Heroes in Business - David Rose, Executive Chef Omaha Steaks, Food Network Star finalist, Super Bowl Players Tailgate

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Food is Life. David Rose, Executive Chef Omaha Steaks, Food Network Star finalist, Super Bowl Players Tailgate is interviewed by David Cogan Host of the Heroes Show and Founder of Eliances entrepreneur community.  

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. That's right, we're back, and my God, what a day it's been. And we recently just had on Nick Lowry, Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Famers. So make sure you check out our past interviews. You can always go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com to check out past interviews. All right. You're going to get real hungry by listening to and watching this interview. I got to tell you, we have with us, that's right, Chef David Rose.

He is the Food Network Star finalist and executive, drumroll please, Chef at Omaha Steaks. Not everybody in the world knows about Omaha Steaks. I mean, I eat Omaha Steaks. Yes. And he'll be at the Players' Tailgate in Glendale serving up, right, tomahawk steaks, right? Tomahawk steaks. We're doing one of my amazing recipes with Omaha steaks, tomahawk steaks. Huge, big, over three pounds.

Just amazingness. We're doing that with the collard green chimichurri, some curried shrimp pearl pasta. And it's going to be amazing, delicious steaks, food, football, Bobby Flay, amongst other people. So if you're not going to be there, plan to be there. It's going to be an event not to be missed. Awesome. And again, you can reach Chef David Rose by going to chefdavidrose.com. So David, I mean, man, you're like, you are in the epic center of the food of everything going on and the Superbowl stuff. And so this is just like phenomenal. Curious to know though, like, how did you, how did you know that you had the skill of what you cook that, you know,

would become and be so popular as a chef? You know what? I am actually the product of two chef parents. Mom was a chef. Dad was a chef. Huge Jamaican family. So if you know anything about Jamaicans, we like to cook. We like to eat. We like to drink. Sometimes drinking more than cooking and vice versa. And that's just the childhood I had growing up where some of my fondest memories were surrounded around food. So I've always had an affection for food, always been in hospitality, and it was kind of a natural progression where I was a server, I was a bartender, and I moved to Atlanta, went to culinary school, and as they say, the rest was history,

and I kind of paved my own path. Wow. So what's the soul got to do with it? What's the soul? You know, when you taste something, you can taste when there's heart and soul in it. It's that extra ingredient. It's that je ne sais quoi. It's that secret ingredient where love, caring is just, you know, what makes a good dish a great dish. And what better way to tell somebody I love you than by taking raw ingredients, using it and utilizing it, giving them nourishment and making them something pretty tasty. So I like to have a good time. I like to, you know, have fun. And what better conduit for that than food and drink? And when you put them together with football, it's a win win. It's a win win.

So what's the go to of like what's the best way to prepare if we're at home to prepare like Omaha steaks for, you know, a football game and any other game? Oh, yeah, definitely. If you're watching from afar and you want to get that in-home stadium experience, we've got you covered. We really run the gamut, you know. So if you can't make it Super Bowl Sunday, February 12th, Arizona, you can definitely use our beef hot dogs, burgers. I have a really amazing sliced ribeye philly cheese steak and naturally cased brats

we literally have everything you need to have an amazing tailgate from the comfort of your home or backyard so go to omahasteaks.com and we have everything at your fingertips literally david and again we're talking with chef david rose food network star finalist and executive chef at omaha steaks you can reach him at chef at davidrose.com. How did you know, though, that you had the skill that would become so popular that others would like what you make? I think just, you know, from my Jamaican upbringing, me being from New Jersey, which is the tri-state area, which is a huge cultural melting pot, I've always loved, even as a kid, you know, 12, 13, 10 years old, I've always been a super

adventurous eater. And I'd like to come home and kind of replicate those things and recreate them and kind of add my own spin. So after a while, you know, you cook for family, you cook for friends, you cook for, you know, girlfriends and, you know, different types of, you know, gatherings, people like your food, request your food. And, food. And for me, just being in hospitality, I've always been surrounded by good food. And when I kind of went to culinary school and prior to that, the words David Rose and scholar were very seldom, not seldom,

never used in the same sentence. But in culinary school, I flourished, I shined, I graduated summa cum laude, top of my class. And I knew that I had found my calling. And it's brought me so many amazing places, met so many amazing people. And it brought me here today. And I'm supposed to be exactly where I am. And food has opened so many doors. So I'm going to keep on fighting the good fight and feeding, you know, empty, hungry stomachs. That's amazing. What kind of advice do you have for, like, children that are out there to find their passion like you found, you know, where you're like, this is what I should be doing? I mean, not many people at any age really ask that. I really think for me it was exposure.

Exposure through my parents cooking, them taking me to work kind of watching them you know feed the masses two three hundred people they'd feed in a day having friends from all over the world you know where I'd eat foie gras and gnocchi at nine eight years old latkes at eight ten years old and just travel because there is so much more than the U.S. So my food, my style of cooking is sort of my culinary roadmap, so to speak, where I've been a lot of places in the world, a lot more to go, but just tasting things, different flavor profiles, watching Food Network. It's crazy because I remember being in high school watching Bobby Flay and now to have competed on Food Network Star, where he was a great mentor, and now full circle, we're doing an event together. I really feel I'm living my purpose.

So just experimentation, trying it trial and error, you're going to mess up. So don't think what if I mess up, you will. It's just how you correct those mistakes and identify them and making it better. Because part of the journey is tasting food and trying it, seeing what you like, seeing what you don't like. And was it surreal like being on the Food Network? It was because I grew up, you know, Emeril Lagasse, you know, Bam, you know, Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay, you know, even outside of Food Network, Graham Kerr, Julia Child, where it's like, you know, they're cooking, but it's entertaining. It's funny. It's exciting. It's engagement. I was like, you know what? Subconsciously was planting

a seed that I want to do that. And again, we're talking with Chef David Rose. You can reach him at chefdavidrose.com. Food Network star also too. Chef at, executive chef at Omaha Steaks. Here's the thing though, David, I'm trying to understand is, is that we all have different taste buds, right? We taste things differently. So how do you, like when you're creating these, you know, and cooking and stuff, how do you know kind of that fine balance, uh, that, right. Especially if you're serving to so many. Well, for that, you know, that's an experimentation and kind of honing your palate comes into place where even though I'm a chef, I cook a lot and I create recipes for Omaha steaks and creating my my cookbook.

Again, David Rose cooks in the big green egg. It's a matter of just kind of, you know, exposing yourself and realizing what flavors go together. And I think, you know, for me, traveling, eating out, being not afraid to try new things, saying yes to new things, new foods. And just, again, just experimenting where you taste something, you try to get the crux of what it is, whether through asking the chef, the staff or going on websites. So literally you can find anything you need on the Web. I'm pretty sure we all have a smartphone. And just looking it up, doing the due diligence and practicing and honing and first starting with close family and friends. So that way, if it is bad or not quite as enjoyable, they can tell you what it needs, what it might be missing. And then from there, you gather and gain the confidence. But the only way to do it is just to do it and see what works,

see what doesn't work and just kind of self-edit as you go along. So here's the thing, you know, you grew up with parents, they were both chefs and stuff. What secrets did they share with you, though, of how to, you know, how to really cook and do things maybe that others aren't? Yeah, rule number one from my parents and from culinary school is make sure the food tastes good. It could look good. You know, it could smell good, but if it doesn't taste good and it's delicious and that intangible ingredient love is not in it, it's not going to be well received. Like, you know, I'm sure you can imagine many fine dining restaurants or maybe not fine dining restaurants, period, where something

looked good, but the taste did not measure up to that. So definitely tasting as you go and adding your own little twist. I think where a lot of people kind of go wrong, especially with recipes and cookbooks is following it verbatim to the T and then wondering why it doesn't taste or look as good as it did initially. But I think is what you do is kind of, to me, recipes are blueprints. You know, recipes are kind of the baseline, the main music and, you know, a sheet music or a song or whatever. But I think when you add your own little, you know, spin your own little riff, that's the solo, that's the jazz solo, the drum solo, where you kind of add that little oomph to it. So, you know, using those recipes as a blueprint, but always add in your flavor.

If you like rosemary, add maybe a little more rosemary. If you like thyme, if you like something a little more herbaceous, add more green, leafy, you know, type of herbs in there. If you don't omit that and just making it and curbing that towards your palate, towards flavors that you like, flavors that you identify with. And I find that when you do that, when you do more soloing and focus less on the sheet music as verbatim, step by step, it's more enjoyable for you and it's going to come through more for the guests and the people who try. I'm getting hungry. I am getting hungry. Chef David, listen, you bring the yum, cooking up good eats on game day and every day. You know what?

And it's true. Food is to the heart. I mean, and making people happy, making them comfort and comfort food. You know what? That's a hero. That's right. Chef David Rose, network star, finalist, executive chef at Omaha Steaks. you know comfort and comfort food you know what that's a hero that's right chef david rose yes network star finalist executive chef at omaha steaks he'll be at the players tailgate in glendale

make sure that you go to and reach out to chef david directly by going to chef david rose.com this has been david kogan with the alliance's hero show you got to dance with me here we go