The Restaurant Guys 0:40

Hello, everybody, and welcome. You are listening to The Restaurant Guys. I'm Marc Pascal, and I'm here with Francis Schott. Together we own Stage Left and Catherine Lombardi Restaurants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, and the finer things in life. Good morning, Marc. Hey, Francis. I am very excited for our show today. Mm-hmm. And, and it... We're, we're having Brian Caswell, who's a great chef from Houston- Yes who we have met in Houston at, his places, and we've also r- run into him quite a bit at the other food festivals we've been going to. I spoke to him a little bit in Aspen, uh, and really got to know him pretty well, and I... He's gonna be a great guest. This brings me to a larger topic. We have been traveling a lot and, you know, I think w- we, these shows that we've been going to, Food and Wine Aspen- Mm-hmm Food and Wine Charleston. we've been doing some, uh, trips out to California for various purposes. Southern Smoke. Southern Smoke, uh, down in Houston. Martini Expo. The Martini Expo in Chicago, and in Brooklyn the year before. Tales of the Cocktail. Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. Mm-hmm. Um, boy, we, I, what- What's the status of our frequent flyer miles? Um, These food festivals, when they're done well, and Food and Wine Magazine is, is the- Yes the top of the top, but a lot of places, there are, there are great places to go and actually learn about food. And, you know, one of the criticisms we always had when we were younger was there'd be a Taste of New Brunswick, a Taste of East Brunswick- Mm-hmm a Taste of South Brunswick, a Taste of Princeton. It started with the Taste of the Nation, which was American Express, New York- Yep well-intentioned, raise money for charity. But then everybody got the idea, It really got mediocre for a while. we've had this discussion before, but, uh, just to, go back to it just a little bit people always did these events, and they were doing so many of them that they were becoming costly to the restaurants. Right. And so costly, in fact, that they wouldn't invest in them. Right, right. And they would bring mediocre food, certainly below anything they would ever serve in their re- Schmaltz on a cracker. Yeah, schmaltz on a cracker schmaltz on a cracker. Yeah. Certainly below anything they would ever serve in their restaurants, and I never understood that. And you and I, from early on, participated in many fewer of them- Mm-hmm but always wanted to serve something special at them, wanted something memorable, wanted to... wanted people to say, "Hey, that's the best thing I had at this festival." Yeah, I'm not... We're not gonna turn up, and I think if you're, if you're a restaurateur or a chef- Mm-hmm don't agree to do a charity event unless you can invest the resources to bring your best self there- Mm-hmm and show someone something that you're like, "Hey, this is kind of like what we do in the restaurant," or, "It's akin to..." or, "It's at least the quality level of what we do in the restaurant." Qua- uh, the quality level is the first thing. equal to that, it's gotta be stylistically the same. Mm-hmm. 'Cause if you, if you s- make chili but you don't make chili in the restaurant- Yes I, I, there's no point in doing that. I don't wanna seem mean about the restaurants that did that. That came from saying, "Okay, this is a fundraiser for charity-" Oh, I think it came from a really good place. Yeah "and we want, and we wanna help out, but I can't invest all these resources." Mm-hmm. 'Cause it's expensive to send a chef- Sure and get them there, and the equipment, and take them out of the fl- off the floor on a night and prep for it. And so that's where that came from. That came from, like, "Okay, well, I gotta do something. I gotta help out," whatever the cause is. In most cases, though, you'd be way better off writing a $1,000 check- Oh, yeah and leave your chef in your restaurant- Yeah and don't invest in schmaltz on a cracker- Yeah as you said. Yeah. Much better off just writing a check. I agree. Well, with these big food festivals, though, people don't do it. They really throw themselves into it. Yes. And as a consumer, you get to m- very often meet the chef. Sometimes there are seminars you can go to, but when they're serving food, I mean, the, the food is- Mm-hmm what they do. And I, and I, and I think it's great. And for us in, being in media as we are now, it's a great way to meet people. So we went and, and met Brian Caswell at a couple of these things. He's larger than life. He's a great chef. We had his food first at these fairs and then in his restaurant, and we can't wait to talk to him, so stick with us. We'll be back in just a moment. You can always find out more about the Restaurant Guys at restaurantguyspodcast.com.

Francis 4:33

hey there, everybody, welcome back. We are in Houston talking with Chef Bryan Caswell about the Houston culinary scene. There is no chef I can think of who is more a part of Houston's culinary rise than Bryan Caswell. He grew up fishing the Gulf Coast, went off to CIA and then to kitchens in New York, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and the Bahamas abroad. Uh, worked for Charlie Palmer, Alfred Portale, Jean-Georges, and then like a salmon coming home to spawn he came back to Houston where he opened Reef where he taught the whole damn country that Gulf seafood means a hell of a lot more than shrimp, oysters, and red snapper. He's been acclaimed by Food Wine Magazine and James Beard. and then for a while he stepped away, uh, after his first restaurant Reef, and now he's back cooking Gulf seafood at La Tuli right here in Houston where Mark and I had a great dinner last night. Maybe a little older and maybe a little wiser, but certainly not much quieter. Bryan.

MIC1 5:20

Bryan welcome to the show. Thanks

MIC2 5:21

Thanks for having me.

Francis 5:22

first of all, that was a great dinner last night. I, I mean, really, if you're in Houston, you gotta go to Latoul. The room was beautiful. The, the place was

MIC1 5:30

Super comfortable, really lovely dining room. Service was attentive but, but comfortable. It was great. Everything about the, the night

Francis 5:39

You, you related something to us last night that someone had said about you that I think was fricking great and I wanna share it with the listeners. 'Cause we're like, I get it. You're, you're a large fella, right? You're, you're a large fella. But, uh, you said that you have been accused of looking like a linebacker and cooking like a ballerina, and I thought, I thought that was... And I agree

MIC2 5:57

I agree. I mean, uh, honestly, that's so... Like, when, the first time I heard it, I was like, "Ow, I don't like

MIC1 6:01

that."

MIC2 6:01

I was like, "Oh, that's not so bad. Actually, it's, that's not so bad. I, I'll take that one. I'll take that one."

Francis 6:06

I hope, uh, you can occasionally wear a football jersey, but never a tutu.

MIC2 6:09

Yeah. No, no, no. And you know, the funny thing is, is that in my head I don't... I mean, there's no- nobody's ever said small and, like me and small don't go together. But I grew after high school. I grew five and a half inches, almost six inches after, after I graduated. and so it gave me like this sense of, I mean, maybe it's false humility, but like it gave me this sense of not being this big guy. Um, and always being kind of self-conscious of being big afterward the fact, 'cause I was not big growing up. I wasn't the... You know, I didn't, I wasn't big enough to be a bully. I wasn't big enough to play football. Mm-hmm. so yeah, it was just an interesting way come into my own.

Francis 6:42

But during the conversation, we found out that you were a line and cooking one, one of the, for me, the three best meals of my life

MIC1 6:53

one of the top five meals of my

Francis 6:54

The top five meals of my life Yeah that we had together with our chef at the time. that was at Union Pacific. Rocco DiSpirito was cooking. We had 21 plates and seven courses, and y- and the kitchen sent

MIC1 7:04

wine pairings.

Francis 7:05

Five courses uh, right, and the kitchen sent out some extra courses. that was pretty wild. Do you, you s- let's talk about those

MIC2 7:10

that place was insane. Um, so when I was going to the CIA, so I, my extern, I went to a Michelin-starred place in Barcelona called And I had never been outside of, uh, out of the country before I went there. I'd never been to New York before I flew into Marlborough to go to school. So I mean, I, you know, we had gone to Mexico and been out of the country that way, but for the most part, I was, you know, I was just a, a redneck, from South Texas or Central so when I came back from Barcelona, I saw so much. I saw cooks that wanted to be better cooks. I saw waiters that wanted to be better waiters. I saw professionals, like really professionals, and I knew I had to go to Manhattan. Like, there wasn't a question. And, uh, so I went back. I got a girlfriend in New York, the place I could crash, and I staged every And I would go into New York. I'd ride the metro. I mean, it was such a great life at the time. Bring my knives, my jacket. I would knock on people's doors and say, "Let me cook." I mean, just, I would just find addresses 'cause you really couldn't get ahold of anybody. Yep. And they didn't know who you were, and I was a hand. Like, I could butcher, I could clean. I was a hard worker. I mean, I, you know, I was in the oil business long before I was, was a cook, so I mean, I knew how to work hard. I worked at Aureole and all, all these places. March. I loved

MIC1 8:18

March was awesome

MIC2 8:19

awesome. March was amazing. But they didn't have a space. They didn't have a space, so you know, uh, uh, what's his name? Um- Wayne Nish well, Wayne Nish was there, but the chef de cuisine was, um- Mark Anthony Mark Anthony. Yeah, Mark Anthony. Right? Who now is like at Gramercy Tavern. I mean, he's just a total badass. I mean, I would work every single place, and I was l- looking to find out where I wanted to go after I graduated. And when I went to Union Pacific, there were 30 things in that kitchen I'd

MIC1 8:40

Mm-hmm.

MIC2 8:41

Like, and this is before internet. Like, you couldn't even research. Like, that stuff was, it was so far.

Francis 8:46

Back in the day when if you found a new fish and you wanted to research it, you had to go to the

MIC2 8:49

Exactly. You had books.

MIC1 8:52

Do you remember going to March? March had the single best amuse-bouche- Oh uh, that I've ever had.

Francis 8:59

The beggar's purse The beggar's purse tied with a chive.

MIC2 9:01

I've made a, I've made about a thousand of those. Mm. Yeah.

MIC1 9:04

delicious

Francis 9:06

good

MIC2 9:06

know what else about that restaurant that I still think about was the format of the menu, right? It was a four-course tasting, and you didn't have delineation. It was just in order. So you would pick four things, and they would size them accordingly, and they would put them in the order that they thought that it had to be. I'd never seen, I'd never even heard of that. And Wayne was, like, this super... He was, like, a uber cool, like, a p- if he smoked cigarettes, he probably did it

MIC1 9:29

Give me smoke

MIC2 9:30

like- Right? Like, like Kojak, right. He would smoke like Kojak if he smoked. He was just, like, this, like, he would almost float when he walked. He was, like, very, like, I don't know, he had, like, a royalty sense to him. And, uh,

Francis 9:41

Well, and he made you feel like royalty when you arrived. Like in the wintertime, they had that little fireplace. Couldn't really see it from the dining room, but it was, it was burning there for when you came into the host

MIC2 9:50

I wanted to work there so badly. They just didn't have any... It was such a small

MIC1 9:54

was a tiny place. Tiny place. It was a tiny

MIC2 9:56

It was a tiny kitchen. I probably spent, I don't know, I probably spent maybe five weekends there. Yeah. and then finally Mark Anthony was like, "Man, we just don't any room for you." so I went to Union Pacific, and at every place that I staged, and I mean, you know, I'm talking like Daniel, Oceana. Bernardin. Like, I went to all the places. That place struck me as being someplace I had to There was just insane things that I saw

Francis 10:20

was doing new things that American chef had never

MIC2 10:22

had not done. Had no idea.

Francis 10:23

be clear for the listeners, we are back talking about Union Pacific, and we are back talking about Rocco DiSpirito

MIC2 10:27

experience. Right. So I, and also I'd been in Spain, and so, uh, Ferran Adrià had just kinda come up. Mm-hmm. Right? Although he was only at two stars, I had eaten there. Um, but at the time in Spain, they weren't talking about him. Yeah. They were talking about, they were talking about San Sebastian. Like like, Marie Arzak was the king. And so like, you know, I was talking about him, but he was like, "What about Ferran Adrià?" Like, you know, all the foams and all that stuff. And so yeah, I mean, I went there twice. The funny thing is, The first time I went, I went with a Swedish chick. I didn't know who he was. Like, she took me there. Mm. And I like had no idea. I wouldn't have known it's not like now where you know everything before

MIC1 11:00

that time, I wouldn't have known who

MIC2 11:01

At that time I wouldn't have known that. he wasn't the guy, but Rocco was enamored with him. And, uh, I still have a book that Rocco gave me that's in, that was his, first book, El Bulli's first book, and there's no pictures in it, and it's only in so Rocco wanted me because of that, and also I told you that story where I cleaned that halibut without him asking he yelled at me. Oh, yeah. Right. So, so I go in there, and one thing I realized about myself is that I've been a butcher long before I was a cook. Since I was a little kid, you know, my dad took me to every camp, and so cleaning shrimp, fish, crab, butchering whole hogs, deer, like I have just done it 100 times. they'd be in, you know, drinking whiskey, playing cards, and I'd be out cleaning the fish. And so I walked in, and I had never cleaned a halibut, but I mean, it's a flounder, So I mean, it's the same, basic bone structure. And so there's about a 40-pounder on the table, and I was like, "Man, look at the size." So for me, it's so impressive. It's like, 'cause I love flounder, and I think it's probably the best

MIC1 11:54

The first time I saw a full, a whole halibut, I was

MIC2 11:58

I was impressive, impressive. And I was

MIC1 12:00

is an amazing

MIC2 12:01

yeah, my first inclination is like, I, I need to cut this fish. I wanna cut this fish. And, uh, what was his name? Dave, Crane was the sous chef there. And I was like, "Let me cut..." He's like, "You're not touching that Right. Y- y- y- y-

Francis 12:12

you know that You're the chef

MIC1 12:13

That's... So people don't realize, you know, a fish that's 40 pounds back in that day cost 12, 15 bucks a pound. You're talking about way back when, 600, fish. Right. For one fish. If

MIC2 12:25

don't c- if you don't touch the bone, man, like, you can leave two portions on that fish if you don't know what you're talking about, right? Yeah. So anyway, he went back upstairs and I just cut it. I just did it. I fileted it. I put it out there. You had to, you- Oh, well, man, I do, but I, but I was very confident about certain things. I was behind from my cooking knowledge. I knew that, right? But I knew that nobody could And so I cut that fish and he came down and immediately started screaming at me, then brought Grocker down. They looked at the fish, and I got hired immediately. And the best, the best thing about it was is I didn't have to work garde manger, which, and garde manger at that place was one of the most brutal stations

MIC1 12:59

tell us about Garde Manger at,

MIC2 13:01

venue. So we had about six different lettuce and he would buy all these different spring mixes and all these different lettuces. but it had, like, radicchio, and it had some stuff that you really didn't want. So you would pick out the certain, the lolla rossa. You'd pick out these little baby pieces, and that would be for this dish. And then you- Oh then he'd have some other baby stuff that you'd have, and you'd take these from here and that. So you'd have five, six different freaking mixes. the garnishes were, like, brunoise of corn. Like, I mean,

Francis 13:28

Brunoy of

MIC2 13:29

There, it's cut already as small

MIC1 13:31

Brulo. for

Francis 13:31

Brunoy, brunoy for the, for, we, we have a lot of chef-lesses, we have a lot of people who are, are, are maybe not, That's a very, very fine

MIC2 13:38

Yes,

MIC1 13:39

do-- You have to take each kernel and, and brunoise each kernel? I

MIC2 13:42

it's really one of those things when somebody tells you, you're like, "What?"

MIC1 13:45

Somebody judges you, you're like,

Francis 13:46

in my head how you could do

MIC2 13:48

am, am, am I missing something here? I don't, I don't get it. So, you know, we would take the, the snow peas for this dish that I did, on Fish Station, and you pull the snow peas apart, and inside of a snow pea, there are five tiny, like the head of this pen, little peas in there, and that was the garnish. Mm. And you probably had to have 25 to 30 snow peas worth of peas for one dish. I mean, it was just this stuff. And then the flights, like we would hear, my buddy Cruz and I still mess with each other about this thing, 'cause you would hear him call, hear these flights. And you guys talked about it on your Dinner Last Night. So he had flights of three, five, and seven. And so, and of course, none of them were even numbers, right? Because everything's gotta be odd. If it was a flight of three, it was three individual small composed dishes. Oh. That didn't have less moves. No. They probably had more moves than a normal dish. And a flight of seven meant you had seven plates that went in front of you. So if it was three of us, it was three times seven for

Francis 14:47

Oh,

MIC1 14:47

for those, and for those of you who are not, didn't pick up what, Brian just said, when he means moves, he means that each, part of that dish has to come in separately with another move to here and another move to there and another move to there

Francis 15:00

many steps for the chef as it would be to make an entrée plate, but he does that seven times

MIC2 15:04

I sometimes I talk like everybody knows what I'm saying. But in the, in the kitchen on the line, when you develop a menu, you go, "Okay, how many moves does each dish have?" Now, the volume of Lutèce. You can't have five moves for every dish. The place would crash. Now, you can have some that have seven if they're that important, but the other dishes have to have like three or four, right?

MIC1 15:21

So when Francis and I develop a, a bar menu, one of the things we're always saying is, "You never want the bartender to have to take more than two steps." Right. Right? you don't want him to go two steps away from where he started in order to make that cocktail.

MIC2 15:34

all logistics. It's all ergonomic and

Francis 15:36

How many times you have to touch the plate, Right there's a time value every time

MIC2 15:40

ultimately, like at Portelli's place, I'm just... Not to interrupt, but that was what I w- Like, it was such a energetic restaurant at the time, and it was such a... That was, like, where everybody

MIC1 15:48

Gotham was one of those places

MIC2 15:50

of control beautiful, but the food was all this. Yeah. And so constantly, the plates would come back 'cause they'd fall. Oh. A, a guy would pick it up and fall. So, at the end of the day, I was like, "I can't work here." And, and he's like, "Why?" 'Cause you touch the food too much." Like, 'cause everybody's having to rebuild. That lobster plate had, like, seven freaking layers, and it was gorgeous. Don't get me wrong. But it was just, for me, it was like, you know, there's this harmony of having the right amount of moves and the right beauty in the plate. Like, you can't be one overwrought or the other. Well,

MIC1 16:19

there were restaurants back in that time that we're talking about that were all about height,

MIC2 16:24

Well, Gotham, I mean, think of that name, like Gotham is the city,

MIC1 16:27

build the skyscraper, right? Right.

MIC2 16:28

I never thought about that until just now, actually.

Francis 16:30

I think that I think Alfred Portale at Gotham was the guy who started

MIC2 16:34

Yeah, I, I wouldn't, I,

Francis 16:35

and I think that was only around for a couple of years though, and then people started to make fun of it. You know, it's like the, it was, it was altitude food, then it was foams, then it was,

MIC2 16:43

Non-functional garnishes, that's also another, yeah

Francis 16:45

They're like all the rage, and they're like, "Oh, nobody does that anymore. You're an

MIC1 16:48

it's very fashion,

Francis 16:49

fashion,

MIC2 16:50

fashion you know, the molecular gastronomy thing, I think it's a bad rap. Like, I believe in it. If you can get somewhere you can't get normally, I think absolutely. But if you're gonna make a, a meatloaf, then just use an egg and some freaking breadcrumbs. You don't need to have Activa to make a, to make a meatloaf,

Francis 17:05

I remember as a diner, as it kind of fell out of and I wasn't looking at it from the diner's perspective, 'cause our food has never been like that. our, our food is careful, but It's never been to knock my food down before I

MIC1 17:18

Deconstruct.

MIC2 17:19

Exactly.

Francis 17:20

have to take it

MIC2 17:21

Why am I taking it apart? Why am I taking it apart before I put it back together?

MIC1 17:23

I don't wanna go into demolition before I

Francis 17:25

yeah, exactly.

MIC2 17:26

It's that's funny. I never thought about

Francis 17:28

um, You couldn't have made money doing I think, We love Rocco. Uh, uh, obviously everyone at this table loves Rocco. I think he was one of the best chefs in America back then, and still a great chef. We did a live show with him on stage. It was tremendous.

MIC2 17:40

I love Rocco, but man, that was tough. Oh. Like, and listen, I could take a punch, but man, that guy, that guy, that guy, man, he was exacting, and he would flip the script on you. At 2:00 o'clock they'd have a chef to the par- partie meeting, and he goes, "You know what? I'm done with that veal. Let's do this." And you're like, "Man, I just made 12 portions." Like, what are you talking about? the veal dish had seven different tournés. It's like, "I don't wanna do the tournés anymore." And you're like, "Oh my God, I just spent three hours on the freaking tournés."

MIC1 18:06

So those of you who think that The Bear is all fiction- Yeah.

MIC2 18:09

Oh man, let me tell you, like it is not j- so I can't watch The

Francis 18:12

Oh, neither could we I, I watched the first season and, uh, and Mark and I were like, we had the

MIC2 18:17

Wh- which was great except for one part wasn't real. You can't get locked in a walk-in, man, not since

MIC1 18:23

And,

Francis 18:23

Oh, yeah, yeah yeah

MIC2 18:25

and by the way, you can't hear somebody say, "I love you," from the other side of a door either. Like, those, that's right there. At the end of the meal, I was like, "Come on, you just ruined it. This was so perfect." And then, like-

Francis 18:34

I'm sorry

MIC1 18:34

gonna say something to you. your walk-in door handle has never been broken from the inside if you think you can't get walked

MIC2 18:42

in No, it's got the

MIC1 18:44

it's got the button. It's got the button unless that, unless that snaps off. Unless you have a 1910 walk-in

MIC2 18:49

Well, okay. No, so if you, if you were grandfathered, may- may- maybe that's true. Maybe that's true. I mean, just like, but normally- Okay th- the people don't get locked in refrigerators anymore since like 1970s,

Francis 18:58

Well, I, I, I also have to say about The Bear, I mean, there was, there was... Why it gave us so much agita was from an emotional perspective, and the individual things that happened were there.

MIC2 19:07

Because it's real

Francis 19:08

in, in...

MIC1 19:09

Some of it's over the top,

Francis 19:10

but a lot

MIC1 19:10

lot of it

MIC2 19:11

That Thanksgiving

Francis 19:13

that haunts me Uh, well, but here's the thing, when we say it was realistic, the roast beef shop doesn't send someone to France to study pastry and

MIC2 19:21

A- and your cousin can't learn how to be perfect service in two weeks or whatever it is. Now, that was, there's a couple things of like, "Okay,

MIC1 19:28

that- you know what? That, that was a- I, I saw it as a metaphor for you sent him away for six months.

MIC2 19:33

Oh, of course. Of course. And the, you have to show the arc in a, in a, in a, in a time where you can watch a, a show. I, I get all that

MIC1 19:39

I, and I think that's what it was, and, working in a restaurant we have, I love when a, a young restaurant professional, the little light bulb turns

MIC2 19:50

There's no doubt. There's no

Mark 19:51

that really connected with me. Again, uh, absolutely right, it's never gonna happen in a week, it's never gonna happen in two weeks. But when you see that little light bulb go, go on and that 23-year-old goes from, you know, ignorant college kid who's, needs beer money to the kid or the man- or woman who now is a restaurant professional, is like, "This is great. I I

Francis 20:11

a number of

MIC2 20:11

it's when he realizes he can be fast. So that, I, that light bulb, I think, I think about it all the time with line cooks. I'm like, there's a moment to where you just realize that you can be as fast as that other guy. And that's what the line cook thing's all about, right? It's not so much that you have this inherent talent. It's about muscle

MIC1 20:28

You know, I had a conversation with my staff at Family Meal. We did an event at a farm a few weeks ago, and it was a really long day, you gotta be there early in the morning and the event goes till 10:00, you're breaking down till 12:00, you drive all the stuff back to the restaurant. so it's one of those, you know, 14, 16-hour restaurant days where it's, it's kinda go time for most of it. when I came back the next day, I said to my staff, "You have such an advantage over your peers right now because you've learned something that most of your peers will never learn. You've learned a whole new gear. You've learned that you can push yourself to a level that they may never learn that they have that level, and you now know you can do it. So in any room where you're with those people, you have a higher limit than they have." Yeah. "You have a, greater threshold than they have, and that's forever." Yeah. "You have that in you

MIC2 22:50

Doesn't matter if it's restaurants or

MIC1 22:51

Yep, doesn't matter if it's restaurants or anything

Francis 22:53

Yeah, Restaurants and farms that's how you know somebody knows how to work hard. And, and it also, what you guys are talking about time. How many times our career somebody were full of shit." I

MIC2 23:06

it all the time.

Francis 23:08

I realized-

MIC2 23:09

know. "I used to think you were such an asshole." Well, you're not

MIC1 23:11

you're not wrong.

Francis 23:13

All right. We gotta come and talk about-

MIC1 23:15

wanna talk about fish Okay.

Francis 23:18

talk about... No, I'm k- I'm totally kidding. Yeah. We got, we gotta talk about you coming and opening Reef, and one of the things you did here in Houston was you came back at a time, was it 2007?

MIC2 23:27

Re-opened in 2007. But I came back in 2003 to open up the Hotel Icon Bank John George for John George. I had spent nine years with him. The last three years of those opening

Francis 23:39

So when you open Reef, and this is leading to where Mark wants to go, when you open Reef, you set out a mission. You are the first guy that I know of who really said, We gotta use Gulf fish differently. We gotta..." You know, because we, had sorta gotten into the, I like fish. I like salmon, I like sole, and I like tuna, and that's the only fish. And I like shrimp and

MIC2 23:59

us it was snapper, shrimp, And,

Francis 24:01

you advocated really early on, using, and because the Gulf is where you're from, and you were a fisherman and you knew this, that we need to use it more sustainably. But it's not just about you need to suffer through fish that's not as good to save the oceans. Right. It's there's fricking great fish out there, and if it, if we put a little time and care into it, and learning, we can have even better fish and save the ocean.

MIC2 24:25

when things like that happen, you started a You... Nobody who ever started a movement to start a movement. Right. Right? It, it, for me it was different. So I grew up fishing, fishing long before I could ever cook, always. And you know, I fished from Apalachicola to Brownsville, and every... in between I would beg, borrow, and steal. I would fish in a ditch. If somebody said, "Man, they're catching them here, they're catching them there," I mean, that's where I was going. We would drive in the middle of the night, all night long, and then show up and wade fish or do whatever we could. And so I started to travel, and you know, first it was Barcelona, and then it was in New York, and then, you know, it was Hong Kong, it was Bangkok, it was Bahamas. And I saw all these different cuisines using all these fish that I saw in our hometown

Francis 25:07

Oh, that

MIC2 25:09

That's very interesting. Right? So a great example is an orata, right? Or a golden dorade, which is a porgy, right? So we have a porgy called a sheepshead. It's got these big teeth

Francis 25:19

Ugly fucking

MIC2 25:20

Oh, yeah. Terribly, terribly

MIC1 25:22

Okay, if you,

MIC2 25:23

I would- Hauntingly

MIC1 25:24

who's listening right now, I want you to Google sheepshead fish and look at it. It's got human

MIC2 25:29

Yeah. It does. It

MIC1 25:31

know. Yeah it's got human teeth, and it's

Francis 25:33

we're not gonna, we're not

MIC1 25:34

somebody put dentures in a

Francis 25:36

we're not gonna post that on our website 'cause it disgusts

MIC2 25:39

But, but you know what? That fish only eats crustaceans. It only eats crab, right? So it has this wonderful flesh, and it's an orata. It's a, it's a golden dorade. It's one of the most prized fish worldwide, but we would call it something else to sell it as snapper, right? That's just one example. And so, you know, I set out trying to find these fish and trying to get guys to catch them for me. Uh, and the hardest part actually was getting... So it's all, you know, in a restaurant it's all about your customer right? I, I, I believe in the 80/20 rule, right? 80% of that menu needs to be identifiable and make people feel at home and they know what it is. 20% can push. A- and sooner or later, that 20% can be part of the 80%, and you can add another 20%. But if you go over 20%-ish, then people are like, "I don't get it." Right. "I, I don't know you." Right. "I'm not putting something in my mouth I haven't... You know, you and I aren't friends yet." They, that kind of thing. So, I mean, it took me a while to slowly start. You know, we served croaker, you know, I would jokingly call the Gulf Coast rouget. And it's a, it's basically a small redfish. Uh, delicious, skin on. That was another thing. People didn't have skin on. And we would cook it like a rouget filet. Three of them, like, like, you know, on a plate. And, some people would go, "You're serving trash fish." Which that, before the word bycatch was even a thing- Absolutely people would use the word trash fish, and that's what we called it. Uh, you know? Or young people that were, weren't, didn't really know that these things tasted garbage,

MIC1 27:00

right? You're serving me garbage.

Francis 27:01

but then I think the name comes from the fishermen who would be out, set out to catch a fish for which there

MIC2 27:06

Cause there's no, there was no money

Francis 27:07

and the bycatch wasn't worth anything, so they called it trash fish. Doesn't mean it wasn't good. Means there wasn't a market for it or you didn't have enough to sell, and so, uh, but now of course it's trendy to say we serve trash, trash

MIC2 27:18

So I had a guy who worked for me at John George, he was my sous chef, named Mark Masato. And after I, moved, he went to work for Airline Seafood. And so Mark and I would fish together all the time. And so Mark and I would talk about, "Man, wouldn't it be great if we could get this?" Or, "I know it's out there." And we'd go out there and we'd catch... I had a 30-foot Grady White at the time, And this is when snapper wasn't that great in shape. We would catch 15 different species and like, man, we would... So then he would introduce me to the captains, and I'd go. The first thing it- we started with was triggerfish.

MIC1 27:48

Mm-hmm.

MIC2 27:48

And I was like, "Can I get triggerfish?" 'Cause they're, that's a bycatch of snapper. Like you're catching one triggerfish to every 10 snapper for sure. And, uh, he's like, "Yeah, but I give those crew f- as a bonus. I was like, "Well, how about I give

Francis 28:03

right,

MIC1 28:03

How about

MIC2 28:04

How about

MIC1 28:04

how do you

MIC2 28:05

And then you could give them money, right? And so it started with that, and then y- these relationships with these guys, and then they'd send me pictures. And I, like, so I knew that there were probably 15, 20 at the end of the day, we had this big board, like the Fulton Fish Market, right? With a chalkboard that we put in the front of Reef. And every fish that we ever served, we wrote on there in, in permanent, and then we'd put a chalk mark next to what we had, right? And so at the end of the day, when Reef closed, there were 92 different that served out of the Gulf. And I had no freaking idea that that existed- Right in my own backyard. Sure. We were getting hake. Brown hake, silver hake, longtail sea bass, which is kind of a black sea bass relative. you know, queen snapper, like insane

Francis 28:49

did you know all these fish? So when the fisherman would, would send you a, a picture from the boat, w- were you like, "I don't know what that is, but I'm gonna

MIC2 28:56

I bought everything. So I bought-- And the other thing that we decided, uh, before we opened Reef, and you know, be- being a restaurateur, you know this. We were like, "I'm not putting it on as a special. If we have it, I don't care if it's five portions, I'm putting it on the menu, we'll print the menu every day." And we did. We print... And it was a huge cost But that was the only way that I was willing to do this. And so if we got five of this or 10 pounds of this, I told them I wanted it all, right? Right. And so we just bought it and put it on the menu. And we had a whole fish. The other thing was we'd had a whole fish that was very popular. the guys would call it the Nemo, the Nemo dish, because they were always about a pound, pound and a quarter fish. And we'd get these little grouper hinds. And there's probably, oh man, there's probably 35 different species of grouper in the world, maybe more. And these little hinds are like this big, speckled all that stuff. Beautiful I could buy two of them and put it on the menu, 'cause the whole fish was like, okay, I've got two grouper, I've got two this- Yeah two lane snapper, whatever. So you have a count on each one. And it worked,

MIC1 29:54

The- So one of the things I, I wanted to ask you about, we, talked about it earlier with butcher and the halibut is just like a flounder. One of the things you need to learn when you're using all these different kinds of fish is the bone structure in all these fish is not the same. They butcher very differently, and I remember, remember Francis and I, the first time we got that Asian carp

Francis 30:13

Oh my God Nightmare

MIC1 30:15

fish from the Mississippi River that is an invasive species that we, We tried to

Francis 30:20

We tried to use

MIC2 30:21

That's the one that jumps? Isn't that the

Francis 30:22

It jumps? Isn't that the

MIC1 30:23

the one that jumps into the boat. That's the, that's the, one that

Francis 30:24

So by the way, we got that one in, and the two chefs and me and Mark are in the kitchen, and it was days. And they brought in this like, I don't know, what was it, like a 30 pound, 20 pound fish? And the chef at the end, he comes out, he's got like, uh, like, "These are four ounces of useful

MIC1 30:37

So it is, it's

Francis 30:39

Cause it's, it's got a skeleton like an alien.

MIC1 30:41

that's part of the problem, right, is, is, because these fish are, difficult to butcher, chefs don't wanna take it- on. And they might be delicious, they might be fantastic. I mean, one of the invasive fish off of Long Island is a sea robin, okay? You catch a big enough sea robin, you can get two or three, three or four-ounce little filets off the back of that fish, and that fish

MIC2 31:01

It's like a little monkfish. Yeah. It has those, the two little barrels. Yeah,

MIC1 31:04

Exactly. And that fish is tasty when it's fresh and not so tasty when it's not fresh. So, people are throwing them back. It's an invasive species. Don't throw that

Francis 31:12

fish back Don't throw it back,

MIC1 31:13

eat those six ounces of those little six-ounce filets.

Francis 31:16

I wanna take Mark's question to the next level. So when you encountered fish that you didn't know what they were, how did you find, find out what they were? And there's a second part, 'cause I'll let you go on to that after, is, you know, you have these line cooks who are maybe not as skilled as you, and you're putting new kinds of fish in front of them, and there's different ways to butcher different fish that they might not be familiar with, and then there's different ways to cook different fi- And some fish don't like certain cooking methods. How did you,

MIC1 31:40

none of the fish like cooking methods, just so you

MIC2 31:42

they all, they're all, they're all, they're, they're adamantly against them.

Francis 31:45

So, um, so, and they don't like sushi either. But, um, but so how do you know what to do with them? And then how do you train a staff to be so nimble and versatile to handle 93 different species of fish coming

MIC2 31:57

didn't. Right? So one of the things about Reef, Such a great restaurant. But we designed it to where when you walked in, there was that board, and right next to that board was a huge window, And it's, it's hard to explain. It, it was a big U line, and it was kind of like a little bit of a dog track. So from where I stood, on my side I could s- I was right by the dish tank. I think the chef should always stand by the dish right? Because that's where I can grab a waiter by the ear and say, "Take this But

Francis 32:22

That's against the law now, by the way. That was

MIC1 32:24

seen

MIC2 32:24

mean, I, I, that that that was a euphemism.

Francis 32:26

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

MIC1 32:27

that happen

Francis 32:28

I've seen that happen and so have you, by the way. It's not always a euphemism.

MIC2 32:31

I haven't never done that. I've seen it done, but I've never done it. And, and then so I could see the whole dining room. I could see everybody walk in, and I could turn and look at both sides of the line, right? So the other thing is I'd walk to the other end of the kitchen. I could sit in that window, and every customer, with the front door was right in front of like, I could butcher there comfortably and not feel like I was disconnected That's one thing. The other thing is Salvatore Romero still works for me. 30

MIC1 32:53

Right.

MIC2 32:54

Right? Right? there's a place called Blue Horizon. Best, one of the best seafood places in the city of Houston. Friksos Kosini is a fifth generation, um, a Greek fisherman from Greece he had a commercial license himself. Two of his butchers are my he's one of my biggest points of pride. I go in there and I see them. I say, "These are guys that I trained." So for me, I would have an eye for, a butcher, it's recognizing talent, um, and people that cared, I had this friend of mine who I fished with, who was on the other end at Airline- Right who was so into it, not, not as much anymore 'cause the, the, I'm not saying the bycatch thing is dead, but the whole point was to get people to recognize it and use it, and now they do. mission accomplished, right? Which is great, but I just can't get the naughty species

Francis 33:34

Well, it's funny being early on, there are so many trends that if you are at the beginning of it, you're like, "Hey, I'm being a pioneer." And the same with, I remember Tom Valenti, when he invented the lamb shank. No one had ever used fricking lamb shanks before. You could buy them for two bucks,

MIC1 33:47

Dollar 25. Dollar 25

Francis 33:49

$1.25. You get a lamb shank. And he was at Alison on Dominic, Became famous for his lamb shank dish, which is delicious. Well, but then everybody's doing lamb shank. The reason he did it was 'cause you could buy lamb shanks for nothing. You were a pioneer in changing the economy with bycatch, so that now the fishermen are incentivized to not waste those fish

MIC1 34:09

you know, you talk about bycatch. I remember going to Fulton Street, and I would go and say, "What do you have two of?" What, you know, you got red drum today?" Yeah, he's like, "Yeah, I got two red drum. You want, you want the..." I was like, "Yeah, I do.

MIC2 34:21

Sure."

MIC1 34:21

Bring it on." And it... And you could have these amazing fish that nobody else would have because the halibut boat would come into Fulton Street, and all of the purveyors would have halibut, right? It'd be everywhere.

Francis 34:32

I just wanna interrupt. Everybody in the Northeast probably knows what Mark is talking about, but if you're not, Fulton Fish Market used to be on Fulton Street in Manhattan, and you could go at 2:00 in the morning, and we could go and buy our fish. It has since, uh, I think Giuliani in his last term moved it out to Hunts Point, and

MIC1 34:47

Where it is much cleaner

MIC2 34:49

Wha- mu- much cleaner, and now Philadelphia's Market East is like a, like, it, it, yeah, it's a tourist place, right

Francis 34:55

you can't go out anymore and wander around the stalls where people basically had these fish on ice, which is what Mark was talking about, which was, which was great. I just wanted to clarify what Mark was

MIC2 35:03

We would go there after the bars. wander around drunk and it was wonderful, man.

MIC1 35:06

go after work, go out to dinner at 2:00 in the morning at The Merchant or, Empire Diner or one of these places that were open really late or, Ribbon. Or Blue

MIC2 35:13

Blue Ribbon. Blue Ribbon Bakery, right, exactly. Man, those places

Francis 35:16

So we yeah, we would go there, buy the fish. Mar- well, Mark, Mark did it a million times more than I did 'cause I

MIC1 35:21

It

Francis 35:22

So you closed your restaurants all right before COVID. You walked away, you weren't behind the stove, you were consulting for other people. What made you decide to do that? And then you've come back to open Lotuli just recently, and you are at the top of your ga- I just wanna refer that I read an article which I, I wanna say encapsulates this. It was The Art of the Comeback: Chef Brian Caswell by Dai Hun. I don't know what publication that was for. And he talked about you coming back not as this nostalgia or trying to recreate the past and doing a great current thing. So talk about w- why you walked away, what you did, and, and what pro- what, what made you decide to come back?

MIC2 35:57

So I mean, if I would've been smart, I would've kept it open. You know, 'cause everybody got the PPP and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I was thinking that, but you don't know that. And like, I, like... No, but you didn't know that. But I mean, for me, I mean, I had a, like I, I got a divorce, became a f- single father. Uh, my fa- my father got dementia. He was a, A&M football player and got CTE. Uh, and I wanted to take care of him. And, you know, the single father thing was pretty important to me as well. And I, at the time, I had a pretty good catering business, like a couple million dollars a year. And I was like, "You know what? Let me just..." You know, I closed everything down. You know, Reef never came back well. Or that area actually changed after Harvey. Um, we did like two months of recovery, like cooking for people you know, we took, we took trucks to Port Neches, to Rockport. And Harvey was a different, um, storm than any other storm I've ever

Francis 36:46

How is it different here

MIC2 36:47

Well, so normally a, a hurricane hits, and so when it hits, there's two factors that really matter: how fast is it moving- Mm-hmm right, and how much rain versus wind. Water. Right. Right. Rain versus wind. like... And I tell people this all the time, FEMA should hire me to talk about how to react to like... 'Cause you can't hire somebody from outside your city to, to help your city. You need to ha- recruit from... It needs to be like a volunteer fire depar- fire department So, you know, every time a hurricane would hit, we would all, like there's 15, 20 of us, we all have big trucks and boats, and we know where to go and what to do and how to help our families and friends, you know? this, this hurricane hits and hits Rockport, and it's, it, I think it has, like, the record for the amount of tornadoes. And so normally, that storm hits, it, it slows down, it moves in, inside, and then it goes somewhere, left, right, straight, the wind's bad- Right but it's over if it's moving fast. If it's slow, it sits, and it rains on you, and it floods, So what happened with Harvey is Harvey hits Rockport, and this is what I've never seen it do. It bounces back out into the Gulf. Mm-hmm. And it goes so- Now So we had already had a week's ful- full rain in Houston because we were on the dirty side. Mm-hmm. Right? And so then it hits Houston and just sits, the rain was insane. So some things happened that I've never seen happen. Both of our reservoirs completely over-flooded. The homes were backfilling. So it was a really interesting situation. The local politicians had to make right? Am I gonna let these ru... They're not rural homes, but they're l- they're less valued homes, let them backfill and flood, or are we gonna dump it down the bayou? And the most expensive, the biggest donors in the state are down Memorial, uh, down the

MIC1 38:20

that's an easy decision for the politician,

MIC2 38:22

an easy decision for the politician, right? Yeah. Well, well, the, the, no, yeah, it's a terribly tough decision. Yeah. But you know what? And they did the right thing. the rich people lost all their homes. Like that,

MIC1 38:29

That, that's

MIC2 38:30

amazing. that that's happened. Yeah. That never happens, right? That normally doesn't happen. That's amazing. And I mean, I don't, I don't think it's a good thing. Like, they backfilled. Like, so like it was a little bit of half and half. But so it, it was just this terrible storm, and what happened was is this, this neighborhood, Midtown, that Reef was in, which was like a little bit gritty, on the edge of Montrose, which has always been a great, restaurant neighborhood, it just never came back. Yeah. Right? Tent cities popped up, and it just never, it never came back. And so even if Reef wouldn't have had damage, which we had a huge claim. it never really made it back, and we tried to open back up again. We had some issues. Um, I had a place called El Real and Little Big's at the time, and man, I just closed them and, and focused on my family and my son. And then COVID happened. Yeah. And so I'd had this catering company that was zero. to zero. And so I didn't make a dime for a year. But funny enough, it was the greatest time of my I spent 80 days on the water with my dad, who could still fish, and my Which never would happen ever, like, unless there's another, you know, disaster, it'll never happen

Francis 39:32

and it was time with your dad before your dad was too far

MIC2 39:34

Right. And, and my son too, like, my son is the saltiest little son of a gun you've ever seen. Like, he could throw a cast net perfectly since he was six years old. Baits his own hook. I mean, he is like a little, Gulf Coast Huck Finn. Like, we go down to my bass house, I don't even look for him. He's gone, baby. And he's just fishing, hunting, shooting, and like- yeah it's

MIC1 39:53

I wanna harken back to a happy time in your life, okay? You decide you're gonna leave New York City. So, just to lay it out, all out for our listeners, in the early 2000s, what was happening was great restaurateurs before that were in San Francisco, they were in New York, they were in Miami sometimes, in London, Paris, and that's where the great restaurants were. And then all of a sudden you had this, this time, and France and I did it in, 92 And I remember people talking to us and being like, "Why are you trying to open a great restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey? You wanna have a great restaurant, You're 45 minutes from New York. Go to New York." And that's what people said to us. And we're like, "No, we wanna- This is a cool thing. We want it, this cool thing in our, in our neighborhood

Francis 40:40

place, I wanna bring it

MIC1 40:41

we grew up." so it's early 2000s and you're like, Houston can do this. and you decide that Houston is gonna be one of those places that can become a restaurant city. Why did you think great restaurants could operate in places like

MIC2 40:57

I'll be frank, it was different for me. I knew I was Mm-hmm. Um, I was, I was trying to apply my trade. I was trying to figure out, you know, when I went to CIA, in the beginning before I went to Spain, I was like, "You know, maybe I'll go to New Orleans and then go back home and open a restaurant," thinking in my head like that's all it was gonna take. I didn't go to the CIA to I went there because I was working in a restaurant in the front of the house, and I lied about my seventh or eighth month that it was necessary to go to the CIA and had somebody, you know, sign off on me. But I'd never worked in a kitchen, ever- Wow before I went there. Wow. And,

MIC1 41:28

don't advise that, by the way. Work in a kitchen before you

MIC2 41:30

Oh, I, I couldn't, I, I couldn't agree more. But then again, I fake it till I make it. Been that way my whole life. And so, you know, I went there to learn the kitchen because I saw this guy that I was working for, he was being held hostage by the m- the mafia. You know, like, the, there, there's a family in the kitchen and they... Like, I remember going to him and saying, "Hey, man, why don't we just go in there and do it?" He goes, "I don't know how to do that." And it was like, boom. Right. all this, thing that I thought, I was like, "How does he not know? They're his recipes." Like, I don't get it. Right. Like, I didn't understand that. So I went to the, the CIA to learn the kitchen, but as soon as I got there, pew. I went to every demo. I lived on campus. Right. I went to New York every chance I could to stage. Like, I couldn't... Like, once I got a taste of it, I couldn't stop. Right. So I go to, Barcelona. I, I hear, "You can go overseas." I s- wrote nine letters to the nine approved spots, all in their home language. One answered me, and that was After that, I knew I had to go to New York. I, there was no choice. Like, that ha- that was the natural progression. So I worked at Union Pacific, then I figured out a way to get a job at Jean-Georges, right? Which was like, at the time, was the number one place to cook. Oh. Because you got five days o- you got f- you work five days, you got two days off, and you made good money. Mm-hmm. Like, I remember I was making, like, 14 bucks an hour. You know, whereas Rocco was making shift pay. It was 375 a week. Dude. And he'd dock you f- 50 bucks if you're five minutes late. Like, it was completely different. you had a life. and he was a... Like, loved Rocco. Jean-Georges, different dude. Mm-hmm. Doesn't yell. guy. Yeah, he's, without a doubt. There was no banging s- stoves, there was no slamming oven doors, none of that stuff. Right. He called every order and it was like he had this guttural voice. So he would call and I'd everybody would stop, 'cause he wasn't easy to understand. Right. he would call the order and you'd look right in his, right in his mouth. And you go, "What'd he say?" And, 'cause you could ask him one, you knew that you could only ask him one all day the entire service. After that he would get irritated. but everything was written down. Every single dish that was on the menu, even the specials, had to have a recipe. taught me so much. I mean, Rocco taught me s- so much. Like, I became a real

MIC1 43:35

But being in different types of kitchens like that or different types of restaurants like that, there's so much to see, "Hey, this guy does, does, it this way, this guy does it this way, this guy does it this way. What can I take from each of them that, that will make me."

Francis 43:48

so you're there, and your plan is always to come back to

MIC2 43:50

never never wasn't. And so what happened was, people kept putting things in front of me that I couldn't turn down. So w- just to finish my thing about the recipe, he had this idea, and 'cause sometimes cooks, they buck recipes, right? It's like your dad, like, "Ooh, I don't know, let's look it up." Remember encyclopedias? Like, "I don't know, let's go look it up." I'd say, "You know what it is, just tell me." He's like, "No, no, no, let's look it up." So that's the way he would do. He's like, "What's the recipe say?" Like, I'd ask him, and I, I don't know if he knew or he didn't know, but he'd say, "Refer to the recipe." And he would say, "If you wanna be here," right, why not just start Why start down here?" Like, the recipe puts you here, so you're you're concentrated on the upper echelon of making that dish perfect, 'cause all that s- that work's been done for you. Like, there's no question. You don't have to sit there and taste, and add, and taste. Like, just do it, and then it's salt, then it's balance, and then you're talking about, putting something beautiful on the plate. So all your focus goes to the work in the top 10%

Francis 44:42

do your restaurants today have

MIC2 44:44

for everything? Everything's on a recipe.

MIC1 44:45

what you're saying is, it's the little tweaks. This fish is not as sweet as the one we had yesterday, so it needs a little adjustment. Not we're gonna start at the

MIC2 44:53

Right. Which, which is, which is tricky because if you're gonna mentor, you still have to teach them how to do that on their own. Right. So you gotta, you gotta balance, and you still have to take that guy along and give him opportunities to fail and give him opportunities to try it without it and all that kind of stuff. 'Cause you do want guys to be able to think on their, on their feet. Like, what's, uh, that thing? Who said it? I can't remember, but it's like, "Don't give me a guy that's never broken a hollandaise. Give me a guy that's broken one, knows how to fix That was the hardest thing as a chef for me to learn, is letting somebody fail, right? So then they really understand the pain of that and they don't do So anyway, so John George says, "Hey, uh, I'm opening a place in the Bahamas. You wanna be a sous chef?" And my, you know... I had, I had a wife at the time who was just kind of along for the ride. She wanted to go back home. She was a homebody. So I was like, "Hey, you wanna go to the Bahamas?" Sounds like a good idea, right? it was the toughest job of my Opening in the Bahamas is the toughest

MIC1 45:42

job. Tell me why.

MIC2 45:44

Oh, yeah. Labor force. not so much bad people, just not- Nobody knew nobody knew what

MIC1 45:49

Everybody was starting from that. We were talking about starting at the bottom, everybody's starting from the

Francis 45:52

what's the, what was the work ethic like down there?

MIC2 45:54

so let's just say it's a heavy union environment, more so than any New York or Boston or any union thing you've ever heard of in the United States. It's like things like if your dog died, you got off. Uh, if it's your birthday, you didn't have to work. So they had this thing called the trifecta that if, if it was a holiday and you were born on that holiday and you worked, you got paid times three. So they didn't have cell phones or, or really any kind of phone system there, so you got nine no-call, no-shows allowed a year as long as they weren't consecutive.

MIC1 46:25

Wow Right.

MIC2 46:25

So they would use those as PTL, right? So I mean, you just had to lear- I had to learn to do everything, and you had to learn to motivate people without fear 'cause you couldn't fire anybody. And like, it was more of a job than it was like... I'd come from, uh, places where we just all wanted to be better at what we did, and they had been there for 20... Well, this one lady had been there for 25 years, right? So she got five, weeks of vacation that she could take consecutively. You wanna talk about brutal. Right. Like, who's gonna work that station? I get to you, me. Right. Right? I

Francis 46:54

And the problem is there was somebody else in your kitchen in the same situation, so you can't work two

MIC1 46:58

Or somebody, no, or somebody who took one of their, PTO days that you weren't counting on while she was in her five weeks, and there ain't two of you

MIC2 47:05

Oh, man. And they know. They know exactly. And let me tell you, so the other thing is, is that we did 200 in-room dining for breakfast, and 200 in the, in the restaurant. We did 400 breakfast, and then 400 lunch, and then five, 600 dinner. It was... Oh, it's a beautiful place. It was the only place right on the beach. It was in the Ocean Club. It was jamming. Mm-hmm. And it was seven days,

MIC1 47:26

And and it's not just that, and here's one of the things that people need to understand about restaurants in particular. We've taken your reservation. So if four people call out on the same day and the reservation book is, jammed, there's no unjamming that book. There's no, "Hey, I'm- we're gonna take it easy tonight. Forget about making payroll, forget about all the rest of the, inner workings of the restaurant. You're coming. You're coming to the restaurant that night, and you have a certain expectation based on my reputation, my menu, what have you. If five people aren't working in a nine-person kitchen, you're coming and you have your expectation. and I have to make it

MIC2 48:07

happen The only option is making it happen, which is my favorite make, make... Dude, you go, "How am I gonna do this, chef?" It's like, "I don't know. You gotta make it happen, dude." I spent a year there, and like, so battle tested, like, 'cause I'm working stations every day. you know, so by the time that was over, John George was like, "What do you wanna do? Your, year's up." And I had already decided that I was in a chip, and "I in Europe," And he was like, "Sure." And I thought there would be a And I was like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. But, but what do you think?" He

MIC1 48:38

Mm-hmm

MIC2 48:38

Why wouldn't you so I worked for him in Hong Kong, and then I worked for The Oriental in Bangkok. Oh, that's great. And man, again, another explosion of mind, right? Just everything on its end, just a different place, a different life. I mean, working in a different country versus-- and I love traveling. It's just a d- it's just a completely different perspective. Getting to know the people in the kitchen and, friendships and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it was just so amazing. talk about work ethic. almost all female in Thailand. never, nobody ever yelled. The most respectful people I've ever met. Beautiful people. And Hong Kong was pretty, pretty

Francis 49:17

what did you learn? Did you learn different uh, different ingredients, different techniques? What did you

MIC2 49:20

You know, so I, we, the chefs there, the big hardest problem there is salt. they don't have salt in their culture. Oh, right. They don't use salt, right? So teaching them how to use-- They use fish sauce and soy sauce and other things that, and salted fish and, and salted, vegetables and pickles and stuff. They don't use actual salt to season their food. So teaching those cooks how to season is the number o- the one- hardest thing. But they're, but w- work ethic-wise, like forget about it. Like Thailand, it was insane how, how, how hardworking

MIC1 49:51

So, you're having the opposite experience that you had in

MIC2 49:53

La Paz. Completely

Francis 49:54

So was it then that you come back to

MIC2 49:56

So I went there right after September 11th, and so I don't know if you remember, like September 11th made everybody kind of stuff. I'm looking around, I'm like, "What am I gonna do And I almost took a job at The Raffles, Where is that? The Raffles is in Singapore. top five hotels in Southeast Asia, all the time, every year. Just a really just like iconic, you know, it's like the Waldorf kind of thing, but in, but in And my wife was no." And so I, I hooked up with this company called Pappas. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. They're here in Houston.

Francis 50:28

Sure. We, we dined at a Papa's Place last night,

MIC2 50:31

two nights ago at Pappas

Francis 50:33

Two nights ago, Papa... No. Last night we went to

MIC2 50:35

Oh, L- Little's. Yeah.

Francis 50:36

came to your place, we had our first dinner at another

MIC2 50:39

another place. Oh, good for y'all. No, that place is great.

Francis 50:40

We're very serious here about the

MIC2 50:42

So So I became a research and development chef for them, which was a completely different one of the most important things I did for my career, because they put me through their management program. They're widely considered the ones who taught everybody how to be at the time, they had 72 restaurants. They're privately owned, two brothers, and they are 100% They have their own seafood company. They bake their own bread. They ship their own stuff. They, they build tables. They build buildings. They have electricians. They have plumbers. They have sheet metal plants where they design their own stoves and just buy the cast I mean, they do their own laundry. They do, they do everything. It-- They own all their own property. Like, their, their great-grandkids are not gonna be in the restaurant business. They're gonna be in the real estate business.

MIC1 51:23

all of us should be in the real

Francis 51:24

world.

MIC2 51:24

business, Man, I wish I was. But they're, they were brilliant, and they taught me systems, right? So I learned some systems, but for me, I'm the kinda guy to where I was like, I took all this stuff that I learned at all these Michelin-rated type and then I looked at what they were doing, which they were doing 1,000 1,500 And doing it well. so Pappadeux, Pappasitos, they have that place, Little's. That's one of their first, Chef-driven ...fi- chef-driven places, although Pappas Steakhouse has always been very, very high-end. Um, but you know, they have places all over the United States, and their systems were just brilliant, right? And it just taught me a different piece of the pie, right? A different piece of the puzzle. And that's honestly the only way Reef ever happened, 'cause Reef, we were doing 600, 700 people on a But we were doing elevated food, and so I took the, what I learned from Pappas and everything else, and I figured out how to run, run a higher-end at a, at a hi- So, I, go to work for Pappas, and then John George calls me and goes, "Hey, man, we need help in the Bahamas. You wanna come back?" Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Have you talked to your wife?" I said, "Don't worry about that, I got it." I'm laying in bed, and I'm like, "Hey, uh, Danny called." "Oh, really? How's Danny doing?" And I goes, "Well," I said, "he's not doing so She goes, "It's too bad for them." You know, like I'm like, "Well, well, I'm thinking, I think we should go back." And she said, "Oh, come on, please no." And so we kinda argued about that for a week, and then John George calls me and he goes, "Have you said yes to them yet? Have they called?" I was like, "No." He goes, "We're opening a place in Houston. So then I went back to the Bahamas for a year, and then came back and opened Bank after that, in, in the Ho- Hotel Icon here Which was, for me, the greatest homecoming on the planet, 'cause here I am, John George's lieutenant. It's the biggest name that's opened in Houston ever. Right. Right? Right. And I'm a, I'm a hometown boy. Right. Right? And so I just came in with this... It, it was like being a made man. all these cooks were just rushing in because they just had to work for John George. They- that was their- Yep their ticket. And so we got great staff, and we... I ran that place for three years. and then my partner and I said, "Let's go." So I's like, "I'm, I'm leaving," and he was so upset. And he goes, "What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you working for?" I go, "No, no, no, chef. I'm going to work for myself. We're gonna open..." He goes, "Oh, send me a menu." Like, so he completely changed. When he found out I was doing it myself, became super supportive.

MIC1 53:34

Yep

MIC2 53:35

I left, then he left two weeks after, and when they interviewed him, this was the craziest solid, which this is not true, but he said it. He said they asked him, "Why'd you leave Houston and Bank?" And he said, "Well, Bryan left. Bryan was Bank. I had no reason

Francis 53:51

Wow.

MIC2 53:52

I mean, I was like, what a badass, man. What a great dude. And that kinda pushed Reef into this- Right there into its own and, and then that was it, man. Reef just opened up

MIC1 54:02

here's something I just wanna say about John George, and, and I'm sure that you've experienced this as well. There is nothing that makes you more proud than when somebody leaves your employ, goes out and does their own thing, and has There's nothing that makes you feel better

MIC2 54:18

I have two kids, and I'm a big thing about being a father. And so what else do you leave behind other than good, solid citizens? Sure. Right? Whether they're your kids or whether it's pe- somebody you've taught, there's nothing else. You don't leave behind... The legacy f- f- fades, but what you've taught people is really the only way you pass it forward. Yeah. I mean, look at Philippe Riccio. I mean, he worked for me. And

MIC1 54:37

that's what I was just about to say. So, so I spoke to him before we, had dinner at your place last night, and he was like, working for him, great experience in my life so glad that I, did that before I did my

MIC2 54:50

He's giving me a little bit more credit than I deserve. I think that, that Felipe was maybe the most talented kid I'd ever met at that... He was 18 years old, and he was so far beyond He was taking things on, on his own. He he was cooking things and having ideas independently from the restaurant

MIC1 55:06

and Philippe's from Good Night Hospitality with Austin Wader and June Rodil and, and

MIC2 55:10

he's a phenom of a talent. Like, he is really a Ryan LaShane also. Like, these are these guys that worked for me that have now gone on to have their own acclaim, and it's a, it's about a, the biggest feather you could have in your

MIC1 55:21

your cap

Francis 55:22

Well, let's talk about the current Feather because we have to talk about the dinner we had to ha- we had last night. We have to talk about Latuli and, uh, what you're doing now because people can actually come to Houston and dine at your restaurant, and it's beautiful. It's interesting that Latuli, you're not trying to rehash what happened at Reef. It's not nostalgia. It's a new thing going forward. What made you decide that you wanted to open a restaurant again, and what's the mission at Latuli?

MIC2 55:45

Well, I didn't know that I did, um, when I was consulting. Although I will say consulting it's, uh, is its own personal hell for me. It Um, people are like, "Why?" Because m- a lot of people wanna be a consultant. For me, like, it's hard for me not to when I cook, there's nothing I put on the plate that I'm like, "Okay, whatever, I don't care. We can... Yeah, we'll burn it, no problem." You know, like, you're working for people that have a bunch of money that don't know what they're doing, and they're like, "We wanna run right into that wall." And you're like, "Well, we're gonna smash and crash and burn." It's like, "No, no, no, we're going that... We're gonna run into the wall. We're gonna go off a cliff." And they're like, "No, no, no, we wanna do it." And then you do it, and you fall off a cliff, and they're like, "Why'd you do that?" And you're like, "Oh, man.

Francis 56:23

Yeah. You

MIC2 56:24

you." They didn't take my advice. Yeah. "He didn't take my advice." And then that's the worst thing you could do, is tell them that, "I told you so." And so it wasn't really a, a fun thing for me. But I mean, I was making a good living at it. And then Alison Knight, her and her husband at the time, were investors in my other places, Reef and El Real. she's like, "I wanna open a place in Hedwig Village." And in the beginning it was a consultant thing. Cause I'm like, does this woman know what she's talking about? Does she know what she's doing? What's her level of commitment? what's her burn rate? but she raised the money and, I mean, that vision and that idea of that restaurant, the way it looks, is 100% Beautiful. It's gorgeous.

MIC1 56:57

of the things I was talking about last night to Francis was how comfortable a room it was and how, how good I felt in

Francis 57:03

room. Yeah,

MIC2 57:03

you guys are metric guys. I know you, you do look at metrics with your, with the restaurant. I, I'm such a geek when it comes to, what you can see on Resy and what So one of the metrics that I think would disturb a lot of we have the longest turn time of any table I've ever seen. Two top, 155.

Francis 57:21

it.

MIC2 57:21

an hour and 55 minutes is our average for two

MIC1 57:24

We never expect to seat a table in our restaurants more than two times a night. Once in a while you get lucky and, and you'll you'll seat that table a third time. But we never expect to seat a table... First of all, we're in New Jersey, so people aren't dining anymore at 11 o'clock at night. They aren't dining at 10:30 at night anymore. and if we seat a table two times a night, that's, that's

MIC2 57:41

Everywhere I've ever worked, that's something that people are like, "Oh, we gotta push them out, we gotta push them out." We decided to say, "You know what, man? Let them Cause when you get up to 4:00 and 6:00, I mean, it's two hours. I mean, it's a huge... They don't own it for the whole night, but I mean, it's- Yeah maybe you're doing two turns. You're never... Three turns, like at Reef, we do three turns. This not, that's not that kind of restaurant, and we just embraced it, and it's been great for us. You know, we just have an insane return customer. It's more of a neighborhood restaurant than I've

MIC1 58:09

Those people h- who stay that long are having a better time.

MIC2 58:13

Agreed.

MIC1 58:13

Okay? The guy who leaves you in an hour and 45 minutes is leaving you either because he's got something else to do, in our case the go to the theater or what have you, but The evening isn't about dining out

MIC2 58:24

But he's just eating

MIC1 58:25

And the guy who comes, and I say guy, but the,

Francis 58:28

the Gender neutral guy

MIC1 58:29

or woman who comes to your restaurant and spends two and a half or three hours is there to be at your restaurant. Their night is about your restaurant, and no one's ever gonna have a better time than that

MIC2 58:40

person. Yeah, and it's been really great for us. And so anyway, so I'm, I'm consulting with her. The first thing she says, and this is before we find that You wanna be the chef?" I was like, "Absolutely Wasn't, wasn't interested at the time. But then, you know, she's a former, commercial real estate professional, finance professional. She's brilliant. the quickest learning curve of anyone I've ever seen. she's like, "We're looking for space." And in this particular area, there's not a lot of inventory. We're looking for a second gen. she was like, "Well, what about this space?" a building that we would had tear down. It's right there where it is on the freeway. And I knew right then and there that that was the spot, right? 'Cause I just know the climate in Houston inside the loop is incredibly oversaturated with a lot of out-of-towners. I wouldn't open with your money

MIC1 59:22

now. Right

MIC2 59:24

I was like, "Well, if you do that, then And so we, hooked up and, and became partners.

MIC1 59:29

So do you guys control the building? the building. She owns the building. Uh, okay. different

MIC2 59:33

know, it's all about occupancy. Change- Occupancy cost is absolutely everything, especially in today's climate. Because, with the rates the way they are, like that, it goes up, those guys have to pay the bank. Yep. the other big light bulb with me with her was that What is she gonna do once we open? Like, uh, you know, is she going to have the commitment of being there on the floor and all that kind of stuff? And man, she learned the POS in a heartbeat. She learned the, the reservation system in She's a- already a, a brilliant financial person. y'all met her last night, so the way she floats around that dining room, You can't teach that hospitality gene. No. You know? That, comfort of hosting somebody-

Francis 1:00:09

can teach service, you can teach steps, but you can't teach the hospitality,

MIC2 1:00:12

the way,

MIC1 1:00:13

can't teach the, the I'm gonna make a human connection with you-

MIC2 1:00:16

Right there at the At that table That's all I need right. Where, where, where there's 100 people around us jabbing around, and I, but I'm going to connect with you personally and make you feel it, and she's got it, man. Like, she's got it in spades.

MIC1 1:00:28

it's funny that you say that 'cause I remember meeting you in Aspen. I remember the moment I met you in Aspen, I was like, "That guy's got it."

MIC2 1:00:35

Yeah, well- We're from South Louisiana, man. We just, we look for excuses to throw a party,

MIC1 1:00:39

switched places

Francis 1:00:40

Well, so I wanna talk about the dinner we had last night, uh, and the menu, to let people know out there what you can expect. it's a very unusual menu. I mean, you've got amazing pizzas. You've got, you had a, pasta with a, was that a boar bolognese? W- with

MIC2 1:00:55

Yeah,

Francis 1:00:55

Was it ma- So your pasta was great. Your pizza dough was great. But it's a, kind of a broader menu than that. What's the

MIC1 1:01:00

I just want to interrupt. If you're not eating wild boar when you go out to restaurants or making wild boar in your, in your restaurant, you're missing

Francis 1:01:07

Yeah,

MIC2 1:01:08

It's really got a beautiful, like, tang and flavor, man Yeah, it really is. And we need to k- we need to eat more. Yeah. Like, there's too many of them out there

Francis 1:01:16

tell me more about the, the restaurant and what the point of view is of that. Why, why that menu there now?

MIC2 1:01:21

So, anybody that's ever opened a restaurant I'm incredibly right? Because I refuse to tell anybody what I'm doing until the, the kitchen I have ideas. you know, like I'll have all kinds of stuff jotted on paper, and I'll have stuff floating around, concepts floating in my head, but I will not tell you what a menu item is until after I cook it in that I feel that any menu for any restaurant is a time and place scenario. in order a restaurant to be real, I think that it has to be of that time and place, and I can't get a sense of that until I'm in that building cooking. I could write a menu a year ahead of time and have a concept and it'd be perfect, but by the time it opens, I will have messed with it so much I will forget what the whole point is. And I'm a huge believer in drawing a box and operating to the edge of that box, but still within that box. Right. Otherwise, you confuse your diner,

MIC1 1:02:11

so our restaurant's been there for 34 years, so it's all in the same place. But come to our restaurant in 1992, come to our restaurant in 1997, come to our restaurant in 2005, come in 2015, come today, and there are huge differences because while the place is the same, the time has changed, and you gotta

MIC2 1:02:30

Yeah, You have to

MIC1 1:02:31

the time. Whether or not you're moving places, you still have to move. So time and place are both important

MIC2 1:02:36

And it's hard, man. Like, so John George used to say that the most creative that a chef can ever be is the day that right? Because at-- you don't need more than mop goes the day you open. But as you go, people wanna see that wild bo- I can't take that

Francis 1:02:51

right Right.

MIC2 1:02:52

So we have a bread service, right? I wasn't really sure. It's the first time I've ever charged for bread. And it's a, it's an extensive thing. There's two types of bread. There's two accoutrements. And we were gonna leave the, the yeast rolls, and I was gonna change the other one. Well, I can't touch it now. People freaking- It's live they'll pitch a fit. There, there'll be pitchforks in the street, man. You know? And so, you can't take things off the menu, and then unless you're gonna be The Cheesecake Factory- Right you can't have a me- our menu's almost too big as it is. Right. Yeah. So the hardest thing is doing things too well. and then, like, how do you change? And when do you

Francis 1:03:23

So what is it though, if we were gonna describe your menu to folks listening, what, what are they gonna find on the menu when they get there? What's the unifying... Is there a unifying theme or, or what are we looking at?

MIC2 1:03:35

Right. I I call it coastal.

Francis 1:03:36

okay,

MIC2 1:03:37

as a young cook or restaurateur, you see these things, and they're like pop up, and everyone... I have ADD, and most think do. And you're like, "Oh, my God," and you just devour that thing. You're like, "Oh, Asian. Oh. Oh, Filipino. Oh. Oh, Spain. Oh, Mediterranean." And so once you digest all those things and actually understand them, I don't think it's until that point to where you really understand, "Okay, well, this is I've had all these things, and so, like, I don't really think about it. It just comes in your head, right? And so when I look back at my career, I was like, "Well, you know, every place I've ever worked is on the, on the water." Every single place I've ever worked and loved and is always been in a coastal area. So when I say coastal, our product, 100 miles offshore, 100 miles Mm-hmm. Right? So there's definitely a coastal theme down the Gulf Coast. Uh, and then techniques are just global, and that speaks to

Francis 1:04:24

I love it

MIC2 1:04:25

is the largest, most diverse, culturally diverse city in the United States now,

Francis 1:04:29

Is it

MIC1 1:04:29

Wow, that's interesting

MIC2 1:04:30

yeah. New Yorkers,

Francis 1:04:32

sorry.

MIC2 1:04:33

I didn't say it. Forbes said it.

Francis 1:04:35

I love it. I love it. all right, well, all good things must come to an end, Brian. This has been amazing, as we knew it would be. I appreciate you taking the time out and, and again, dinner at your place was great last night and, uh, today's conversation was everything we expected. So thanks for joining

MIC1 1:04:49

Brian, thanks so much for being here, but I want to invite you back for our last little segment of today's show because I want to talk about bread service

MIC2 1:04:58

Sure.

Francis 1:04:58

Excellent. We'll be back in just a minute. You can always find out more about us and Brian and all things Restaurant Guys at restaurantguyspodcast.com. All right, so we're back, and Mark won't let Brian Caswell leave for the last three minutes of the show. So, um, I don't know. You got in the VIP room. I can't get him out of here. Hey, Brian. Brian

MIC1 1:05:14

that I want to talk about in today's final segment is bread service and charging for bread service. It's, it's a way the restaurants have changed and had to change as our costs have just exploded and our labor cost has exploded and our, food costs have exploded. Finding ways to elevate bread service and to make that something that's, worth- you paying for is a way that we've all had to adapt in this new world and things, you know, as we talked a little bit in the last segment about time and

Francis 1:05:45

We don't do it yet We

MIC1 1:05:46

We do for our garlic

Francis 1:05:47

bread. Right, but you get free bread

MIC1 1:05:48

Well, in our restaurant, you have an option for free bread or to pay for the elevated bread, That's a way that elevate our bread service and to make it a revenue center. Now, you have two different types of bread on your menu that are for pay. What do you do with those breads to make it worth something extra?

MIC2 1:06:07

So, Reef gave free bread. We did, house-made yeast rolls with jalapeno wildly, uh, successful, and we- it was free for 14 years. I'm old. I'm old school, so like free bread in this town, warm bread and free bread were like these things that you- Basics yeah, couldn't, couldn't live without. And so when we came into, into opening Lotulia, it was a huge conversation, um, between Allison and I, and, you know, like, can we charge for bread? And if we do charge for bread, how do we do it? I don't think you can charge for bread if it's just sliced sourdough- Mm-hmm that's not warmed up. I think it has to be something that you are making, you are elevating in your restaurant. It's yours, it's signature, whatever- Right what So, let's do a bread service, right, that has two different Uh, and then also, you know, you think, well, are people gonna eat bread, right? Do people eat bread anymore? And, you know, the, the, the, the, the gluten-free thing is so prevalent. I wondered how, how it would move. And I'm telling you, it's our number one seller. Yeah. We sell 50 to 60 bread services, and it's every day more than any drink, it is our number one

MIC1 1:07:10

and with our garlic bread, by the way, our number one item, sales item- Right is our garlic bread, and people talk about it far and wide, like, "Gotta have your garlic bread," because we did something- Yeah to elevate that, to make it a special kind of bread- That's ours that's, that's

Francis 1:07:26

and I also think, you know, I think a lot of people really rebel at, "Oh, they're charging for bread and butter now." it's funny. I'm, I'm sorry guys, restaurant costs are just going up a lot, and one of the things that a lot of folks who've switched to just charging for bread and butter are talking about is for a long time they had a service where everybody would get a roll. Well, to your point, so many rolls are being thrown away 'cause people don't eat So we're like, "I'm giving you this, this free thing out to the 400 diners who come in tonight," and 250 rolls are going in the garbage. That's, that's a waste of food. So,

MIC1 1:07:57

Right, and the cost to me on that is $500 or $600 a night, right? So every night to produce 400 rolls and to bring butter and those rolls to your table, I'm spending 500 or 600 bucks to make that happen to- at your table.

Francis 1:08:09

and again, the point to go to, let's be intentional about this. But I think that what you do has to be done. If you're going to charge for bread and butter, like you said, you've gotta make it a special thing, you

MIC2 1:08:19

like you have to do... Yeah, there has to be some value added something, right? Yeah. we, you know, we also spend a lot of money on the custom-made boards- Yeah and the, and the, and the little cast iron things and all, you know, all, the different butter and the jelly and all that

MIC1 1:08:30

I guess the point is we've created a new revenue center, but what we've created is something that's better than it was when we just brought bread to the table and, and said, Here you go. This is gonna be your bread for tonight. Sop up your sauce in

MIC2 1:08:44

Uh, the other thing is, like we always talk about, and I always talk about, what can I add to the table that's not gonna touch their dinner? So e- they're gonna order their appetizer, their entrée, their dessert, right? But things like bread service, oysters, caviar. Yeah. Like, you know, whatever it is, what doesn't mess with their, you know, what's not replacing something else on the menu? What's added and doesn't touch the rest of

MIC1 1:09:05

menu? Ours is the Calvados section at the end of your meal. Don't forget it.

MIC2 1:09:08

But yeah, y- that's another thing, the after-dinner drink. The, you know, the, people are moving away from desserts. That's another thing. Like, there's some places in town that they just put a ice cream machine at the front door, and there's no desserts on the menu, G- Gringos, which is a very popular, very good Tex-Mex place- Mm they don't even have desserts. They just have a free ice cream machine wh- or a soft serve they serve, 'cause they wanna turn that table. Mm. So but we, we intentionally, well, we probably serve more desserts than any other place I've ever, ever been, 'cause we have very intentional, very good

Francis 1:09:38

Sure. Wild. All right, well that was a lot of fun. Uh, we are going to leave again, and you have to go, Brian. We the, we need the room

MIC2 1:09:44

I gotta get to work, man. The festival's about to happen

Francis 1:09:47

super fun. Uh, we had a great time with this. Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we did. I'm Francis

MIC1 1:09:50

I'm Mark Pascal

Francis 1:09:51

Mark Pastorello. We are The Restaurant Guys. You can always find out more about us at restaurantguyspodcast.com.