Thanks for joining me back on the podcast. It’s one thing to run a successful kitchen. You know, leadership, financial acumen, culinary skills goes without saying. It’s entirely another thing to open a successful restaurant, put your name on the door, and then keep on opening new successful restaurants.

Well, this interview with Chef Julian Medina gives us the inspiration. And the how to’s, you’re not going to want to miss it. I have a course called the Profit Maximizer, and it’ll give you immediately actionable ways to boost your bottom line. I’m talking profit here.

Now, my restaurant’s had double the net profit of the average full serve restaurant in this country and you can too and these are the keys to do it. So check it out at restaurantrockstars.com/profitmaximizer. Now on with the episode.

You’re tuned in to the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast. Powerful ideas to rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

Welcome back, everyone. This is the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. So glad you’re here. Thanks for joining us. And Chef Julian, welcome to the show today. How are you? Good. Good. How are you? Thank you for having me. Fantastic. I love speaking to chefs, the heart of the house, the culinary, the foundation of restaurants, sharing the love through beautiful culinary creations, and I know that’s what you’re all about, so I can’t wait to dive into your restaurant story.

And it’s fascinating. I guess it begins in Mexico City. So tell us your story.

Yes I was a boy, 17 years old finishing high school didn’t know what to study, where to go to school I find the passion for cooking through my family, through my grandparents my mother, my father. And explore going to a to a restaurant and start cooking and be someone’s helper with the help of my aunt that she knew a few different people in the restaurant business and introduced me to a couple of chefs and started doing some internships and then see if I really wanted to pursue that career.

Then I was working there for a few years and then that’s when I decided to move here to New York to come to school, to have a little bit more sense of what exactly I wanted to do in life back in the day in Mexico in that time it was, there were like a couple of culinary schools, it was not as big as it . Now after 25 years and that’s why I wanted to, immigrate here and find my passion and which is cooking and, run restaurants and come up with different menus different restaurant brought anything besides Mexican food.

My specialty is Mexican, but I, lately I opened an Italian restaurant so I’m a little bit more versatile in my cooking. I love cooking no matter what. Yeah. And that’s how I started

1. Huge Mexican food influence, of course. Now, Mexico is known for flavor profiles, very rich foods, very traditional, authentic foods.

And obviously that was your early influence and you brought that to New York. You’ve started several Mexican concepts. But I think you went to something called the French Culinary Institute in New York. Is French cooking a complete departure from Mexican? This is adding to your craft, of course, but there’s got to be a lot of differences.

Yeah back in Mexico, I was when I started cooking, I was cooking most of French. So the restaurant that I worked there for three years, three years and a half it was like very classic French, very elegant all the school service.

cooking, sauces, So that’s how I basically learned how to cook, which by everyone or by in the culinary world, they said that the best mother of all, it’s it’s French French cooking and French techniques, which I agree 100%. So I started there and then when I moved here to New York I started cooking also French, a little bit of Asian, a little bit of everything American, which was very different for me.

Obviously maybe in Mexican, everybody will think that I will just cook Mexican food and I know how to, and I knew back then how to make Mexican food. To cook Mexican food. But no, I didn’t know anything about how to cook Mexican with Mexican ingredients. I actually cook most of most of my life back then, French.

So I came here and I, yeah, I went to French culinary Institute as well. I started cooking Mexican food because back in the day, I was the chef of the cuisine of a new modern Mexican restaurant that I was hired to. And and I. I literally learned as I went on a daily basis by reading a lot of cookbooks calling my mother and my parents to, to get me or my grandfather to gimme some recipes that, that we had in the past and that they cook and and how to make them a little bit modernized.

And because back in the day, even here in New York, Mexican food was, it was not as big as it is now. Only a few different Mexican restaurants and it was very classic, very Americanized also in a way, and we were the first restaurant when we opened Maya a long time ago, over 25 years ago, the first modern Mexican restaurant that it was just out there.

And that’s how I basically started actually combining and learning a Mexican ingredients. And I, and to my cooking these days, I combine a lot of French techniques with Mexican ingredients and in a way. So that’s how I started it.

Sounds like amazing flavor profiles and tastes.

Yeah.

Let me ask you about being mentored. I understand you had you had a special experience with Chef Richard Sandoval. Tell us about the experience, how it shaped your leadership, and maybe approach to your craft.

It was very funny how we started all. I used to work in Mexico City as we talk.

I wanted to experience something to come either here in the States or maybe Europe. One of my friends that he was a cook with me working in the French restaurant, I asked him, Hey, do you have any connections? He’s yeah, I have a couple of connections. One in New York, one in Spain. He said, why don’t we just try the first one in New York?

And one, that being one of the managers of Richard Sandoval, which I. Call immediately, like in a couple of weeks he said over the phone, I don’t have anything for you but the next day, surprisingly, called me back at the restaurant and I pick up and it’s Hey, it’s Richard Sandoval again. I was thinking overnight that I would like you to come and work for me.

What have you done? And it’s I’m a line cook. And one of these very well-known hotel in a very well-known French restaurant. It’s okay, when can you come? I said, two, three weeks. It’s okay, done. Excellent. So two, three weeks later, I love it. I was here in New York.

Wow. Working for one of his restaurants back in the day was called Sav Van. From there he knew that he wanted to. Opened a Mexican restaurant, Maya, and he brought me in. He’s you want to come and be my sous chef of the cuisine? I said, for sure. I learned as I literally built up the restaurant with him.

And then surprisingly, one, one, two months after we opened, he was out of the kitchen and I took over. I was in control of the kitchen and we got a New York state New York times review, two star, the first two stars, the first Mexican restaurant to get two stars. Amazing.

And from

there,

from there,

we’re just like, when when like open, as well as he did, he he built up this like incredible empire that he has on his own.

So in a way he’s he was one of my very important part of my career and in my life just to, to work with him. And then I. I started moving after I worked with him for several years around to like Sushi Samba, Sokolo, other places. Actually I went and worked with Richard again until I I wanted to do something on my own.

And that’s how Toloache started in the theater district in the city. And then after that I keep opening more restaurants here and there. I have currently I have to Uba Colia Lala Solid that Varano Amarna, which is the Italian restaurant that I just opened recently, and I’m opening at the end of the year over a place in Miami as well.

And I have yeah, ano here in South Hampton. That I opened last year. That’s where I am right now. And yeah, there is like 12 restaurants all over most of them in the city, but that’s how I am right now.

That’s an extraordinary story, and so many things come to mind, but it’s a transition to having excellent culinary skills and being a chef to actually running a business and opening restaurants, and did did you get any of the Business skills are the business side in culinary school.

Did you learn that from Richard watching him open concepts? It’s it’s a transition because there are many chefs probably listening in our audience for this, and they’ve always wanted to put their name on the door. They’ve worked for other restaurants. They’ve got experience. But they suddenly realize it’s no longer just about cooking, it’s about people, and it’s about marketing, and it’s about knowing the numbers, and it’s about running a business, not running a restaurant.

How did you start from 1 and then go to 2 to go to 12? That’s a story unto itself. Can you take us there?

Yeah, in culinary school, they teach you some. Obviously, what better than an experience, right? Learning how to, just operate a restaurant and cooking is it’s two different things.

It just goes together hand by hand. But but if you don’t, if, first of all, if you go to a restaurant to eat, to have a good time, to have a good service, right? That’s number one. But number two is just like the way, how you operate it, right? How you manage it, how you hire your staff, how you train your staff, how how you use like the, develop, All that process like to open and then obviously before you open a restaurant, you have to know your finances, how much money you’re going to invest, how much money you’re going to put.

Obviously it’s just it’s a restaurant business, right? You, sometimes you can just like or like any business you project sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Then how to project those numbers and put them together into a reality and into actual the business. Put him up a PR marketing team together before you open.

What are you going to do? What concept? What’s the menu? What tastings, bringing the staff over. How do you want to, how exactly we want to detail on and on, on the menu, the pricing, the food cost. It’s just so much, but at the end of the day, it’s a business and I’ll see it as a business.

I have fun doing menus and cooking and talking to people about it and hiring people. But at the end of the day, it’s a business and if you don’t make money out of like a restaurant or other business then it’s just hard to compensate that passion that you have. Everyone wants to open a restaurant because as a chef, they, everybody think that you are the best chef ever.

I don’t consider that myself. It’s

pride and it’s passion. I get it.

I I learned many years ago that I don’t cook for me as a chef, but I cook for my clients and my clientele. I learned that I cannot be considered into that, but I like to put out there something that it makes sense for me and make me proud and my team proud, but also, the consumer that is going to come and he’s going to eat and he’s going to drink and not necessarily, they like a spicy. They’re not necessarily, they like a crazy thing that a lot of the chefs, they want to put on the menu just because, Oh, I want to put sweetbreads on the menu. I want to put a liver. I want to put this.

I want to put that squab or venison. And chefs, they trying to be very like stubborn. And they get it and I was there like once or twice or 10 times in my life but but at the end you learn how to run it as a business. You learn how to run it as a team as a team effort because the restaurant business is as I said to all my employees, my kitchen staff and stuff.

It’s I can do it alone. The basketball team the U. S. just won an Olympic medal and having the best players in the world, but if they’re not a team, they wouldn’t get it they wouldn’t get it done. So I think that’s very important that everybody knows that this is an effort of of a team from starting from The guy who receives the deliveries, the guy who preps, the dishwasher, the porter, the bartender, the busser, the cook.

So everyone has to be on the same page on this. And if it’s not the right top that’s telling everyone how to, it’s just like that one machine has to run and how everyone is very important in the part of a, in a restaurant. Then everyone has to know their job, how to do it. And they try to do it as well as possible.

Then we’re not going to survive. They can go and move on from job to job, but that’s not the idea, right? The idea is just to have people that they wanted to stay work for you for the longest. And I think that accomplished that very well because I have people that I, they’ve been working for me for for over 20 years since they came.

And I. Train them how to cook and how to be a manager, how to be however you want it, I think it’s just, that’s one most important thing about the restaurant businesses.

So you’ve built up a tremendous reputation, not only as a chef, but for your cuisine and your restaurants. You’ve built a team that you just mentioned has been with you for a long time.

And that’s super important. You’ve got loyal clientele, but now you’ve got restaurants. You’ve got 12 locations. You’re out in the Hamptons. You’re in the city. You’re going to be heading to Miami. It’s like, How much time can you, or do you, spend sharing that passion, sharing that love, being the inspiration to your team saying hello to the guests that come to visit you as clients, and still getting into the kitchen and cooking?

You must travel. Like, how do you make it all happen?

It’s a it’s I’ll be honest I develop all the menus but I, it’s hard for me to be cooking in a daily basis. Obviously, I can, as I said, I can see myself now as a a operator rather than I’m a chef.

from, the list, there’s no doubt about it. I talk to my chefs, talk to my managers, talk to all my staff. It’s always important. Putting time in each restaurant is it’s also, very important. And if you’re going to be in one restaurant for two, three, four hours a day, it doesn’t matter what restaurant it is, but just, Make the best out of it.

Talk to your staff, talk to your people correct if there is something that is not up to my liking. Yeah. I walk around the, the dining room and say hi to regular, say hi to people because at the end, people, they come to your restaurant, they want to see you. They want to see you that you were there.

They want to see you that you’re involved. So I try to do as much as I can. Now I’m here in the South Hampton because the summer is it’s. It’s busy here and I’m trying to focus on that but but that doesn’t mean that I don’t, I’m not involved in the, into the details of the the restaurants in the city.

I’m very involved. I’m very aware of what’s going on and as I said, you have to hire people that you trust that that you know that they’re going to do the job. As a chef and as a manager, general manager. So it’s, you have to be and appoint a some sort of a trust these people to run your business as well.

So city people spend summers in the Hamptons and they probably follow you and you probably see some of your New York City regulars at the Hamptons location. Does that happen often? .

I do. Everyone is here now, especially the last weeks of August that everybody wants to be out and not in the city, enjoying the last weeks of summer.

And yes, most of the people that come here are from the city. frequently a lot of my other locations and it’s I thought to myself when, before I I’ve been here in the Hamptons for like over 12, 13 years. And I said, I’m never going to open a restaurant out here just because it’s my sanctuary in the summer.

And that’s where we’re at. Not anymore. It is too, but but now it’s different. It’s just I I got this great location in Southampton that I couldn’t pass not having a lot of Mexican restaurants up to the the scale that I wanted to do it here. Basically the idea of this restaurant is just having a Mexican dishes ingredients.

But also having local food, local produce local dock, local as much as I could. So we research I’ve been researching actually a lot of of that. And through all these years that I’ve been here, I love to come here and cook here because just the produce is way totally different.

It’s just it’s something different that you get in the city or in anywhere. So it’s just kept local than that is just, it’s just great. We have a lot of farms here in the North Fork and actually have my own garden that I picked a crazy amount of tomatoes this morning like blackberries and jalapenos and ferrita Plants and squashes and green peppers Chinese eggplant.

I grow a lot of the stuff every summer and I get super excited about it. So when I’m telling you I pick tomatoes, I pick like over probably five pounds, 10 pounds to day of tomatoes different types, Earls and plums and cherries. So I’m gonna bring them to a restaurant

tremendous,

To tonight for, to make a specials and to use them there.

What’s better than that? Just get from there. So yeah, it’s it’s a totally different caliber of being out here than comparing to the city right now, that’s how the summers are here.

Oh, that’s tremendous. Good for you. I hope you get any time to go to the beach, Julian? I

don’t think so.

I try. I definitely try. I totally try to go when it’s nice and take a few hours for myself. It’s, that’s very important and being, especially in this business, just take some time for you and for yourself.

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Yeah. When I was a young person, I spent some time in the Hamptons every summer with my college roommate actually worked out there.

So I would visit him in Amagansett. There’s a restaurant called Oceans in Amagansett and it’s long since closed. That was probably 20, 30 years ago, but anyway. Those are my memories, but I remember the farmers markets and the fresh produce and the farms. My roommate’s grandfather lived on the North Fork, so yeah, we saw all of that.

Nature’s bounty and the climate is really conducive to growing, isn’t it? Correct,

yes. I think more and more farms are coming in. With different stuff. I have one of my favorites. It comes here to the farmers market in West Hampton. I’ve been going there for over 12 years, 10, 12 years.

Everyone

knows you.

It’s a the name of the farm is Sang Lee Farms. And it’s like a Chinese family grandfather’s farm. Grandfather got a farm, put it to the father and now the son is running it. And it’s, I love it because it’s just not your typical, they grow tomatoes, they grow zucchinis, they grow, but they grow like fresh ginger that you can pick actually like a young, fresh ginger that is just like it’s just magnificent.

They have Chinese eggplants, they have a Chinese broccoli, they have, A lot of that combination of like their, the roots into like the farms. And it’s just beautiful. Actually, I get all my crops from them and my seeds that I planted here in my garden, in my home. But It’s just what, it just doesn’t take better than that, it’s just going there and pick up fresh produce or local fish and, also they have a local chicken farm place that they come, it’s just it’s great.

It’s unbelievable.

You have all the resources you need right there outside the door. That’s it. Wonderful. Let’s talk about, you mentioned staff. Being with you for 20 years. Do you have any labor challenges right now at all? And if so, how are you handling that?

They’re, labor is just the most difficult part of the of the job.

Why? Because even before COVID, but after COVID is when it was just like very challenging as nobody wanted to like work at the time or either that, or they move and they changed careers. They didn’t want to go to be on the payroll. Restaurant business or in anything whatever they were doing before a lot of people moved down to south in florida or anywhere else and started doing something different rather than hassle in the restaurant business as it’s just not easy to do but having people and I think a back in the day was just it was I would say easier But it was just like people will take more seriously about like when someone wanted to teach them how to, how to cook, how to manage, how to be in the restaurant business or how to how to go up in, in not only just like a, as a cook or as a dishwasher or as a bosser.

So a lot of that people that I have now that they’re now they’re my chefs in restaurants basically I they came to the first restaurants being dishwashers and I taught them how to make a prep cooks and then cooks.

They have to work

in the line, how to, how to prep, how to place orders, food orders, anything, even though English, for the main, part of it, how to, how to do inventory.

It’s How to cook, how to develop flavors. So that’s, I think that’s a challenge. And, but the people that they’re now with me, they appreciate that so much because, they came into, and I do appreciate that a lot more than anything, because they’ve been with me for a long time.

For quite a while, for several years, and we know and we communicate very well with just very simple of the way of looking or talking or just saying, okay, I want to do this, what we’re going to do? Because I’m always asking what we’re going to do. It’s not oh, what I’m going to do. I’m going to do this.

What are we going to do? What should we do? A fish? Should we do a meat? What do we do special? So what do you have in mind? And it’s always great just to have a team to, to work together. I am. It’s, again it’s a team effort. It’s not me. People and cooks and chefs, they get tired of like cooking the same thing for years.

And I think I manage and balance that well because I always have that 20%, 25% of the menu that I change and I try to change with them. The rest, it’s a staple. You go to a restaurant because you go to Peter Luger’s because you want to eat the best steak That’s. That’s what you like, or the cream spinach.

Those things, they cannot change. Exactly the same in a Mexican restaurant or in any of my restaurants, they cannot change, right? The chicken enchiladas are the best because they’re there for many years. The huitlacocha truffle quesadilla is one of my signature dishes and that’s a staple on the menu.

So there is a few things and then, but we take that to any place. 5% of the rest of the menu that we can play with depends of the season. And then I incorporate my chefs too, in doing that, and making dish like, we’re like an, as a collaboration, exactly the same happens with the bar. The managers.

Let’s come up with a drink. Let’s come up with a different what do you have? Something new. A tequila, a new tequila, a new mezcal, A new, so tall. There is a a. Variety and infinity of things that you can make and you can just incorporate a staff into it. I think that’s the success of me just having these people for that long.

Obviously the turn, the turnaround and employees it’s crazy. It’s been better lately, but but yeah, it was just that one point in the pandemic that it was just like, nobody wanted to come and work. And then yeah, but now, yeah, but now it’s, now we’re good. I will say that now we’re good.

And we’re better for now. But yeah, the challenge was there also minimum wages, all that part of like people, that they should be paid what they deserve. It’s hard to adjust and accommodate that because it’s, again, it’s a business too and in the restaurant business, the margins of being successful and to, to profit, they’re like so tiny that we need to really focus on how we can just make money out of it.

And not only me, but the rest of my staff, they want braces or if they want, to be better in certain things or to have a, a food cost, a low food cost. And then we work in in those little things as a quarters that, you get you get yourself. Together with the food costs and the payroll costs, and then you get a little bonus.

So that’s how we can, we manage, we’re managing that to, for everyone to be in the same place.

So you have incentives for your team for performance and how well your restaurants do. Yep.

You have to.

Fantastic. Let me ask you, do you, when you’re hiring, do you hire for experience or is it really the attitude that someone brings to the job?

Because you do mention that you’re training and that you take pride in training. Is that a combination of both? Because sometimes people bring habits from other places that aren’t the way that you operate, but they have experience. You don’t have to start from scratch with them, but then I’m eager to learn.

I’ve got a fire inside. I want to be in this business. I want to go as far as I can go and I will do whatever it takes for you is an attitude, right? It’s like, how do you hire?

I think it depends on what I’m hiring. Obviously people with experience brings a lot to the table. But also I like to give the opportunity to my own people to start from the bottom and then grow.

 A manager, as a chef, as a cook, as a dishwasher, as whatever you’re doing, I think the most valuable people that I have is the ones that they come from the bottom, exactly the same as I did.

And

that’s how they learn because I’m very hands on and I’m just like I learned how to do it the first way, then it was the right way and the good way.

So that’s how I try to teach. Train them. If you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do two things. Either it’s the right way or the wrong way. But it’s going to take the same amount of time, so just do it the right way from the beginning, so then you don’t have to repeat yourself just making anything.

Experienced people, it’s always amazing to bring to the table and not necessarily experienced people are, they’re going to bring something else, but it’s just the it depends of the connection and the click that we have bringing an an experienced person with the people that runs my restaurants, basically that run my restaurants I, I do both.

I guess I do 80% in-house growing and 20% experienced people.

Wonderful. That’s great. Let’s jump over back to the finances. You mentioned, obviously the tight margin, this in margins in this business and things are harder than they ever. Have been after the pandemic. We’re paying the highest labor costs primarily in the kitchen right now.

And inflation and the volatility of the markets and all these things have tended to shrink margins. Yet when you raise prices, you still have to offer value to your guests and not price them away. And to stay competitive and to stay relevant. And that is such a balance. Where do you find the, the ways to move the needle there on your profits?

Let’s start from the, from from labor. Labor is very intense. It’s crazy to have a good service, to have a good kitchen crew, to have a good bar crowd in front of the house. You need to have people, right? To run the restaurant. We cannot hesitate and just bring the certain amount of people that we think that is good for like the front of the house and the back of the house, but it’s been a challenge.

Therefore, if you Also, the cost, let’s talk about a little bit about the cost of food. The cost of food has just been ridiculous, insane, not only for the restaurant business, but you can go to any supermarket in New York and anywhere, and you grab the basics and you don’t walk out with less than 150. And it’s not me, it’s everyone else.

The cost of fish. food produce dry goods, anything that you buy now whether it’s in the supermarket or we buy it for the restaurant business, it just went up. Liquor costs obviously, we use fresh ingredients, fresh, we squeeze our lime juice, lemon juice, oranges, we squeeze everything.

We do pureed for kids. Cucumber, pineapple, you name it. That’s also labor intense. And also you have to pay for the limes that they either, they’re come from California and they come from Mexico. If something happens in Mexico about avocados, about limes, about this, and there is like a mafia kind of thing, you end up paying a over a hundred dollars for a case of 48 avocados.

One of the staples of Mexican cooking is guacamole. How can you compare, like, how can you price it right? That it’s just guacamole, right? People are like, oh, it’s just guacamole. Go buy an avocado at the supermarket. Oh, yeah. How

much you pay? Avocados are very expensive.

Plus, people, they don’t understand.

You have labor. You have you have food costs, you have liquor costs, you have to pay rent, insurance is through the roof. Rents in New York now, they’re not easy. They get an escalation of 3 percent every year. And any lease that you sign, you get an increase of 3 percent every year for rent. You get a the insurance that now the landlords ask for is they’re ridiculous, or they ask For more and more millions to like anything you have worksman comp compensation.

You have a thousand different insurance that you pay in a monthly basis. You have real estate taxes that you have to, you’re entitled. When you sign the lease, you have to pay for part of that building that you’re I have no idea. You have to pay a real estate tax. Yes. Wow.

On

top of the rent.

Yeah.

Unbelievable.

On top of the rent. Whatever you pay from your rent, it just escalates a lot more with that. You have to pay gas, you have to pay electric, you have to pay water, and so you have to pay for any other little, those details that, you never know. It’s like renting an apartment.

You have to pay for utilities. That being said, now you just like you just spend whatever all the money that you make a week and a month in the quarter basically on paying all these things that I mentioned. And the margin back in the day was like if you took Managed to mark like 20 percent of that margin, take it as a profit, you were king, you were the, you were God.

But now you barely break 15 and then you’re God. So that being said, it’s just, that’s why people don’t understand how the restaurant, how expensive it is just to go out for dinner. Not necessarily because you want it. It’s because you need to make sure that you can survive and then just pay your employees on time, your probators on time your landlord on time, your everything else.

Taxes also are like insane right now. And it’s, that’s how complicated it’s just been, just like plus you want to talk about the city, the city also charges you like for everything. You have the health department come and then you don’t have, you can get an A, but still you get fined for it because you have not a completely, they always going to find points of view and then you have to pay for those points that you got it wrong.

Garbage, you need to get picked up garbage every day. It’s not cheap. So it’s just a matter of like things that piled up into your PNL that at the end of the month, at the end of the I try to pay attention on a weekly basis, and if you need to adjust, then you can adjust right away instead of waiting for the month.

That’s right. Absolutely. So you’re taking regular inventory, figuring out what your prime costs are and all that sort of thing on a regular basis.

We do data on a weekly basis. Yeah. And we try to do a P& L on a weekly basis.

How often you’re emphasizing the importance of knowing What every item contributes for the bottom line, and that starts with costing out the menu so that am I making money on this?

Am I not making money on this? With the volatility of the pricing and inflation and everything, is that happening in, in your restaurants fairly often?

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But we have to do it. We have one person dedicated to that and cost and cost every single item on the menu and because otherwise how do you can you price something that you don’t even know how much you’re paying for it?

Exactly. And how much is it? Thank you. I mean you buy a lobster or you buy a fish you have they you have a I don’t know any kind of chicken you pay for those bones you pay for that skin, you pay for that. Anything that is just goes to waste, you pay for all that. Making sure that you have a a cost effective menu item or whatever is relevant, it could be.

It’s important to know that you are being smart and being like having at least your 30 percent on food cost there. Whether it’s this, anything that is 30%, yeah, but you have a other. Menu items that they’re below 30 percent which is fine. Nothing above. And that’s why the steak houses is just they’re, they’re pricey because, they don’t even run a 30 percent food cost on the steak because the steak is it’s super expensive.

So they probably run maybe 35, 40%, I would say. That’s why the sides are pricier. The salad is pricier. Just to balance it out in a way that you can just Make, cut through the food cost and make that even 30 percent or below. We can, we’re trying to run in all the restaurants our food cost 25%, 20% when we can but but yeah,

if you can stay there in that sweet spot.

Yeah.

Not about that because we need that in order to compensate with with payroll, that is just that labor, that is you’re never gonna get, back in the day it was 20%, you’re never gonna get it to 20%, it’s just it’s very hard it’s very hard just not to be there, you run it by 30, 33% and you’re winning right there.

Thank you for pointing all that out. That is so important for our audience to hear, the importance of taking regular inventory and costing out your menu and knowing where your profits are coming from and trying to optimize profit across that whole menu and delivering amazing service also. Everyone listening to this has heard of Iron Chef America.

Can you tell us about that experience?

Yeah, I was invited I don’t know, several years ago to to, to cook in Iron Chef. It was a great experience. I just basically go through the whole process of going to to that. And until the day that you actually go to the studio and just You’re ready for it.

As a chef contender they give you three options of possibilities of the secret ingredient. And you have to come up with five dishes on each ingredient that they give you. But you literally, you don’t know what the ingredient is going to be the day off. It’s fair and square for everyone, and you have one hour to cook and to compete, and it’s just time, an hour obviously it’s TV, it’s a show, but you have an hour, you have an hour and and then from there you either, when you finish that hour, they ask you to plate one of each dish, Minimum five.

If you want to do more, you can do more, but minimum five. It’s only one dish for camera, for beauty shots and all that stuff. And then after when that is over, then you present it to the judges and then you cook the rest for them. But you have everything prepped already. And then either you or the Iron Chef goes first.

Usually the contentant goes first because they can, Adjust or do a tweak in any of their recipes. So that’s an advantage I would say for them. And and that’s it, so you really messed it up, like within that hour, then you’re then you’re going to be into trouble at the end, in my example, one of my sous chefs that he’s my chef actually here in El Verano and here in Southampton and Soledad and he’s going to be the chef also in Miami, he was just my one of my sous chefs and he was in charge of only making a dessert, one dessert.

We had to make a chocolate panna cotta with a Mexican chocolate, some sort of a sauce and foam. He messed up the recipe. He was nervous. Obviously, it’s very nerve wracking. Just basically cooking between, 10 cameras everywhere around you. It’s just it’s hard and it’s stressful.

You are in your zone and in your game, plan. But but then he made a, he made He messed it up in the recipe of the panna cotta. We had to take everything out. He forgot to add the cream. It was just like, but it’s, that’s how it is. It’s a everyone has an hour. You train. I trained a lot.

We trained together. But even though when you train and you do, Everything ahead of time, you get nervous and it was great. I lost for, I think for a point on originality, not in taste. And I think I, I beat like Jose for a few points in taste. I think I did pretty well, but I think I should have won.

What a great experience. Thanks so much for sharing, chef. That’s exciting. Cool under pressure, creativity, resourceful. You got one hour, you got to put it all together and keep it all together. Plate presentation, flair, ingredients, choices. So much goes into that. Wow. How gratifying something like that is, and it’s also an accolade.

That’s tremendous.

Yeah, it was fun. The battle, it was actually Mexican chocolate. It was it was good to, to have to cook dishes savory dishes, and with Mexican chocolate. It was fun.

Chef, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been such a pleasure talking cooking with you and talking restaurants with you.

You’re definitely committed to your craft and a testament to what’s possible in this business. If you’ve got a dream and a passion, you can build a restaurant empire. I wish you the best of success.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate your time here. And thank you.

Thank you so much to our audience for tuning in. That was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. We can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Stay tuned and stay well.

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