Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Bobby Flay

Episode Date: July 1, 2018

Bobby Flay has been a star on the Food Network almost since its beginning nearly 25 years ago, and his shows and restaurants have since made him a household name. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,�� Willie Geist visits the chef at his summer home in the Hamptons to discuss his long career in the business, starting with his childhood interest in cooking and his rise from high school dropout to the head of a food empire. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist back with you. You're listening to another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast and a good one for you as we roll into this 4th of July holiday week. Chef, restaurant tour. We're not allowed to call him, it turns out celebrity chef and you'll see why in the interview. But his name is Bobby Flay. One of the early adopters, one of the early stars on the Food Networks, got season 14 of his show with Jada DeLarentis called Food Network Star. He invited us to his place out in the Hamptons out in New York. York's Long Island said come on out I'm going to show you what I do for the 4th of July weekend so we rolled up to his house brought him a bottle or two of rosé he's a big rosé guy I'm not a rosé guy I bought a six-pack of bud heavy tall boys so it was kind of a tale of two beverages we got in there though and he threw on a feast for us in his kitchen out in the yard as you can imagine he's got the outdoor pizza oven

He did a crazy steak in that oven. We cooked. We talked about his career. Some surprising admissions in here you'll hear as well. I think he said it's maybe time at 53 years old to slow down, reassess things. He's kind of done everything he wanted to do. So we'll get into what that means. He's been into cooking since he was a kid. Eight years old, he asked for Christmas for the Betty Crocker Easy Bake Oven.

And by God, he got it and he was off to the races. Dropped out of high school in the 10th grade, went and worked in a famous, kitchen in New York City as a bus boy, and the rest is history. He's now the famous Bobby Flee, and here he is on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thanks for having me over, Bobby. Will you welcome here anytime? Do you mean that? I do. If the cameras are off, will you repeat that? You have to wash some dishes, though. Okay. Just a couple. Bring the rosé and wash the dishes. Yes, actually, bring the rosé is the real ante here, for sure. And then maybe help around the kitchen after. Yeah. So, Fourth of July weekend, you throw a big party every year. What do you try to do,

with that event. What's the Bobby Flay vibe at a party at this place? It's really quite simple, actually. It's, I don't make a lot of red, white, and blue food. I just make a lot of food. And it's almost like every other weekend here where I have a lot of people over, but it's just more abundant.

There's more people and there's more food. And basically, I cook in my swimming trunks all day long. And it's something that I love to do. It's, you know, a lot of people say to me, like, you know, it's your day off, it's your week off, you know, whatever. Why aren't you just relax? But the bottom line is that, and I get asked all the time, like, what do I do to relax? And the answer is that I basically do the same thing I do for a living, which is cook. It's just at a different pace, for sure.

I'm not fighting against a clock or, you know, a ticket that comes into my kitchen that needs to get out quickly. But I cook a ton of food. And there's lots of rosé. It's not a dry party. I will tell you that right now. There's tons of rosé here. And sometimes we actually count the bottles at the end of the day. I won't tell you how many there are.

There's more than three, though. And people are in the pool. We have great music blaring. And the food sort of just kind of rolls out all day long. This place is kind of an oasis for you, isn't it? To be able to get this far away from the city and all of your 15 jobs that you have and just shut it all down. It must be great to be up here. It is great.

And, you know, in some ways I'm still a fish out of water here because even though I've been coming here for most of my life in one way or another, either as a guest or as a homeowner. And I'm a city boy through and through. I grew up in New York and Manhattan. and I've lived there in my entire life. And so, you know, owning a house can be a challenge for me sometimes. I'm really bad around the house in terms of getting things fixed. And so thankfully, there are other people that know how to do that way better than I do. But that said, when it comes to nourishing my guests, I'm in charge of that.

And you never have the moment of, you know what, what does somebody else do the grill today? Every once in a while that happens. But it's usually because I'm taking a nap and they sneak onto the... grill and they just start cooking some steaks or something. No, some people help for sure. And I don't do dessert. I don't do, because I'm not good at it. Come on, you can do a dessert.

I can, but it's not really my forte, and I don't really like making them. So when people come over, I do the same thing for Thanksgiving as well. Like in Thanksgiving or July 4th, if people say to me, can I bring something? I actually say, yeah, you can. You can bring a bottle of wine or you can bring a dessert. But I really make sure that it's sort of scheduled out. So people aren't bringing in the exact same thing. So I might say to you, Willie, all right, bring some kind of fruit dessert.

So maybe you go to the farmer's market around here and get like a blueberry pie or something. And I'll tell somebody else to bring a chocolate dessert or, you know, something along those lines. Or somebody else might bring some ice creams so that we have, you know, an abundant of desserts. Because the bottom line is that even though people are always sort of watching their weight in their bathing suits, still want dessert no matter what. No question about it. Oh yeah. No question about it.

And when you design this place, just looking around inside and outside, clearly it was with an eye toward not just entertaining, but cooking for a lot of people. Yeah. Well, your crew here has sort of rearranged my kitchen a little bit, but most of the time, this is like a little cafe that we're sitting in. So the kitchen, obviously I cook behind the, I cook behind the island there, but there's three little sort of French tables here with Rattan shia. and another sort of bigger table.

And my guests, at first, my, like, people were, like, a little confused. They're, like, you're putting a restaurant in your house. I'm like, no, I just want, I want people to, if they want to have their own table, if they want to share a table with somebody else, read the newspaper, watch the Today Show on Sunday morning, you know, whatever it is, they'll, they can do that. And people actually, they love it. It's kind of, it's kind of a nice feeling. It's like you're sitting in like this little French cafe except it's in Amaganza.

Right, right. That's amazing. I don't think I've ever heard of that, actually. Like within a kitchen? Yeah. And your own mini cafe. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, listen, I'm, I'm, I'm a restaurant owner and operator and

chef through and through. I mean, that's, it's, it's in my blood. It's never leaving. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's frustrating. But it's, it's part of my blood. And, and I think of myself very much as a, as somebody who likes to serve people and make sure that that they're comfortable.

And if I can sort of emulate, like a little cafe in my, In my kitchen, why not? You have the same hair as your cat, by the way. That's Nacho. That's funny. Well, obviously, he's very curious. Yes, we have the same coloring. Nacho's bordering on big cat.

He's a big cat. He's a Maine Coon. He's about 20 pounds. Wow. Wait, Willie, you don't follow him on Instagram? No, was he a good follow? Nacho Flay. He's only got 140,000 followers.

Come on. Really? He does. He's very popular, aren't you? Hey, Nacho. He's very popular. That's a good-looking guy. Yeah.

Very comfortable around the. cameras too oh yes like I said big time so let's talk about the show season 14 the next one network start yeah what do you love about this show well uh Jada and I been doing it for a long time now and you know she and I have been good friend for so long and we we love hanging out together and basically giving each other a hard time we look at it very differently and I think that that's part of the beauty of the show you know we have somewhere between you know 10 and 14 finalists that that show up depending on the season, and they're trying to get their own show on Food Network.

And there's a lot of challenges, basically, that are versed in cooking and looking at the camera at the same time and doing what food stars do, which is tried to be an authority figure in front of the camera so that you feel comfortable as a viewer to follow them. I mean, to me, that's the long and the short of it. And because I'm a cook, my, you know, my whole sort of soul. and body is as a cook, I always think that the cooking is more important than being able to look into the camera. Giata feels differently.

Jada feels like if you have what it takes, you have that stark quality, that you'll learn how to be better with food and be able to talk about it in the camera. My feeling is that you need the cred, you need the confident and you need to have the repertoire of being able to cook lots of different things. and then you'll get comfortable in front of the camera. So we look at it from opposite directions and we're not, neither one of us is budging on our position. But I think that that's what makes the show really interesting.

It's not just one person's opinion, it's really too. And it's not good enough just to have great food. You've got to prove that you're going to be a TV personality too. You do have to have that spark. You do have to get people to stop flipping through the channels and stop at you. You know, what is that thing that just says, says, I want to watch this person teach me how to make roasted potatoes or whatever it's going to be. Do you find people struggle with that? Because it's not a natural thing because you think

I'm a chef, I make food. That's it, period. To have to learn how to do that. It's an easy thing. Well, I think that, you know, in my business, things have changed very much. I mean, when the Food Network first came around, to be perfectly honest with you, I had no confidence in it. I was like, what are they going to talk about for 24 hours of food? This is going to be over in a week. And obviously I was not right. And the Food Network has flourished in such an amazing way. And my contemporaries in the business were like, why do you want to be on TV? Like, you're a cook, you're a chef. That's what you should be doing. You should be chained to your stove. Don't get me wrong. I cook a lot in my restaurants all the time is a thing that really

drives me more than anything else. But I knew that awareness is the most. most important thing, letting people know that you exist, not just in your city, not just in the magazines in New York, so to speak, at the time. There was no internet then, right? But I wanted to reach the family in Minneapolis who was coming to New York for the holiday weekend, and they were looking for restaurants to go to. Well, maybe if they watched me on TV, they might say, let's go to Bobby Flai's restaurant one night.

That's all. Just putting people in the seats in my restaurants, and that's still the key for me today. But isn't that something you had to learn, too? Because everyone knew you were good at food, but now you've got to learn how to do TV. Well, there's, I was awful on television. And frankly, like some people still think I'm awful on TV, but that's okay. We're going to dig up some tapes for this interview, by the way. Please.

Just do you wait. Yeah, thanks. I can't wait to see that. I love the internet. Anyway, so, yeah, I mean, there's no substitute for experience. I'm sure you feel the same way. profession. You know, being comfortable talking to the camera. When I first started cooking on camera, I would always shy away from the camera. I couldn't look at it. I would always

sort of look down. And so I had no connection to the viewer. Obviously, as time goes on, you get a lot more comfortable looking at the camera and feeling comfortable and basically forgetting the cameras there and just being yourself. And that's the hardest thing to do. People just say, just be yourself. What does that even mean? Because you don't even know what yourself what it looks like, you know? And it's hard to be yourself when there are six, seven cameras and lights on. It's the least natural thing you could ever do. No, it just go be normal.

It really is. But I'll tell you that I'm always more comfortable when I have a lemon in my hand or, you know, a spatula or something like that. And that's why when I do cooking demos, like live cooking demos, like at, you know, the South Beach One, and food festival or something like that, like I have the best time because it's, I'm in my element. Yes, it's a crowd. and I'm nervous. I get nervous every single time. Do you really?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Even when you said, are you ready to do this? I get nervous, absolutely. I get nervous just because I want to be good at what I do. Yeah. And so I think that when I lose that, it's going to be time to hang it up, you know, because at that point it will prove to me that I don't care as much. But I do care.

So I get nervous every time, no matter what. And when they introduced me, even at the food festival, you know, Bobby Flay, I'm like, okay, 45 minutes, just me and 500 people. Right? You know, it's real. You know, but that said, you know, when I have my saute pan and my olive oil and a piece of fish and I'm doing what I know how to do, it makes me feel comfortable. You know what's funny doing these interviews, as you said that, I was thinking of the number

of people who I've done these interviews with, who people would be shocked, feel that way, who get nervous before a performance. Oh, yeah. Like Dolly Parton. She said, butterflies before every show, right before they say, Lady Dawn, Dolly Parton. People who are very good at what they do, like you, still get nervous. And I think you're right. It's the edge you want to have when you go out there.

Yes, for sure. Yeah. So with the Food Network, I think your first appearance was 1994 with Robin Leach. Oh, yes. On that show, I don't know if you remember that. Yeah, I do remember. I do remember it. I do remember that.

And then a couple of years later, you got your first show on the network. As you said, you weren't totally sold that this was going to be a long-term plan. When you think back to that 22 years ago and where you were in your life and your career, you already had a successful restaurant. Right. What did you think, where was it going? Were you going to be a TV chef? Were you going to have restaurants?

What did you think? My TV chef experience, in terms of being a viewer, was The Galloping Gourmet and Julie Child. I was a kid. I would sit in front of, you know, in between cartoons. I would watch cooking shows. I had no idea that I was interested in food,

but something certainly captured my attention. The Galloping Gourmet was such a cool show because he was this guy, this like gourmet French food. And at the end of the show, he would pick the prettiest girl in the crowd. He'd bring them up and sit down and have dinner with them. I don't know if you remember it. But that's how the show in.

I was like, wow, that's pretty good. And you know, he's cooking. And so there's something that attracted me to Julia Child and to the Gallup and Gourmet. To this day, I don't know what it is. I do remember cooking at home. The very first thing I remember cooking was mighty fine chocolate pudding. It was out of a box, you scald the milk, and you'd put this chocolate powder into the pot, and I was standing on a chair or something with an apron on.

My mother was standing next to me, and I would just stir it, and then I couldn't believe by stirring it with a wooden spoon, it would just get thicker and thicker and thicker. It was my first moment of, like, texture changing because of something cooking. And I was like, wow, this is really cool. You know, I was an awful student in school. I dropped out of high school in 10th grade. And if I had thought about it then, of course, so I was six years old or something,

I would have known that I really needed to work with my hands at some point. I mean, I was in school trying to do what everybody else was doing, which was learned through books, couldn't do it. I wasn't interested. I don't know if I couldn't do it or I just wasn't interested, but I didn't do it, that's for sure. Did you know at that point it was cooking that you thought you might do? No idea.

That's too early still. I fell into it completely. I feel like. But I'll tell you an interesting fact. You mentioned Robin Leach's show. Yeah. So Robin's show, do you know this? Do you know this story?

I don't know. Okay. I don't think you do. Oh, there we go. So Robin Leach had a show called Talking Food. Yep. And it was, it originally came on, I think, either 12 midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning. And Robin was a huge Nick fan and he had season tickets to the Knicks.

And basically he'd go to the Nick game and he'd come to the Nick game and he'd come up come and tape the show afterwards. After the game. After the game. Okay. And it was mostly live. I think it was midnight. And he had, and he'd have celebrities on.

They were not the top of the food chain. Let's put it that way. And it was an hour long, and he had a co-host named Kate Connolly. And at the end, for the last 15 minutes of the show, Kate Connolly would do a cooking demo with a chef. And the chefs were mostly local in New York because the Food Network had zero money. It was a startup cable network. And so basically, if you could get there by subway, you could be on.

And literally, she would spend a 15-minute cooking demo. I mean, come on. It's crazy. I mean, listen, I think the Today Show needs up their time that they give cooking. But 15 minutes is a long time. And so I met, so I did a couple of those shows. And then Kate and I went on a couple of dates, and she's the mother of my daughter, Sophie. I was going to say.

Boom. I did not know that story. And that's how you met her on the show? We met on the show. And then we went out for a couple of dinners, and we started dating. We got married. And we had Sophie. So Robin Leach was the matchmaker.

Yes, exactly right. That's true. So you were talking about your childhood when you first developed the love of cooking. True or false, you asked when you were eight or nine years old for Christmas for the Easy Bake Oven. I did. You did. Yes. And you got it?

I did get it. My father was like, how about a baseball mitt? And I was like, I'll take that too. For some reason, listen, this is the, it's called good advertising, right? So I'd be sitting watching whatever I was watching, cartoon, Sesame Street, the electric company, you know, those are all the shows. Like, I remember when, when Sesame Street first came on, I was, that was my era. And, and I could not believe.

See, here's another thing. I didn't realize it then. I couldn't believe that you could bake a cake with a light bulb, and I had to see it for myself. So I was like, I want the easy bake oven. True story. I remember thinking, I can't believe they let us kids cook with an oven.

Like, this is revolutionary. They're just going to hand us an oven. This is great. It's all about the light bulb. And look where it led. Here we are now. Exactly. I'm still cooking my life bulb.

So when do you remember thinking to yourself, Bobby? I could make a living doing this thing I've loved since I was six years. Well, I'm still waiting for that to happen. I think, look, I started cooking when I was, I guess, 17 in a kitchen. First I was a busboy for two weeks, but then I found my way into the kitchen by accident. Yep. I found my way into the kitchen by accident. And the first and the most important thing was that I found something I liked to do.

I wasn't making any money. I remember exactly how much my paycheck was the first time. What was it? So I got paid $190.90. a week, but I remember getting my first paycheck and going into the men's room and opening it up to see if they had taken any taxes out. And it was $144. I don't know why I remember it to the penny. And I was like, they took $46 from my paycheck. I was appalled. Guess what? That's a lot of money. A lot of $1.90. I know. I know. And so, so the most important, so frankly, I wasn't

working there for the money. I was working there to stay at a job. trouble and to find something I wanted to do. I did not know I wanted to do it. It took me about six months. And then I woke up one day, looked at the ceiling, laying in bed saying to myself, I really want to go to work today. That was really the first time I was excited about something like that ever. So, and then I went to culinary school. And then I decided to, but even in culinary school, I would cut out of culinary school too. I was like, I was just, I just couldn't, I couldn't get the school thing down. Even when you love it. the subject. You couldn't do the school thing. I couldn't do the school thing. Yeah, I don't know

what it is about school. I'm allergic to it somehow, which is so crazy because my dad, who's, you know, my dad's 87 now, and he's such a scholarly guy to this day. I mean, he's, you know, he's an attorney. He's got his master's in art history. He's constantly going someplace to learn a different language. The guy is like, he loves school. He loves school as much as I don't like school. And so I think it was hard for him to kind of sort of see this and witness this. Yeah, so what did the family think when you said, this is what I'm going to do with my life? Well, they would take it.

They were like, great. You found something you want to do, so instead of hanging out with your friends in the street corner. And so, you know, there was a moment in time when my father really tried to get me to focus on school, like over and over and over, and then he just threw his hands in the air. He said, go get a job.

So that's what happened. And then now, what do they think? Well, my mom just passed away, not too long ago. My, you know, they've been proud parents. I mean, there's no question about it. My mother was always my greatest cheerleader. You know, she, one of the things my mother loved to do was, especially in her sort of advanced years, was go to Atlantic City and go to the Borgata

where I have a restaurant. And she would sit at the bar at my restaurant, drink chocolate martinis, and sign my cookbooks. Come on, really? I swear to you. Like, not, not. She wouldn't sit there with a stack full of books, but people would come up and say, I hear you're Bobby's mom. Will you sign my cookbook? And she's like, sure.

You know, so like my mom was always my greatest cheerleader for sure. My dad is very, you know, very proud of me, but he's always so worried about me. Like he's still. Yeah, because he, we, my dad and I have lots of business conversations to this day. I always ask his opinion about, you know, really important things. Because I always know he's going to, he's going to be right down the center. of where things should be. He's a conservative thinker in terms of like not taking too many risks,

but at the same time, he'll take a little bit of a risk. He's right down the middle. So if I'm feeling uneasy about a decision I'm going to make, I know he's going to straighten me out. And he always said to me, no matter what, just always do the right thing, which is something I always think about all the time, because this short cuts to take in this world. you know, there were places, there's decisions to make that can make things a little bit easier

for the time being, but ultimately he gave me this really big picture view of life and business, and I follow it. It's important to have somebody who tells you the truth all the time, too. Oh, yeah, and he does that. Because the bigger you get, it seems the fewer people who tell you the truth, right? I have a lot of people that tell me the truth about me. You got enough? Oh, yes, absolutely. I do. I have some incredible friends and people who have worked with me for decades, literally,

who have no problem telling me exactly what they think. This all happened, too, for you, Bobby, young. I mean, right? I mean, get the great reviews for your first restaurant in New York City, takes off. Was that a crazy time for you to be that young and that successful in New York City? I was 25 when Mason Reel opened. And you have to understand, Willie, like, I had already been working for eight years. And so I felt like I had a lot of experience at that time, at that point.

I didn't have a lot of life experience, but I had some experience cooking and being in the business. And it didn't feel like I was young then. Looking back now, I know I was young. And I could have been... I wouldn't do it over. again. I mean, I mean, what I'm trying to say is I wouldn't change anything. I mean, it was such a fun time. It was a exciting time for me. I got to sort of play out my life on a plate at Mesa Grill. And it really, I feel like I've been doing the same thing basically since

I was 17 to this day. Do you really? Yeah, I get up in the morning and I cook at some way, shape, shape, or form every day. I mean, and that's the most, that's, to me, that's how I find my happiness, which is through food always. And I show my friends and family will tell you, I show my love by cooking for them. People know how I care about them, because I make the effort to turn my stove on and make sure that they're nourished well. I'm going to see how much you love me in a few minutes

with this pizza. Hopefully my pizza is going to work. You never know. I need your help on the pizza. We'll talk about pizza. I'm here to help you. In a second. The term celebrity chef, which sort of rose out of your

era, the Food Network. All you guys are known as celebrity chefs. How do you feel about that term? I don't like it. You don't? No. Why? I think celebrity chef actually has a negative connotation, if you want to know the truth.

I, for a long time, I got really upset when people would say he's not a real chef, he's a celebrity chef, or he's a TV chef. And it somehow, you know, diminish your skills. because you were on television. And it used to hurt my feelings a lot and really upset me, and I used to fight it. I don't fight that fight anymore. I'm past that, thankfully. But I think it's...

I guess chefs have come into the sort of the mainstream in terms of popularity, but I never think of myself that way ever. And I think that when people feel... feel like they've somehow garnered the moniker of celebrity chef, they forget how they got there, which is cooking. And I've seen that way too often, and I've seen it not work out in the end. And I think that my advice to anybody who ever asks me, you know, I always say to them,

stay grounded in what you do, stay grounded in the reason why you got here, stay grounded in the thing that you love more than anything else, cooking. Everything else will fall into place. force it. The media part of this is a, it's a love-hate relationship. It's one of those things where it can be really good for you. It can be difficult on you and it also can go away in a split second. You know, all of a sudden somebody is given a show at the Food Network. I've seen this happen many times. Somebody's given a show at the Food Network. They've been cooking for 15 years in their restaurant. They get eight episodes. They quit their job. What? This can

end, and a lot of times it does, because there's very few hit shows, and there's lots of pilots. Yeah, that's right. No, that's absolutely right. Do you still find that level of snobbery among some chefs who won't go on TV or don't go on TV or haven't been asked to be on TV, who look down on people like you? Well, I think that what happens is, it's like it's like anything else. People want to be in the club, so to speak, and not just that club, but any club. And so when you get left out of a club, you feel like, how come I'm left out of that club? You know? I mean, I, And so I think that for, I think if you have the opportunity to show your skills and wares on television at some, and, you know, beyond television digitally at this point or whatever it is, and you should do it. I don't think you should shy away from it because you're going to get left behind at some point.

That said, I don't, I don't think it's necessary to be to be on TV to be successful in our business, but it certainly opens up a, a lot more doors. And so if you don't want to be on TV, you shouldn't be on TV. There's no question about that. But if it's something that you want to do, I think that then it's something you should try to do. So when you look out over the horizon, Bobby, what you're still a young guy relative to some people

in our business. You're a young guy. You got a lot ahead of you still. What do you think about? More TV? Is there something totally different you want to do? Honestly, Willie, I don't know. I'm at an interesting place in my life

because for a long time we talked about big picture before right and so I only live by big picture goals I don't worry about next week I worry about five years from now and that's the way I sort of like to travel in my life sort of working up towards something

and I met a lot of the goals that I set for myself when I was a young person And then all of a sudden, I was like, now what? You know, at first, when I was first cooking, I was like, you know what would be really cool if I opened my own restaurant one day? Okay, so that happened. And then the TV thing happened, and I sort of have met a lot of the goals that I wanted to in television. I've had a lot of very lucky success in that business. I've written the books that I've wanted to write.

And so I think that I'm at a place right now where I need to take a pause. And the only way I can pause is to pause. Now that said, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop cooking because my most creative moments is when I'm behind the line like at Gato. I cook a Gato four or five nights a week. And people are surprised by that because They think, how could he possibly be doing that if he's got all these other things, especially being on television. But the bottom line is that I could be shooting 48 episodes of Beat Bobby Flay up until 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and then I go to the restaurant.

And I do it because I think it's important for me to go, for my customers, to my staff. And it's important for me to go. I know what's happening there. I can't just hope that it happens there. I mean, there's nothing like being hands-on. So I think that I'm at a place now where my daughter has just graduated in school, college. So she's now officially an adult, and my number one hope is that she gets a job. She's very sharp.

I've worked with her. She has worked in the NBC family. Yes. Yes. We were just at the Olympics together. Yes, exactly. And you guys have taught her a lot. I mean, she's had an amazing experience.

You know, she worked at the Today Show when she was a freshman. And then she went to Rio, and then she was asked to go to South Korea. And she has garnered an amazing experience working with you guys, honestly. And so good for her. But now it's time for her to sort of leave the flock and do her own thing. So the thing I'm looking forward to is not sort of pushing the envelope to as far as I can push it, but kind of just taking in what I have at the moment, which is, You know, some restaurants that I love to cook at, growing my burger business a little bit,

and watching my daughter sort of take flight. I'm 53, so I'm probably not done yet, but I'm going to look for the next spark. And when it hits me, I'll know it. So the pause is you don't stop cooking. Do you slow down TV and the other things? Yeah, I think the, I think the, you know, I shoot so much television, year. And so I think that I'm going to take a pause from that and see something will drive me. But I think the only way to do that is to kind of sit back and watch it as opposed to trying to

find it. You know, when I was younger and I had, you know, basically nothing and so many goals to accomplish, I had goals to accomplish. Now I'm trying to figure out what my next goal is going to be. And I'm excited about that. You know, it always evolves around food. It just does. Like, you know, for a lot of years, I wanted to do what you do. You know, you're an amazing journalist. You've worked so, so long in this business. And I wanted to sort of take the path of, you know, doing some food segments on national programs like yours and hopefully move into, like, food stories, and then hopefully other kinds of stories. Nobody wants me to do that.

They don't. Right. I mean, they don't want me to do it. Could I do it? I don't know. But they don't want me to do it, and I get it. Like, I've created this lane for myself, and I've been batted down to stay in my lane, and that's okay.

And I'll try to be the best at that. But couldn't you create your own lane in that way? I mean, you've got enough behind you now that if you want to go see the world with food or however you did it, you could do that. Yeah, but again, with food. It's got to have food because, you know, in some ways I've, created, I pigeonholed myself in some ways. You know, it's almost like, it's almost like the actor that has been on the same show for 15 years,

and then the show's over and they want to do something else. And like, we only think of you like that. People only think of me as being connected to food. And so that's okay. I just, it just took me a minute to realize that, that I'm not just able to do whatever I feel like doing. I have to have food connected to me. No matter what I do, no matter what I talk about. about I have to have a steak in my back pocket.

You know, that actor, though, also says, I wouldn't trade those 15 seasons on that show for anything. Yeah, of course. That's what got me where I am. Of course. But I would like you to see me in a different way now. But if you talk a bunch of actors and actresses, they'll tell you that even if they're successful

in this one particular role that everybody knows them, they're always looking to try to do something else. Right. Right. Absolutely. And it's hard for them to break out of that character. You mentioned something in an interview. It's been a long time in like 10 years

that you might look at politics. Is that still interesting to you? No. What changed? Politics. I'm not interested. I'm a doer. And I just want everybody to do their job.

I mean, seriously. Whether it's my staff or it's other people who have been either elected or asked to do something in that field. that field. I'll tell you where that came from, which was that, you know, we talked about the fact that I'm a native New Yorker. I love New York as much as anybody. And I always have thought about trying to give my time to public service in a New York state of mind. And, but I, you know, I've been on some boards and things like that in, you know, in like the New York Racing Association and the Breeders Cup and stuff like that, which I've, I've, I've, I've, you know, I've, now left. I just, it's not the way I function. It's, it's, um, I don't want to deal with bureaucracy.

I just don't. Then don't get into politics. I can't. I'm not doing it. I know. You asked me the question. Listen, if you asked me 10 years ago, I would have said yes. Yeah. But, um, the closer I got to even thinking about it, the more I realized that I don't think I can be effective. And if I can't be effective, why try? I know I can't. I just, I don't, I don't know. I'm really good at organizing my teams and my

staffs. But, you know, I just, I just don't think, I don't think I have it. Does the ugliness of politics contribute to that too? Digging through your life, following you through every restaurant you ever worked in and talking to people? Absolutely. Absolutely. And also,

the bottom line is that anybody can say whatever They feel like saying at this point and skew it in a way. And then you have to prove that it's not true. You know, so like, I'm okay staying out of politics. I'm looking forward to an easier life than that for sure. Okay, so we've established this pause is not pausing for politics. It's not.

Okay, we can push that one aside. Yes, exactly. I'm gonna run this, I'm gonna run Starbucks instead. There you go. That's an easy gig, right? Exactly. I gotta ask you about Anthony Bourdain, shocker, as we sit here was just a few days ago. less than a week ago that he took his own life in France.

What did you think when you heard the news? Very sad. My daughter actually told me. I was in my car and Sophie called me and said, did you hear about Anthony Bordana? I said, no, what? And she told me what happened. Look, I'll preface it by saying Anthony and I were,

we were not close friends at all. Obviously, we knew each other a little bit. It's very sad. My last memory of Anthony, interestingly enough, was at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami. This is about five years ago. Last time I had really talked to him. I'd seen him at a party here and there. And he was in the pool with his daughter.

And if you know anything about Anthony Bourdain's history, he was kind of a wild man when he was younger. He talks about that in all his books. And I remember walking by the pool in the Raleigh Hotel, and he was having sort of a private moment with his daughter just swimming in the pool. And I stopped and I said, hey, this feels a little different than what you, you know, back in the day. He's like, yeah, he's like, but this is a lot nicer. And so, you know, it was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news, you know, but it's

very sad. Now he's an example that you were talking about doing something else with your food of of taking that thing you're good at, which is making food and creating an entire universe around it. I'll tell you, I was a huge fan of his shows. They were so well done, so well produced, and you could tell that he felt it

when he was sitting at a table and wherever he was, anywhere in the world. And he really brought it to life. He created an amazing amount of awareness about all kinds of things, but through food. He used food as his vehicle. Right. Very smart.

To talk about culture through food. Thanks, man. Sure, my pleasure. Appreciate it. You got it. My thanks to Bobby for a great conversation and for opening up his beautiful home out in the Hamptons to us for the day.

You can catch season 14 of Food Network Star at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central on the Food Network that's on Sundays. Thanks, as always, to all of you for listening. to hear all of the extended conversations with my guests, make sure you click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And as always, you can tune in to Sunday today,

every Sunday on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. Hope you have a great 4th of July. We'll see you next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.