Grant Adams

00:00Hey everyone, it's Brandon Styll, host of Nashville Restaurant Radio. I know what you're thinking about right now. We are so close to being reopened. Whether you're a restaurant or a hotel, there's a big gamble right now. Are we going to be busy? Is the mass amount of people just gonna flood, or is it gonna be a trickle? And one way for you to ensure that your business is ready to go is to put together a marketing plan. And that's why Kurt's Hospitality has spent the last several weeks putting together plans to drive business after we are allowed to reopen. They are a full-service sales, marketing, and public relations agency dedicated to growing revenue for their clients. Doesn't that feel nice? Somebody who's out there working every day to get people into your business. That makes much more sense than just trying to post stuff on Facebook. So give them a call. There's no stupid questions right now. Nobody knows what's gonna happen. It's always nice to have somebody to bounce ideas off of. 615-456-3953 or visit him on the web at KurtzHospitality.com. That's K-U-R-T-Z-Hospitality.com.

01:17Welcome 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 happy Monday to you. I don't know if they're supposed to say the days on podcasts because they last forever, but you know what? It is Monday and a bunch of places are reopening. A bunch of retail shops and just general businesses are gonna start reopening. Maybe not for Metro Nashville yet, but today is gonna be an interesting day. Hopefully you got to enjoy this absolutely beautiful weekend that we just had starting Friday. It was just unbelievable. If you live in some of the rural areas, maybe you got to go out to eat. I saw a lot of people posting pictures of white cheese dip and just like in their happy place. Here we go. We are eating Mexican again and I am with you a thousand percent. Didn't get to go yet, but I did order to-go food last night and we got it from a place that we typically we've ordered from a few times. We've been trying to do the replay challenge and honor some chefs and just support local restaurants and I'm not gonna get into much detail and if you go back and listen to my episode with Monte Silva, I discussed this. We just had a just a poor experience. You know, just one of those experiences where you go up and you feel like if you don't want me to buy your food, I'll just stop. You know, and I just feel like we're better than that as an industry right now. Like even if you're relegated to doing to-go food do it to the best of your ability. What happened to pride? What happened to people just really taking pride and having a spirit of service and wanting to make

03:19sure that the guest has an amazing time? The place I went to tonight did not do that and it just makes me sad. I'm not gonna say who it was, but if you're out there and you do run a place that's doing to-go food only, do it to the best of your ability. Figure out ways to increase your operational efficiencies for the love of Pete. Alright, so I will step down off my soapbox and let's turn our attention to today's episode. Today our guest, his name is Grant Adams and he is a chef and he works at The Marsh House. So Grant is a guy I just recently met and I've just so blown away by him. He's just got such an amazing story and the level of positivity that he brings just was completely inspiring to me and I wanted to share it with you. So hopefully you're getting ready for an exciting week. I always like to say Monday is the first day of the rest of the week that I've got so much I can accomplish starting today throughout the rest of this week and hopefully you take that mentality with me and hopefully this interview gives you inspiration like it did for me. So without further ado, Grant Adams. Alright so we are here with Grant Adams and Grant you are a kind of a jack of all trades at The Marsh House right? Correct Brandon. I really just kind of do everything. You know I really love cooking and it's something that I've been passionate about since really all my life. So when did you start like when was the did you have like a seminal moment when you decided like I need to be in a kitchen this is my love? You know actually I did. I had a stroke when I was age four and my grandmother realized that by pulling me into the kitchen and

05:19letting me feel the different textures of the foods and seeing it and cooking with her was more of a therapy. So from there that's when I really started learning how to cook. Both my sides of the family have farms and I started to transition into the actual inner workings of the farms seeing that you know crop rotation. Where do you want to put your livestock? Where do you how do you keep up with equipment? How do you do all these different things and you realize that business and food go hand-in-hand? 100%. So you started early you had a stroke when you were four years old? Correct. With that I was I had one morning and I couldn't move I was on the floor and my brother realized that I couldn't move. I was trying to avoid going to the doctor because you know no four-year-old wants to go to the doctor. My brother took me to my mom which she realized that I had the droop in the face and I couldn't move so we went to and I was diagnosed with a stroke. I didn't even know what to say like four years old was there any lasting effects from that? It affected my speech that's mainly what I remember you know of course when you're four you don't remember too much. I remember not being able to feel anything and I remember my dad he they wanted to put me on a scale and weigh me and get my weight and my dad had to set me down and I just fell over I couldn't stand up on my own so those are the two main things but after I couldn't say any R's it was coming out

07:20like a W so it slurred my speech that was the longest lasting effect and then it certainly didn't help a seizure disorder that was already genetic. So something we haven't touched on here you are an epileptic? Correct. And that you've had that since birth? Yes. So you work in kitchens tell me a little about your journey what was your first professional kind of cooking job? So I transitioned from the farm to working in a grocery store second groceries at a local grocery store in Lexington Tennessee which is where I call home and then after that my mom had started working in Memphis so I would ride with her to Memphis which Lexington is halfway between Memphis and Nashville and I started working at interim restaurant doing dishes doing prep doing whatever they needed done and then from there I went to culinary school at Johnson Wells University I got a culinary degree a baking and pastry degree a business degree and I minored in nutrition and entrepreneurship and then from there I went to New Orleans my career really started off under chef Kelly Fields at Willa Jean she realized you know the stage that I was at my cooking career and it was really under her tutelage that she just expanded my mind and to being able to do everything in a kitchen what would you say is what's your what's your forte what I'm really known for is of course you know you have to have the talent to be able to work in a kitchen and the skills what I'm really good at is being able to do a million things at once and keep up with it all so I can do

09:27typically what I do is I'll do bigger projects and then work in my smaller projects in between the bigger projects while in the meantime there's orders coming in there's people that you have to talk to or should talk to you and then you know you have other people that are working and they need assistance too so in a way when you're helping somebody in the kitchen you're actually giving back to them hundred percent so where do you think that spirit comes from wanting to give back to others I feel like it's the golden rule I've always lived by treat others as you would want to be treated and it's also a part of the southern culture growing up in the south you know if somebody needs help you help them I mean my dad he would if there was an elderly elderly person that needed help he would be right there to help him and he would spend quality time with him too just because he knew that they were lonely my mom she would cook for different people especially if they needed it or after surgery or if they experience something big not saying she was the best cook but you know it's the genuineness and it's the act of service that you really experience in the south heck yeah man and I love that I think that there's a lot of people that cook for that reason but you you kind of have a little it you're a little special being an epileptic there's some there's some challenges involved with working in a kitchen and it can be relatively dangerous so you when I first kind of met you you said I'm the guy that wears the helmet in the kitchen yes right it's kind of become a signature and an icon at the same time so you wear a helmet why do you wear a helmet in the kitchen

11:29well so I have epilepsy as we've talked about um I have intractable epilepsy and that's pretty much narrows it down you take the medication you have the side effects and you still have seizures and a lot of people don't necessarily know what that is so I know that I'm gonna have a seizure and the best way to handle that in a kitchen is to be proactive you know I wear the helmet for safety effect so that way if I hit my head it's not as bad I work on a mat so that way I have a cushion underneath me um I have a pre-reliable aura which I taste metallic before a seizure which let me know and to let others know that I'm gonna have a seizure so I can communicate to them and there's no pressure on anybody that I've ever worked with to say you have to help me during a seizure everybody has been really supportive of it everybody has always included me and I've never run into a position out in the restaurant industry where nobody hasn't been willing to help so how often does this see you you've recently had a procedure done yes tell me about that so last year at this time I was actually dying from epilepsy I was the more seizures you have the more you will have and I didn't know last year at the time that I was dying per se I was going in and out of the hospital two or three times a week at this point last year and the seizures were at a steady pace about three or four five times a month and they just gradually increase so I went from weekly to almost daily having seizures and they

13:34got to the point where they would go over five minutes nothing would stop them and I would have to go to the hospital and then we realized that we had to do something so I had gone into the neurologist and she had sat me down said you have to do this procedure otherwise you're dead in two or three weeks you know at that point you really want to ask questions you know what am I doing what is this all about and you know we got a little bit of the details and we didn't know at that time that I really only had a week left on this earth I had gone home to Lexington Tennessee and I was house-sitting and it was a gorgeous day it was August 2nd I had gone out doors all day I love the outdoors I was going in and out of the house of course and the next thing I know I woke up on live support I have had a seizure outside of the house and it took them about 30 minutes for them to get there to me and by the time they rolled me over I was already blue in the face so they airlifted me from the scene and had started life support I don't know if anybody has ever woke up on my support but it's not the greatest thing all you can feel is a tube in your chest and you feel like you can't breathe and you can't see oh my gosh luckily I was able to survive and live off of life support long enough to get this procedure done and the procedure is an implant which the generators in my chest and then they have a lead that goes up to my brain and it's a smart

15:38device so when it detects that a seizure is trying to form it automatically sends regular electricity to the brain disrupting the seizure activity and it stops about 255 seizures a day so you were having 255 it prohibits 255 seizures every day yes that's our that's our steady amount are consistent what we see consistently across the board when we pull up the chart of what this implant is actually doing what an amazing procedure that is let's save your life it did and it's what's kept me here a year later so we're a year later how's everything going I do had an accident recently I did so I was I was at home during this quarantine time and I was going up the stairs and I had gotten the aura and there's a magnet that you swipe across your chest and when you really need to get three good swipes in but unfortunately I was at the wrong place at the wrong time I had a seizure on the stairs where I had fell forward hit my forehead and then I had seized down the staircase so it led to just a moderate severe concussion and then bruised ribs a gash in the forehead those kind of things that are inevitable when you fall down the stairs and you know really there was no it was a no-win situation it wasn't that I could get off the stairs to a platform

17:42when I got that aura and I don't wear a helmet at home but what I am looking at is a hat that can protect the head okay so if you're I mean that just bless your heart man I think that just sounds so so scary certainly at times so if you're at work and something you get the aura and you just ask a co-worker people that work with you do they know what to do absolutely so everyone that I've ever worked with I've always been open up I've always been open about the seizures you know it's not something that you want to hide and you know you can't hide it when you're wearing a helmet so they know what to do and they can actually tell that I'm gonna have one before I even know at this point with working with people for so long oh wow what amazing people it is that you work with that just jump right in how does that make you feel to know that you work around a bunch of people that just like just care about you that are willing to do that at a drop of a hat you know it makes me feel like everyone else it makes me feel that I'm around the right people it makes me feel that I should embrace them back the way that they do with me I love that I mean I just I think your story here so far is just so it's just amazing because I think that we live our daily lives I know I do and I just don't recognize that there are people every day that are dealing with stuff like this man I I mean bless you for having to do this what do you what's your mental state like you seem super positive you know I've lived with all this for so long I want to know life any different

19:47to say why me or to say oh this sucks you know negativity is like a cancer and it's not something you want to live like you know being positive is just kind of who I am I always try to find the good in everybody in every situation and it's just kind of built into how I have an outlook on life you were voted one of Nashville's 30 under 30 yes what was that like so that was a very fun a very fun thing to do we were I was able to give back actually raised $5,000 for cystic fibrosis a lot of people would ask well why do you give back to another organization that is an epilepsy well you know to say that epilepsy is the only disability out there that's just that's not out there that's just that's not true so there are other people with bigger bigger disabilities that you need to help and if you can help them then you totally should and cystic fibrosis I learned about it I felt that it was the right thing to do especially with how much monetary money that they actually need and giving back was more rewarding than actually getting their award so if I was a listener right now and I wanted to know what I could do to help fight epilepsy what are some things I can do what are they you know there's a number of ways to help with epilepsy and I would say the first thing is to be aware about it keep an open mind to it not

21:50everybody is cookie cutter we all have our own adversities and our own problems and when you realize that you have a bigger open mind but number one thing is to be aware of what to do when a seizure happens so it's such as a tonic clonic seizure or formerly grand mal seizure you want to lay the person down you want to turn them on their side you want to time the seizure you want to move hard objects out of the way sure and then as soon as it's over you just want to be kind and humane to the person that just had a seizure and then you want to stay with them for about 30 minutes because they'll be disoriented and then you know after that realizing that there's other seizures out there such as a partial complex seizure is another thing um it's not necessarily that a person has to shake to have a seizure somebody could actually just be staring at you and still have a seizure um so there's a wide range of seizures out there and the main thing is being aware of them well thank you so much for that I um I want to get back into a little bit just for awareness for just people to understand it and I just love that you're out there in kitchens you're working you're communicating you're giving back your your positive attitude to me is just everything and I just love your spirit I think that you're amazing I think that um everybody out there can just I wanted people just to hear your story and learn from it and go wow I just I just love it man I think that you're you're an amazing guy so what

23:50are you doing during quarantine like what do you do in your time you know where you're not working right now marsh house is closed right right so you're just what are you doing I'm obviously being a pest to our senators and our congressmen and our governor um you know the stimulus package was great um the payment protection plan was looked like a golden egg but however it is a little broken so um a lot of restaurants and a lot of smart small businesses are unable to get um the ppp protection payment program um and with that you know I realized that somebody needs to stand up and fight for everyone um so I started you know getting in touch with our governor started getting in touch with our senators getting in touch with our congressman um and from there we actually was able to achieve getting it uh the revision a priority before the next stimulus goes out really yes that's awesome awesome so that's another thing people can do how did you get ahold of them just write them letters you email them and you call all three you know the best way is to start by email okay and then if if you have to start calling you're amazing man I mean one thing is is you don't ever want to give up and you know you say that and it kind of can go through one there and out the other but really what that's saying is that success isn't final failure isn't fatal and it's the courage to go on amen the courage to go on I think that's a um it's an

25:58amazing message man what's your um what's your favorite movie what are you watching you watching anything good right now on tv you know I've watched a wide range of things uh I really like sports I like comedy and I like um action uh my favorite movie is actually Deadpool I think that's all right and then you know I listen to a lot of music I'm very active still I do 12 miles of cardio a day with my service dog Remington um and then from there I do home exercises that are keeping me um fit uh you can 12 miles a day and what's your dog's name Remington Remington and what kind of dog is Remington he is a German short-haired pointer a German short-haired pointer and he is your service dog so you live alone I do okay so you live alone so if something happens you have a service dog there yes and I actually have an apple watch too that detects falls so if I don't make it to the ground safely then the apple watch can kick in detect the fall and it calls 911 and then it alerts my emergency contacts um with my service dog when a seizure happens he lays across my chest and then he'll lick the foam that comes out of my mouth to keep the airway open oh my gosh that's incredible wow I give me a second that's that's um I don't even know what to say what an amazing animal they truly are and use 12 miles a day with him yes yes he's definitely getting spoiled during quarantine they're very active breed um and they use them in airports to sniff out um drugs but uh

28:08drugs but uh you know if I'm in an apartment and he's in an apartment well he needs to exercise just as much as I do so why not take them wow so what's your favorite kind of music what do you listen to when you walk or hanging out do you have a favorite band favorite band that's so hard to narrow down you know really genre pandora on my first five miles and then I switched to youtube and just start listening to whatever I want um but favorite song favorite band that's so hard to narrow down because I listen to everything you know what's really good to listen to when you walk what's that nashville restaurant radio we could all use that more in our lives a little little podcast for you and like the the shameless plug all right hey man is there anything you want to say to the people out there anything you want any anything at all I would say since it's just such an uncertain time right now um the best thing that we can all do would be to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable um and once you get used to that feeling everything just kind of goes away get comfortable with being uncomfortable and you get used to that you're okay everything just kind of goes away do you read a lot of books uh I read a lot of cookbooks and business books what's the number one business book that you could tell people that they should read oh gosh um you know honestly I wouldn't necessarily just say a business book I would say keeping up with the

30:16stock exchange keeping up with anything that can keep your mind active let me ask you this if I'm a chef if I'm somebody who's coming out of school or if I'm right now I'm in quarantine I'm trying to get better I'm trying to to come out of quarantine a whole new person what's the what's the cookbook that I need to be reading right now or who should I be reading right now you know that's a very very good question there's a lot of cookbooks out there it's kind of what you're into do you want to deep baking do you want to do savory uh Claudia Fleming came out with a new one the last course um Sean Brock south is always a good one all right and then you know there's different uh regions so what's your favorite what's your best style what do you like to cook what do I like to cook I really enjoy cooking New Orleans Cajun Creole food right now it provides a sense of comfort um you know any southern food you know obviously I don't go crazy with all the different fats and you know that kind of thing because I want to keep weight off I don't want to gain 15 pounds um so I've been doing a lot of comfort food at home okay oh healthy comfort I should say well I love to hear it thank you for spending the time talking with me today and kind of telling a bit of your story I'd love to check back with you and kind of do a follow-up once we get this thing back open and see how you're doing and keep us updated on you and

32:20if people want to like contact you you got an Instagram page I do um it's Grant underscore Shahanan underscore Adams uh my middle name is Shahanan so I spell it s-h-a-n-a-h-a-n and if people follow you on Instagram or find you on Facebook then you kind of post updates as to how you're doing and what you're doing I've seen you post lots of things that you're cooking and kind of updates I love it so people want to follow you they can go there and check it out oh absolutely absolutely awesome well man thank you so much and um I wish you nothing but the best of luck and um bless you get out there keep it going man I love your energy I love your everything about you dude thank you thank you for having me and thank you Grant for coming on Nashville Restaurant Radio what just a what a compelling guy I mean everything about him you gotta think that in the situation that we're all in right now none of us asked for this nobody did anything to make this happen and you hear a lot of people complain you hear a lot of people that are I'm I'm ready to be out of this this is annoying whatever it might be there's so much stuff going on but this guy he didn't ask for any of that either and he just has an amazing outlook on things I love he said get comfortable with being uncomfortable and when you get used to that feeling everything just kind of goes away so I'll leave you on that thought but thanks for listening tomorrow we will be speaking with Chef Julio Hernandez from Nectar Urban Cantina and then on Wednesday we have Shane Nasby of Honeyfire in Bellevue which is one of my absolute favorite places in the city if you love barbecue he's just a good dude all around I cannot wait

34:21to talk to him same with Julio so stick around subscribe to the podcast so that you can get it directly to your inbox and I hope that you all are doing well I hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you and stay safe love you guys bye