RJ Cooper

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City! Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. So excited today to catch up with Chef RJ Cooper from St. Stephen. Now we had him on just before Christmas and we talked about all of the insane things that he went through this year as far as a tornado and the pandemic and what he did. Since we've spoken, there's been a bombing and a failed insurrection and an inauguration. Lots of stuff has been going on since then, so we're going to catch up. They took the month of January off, so we got to catch up and find out exactly what he did as far as innovation and just what he did on his time off.

01:07We also talked about his James Beard Award, what that was like, winning it, the entire story behind it. Super fun episode. At the very end of the episode, we talk about a fun event that's going to be happening this coming Tuesday at St. Stephen. You may recall we had an episode called A Show of Help. We raised money to help people who were displaced by the bombing on Christmas Day. We raised $1,500 and we're going to spend that money at St. Stephen this coming Tuesday. You can go make reservations now, so listen to the podcast, listen to this interview. At the end of the interview, you will find out exactly how to do that. If you are somebody who's been displaced from the bombing, we've got dinner covered for you. Very excited to do this. First, we're going to bring on Murray Nicholson. Murray is the Director of Business Development for What Chefs Want here in Nashville. He's going to jump in and do our on-brand segment. There he is.

02:08How you doing, Murray? How you doing? I'm sorry. I'm fantastic. Murray, one of my favorite things is when reps come in the restaurant, people are like, you have such a great visibility as to what's going on in the entire food scene because you're dealing with so many restaurants right now. I love it when you guys come in the restaurant because I get to catch up. Hey, tell me what people are doing. What do chefs want, in other words? I think it'd be fun if you came on the show today and just kind of gave us an update. Tell us kind of what chefs are looking for, what chefs want right now. Yeah, Brandon. Yeah, I appreciate the time. In January, we have our annual kickoff meeting where we go to Louisville, our headquarters, and kind of go over our plans company-wide for the year. We had various topics that were discussed, but one of the main points of discussion was local. Local in every region, and with our company, as we've grown into various cities over the last few years, we've always had a pretty good local presence, but local, depending on what a chef defines it as, the radius of that locality, has kind of been...

03:14Regional. Yeah, yeah. It's gone from local to regional in certain aspects, but what we really wanted to do this year was get more of a laser focus within each city on locality. Right now, we've been working on some plans. I can speak for Nashville specifically of potentially partnering with some new farms and artisans in the area to kind of further develop that program to where, in the past, we may have been pulling some stuff from the Southern Kentucky region or Southern Indiana or various regions regionally, but what we're looking to do now is kind of partner with more people in the Tennessee region, middle Tennessee, ideally, so local, getting kind of into more of a hyper local is something that we've seen in the market and something we're excited to roll out to our customers. Right now in the pandemic with so many local farmers just having such a tough time, especially with just the restaurant closures, as well as only being able to allow 50% of people inside the buildings, these local farmers need that now more than ever.

04:17I love that. Absolutely. And the initial conversations we've had with some farms in Nashville has been very well received and we look forward to a great partnership with them. No, I love that. I mean, it's good to hear that because so many people throughout this, throughout this entire pandemic and the shutdown and the quarantine, I mean, one of the things that we heard is you've got to support local. I mean, I've been in touch with Nathan Gifford over at Gifford's, Mr. Aaron's Goods, Aaron Dissler, I mean, all of these people that are these local artisans and these local farmers when you talk about creation, your creation gardens aspect of what you're doing with the produce. I mean, purchasing from them and keeping them viable throughout all of this is is really what the chefs want around town. I mean, if they can't buy from them personally, working with you gives them the ability to support local restaurants, local purveyors or local farms, excuse me, and local artisans. What a great way to do it. I love the fact that you guys are doing that. Hey, if somebody is listening right now and they want to get in touch with you because they want to learn more about that, how would somebody do that?

05:23So go to our website, whatchefswant.com or run Instagram at whatchefswant. You can DM us on Instagram or go to the contact us page on our website, fill out the form. It's very straightforward. And then our marketing team will get it to the appropriate region and we'll have someone reach out to them. Excellent. Well, Murray, thank you so much for taking time today. Absolutely. You're a crazy man and we're excited to have you on the show. Yeah, thanks, Brad. Thanks, Murray. Thank you, Murray Nicholson, for coming on the show. Very excited to have What Chefs Want as a sponsor for our show, but love to hear that you guys are supporting local. Thank you so much. Also, again, remember, listen to the end of this episode to find out more information on the dinner for people who have been displaced by the the bombing. Also, remember, you can go to our website, whatchefswant.com and you can buy all of our merchandise. T-shirts and hats are $20 right now through Valentine's Day. And speaking of Valentine's Day next week, we will be back with an all new Music City Roundup.

06:24Yes, Kelly Sutton and I will be back next week, next Wednesday, live at 3 30. We are going to be talking all things Valentine's Day. It's going to be a super fun episode. So we look forward to seeing you live next Wednesday at 3 30. Enjoy this episode with RJ Cooper. Very excited to bring back to the show Chef RJ Cooper St. Stephen. Welcome back, Chef. Thanks, Brad. How you doing, man? Oh, I'm good. I think that's the I'm good. I'll just I'll leave it there. You know what? I'm blessed. A lot of great things have happened. A lot of crazy stuff has happened since the last time you and I have talked. Yeah, there's always craziness. It just keeps going on. So we kind of we talked right before Christmas and you'd put out a statement saying, hey, look, we're going to take a break. We've been this world has been crazy. We're going to take a little bit of a break. Catch up. We'll be back at the end of January.

07:25And since then, we've had Christmas. We had a bombing in Nashville. We had a failed insurrection attempt on our nation. Yeah, I live for 18 years, you know. Yeah. I mean, we had an inauguration. We've got a new administration. We're into 2021 now. How are you doing? I'm good, man. I did 18 days of sobriety and not leaving sweatpants. It was pretty cool. I think I wore flip flops for 18 days straight and probably the same grateful bed shirt at least 10 times. And just I mean, I got into a new relationship with my couch and it was it was lovely. How's it going? Was the couch upset when you broke it off? Yeah. Like, oh, we're back to midnight to two in the morning again.

08:27I'm like, yeah, it's perfect time. It's great. So why did you decide to do it sober? Oh, dude, the pandemic, you know, November and grinding, November and December. I mean, we, you know, the ups and downs of just the emotional roller coaster and, you know, being in this business, what do you be numb with, you booze. And it just got to the point where I was just like, you know what? I don't need to drink for a while. So I just calmed, just relaxed, man. Just didn't need to be, you know, drinking whiskey every night and, you know, waking up kind of feeling druggie. So but it was it was good. It was a good cleanse, eight healthy three meals a day, which is very interesting. I don't know what that is. And then we start back. It's like, oh, I'm starving. It's two in the morning. What's there to eat? But, you know, it was good. Do you find yourself eating super fast?

09:29Like restaurant people notoriously, like when we have time to eat, we just it's like everybody that I know who eats in a restaurant is just like, you just eat so damn fast that when you eat with normal people, you're like done and you're looking at them and they're just like all in awe going, what the hell is your problem? You're like, oh, that's how I eat. Exactly. I was out for dinner with some good friends a couple of weeks ago and I just kept eating food in order and it's like, where to go? I went out today, I took my daughters out. We went to go to Black Dynasty to get ramen, but they didn't have ramen. So we had the the noodles. I think we crushed those in 10 minutes. They went to a taco for ramen and I think we crushed some bowls in like 10 minutes. It's like, it's weird because you don't get to sit down and actually enjoy dinner. So I kind of when I go out for dinner with, you know, people, I just kind of try to put myself in a normal society.

10:32And it's sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. This whole idea of getting dressed and putting on real shoes and going to dinner, I end up wearing clogs and they're like, what are you wearing clogs for? I'm like, well, it's my everyday shoes. You know, it's but it's it's a bad thing. It's like, oh, what do you run around the kitchen and eat? Oh, there's french fries. You shovel like 20 of those down your throat real quick. It got bad. Did you say you went out to dinner with friends or was it just your daughters? I went out last night with my daughters, but I went out with some friends a couple of weeks ago. Where'd you go? We went we went got sushi at a taco at Oku. Oku. Very nice. It was it was good. We had a we had a great time and I did the whole thing. We were there for three and a half hours and I did not have a drink. It was crazy. Yeah, no, it's it's funny because, you know, the insurrection happened mid-January and I saw online everybody's posting this.

11:37Well, there goes my dry January, you know, all of these different things. And I I stopped drinking in October of 2019 and it's kind of one of those things. I was like, well, an insurrection like that, guys, it's time to start drinking again. I'm like, I did 2020 sober the whole year. That's great. Proud of you. I said my fifth month was that you're still not drinking? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm still not drinking. Still not drinking. I don't intend on ever having a drink again. That's good. Congratulations. Keep it up. You keep up the power. That willpower is great. Yeah, I think I drank since January, maybe once. But it's not, you know, you get to that point where, you know, the whole world swirling around you and you're drowning that in depressive alcohol spirits and waking up and working 14 hours a day. I'm not 20 anymore. I can't do that. It just doesn't work. So, but it was, it was good.

12:39I, you know, I still love wine. Still love bourbon. It's just, I don't need it all the time. It wasn't like I'm an alcoholic and I need a drink in the morning and you need a drink to fall asleep and, you know, it's just a way to cleanse and feel better. Of course. Yeah. So you took 18 days off or the month, I guess you took most of the month off. Is there any innovation that came about? Did you read any books? Did you watch anything good on TV? When you, I guess what I was getting at with you going out to eat with your friends was were you able? Cause when I got to eat, I'm, I'm able to transform myself into the perspective of a guest. It's hard, but I try to intentionally be a guest and not be an operations guy looking around the building and like ruining my meal. I want to be present during the, it's hard as hell, but I like going out to eat. And then when I bring, when I come back to the restaurant, I learned some things. I go, gosh, we get so mixed up in our own little bubble in here that we forget that the guest is feeling something that they, their perception is different than ours.

13:45Did you get any of that while you were away? I, I did, you know, Oh, I'm good friends with those guys. I've known them for years. They know me and you know, we have the best server and the best service there. And we're treated very well, but there, there, there's also, you know, when chefs in respond to the reason why we got to dinner is we want to be served as well. You know, when you're grinding 90 hours a week and you're, and you're being hospitable, it's, it's, it's good to be in that reverse role. Um, we shifted a lot in the restaurant. Uh, I, I woke up one morning and going, you know, why, why am I just doing food to attract a large audience, you know? And so I, I wrote a menu. The new menu is probably one of the most innovative menus in the city. And, uh, we're pushing towards, we elevated the dining experience two folds, so it's not as casual.

14:46The menu is not as casual. I went, you know, I did some research around town and we just drove the menu to be super fine, you know, curated products and elevated the plates and the service to go along with that. Uh, it's now, you know, the check average went from like $45. I think we're up to 75 or $85 in the last two weeks. You know, I never thought we'd sell so much sea urchin in the city. I've just this weekend, we, we probably sold six trays of a sea urchin and it was a dish that's been evolving since my days at rogue 24 and now we got it almost perfect, you know, and, uh, giant prawns from Australia that, you know, we're doing over the, over the oak with Espelette butter and Yuzu gel and wild horseradish powder, simple dish, but the flavors and the ingredients are the standouts in it.

15:48We're kind of innovating that to be a better dining experience for people. So, because when people go out for dinner through the pandemic, they need an experience to escape the norm. So let's give them that escape through food and beverage and service. That's higher and pushing the mark to where it can be exceptional. So people will leave their daily lives, if you will. So that's amazing. When you said you did research within Nashville, what did you look at? What did you research? I looked at it and not going to pull names. And so, you know, I looked at, I looked at price points, really, you know, going to the last time we went to Oku and I, not to compare apples and oranges, you know, they're, they're Japanese sushi restaurant, we're a progressive American restaurant, but it's the dollar value market.

16:50So we put a lot of value into the products and the ingredients we have, and we manipulate it in a way that's probably above a lot of people. And so that value mark is there. And so I adjusted, you know, we, I've been to YOLA and I've been to Bourbon Steak, Josephine, Catbird, Bastion, you know, and so we wanted to raise our value because we have always had the ingredients, but we, I kept the costs low to kind of drive more people in, but during the pandemic that really doesn't work. So let's have the value in the ingredients we have, but we need to charge for what we're doing, which is proper. So. Well, it's, it's interesting because sometimes perception can be if you're charging too little, that it's not as good as it is, you know, as to where what you're doing, what the ingredients you're doing in the high level that you're doing and probably what you're paying people, you need to be charging what it's worth.

18:03And I think where your perceived value of, Hey, look, I'm giving you a value for what I'm doing on the other side. That perception may come across as it's not as good as it is when it really is at the level of when you mentioned YOLA or Bastion or Catbird, those places are at the top of their game and they're charging for it and you should do. Exactly. And it's not, Oh, you know, he's a James Beard winner, but no, it's the value of the food. So any of the awards and all that stuff that we've won is just a title, but the real stars are what we put on the plate and the teams that we build to express the vision of what we're doing. So in turn, what we're looking at is people are still leaving satiated. I mean, we did 20 people at the tasting counter this weekend at, I think we raised the price to two, 10 a person and people left so satiated.

19:06I was like, Oh my God, that's almost too much food. I'm like, it's not the food. It's how you progress into the menu that's going to make you feel good. You know, so, you know, education behind it, the philosophy behind what we're doing, the reason why we're doing it. And it's the reason is to give an experience that's exceptional. It takes you away from the mundane or the ordinary. That's what I do. You mentioned Yolan. Have you, did you go eat there? I've been there a couple of times. Yeah. Do you feel like, I feel like when you go to Yolan, when you're done eating, you walk outside and you go, I feel like I just left Nashville for a little bit. Like, I feel like you almost step out of our city and you walk out and you go, Oh, I'm still in Nashville. And that's something that I think is intentional and they just, they've raised the game so high. Is that something you want people to kind of feel like when they leave there, like they're stepping out of your world and back into their world?

20:07Exactly. And here's the funny thing. All right. I worked at Spiaggia from 1989 to 1991. You know, so Tony was Tony. He, Tony was on the last month of Tony's tenure when he left Spiaggia for the first time and opened up and he branched out on his own, but he's always been a huge influence in the young creative cook that I wanted to be. It was John Bonchet, Charlie Trotter, Jean Jojo back then, Tony Montuano. And we all looked at those guys, you know, working in Chicago as they were the gods of Chicago, you know? And when I graduated culinary school, I had my, you know, dinner at one of Tony's restaurants, but I was really excited when he came to Nashville. And it's very much that philosophy of what Spiaggia was. It's elegance, luxury, and the perception of being taken care of. Their service is phenomenal, you know, and it really shows that there's levels here that can be achieved that are higher than what people perceive Nashville is going to be or is.

21:24And I think that's, that's a fair statement because I think that's what drove a lot of us from out of town into the city is because everybody thinks, Oh, Nashville is hot chicken and Broadway. It's not. There's more to it. There's a, that could be the foundation, but you know, we have skyscrapers too. So let's, let's hit the top of it. Well, that's one of those reasons why I want to do this podcast was because I drove Uber, um, just almost as a passion to Duke's. I like talking to people, ended up doing a podcast instead, but like people would come to town. They come to town from all over and they get in the car. You pick them up at the airport and they go, so do you know anything about the food scene here? And I go a little bit, they go, where should we go eat? We're thinking we saw this place called Jack's on Broadway or maybe even Rippey's we could go here and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't eat on Broadway. Don't don't go down. There's lots of great restaurants downtown, but go to Germantown, go to East Nashville, these, these are the $4 Ubers to get to world-class dining.

22:26That's do not go eat on, go to Broadway afterwards and go experience and do that thing. But I wanted to do something that I could kind of, this is what you need to do to get away from Broadway. Right. And that's the, that's the thing. It's like, you know, the first time I came to Nashville, you know, it was 2000, we're just talking about this 10 years ago. So it was at 2011 and, uh, it was myself, John Currence and, uh, Schwartz from Miami and we did country music, television's inaugural artist of the year awards. I'm like, all right, let's go to Nashville. You know, sounds good. And where was there the, there was city house. Yeah. Uh, there was Capitol grill, you know, on the, it was the end of Sean's tenure there. Audrey started Huss, right. Or, uh, McCready's and it was just, you know, uh, you know, it was like, okay, where's the food seat? But that they say the same thing in DC, but DC has gone through all these transformations of food scene since the seventies with, uh, Jean-Louis Robert Weidmeier is the Jeff Boovins and, you know, Roberta Donna's and, and just keeps elevating.

23:42And that's all we have to do. And, you know, this, this great thing, uh, called mentorship where you take these young cooks and you, you, you develop their skill. You know, developing skill is hard, but what's really hard and the hardest part about being a mentor is developing their consistent ability to be able to go further in their career than they expect. And, and that's takes motivation, determination, the focus to drive them to where they want to be, you know, and that's how I was mentored too. Back then it was like, that's, that's the beauty of it. So, you know, it's, it's taking the seed, you put it in the ground, grow roots and let it grow, you know, and that's what young cooks need to understand. And even in this, it's not New York, there, there isn't this, this competitive cook edge that we had in New York, Chicago, DC, but it's starting to.

24:50All right. So these young cooks are trying to outdo each other to push themselves in the philosophy. So do people, let me ask you something. Cause so you enjoy mentoring. It sounds to me like you're, you want to help elevate the entire food scene in Nashville. That's one of your, your goals by what you're doing is to elevate cuisine and then to help mentor and bring up young chefs and to motivate them into wanting more and to, to challenging each other and really be one of the leaders in our food scene. Am I correct? Exactly. And I want to do that on the backside. I don't need to be the star, the focus, the voice of Nashville on the front stage, you know, I want to do it on the backstage. I'm at that point in my career that, you know, I don't need to be on TV every day. I don't need to be on, you know, every cooking show. It's not what I'm about. I'm about my guests. You know, once you teach the people and these young cooks that is about the guests, it's not about you take your ego out of it. You know, they're going to elevate their lives better.

25:54So tell me one example you bring say, let's just say I'm a, I'm a hot shot young chef who comes in and I want to learn. Do I ask you, I just want to say that mentorship that's kind of been confusing to me. Do I ask you say, Hey, will you be my mentor? And is that a conversation or is that like something that just happens naturally that you kind of go, I'm now mentoring you? Well, I think it comes organically. My, I don't interview people. I do the last interview and, you know, it goes through the layers and I can sit down with someone from doing this for so long in three minutes to see if they have the ability to learn. It's not about your skills and what you're telling me you can do. If you come to me and go, I want to be able to do this, this, this in my career and you have the drive to do that. That's more important to me than what your skills are. Take Isaiah, Isaiah, a kid who came off the street.

26:55He was a host for three weeks in the restaurant. He's been with me for over two years, almost two years. And we have shown him everything to do in the kitchen and he's probably the most focused and detail oriented person I know in the kitchen. But dammit, he's so, you know, if we just hand him to speed up, it'd be great. But that's the beauty of it. He still has that focus and desire and drive to do this business. And it's really, it's his second love. His first loves music, you know? So if he has that same passion and gives that same passion to music that you go with food, he's got it. He's got an opportunity to grow farther. And Cory as well, Cory is like, you could see, I had, you could see the drive that he has and how he's grown in his career in the last two years here, almost two years.

27:57And I've had guests come to me and he's like, you know, we've seen Cory grow and his leadership behind a lot. I'm like, yeah, that's why I just kind of, I take myself as, you know, as the journeyman to go through and help everybody and let him kind of run, you know, drive the bus. I don't need to be the conductor. I just need to be, you know, the focal point. I could command with silence, which Trump should have done. That's another word. Just be quiet. Just shut up. Yeah. Is that your leadership style? What is yours? I'm still vocal a lot. Oh, I'm a lot tamer than I was even five years ago, six years ago. And I think that, you know, like we were talking on the first time we spoke, you know, the pandemic has shown me what empathy really is. And so with empathy, you can't be a tyrant.

28:59You know, you have to understand what your people and your abilities of people and use their talent as the entity for creativity and success, then breaking them down on their shortcomings. And that makes sense and help them with their shortcomings to build better relations and better skills. Okay. So I'm going to go back a little bit. You've mentioned your own evolution and how you've grown, especially through the pandemic and through some of these circumstances that we've all kind of had to deal with. I think that a lot of people have grown as well. You won a James Beard Award. You mentioned that earlier. Said that, yeah, I won a James Beard Award. That's what it is. How long ago was that that you won the James Beard Award? Now we're going on 14 years. 14 years ago. Isn't that crazy? Go back to that guy, that chef that won the James Beard Award.

30:00What was that like for you? The guy in the kitchen or the guy that won the award? A little bit of both. I kind of want to get in the psyche because, you know, so many people say, oh, it's just an award. It's just a medal, whatever. But like, it's a really big deal. Yeah. And there's a lot of people that listen to the podcast. They don't even know what a James Beard Award is. So we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Okay. So here's the thing. It's impossible to find a Lennon company who you can trust, who you like, who you'd recommend. And if you're a restaurant right now and you're looking for that company, you're unhappy with who you're currently using, and you want to start sourcing out, but you're waiting for recommendations, right now is your lucky day. Sitex is a third generation, family-owned and operated, Lennon, mats and uniform company. They really are the good guys in the Lennon business. They're transparent with their pricing. They have incredible quality and their service is second to none. Check them out at sitex-corp.com or give Ross Chandler a call at 270-823-2468.

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32:14So back when the awards were started, it was a peer-driven award, right? So your peers nominated you, your peers voted for you. And in 2007, long story short, I'll make it a nice story. 2004, I met Jeff Boovan, who is my mentor, who is probably one of the greatest chef restaurateurs I've ever met in my life. This restaurant would not be open through the pandemic without his knowledge. He won a James Beard Award. I sat down and I did a taste and I did a seven-course tasting for him and Mike who was his GM for 25 plus years back in the day, two of the greatest people in the world. And Jeff goes, oh my God, you're the most talented cook I've ever met. Do you know how to operate a restaurant? I went, yeah, of course I know. He goes, you don't know shit. I'm going to teach you how to operate a restaurant. You can operate a kitchen, but you don't know how to operate a restaurant. And he goes, what are you going to give me?

33:17I'm like, I'm going to give you my best. I'll win a James Beard Award before I leave. So I got nominated in 2007 and you told him that? Yeah. You said, I'm going to win a James Beard Award before I leave here. Exactly. As a goal. As a goal, because that was the highest stature you could go to. We didn't have Michelin yet. You know, we didn't have, I mean, we were AAA, we were mobile, we had all that. Those awards are more commercialized, but a peer award from your chef peers, especially your mentors, the people you look up to, meant more to us than anything else in the world. And I got nominated in 2007. So it starts in 2006, then the award ceremony is 2007. And you didn't have a long list. You didn't have an online vote. You didn't know anything. You just got a letter that said, you're on the short list with A, B, C, and D for best chef in Atlanta for 2007.

34:25And I gave it to Jeff and I'm like, I told you. And he was like, now you got to win. Well, you know, I just kept doing what I was doing. And we were really, I could still name every chef in the kitchen. We had 16 cooks in that kitchen back then. And they were driven and focused to do the best contemporary food, regional food in the country. And we pushed that to the boundaries. All whole animal butchering, you know, I was butchering rabbits when my daughters were born. They, one of them was three and a half ounce or three pounds, five ounces. The rabbits I was butchering were four and a half pounds. You know, so that whole drive was the focus of what we were doing. And, you know, when we were into the oars, I mean, it's up to New York, we ate, we hung out, you know, on our way back, just like you're not going to win.

35:28I had Thomas Caller on me with his partner, Charlie Trotter, and it's just like star studded. And Jeff looks at me and goes, I bet you a hundred bucks, you win. I'm like, bet everybody done a lot, a hundred bucks, right? It was like 500 bucks on the table. My name got minted. And he grabbed me. He was, you can't leave until you pay me. I'm like digging for cash and giving him a hundred bucks. So I go accept my award and do the speech. But coming back, it was literally, I was supposed to be off all weekend. I got a call and it's like, can you get back down? We're slammed. And I came back down. All we did was keep punching. And it was, it was great. But then you have to keep pushing yourself. That's not the end of it. So when Rogue opened, we got nominated for best new restaurant, best bar program for the first year. Brian Teturakis, my bar manager. We had the smallest bar in the country.

36:28He had six seats, but he was doing cocktail and food pairings that were unbelievably at high levels. And then I was nominated a few times for best chef. And it just kept moving. And, you know, but you can't lose the focus on what you need to do daily, which is take care of the guests. And that's the most important thing. What would you go back? What did you say in your acceptance speech? Oh, I can't even remember. I think I had to say thank you to everybody and Jeff Boven. First, I thank my team first, because, you know, a lot of young cooks think that this isn't a team sport. It's not tennis. This is a team sport. You're not as good as your worst team member. And so after that, it was like champagne and blackout until early hour in the morning.

37:32I just remember it was a long train ride back to D.C. Did you think you were going to win? Did you think did you not going into it? Not at all. And I think there wasn't an expectation for me to win. And I didn't expect it myself. But, you know, being nominated was fantastic. So you just keep driving. And, you know, the success in that is you get a flood of people wanting you to do appearances and cooking and blah, blah, blah. I took advantage of some of that, but I didn't want to lose my team. When you step out of that, when you become, quote unquote, the celebrity chef, you lose the team. You know, so you're just coming in as a figure. And, you know, that's when things get cloudy. If you don't have a second that's going to lead your vision and you're away, it becomes cloudy. And there's a lot of great chefs that have done that and done it with success.

38:40I didn't want to be one of them because I want to be, you know, I want to be the general that's in the trenches, not the general in the office calling the shots and not knowing what's going on. Wow, there's a lot there. I think that it's just such an interesting dynamic of that celebrity chef thing. Once you hit that peak, that high level, just the amount of people, the hands that start reaching out to you that want a piece of every little part. And hey, be on this, be on that, be on that. We have James Beardwarding Chef. And that team that you talk about is that's that time that you spent mentoring. It's all those hours of working with all of these individual people in the trenches. And I guess that's a side of it that I completely lost because I'm not a James Beardwarding Chef. But once you get to that level, when everybody starts pulling you away, those are your people. That's the people you miss the most. And identifying that, having the wherewithal to say, I can go two directions. There's almost like you come to a crossroads. Right. And that's the thing, too.

39:42All these cooking shows, contest shows like Top Chef and so forth, there's some winners that came out of that programming that have had great success, being able to balance multiple restaurants with their team. Stephanie Isard is one example. She does a fantastic job, but that whole Boca group around her, she's got great infrastructure to be able to drive her success. And I think that's really important, too. And one thing we started building here is a great foundation of people around me to drive the business instead of me have to put my fingers in each piece for it to be successful. And it took a lot through the pandemic to be able to outreach that instead of me trying to micromanage that to be able to keep the restaurant operating and floating through the pandemic as it is.

40:47If you could go back right now and give that chef who won the James Beard Award in 2007, if you could give him any advice, what would it be? Learn empathy back then because I had no empathy for anybody. The whole vision was driving the success of what we're doing creatively to the guest. Nothing else mattered. I don't care if your mother died. You're working, you're on the schedule. It was healthy in a way, but unhealthy in most ways. Healthy that we were building and driving. It was like football teams in the 70s. It's like slam it, slam it, yell at your players, and they'll be successful or like military things. But now, the shift where the mindset of younger professionals is a lot tamer and softer, but they react and respond better with criticism that's more constructive than criticism that's more degrading, if you will.

41:58More appropriate questions, not just complaining, but kind of coming in with solutions. Right. Let them figure out the solution and push them into the direction that you want to so they can figure out how you would. Restaurant's not hard to operate. Creativity is hard to balance. Restaurants aren't hard to operate. You have X amount of dollars coming in, X amount of dollars going out. Right. People coming in, people coming out. Execute the fundamentals. Execute the fundamentals. Keep the standards as high. There's different standards for everybody. Our standards are super high. My standards are super, super high. Even when we first opened St. Stephen, it was like, I still have this mindset that is at a level of Michelin greatness. I'm not going to deter myself from that, but you have to be able to balance your team and find them their paths and push them towards where you want to go.

43:13It's just a little nudge. It doesn't give me a bullwhip all the time. This is really good stuff. You know, I'm thinking about, I almost wonder like if as younger chefs who are just hustling, working their asses off these 90 hour week, just every day, everywhere, working two jobs, everything they can possibly do to make it. Do you think empathy slows them down or do you think that empathy is something that needs to be earned and learned over a period of time? And once you kind of get to that level, do you think that it hurts a younger chef? It's a hard question because you have to take it on an individual basis. Storm, one of my cooks here, he was just like I was a 23 years old. Goofy, wants to go hang out, has the talent. He's come from being a complete slob in the kitchen to clean, focused, but still goofy as hell.

44:17But he's got some ass kicking. Isaiah's got an ass kicking and he's got the walk in me going off because he was four hours late continuously for days. And it's not about me, it's about the team. You're not hurting me. You're being late is not hurting me. You're hurting the team. And you know, the only thing young cooks still should be patient. Find someone to mentor you for the next three to four years, especially when you're 21, 22, 23 coming up in this business. You're not going to be a sous chef at 23 years old. You know, I have kids who come out of culinary school and go, you know, I want to make $80,000 a year as an executive sous chef, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Julia and me and Onion cut me a chop and make me a hollandaise. They can't do any of the three. What is your leadership skills? Because when you get to that point, and even Corey had to learn leadership skills, right?

45:20When you get to that point, you need to have the skill set to be able to execute the food. But you have to have the skill set to lead the team. You know, so my mentorship when I was younger was very harsh. It had a change over the last 15 years, but five, six. But it still has to do with the individual, you know, I was talking to Harper McClure, who was my chef to cuisine at Vidalia for three and a half years, four years, and he's still in D.C. You know what, you're still the biggest asshole I've ever met. But I learned more about cuisine solutions and empathy and drive than anybody in my in my career. I'm like, well, how is that an asshole? You know, because you took you took it personally. He's like, yeah, because I took it personally. I'm like, then that doesn't make me the asshole that makes it you take the person.

46:23I was caring about the foundations of what our philosophies are that you were not doing. Was holding you accountable for our entire operation and taking care of the guest. Right. And when you get to that point, you know, we used to have pre pandemic. We had 12 cooks, 13 cooks here. Now we're five. I mean, it's like the breath of fresh air. It's kind of easy to balance. But, you know, Harper was leading a team where we had eight people in the morning, 12 people at night. You know, I would be in and out of the restaurant. You know, I'd have to go do events or this or that. And, you know, it you have to lead like your mentor, but with a little bit more graciousness. And, you know, you what I tell sous chefs and chef, you're you want to do better than I can. Your focus, your drive, your philosophies, your finesse needs to be as good or better.

47:26And, you know, that's always stuck in my head. It's keep driving, you know, and young cooks take a breath, man. Just, you know, you know, these 21 year kids who like I'm going to I have one that goes, oh, why don't we co-write a tasting counter menu and we can sell it out. Like, you have no idea what kind of cook you're just learning. I've lost and I've forgotten more about cooking than you already know. So let's start back. How about going, you know what, chef? We could really do this and I really enjoy everything. Let's keep pushing instead of I can write menus like you can. Like, OK, you know, not not the approach you should use. No, not at all. That's like me going to the president and go, you know what? Move over. Let me let me have the head. You know, the vice president's maybe your left hand, but we'll get everything done. Like, come on, you know, you don't know anything.

48:28It's a lot. It's a lot in career. I think that's one of those things a lot of people don't understand is that just over time, I mentioned this on a podcast just recently, but there was a cup, a mug that I saw that said, gosh, I'm getting my brain mixed up here, but I think it said something along the lines of good decisions come from experience and it said experience comes from making bad decisions. Absolutely. And you've got to make a bunch of bad decisions. You got to mess up and you got to try. But over a career over a lot of time, we could calculate all of those bad decisions and then in turn form good decisions like it's OK. You want to be along for this ride. I want you along for the ride. Be willing to make. I'm going to give you some rope. Be willing to make bad decisions. Be humble, be coachable, but be part of this team. It's OK if you mess up. Learn from your mistakes and then let's move forward. And over the next 10 years, maybe you get there. I don't know. Right. But we all make mistakes.

49:28I make mistakes too. Still, everybody does. I've been doing this for 33 years, you know, but it's it's I understand the decision. Now, most of my decision making, I don't do it individually anymore. I speak to the people that know better than I do. Like my financier, like my investors, you know a lot more about money than myself, in which direction we want to go. You've learned that over time, right? And it was the same thing with the shift of the food. I'm like, we're not going to digress our food to drive people into the restaurant. You know, we're not going to be a burger, hot dog, you know, taco restaurant. We can. They'll be great. But is that the philosophy of what this restaurant wants to be? No, this restaurant wants to be an escape and experience. So when we did the shift, I'm not afraid of doing the shift, even if it fails. Right.

50:29Our check average looked on Saturday night was, I mean, we put out roughly 700 plates between five of us on Saturday. Wow. Right. The dining room turned into two tables that had a la carte menus. The rest had a course and done the tasting. You know, that's the experience we want people to come to with this restaurant. Wednesday through Saturday. Right. Tuesday, we're doing the steakhouse thing because the product that we get, the level of product that we get, we can't get in middle Tennessee unless it's our vegetables grown from our farmers. And right now it's radishes and beets, you know? So, you know, we're bringing all this product in this, you know, source. We sold, since New Year's Eve, since New Year's Eve, then we closed almost 15 pounds of A5, 200 day dry age Wagyu beef ribeye. You know, there's nobody in the city that gets it. Right.

51:29And our cost in that, I mean, we're selling for $150 for four ounces. We're not making a lot of money on that, but it's something that you're not going to get next door or down the street or across town. And that's what's important to us. Well, let's talk about something else that's important. I'm going to shift because before we started this conversation, and thank you, I think if you're a young chef and you listen to this conversation, I think there's a lot you can gain. I think there's a lot you can learn. Thank you for being open and just talking about all that stuff. I liked hearing the story about the James Beard. That was good stuff. It's kind of crazy. And to bring that back, you know, five, six years ago when Top Chef was really hot, you know, I was on Top Chef after my open heart surgery. I didn't do the awards. I did a spin off of it with some, you know, Brian Voltaggio and Jennifer and Mike Isabella when they came to my restaurant and they were cooking because I was out.

52:34That's not what's important in your career. All that is to drive people's asses in your seats. What's important in your career is your philosophy and your foundation of what you expect out of yourself to make the guest experience better or what your guest experience is, right? And on a side note, there's a project coming up. I don't know if it's going to come through through fruition, but it's philosophically what I want to do for the next 10 years of my career. And that's what's important. Can you let us in on what that is? Nope. Damn, I'm smelling exclusive there. No, it'll be. It'll be something cool. All right. Well, I will tell you that we did while you while we were away since the last time we spoke right before Christmas, there was a bombing downtown and it was a bad situation is on Christmas morning and a lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of people's businesses were ruined from Second Avenue all the way down.

53:38That whole huge block of Second Avenue, so many businesses closed. And we did a podcast called A Show of Help. And we raised fifteen hundred dollars to help feed people who were displaced from the bombing. And I've kind of waited. I wanted to wait a little while until some of the people there's a lot of help that came in. And I think that with a lot of these things, there's an initial surge. And I wanted to wait. Now we're a month out. I think it's about the time that we need to jump back in to help these folks. So with this episode today, we talked earlier and I think you're going to be down to do this. What I wanted to do with this money was I wanted to use it to spend it at a locally owned and operated restaurant to feed these people who are displaced. I said, I've got fifteen hundred bucks. Can we create something at St. Stephen that we can serve these people? And you said yes, of course. Let's do it. So we'll start this.

54:39We'll do it on a Tuesday night because Tuesday nights are steak nights. You know, I'm a restaurant dude. I like steak night and I like half off bottles of wine. I don't get out much, but let's do it. I started on a Tuesday night steak night. We could, you know, go through explore talk backslash at ExplorersTalk.com backslash St. Stephen, make a reservation, put the podcast name and we do good food on that. And that will take care of that, you know, success of that reservation. And I will match that fifteen hundred dollars to do a deli just for servicing people from down there in the future. Okay. Wow. That's amazing. Are you serious? You don't, seriously, you don't. We'll pick, we have the next two delis lined up.

55:43Then that third deli will make an exclusive for that industry for fifteen hundred dollars. And we'll do something cool. I think we'll just do cheese steaks and Rubens again. Those are always popular and makes people feel comfortable. Right. It'll be industry only from that. Those avenues downtown and we'll make it exceptional for them. You know, we can use six dots to sponsor. We've got a lot of different angles we could, we could go with it. But steak night on Tuesday nights and then exclusive deli for those people. We'll nail it and knock it out. So if you want to, if you are displaced, if it was people who are displaced from the bombing and you still, your jobs are, nobody there is back open. We want to invite you out, not this coming Tuesday, right? We can do a week from this Tuesday. So what I've learned in the last week is trying to get our product down on Monday and Tuesday is virtually impossible.

56:49Uh, not virtually, but physically impossible. Uh, so everything was that every day. Yes. Okay. Stake night getting your product. I'm sorry. You're up to do. Yeah. So trying to get the product on a Monday, Tuesday to get Tuesday service going. It's like I, I'm getting blown up because the whole East Coast is under a blizzard. So lobsters aren't available. I mean, it's just, okay, got it. Um, so Tuesday nights we'll shift back into steak night and it's like old school wedge salad, Giffers, bacon, uh, Shigerak, blue cheese from, uh, Chattanooga dressing, you know, red onions. Uh, I think this week we're doing New York strip from it's, uh, uh, CAB dry age, 60 days. Uh, then, uh, swordfish steak that we brine in olive juice, old school, big ass baked potato with, you know, bacon chives and, and cheese, cream, spinach, hollandaise, green peppercorn sauce, and then old school chocolate mousse.

57:58Like the ones when we were kids that we'd gotten a little, you know, pudding cups with a dollop of cream cheese or a whipped cream. It's perfect. And that's, that's fun for us to kind of shift and do. Um, and we just have fun with our trance music. All about wines are half off. It'll be fun. So how, so here's what we'll have people do. Like you said, go to Explore Talk. Talk is your reservation system and then St. Stephen of Explore Talk backslash St. Stephen. Make the reservation for Tuesday night. How many you'll decide how many reservations you can, you can do with the $1,500. How much you want to do per person. It'll be kind of an all-inclusive deal so you can come out and eat. When you make the reservation, type in NRR, which is Nashville Restaurant Radio, and then type in the restaurant or the business that you work in on Second Avenue that was disrupted by the pandemic. We're not going to ask you to bring in a pay stub. If you need to lie about that, then you need the food anyway.

59:00I mean, I don't think that's a thing, but just when in the notes there, just type in the place that you work so that we can know where it is. We'll have another special, I got another something special for you too when you arrive. When the reservations are done, they're done. So I mean, go and do that now. Go make the reservation and we'd love to feed you. Thank you to all of the people who supported us. We'll get Julian a post on the St. Stephen Instagram about all the information. We'll tag everybody and afterwards, you know, what we'll show in support of, you know, the people that come out with the restaurants and businesses that have been affected. We'll do a cool post around that too. Let's just keep, you know, keep the faith. I mean, you know, I went through 9-11, you know, the Pentagon, but I was in DC, the Pentagon bombing and I know that what happened on that structure and how it shut down our community for over a month, six weeks before we got back into operation fully.

01:00:02So, and I've been in New York during 9-11. So it, you know, we understand. So the sympathy and the empathy that we've always been talking about, we get it. You know, this business isn't about making millions and millions of dollars like any chain restaurant. This business is about the people and the foundations of hospitality that we want to keep growing. A hundred percent. All right. Well, chef, here we go. We come to the end again. We can do this every month. This is a lot of fun, isn't it? Absolutely. I'll start a podcast. There you go. I wouldn't know what to talk about. You know what? I like to have a plan and when I listened back to our podcast previously, I realized that I wasn't engaged as much in the conversation as I could have been because I was trying to get to my next topic I wanted to talk about. So today I had nothing. I didn't have any. I knew I wanted to talk about your James Beard Warden. I just wanted to catch up and just have a conversation and I like it this way. It's a lot more fun, I think. Yeah, it's everything grows out of organics.

01:01:05You know, even some of the best ideas I've ever had, some of the worst, but it's better to be spontaneously free flowing like a jam band. Well, so to finish it off, again, the new dead tattoos. Did you just get those done? Yeah. Nice. My arm done and kind of came up with these, so. Yep. Cool. How many tattoos do you have? Well, I don't know. Like 30, 40. Do you know what they all does? Does every one of them? Every one has a meaning. Everyone has one. Yeah. Can we do a whole show where you tell the stories about every tattoo? That'd be crazy. Yeah. What's that? What tattoos you have? Zero. I do not have one tattoo. Isn't that insane? I want a tattoo so bad. I just don't. I don't know how to do it. Go see Nate at Adventure Tattoo, man. Who is it? Nate at Adventure Tattoo.

01:02:06He's the best. Nate. I'm serious. We should do a show where we just go over every tattoo. You're like, let me tell you the story behind this one and we'll just do a whole bunch of individual. I'll do a new video every week where we just talk about your tattoos. It'd be a lot of fun. Oh, shit. You get Sean involved with that and a bunch of other chefs. Hell yeah, man. I mean, Sean, just Sean's left arm. Tells a hell of a story, too. So it's great. All right, brother. Thank you. Hey, I always end off every show. I let you take us out. You did this last time. It was great. Any final thoughts that you want to leave the city with? Yeah, I'm going to throw like promotions out real quick. Super Bowl Sunday. Go to exploretalk.com. Check out the wing list we're doing. It's crazy. So my team, with all their backgrounds and influences, wanted to do wings for Super Bowl and they're a killer. There's one called the Chicano, which is adobo marinated chicken wings tossed in chocolate mole.

01:03:13It's just fantastic. So stay healthy. Keep the drive going. It's all going to be done soon. And we're just going to keep on pushing, y'all. I love it. Thank you so much, Chef. R.J. Cooper, St. Stephen, you're the best. Thanks, bud. I'll see you soon. All right. Yeah, man. All right, R.J. Cooper. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Hope you guys enjoyed that. I just thought that story about the James Beard Award was just so interesting. Hopefully we will see you Tuesday night if you're one of the displaced people from the bombing. And I hope you guys are staying safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.