Jake Howell

00:00Very excited to be partnering with C&B Linen. If you know me it's my number one topic of conversation is linen companies and how shady linen companies can be. I have just disgusted with how the business practices work in this industry which is why I was so excited when I found C&B Linen. They're out of Waynesboro, Tennessee and they don't charge any fees. So the linen price that you have, whatever that first linen price is, that's your price. And so you may say well every year they must raise the price on this seven-year contract, right? No, because they don't do any contracts. There's no gas fees, there's no clean green service fees, there's no replacement cost, there's nothing. The only price you pay is the price that you pay for the actual product. I know it's too good to be true. No contracts. They do formats. They'll make custom formats for you. They do fresh linens, cleaning supplies and guys I just did a tour of their facility and it is immaculate. It is state-of-the-art. I'm gonna post pictures on my Instagram. You can go find them and you can see how absolutely gorgeous this is to the point that they even wash and sanitize every one of their used laundry carts. It's just absolutely amazing. If you're looking for a linen company you can trust, who wants to earn your business every single week, go back and listen to our episode with Jason Cruz, the owner of CNBLenny. Hear it from his straight from his mouth exactly what they do or you give them a call at 931-722-7616 or you can DM me at Brandon Styll on Instagram for my exclusive pricing through the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance, NARA for short.

01:53Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service and we've got a great one for you today. We are speaking with Jake Howell. This is a marathon episode today. We talked for over two hours. It just was one of those conversations. It just kept going and I was like, hey we're at an hour and I was like, all right well let's keep going and it was like we're in an hour and a half. Okay we're at two hours now. We've got to wrap this thing up. So interesting. You know Jake Howell is the executive chef and partner over at Peninsula. He just won Best Chef Southeast at the James Beard Awards. A month before last he's fresh off of that. We jumped into all of that. What was going through his mind when he heard his name about his acceptance speech. You can watch all of that on YouTube. By the way you can watch this interview on YouTube. It is live right now on YouTube. We did the video on this one so you can hear all of it. You can watch it all. You can see it. We did it. It was actually a live stream that we did. So it's there at Nashville Restaurant Radio's YouTube page. Hey while you're there why don't you click that subscribe button and you'll know whenever we do this you'll get a notification that we're live at the moment. This episode was amazing but you know what I'm talking about today. It is NARA Connect. The Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. We are doing our NARA Connect launch party. It's gonna happen on August the 14th. It's at the Music City Center. It's gonna be from 3 to 6 and I want you there. If you are a restaurant owner, if you're a general manager, if you're an executive chef and

03:54you have any responsibility for your purchases or if you're lonely. Look this is a connect thing. I want as many restaurant owners there so that you guys can meet each other. You can share phone numbers. You can connect. Hey we're all stuck in the four walls of our buildings every day and let me tell you most of these events you get there and there's a bunch of salespeople and you're like leave me alone. I just want to be here with my friends. That's what this is. From 3 o'clock to 430 there's no salespeople. It is just restaurant owners hanging out talking, connecting. There's gonna be a presentation. I'm gonna tell you all about NARA. We've got Leah Melnick. She is with Giving Kitchen. This is gonna be an event for the Giving Kitchen. We're gonna donate all the proceeds that we after all of our costs are going directly to them. I'm gonna hand them a big check. I'm really excited. We've got about 20 vendors that'll be there. So from 430 to 6 we are doing a hundred percent independent restaurant show. It's not brought to you by one major vendor. We'll have all four broadliners there. We're gonna have Freshpoint there. Just signed up Placemat. If you guys don't know what Placemat is, stay tuned because our next episode is gonna be with Placemat. They're really cool. Cool new option for you to connect better with your guests and make some more sales. We've talked to Charlie Nelson and him and his brother are gonna be there. They're gonna be talking about a Belmead bourbon. They're gonna be pouring Belmead bourbon. We're gonna have Black Sheep Tequila. Jason who's the owner of Black Sheep Tequila is gonna be there pouring. This is the best tequila in the world. We just had them last night at our Bowls and Business event. Every Thursday at Mayor Bowl I do a Bowls and Business event from 5 to 7. It's a networking event. A bunch of people come out. Everybody who was there was like what is this? I go this is the best tequila in the world and they all gave me that sheepish look like okay really. I go go try it. They're in town today and I said hey come to my event. I'd love to see you guys and they came out and everybody was like oh my god this is the best damn tequila. We have a server

05:54our top sales guy was like what is this? Let me see it and he flipped for it and he came back and said how my twin brother said this was good. Can I try it again? Which I thought was really a funny joke. We will have Colexo there. So if you are curious about THC brands you wanted to try these. Colexo is the best THC brand you're ever gonna have. Full spectrum soft wash and pressure cleaning. So if you need your anybody this is a local company guys. This is a good deal they're offering for you to come do pressure washing and cleaning. Adams Keegan's gonna be there. If you have payroll HR they're there to answer your questions. Miles Hospitality Marketing. CNB Lennon Robbins Insurance Super Source. Like I said all four broadliners no pressure. We've already negotiated deals with most these people. They are here to talk about relationships and what they can do. These are businesses that I trust that I use These are people that I am currently using. I can vouch for them. They're members of NARA and they are here to work with other members of NARA and this is gonna be a show like you've never been to before in your life. I am super excited and there's gonna be an after party. The after party will be at a restaurant downtown. It's gonna be sponsored by CNB Lennon. There's gonna be drinks. There's gonna be food and you're not gonna know where that is unless you come. If you come to the event which is a hundred percent free you will tell you where the after party is and then you can go hang out with all these people afterwards and have a good time. Right? This is this is something like we've never seen. We're gonna do this twice a year. I'm really excited. I need you there. How do you get there? Well that's that's the easy part. You go to NaraNashville.com. That's N-A-R-A-Nashville.com. On our web page it's gonna explain everything about NARA. You can see who our vendors are. You can see who the restaurants who are currently involved with us are. We market all the restaurants. We have plans to do lots of marketing. We want to promote all the

07:57restaurants that are members. We want this to be the go-to place. If you're looking for a place to eat and you want to eat at a local restaurant, go to Nara Nashville. There's a list of all the best local restaurants right there. I want to save you money. I want to build your business. We want to create a community of people together. You click on the NARA Connect tab. You go to NaraNashville.com. You click on that NARA Connect tab. You just scroll down. It talks about the event and then you click on the register here button. But here's the deal. I'm promoting it pretty hard right now, but I have seats for a hundred to 125 people, right? Only two people per restaurant. I'm hoping to get 50 to 75 restaurants there. If it's only you, great. I'd love to have you there, but you're going to need to register, right? So if you want to reserve your seat for this awesome event, you need to go do that now because it will sell out. We won't have any spaces left and it's in two weeks. This thing happens in two weeks, so timing is of the essence. Go to Nara Nashville right now. Click on the Nara Connect tab and register to be there. If you're already registered and you have restaurants that, hey look, this seems right up your alley, your local restaurant, you need some help. Let's get you in there. Go tell your friends. The faster this thing fills up, the faster we can move on and start the party.

09:14August 14th. I'm super excited. By the way, we are going to be doing door prizes, so when you get there you will get a raffle ticket. And on stage I will be drawing raffles. You'll be getting, everybody who comes first of all is going to get a Nara t-shirt. I've got two different. I've got the really cool Nara, just says Nara across the front and I have one that says the Nashville area restaurant lines. Everybody who comes is going to get a t-shirt in their size that you can rock. Be proud. I love it. It's something I'm really excited about giving you. We're also going to give away door prizes. I'll have door prizes from the vendors that will be giving away stuff and then I'm going to give away a couple pairs of Air Jordans. So if you, if you want, and your size, right, so you won't get them that day. You tell me what size you are and then I'm going to send them right to you. And then I've got two pairs of custom Nara dunks. I think I'm going to give away one pair of custom Nara dunks and one pair of custom Nara Air Force Ones. So four pairs of shoes that are going to be super cool will be given away to you if I call your number. We're going to have random drawings and you can win these shoes. There's going to be swag bags. There's going to be all kinds of fun stuff you're going to take home from this event. Hopefully just a ton of connections. I'm excited to meet you if I haven't met you already. We're going to be recording a lot of this stuff. It's, it's going to be a lot of fun.

10:34So this will be the one you don't want to miss. We're going to do, like I said, and we're going to do this twice a year. We'll probably do one beginning of March and we'll do one in August every year. So this will be something, if you want to be at the inaugural one, this is your chance to be there. Come help us support The Giving Kitchen. This, again, we're not going to ask you for money when you get here. We're not going to ask you to donate anything. This is just simply, the vendors are paying for all of the donations. So this is pretty cool. All it takes is you. So looking forward to seeing you guys there. This episode with Jake Howell is epic. Please listen to, like, the whole thing because at the end he goes into all of his favorite restaurants that he loves, his favorite music, kind of what he does for fun. And when, talk about what he does for fun. It's really deep. This whole conversation is unlike any episode that I've ever done. Maybe the Brian Backstrap, so it was a little closer, just I think I had this perception of who Jake Howell was previously and I've been afraid to contact him and shattered all of that in one conversation. This would be the first of, I hope, many with him because I was fascinated and hopefully you are too. And we're going to jump in right now. This is Nashville Restaurant Radio.

11:52Super excited today. And I, you know, I say that thing of every episode, I say I'm super excited today to welcome in. And today, like really, I'm like so excited to have you here. Right as my dogs start barking. Good, whatever. Love that. That's what it is, right? We are talking with Jake Howell. He is the chef. He's a partner at Peninsula here in Nashville. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you. I guess I have to say James Beard award winning chef. That's it's like winning an Oscar. You can't say this is an actress. This is a James Beard award winning chef. Yeah. How does that feel? It's weird. Is it weird? Yeah. Yeah. Is this something you've always dreamed of? Um, no, not necessarily. You're an artist. Originally, that's what you want to do. You wanted to be an artist. You wanted to paint. You wanted to paint. Do you still paint? No. No, not at all. You're painting that artistic ends up on a plate now. I think the creative side of my brain works with food. Yeah. Was there a moment where you're like, I'm just done painting? Yeah, I hated it.

13:09That's interesting. You hated painting, but that's what you wanted to do. I like painting. I didn't like when it was done because then you have to judge it. It's hard to judge art because it's comes from inside, right? Then you look at it and it's disappointing. Why? Why? I mean, is that just, is that like a insecurity thing? Because I can look at something and go, this looks amazing. Or is it, were you not good at it or like, I don't understand? I mean, I think there's subjective nature to creating and the way my brain works, I'm not particularly satisfied with anything that I make or do. Interesting. So it's, I'm going to notice what's wrong with it. And so any brushstroke isn't right. Anything you're like, I messed up that area of it. And then when you started cooking, is there a perfect dish? Do you create a perfect dish where it comes out and you go, this is it? Is it, do you feel that satisfaction now when you cook? No, never.

14:26Do you think that's the driving force that keeps you, that it is the reason you're successful? Um, it's the thing that motivates me. It's kind of trying to find that thing that I haven't found. Interesting. I can't listen to my own podcast. I listen back and I cringe and I go, oh, I missed an opportunity to ask that question. I hate editing. I will postpone editing a show forever because I'm like, I hate my voice. I hate my questions. I hate everything. And I just go, release, go, I'm just going to put it out there. And I never listened to them. Yeah. Do you eat your own food? How do you, how do you judge a dish? I would like to, it's interesting because I was talking about this recently where I started cooking before I ever wanted to be a chef. So I cooked to make a living, which meant I was learning skills, learning how to be in a kitchen, but it wasn't like my life passion. So I sort of have like that phase of cooking.

15:34When you were in Seattle Pike Place? Yeah. Like in Seattle doing, working in restaurants, I was, I'm competitive. So I tried to do a good job, but I didn't want to be a chef. Zero percent. I wanted to do art and creative things only. Then I quit cooking and I only did creative stuff. When I came back to it, I was very much focused on like, this is what I want to do. I want to be a chef. I want to go all in on it. And I was like, it sucked so bad. At being a chef? At cooking. At cooking in general. Like, I think it's a common, it's a common occurrence that happens with people that are trying to create stuff where your ideas are good in your head. Okay. Like you wouldn't try to make it if it didn't sound cool, if it didn't sound good, if it didn't sound interesting.

16:35So I'd been thinking like, this is what I'm going to do, went to do it, couldn't execute it. So nothing was good. Nothing worked. Just fail, fail, fail, fail. Next phase, you start to kind of figure it out, which is where I am now. Where like, I can think about something. It will likely work. It's like playing guitar. Like I have a guitar sitting here and I can play like Pearl Jam's Better Man. But I can play it because I've learned how to play, not because I can hear it and I can hear the music, but somebody taught me how to play individual songs. I can play Come As You Are and some other basic bullshit songs. But at some point, the strings, your fingers start moving and it all starts making sense and you can hear a song go, oh, I like they did with the bridge there. And it moved this way. And is that kind of what you're talking about? Like with cooking, where you could put ingredients together and cook and it wasn't good and then all of a sudden it was, and now you're kind of in that point to where you're like, it's starting to make sense.

17:47It's starting to, yeah, it's starting to like form where I feel like I have some idea of what I'm doing. Does winning a James Beard award give you that like the world also sees what I'm doing and I'm there or do you just see like, there's no, you haven't reached the top of the mountain and you're like, that's it. I won. I've got this thing now. I've been recognized. You're still in a mindset of, oh, you haven't seen anything yet. Hopefully. Where else can you, I mean, like that's so fascinating. First of all, I love that. Well, I feel like the way we'll sometimes put it at the restaurant is if we look back at a menu we had two years ago, we want to be embarrassed of it. Interesting. How do you challenge yourself? Where do you find inspiration with food? I mean, it's this interesting question because it's just a little circle spinning in your head.

18:48Why do you go to other cities and try and seek out other chefs who are doing really creative, groundbreaking, imaginative things? Are you finding inspiration from other people or do you find it in going to Canis market and picking up a bunch of random items and putting them together and seeing what tastes good that's different? I mean, I think there's a lot of that. I'm obviously inspired by other people that do great stuff, but I also think that it would be inauthentic to me to base what I'm doing on other people. So I love eating something that someone made that makes me like. When was the last time you had something like that? Locus, probably, yeah. Trevor will always do some something that or lots of things that. It's like this, this is ridiculous. Yeah, I love their service model. I think just everything about the whole idea of Locust is just.

19:50Yeah, the whole thing's fucking awesome. Yeah, it's just amazing. And he's such an amazing guy. But I think that he's coming from a point of view seemingly where he wants to do stuff that he cares about. And I think that that's the intention required. So you can't worry about all the external what people are saying. You can't worry about somebody who says, I don't like that. I like that. It's all a matter of how am I pushing myself and what I'm putting out there? And you can like you can love it or leave it. I don't care, but it's going to be authentically what I want to do every day. And here it is. It's a difficult question, because I think like my thought process would be that I want nothing more than for people to have a great experience. It's my biggest goal. Yeah, I don't think I can give them that by thinking about what they want.

20:54That is profound. So. Do it, figure it out. If people hate it, you might be bad at it and then you should do something else. Like at the end of the day, like if it's just not there. It could not be what you're good at or you could be right and no one else sees it. How do you delineate between the two? I will have people come back. Yeah. Or if you go to a business before anyone decides they like it. That's a thing. But yeah, I mean, I think that. The restaurants I like the most are restaurants where I think that A to B, they're doing what they want to do, how they do want to do it, not trying to figure out what people want. That's interesting. That's just me. That's just how what I like. I just think it's a completely different way to look at it. I think if you are in the hospitality industry, your goal is to make your guests in general.

22:00I'm speaking in generalities. Same. Your goal is to make your guests want to become a repeat guest and come back and you want to create food that they're going to love. And there's very something very cookie cutter about that. Oh, I love that place. It's warm. It's friendly. It's comfort food. And you're kind of going. I'm if I'm doing that, then I'm I have no soul. Like, that's not what my motivation is. I want to create something. I want to create something that challenges people. That is something I want to do. And maybe people are able to open up their minds and their taste buds and go, I don't even know that I like that. And he turned me on to something that was really. And it's a it's a completely different style of experience. It's way more risky in the business sense of what you're doing. It is. But I think that there's been like a misconception about how I work or do things. My intention isn't to like. Be weird. Yeah, my intention is to cook the things that are in my head.

23:06And when I eat the food that we've made, I want to like know why I made it and like feel something from it, hoping that that will and like resonate across to the people that come in. Well, it seems to be. Hopefully. What is recognition like? So leading up to when you get that, let's let's talk about this, James. This is you're inspiring me because I live in a world where everything is just kind of what it is. Tell me, Craig and Yuriko, you knew them back that you guys all moved here together to do this, right? Yeah, Yuriko was the GM of Walrus and the Carpenter when I started in like. 2013. So her and I have worked together from 2013 to now. How are they as partners? As far as the way that you like to cook in your mindset, are they lockstep with you?

24:08How important is it to have people that are partners that totally get you? And very because it. I was young ish when we open pen and to have people let me do what I wanted. And be partners with me and support me while I was like, frankly, sometimes figuring it out, still figuring it out. Yeah, missing. And just letting me figure it out is invaluable. Was there ever contentious moments where you're like, dude, you've got to fucking stop doing this. We need sales. We need business. All that. Did it does it ever come to that? No, but no. I mean, Craig's a creative. Yeah. Yuriko's dad is an amazing artist. Yuriko believes in like what I wanted to do and in me. So they didn't try to. Push me somewhere. Which is really hard because you went through a pandemic.

25:10Yeah, and you guys were open before that, man. I will never forget the reason Peninsula came on my radar. I didn't know anything about it was I had Brian Lee Weaver on the show. One of my questions at the one of the most amazing guys in the city. But I said, where's your favorite place to go eat? And he goes, oh, man, I got to give it to Peninsula. He goes, Peninsula. And I was like, what's Peninsula? I didn't even know. And this is 2020. Yeah. That he says this in the middle of he goes, they're doing amazing things. And I think even went to like, we're just doing some to go. Yeah, we we. Soups almost. What was it? So we weren't open or couldn't open our dining room. Yeah. There was like no reasonable way. To be open at all. So we were. Doors were closed for over a year. Wow. Yuriko is an amazing chef in her own right. Food is amazing. So we made dumplings. That's what it was. I was like, there was something. We saw things like brass subscriptions and made dumplings for. Like. It was a year.

26:14It was a while. It was a while. So what did you do during that time? I mean, obviously, you're making dumplings, but like. Was this an opportunity for you to look inside and be creative? Because when you have a little bit of time for somebody like yourself, do you go deep into test mode? Are you testing flavors? What are you doing during the pandemic? I mean, a lot of it was making broth and dumplings, which are incredibly time consuming. And they were really good. They were great. People loved their broth and dumplings. I think it was cool to do that for the community, too. Her food is really, really good. Yeah. Amazingly good. But. You know, towards the end of that period of time, we were closed and the way things were stretching and the way things were looking and the uncertainty of. Restaurants as a whole, yeah, I remember texting my friend and I was like, I'm worried I'm not going to be able to do what I love anymore.

27:23The way I want to do it. Where'd that fear come from? Just the overall there was a pandemic. We might have to the pandemic, the like economic ups and down. The sort of like, are people going to be able to get into small restaurants again? Like, it was just we didn't know. Like, I had this like dread that like. Doing what I loved was done. And it just like. It was difficult to have a team need to walk in positive and in a good mood. Well, I simultaneously was grappling with the fact that like maybe. My career, as I know it, that I love is not going to exist the same way. How did you deal with that? Do you meditate? Do you drink? What do you do? I don't drink. You don't drink at all? No.

28:24I love that. I mean, I'll like. Have the stuff we have at work, so I know, but I don't really drink. Do you think that's a superpower in this industry? Um. I think it helps. I think that. Some of the tropes are overplayed. About chefs and cooks. 100 percent, well, you they're all TV. I mean, like worked in this industry a long time. The majority of people are pretty responsible. Majority of them are. There's outliers in certain types of restaurants and but. It's too hard of a job. At your level. I think if you're, you know, I think serving is a relatively easy job to get into, there's a thousand restaurants out there, and if you. I mean, I think that if you genuinely care about what you're doing and you're a professional, then, yeah, yeah, it's different.

29:30Yeah. And those are people that are. There's some good money to be made in the industry if you genuinely care and you make it a craft. I think that I've always felt like the reality is, is that you're very likely to find people that have substance abuse issues. Across anywhere, any career. In fact, there are careers where you're going to find a lot more and they're not the ones you'd guess. A nursing, any like first responders, I think where there's high trauma, I think that's where you find like high trauma or high stress or whatever. And it's like. I've been around too many people that do this to say that it is, on average, a true story, more so in a restaurant industry. Yeah, I'm I know I'm also. You know, have seen what I've seen. It's just my personal experience. No, I think everybody is entitled to that. Yeah. So you get that. But the whole thing, it's like, blah, blah, blah. Cooks, chefs. Yeah.

30:34That's that it's someone's experience. It is. And I mean. I've seen it. Yeah. I've certainly seen both sides of it. I've seen some people that it is. Brutal. You know, it's funny because one of my restaurants, I have like I have like 15 people in recovery. And I guess I draw those people because I'm like, this is a safe place, man. We're good. Like, come on in here. It's also good to. Oh, I love that. Help people. It's one of my favorite things. Restaurants are an interesting. I always feel like restaurants are this interesting type of job where you get so many different walks of life that you're not going to see in a typical job. There are people that are here incredibly intentionally. There are people that are there because it's just the only thing they thought they could do. And you're sort of like. Making a wide swath of people with different backgrounds coexist with each other.

31:40Yeah, and you have LGBTQ, brown people of color, all kinds of people all together for one common goal. And you're in the shit. Yeah. When it's and I often say that it like a busy shift is trauma because you can hang out beforehand in the side station or you're doing your mise en place, you're prepping and it's all super chill. And then all of a sudden we just got sat 60 covers in like two minutes. And. The pressure and the tension goes to level 10 and you your voice elevates, you say things very directly in the moment because I don't have time to sugarcoat things in that moment. And you may say, I need this right now. And it's like, why did you speak to me that way? But it's like you have to understand in this industry that there are moments where we're going to be incredibly direct. We're going to do these things. And then it's going to slow back down. I'm going to go ham. My bad. I didn't mean to. I wasn't yelling at you there or whatever. And I think there's a.

32:41We have dogs trying to get in now. This is all part of the at home podcast. No, I like it. But no, I think that also I have 80 D. Diagnosed like 80 D. And I need chaos in my brain. This is one of the things I love doing as a podcast, because I can actually hyperfocus and sit here with the headphones on and the whole thing. But I need a busy Friday night. It allows my brain. And I think it attracts those type of people. And there's a fact that there's a ton of alcohol, cocaine and marijuana are all three things that calm the 80 D brain. And those are things that this industry attracts a lot of those type of people, because there's a lot of chaos. They want that. And it's harder to sit at a desk when you have 80 HD. And it's so I think there is a little bit of a correlation, but it's. Yeah, like I said, it's different levels. Yeah, I mean, I'm most relaxed at work. I agree with that.

33:43Like to me, I've kind of been someone where no matter what's going on outside of work, I walk in. This is what it is. It's going to make how I felt better. Good, bad or otherwise. Why is that? You have to be intentional, you can't. We respond, you can't leave your brain somewhere else. You have to leave your like, you have to be focused on what you're doing. So if you enjoy cooking and being in a restaurant. You can't think about what was I thinking about that was bugging me before? You have to think about exactly what you're doing. I love that I'm going to we're going to pause for a second. Hear a word from our sponsors. Yeah, I'm going to let the dogs outside. But give us just one.

34:43So we'll be right back with we're speaking with Jake Howell from Peninsula. Hello, all your restaurant folks out there. Real talk. How many times have you said we need to do more marketing, but you just don't know where to start? Well, that's where Miles Hospitality Marketing comes in. They work exclusively with independent restaurants and small hospitality groups, helping you build a smarter, more strategic marketing plan without hiring a full time team. And the best part, the owner, Christine Miles, she brings over 25 years of restaurant marketing experience to the table. She's worked with everyone from beloved neighborhood spots to national chains, and she knows what works in real world restaurants. So whether you need help with branding, digital marketing, social media, email, or just figuring out what's actually worth your time, Miles Hospitality Marketing gets it from quick wins to long term growth. They offer everything from graphic design to full fractional CMO services. So check them out. This is where you start, guys. You check them out at MilesHM.com.

35:45That's M-Y-L-L-S-H-M.com. And if you mention Nashville Restaurant Radio, you receive a free hour of consultation. Also, she will be at NARA Connect. So if you want to meet Christine Miles at NARA Connect and set up that hour long consultation, she is also a vendor partner with Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. So Miles Hospitality Marketing, because your marketing should work as hard as you do. I'm Robbins Insurance Agency. You know, before I got into insurance, I worked in the hospitality space. So I do understand firsthand how tough it can be to keep things running smoothly. Now, I love to help business owners like you protect what you've built. And whether it's a restaurant, bar, hotel, catering operation, I know the risks you're up against and how to cover them properly. This isn't a one size fits all coverage. I'm going to help you find a policy that actually fits your operation, your staff and your budget. So you can focus on serving guests, not stressing about what ifs. It's an ever changing market. Anything could go wrong.

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37:49Let us handle the numbers so you can focus on serving great food and creating unforgettable experiences. Book your free consultation today. Groomberg Accounting dot com. Specialized bookkeeping and financial services for the food industry. And we're back. We after our short break, let the dogs out. We have we're back with Jake Howell. I love where this conversation is going. And I love just kind of your take on it. It's refreshing because it's so different and I say different. I mean, it's just authentic. I'm not hearing PR speak, which I get. Yeah, we don't have PR. I get from time to time. You get out of the pandemic. You're doing all this food. When did you like? Is James Beard something that you have seen other chefs get? Is there any bit of like a man? I bet I could I bet I could get a James Beard award. I bet if I tried, was there anything you did differently to catch the eyes of the people at James Beard?

38:55No, you just. Yeah, I mean, so for instance, I had Tandy Wilson on the show. Yeah. Right. And Tandy said I wanted to win a James Beard award. So I started going to food festivals and I started shaking hands and I started getting I started going, traveling to Palm Beach, to this one, to this one, to whatever. And I got my name out there and I worked towards getting the James Beard award. None of that for you. I'm just going to show up every day, do the thing I do when you. How did you find out that you were nominated for a James Beard award? I'm trying to think. Like a tech, like tax, I think I looked at my phone. And all of a sudden, you're like, why do I have forty seven text messages? We're like we do like one prep day before I looked at my phone. I don't know what is going on here. And I couldn't I'm blowing up.

39:57I couldn't figure it out. So Eurico texted me and told me. So Eurico text you and said, dude, you've been nominated for a James Beard award. What was the first emotion that you felt when you read that text? I mean, we were excited. I mean, like literally the last time we were nominated, which was like. So you've been nominated before. I didn't know. I got a text as I was getting out of my truck to go into work. It's like crazy. I walked in the restaurant, went into the bathroom and a guest like the last guest we'd had had literally thrown up all over the wall. So I immediately started like just putting on like the vomit throw up kit and cleaned up the vomit and then started work and literally like almost forgot. And that's so perfect. Well, it's kind of like that's the industry right there. Like I just got nominated for a James Beard award. Yet I'm here in a vomit cleaning up vomit off the bathroom.

40:58Decent representation of like that's real. Restaurants are a unique business. Yeah. World we live in. But I mean, yeah, we were pumped, excited that everyone on staff loves it. And do you take this on as something that I won? Or is this a hundred percent like I don't win this? This is everybody here together. Yeah, one million percent. I mean, I can do a fraction of the work required to run the restaurant. And if everyone else didn't do their absolute best every day, which they do. Then like it's worth nothing. Yeah, so there's a there's a restaurants are one of the I mean, it's the same as other like making a film if everyone isn't doing it doesn't matter what your idea was, it's not going to work. How do you get everybody to do that?

42:00How do you do you hire people? These are friends that work there because it's difficult to find that. How many people do you have working for you? How many people work at Peninsula? I think there's like 10 total. OK, one three cooks, me in the kitchen, dishwasher. You work every night. Yeah. You don't get to take days off. I don't. Well, I mean, we're not open that much, so. So when you're not open, you get time off. Yeah, I mean, it's like doing other stuff, but I do get a decent amount of time off. Well, that's good. I just I'm imagining you like six nights a week back there like, no, what do you say? I'm happiest when I'm there. So, I mean, sometimes it's it works out like that, like where, no, I like being here, I feel comfortable, I'm confident. This is what I love to do. I do it every night. That's a thing. I mean, I enjoy being in the restaurant. So who went to Chicago with you?

43:00Yuriko and Craig and my wife, Sophia. Well, I'm married. Well, technically not married. Oh, like we've been engaged for way too long. All right. It's kind of hard to get married with my schedule. OK. But I heard. Do you have like a do you guys talk about it? Like, what is the ultimate plan to get married? You guys going to look just going to like go somewhere? We were potentially going to get married this summer, but we have like the new little restaurant opening and. All of it, there's no time. And I want it to be nice, so you want to have do you want to have like a big wedding? Medium, medium. Yeah, it was big to me when I got married. I wanted a big my wife was like, let's just go to Mexico or something. Let's just do something away. I wanted a big wedding. We want our family and friends there. I don't want it to just be because we just run off and get married quick. Yeah, we've also been together for almost 10 years. Wow. And. We like own a house together.

44:03You're proud you're married. I get you. We have a dog. We have cats. It's like we're we're married. We're just not like there's not a piece of paper that says it. It feels like we're married. Yeah. Oh, you're married. I mean, I'll give it to you. That's like she's my wife to me. Yeah. But yeah, she came. So 10 years. Yeah, 10 years question. Yeah. And it was like we were barely there. We got there Sunday. The awards are on Monday and we left Tuesday morning. Getting into the arena, you said, I watched your speech today. And you look shocked. Like when they came up, it was like Andrew Zimmern was the presenter. And he said, you know, Jake Howell and Cameron like found you and yours like, holy shit. And you kind of got to give everybody a hug. Your wife's right there. And you walk down and you came up and it was like, I didn't prepare a speech. What's the what's the rationale behind? Do you prepare a speech or not prepare a speech?

45:07What did you think when you heard your name? The second that Andrew Zimmern said, Jake Howell, what went through your brain? I mean, it's like just shocked, honestly. And then the second thing I thought was a speech. I don't like like public speaking at all, which is not my thing. So it's like the number one fear next to death is public speaking. Well, the funny thing is, I'm zero percent afraid of it. I just don't like it. Is that too? It's just one of those things where I'm like, this is not for me. So. Told Sophie, I was like, shit, you know, you're you're right. She said, so she said you need to prepare a speech and you said, I'm not. Well, she was like, you want to write a speech so you don't forget to like. Thank your mom or say thank you to your mom or whoever. And. Panic, which I did, but luckily I got something out. I thought it was a lovely speech.

46:09I was just happy that I got. You looked you looked like you were like, holy shit, like a lot of times people are you see Oscars like, I didn't even know. I guess the Oscars, they knew your chance. You that's a that's a thing. You I watched that. I was like, that dude didn't think he was going to win. He just walked up there and was like, just this is really cool. Like, thank you to the James. Or anybody that you forgot, did you get home and lay in bed and say, oh, shit, I didn't think somebody anybody. I mean, like so much family aunts and uncles and. Different chefs like my chef, my friend, friend, Taylor Thornhill, who was like such a huge, like like him. And I started working together when he was way more experienced than me. And he taught me so much. And, you know, it was like because I was at my time limit. Yeah. Like I looked down and it was like two seconds left. How much time do they give you? Two minutes.

47:10Two minutes. Yeah. Wow. I think you think you'd be like at least three. Two minutes. I thought I barely talked. Two minutes. I was I used all of it. You think the Nashville community? Yeah, you said the Nashville restaurant community. What is can you elaborate on that? What is this community of restaurateurs? What is this community in Nashville? The people, what does it mean to you? Well. Nashville has something that's unique to anything I've seen with restaurants. Like. Restaurant owners and chefs here in general are like legitimately on each other's side. Like not fake, not for looking good in public, but they actually are on each other's side. And that's invaluable, especially to someone like me. I moved here from somewhere else. Fucking cares about me.

48:13Why would you? But people were like kind and helpful. It's interesting, because I've seen this. I've been in Nashville in this industry for 30 years. Met a lot of people, been all around a lot of this stuff. And. If you come to Nashville. And you're from anywhere else. And you genuinely it there's a there is a friendly kind of a vibe. If you don't want to say play the game, but if you're genuine in hospitality and it's not about fuck you, I'm better is not a competition. It is a hospitality thing. Hey, we're all here to serve people. How can I help you? What do we need to do? Which is why I'm doing the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. Let's define that. Let's bring all those people in and foster that. Let's put some guardrails around it and say, hey, shared numbers. If you guys don't know each other, this guy is awesome. This guy is awesome. To me, it's almost like an us for us and them, because now you have all these chains coming in and we have to support each other and build each other up.

49:17And that's the Nashville people I've known in this industry forever are like best friends. Yeah. You're Marco McCormick's, the rest in peace, Randy Rayburn's and all those people, Brian Lee Weaver and people that come to town. I mean, you talk about Chad and Gracie, Chad Newton and Gracie Wynn over at You Are Here Hospitality and Emma and Chris Baird like these people came into town and they've just put their arms around everybody and it just happens right back. But if you come in and you start. If you don't have that humility and let me tell you what I can do, that can also turn quick on you. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty it's pretty amazing. You guys have done a fantastic job of being right in there with everybody and contributing so much. Well, I feel like. People here are uniquely good at sussing out if you're being authentic or not. And like I was coming from a place of.

50:21Not wanting to be in Seattle anymore and looking for somewhere to move. And I wasn't I'm from northern Idaho. I wasn't going to move there. So there's two places I'm connected to in the rest of the world. I don't have any connection to. So I was going to be a transplant. Yeah. By nature, there's nowhere else I can go that I have a connection to. Two places you're local to. So now three. When we moved here. I was fully aware of how. People can be taken. From like living in other places. And it's not really my nature to come in and think shit about myself. But. Just kind of like ask questions and was here trying to do something that was like honest and. I think maybe the the best way I could put it is do something that had some net gain to the city.

51:25Like not be a vampire. Not just take. Yeah, try to like come in and like actually do something that I felt like in some capacity was. Good for here. We've done it. Not. More this or more of that, but just something that like existed in a part of what Nashville is. I mean, I think you, like I said, I think you've done it. I mean, now. You do your acceptance speech, you leave. Now, now you're cemented. There's a legacy now around you. How do you go forward? How do you go back to where you came from? Legacy now around you. How do you go forward? Now there's expectation. Now there's publicity. Yeah, everybody wants to know more. If it wants to get in and me, I reach out to you. I want to learn more about you. Now, full disclosure, I've wanted to have you on the show for four or five years.

52:26I've been afraid to ask you because I didn't know you. And I'm just I'm like, I just was afraid to ask me. I'm like an immoral person. I'm like you're not to say you're intimidating, but like, no, I don't know. It's hard to reach out to me. You don't know. And this kind of was my reason to go, I really want to have you on the show because I have for a long time. But yeah, thank you. Now going forward, how are things going to change? Are you going to do anything differently? How has your life changed in the last month and a half or however long it's been? I mean, I think in general, I won't do anything different than now. I think that there are opportunities that will come about to do things like charity events and stuff like that that you like participating in that are going to hopefully be like net gains. But as like a business, I don't want a lot of the things.

53:30Some of it is going to be out of your control. Just because people are just, there's just going to be a now a perception and an expectation as to what's going to happen. Have you seen your reservations just go through the roof? Are you like booked out for the next six months? We're more booked out in advance now. People spend a little bit more money. You're probably getting more tourists or are you getting that before? I mean, I think people are coming to town because they want to eat at a James Byrd Chef's restaurant. We in general do, I think, feed a large percentage of tourists. We have a strong collection of regulars that have been coming, some of them coming for eight years almost. Yeah. But I think it's some of the outside stuff. Immediate pull to remove you from cooking. All right, I want to talk about that because that's a big part of it right after I go let my dog in from outside and we hear this word from our sponsors.

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58:42So they put 100% of their detail and love into it. Please enjoy responsibly. Welcome back. We're talking with Jake Howell from Peninsula. And we are talking about how his life is changing. I'm just asking the question like going forward now being Jake Howell, James Beard, award-winning chef from Peninsula versus anything else. And you're saying the things that might change, you don't want anything to change. You want to keep doing the same thing you're doing, but continue to progress and push the envelope and challenge yourself. You said you earlier in the interview, you said, I feel like I'm just starting to get it. I'm just starting to figure it out. You know, and I don't know what gets you to be like Eddie Van Halen. I used a guitar reference. Like how do you be the guy that's just like absolutely crushing it, which I think that you are anyway, but for your own self to feel that way, you want to keep doing what you're doing.

59:42But the world now, do you feel a responsibility to the Beard Foundation or the media world to go do the Virgin Islands Food Festival where you get to go there and stand up on a stage and go, hey, I want to learn this. And you could just be a talking head. I mean, is that interest you at all? Not right now. I'll do the things that I feel good about. And I'll, cause the James Beard Foundation actively supports people. So when they ask me to do something, I will be more than happy to do it because it is actually a foundation helping people, human beings. Heard. I don't feel compelled to not be a chef right now. I think that it's like I'm so early in my career.

01:00:46How old are you? 37. Yeah. I'll be figuring it out for 10 years. And then if I'm lucky enough to have some part of me that has more, then we can talk about being really good at it, which is a whole other level of chefs that I'm like not them. Like who? Who's them? Eric Repair? I mean, like, yeah, Vitor at Osador is 80 years old. Cooks every night in his restaurant. It's awesome. Do you know Chef Max Knopfel? Uh-huh. He's one of those guys to me. Yeah. Who's just like so good and he does not mess around. Elaine Passard cooks in his restaurant. That's awesome. Yeah. But there, that's a whole other tier of cook. Do you want to get there? Cause that also is like a, I don't know, it just seems like that's way more stressful.

01:01:50Well, I think you can do it in the context of what you like and how you want to do it. Think that like you don't have to have like certain arbitrary goals. You can just be about cooking. You can see what happens. It's interesting. And you can do that. It's what I want because like I get one time to live on this planet and I don't really want to be on TV with it cause it doesn't do anything. Doesn't? For me. Sort of like everyone can decide how they want to do their life if they're lucky enough. What brings you joy? Like what brings you un, you know, what makes you feel nourished in this world? What makes you feel whole, makes you feel warm?

01:02:52Like I'm there, you know, like that. I mean, it's like simple stuff. Like a nice walk, like get a coffee and a nice walk with your dog and your wife. Like life is this interesting collection of like you think there's something else that you haven't done yet that's going to make you feel good or happy and kind of figuring out is realizing like, no, that's the stuff you've been doing. Right now. Your whole life that is the good parts of life. There's not like another thing. A bomb drops a million dollars on you or a billion dollars or whatever. You're still just going to go on a walk with your dog. What are you going to do with it? Or go to your yacht to go on a get coffee. Like there's not some other thing. My, I have a coach that I work with, a business coach.

01:03:52She's great. And it's, I say a business coach. She's not like to help me with P&Ls. She's helping me with my brain. And one of the main things that she says is everything that you ever wanted is right here, right now. Real. Everything that it is, is you're okay. Fuck all of this. I need, I want. Everything you need, you already have. It's right here, right now. And then keeping up with the Joneses and all the other bullshit. Like that's a driver of motivation for a lot of people. And for me too, I mean, it is for me, I'm relatively shallow. But everything, and that's kind of what you're saying. Like stop and smell the roses. Is that right or wrong? No, it is. It's, the more, the older I get, the more I realize there are parts of my brain that are going to be searching. And it's up to me to like reconcile how to live knowing that I'm a searcher.

01:05:01What do you search for? Knowledge, power, money, sex? Like what are the things that you potentially would be searching for? I mean, to me, it's kind of just this, what don't know. How do I? Curiosity. Curiosity, I mean. You just have insatiable curiosity. When you're a cook, you, no matter who you are, how accomplished you are, you didn't figure something out. The worse you are, the more you haven't figured out. But no one's figured out everything because it's not possible. I'm not. God bless. Sorry about that. So why would not, why not? Why feel like you're done? I don't, I never, I never felt even close to being done. That's why I loved wine. I got big into wine when I was younger.

01:06:02It's endless. I can never learn enough. I can never stop learning. So I went from almost the entirety of my 20s letting that want hold me back from feeling satisfied and like typical things, which is the collection of life is typical things. And as I've matured, I've realized like, no, this is like what it is. Going fishing, whatever. Time with friends. Like those are beautiful moments. That's all there is. You can change the background. You can sit on a nicer couch. You can drive there in a nicer car, but like it's not gonna do anything for me. You can find joy in any kind of a couch if you're, it's a mindset.

01:07:03I like what I like. I don't like my house to be ugly. So I have like some amount of, like I want the environment to feel good, but it's like, I'm not motivated by how do I turn this into the most money I can possibly make. Okay. Because that is going to remove what I like about what I do. Cause then it becomes, it's interesting. It's almost like I'm trying to simulate this in my brain and how I can, when I did my level one sommelier, I was like, ooh, I want to work in the wine world. Then you go, I could go work for Lippman or Best Brands or whatever. Then you go, but if I work for Lippman Brothers, then I have to sell and only drink Lippman Brothers wines. And if I go somewhere and I want to have, you know, a weller or something, you go, that's not a Lippman Brothers. I can't be seen drinking that. And then all of a sudden it's not authentic.

01:08:03Now it's a business and I have to do this because of this, this and this. And I thought I went into food sale with produce is what I did for a long time, because it's all, it's a commodity and I get to work with chefs and creative people and I can constantly be learning. I don't have to feel that way. Is that a microcosm of what you're kind of saying? Yeah. In the overall world of, no. I just think that people have choices to make about their lives. And if you're lucky enough to be able to make a choice about your life, you should do what you actually feel like you care about. A thousand percent, couldn't agree more. I am fortunate enough to be able to decide what I want to do and how I want to do it. And now forever.

01:09:05And it would be insane to me to then be stubborn and stick to something, doing it the way I want to do it and then abandon it for something that I don't care about. That makes complete sense. Because you go, okay, more X does nothing for me. What is the X that does more for you? Stuff. Or there's not. People knowing, whatever, someone knowing who you are more or having more of something does absolutely nothing. To me, as a human person. This makes sense. Why do you care if somebody knows more about you or whatever it is? What if you could inspire a whole generation of other people to want to chase, not chase, but to find their own authenticity inside of them.

01:10:07And you being here today, you didn't have to do this. But coming in and sharing all of this stuff, I hope my whole goal and vision around doing this is that somebody will hear this and go, man, I fucking dig that. I want that. That inspires me to do that myself. I want to be as authentic as I possibly can. But you have to come here and do this to do that. What does that make you feel when you think that somebody might hear this and look up to you and want to be like you? Do you give two shits about that? In a lot of ways, I do care because in one way I go, I would want people to feel inspired by something. I don't think that I'm the most aspirational person. If something I do motivates someone to try and do something that they care about, then that means the world to me because I want people's lives to be as good as they possibly can.

01:11:14If the way I live my life inspires someone to try and do something that might be hard, that's awesome to me. To push someone to believe in themselves enough. But you don't want to sacrifice your own feeling of joy or your own authenticity to drive that in other people? Well, I think that I do care about that, but I think that when something feels right, then I'll know. I think there's an amount of, if something felt good to me, then I would pursue it. I think it's an interesting moment in time where you have your own thing that you're doing, you enjoy it, you're living an authentic life with your wife and you're doing your thing.

01:12:21And then it's almost like this James Beer. It feels to me like it almost encroaches on it a little bit because it's going to change so many aspects if you let it. The opportunities open up so much that now there's temptation. I don't know if you may not give a shit, but people are gonna be calling and polling in all of these different ways, and it's almost like, hey, I don't want that, or maybe you do, or maybe that you evolve into, I don't know, I'm just trying to figure it all out. It's really interesting. When I do something that isn't in line with exactly what I'm looking to get, it has to be good for other people. When I'm looking at something that I'm not even. So I want to cook selfishly. Like that is in a lot of ways an endeavor based on me.

01:13:29I like this. It's good that it will resonate with people hopefully, but if I'm doing things where I'm like, if there's not a big people net gain to make other people's lives better, I don't really see the point. Financial isn't a thing. I mean, people need money to live, but no. But that's also like admitting that my situation is fine. Like I'm not, I can't pretend that that choice is the same choice that someone else should make. I think this is all really fascinating. Thank you for sharing all of this. Yeah, I'm like. No, I mean, this is so cool, man. This is, I think it's refreshing to kind of get into the mind of, you know, I think it's refreshing to kind of get into the mind of your mind for a little while to kind of understand a genuine, this is what I love and I'm making decisions around this and what's important to you and what you value, what you prioritize.

01:14:39I think it's good to hear that because some people wouldn't say that. I don't know if I would say that. I mean, I'm motivated about, I have kids and you know, I have dogs and I have mortgages and you have all this shit. And so I'm motivated by there's, I genuinely want to help people. I've been through a lot and I've seen a lot and I've done some amazing things in this industry and I love this industry. And if it was me, I'd probably work all the time. I would be in restaurants, I'd be helping people. I would just, that's what I find the exact same way but the world, I have different priorities and you see a kid look you in the eye and you want them to have everything and you want, so money plays a big factor for me because I have these massive responsibilities towards all this other stuff and I, it's a fine line balance but it's really refreshing to hear like, man, I'm really trying to do, I think the big thing there is you have everything you need right in front of you.

01:15:48This game, this watching people in their watches and shoes and all the different things, like I need that, like do you? Or is the world telling you that you need that? What do you, you have everything you need right in front of you every day is a really, it's kind of my takeaway from this. Well, I think the question would be, would you rather wake up in the morning and go to work and feel like you're not at work or would you rather go to work so you have a 20% nicer car? I'd rather go to work and feel like I'm not at work and get really good at that so that I can still get the, I still want the nicer car but it's like, but I don't wanna do a job I hate. I don't wanna go into work every day and do something that I have to like sit at a desk and do some shit that I, I wouldn't do it. I feel like it's like trusting the process.

01:16:51Which is not easy to do. Like I truly believe if you do, you're gonna get the things out of life. Is that a spiritual thing? I'm an AA guy and they say give everything to your higher power, give everything to your higher power and the worst day of my life in that moment, I thought it was the worst day of my life. I thought everybody in the world hates me, my life is over, I've made the biggest mistake, I'm a piece of shit and then somebody told me, give that to God, give it to God, do the next right thing, focus one day at a time, do all of that stuff and today, almost six years later, I look back on that day and in that moment, I never could have seen it but that was probably the best day of my life. Never, but I trusted, I gave it away. Is it a spiritual thing for you? I mean, in some context, yeah. I just- You mean I'm talking about in a Christian context or- No, but I do think that in general when you put out the right thing, things will come around for you.

01:18:03I agree. And you know, karma, whatever. There's a certain amount of trusting yourself and when you trust yourself, you're willing to put everything into it. Do you have siblings? Yeah, I have a sister and two brothers. Where are you in the- Oldest. You're the oldest. Okay, I'm a middle child. Yeah, I'm the oldest. And both parents, still alive? I think you thanked your parents in this. Yep. Tell me about the level of support for you because a lot of this mentality comes from how you were raised, I imagine, I don't know, but like supportive parents who trust in you, who will continually allow their children to, they wanna promote their children to be the most important thing themselves.

01:19:07Tell me how they're, tell me about them. My parents are both very smart, very hardworking people that are I would say like incredibly motivating but they're also like question you and push you. So for the cooking thing, I think it was like roughly quite confusing for them. For them. What are they, professionals, what do they do? Yeah, my dad is in logistics. Like my parents have difficult, stressful jobs and work a lot. So you wanna be an artist, I wanna do paintings and then I'm gonna start cooking them in Seattle, then you kinda start taking it seriously. They're kind of, they're supportive but they're also- Like the early part of- Trepiditious? My, like moving out in high school, I went to college to play baseball. I got injured. So I told my parents like, I'm gonna drop out of college, I don't wanna be here, there's no reason to be here if I'm not gonna do this.

01:20:16Reality, I was like probably just fine at baseball and it would have just been like this long, floaty disaster if had I kept playing. Sure, what position did you play? I went to college to pitch. I was wondering where the competitive nature, you said a very competitive. Typically athletes understand that side of wanting to win. Yeah, that was my thing. Okay, baseball. Or I thought it was. So not stoked on that choice. Yeah. They were not stoked on that choice. No, not at all. No, I understand that. There's a lot of picking kids up, taking them to soccer practice or baseball practice and back and forth and you're like, this is what I wanna do and a lot of coaching and they're like, I don't wanna do it anymore. You're like. And like quite frankly, it's the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Like I would have, I wasn't good enough. Maybe there was some. Less than 1% of people are. Maybe there was some massive spurt or increase in talent or whatever that could have potentially happened, but probably not.

01:21:25So I was gonna be floating through making no money, doing whatever for until I decided the dream was over. Which is how most people in their baseball career. I am not. The less publicized version of the baseball careers. Clearly not good enough. It's the level of skill is exponential. Do you think maybe you're hard on yourself? Cause I mean, you just, you're phenomenal chef and you're like, I'm not really that good. I mean, you just gotta recognize as one of the best in the world. And you're like, I mean, do you think maybe you are that good and you're just hard on yourself? No. It's like I had a 6.0 ERA dude. Like that's not. No, I think that. Athletics are flawed in a lot of ways, but I think athletics are also great for kids and learning structure and not quitting when it's hard, playing baseball is like a failure sport.

01:22:30I use it all the time as my parental coaching. You're quite good if. You fail seven to 10 times. Yeah. Or a femur. Or worse. And you're still quite good. Yeah. So I don't know. There's like a humble nature that that sport varies into you. Cause a great game, the pitcher won more times than you. I tell my kids all the time, like I don't root for them to lose. Yeah. They have to fail though. It's good for them. It's in the losses that I find the most connection because that's where real parent, it's easy to give them high fives. Oh dude, you did this, you did this, you did this. But when they lose and their head is down, that to me is magic. That's the moment to go, hey, how do you feel right now? Like what's going on? Like, let's talk about it. What do you feel like was this? I just think that's, my kid asked me one day, he said, dad, how come you're so smart? And I'm like, bless you. Thank you. And I'm like, bless you, that's very sweet.

01:23:31And I think that the general answer you wanna say is cause I went to school and I did this. And I go, you know, dude, cause I have failed a lot. Yeah. I have failed way more than I've won. And when you learn from those things, you can do it. I'm a big fan of failure. I'm like a huge fan of- It's required. Try it. And like- You wanna do it? Try it, fail, fuck up. I did it a lot. So your parents were, they just watched me fail. And you know, when I was cooking and doing art and trying to like do both things, it was like sometimes two jobs, nonstop work, not much money. What are you doing? Trying to do this, like what are you doing? And it wasn't like not supportive, but it was very much like, all right. Do you feel like they were questioning you? Like this isn't going anywhere figured out or do you think they were questioning you?

01:24:35Like, hey, how are you? What is your strategy? Are you learning from these mistakes and how are you growing? I think both, but I think primarily it was not not like a path they would have thought I would go down. When it wasn't a path you thought you would go down. No. This is all kind of a perfect storm. It was a lot of watching, a lot of just like grinding and wheels turning and to me, it's sort of like the essence of your life is like those weird parts you're learning a lot. I'm very grateful for how much I struggled. Gives you perspective. But it's different. It's just different than if I was like, I'm gonna be a doctor and I get, I understand your struggle. Like there's a end point that makes sense to me.

01:25:42To being a doctor? Yeah. It's not that it's like any different. I mean, it's hard and difficult and insane. But when you're doing something that's like, what's the outcome here? Like being a shit. Like I'm not a doctor at the end of this shit. No, like now that you've, some would say winning a James Beard award would be getting your doctorate. That's the official, wow, I'm a James Beard. Winning an Oscar as a movie star, one of those type things, that is your graduation. You're not seeing it that way. You could go for another 10, 15, 20 years and constantly be learning and you have no idea where it could take you. There's not a final end goal that you have. Is there? No, no. Just gonna keep going until one day you decide I want to try something different or something else.

01:26:43I mean, yeah. You want to retire? I think you just, no. Where do you see yourself at 60? I'll cook, I'll still be cooking at 60 million percent. Okay. Hopefully longer. All right. That's like the, you have to keep all your, stay in shape, all that shit. I can't. Take care of yourself. Yeah, I think I want to be like advising at 60. I think I kind of want to be everything's taken care of and I want to spend that time on the beach with my wife and kids. I want grandkids. Yeah. I want to spoil grandkids and I want to spend those moments with those little creatures, little creatures, little boys and girls, whatever it is. And I want to spoil them and that's how like my goals, like that's how I want to spend my later years. Yeah. That's it, a hundred percent. And I got to make enough money to be able to do that during that time.

01:27:45So there's a motivator there for me, but my end goal is time with special people. Yeah. And not having to go to work all day long because, and missing any of those moments. Yeah. You gonna have kids? No. No. Hard stop? I would adopt. I don't want my own. Okay. But I honestly think, like I've thought about it a lot because I will stop being like a true chef like at some point. But I think it's like so far away that I can't comprehend it. Still so much more you want to do. But like my, one of my like long-term, like long, long way out was to have people take me seriously enough that I could do, like there's been restaurants like this before. It's not like inventing something, but to basically to get enough shit or whatever I need that people would trust me to open up like a nonprofit restaurant.

01:28:57Because that's like the coolest thing in the world to me because culinary school is massively expensive and it's really hard to learn. Yeah. So that model is very compelling to me because I could be a teacher and people can come, not go $140,000 into debt trying to learn how to cook or going and trying to figure out where to go. I love that idea. I may have some opportunities for you there. I just think it's- Just out of my brain like, wait a minute, I think I have an opportunity there for that. Nuts. One of those things where it's really expensive to do. Because you are, there's nothing coming in. Well, nonprofit just means there's not, there's not EBITDA at the end of the day. I mean, you can still take a salary. There was a place in Seattle that was a restaurant and all of the cooks were learning and it was great.

01:30:06It was cool. It was fantastic. But that would be using my life to then try to make other people's lives better. Which I think you 100% will have the opportunity to do someday. And I think that's when you go, I've kind of gotten what I needed to get out of this. Now I'll move on to the next thing. And I can be old doing that. I don't care. I want to work. Well, part of it, see, with NARA, what I want to do is create a restaurant resource center. I want to open a freestanding building. I've never said this before in a podcast, but fuck it. Yeah, let's go. I want to open the Nashville Restaurant Resource Center and I want to have a freestanding building. And in that, I want to have an office for the Giving Kitchen to have a Nashville face you can go to if you need to ask for help. I want to have a room where I can host friends' meetings.

01:31:07They can come in, meetings, whatever, that people can come there in our industry. I want to have a library full of cookbooks where members of NARA, any local restaurants want to come and ideate. You want to sit in there and you want to ideate. You want to look at any books and talk to other chefs. Just kind of play around. Then I also want to have a bar. And in the bar, there's no alcohol. It's not like you can come in and buy drinks, but every single day we have different people. Litman Brothers does Mondays, Best Brands Tuesdays, whatever, and every day at 11 o'clock or two o'clock and four o'clock, there's classes. So you can send people in. We can develop our own people. Then we have a kitchen in there where we're constantly doing free classes, teaching all of these things. And we have job placement programs where people can know this is a friendly place where we can help people in our industry and we can teach them how to do these things on a regular basis. There's a consistent schedule. Anybody that needs to, inner city people, anybody that doesn't speak English, I don't care, come in.

01:32:08We will teach you how to do this stuff and we will find you the job at a local restaurant where people need people and it's self-serving for our community. But we would need people to volunteer at different times to work with those people. And I just really feel like we have to own that as a community of restaurants. We can't say someone needs to come up with this. We need better this. And I go, who's gonna do it? Let's do it. Let's not waste time. Let's put something together that's self-sustaining for our community. And we gotta make that happen. And maybe that is a restaurant that is served outside of there that is training people in all these facets. And we do service on Friday and Saturday or on Monday and Tuesdays when the other restaurants aren't busy where we can really train people. It's an evolving thought, but that's one of my goals three years down the road with Narna. There's a really, what is sort of starting to happen is economics of restaurants are increasingly more difficult.

01:33:17Every day. So we're sort of compiling issues where the economics are difficult. People that don't have much experience are getting hired and really just kind of getting the stuff that they can kind of do with not much training. And then they're just sort of doing that, which is, okay, they're doing a job. They're getting paid. The base, bare minimum. But what's starting to happen is a lack of tangible cooking skills that are applicable to move on somewhere else. Or that they don't care to. You're functionally sort of handcuffing young cooks into whatever they can do, which is whatever the restaurant needed from them only.

01:34:25And then when you go and try to cook somewhere else. You don't have the fundamentals. You might have a cook that's cooked for five years that can't dice an onion. Because they didn't dice an onion. Well, they bought diced onions. I never had to do that. Ever. Or they go to culinary school and learn tons of stuff really quickly, but it's also really, really expensive. It's very difficult to pay off student loans as a line cook. Did you go to, you didn't go to culinary school? No. You just learned under people. Yeah. So you wanna give that back. I want this industry to continue. More than anything. Now this industry, are you talking about, people are gonna go out to eat no matter what. Yeah. Are you talking you don't want ghost kitchens and you don't want more Applebee's? Or you want more, are you saying you want more chef driven people who care, who push the envelope, who are creating unique experiences for diners who wanna feel that?

01:35:32Because I think local restaurants offer that. Yeah. They build their communities. That's what makes community special is, I got engaged there. We went there when you got straight A's. This is our place and our community and they give back to the community and it's a special place. Not that's a restaurants just open and it's a money grab and they're not gonna do it. Exactly. Is that what you, cause that's what I see dying. I see local places being pushed out by big corporations. It's like economy of scale. And efficiencies of corporate restaurants that you can't possibly build into, I don't know, Rolf and Daughters, Locust. You can't make that Chili's. Possibly. You don't want to make it Chili's. No, you don't want to but the problem is, McDonald's is a restaurant and Locust is a restaurant. True.

01:36:33They're like light years apart. There's nothing they have in common but they're both restaurants. And that is what you are up against. What you're saying is you want to keep, you want more Locusts and less McDonald's. Yeah, I want more like fucking dope restaurants. Yes. I don't know that we need more like. More like. Chains. Yeah. I agree, I 100% agree. If you're trying to grow the industry and there are thousands of restaurants in Nashville but only a very small amount of them have chefs and sous chefs and people that care, the majority of people that are cooking aren't learning how to cook food. Understood. So where do you get more great restaurants when the threads of good restaurants are like this and the threads of corporate restaurants are like this?

01:37:46See, this is the dichotomy that you get into is that if you spend that amount of time with somebody and you put all of your time and energy into somebody and you create value in them, somebody else just buys them. That's fine. You're okay with that? They go to a chain and they go, then it's just a constant wheel of your just, that's what you want. I understand that. I don't feel like anyone owes you anything for teaching them how to cook. I agree with that. It is my duty to care about teaching you if you're in my walls, to me. I pay you, you do the work I ask from you. You wanna go, that's their choice. You're not purchasing someone by teaching them how to cook. Completely agree. They owe you nothing. I think that this is this long-term difficult, annoying thing about restaurants, poaching.

01:38:46It's like, give them a better job. I'm more referencing, I put everything into it. I wanna teach somebody, I hire a general manager and I teach them every single thing I can. I come in the morning at seven o'clock and I walk them through and I train them. I work them through a P&L and I do all of these things because A, I wanna develop them and I want them to learn. But also, part of my job is developing that person because they're gonna be able to produce for this restaurant and make that experience. They're gonna get our entire culture. And when you spend that time and energy and you sacrifice time away from your family and kids because you wanna develop this person and then they get three, four months later, you're there and then they go work at Perry's or something and they go take a GM's spot at Perry's. You're like, there's a side of me that's frustrating because I sacrificed to build this person up because I want them to do the things inside of our building that display who we are that build our community and then they go take a money grab somewhere else because they're gonna pay me 125,000.

01:40:02I can't do that. I don't have that ability. That's where it gets frustrating with the large restaurants, losing people. Not because I begrudge them. I don't want them to do well. I want, yeah, man, I understand. Go do that. But at some point, you do that three times and you're like, I'm tired. I'm tired. I've put emotionally into all these people every single day and that doesn't happen all the time. I'm not saying that's just, that's not something that's not like a broken record for me. We have a very good culture and we offer all the fun things and we keep people for a long time. But I hear this from people that it's hard. It's a grind every day when there's so many restaurants opening and there's not enough people and these big companies come up with these big paychecks and they'll go, yeah, we'll give you this and then you lose good people to that and that can be tough for local restaurants also. So, yeah. I guess I have only the experience we have here which would be that we have had in total front and back of house.

01:41:13There are what, 10 people that work here right now. I think we've had 17 employees in eight years. Our tenders, servers, cooks. That's incredible. So, how many seats do you have? 40. 40 seats. One of our servers right now has worked at the restaurant since 2019. On average, our cooks work in what, five years. It's impressive. The only people that have ever left in the kitchen were to functionally to move out of the city. It is not because, how do I put it? I think that we're providing something that is keeping people there. Emotional tranquility.

01:42:15I think respect, support. You're there people. Don't treat people like they're a cog in the wheel. They're not. And I think that there's like a human level that is so far removed from a restaurant kitchen. Like it's all, like it's a hard job. I went through it in a way that I would never wish upon other people. So, I feel like- Elaborate on that a little bit. What did you experience that you would never wish upon? What did you learn from it? The same shit that any cook over 36 went through, 35. You, this is a 40 hour a week job. If you're not good enough, come in early. Not allowed to clock in. Get treated like shit all day. No one says thank you. No one appreciates you. You get paid dirt. You get screamed at. I didn't care, because I played sports. Scream in my face. It does not scare me. I'm gonna laugh at you later.

01:43:17But, it's not what I'm gonna do. If people had treated me with respect and some dignity, I would have still continued to do probably better work for them. I would have been a better cook. I would have been a better cook. I would have done really better work for them and not laughed at them later. But it's like, what does it do? It speaks volumes. There is a unique intensity that happens in restaurants that would not happen in any other line of work. I will correct someone maybe 25 times a day, which would be a meeting every single time if I work somewhere else. When you say a meeting, you mean like they pull you one on one and say. Okay, so like you did this, this is like wrong. If I work somewhere else, we're probably having a meeting.

01:44:20But instead it's like, this is wrong. Moving on, this is wrong, moving on. This is not, I'm not critiquing you as a person. It's a behavior and you know me that I'm not gonna hold this grudge that you did this the wrong way. It's just part of who you are and you're able to do that. But it's more respectful to let people know that you're not going to waste their time. They're going to know exactly what you want and exactly where you're coming from. That's it. Than to not say anything, hold a grudge, blah, blah, blah. Get mad, lose your temper. Well, that's leadership. Leadership is telling people on the front end what your expectations are, what they're in for so that they know what to, when you're afraid to have that conversation and set expectations and then you yell at somebody for not meeting expectations, they didn't know they were supposed to meet, it becomes a, dude, what the fuck?

01:45:21Like why, why did I just get yelled at? Well, you didn't do like, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. How come you didn't, you never told, like there's a whole side of that of just tell people. A unique amount of intensity that restaurants have and like you're correcting people in like the middle of busyness. So it's like, listen, wrong. Listen, this. Is what it is. Why not go about it like that so people know without question, if someone works with me or with us and the way like Guy or whoever is helping me run the kitchen, they know if they're hearing something, it is in no way anything other than trying to make the product better and them better. I'm not in a bad mood. I'm not frustrated about something else.

01:46:24It is literally just like, this is what is wrong. This is like work only. I think you're describing trust. Yeah. That's the Patrick Lencioni in his book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team says that one of the big dysfunctions is an absence of trust. One last break to hear a word from our sponsors. Running a restaurant is tough. Staff turnover, rising costs and the endless tasks that bog you down and take you away from what you love. Let Adams Keegan lighten that load. Their privately held Tennessee based restaurant and hospitality focused outsourced HR, payroll and benefits firm. The team at Adams Keegan removes the administrative burdens of HR administration, payroll benefits management, garnishments, unemployment claims, compliance, 401k and so much more. From their proprietary HRIS platform to seamless payroll and competitive benefits that keep your team smiling, they've got you covered. Adams Keegan lets you focus on what you do best, creating unforgettable dining experiences while they handle the rest.

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01:49:29Hey, this is Jen Heidinger Kendrick, founder of Giving Kitchen. Let me tell you a little more. Giving Kitchen is a James Beard award-winning nonprofit that provides emergency assistance to food service workers nationally. Headquartered in Atlanta since 2013, Giving Kitchen has served over 19,000 food service workers and awarded over $12 million to food service workers in crisis. Wanna get involved and support Giving Kitchen? Join Dining with Gratitude in October, Giving Kitchen's month-long campaign where the food service community pledges to raise critical funds and spread the word about Giving Kitchen's mission. Learn more by clicking the link in this episode's notes, givingkitchen.org slash DWG. And when you trust that we're here on a line, there's three of us working, and our number one goal is to put out a perfect dish or a dish that is exactly as we want it because we want to, this is the vision and this is what we're doing. Me telling you something isn't wrong is not me saying, you're not good, it's a, and you can disagree with me or we can talk about it, that's okay, because we're all trying to do the same thing.

01:50:40And there's a hierarchy, but like, when you trust somebody, you can hear that. If you don't trust where they're coming from and who they are, then you tell yourself stories in your head as to why they said that to you because, is he mad because I was here two minutes late? Like, if you don't trust them, your brain will start telling you stories. And I think what you're describing is the people who work for you trust you in what you're doing and why you're doing it, which allows you to be able to say, that's not right. Because then they go, okay, Chef, help me, or what can I do differently? And they're open to it because they trust that you're just trying to make them better. Well, it's also like, we're all just people. Yeah. Like, I'm no one more than any person in the restaurant. I might make the final say, but these are all just people. Yeah, human beings. Fuck, am I better than you? Treat you like shit for what? Ego, like, doesn't serve anybody.

01:51:41It doesn't add up. And like, everyone's gonna run their kitchen the way they're gonna run their kitchen. I think that we're not hiring much. That speaks volumes. And people like working there. So I think we're roughly doing it right. My wife does HR, full disclosure. For Peninsula? No, no, no. She's VP of one culture at Manhead. It's a music barge company. Nice. But I'll be like, this is how this played out. And she's like, next time, this. That's a nice person to have. Which is like- To run stuff by. Invaluable. Yeah, it's amazing. We have an HR company we started using a year ago. It's amazing. Consistent feedback on this is how this went and like, okay, I would maybe have done this.

01:52:48Because I'm open to feedback. And I would like more than, like, my ultimate goal would be that people are like enjoying working at the restaurant. So if I've done something that makes them not enjoy it, then like, let me know. Oh, I can't say enough, like a thousand percent. Just say it, just say, tell me. Yeah. Tell me, don't tell everybody else. Tell me. And I can hear anything. Because like, you will fail over and over. I will fail a million times over and over and over forever. And it's like, keep trying. Man, I feel like I could sit here and talk to you all day. I think I had this perception in my head, you know, every time that I have a chef of Brian Baxter's type.

01:53:49He's also people. He's so cool. Amazing artist. Yeah. I think I have a. His paintings are so good. Catbird Seat menu over there has a painting on the back of it that he would, and he does, that's what he does in his free time to kind of calm him and do his whole thing. And I don't know what my perception of him was. When I left, I was just like, wow, man, I was inspired. I'm inspired. And I am today. I think talking to you and kind of, I have three restaurants, you know, 200 employees. That's crazy. You kind of get caught up in so many things. And I work with 30 other restaurants through NARA. I do the podcast and it just kind of, everything turns, it's just kind of a moving machine. And it's conversations like this where I can stop for a minute and hear what you're saying. And it makes complete sense. And it's really fantastic.

01:54:50It's really, it's nurturing for me to hear. It makes me feel, this brings me joy. And I want to say thank you for coming in today. Thank you. I've really, I just really appreciated the conversation. And do we miss anything? I mean, we've just been kind of talking, we've been going for an hour and a half. I mean, I was just kind of see what we talk about. I'll go in all sorts of fucking directions in conversation. What do you do for fun besides walking with your dog? Do you do, do you like, do you have any hobbies? Do you play like cornhole or disc golf or golf or anything? I played golf for like two years during early COVID. And then I don't have time. That's a game of perfect that is really hard. If you're a perfectionist. Yeah, I got super, I played a lot. Yeah. I got super obsessed with it. It's a thing. Yeah. Music, what's your favorite?

01:55:53Like, what are you listening to on the way home today? If it's a book, that's fine. I just, what, like, what's you get in the car? What's your go-to? I don't know. I was listening to West Side Gun on the way here. So we'll probably listen to that on the way back. Or I'll get bored of it and move on. I don't know. Do you have any guilty pleasures? For fucking music? Yeah. Like too many to count. What about like TV? My wife and I watch Bachelor in Paradise. That's kind of my, like, and I'll sit and play games on my phone and let my brain calm down and watch like a show like that. And we love it. We just, we crack up over it. Like it's a fun thing that we, the drama is great. It's goofy, but like. Sophia was watching this show where, um, it's like island dating. Love Island?

01:56:54Is it called Love Island? I don't know. I've never watched it. I just know that that's a show. Yeah, so she was watching that because she said her job is stressful and it's nice. She just have like. Do you watch it in the background? It'll be on like when I'm in the room, but I don't really pay attention that much. I, you know what? There's these, the show, Bachelor in Paradise. They have this guy that's, they bring all these singles to like this resort. And then they, they like have to hook up or they, and they have like, they vote people off or it's like, they, you give somebody a rose and the people who are left, there's like eight guys and 12 girls and the guys get, so four women go home. So they're all like jockeying for these things. Then one guy has like, he's, he's made this connection, but she's not sure. Cause his girlfriend is, they just broke up two months ago and she's like, I don't know. And then next thing you know, a new person arrives and it's his ex-girlfriend. And here she is. Now she's part of the, and it's just like, oh, that's cold. These producers are hor, that's pretty juicy. I mean, it's, you watch it, you're like, oh, how are they going to navigate that?

01:57:55That's interesting. Like, I think that stuff's funny. And it's so far fetched from anything I deal with. It's such an escape that it's just kind of in that I could give two shits about these people and what they're going to end up doing. But it's like watching going, oh, but it's like watching going, oh, that's, that's a twist. I like that. So that's a thing. Yeah. Did you watch the bear? Yeah. Thoughts? Cause I have a lot. It's cool. No, no. It's cool. What's one great thing about the bear and what's one thing that you don't like about the bear? I really enjoyed like the first, what season?

01:58:55First two seasons, probably. Two seasons. Cause there's the four now. For me, it's a little like just off the rails of interesting to me. Okay. Not, it's not that it's bad. It's just not interesting to me. Because it's what you do every day? You're not able, like I can escape and watch these two people on a show and it's nothing like I do. When you watch a show, do you feel like it's too real or do you feel like it's Hollywood? I mean, it's like probably super real, but also like slightly tropey. Makes sense. Just kind of like, I don't have the need to watch a like chef going through their shit that bad. I understand that. But I don't think that it's like made for restaurant people to watch. I thought it was like season one where you see the beef is just this family restaurant. They just run in, it's nobody with these skills. It's all these different hodgepodge of people who are just making food as fast as they can.

01:59:59And then when he comes in and he comes in and he challenges them and the whole calling everybody chef all the time, like I don't, it's not a thing. I don't know. But like it's a, when you see Carla, who's a Puerto Rican line cook, all of a sudden do something special and you see her mature when somebody starts believing in her and you see her blossom and thrive when somebody gives her an opportunity to do it. And then she has responsibility and how she grabs onto it. I loved seeing, because I've seen it a hundred times, thousands of times of people who've been told that they're a piece of shit their entire life. And they come into a restaurant and they go, hey, I'm good at this. And all of a sudden for the first time in their life, they feel like they're worth it. I'm good enough in this building. I was never good enough in every other job I had, but in this job, I'm good enough. And I saw that in season one, a bunch of people who didn't think they were good enough, all of a sudden the guy doing desserts who his creativity was sparked and now he's found his purpose.

02:01:01I loved seeing that. And I loved that the general public got to see that aspect of restaurants. And then I loved the Will Gadara influence in season two where episode six forks where Richie, I wear suits now, and the guy took him outside and goes, you don't understand what this means and how important it was. I thought that was super inspiring. I brought my whole staff and I had a Sunday night movie. And we watched that episode together because it's true. A lot of people save up to come to a restaurant like this and there's these expectations and we can't just, ow, whatever, I don't care if there's a spot. Like there's a side of that that I got. Some of the drama that's built up and all that stuff is a little much, but. Well, I think that, yeah, the first two seasons had my interest and then I sort of tapered out, not for any, like. I've only watched four episodes of season four and it's been out for a month. And I'm kind of in that same like. For any like lack of anything being wrong, but more just the small amount of TV I'm gonna watch.

02:02:05It wasn't what I wanted to watch. Makes sense. But I do think that not restaurant people are very interested in it. It is like the new wave of like I know about restaurants. Does that bother you? I don't care. You don't care? No. Is there something sacred about being in that moment, there's a brotherhood, there's a, I think it's similar to like people that go to war together. You know, like there's this long time, like we made it through that Easter shift or you know, whatever it is. Like when everything was crazy, we depended on each other and you helped me get out of the weeds or whatever it was. Like there's a trauma bond that happens to people in restaurants. I think that there was a great scene in one of the episodes where she turned on the to-go's. Oh yeah. And the printer just went off. And it was like, that was a real, like I've experienced not that particular moment, but where you're in a restaurant and you're like, holy shit, right now this is going, like we have to do this.

02:03:11And there was a real moment where I kind of felt, but unless you're there, you don't, you can watch it on TV and you can imagine what that's like, but. Yeah, I feel like I maybe just don't hold like any of it in like that precious of a place where it's like, I don't need to be the owner of this in any capacity. I mean, I understand why people think it's good TV. Cause it is. It is. There's a, there's uniqueness to it. There's good acting. Sort of like the waves of how, the waves of whatever big restaurant thing, you know, no reservations. Everyone knows everything about restaurants cause they read this book. Yeah. It's one person's experience in one specific way.

02:04:13You're sort of like, like my restaurant is a boring book. There's nothing to write. We came in to work. We all said hello. We put some tunes on and chat about our lives and then have service and then it's over and we all go home. That is also like people's restaurant experience. Like Guy isn't coming in, helping me through like a midlife crisis. I understand that. So that's the only thing I would say. The most popular cooking related thing is the thing that people apply to everything. It's the same reason that people don't reach out to me. Like myself. You're probably rude or unstable or something because everything would lead you to believe that I would be one of them.

02:05:23One of them, like a stereotypical chef? Yeah. The popular idea would be based on everything you could read is that something would be wrong with me that would make me not easy to contact. I don't know. Cause Brian Baxter's one of the nicest people I know. The nicest guy I've ever met. Yeah. But then people are intimidated by them. Yeah, in Hell's Kitchen and all these different shows where chefs are volatile. I've never seen him have an interaction that's poor. No. He's like a nice guy. But if you believe the things you see, then he would be, there's something. Josh Hobbiger's another one. Josh Hobbiger's another one of those guys who's like the kindest dude you'll ever meet. But I think there's a...

02:06:23I guess that's kind of my point. It's all just like normal-ish, normal enough. We're all normal enough. Yeah. Nice enough. Do you like that? That people wouldn't want to approach you that there is that stereotype? Or do you wish people would be more approachable? I hate it. I think it's ridiculous. The, in general, automatic assumption is that I'm, there's like some, like I'm not nice. Why? I don't know. I mean, I think I look like kind of rude like when I'm just like standing there. But... You have a lot of tattoos. You have a lot of tattoos. Maybe that's it. How many tattoos do you have? Fuck, I don't know. Tattoos on top of my tattoos. When did you get your first tattoo? It's like 19.

02:07:26What was it? An eagle. An eagle? Yeah, it's not very good either. Can you even see it now? No, it's, Sean Williams covered it up. It's like literally covered with other tattoos. Do you have a preferred tattoo? Are you getting more tattoos or are you done? Getting like blast overs over all my old ones. But they hurt now. They hurt now? The older you get, it's like brutal. I hate getting tattooed now. You have one tattoo. What is it? I have the social distortion skeleton. That's it. With the martini glass and the cigar on my left butt cheek. Good. Nobody knows. Don't get another one. That's perfect. It's the only one you need. Well, mine's a long story as to why I even have that. I've just, I felt like getting, I want tattoos. Like I would love to have a sleeve.

02:08:30But I'm also very sentimental about it. Like I want it, like everyone to mean something. If I'm gonna look at it every day, I want to have like memories. I love Shane Nasby told me on his left arm is all the bad shit that happened in his life that signifies everything is bad. And the right arm is everything that's good. So he can balance the yin and yang. And he kind of told me the whole story. And I was like, see, that's fucking awesome. I just can't figure out what it is. And my kids, all that stuff, like I want to have those reminders and I want to have that. But I just, I don't know what it is. I'm just not creative. You just like let it, I just let it fly. I was almost completely covered by the time I was like 24. And I get hardly any tattoos for years. Did you have, do you have any that like signify any real meaning that are like really important to you? No, it's just like pretty much, I've always felt like I'm kind of like getting a collection of art from, I've almost only been tattooed by friends.

02:09:33Really? So it's kind of just like a collection of their art and like what they think is cool and what they did that resonates with me in some capacity. You just kind of said, give me a tattoo, whatever you want to do, you can choose it. Just your expression on me. Or like, kind of like look at what they're drawing or what they like right now and pick something out. And it's a little bit of like collaboration, but I think that's better because sort of have this idea that trying to tell creatives what to do gives you something worse. Also have some shitty, like shitty fucking tattoos, awful. You do? Oh my God, yeah. But like, kind of just is what it is. I don't really care. What that, yeah, I mean. It doesn't keep me up. I'm envious. I forget. You have that ability to do that. I like forget a lot that I have like a lot of tattoos.

02:10:37Can you see it? Do you have like tattoos on your back? Oh, I'm like back, front, legs. Wow. Yeah, done. Wow. But it's also interesting. It's all friends and like I remember who did them and when, and that feels like enough sentiment. It's sentimental for me. Like that kind of connects it. It was from a bunch of random people. I don't know. Because I've definitely looked at myself and been like, what if you weren't buried in tattoos? Well, it's like, what's the actor or the guy on Saturday Night Live, what's his name? Pete Davidson. Oh yeah, he's getting them all taken away. He got them all taken off. I heard that's like the most painful thing on the planet. I've heard it hurts like hell. Yeah, like that's just like, don't do that. Yeah. My cousin died in a plane crash. Oh, I'm sorry.

02:11:39That's him over there. That's awful. That's actual piece of the airplane that melted metal went to the actual crash site and hiked it and saw, but when he hit, he was doing 200 miles an hour, side of a mountain, he was a pilot. And they didn't have, there was no body to recover, but he had a ton of tattoos. And his first tattoo was the social distortion skeleton on his left butt cheek. And they found a piece of skin out there. There was no body that they identified him by the piece of skin they found. And it was the social distortion tattoo that they found on the side of the mountain. Just a piece of his butt? That's how they identified the fact that, and so a bunch of, I was like, if there's ever a reason to get a tattoo, that's the one I'm getting right now. So I don't even know I have it.

02:12:40I got out of the shower and I'm like, oh shit. Like I have a tattoo and I see it and it reminds me of him. And it's a special thing to have the one, but that's, I'm happy to get tattoos, but I just don't have like something. That was a moment where I was like, and that hurt like hell. I mean, you're not used to it. You didn't know anything about it. And you're like, oh, shh. You picked like pretty much the most painful. Oh, really? I don't know. Cause I was like, people are like, it doesn't hurt. I'm like, no, it hurt. Like I felt like it hurt. But I mean, once I got going, I was like, I knew what to expect. It's a little bit like if you pinch yourself somewhere, like where it hurts most is where a tattoo hurts most. I always think like bone. No, like. Yeah. I was like underneath the arm down here. The top ear, like the really like top of your legs inside there all hurt. Can you imagine like your inner thigh or something? But like over the knee and stuff is like. Not bad. It still hurts.

02:13:40Especially now. I think there's like a thing that young people have where they're like refuse to acknowledge. And then. I'm in my mid forties. So I. Now I get a tattoo. Hate this. I still want, I still want, I think when I'm like 60, I'm going to get a whole bunch of tattoos. I'm going to have all kinds of life experiences that I'm going to go, no, these things mean something to me. I'm just going to do it. You have, dude, we have like. So we have like one of the best tattoo shops. Like in the world, in Nashville. What is it? Adventure. Adventure, I don't know. I'm not a. It's like Chad Coplinger is like just a fucking goat tattooer. And then everyone he hires at his tattoo shop is. They're like, they're all the best. They're amazing. Like the peninsula of tattoo shops. I'm going to fuck no, I'm not going to say that shit. They're like the fucking way more than the peninsula of tattoo shops.

02:14:42They're like the shit. For real. Everyone knows when I get a tattoo where to go. I mean, you get a tattoo from every one of them. They're all. Crazy. Just sitting there right behind Cafe Rose. Cafe Rose in East Nashville. Uh huh. It's like just right there. Anyone can go. See, she's somebody else I've been afraid to ask because I feel maybe I have this perception that she's going to say no. She's literally so nice. I imagine, but I don't know. There's these individual people out there like yourself. I was like, I don't know if I should even ask. I'll tell you right now. She's super cool. Super nice. One of my favorite people in town. I'm pretty good at asking. I've done over 400 episodes of the show and I'm pretty good at saying, hey, come on the show. Let's do this. All right. There's like a seriousness that she might have that could be intimidating. I love, I love what she's doing at Rose Pony down there.

02:15:43But her restaurants are great. Her restaurants are dope. She's like super awesome. Who are you, where do you like to go eat in town? Like where, what's a chef in town that people need to have their eye on who's doing really good stuff? I'll tell you the restaurant I go to the most by far. And I think it's like definitively one of the best restaurants in town. SS Guy. I think Chris and Emma Baird. Chris is a G. Dude. I go there like so much that it's like almost embarrassing. But I mean, yeah. The shit. Truly the shit. Fanta and their story is fantastic. But just you couldn't ask for better people either. Nicest people you'll ever meet. Nice, talented. Talented. Like humble. I think the product is at such a high level.

02:16:46And it's also like so fairly priced. Like aggressively fairly priced. Like I know how fucking expensive it is to run a restaurant and I'm like. You guys need to charge more. I think they should charge whatever he wants because he fucking knows what he's doing. But I'm like, y'all are doing it for real. That restaurant is really, really, really crazy good. It is. But I mean, we're spoiled here. Where else do you go? Regularly? Yeah. I mean, when I want to do like go and do a thing, I like always want to go to Locust. I think Trevor's crazy. I mean, I love so many restaurants here. It's like. East Side Bond Me. Yeah, I go there a lot. I, every time I go to East Nashville, I just. Lazy sometimes and order it. That's okay.

02:17:47It's so good though. It's like it's first time I was like, oh my God. Like this is a sandwich that's just fucking delicious. I love them too. And just everything they're doing. I mean, East Nashville itself has like a pretty. Amazing, amazing culinary scene. I hate living out here because I'm never over there. But my favorite time of the week or the month or whenever I get to East Nashville, I feel at home and I'm like, okay, I get to eat really good food. And then you want to go to like 10 different places. Have you been to Alabrije yet? You know, I've been to like when he did other places, I still haven't been to this one, but I always liked it when I've been. I was driving by there the other day and I saw his car out front and it was like, you know, one o'clock in the afternoon, I just like pulled in and I just had to, I just haven't been over there to like go in and I sat and talked to Edgar for like 20 minutes and just kind of like. Yeah. Checked it out, it's a really cool spot. His food is. Yeah.

02:18:47He's good. Every time I've had it, it's fantastic. You've been to Maize de la Vida? What'd you think? It's good, it's great. I actually haven't been. To the brick and mortar? Mm-mm. That's good, really good. I need to get out into like, I'm kind of been slow to get to places. Like almost everything new I haven't been to. Or new-ish. La Coolia was doing the food truck outside of Chopper Tiki for a long time making amazing food. Yeah, it was awesome. There's a lot, you've eaten a lot of the stuff it's just as these people grow. It's hard to get to everything that's new out there. You gotta, I find like my favorites and then you just kind of go. Well, it's like, it's kind of just been hard to like, I'm kind of, like I've just been busy. We were kind of working on the new restaurant. Tell me about the new restaurant.

02:19:48Can you? Yeah, I mean it'll be open hopefully in October. But we're doing kind of like two concepts, a little restaurant, like 12 seats, and then a larger, more casual restaurant. Like a Casay Noko kind of a thing? I mean, it's not like. I mean, just the style of a restaurant in the next door to each other, right? Same kitchen? We'll like share. There's two kitchens in one like big space, so we're like sharing a back of house. Okay, yeah. A little bit of economy with it. What's it gonna be called? The Bar's Charmers, Copernor is the restaurant. What's the restaurant? Copernor. Copernor? Yeah. What does that mean? It's kind of like a Latin, it's like an extension of like a Latin trades person. Okay. Yeah, I'm pumped. It's gonna be cool. Where is it? In Newhoff. So, Newhoff is where like Fishmonger and Monday Night Brewing and all that.

02:20:52Okay. So it's like down by the river. It's exciting. It is exciting. How are you gonna balance your time? Work more. When we opened our third restaurant, I was, I have two kids. Yeah. And that's man-to-man defense, right? The third one totally like fucked me up. Yeah. Because I was like, I don't know how to do three and how to do two, and it's tough balancing your time. You're there a lot, but the third one, it's almost like a third of the time you are now away from the other two and then the game of whack-a-mole begins trying to go back and forth and it's like, it's. Yeah. I don't know how people do 20, 30 restaurants and keep standards as high as you want them to be. Hopefully lots of really good employees. Yeah. I'll work more. We have great people. Feel pretty confident, or actually super confident with the people we're bringing on.

02:21:58Yeah. I mean, I should sound more excited. I am very excited, but I think that it's like another thing to try and figure out. What kind of food are you doing? Dude, this is like the funny thing that has like almost ended up where I'm like, it's just like American food to me. Because like. Burgers and chicken tenders? Well, no, I think that's like, this thing that's happened where it's like, because we live here that has like, food culture is just in strict time, so far behind the majority of the world. I don't have thousands of years of cooking American food because it's not possible. That it's like, you can't say American food because that doesn't mean anything.

02:23:03Because it could be anything. Well, like you open a fucking restaurant and like we did it because we called it something and then like now I'm like, we're just fucking cooking this shit. It's not like Iberian Peninsula inspired. It's just shit we're cooking. Food you're cooking. Which. It's hard to put in a box. Means, I don't know, it's like Nashville food, Tennessee food, American food. You're just, it's world food. Cause it's like, people ask me all the time, what kind of food is it? And I'm like. It's food. It's food you're gonna like. Or not like. Either way, I'm gonna make it. But there's like something interesting that's uniquely like a new country that you would like have to put a signifier on it. I'm not following. Well, like though fucking every food culture in the world is mishmashed around each other.

02:24:08So like. What is American food? Well, at this point, it's just. Food. Food that someone's making here. Because it's been like, it's like transitioned from like dumb names that suck. Like fusion. And like global cuisine or like whatever the fuck. Yeah. And you're like, none of these are like apt descriptions. I've worked in six French restaurants that I would call 5% fucking French. They're just restaurants. They just call them something. Cause they have to. I got it. I'm picking up what you're putting down. But then like you actually get into it and you're like, this is just like using the world's like pieces of food that exists around you to like decipher what your cuisine is. Or you really are a Japanese restaurant. Or like you really are a whatever.

02:25:09But like what kind of restaurant is Rolf and Daughters? Italian. Sort of. Ish. Like I don't know if they would call it Italian. Italian inspired. Or like American. Okay, I get it. Or like insert like X other restaurant that has a like, their chef's idea of what they're doing. I think I understand what you're talking about now. I get it. Sort of like I get a rainbow to get there, but. No, but it's beautiful. I mean, you can't just say it's this and that because what is it really? I mean, it's food I'm gonna make and we're gonna put it out there. And it's I'm in America and we're in Nashville and it's food I'm bringing in from here. I'm not flying in food from another country to do that style of food from that country that's their traditional. I don't know. Well, I feel like people do it. We did it. Everyone does it because like you have to call it something.

02:26:10Yeah. And then like X amount of time later, I'm like, I shouldn't have called this early like said shit. Cause like, I'm just, I love certain cuisines that I like tend to cook through in like some vague way. And it'll be ever evolving. Yeah. But it's like only in like this vague nature. I can't wait for it. I'll be there. Yeah. It'll be definitively like more teeth into technique. Et cetera. Then peninsula. So. Well, let's do this again. Yeah. Another time. Cause I could, like I said, we've gone down two hours. Shit. We could go a lot longer. I could talk to you all day long. You know, I don't know if you know the final thing we do on the show. The Gordon food service final thought.

02:27:10Okay. Where you get to take us out. All right. What do you want me to say? Whatever you want. You get to speak to whoever's listening. Say whatever you want for as long as you want. And it's, the mic is yours. You get the final word. All right. It should be brief. Whatever you want to say, man. I don't want to blow it. Stay cool. That's it. Okay. You heard it from here. Thanks for listening though. Congratulations on the award. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time today. Thanks for having me out. Squashing any perception I may have had previously. No, I wasn't trying to give you shit on that. No, I'm, I look, I'm first want to raise my hand and say. We're nice. Yeah. A lot of people have a perception about coming on a podcast that I'm going to try and get some gotcha question. I'm going to try and get you saying something that you shouldn't say. And I'm, I don't want to do that. I'm just generally curious about what you do and how you do it.

02:28:10And I think it's really awesome. And I appreciate you coming out here to do this in studio. It means a lot. And I wish you the best of luck with the new place. Like I said, we'll do this again sometime. Be a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you, man. All right. There it is. Jake Howell. Thank you so much, Jake, for coming to, to my house and joining me. Let the dogs bark and go on the whole thing. I really liked the last 45 minutes of the interview. I had no idea what to expect or I mean, I've never met Jake before. I've met him four minutes before we started talking. And so I think once we got about an hour in, I got a lot more comfortable. I got a lot more comfortable and just chatting. And it was interesting because after the fact, we were talking about the bear. And I said, you know, the hard thing for me is, is if you watch season four, any of you know who the guy on the show, Computer is, I go, I feel like you're the bear and I'm computer.

02:29:11And I miss the creative side of being in the building. And I go, but I'm so attracted to, I think it's so awesome that creativity and these people, all of you guys out there making it happen. I tend to be kind of in the background now working on numbers and all the little things, which is equally important. You need both of those things, but sometimes I got to warm up. I got to warm up to that style of creativity because my brain just doesn't do that. So thank you for hanging out through the entire thing. I do, didn't mention at the beginning, our amazing presenting sponsor, Gordon Food Service. Hey, they're doing their Gordon Food Service show. It's gonna be September the 17th, and it's gonna be in Louisville at the AgCenter. Contact your GFS rep today and let them know, say, hey, I wanna go. And they can register you in. We'd love to have you there. I will be at the show. I'll have a table at the show, the National Restaurant Radio table. I'll be interviewing people.

02:30:11You wanna go to the show and get on this show as part of our Gordon Food Service show, just message me or message your GFS folks and say, hey, I wanna go and I wanna be on Nashville Restaurant Radio and they will get you in and we will get you on. That's probably one of my favorite things that we do now today is sitting down with 15 to 20 different chefs in one day. I'll paint the picture for you. I don't know who's gonna be on the show. I don't know who's gonna be on there. I sit down at a table, people walk by and they go, what are you, what do you do? Or they know exactly who I am. But then they come up and they go, you wanna be on the show? And they go, oh, no, no, no. Come on, sit down. And then somebody random from Indiana or Illinois or Kentucky or Tennessee will sit down at a table and I go, who are you, what do you do? And then we have a five to 10 minute conversation about what they do. And it is fascinating because there's no prep, there's no getting ready for it. It's just on the fly, let's go. And it is a blast. I get to meet so many amazing people in this community and it's just so much fun.

02:31:16All right, we're at two hours and 31 minutes and this might be one of the longest episodes we've ever done. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Thank you for sticking around this long. Make sure you go right now and register at nara-nashville.com. We got door prizes, guys. Everybody who comes to the NARA Connect gets a free t-shirt. I'm giving away some Air Jordans. I've got some custom Nike dunks, some NARA dunks and a pair of NARA Air Force Ones, which will be one of a kind that you will be able to have. So these are door prizes. Not everybody is getting one, but they will be given away. So go register right now. It is free. I can take 125 people and it's selling out fast. I say selling out. People are registering quickly. I wanna have this thing done by the next week, so let's go. Thank you guys for listening. I hope that you are being safe out there and I mean it. I love you guys. Bye.