college, Chef? I went to, well, my freshman year, I went to West Virginia Tech, I played football. I knew I wanted to cook. It was kind of what I knew since probably sophomore year high school. What was it that made you know that?

11:51Well, I was watching a lot of Emeril Live when I was supposed to be doing homework, which is why I wasn't on honor roll. And then, you know, a lot of the original Iron Chef, you know, late night Friday, Saturday. So then I started kind of trying to make these Emeril Live recipes, you know, on FoodNetworkTV.com or FoodTV.com or whatever. I had no idea what I was doing before. Who's your favorite Iron Chef? Kirioki Sakai. Kirioki Sakai? You're talking with the original, you're not talking about like Bobby Flay and those guys, are you? No, Iron Chef. Excuse me. I loved watching that show too. I love, I guess, I think the one I watched was the new iteration with Alton Brown was like my hero. He was like the guy I wanted to be. I was like, Alton, forget the guy's cooking, I wanted to be like the nerd that knew everything about it all. Which is probably why I'm talking to chefs. Yeah. There you go. But yeah, so when I, you know, left, when I quit playing football, I eventually got up to the Culinary Institute of America, so that's where I graduated from.

13:03That was the high park thing that's in New York. So I think that that's the question that I like to ask most people. Do you think that as a chef today in 2021, do you need to go to culinary school? I think it depends on the person. Obviously, there's so much information that you'll learn probably your entire career. Some people have the drive and the passion that they can retain it. You know, you can read it, you can learn it, but the only way to really learn it is by doing it. I think the repetition that you get in culinary school, you know, like a lot of places probably don't do traditional classic sauces anymore, but they use those, they do a bunch of derivatives. So like the mother sauces, they're still the foundation. If you don't know how to make them properly, then you won't make the proper sauce. So I think Dashi is kind of added into that now, you know, it's not a French sauce, but we use Dashi a lot.

14:08But I'd say everything like that I do for the most part has some kind of foundation in classic French cooking. And for me, the repetition, you know, I wanted to get a degree from my parents, I wanted to go to college, I wanted to live in New York, so that's kind of why I ended up there and I don't regret doing it. How expensive it is is kind of the negative, you know, like if somebody doesn't have the money to do it, you know, I was fortunate enough that my grandmother's co-signed on my loans so I could go to school. And I owe a lot to them, but you know, I think if somebody has the right drive, they can find the right restaurant, the right chef to work under, you can learn everything you need to know. Boj is gonna say that. On the right, it's gotta be the right spot and they gotta know they're gonna start at the very bottom and it's a long, very long road to, you know, what culinary schools might tell you your career.

15:08You're not gonna come out and be a chef in culinary school right away, you know, so. Right. So you're not hiring people to come work at the Cappard seat who don't have experience, right? I mean, when you hire somebody and they say, I went to CIA and then I worked for all these people, do those two things balance each other out? Because one of the things I think that you just kind of intimate is that you've gotta have the fundamentals. Sometimes there are fundamentals of knowing what the mother sauces are, knowing knife skills, knowing how to do all of those things are kind of the basics. And if you do those things really well, I think you can expand on those, then you can start adding your own personal flair to them. But if you never do that, you gotta work for some people who really have the heart of a teacher who are willing to have the patience to teach you that stuff. But that's not what you're doing at the Cappard seat. You're hiring people who have those. Can you tell when somebody's gone to school or haven't gone to school? I don't know. I had, well, I did hire a girl that was prepping for us.

16:10She didn't have any experience, but she'd been prepping for us for a long time. So I think if they have the right attitude, it's okay in a prep position because obviously it sucks, but it's a lot of like you're juicing, you're juicing every fruit and vegetable that's coming in and that's all you're doing for the night. And hours, four or five for the food, right? So, wow. My husband is Japanese and his mom taught me how to make white rice. And she was like, I mean, I can't teach you this in an afternoon. Like this would be, I mean, they spend, literally sushi chefs spend years just doing rice. Europe, yeah. I mean, in Europe it's more of like that apprenticeship. So like if you're not going to school, try to be an apprentice and I think that's the disconnect. I don't know, you know, I've never worked overseas and I don't know if it's still like that, but I feel like that's the disconnect with young American businesses.

17:17They just want to be the new star and they don't want to put the work, that could just be a generational thing like that. But, you know, it's a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. I'm still learning stuff every day. I wonder how much of it is generational and nationalism, right? Like the idea of Americans versus Europeans versus Japanese and Chinese and all that. Because the thing here that I think a lot of other countries don't, and I'm, listen, I am the biggest reality TV fan you could talk to, like truly. I love reality TV. I'm a housewives fanatic. But that being said, like that's such a thing here. Like celebrity chefs are a thing here. And I don't, like that's not, it's not to the caliber that it is in other countries. And I think the idea of celebrity in any sense just plays so much into what the cooking world has turned into. Like Brandon has said on here and has said in lineups and all the time, like we are not trying to be a James Beard award winning restaurant.

18:21My husband and I own a restaurant, we're also not. We are just trying to give great service and good food and all that. But I think, and not to knock like James Beard obviously or any of that, but I think the idea of celebrity is so present, like in American culture specifically that everyone's trying to be noticed in a way. And so you get, like Rachel Ray just did an episode of Armchair Expert, which is my podcast I listen to all the time. And she says she will not call herself a chef. She's like, nope, I'm a home cook. Yeah, she will not use the word chef, which I have a lot of respect for because I think there is a delineation in that. I'm neither, I can't home cook or you don't put me in a kitchen. But that being said, like, I like that she's like, no, the chef has this like respect level and it's not a celebrity level, it's just a respect level versus, yeah, I'm a great cook, but I'm a cook. Right. I don't have a question there, just a point. Okay. Well, you know, when you meet like these chefs overseas, there's a, you know, maybe not all of them, but, you know, I was fortunate enough to go to Matt a few years ago with Morgan McGlone, who was the old chef at Husk.

19:29We did a luncheon. And you know, you can meet like Renee and, you know, Christian Fuglusi and Matt Orlando, all these, they're just like the most humble dudes you'll ever meet. And it's not like they think they're better than anyone. You know, they'll come up and start talking. You know, they don't really care who you are. They don't think they're better than you. You're not lower than them. You know, so I think here you still have kind of this, like you said, with the celebrity chefs, your celebrity, you're a rock star, you're, you know, athletes, like, they're still people, still just people. Yeah. You're like, if Tom Brady came in, like, yeah, I'd probably like, you know, be a little nervous and geek out or whatever, because I play football for fun. You know, even with like certain chefs come in, like, you know, it's kind of, the interaction you have with other people, are they still humble or do they think they're more than plush and bones?

20:33Right. So being at the Cabaret seat, do you have a lot of celebrities? Obviously, this is, you're the cream of the crop of dining in Nashville. I'm sure that you get a ton of celebrities in it. Do you ever, you said Tom Brady, you would be like, oh my gosh. Do you ever get star struck? I'm trying to think. It depends. You know, sometimes it's just like, you know, maybe, I would say yes and no. Come on, you can name drop. Well, like, you know, Carrie Underwood, like, she's pretty shy. So like, kind of like, I don't know. She was, you'd be like, oh, I mean, this Carrie, like, you could talk to her, Carrie Underwood. So then like, after the first interaction, it's like that first hit in football, like, oh yeah. That's just- Yeah, let's go. The person that just wants to eat and not really talk to anybody. So, you know, we don't really bug anybody. I think the only time I've bugged anyone was Archie Manning. I had him sign a football for my son, so.

21:36That's awesome. Do you ever have like, you know, when I had Josh on the show, we were really talking about the idea for the Cabaret seat and it stemming from being at the Patterson house, making cocktails and watching what people did with the cocktail once he made it. I didn't know if they took the garnish off or they took a picture or they took a sip or whatever they did. He said, I want to do that with food. And the Cabaret seat, and the chef, I'm right there and I'm setting the food in front of somebody. Do you ever get people that just don't like it that are like, what is this? Or that don't eat it? Does that ever like offend you or is that just a bad part of it? It doesn't offend me. I mean, you know, taste is all subjective, right? So maybe somebody, I don't like curly parsley and I don't like when people just throw pomegranate seeds on a dish for texture. Hate it. So two of my least favorite ingredients. Parsley, curly parsley, because it was like a fondant chef, Bob Evans, when I was a kid and I didn't like it. Sizzler. And you know, pomegranate seeds is because I don't want to, I mean, I think it's just a lazy way to add color and texture to a salad or like a fried inch or something, but I'll replace the things that are fancy because they, you know, throw pomegranate seeds.

22:51Not that I dislike the ingredients. We've been fortunate enough, like if somebody's not really liking something, like you can suggest, because you can see it, you're right there. Yeah. Sometimes people don't like something and you know it's good and then they'll offend you. I think the thing that's most upsetting, somebody said they have an allergy, especially like gluten, where you take extra time to create a separate dish for these people and then they sit there and eat off of their partner's plate. So yeah, there's gluten in it. They're like, oh, it's okay. All right, then why do we, you know. Why do we create a special plate for you? 60, 70 hours a week doing this. Yeah, I just caught into like a Facebook argument with somebody about that because I have like deadly allergies and the woman, it was for the restaurant we own, and she's like, oh yeah, you guys didn't care about the gluten free or whatever. And I'm like, that's odd because we're usually pretty good about that. And it's a Japanese style. It's Japanese and Korean. Like it's pretty doable, you know. And she's like, well, it's not an allergy. It's just a dislike, but you should put just as much effort into that.

23:52And then I had to walk away because I'm like, I'm gonna get rude. And I don't need to put as much effort into that. Like I do not. You need a restaurant that specializes in gluten. Yeah. There's plenty of places here where you can go get gluten free stuff. Like we do it. It's when, you know, you put the extra effort in and then it's like, it's not a real allergy. So we've kind of knocked off some allergies and stopped taking certain restrictions, especially for our 18 course menu. It's so much work. It'd be nice for this five extra courses. And you have to do four separate versions of it because all these people are allergic. Well, I know when I came in for a bastion. But then they get upset. Like, why didn't I get this? He said you were allergic. Well, I'm not. Well, I'm sorry. You can't corrupt all these dishes without fish in it. You're not getting fish in it. Yeah, I remember when I had dinner at Bastion, like we said before we were on air, you were working there at the time. And Josh, I've known Josh since I moved to Nashville. So I've known him eight and a half years now.

24:53And I've had the same allergies forever. They, like I said, they are deadly. And so he took the menu and like crossed off what I couldn't eat, which was great. But we ordered everything because my husband is Asian and does love fish and all that. And so, but you guys did a really good job with it and then made me a couple of the dishes allergy free, which I was so grateful for. Cause especially restaurants, like I've never had Catbird because I'm scared to go in with all my allergies. I feel so bad about it. But Bastion too, and like fancy places, I always feel bad about. But I'm so appreciative when everyone will do it. Cause it's like, you want to go there for the experience and taste everything. I just can't. So when anybody takes that like extra time to make sure I can, it's so cool. Oh, good. He ate it, sorry. Most people appreciate, they're very appreciative. Thank you so much for accommodating. But there's like, like a boy cried wolf. There's always that one person in like a month that really makes you just want to be like some of these other restaurants, like top restaurants in the world, they're like, yeah, we don't accommodate allergies.

25:55Well, I think it's interesting just to let people know. Like when you say it's an allergy, an allergy is something that is way different than a dislike. Like I don't like tomatoes in November. Like I don't, there's the thing. Like I don't like that. I don't say I'm allergic to it. If you say I'm allergic to it, that means zero cross contamination. I have to use all new utensils for every single thing. I can't use, I have to clean a certain section of my grill. Like every single thing can have no part of it because Jen, you're allergic to seafood. And if you eat anything, you're going to go into anaphylaxis and we can't have, that's me. It's a massive process for people that have an actual allergy. And you got to take it seriously because I don't want to be dying in the restaurant. And then if they say, oh, I don't like it, but you use the word allergy, we got to do better. Yeah, I agree. I don't know if that's, you know, I really wonder what it's like around the world. I feel like it's just an American thing.

26:55Yeah, I do think that's some like American stuff as well. But I, you know, you have a young kid as well, right? You have a young son. I have a two and a half year old boy and a nine month old girl. Oh, congratulations. Congratulations. I have, there'll be 11 months next week, they're twins. And so you probably know too, like this whole, not to get into the baby world too much, but like my mom is staying with us to help with the kids because it's a lot. And the whole idea of like baby led weaning is new, right? Where they try new foods and they try new textures and you're supposed to now give them foods that have high allergen rates so that they are less likely to be allergic to them going forward. And so I remember like, because I do have so many allergies, my husband doesn't have any, I was like so paranoid with the kids. And I was like, oh my God, I can't give them peanut butter. I can't give them all this stuff. And like, you have to, so I wondered too, how much of that is like going to be generational of like can't do gluten free, you know what I mean? Just based on like the parents diet and what they end up feeding the kids and are they actually allergic or things like that.

28:00Cause if they're not exposed to it, then of course they're going to develop an intolerance to it. It's like, you know, so I just wonder how much that's going to change. Yeah. Very old me. Yeah. So let's get back. We were talking about culinary school and I asked you a question. I said, do you think it's important that we got off on a bunch of rabbit holes? Let's get back to that. After you went to culinary school, did you go stage anywhere? Did you go work at NOMO or did you go with Renee and do all that or did you, what was your post? If I had known me, I would have been in Europe probably, you know, the next day. I also got married to my ex-wife really young. I was 20. Wow, that's really young. So I worked for a chef named Walde Malou for six months where I did my externship. It was at a restaurant called Beacon in New York. And then we moved back to Florida. I worked technically for Tom and English, but at the Swan and Dolphin store, which is down near Disney.

29:03A restaurant called Blue Zoo, which is a secret restaurant down there. During that time, I would go stage at Norman Ben Aiken, a restaurant in the Ritz there. So I would go stage there every once in a while just to kind of like see how like other restaurants do stuff. You know, anything you can bring back to where you're working, whether it's just a different technique or how to work cleaner and more organized. I did stage at McCready's in 2009. It was like one of the hardest, probably the hardest stage I ever had. It was like really eye-opening, a little discouraging. It's just like, I didn't feel like anything went right. Fast forward a few years. Why do you feel that? What about it didn't go right? Oh, it was just a lot of things I had never done before. I was pretty empty years at a culinary school at this point. You know, maybe it was one year I can't remember.

30:05And Sean was doing a shoot for Art Polonaire. He had all this stuff to prep. They're just like, you know, here's a prep place. Make a bay tea and we're gonna froth it up. Something like that. And you know, or a laurel tea. I didn't know what laurel was. Where's the laurel? Where's the laurel? One of the guys I got to bathe was Bailey's. So I get that and then make this olive oil pudding, which only Jeremiah Langer, it was the CDC when I ended up there, had made and he was off that day. So I'm like, keep messing up the recipe. Keep having to ask Sean about it. And then, you know, it's just like third or fourth time. It's just like, I felt completely defeated at that point. I couldn't make the recipe and I felt like I was following it exactly. Come to find out, I was given the wrong eggs for it. So it was never gonna work. I'd also never worked with isomalt or glucose together. So you have to melt the isomalt first and add the glucose. So it was like, you know, Sean's like, oh yeah, I forgot, we gotta do this.

31:07And he wasn't like, he was fine about it. But I was like, just, you know, I mean, I did it four times. I had to come ask him. It's kind of like a waiting call. So was that humbling? I don't understand. Leave in there and you're like, okay. What did you? I can feel the feeling of just discouragement walking out of that place. I could feel it in your voice as you're telling the story. Like it was just a, and it's almost like you wanna do it so well, you wanna do it right, but. I was trying so hard, I didn't know. Yeah. I kind of froze up for a second there. Yeah. Brian, I can hear the background. I can't hear you. There you go. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you now. Perfect. So after that. At a hotel, you know, you save up PINTO and stick time. So I took a month, massage at Dior. Massage at a restaurant called Boulay.

32:07So David Boulay down in Tribeca for three weeks. And then a restaurant called Marea. It's over off Central Park. Both Michelin stars. I've always wanted a Michelin star. I wanna get back to New York, work for a Michelin star restaurant. Really wanted to work at Boulay, but like I had a room in Williamsburg with a buddy of mine. We kind of, after like probably the only smart financial thing I've ever done, just go through in my head, be like, all right, I'm gonna get paid this. After everything, I was like, I'm not gonna have any money left for food or cell phone. So I ended up coming back after that month. And like two days later, Jeremiah posted it and McRady's both tweeted that they were hired. I was like, hey, can I go stodger McRady's? And my chef's like, you're just gone for a month. And he's like, if I let you go, you better come back and say that you got a job offer.

33:10So all right, so I went and stodged again for two days and Jeremiah offered me a job with Chef McRady. So I came back and finished out a few months, finished out in November, 2011, moved to Charleston. So how was that going back to the place that you left so frustrated? It was a little nerve wracking, you know, like, it's still one of the best meals I've ever had. I think it was one of the most underrated restaurants. It was definitely the hardest pitch I ever worked in. And that's, you know, even when I was seeing what was happening, you know, up in New York. Did you work with Ben Norton at all? I didn't, I know him, I didn't know him. Okay, wasn't sure. What brought you to Nashville? So, you know, I've been working there, McRady's 2011 to 2013, Sean's talking about opening a second restaurant around like the end of 2012.

34:14And there was not really a chance for me to move up any time when they used to have the McRady's because there was so many guys ahead of me. And I didn't love, I love visiting Charleston. I love it as a city, but I didn't like moving there. So I was like, hey, you know, I'd like to be considered first to chef at Husk if you haven't hired anybody yet. So I ended up moving up here in 2013 to help open a little tier April 2013, I think we opened in May. And then at some point in the next year and a half or so I took over as chef de cuisine. What was that like? Because Husk was, I remember when Husk opened, I think it was, you said 2005, I think it was 2005, right? 2012. 13. 13. Okay, sorry, I'm getting my turn because I remember when it opened and it was such a big deal because Nashville was in a really, I think Nashville for me, I lived here for 33 years.

35:19We knew here locally that we were growing and we were doing great things. But when Husk came to Nashville, that was us stamping our ticket as, hey, look, we're a real foodie town. We're a town that can draw people like Sean Brock is coming back home and bringing Husk to Nashville. We have a solidified celebrity chef independently, you know, owned and operated restaurant that's doing it well. Did you feel that when you got here? Were you brought in kind of like a celebrity? Well, we knew there was a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure with people expecting best new restaurant, team career awards, kind of all that, you know? And we tried to run it the same way we ran McCready's. So the, there was just never, it's never like, nothing was ever okay for what it was like. And when you do it, it covers a lot. So yeah, I mean, the discipline, attention to detail, all that stuff is always highly.

36:28How do you drive that culture? How do you lead that culture? Because I'm curious, especially today, like is it so intense? Is there lots of screaming? Is it about the hiring? Is it about a pedigree of people that work there? But how do you maintain that level of perfection over and over, day in, day out, for that many covers? I think it's, well, that was a lot of the blog, one of the main things I learned from there from that position, right? I think, you know, me kind of moving up into that role, you know, I've worked in so many places where, you know, people yell at you and stuff. I mean, no one ever threw anything at me. Actually, no one ever threw anything at me. But I was so used to playing football for so long, just that intensity, and the way like the cradies was run, and you know, it was an intense kitchen.

37:31I wouldn't, I don't know if it was necessarily screaming, but it was definitely that intense, aggressive, like you had, you know, like part of it was, even if everybody, everything was going right, you had to find something, you had to start nitpicking to keep the energy up, or else people would just start kind of sliding. But I learned everybody has to manage differently. Everybody does, yeah. What do you think the motivation is there? Is the motivation to provide an amazing meal for people that they're gonna take pictures of, and how is that level of perfection? Is it about feeding a community of people? Like, what is the motivation for an individual chef at that level? Is it an award? Is it a James Beard Award? Is it a 50 Best Restaurant? Like, what is it? Well, I think back then it was, you know, about trying to get those awards.

38:34And in order to do that, you have to try to serve people with the best meal that they can have. You know, but you're really, all for Sean for running this, you know, like if something doesn't go right, it's his name at the end of the day. Yeah. How intense is he to work with? I mean, is he there actively, like, showing everybody this is what it has to be done? Cause I just imagine he commands a level of respect. Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, you know, he had a lot going on when we first opened the hospital. We were filming Mind of a Chef. Every morning we'd go Mind of a Chef and we'd have to rearrange the kitchen and try to get it set up for dinner service. So that was hectic. And then he started in the open era. So he was being pulled in so many different directions that at first he was there a lot. But then, you know, you got all this other stuff going on there. You know, you can't be there.

39:37And I think, you know, looking back now, like he trusted me enough to keep it going, to run it at the level that he expected. When you see Sean Brock in that state, right? You're a sous chef. You're coming up through the ranks. You're hustling, you're doing everything. You're putting every ounce of energy, the pressure, all of this stuff. When you see a guy like Sean Brock filming in the morning and going through all this, does there any part of you that says, I wanna do that one day? I wanna be the guy in my restaurant that's filming in the morning and all these people. Is that inspiring to you or does that turn you off for that sort of thing? Or are you just kind of indifferent? More the success that you see that that's inspiring. I don't wanna, I don't want that much going on. It's already a, you know, it seems very stressful enough for it to seem like you have to do all that stuff.

40:38Like watching him go through, I don't know if it's something necessary. Yeah, cause I can imagine that's a lot. You know, eventually like you wanna have the time off, but I think now it's a great thing about Eppard's season I can still be so hands-on, which at Husk you're separated, you know, like it's a little different, but it's so busy. You're plating everything on the pass, but you're separated by, you know, if I wanted to get back there and touch something or show somebody something, I'd have to walk all the way down around the line, come back down. You know, it wasn't like I could be there with everything. Like I said here, you have to get your body, so I can quickly just touch something somebody's doing under there, six feet away. It's a little more control. Yeah. What's the number one takeaway you had from working at Husk? Like, what's the thing that you leave there and you're like, I will never forget this thing that I learned. Well, I think I'm still learning it, but it just meant, you know, from that, from Husk, from that.

41:51Did you say? As far as from Sean, I learned, sorry, did you? No, I did, you kind of froze for a second there. No, I was saying the thing I learned from Husk was just like, not everybody's, like I was saying earlier, managed the same thing. You gotta manage people, not a, yeah. Right, and as it changes, you know, as the industry changes, I'm always gonna be intense. I can't turn it off, you know, I can't help that. But I think I've calmed down a lot and I'm, you know, I have a high expectation. A lot of the guys that work for me now work for me at Husk Ambition, you know, so they know what I expect. So I get frustrated when they, when they don't do what I know they do, that's what frustrates me. When people, when they don't work to their fullest potential. Right, yeah. And if it's something you don't understand that's different, you can, you know, like somebody's not getting something, you can show them once or three times.

42:56You can't figure it out. You gotta figure out like, where's the disconnect here, or I don't know. Is this not, I don't do anything crazy, you know. I don't use a bunch of hydrocolloids or whatever, we're just cooking food. Yeah. We're trying to make it. But I think it's that, I can see now these guys, it's more like, nobody wants to be held at, I understand that. But I can see that they know that I'm, it's more difficult now, more difficult than then. Like I said, everybody, everybody reacts differently. It's something for me, for the channel, for the now and then to like, for it to click. All right, yeah. Like me, yeah. I was gonna say, I got spanked three times as a kid, third time. I said, all right, I'm not getting spanked ever again. I'm gonna learn. So you were able to learn from lessons and learn that discipline. I don't want to skip over your time at Bastion because I know that it was probably very formative as well and you are coming at your own as a leader.

44:05But I do want to get into the catbird seat. And I want to talk about the pandemic, what it was like, how you were hired and then kind of get into some of that. So were you, in the middle of the pandemic, were you hired as the executive chef for the catbird seat during this quarantine? When did that happen and how did they offer it to you? Or did you apply for it? How did that happen? Well, Josh, you know, Josh is kind of like a mentor to me so we can touch a lot. And we had just been chatting about me wanting to come back to Nashville eventually. And then, you know, Max and Josh and I kind of had a call. The plan was to eventually come back and take over. Because you were in Atlanta at Cold Beer. I wanted to give Kevin two beers. The previous chef, you know, only a year in. And then, you know, March 17th or the March 17th.

45:09March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. You know, I was furloughed. Everything shut down and the rest is history. But when we continued to be kind of chatting over the next few months, there was going to be some kind of restructuring down in Atlanta. And, you know, it wasn't Kevin's fault. He wasn't going to be able to do the same that it was when I moved down there and when I moved down before. And this became available. There was a page that made the move look sooner. So when we reopened, hopefully in summertime, just take over then. So that's kind of, you know, after talking to Kevin and my wife and everybody, I don't know. I remember when you were announced because my Facebook and Instagram feed was flooded with congratulations to you. Because I think we know all of the same people and everybody was so stoked to have you take that over.

46:16Like, it was just, I imagined you must have felt like, holy shit, like this many people are this excited about it. It was every, I mean, every single person I knew from Strategic or that had gone to Husk or that were unrelated, like my friends that are at Peninsula, they were so pumped to have you, like everybody was so stoked for you. Yeah, it was a good feeling. I mean, I, you know, felt like we left friends and family behind, you know, even though my wife had a family down there and I was collecting my parents. But I just kind of missed Nashville and missed everybody. And I feel like, you know, the thing I loved about Nashville when I first moved here is it seemed like everybody was really supportive of each other, unlike Charleston. All the people, like, you know, musicians, maybe somebody that played with this guy who's now famous, still supports him, entrepreneurs, tattoo artists, restaurants, you know, like whatever it is, everybody was so supportive and it has its little groups, but I never felt like part of like a friend group of family except for the people I was working with in Charleston and I think that's kind of, I don't know.

47:31When I moved here, this is the first place I've ever lived where if I go on vacation for a couple of days, I can't wait to get back home, you know. Wow. And so, I don't know, it was really nice to come back and kind of see the reception, but it was also never, I think, because I knew what was expected. Yeah. So that's a great segue on expectation. You're the fifth, well, there's been, I think, you started off Josh Hobbiger and Eric Anderson 10 years ago and I wanna talk about your 10-year dinner and then goes to Trevor, Eric Poley, and then Will and Liz, and then it's you coming in. Are there ghosts? Do you feel like, you have complete autonomy to do whatever you want and I love that, but like you coming in, what is that pressure like? Are people expecting one of these other chefs' food and how do you differentiate yourself? Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? It's hard to not look back to what everybody else has done and say like, okay, my style of food is different.

48:43It's vastly different than what we do. And I think they were so much different than what Ryan was doing. So it was like a little scary, people that were going and having great meals with them, it's not gonna be similar to what they were having. So you kind of go back in your mind, so are people gonna enjoy the food? The way I build a lot of my dishes is, I don't trust the diner to eat it properly with dots and all this random stuff all around. So I build everything, I layer everything. So the guest has to be the way I want them to be, unless it's like pick this up and drag it. So it definitely looks different than I feel like a lot. So it's more functional. Yeah, it's just more about how it tastes. I don't want a dish that looks like somebody threw up on the plate or threw a bunch of trash on it, but I don't trust the diner to eat it properly with no building service.

49:52So when you have complete autonomy and you're creating these menus, where do you get inspiration? Cause you've gotta be changing them. And nobody, I think so many people forget that, or that they don't understand. When you don't have a corporate chef or somebody else who's telling you what to do, you're kind of flying solo and you have to ideate all these things and create all of these things. So is there a process that you have? Like how do you gain inspiration for the menus? The produce, the product. I don't want to say hyper seasonal, but we do four big seasonal changes and then throughout each season, the menu's gonna change based on what's available. I try to support as locally as possible and then slowly branch out. And I think the furthest thing we're using right now is like lamb from New Zealand. But lambs, it's so hard, like local lambs can be very difficult.

50:57So yeah, it's definitely big time, what's available, how it tastes. When we first came back, there was a lot of farmers that just had so much produce. They're just like, can you take it? Can you take it? So let's just take as much as we can and then we'll figure out what to do with it. So whether it's making a vinegar or a miso or juicing it and fermenting it, doing all these things, which people have been doing for years, but just trying to not waste any of this product and support these guys who also weren't getting paid for many months. That kind of slowly helps develop some of their favorite profiles that we can use. Just based on what we're using. You at the Capard Seat, I don't know the actual, is there a timeframe? Did they say, we want you to come to Capard Seat and you have two years or was it three years? Because I know it's kind of a, you're there, you do it for a while and then you do something different.

52:00Is that even a thing? I don't know. Usually two years. You know, mostly with that first year being kind of weird. Yeah, it was a weird first year. Yeah. How do you think your cuisine has evolved since that first year? I mean, just when you coming in, there's so much unknown. Like I said, there was these ghosts and you're trying to figure everything out. The food that you're doing then versus probably a confidence level of that you have now of walking in, you know where every single thing is. This is your kitchen. Everything in there is very intentional. Yeah. Has it evolved and do you continue to see it? Like where do you see yourself in a year or five years? Do you know yet? I have a plan of what I would like to do, whether or not that's gonna happen. That's all up in the air now. But yeah, I think obviously confidence is one thing. You know, you slowly gain part of, I'll just kind of treat this as reopening a restaurant.

53:02Space was what it was. We made some changes. This is the idea I have coming in, but every restaurant I've ever opened, it's always like a pivot point. The restaurant is like its own being. It's gonna become what it wants to become. You may think like I'm only gonna do 20 covers a night and then you end up doing six. And you gotta figure out, you know, you have to deal with that. So I don't have any good examples of what I thought was gonna be different when opening. But I think through that, just kind of realize what we can and can't get away with and that it's kind of helped also kind of inspired. So what can you get away with? What can't you get away with? Oh, I don't know. It's just, I mean, there's not a lot of space.

54:03So there's only so much you can do. So, I mean, I wish I had a big giant hearth that I could cook in, but I have a little Japanese grill that will set off so much smoke if I grill. You know, grill a lot, but I wish I could grill way more. You know, there's, we're limited on space for dehydrators. You know, it's just like, you know, you're just kind of making it work with what you have and not saying that I would have a million little stencils of little things, because it's not really what I do. But, you know, it's kind of helped me. All of that has helped me focus more on trying to get the flavors in the dishes. If that makes sense. I'm worried about all these little garnishes and all this stuff, because I'm like, I don't even know where I would try to dry this stuff. So, yeah, just focusing like, it's forced me to focus on the ingredient, on the flavor.

55:08And I think I'm still figuring out like, exactly what my cuisine is. But I think, you know, people that have come in for, we have people that come in every menu change have seen it. You know what that is, I don't know. I want to be in that hot bracket. Yeah, no kidding, right? You just, we just celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the Keppard seat. And Eric Anderson came in, I think from San Francisco, right, he's still in San Francisco? Napa Valley, north of Napa Valley. Okay, came in from the West Coast and you had Josh Hobbiger in there cooking for two nights. What was it like having the original chefs from the Keppard seat for, you know, a couple nights to cook? And was it like getting the band back together? Were you, did you guys create a very own special menu? Was it fun to share that space? Or how was that whole experience for you? Oh, it was good, it was stressful. Kind of leading up to it, you know, trying to make sure to have the torch filling and everything was like right for Eric and everything.

56:19You know, like, I didn't want it to be messed up, but he's trusting me to make sure that the right people came in. But after like, you know, that first turn, that first night, that's kind of, that's the hard part. And it's with every best cook in the world at first turn and it was just like, everybody's trying to figure it out because they're not used to cooking here and timing's different. I always do completely new dishes. So I don't really know what I'm doing. Like when we cooked with Johnny Sparrow, I was like, still like three quarters through the meal, trying to figure out how I really wanted to cook this piece of fish, you know, with this dish. Which is fun, but it's also like stressful, but when you figure it out, you figure out what you're doing. So yeah, it was nice. Like I haven't worked with Josh since. So it was fun to work with him again. I haven't seen Eric in a long time. So getting him here with us was awesome. And then just, it was pretty much all friends, friends, family, regulars of one of us at some point in our career was eating this two nights.

57:30It sold out so quick. Yeah, I know, I tried to buy tickets the next morning. It went on sale like midnight and it's like 5 a.m. I got up and I was like, ooh, I gotta buy tickets. And they were, I went on the waiting list, but I never got a call. Nobody said that. I don't think anybody canceled. Yeah, so that was fun. That's amazing. What do you do? Like, so you have two small children. What do you do for fun? Like when you're not working? Cause this is a very intense, I think that, I don't think people understand the emotional toll that a position that you have takes because you're putting so much creativity in so much of your mind, body, and energy into that. Do you have stuff left when you get home? Yeah, that's the thing. People don't understand, like, if you don't like something or dislike something, they don't understand that we've been here for 14 hours creating them, trying to get them. But, I don't know, it's, sorry, I got distracted.

58:37It's all right. I would say Wednesday through Saturday, I average probably four and a half hours of sleep. So, it takes a lot to get up with the kid at 6 a.m. when you get home and get in bed at 2.30. And then, to try to go to the gym, cause that actually, believe it or not, will help me have energy later in the day, get through the day. You just know it's this cycle, and there are weeks, like last week and the week before, trying to get everything ready for this, make sure I was sourcing everything, where I just feel like, come Sunday, I just can't think about it. My brain feels fried. It feels like someone's got my head in a vice, just crushing it. So, to kind of release that, I try to do watercolor painting. But, I don't have as much time. The kids are out of daycare right now, because of COVID.

59:38So, it's hard to, I try to paint once a week to just have that release. Cause otherwise, my brain will start thinking, I try not to, if I start thinking about food, like on the way home, I'll be up till, I can't fall asleep with my brain. So, I learned not to read cookbooks when I get home from work. Or, try to like, cause I used to keep a notebook by the bed, before I had like a iPhone, just like right now. So, yeah, I can't, I can never turn, it's creating at some point, but it's hard cause it's also like, sometimes like, my brain needs to shut down. I can't, I can't check. Do you meditate? No, I think for me, my meditation is going to the gym each morning. Yeah. What part of town do you live in? I'm in Spring Hill. So, then I got, you know, it's about 35 minute drive in and out. You're in Spring Hill? Yeah.

01:00:38It's my wife teaches down there. Okay. I used to live in Spring Hill. My wife and I bought our first house. And it's funny because I was trying to think about when Husk opened because we lived in our house for many years and when we had our first kid, we moved back into our house in Spring Hill and it was 2013. So, that's why I was like 2012. It was 2012 or 13th, I remember right when Husk opened. Yeah. That's a heck of a drive. Well, they've opened up the interstate now. So, it's a little easier. That's not bad. That main street of gym, yeah. Yeah. Luckily, my gym is right off Saturn Parkway. So, back road, hit the gym, jump on the interstate. Nice. But yeah, I mean, the gym is like, that's the only alone time I get beside driving. It's like the only time I have to myself. You know, you know, planning, but. No, I do. Days I'm home with the kids, somebody bailed me out. Like Mondays, my wife gets home from work, and I go to the gym. Saturday, she was all day stuck with them. I say stuck, but you know what I mean?

01:01:39Like it wears you out, like. It's not stopping. Stop, she's crawling, she'll be walking. Everything's in her mouth. My son was like pretty curious, like not like that. I keep, I don't think he ever, or she's like. I feel like you're the first chef that works in like a name Nashville restaurant that does not live in East Nashville or Germantown, honestly. I live in Franklin. And so like, I'm with you, but like, I feel like everybody's like, East Nashville, Germantown, East Nashville. You threw me off and you said Spring Hill. I was like, oh, look at this. You were expecting East Nashville or Germantown. I was. Exactly. No, it's nice because like every single house on our street, maybe even in our neighborhood, has at least one kid. One of your grandparents and their kids live in Franklin. Right. They live there like half a year. So, we wanted like to kind of grow up in a quiet neighborhood with kids that they could grow up with.

01:02:41And she's still, she's a willing to account, so. Yeah. That's what's just great. It probably pays a little better. Well, this is awesome, man. Tell me something. Do you have holiday traditions? Um. Anything that's unique to what you guys do every year? Yeah, I know you're probably forming them right now. Family, yeah. So, it's funny because my son, like, he likes, he's like been singing Christmas songs and stuff, but I'm like, hey, you wanna put up the Christmas tree? No. Okay. No. Thanksgiving night, we used to put up the Christmas tree. Thanksgiving morning, I like to make these like, old Danish pastries. Either Froot Snapper or Taburki's. It's just puff pastry with like, almond paste, sesame and poppy seed. I'll probably do that tomorrow, and then I'll eat it before or after I'll go to the gym, because I missed out the last couple of days. So, I have to tomorrow. I'm gonna be eating some food.

01:03:43Now, do you cook Thanksgiving dinner for everybody? I'm only making my memaw's or my great grandma's potato casserole, which I don't even have a recipe for anymore. I'm just gonna wing it, but I know it all was put in it. Sure, it'll be good. Yeah, mine's gonna have a little more sour cream, and then it's gonna be fine. And then, I like to make my own cranberry. Okay. That's all I'm doing. Some chefs are like, no, I don't cook when I'm at home. I do that all the time. My wife cooks. I didn't know, like, if it's, no, there's one day a year we're closed on Thanksgiving, and that's the day where food counts. I do a big spread, and then I was gonna try and start driving around house to house in Spring Hill tomorrow and find out where that is. Yeah. I bet that would be amazing. No, I'm not cooking. Yeah, no, no. I'm taking my day off. I'll probably get stuckered into helping. I know how it goes. I go to this office, and then something's not going right, and you jump in, and you end up making five different dishes.

01:04:43Well, I have a tradition of working every Thanksgiving, because we have two restaurants. Me and Jen both work for it. Mayor Bull and Brentwood does. We have 1,000 covers we do on Thanksgiving Day, and it's the same people almost every single year, and it is the most amazing day to feed people Thanksgiving dinner, and they show up, and they're just, they're super nice, and it's the same people over here. It's their tradition, and it's pretty cool that people allow us that family memory, like that they, that's what they do for their family to come to that restaurant, and they take it seriously. We take it very seriously that they trust us with that special family moment, and it's a lot of fun to see families get together and to be able to watch that happen all day long while your hair on fire in the weeds, just going to town. So it's a lot of fun, for sure. I haven't had a Thanksgiving like that since I worked at the hotel, thankfully. They're intense. It's a thing.

01:05:46It's very intense. We're close the next day. There you go. Yeah, recovery day. Yeah, we're actually taking a nice little break here. I think the staff has earned it. They've worked super hard, and just can't say how proud I am of just all the support I've had from them, and the faith they've put in me, and trust, and we're going to take, we usually close, Bashendad's two weeks out of the year. We're going to close tomorrow until next Wednesday, so nice little recovery. Just to let people know, we're recording this the day before Thanksgiving. This is going to come out on November 29th. So he's saying that he's closed tomorrow, Thanksgiving, and the next week. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. There you go. I want people to hear this and go, whoa, wait a minute, you're not closed. I got a reservation that day. Well, good, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Did we miss anything?

01:06:47I want to ask you a question. I have to ask something, and you guys are going to hate this question, and I'm sorry, but it is what it is. So I told you I love reality TV, okay? So Southern Charm Films in Charleston. So I just have to know if you'd met or been to the restaurants that Leiva Bonaparte owns, which is like bourbon and bubbles, and what else? Republic, have you been to those? No. It opened after I left. Okay, yeah, I mean, apparently they're like a big deal, but nobody I've talked to from Charleston has been there. So I'm like, are they going to it for the show? The thing is probably like, if nobody from Charleston's going there, it's probably not the spot you want to go to. But also, I was a line coach. Well, no, I still want to go. I don't care if any of you want to. I want to meet them all. Anyway, but I knew, yeah. I don't even know what that is. Okay, well. All right.

01:07:48I'll let you know. I don't either. It's okay. Charleston, I'll give you a list of places you should try before this. Okay, well, I want that list, and then I will report back what her restaurants are like because there's just no chance I can't not go and try to meet the people. I'd name them, but you don't care. But I love it. So my wife and I, we love The Bachelor franchise. We did. We're kind of growing out of it. We watched it for years and years. Appointed to television for my wife and I. Kind of a guilty pleasure sort of thing. Just the drama is amazing. Do you have any guilty pleasures that you would announce on the show? Hell's Kitchen, love it. It's so good. I would have worked. It's funny because I got a message from a casting person trying to get me on. I was like, no offense at this point in my career. I don't think I'm ready to come on the show. But if he had reached out to me when he opened Gordon Ramsay years ago, I probably would have moved over to Bond.

01:08:54I would have worked for him back then because I was young enough to still take The Baller Kings. Yeah. Now I just want more. But I do want to meet him. That's one chef. I would have worked for him back then and taken him to work with a freestyle like that. Yeah. I love him. He's one I really do. What I feel about him is it's nothing personal during service. He messes up. But after service, I think he truly cares about his staff and humanity and people. It's not a cover-up. I think he truly does care about people. Yeah. And he really does walk the walk. He really will not ask you to make something. He can't make himself or do himself, which I think is very important in celebrity chefdom, to have that kind of respect from other people in the industry. Yeah. I love Bar Rescue. I'll say it. Bar Rescue. I don't think I've seen that. John Taffer. John Taffer, he goes into these bars where everybody, the owners and the bartenders are all drunk, just doing stupid shit.

01:09:55And they're like, we don't know why we're broke. Yeah. And then he, it's pretty self-apparent. You're drinking too late for yourself. Yeah, he's like, look in the mirror. And you're like, oh shit. This is a pretty good show. Pretty good episodes. Yeah. Our version of Kitchen Nightmares. Yeah. Yeah. Well, chef, one of the things, Jen, did you have any rapid fire questions for him? I do have a few. Okay, do you want to do a quick rapid fire with Jen? All right, what'd you get? Okay, so just first, none of these are Bravo related. So just first, go. Also like, I feel like my second release of this Miesenex I took just kicked in. So we'll see how this goes. Okay. Yeah, good. Okay, so your favorite restaurant right now that is not obviously your own. Locust. Okay. Most underrated restaurant in Asheville right now. Oh gosh. Can I be honest with you? My wife and I have only eaten at Locust and Audrey in the last year and a year and a half.

01:10:56Okay, that's fair. You have a nine month old. I get it. Yeah. I've been nowhere. Okay. So in the hot chicken kingdom, are you Prince's, Hottie B's, or Bolton's? 400 degrees. Okay, all right. And then I know you haven't been out a lot, but I feel like because you're at Cappard, a lot of these will come to you. So the best pop-up right now. I have not had any of them, believe it or not, but I hear. I went by Bastion the other night on the way to a con. Kisser? That place was bumping. Yeah. We did that at the Patterson house. It was good. Yeah. But I haven't had any of those. There's so many pop-ups. There's so many. Yeah. I can't keep up. So I don't know if I'll ever make it home. Yeah, now that they're eating food, now that mine are starting to eat food, I'm like, oh, we can like go places now.

01:12:00Like that's so exciting. It's a thing. All she eats. My son, he's so picky. It's hard. Hope we're out of it. Yeah. Well, Chef, thank you so much for spending the time with us today. I've, it's been a pleasure getting to know you a little bit. Thank you for telling us about your story and some of the feelings you've had throughout all of this and the vulnerability. I really, it's been a lot of fun for me. Yeah. I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. The last thing that we do on this show, and I like to, I throw people off here. This is what I do, is I let you take us out. Take us out Jerry's final thought style. You get to say whatever you want for as long as you want. You're talking to the Nashville community, restaurant people, and I'm gonna make the whole screen just you alone.

01:13:01And go. First of all, thanks for having me. I hope everybody has a happy holidays. Kind of a safe end to the year. The only thing I could say is support the local restaurant scene. Don't be an asshole for anybody who works in them. They work very hard on the holidays. And if you're able to, I would find a chair to support this year. It's been a tough year for everyone. It's all I got. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is coming out on the tomorrow. I'm gonna piggyback what you just now said. Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday. So we love Big Table Nashville, The Giving Kitchen, CORE, Children of Restaurant Employees, and La Dame des Scaffiers all need your support. They're all supporting people in Nashville, in our industry who need help.

01:14:02So if you know people who work in restaurants who need help, contact one of those people. They'd be happy to help you. But tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, and we'd love for you to do, to give as much as you possibly can. If you don't know how to do that, and you just have one of the Venmo five bucks, at Nashville RR is our Venmo, and just put in the subject line where you want it donated, and I'll make sure that it gets 100% directly to them. Thank you, Chef. Once again, have a wonderful holiday, and look forward to seeing you at the Catbird Seat. Thank you so much, guys. Thanks, man. Big thank you to Chef Brian Baxter from the Catbird Seat. You can make reservations to go to the Catbird Seat, thecatbirdseat.com. And once again, Giving Tuesday is tomorrow. Go out there and help somebody who needs help. We hope that you guys are being safe. We ask you please go get vaccinated, get your booster shot, and we love you guys.

01:15:04Bye.