Derek Brooks

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host, and we have a great one for you today. We are going to be speaking with Chef Derek Brooks, who's the executive chef at the Hermitage Hotel, which is the state's only five-star, five-diamond property. Very familiar, I'm sure, with the Oak Bar as well as the Capitol Grill, and we're going to talk with him today just about kind of what it's like. He moved here from Miami to take over the executive chef job, a job that was held by Sean Brock and Tyler Brown for so many years, and what that's like coming into that type of kitchen. We're going to talk about what it's like running a five-star, five-diamond dining room and then having to close it and do everything to go, and we've got a pretty cool challenge towards the very end that comes up organically that we're going to start doing today. So, sit back, relax, enjoy my conversation with Chef Derek Brooks. Derek Brooks, you are the executive chef of the Hermitage Hotel in the Capitol Grill. Thank you so much for joining us on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Absolutely, my pleasure to take some time out and talk with you guys.

01:41Man, I'm just, I'm so excited. I, being working with, working at Creation Gardens in 2005 through 2009, I worked with the Hermitage Hotel and I've been in that kitchen so many times and how's it going down? How's everything going over there? Well, yeah, I've actually, I came on board in the end of 2017 in December and I've been here ever since and actually, you know, just been enthralled with the entire operation and how everything's kind of been, you know, heading. So, it sounds like you have your hands absolutely full. Let's get back to where it all started. When did you actually start cooking? I actually started cooking at a very young age, growing up in the, in Chicago in the southwest suburbs. Plainfield is where I grew up. My family, you know, were always involved in cooking and entertaining through with family members. So, we always, you know, kind of, food was a big, was a big area for us, always sitting down together as a family, you know, whether my mom or father were making the food and, you know, sometimes during on the season if those items came from our garden in our backyard and that always transpired to me getting my first job as a necessity to, you know, get a car and, you know, make some car payments and gas is, you know, I got a job at a Mexican restaurant down the street from my house called Potter's Place. If you were to go home tomorrow and your family was cooking dinner, what's like the one thing that you guys could, what was like your family dish, the thing that is like going home for you? There's so many, but I mean, I'd have to choose like one dish would be my mother's cold pizza. It was more in the summertime and it was, you know,

03:50like those pills, boy, like the crescent rolls, like kind of puff pastry baked off on like a flat sheet tray and then she made like this dill herb cream cheese and then it was nothing but like fresh vegetables, you know, kind of sliced on top, green onions, tomatoes, cucumbers. There was some black olives, mushrooms and that was like, that was it. It was like the best thing. Awesome. So I love that. So you've started working in restaurants. When was the moment, did you have a moment where you realized like you wanted to do this for a career? That was probably about two and a half years later as I got, as I started commuting because I was tired of living in the college life, if you will, and I got a job at the Empress Casino out in Joliet and that was my first introduction to a professional kitchen, meaning there was a Garnier department, there was a pastry department, there was a banquet department, they had multiple restaurants in there and then as I was working there, I kind of, you know, had culinary experience since I was 16, so I was, you know, moving up and then I was promoted to the back production kitchen instead of working on the buffet and that was when I really clicked that this could be a career. I wouldn't say I was exceptionally at the time, but I was eager, I wanted more knowledge, I wanted to learn, always asking questions. Why, chef, do you do it like that? Why did you add it then? You know, kind of more inquisitive and that's when, you know, the chefs noticed and they were like, I think you should really kind of maybe look at going to culinary school. So who was that? Who was that chef that noticed that for you? What was their name?

05:53Her name was Kelly Davis. She was one of the sous chefs that was working in the Empress kind of casino in the back area and she noticed that, you know, like I was always moving with a sense of urgency, you know, trying to get things done and then kind of mentioned that, you know, why don't you look at culinary school and then that's when I enrolled in Chicago at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute in Chicago called Chic and then got a job at the Intercontinental Hotel right downtown Michigan, 525 Michigan Avenue. And it was an amazing experience from the standpoint that the chef I ended up working for, he was trained by two chefs that I would go on to work for later, Sarah Stegner and George Rumbaris, who between the two of them had over 50 years experience and they worked at the Ritz Carlton, you know, Chicago, which was a four seasons property and then I ended up going to work for them at the Ritz Carlton but that chef that I worked for in the Intercontinental kind of gave me a leg up, you know. He was, I wouldn't say he was mean but he pushed me to become better, you know, like making sure going through my mise en place and if anything wasn't up to standard then it was kind of discarded and, you know, kind of redoing it. I always found that chefs like that were really kind of tough to work for from a sales perspective but I ended up respecting the heck out of them because they made me so much better. So moving along, what's the next place you went? Where'd you go next? This is kind of like a weird story that had unique endings.

07:50At the time, I was in a relationship and the girl I was dating, she wanted to move back to DC and I was, you know, always up for a challenge or, you know, kind of seeing new things so I ended up going back to the Intercontinental in Chicago, working part-time, having the two jobs so I could just transfer into the Intercontinental, the Willard in DC and then kind of have a job and right when I moved there, which was great. The Intercontinental in DC, the Willard was considered like the White House's hotel at the time. Oh wow. It was the closest White House or the hotel to the White House so we always had a lot of dignitaries come in and stay and I remember a couple times of having to go in at, you know, 11 a.m. or 11 p.m. at night to start roasting, you know, baby goats and lambs because there was a Turkish delegate in and they wanted to stay on their own time so there was a lot of, you know, those unique things and unfortunately I wasn't there during an inauguration but with talking to all of, you know, the chefs and the cooks that worked there, they were saying that during the inauguration, the two weeks before and possibly the three weeks after, it was the craziest that they will ever see in their entire lives. They were saying that every room, banquet, every inch of space was booked and they showed me floors of storage that they would buy all of these containers and vessels every four years just for all of the inaugurations and that they would pretty much make their entire F&B budget for the year during that time. Wow. Which I just thought was insane.

09:51That's just in that that is out of control to think that over just an inauguration that you would make your entire F&B budget for an entire year. Because just that's what they said. I mean I don't know how true to that but every single event space, every room was sold three to four times obviously what it was because of the the event and all of the prices were increased and it was just it was wild. So where to next? From D.C. I moved to Vail, Colorado and opened up a luxury boutique hotel which was really unique experience to kind of as you progress you know from sous chefs, line cooks, chef de partie and now all of a sudden I'm a chef de cuisine with you know having to create menus and recipes and kind of you know go over train the staff. So as you're kind of working on cooking that's the one trade-off is that as the higher up you go it kind of focuses from cooking more to mentoring training and becoming that that driving leader. So you start to kind of understand you know where your path is going. Now that's so interesting. Well because I think that that's a lot of that's part of the progression that that's why I love hearing these stories is because I want people out there to hear like so you started at a Mexican restaurant went to Red Lobster and then you worked your way up through all and it it doesn't just happen overnight and it doesn't happen at just one property. I mean you found people that you really respected and people that inspired you and then you followed them and they had trust in you and you built these relationships which took you all over the country. So you got to travel, you went to DC, Chicago,

11:51now you're in Vail. I ended up moving to Southern California. One of the rooms directors was unhired at the Pelican Hill Resort and he you know gave my resume to my next mentor. So between Sarah and George the next one that really shaped a lot of my you know culinary management was John Pierre Debray. He was an MOF chef. He was spent 25 years at the Ritz Carlton San Francisco and his restaurant chefs were Ron Segal and Gary Danko and he came as the executive chef opening of the Pelican Hill Resort and I had spent six years working for him. So wow the Pelican Hill Resort, Southern California, Orange County, you must have served a lot of celebrities. Do you ever get like nervous when serving a celebrity? Does it make a difference to you?

12:58Not essentially. I mean the one thing like that kind of I mean getting off topic but one of the most rewarding things that a chef or a cook does is cook for other people and you know it doesn't matter if they're a celebrity you know rich poor in between it's how you make them feel that is more rewarding whether you know oh chef I just wanted to say thank you this was you know the best rice pudding I've ever had and I'll always remember this day. That is more rewarding than any amount of money and it makes you know all of the long hours you work just melts away. I mean that's the best feeling you can get as a chef saying thank you you know from somebody this was amazing I'll always remember this. One of the things that I want people to recognize and it keeps coming up is exactly what you just now said is that while people monetarily out there aren't working and they're trying to figure out what they're going to do and we all feel bad for them the one part that I want everybody out there to understand is that we in the service industry we have a passion for people we have a passion for service and when you do create a dish like that when you send food out and you get that feedback chef people love the the razor clams at table 24 whatever it was just being able to produce food put it out there Margo McCormick said it's like that's the way I give love I put love out there then the people give it back to me and right now all of us are missing out on that like there's a big part of the soul of our community that's not feeling that because restaurants aren't open.

14:46Yeah and that's really the challenge and the only thing that you know is worrisome is all of the restaurant industry is the hardest industry to maintain to begin with and now with what we're facing with you know this virus moving forward is that you know I don't worry about the McDonald's the Chipoltes all of those those are going to be fine what I'm more concerned missing about is the mom and dad and the independent restaurants that those people put so much love into their product and they cared about making sure the guests are happy and they're comfortable and they're taking care of and they do all of those little things that make you as a guest want to go back and you know constantly go back and those are the ones that are going to you know I wouldn't want to say disappear but those are the people that are going to be struggling the most and they have the best restaurants and it's scary knowing that all of these amazing restaurants might not possibly be around when you know it's time to regroup or open just from a financial standpoint or just finding employers and I think a lot of people don't understand exactly what locally owned and operated is I mean these are restaurants where the owners live in your community their kids go to the schools in your community they're employing a hundred people from your community they're purchasing from local farmers who farm in our community these are this is it's a it's a chain reaction of all of these things when we don't support them it doesn't support a lot of so buy local spend time eating at places that support local has been a major cry that we're just trying to tell everybody what are some low you've been here since the end of 2017 so you've had a couple years two and a half years almost here to figure out your dining scene what do you where do you like to go eat what are some locally

16:52locally owned and operated restaurants that you love well I mean getting back to the local like I said I've been lucky enough to live Chicago a lot of different places and getting to Nashville Nashville has blown me away with the sheer amount of amazing local produce product um you name it you can find it in Nashville or relatively close that is you know locally grown that to this day still blows me away of you know being able to go to the the farmers market all of these farms and everybody comes together to sell their product that is really special and unique that you don't find that so often and uh and I would say Nashville is a large enough city that you know you don't find those things where you know everybody kind of knows everybody and they you know work together and help one another out this is what makes Nashville special and I think this is what will help Nashville kind of rebound quicker than anywhere else because of the strong local community that we have which is and it's crazy too because we just had a tornado and then you get into this COVID-19 yet I agree with you I feel like this community will bounce back faster because you know the whole Nashville strong thing is a hashtag is what it is but it's true I mean the community here is really amazing you know and that just goes to kind of to lead into what we're currently working together you know with a lot of chefs locally and second harvest and hopefully starting next week there's going to be seven restaurants you know that are going to start cooking with products from the second harvest to feed as many people as we can in Nashville and that's the type of community that I'm talking about that will you know

18:56stay strong together and you know kind of make a nice break when this is over and come back so it sounds like you're fitting into the Nashville community exactly right you're totally getting it you're coming in helping cook food for people that need it right now let's let's pivot into what we're doing right now what was it like coming into the Capitol Grill in the Hermitage Hotel because with with Sean Brock being there for a long time and then Tyler Brown coming in directly after him there's a real rich history of James Beard nominated chefs like people that have a culinary program there that do a fantastic job what's it like coming into that kitchen after them um you know it's always you know coming into a new kitchen whether you're a cook or a chef I mean it's always you know challenging because there's systems in place there's ways that they've been doing things for a long time so you really want to come in and and understand and see the entire operation and how everything unfolds before you just come in and start making changes and be like oh I'm the new chef you know um those guys whatever they're doing you know that's their own thing I'm my own person yes and no yes I mean there's still going to be items that you know I had on my menus from California that are still there there's items and you know recipes that you know maybe Sean created or you know Tyler created and then they're still intermingled throughout so that's just how the world is and the culinary you know goes but the first thing that you want to do is make sure that you come in and earn everybody's respect and you know that is the the hardest thing to do is because just because you're executive chef

20:57and you walk in doesn't mean that you know you're the greatest thing since sliced bread you know at a new place you have to show everybody what you're capable of all over again you have to you know train your staff how you want them to make your veal stock all over again and that's one of the the other unique things about the culinary world is you never stop learning you never stop growing as a cook as a chef and there's still more than you know like one way to make a sauce or make a soup so that's really the unique thing about coming into any new property is just making sure that your staff is going to follow you and I think when you come into a place like the hermitage hotel I don't know if a lot of people know this when you started there you had if you've got it you guys have a farm right at the land trust at glen levin amazing um two acre garden in glen levin that's uh in partnership with the uh land trust of tennessee um and we have a great relationship with them where our hotel guests are able to donate to the land trust through their room rates oh well and then that percentage goes back to the land trust and we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary of that late in august of this year um and we've donated close to a million dollars to the land trust wow so that's that's a that's amazing but b that's a big responsibility too you have two acres of land that you grow produce on and I believe you you had a cattle farm right double h farms but that is you guys sold that is that correct we did have a cattle farm

23:00um and uh in white bluff dixon um we still have the cattle we just sold the farm and then we relocated our cattle to our sister property in kesselwick because they're going under a complete renovation so it was just a little bit more space for the cows and then once that property gets up and running we should be looking at possibly getting some of our you know double h beef back um so yes we still have all of the the red pole cattle we just sold the land here in tennessee so when you come in to be the executive chef at the hermitage hotel you're not just coming into a job where you're earning yourself or you're kind of identifying what the menu needs to look like you're you're kind of also a farmer and you have to run a big farm right you know that was the uh the allure of when i was being recruited it was um so let me get this straight um it's a five-star five diamond hotel um they have their own cattle ranch and we have our own two-acre garden um absolutely did you know anything about raising head of cattle before this um no i only knew about how to break it down and butchering it but that was you know once again a learning you know standpoint um and a constant growing um i knew some ins and outs of you know gardening from helping my parents at their garden but this is on a different level so and that's the beauty thing of you know the culinary world wherever you go i mean you're still kind of cooking but then you're still growing as a manager and you know deciding what vegetables we're going to grow and working with our you know our gardener to decide when we're going to harvest and that space

25:00is so beautiful out there you know i'd like to when i have some free time just to go out there you know and walk around you know look at all of the beautiful produce become inspired look at spring menus summer menus you know i was gonna say how does that try growing different vegetables how does that change you know so as a chef you really are limited to what your purveyors can get what you can find foraging is a thing but when you're serving the public you got to really be careful with where where you're sourcing your products but if you're a creative guy you're an executive chef you're coming in how does it change the dynamic of what you put on a menu when now you're actually producing the products yourself it makes your job so much easier as a chef if you have access to amazing produce because you know we have so many things that we plant in the ground but i can just use past years or past harvests you know like a couple weeks ago we still you know before we turned the soil over we still had some you know cabbage in the ground we still had some beets some carrots and the beauty thing is when you know where you're getting your product and it's the best product that you can possibly grow you don't need to you know get fancy with the product and you know add this type of seasoning in this you know if you get beautiful carrots you should let the carrots you know speak for themselves yeah you know and i think that's where a lot of people kind of get themselves confused and they think more is you know less and they keep on adding this and then if you see some like the menus there's you know 27 different descriptors going on and that that's you know when it should be just simply roasted carrots you know a little bit of salt pepper you don't need to add like oh it's pesto roasted carrots with sea salt

27:03turmeric smoked bourbon paprika this and that that gets away from cooking in my mind it should be just you know simple product that you can taste everything so that's interesting so that's kind of your philosophy you know yeah that's what i learned at a young age from my parents you know watching them cook in the garden to at a really high level of a five star five diamond you know restaurant with sarah stegner and george from bars yeah and then you know learning that you know ins and outs of management and leadership from jean pierre you know kind of set me up to become an executive chef of the hermitage hotel that's such a cool story man and i love i love that you're doing it like that and i think you have such a unique opportunity ahead of you and just things to come i mean you've only been there for a couple years i mean what you're going to do in the next couple years i mean is is so crazy so we've had this big opportunity with your restaurant being closed you've had to pivot in a major way um you're the first chef that i've interviewed so far who actually has a hotel that they're working with what's your occupancy rate right now um it fluctuates um but unfortunately you know we're only having a couple rooms in house which is great and you know we've really worked hard on our to-go menus as a as a team and as a hotel to really kind of get some unique ideas out there such as you know doing decorating cookies you know cookie kits we have we're selling we did an easter one we're doing a mother's day one now we have a spring kind of animal and it's a great idea that you know you can get a dozen cookies already baked off and you and your family get the pastry bags of icings and sprinkles and can

29:10decorate your cookies because it's always funner to decorate the cookies than to have to wait for them to bake them off of course yeah no i think that's a heck of an idea we're getting ready to start a sourdough starter kit that we're looking to possibly sell because that's one of the more unique things that bread making we're looking at kind of going more artisanal with the offerings that we have similar to how we do our garden more artisanal that we're growing things you can't find at the grocery store well such as you know such as like as our sourdough starter and the cookie decorating kits and we're doing what are you growing some cocktail what are the things you're growing that you can't get at the stores a lot of heirloom vegetables right now we have some beautiful heirloom okra some heirloom arugula and some different types of collards and a lot of lettuces that are kind of local to the area which is you know really refreshing so when i say so i know the end be able to be a part of i know the answer to this question but i want to ask you so that we can clarify for our listeners heirloom tomatoes i don't know 12 13 14 years ago heirloom tomatoes got really big in nashville a guy named randy boone at the farmers market he's he's since passed but boone randy boone did he had all the heirloom tomatoes and they were all the rage when you hear something like heirloom varietal heirloom okra what is the heirloom like what does that mean in like general yeah like in general so what's the difference between like an heirloom okra versus a regular okra you buy at kroger um depending on where you find these heirloom seeds most of whatever they consider like heirloom

31:19are you know as part of the family heirlooms you know kind of passed down from generation to generation that's what i would consider you know heirloom everyone just likes to throw that word around kind of like farm to table yeah or you know organic there are real heirlooms you know that have been passed down and then most people don't understand or realize that an heirloom seed of tomatoes that you got in maine will not grow the same or grow properly in nashville so it's really important that when you're you know sourcing your seeds and you're getting them you're kind of following where where what temperature what conditions they're going to grow it absolutely and so it's my understanding back i don't know in the 40s 50s i forget the exact time tomatoes all used to look crazy they're shaped crazy they kind of grew where they grew and you had these different heirloom varietals that just had amazing flavors but they had to genetically alter tomatoes to be round they had to genetically alter them to be round and so that they could package them because you can't package these tomatoes that grow in all these weird shapes and when you have to create mass amounts of tomatoes millions of tons of tomatoes to provide to all of the restaurants to provide food for across the country they had to genetically alter them to be round so you could pack them in a four by five five by six or 25 pound just a field pack is what they call them but the heirloom varietals didn't grow that way so when you genetically alter them to be round you lose some of the flavor because you're you're changing the dna of a tomato but these original heirloom seeds that come from a long time ago that just grow the way they grow because of where they're grown and there's so many different variables like you said if you

33:21grow them in maine they're kind of made to grow in a cooler climate and they they're just different soil that they have there the same as the like french varietals and wine so in california the longitude is similar to oregon up there that's why you can grow a cabernet or a merlot or a pinot noir because it's a french varietal that actually works there similar with an heirloom seed that i don't know if a lot of people put all those things together i just wanted to clarify a little bit as you mentioned heirloom um you tell me did i just go off on a tangent am i right am i wrong no no i mean um i'm very passionate about heirloom and sounds like same with you um and that's the other thing that i wouldn't say is disappointing it's you know maybe a catch 22 um that you know food should be served in season you know like just because you can get heirloom tomatoes in the dead of winter doesn't mean they're going to taste as good as heirloom tomatoes when they're growing in the garden in the dirt and you know summer yeah and that's kind of one of the downsides is that everyone just expects that they can get asparagus 12 months out of the year because of from shipping it in exporting it growing in greenhouses and a little bit that takes away or a hot house as people call them you get hot house tomatoes just for people out there for verbiage if they hear oh those are hot house tomatoes those are grown in a greenhouse exactly and you know i mean it's great but then you know and then you look at you know as a manager and as a chef you know you look at you know seasons for food because that's what's in season and you're paying a better price for asparagus in season than you would asparagus in winter and that's one of the things that you know as the executive chef manager you're responsible for the food cost 100

35:26and if you're buying you know asparagus in the dead of winter you're going to be paying two three pounds more than what you'd be paying for that and you can't really pass that on to your guests so it's very important that you utilize the seasons of you know vegetables and fruit and that's how you kind of create your menu of what's in season because those items that are in season you're going to get the best price and you're going to get the best product so let's talk about vendors getting the best price the best product who do you source so you have your farm obviously you can't get in the middle of winter you're not growing a ton of stuff just doesn't grow in 20 degree weather this year is a little more mild but who do you source most of your fresh produce from right now we use a combination for some you know staple items we'll use creation gardens and then we'll use you know a lot of food and season for some specialty events we'll use bloomsbury farm you know for some events sean dordy and sons and initially we were using and they were helping us kind of get our garden growing up before we got our greenhouse to grow our seedlings and you know we'll just you know depending on what we're looking for maybe you know make a trip to the farmers market so you know we're using as much local product as we can gotcha well it's good so that's exactly what um what i was asking my next let's let's pivot here real quick one last time because i know we got to get this thing going going from a fine dining restaurant to doing takeout there's some some challenges involved to that what's been your biggest challenge and where do you see yourself in a month from doing fine dining to take out i guess it goes back to you know you're not walking the dining room you're not interacting with the

37:30guests you're not even seeing the guests at this point you're just putting you know as nice as food as you can into a box and then it goes on your way and you know the biggest concern is that you know hopefully the delivery driver you know is takes care of the food and doesn't like just you know chuck it on the floor and by the time the guest gets it it looks like it you know went through the dryer cycle a couple times because we try and play in the boxes as we do in the restaurants gotcha do you get any feedback from people really just like a fear of quality as like i know as i put the lid on it and then i put it in that bag and then i don't see it again and that's really the only fear of going into that is if it will stay you know nice and hot or that guests will get it and then have to maybe microwave it and then that kills all of that hard work you put into that that to go box but that's just more fears yeah not necessarily reality okay so i totally understand that is there are you getting feedback from people out there are people letting you know hey this was amazing you put so much love into this box and i just really appreciate it are you getting any good feedback we're getting a great feedback we had a a guest actually send us a send us a picture on easter of their kind of spread that they ordered from us that they put on plates oh nice it was actually stunning and beautiful and it was it was great to see that you know that people want to you know take our food and you know present it just you know like they were chefs and you know restaurateurs for their family we should try and create a hashtag for people when they get their food home to try and recreate the dish and then

39:32they should post it on the social and tag the restaurant in it and put like you know hashtag recreate my dish or hashtag make chefs happy or something that people can see how like their vision of your dish on their plates that would be so fun yeah i mean it was it's funny you mentioned that um we were going back and forth if it would be like too kind of snooty for a chef because i really wanted to you know do exactly that like take these boxes of food that you know we package up and then show people kind of how to plate the food restaurant style but we just weren't sure if that would come off as too kind of egotistical oh i'm chef derrick this is the way i want you to plate my food type deal thing so i mean i think it'd be fun just to see how the guests do it kind of curious you put your creativity in the box and then hey snap a picture of when you take it out of the box we want you to put it on a plate and make it look gorgeous and send it back take a picture and tag us in it we'd love to see how you recreate what we put in the box on a plate i think that would be so cool yeah definitely that would be interesting and maybe cringe-worthy at the same time as well all right i'm i'm starting that i'm gonna get on that i'm putting out on the socials today we're gonna start that and hopefully we'll start a trend and people can start doing that because i think that would be really fun to see and cringe-worthy like you said i think there's going to be both moments there so what's next uh mother's day is coming up um big day for restaurants big day of people going out a lot of food going out what are you guys doing for mother's day we had a lot of success with our format for easter where we gave uh all of our guests an option to choose first courses their entrees and sides and that went over pretty well um because

41:32here at the hermitage we do have a very long history of you know our beautiful large buffets and our gorgeous um lobby so we want to keep that on the level and for this mother's day you know we're doing a lot of uh exciting kind of uh to-go food we have some beautiful lobster bisque that we're getting because i mean unfortunately lobster is probably one of the cheapest items um in the market right now that's just sustainable wow we're doing a beautiful strawberry burrata salad as strawberries start coming into season with a meyer lemon dressing some beautiful candied fennel and then a simple orzo pasta salad with some roasted tomatoes a little bit of pickled peruvian peppers and a nice uh local pesto um definitely halibut for entrees halibut is kind of coming into season right now um we're going to do a roasted leg of lamb just to change it up and then you know stay with our prime rib because we were able to partner with simpsons simpsons is a uh an amazing great local company that's been around since 1888 um i believe there they started in athens uh nashville or athens tennessee excuse me um and they do all of our dry aged for us here at the restaurant the capital grill they do a nice 60 day dry age so we ran that for easter and we got a lot of feedback on that so we're going to keep it for mother's day as well and then um we have our traditional sides collards you know mac and cheese we're going to do a more straightforward potato puree instead of our red skin mashed and

43:37then we're looking at you know some seasonal vegetables that we're going to offer as kind of our pick sides i love it that sounds like i'm so hungry hearing you describe that food like and you're gonna do that to go which is just amazing to me let's just say i want to order mother's day brunch or mother's day lunch mother's day dinner how do i do that do i go online do i call a number what's the best way for me to do that we have a number set up through our reservations to call and you will actually speak with a uh an agent who will guide through the order guide take down your orders all of your information uh email telephone number um secured credit card information and then that's all and done and then you're good to go and you let them know what time you would like to pick up your food um we'll have a window from 8 a.m until 3 p.m and you decide when you want to come get your food and then we'll make sure it's ready to go nice and hot and then definitely we'll maybe look at hashtag plate it for mother's day i think we can get a lot of business with that much food to be plated yeah i think i'm going to call it the replay challenge i'm going to call it even the replay challenge yeah it's going to be so i'm going to do like a contest with it we're going to call it the replay challenge i'm excited to see what all of our home chefs how they can take the love that you put in that box and what they can do on their plate where i think it's going to be interesting because you're going to see chefs with a um kind of getting ideas i think it's going to be interesting because you'll see all the people's plateware and you might see some dishes that you looked at a certain way reimagined through somebody else's eyes on their plate where that might spark some creativity yeah definitely i mean um because you know some people have some very eclectic looking plates you know whether

45:42they're hand-me-downs or mix-match you know like it's all depends on the plate and what you do with it yeah and i think we're going to see some interesting interpretations of some dishes out there yeah and then there's one other interesting note we had such a huge success with the easter bunny and kids wanting to come and we actually had a metro bus driver that stopped in front of the hotel and actually serenaded our easter bunny with the song my girl and then as like the management team we're still really thinking about we need to find a a mother's day kind of mascot to kind of you know do something else that's interesting you know to kind of get the word out so that could be kind of surprising what we decide as our mother's day mascot yeah i'm curious i'm like how do you i don't know who that's going to be but i'm i'm game to hear what that is so stay tuned everybody uh hermitage hotel will have potentially a mother's day mascot outside so watch their socials i'm sure they're on instagram facebook and twitter and um place your order through reservations if you want to place your order i'll i'll put a their phone number will be on the link for this um for this podcast so you guys can all get to know i'll put all the information as to how to get the order in on the link chef okay so thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with me and everybody else here at nashville restaurant radio we uh we're so excited to have you here in nashville and um just keep on doing what you're doing man and uh look forward to love to have you back when this whole thing is over and kind of hear what you're doing now and how this whole thing's affected you and what you guys are pivoting to do once you reopen absolutely it'd be our pleasure to come back and um and have you

47:49and um actually it'd be our pleasure to have me back um if you will and um absolutely thank you so much for your time and i had a great time talking with you and um i look forward to hopefully you know communicating with you again and talking all about our our mother's day and then she will re-stand here in a couple weeks thank you so much chef for joining us here on nashville restaurant radio that's it for me guys thanks so much for hanging out and we look forward to seeing you real soon love you guys bye