The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Michelin Star Chef: Curtis Duffy | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Billy Corgan sits down with world-renowned chef Curtis Duffy to explore the extraordinary journey behind his Michelin-starred career. From a childhood marked by tragedy to becoming one of America’s most celebrated culinary artists, Duffy opens up about how loss shaped his drive, creativity, and obsession with excellence. They dive into the discipline of the kitchen, the meaning of artistry, the pressure of perfection, and what it truly takes to be great at something. Duffy shares why there are no off days in his kitchen, and how each season feels like writing a new record. Subscribe to the Magnificent Others YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I was shameful of my story. I didn't tell hardly anybody through my 30 years of that. I didn't tell anybody. I mean, it was very secretive. I was ashamed of it. Yeah. I mean, am I wrong in thinking you must have replayed that day in your head like a thousand times? Almost every day in my life.

Because you're an artist in my eyes. How does it not affect your artistry? I always struggle with the idea of had it not happened, would I be where I am today? And I can't say that I would be. I don't know if I would be. I think everything that happens in life is usually for a reason, and it does go on to shape who you are today. Okay, welcome.

Thank you very much for being here. This special edition, we're in my tea house in Highland Park, Illinois, to talk all things, Curtis. Excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you. This is kind of a weird preamble, but I think it's sort of necessary

because normally when I look at somebody's life and one of the reasons I started the show is I love talking about people who are great at what they do and I just want to sort of explore that, you know, and in the case of food, I mean, I'm totally a punter. I don't understand the world at all. My wife is a foodie and, you know, my wife. But for me, it's all kind of goes above my head.

You know, the classic, somebody comes to the table, you know, the mushrooms are sourced from here and I'm just like, I don't know. Yeah, you're lost. Yeah. But, you know, you have this, you know, this kind of unspeakable tragedy in the early part of your life that on, on the surface level, doesn't have any direct correlation to your work, your life's work. But, of course, it must have some connectivity. And we have similar childhood. Sure.

And in my life, I mean, my childhood became such a part of my work. And it was part of what attracted people to me because I was being so open about things that most people didn't talk about. And of course, you've written this book, Fireproof, which is out. And, you know, of course, you talk about it in there. But I found myself struggling and preparing to talk to you as like, how do you put these two pieces together? Sure.

So the reason I sort of started there is not that I don't want to talk about. those things. But I'm, I'm, I'm very interested in your creative life. And yet over here in the corner, but you have been transparent about it, is this terrible tragedy. Sure. So, um, so at least maybe by saying that it gives some context for why I'm asking what I'm asking. So I'm curious, um, you're Midwestern person, Ohio. Absolutely. And you seem to bounce between Colorado and Ohio. Um, what was your, I guess what was your cultural life like when you were young? I mean, what world do you remember growing up in?

Do you know, I guess for me, like my happiest moments were in Colorado. Okay. I spent my first 13 years in Colorado Springs. And for me, like, those were the happiest moments of my life. We had, we were surrounded by family all the time. I think my father was in a really good place there mentally. My mother as well. I mean, there was certain moments.

Sure, but was it the, was it the, I don't know, you know, for us in Chicago, like, you know, Colorado sounds like, you know, mountains in nature. Yeah. But you probably know you grew up in like a normal suburb, but I'm saying was it was it the outdoor life? Was it Colorado back then wasn't as populous? You grew up, you know, you're born in mid-75, right? 75. I was born in 75. Yeah.

So the world you grew up in was like, you know, the Reagan 80s. Sure. You know, America by and large was considered a safe place. The neighborhoods were safe. At least my neighborhood, I mean, we had friends. We were out till 10, 11 o'clock at night playing hide and seek. So what you're thinking of that, is it just that kind of romantic notion of what America was like back then? Yeah.

It's kind of what you wish you had for your children today because we fear of just letting them out the front door in this day. And back then, I mean, we ran the neighborhood. We walked to and from school. My parents were always working. So what around you was attractive? Was it music? Was it art? Was it somebody, you know, that made great food? Like what first registered in your mind as culture?

I think friends more than anything, just being able to stay over at somebody's house and play video games. Well, we didn't have video games at my house, but on the weekends I can play video games somewhere else. And we could run the neighborhood. We could ride bicycles and do things like that. That was my upbringing. And for me, that was life.

That's what it was. It was skiing in the wintertime because the mountains, of course, were right there. And then summertime was riding bicycles and just having a blast. And I know you love music. So what's your musical reflection of that time? My dad playing his stereo, big real-to-reel system. Okay. Pioneer.

sandsui speakers and woodcase. You love music then because you only went there if you love music, right? Yeah, yeah. And what would you have been listening to in the house? CCR, Quiet Riot, ACDC. Okay. So like a classic? Classic, yeah.

Some Alabama, actually. Okay, great band. Oak Ridge Boys, if we're going a little country. Some Johnny Cash, yeah, sure. So, and to sort of just talk about the elephant in the room, the unspeakable tragedy is you're 819. and we don't have to go too deep into it, but it sort of bears reflection.

It's like, to me, it's like in thinking about it, and I don't know what it's like to go through that, but it's like a shadow on the wall. It's always there. And, of course, by you being public about it, it becomes part of your life story. Your father kills your stepmother, but she was the woman that raised you.

Correct. So in your mind, it's your mother. That is my mother. There's really not, there's no distinction there. Correct. Technically not your birth mother. Right. And so was your life before that, I hear you sort of like, let's call it classic middle class life,

was your life before that, would you classify this as happy, but there were sort of things that were going on? Or was it a situation that worsened over time? I think once we moved to Ohio, that would have put me around the age of 13, sixth grade. When we moved to Ohio, that's, I think when I started noticing it more. Was it there and then you started noticing it or did something change? Well, it changed in a way the lifestyle changed drastically. Like I said, like Colorado, we seemed to, it was a five-bedroom house, a decent yard. I didn't feel like we struggled for many of anything, actually.

And maybe that's just my naivety being so young as a child. But when I got to the age of 13 and we moved to Ohio is when I felt like this is, we're not in Kansas anymore. Was there an economic decision behind moving? Yeah, my father, my grandfather owned a tire retread shop called, I think it was a big old tires, and they retreaded tires. And my father ran the business when my grandfather retired and shut the business down. So left my father with now searching for a job.

So decided to move back, well, and maybe move to Ohio where my uncle was, his brother. and so there was a closer family knit there. Yeah. So that's the reason why we moved back. So you're 13, you're conscious of this, the shift in the family fortunes maybe? Immediately, immediately. It was like overnight, like one moment to the next. Did you start working in kitchens around 14?

Is that accurate? Yeah, about 14 years old. And this is country club, right? Well, at this time, 14 years old, I was still in the small little town and I can only wash dishes. you know, I could only walk there. So I spent, you know, my evenings washing dishes in a small diner for $15 a day. Were you immediately attracted to the atmosphere of a kitchen? Not immediately.

When the owner, who happened to be the chef owner of the diner, he allowed me to start cooking. He allowed me to start peeling potatoes and things like that. That's cool, right? And, yeah, as a young guy, you're like, anything to do from get away from doing dishes, I'll do whatever you want me to do. And so that stuff became very fun for me. And I started making small challenges with myself, like peeling the cooked potato, uh, trying to hold the skin in its entirety without disrupting it. And yeah, all these silly games. Had you had an interest in food before that? Never. I mean, that's funny. Yeah. And it is because later,

later, later down the road when when I tell my family that I want to be a chef, when I realize that this is what I want to do, they all kind of looked at me like, are you crazy? Because, Because I would sit at the dinner table like this for hours and hours and hours and hours and wouldn't eat the meal. And there was two ways of either finish what you have on the plate or go to bed hungry. Was it you didn't like what was being? Okay. Yeah.

I didn't like food. That was just wasn't interested in it. You see, was it a consequence maybe of that you were born with a sophisticated palette? No. I'd like to think that I would probably err on the side. It was my mom. I look back, I feel like I was a music snobbit very young. Whatever gift I had for music voiced itself very early on a snobbery about music.

Oh, maybe I never looked at it that way. I've always looked at it as like maybe my mom wasn't the best cook. Yeah. And rightfully so, she does. But you must have a, I mean, maybe I'm guessing, but I mean, to do what you do, you must have a pretty sophisticated palate. Yeah, I think so. Like a sensitivity.

Yeah. So you're working in kitchens, but, at that point, do you have any sense that there's a, there's a professional life? You're just like a normal kid. You're making some money and. Yeah, making money. At that point, I knew, like, I wanted to, I wanted more than what we had. I wanted more, like, this was not my lifestyle. This was not where I wanted to be in 10 years. And I'm 14, I'm like, so I'm taking that $15 a day and just saving it, saving it, saving it, saving it, saving it. Because at some point, I want to, you know, buy a motorcycle to deliver the newspapers quicker because I also had a paper route, you know,

eventually buy a car because that's going to get me further away. Especially in a cold weather state. Yeah. No car, no. No, exactly. No game. So that's where I was at. And, you know, I never really thought that this was what I was going to do.

Was there any foreshadowing in the family dynamics, say, between, you know, this kind of, because this tragedy happened when you were 19, because you must have at times reflected back. say, were there signs, did I see things? Or when your father did kill your mother, did it seem to come out of nowhere? It didn't come out of nowhere. The irony of it, like in hindsight with most things, that stereo system, if we back up to that stereo system,

that was like his love. I mean, it was a beautiful system. And we had to clean it on Saturday, but to clean it, we weren't allowed to touch it. So clean it, but don't touch it in a weird way of joking about it. Like, don't screw it up. Okay, right. Don't screw it up.

Don't push the buttons. Everything set to where they're supposed to be at. He gave me that system. And the irony of it is it was right towards the very end of his life. He started giving things away. And he helped me move it into my first apartment. And it was just like, for me, like, I was like very excited. Yeah.

I got to jam this amazing system out for the first time. It's certainly not my area expertise, but there is some sense that when people are thinking about taking their own life, they start giving stuff away. Yeah. That is one of the signs. Not knowing that then, I certainly look back at it. He gave me a lot of stuff towards the end. And that was his pride and joy to just give it away. Yeah.

He's like, I don't need it anymore. What do you? So, and you can go, like I said, I'm not trying to jump around this story because, like I said, it's to me, and looking at your life, it casts this sort of shadow. And that's not to put the shadow on you. It's just like, how does it not? Yeah. You know, the circumstance you get called, there's a hostage situation. The cops pick you up. You don't really totally know what's going on. Right.

They take you to a house down the road. and this whole scene plays out. I mean, am I wrong in thinking you must have replayed that day in your head like a thousand times? Almost every day in my life. Yeah. Do you look back and think, I could have done this, I should have done that? It's such an extreme circumstance. I think that's why I even struggle for what the right question is, you know?

You know, the struggle is could I have done something? And the answer is no, I couldn't have. But it took a long time to come to those terms. Because I do know, like, he was asking to speak with me. But in those situations, he also had to give something up to get what he needed or what he wanted, what he was requesting, to have a conversation with me or to even get a pack of cigarettes from them. There was like, you've got to give something else up. And he had nothing else to give up other than to give my. mother to them. So there was no negotiating at all. It was just really a standoff. So yeah, I outplay

that in my brain a lot almost probably every day, I would think. And then after this happens, I mean, sometimes I think about when people go through an extreme circumstance, I was trying to think like, what happens the next day when you wake up? And that, you know, it's not a dream, right? It's like, this is a reality. And now I have to sort through. You have siblings. You have relatives you have now this is your story too right i mean here we are you know 30 years later and we're talking about it we're talking about it's it's part of your life yeah yeah it is a weird wake up the next day moment because um in an instant it's gone everything that you knew before the first 18 19 years of my life just gone like does it make you question the happy times i think it makes me

um try to embrace the happy times more and and and and be thankful for those moments because the darker times always outshadow the happier times. I have to dig deep to find those happy moments. And the harder ones come up so easily. Yeah. And did you, were you able to eventually make peace with it all or? Yeah. Well, I think part of writing this book was the main reason why I wanted to write the book with Jeremy because I knew it was going to, I knew I needed to deal with it.

Although I've dealt with a lot of, I spent 30 years of trying to. to figure out all the emotions that I had towards my father, being okay with what he did. And, you know, and then trying to justify and smooth everything out so I can live a normal life and not be shadowing. And then being a parent yourself. Yeah, and how not to bring those things into my life, my children. How old are your kids? 19 and 16.

I knew they were. Yeah. How do you at some point sit them down and say, by the way, this is part of our family story. I had to wait until they were old enough to I felt they could understand it and also happened to release a documentary of my life called For Grace.

And I didn't want my children to either somehow find it on Netflix or one of their classmates see it and go, hey, your dad. Yeah. So I had to hear it from you. I wanted them to hear it from me. It was very important.

So we sat down. and I tried to make the environment as comfortable as possible. We just pillows on the bed and just made it just a loving environment and just kind of walked down the path of what it was. What was their reaction? You know, I think, you know, they were crying and we were all crying and we were trying to, you know, I was trying to make it as happy as possible. I was trying not to cry because I didn't want them to feel.

I was trying to tell them that I was okay with what had happened. Sure. And that they needed to be okay with it. but it was important for them to understand, you know, where their grandfather and their grandmother are. And, you know, they're not present in their life. Yeah. So, and thank you for being open to talk about that, you know? Absolutely, yeah.

Was it hard in writing the book to go into detail? You know, it's one thing to sort of talk about it in the context like this, but like to actually sort of spell it out because it is a story like any other. Yeah, well, with Jeremy, you know, because we're such great friends, it made it the process. Jeremy's the ghost writer or is he listed? He's the actual writer. I should be labeled as the ghost writer because I didn't actually write it. It was hours and hours of conversation like this.

Yeah, but it's in your voice. It's in my voice, yeah. And, you know, having such a good friend be able to tell your story made me be able to tell my story with ease, with comfort, with the ability to, to be really like an open book and with no judgment, zero judgment from his side. And I was always worried about, you know, I was shameful of my story. I didn't tell hardly anybody through my 30 years of that. I didn't tell anybody. I mean, it was very secretive.

I was ashamed of it. Yeah. And I had to, until grace came out, I just kind of buried it. Yeah. And what's weird about something like that, weird is not the right word. But unfortunate is, I can't remember what. what the exact circumstance was, but it was one of the first times that I met you in life. And somebody said, they basically sort of, oh, you should know this thing about him.

So before I even knew you as a person, it becomes this like thing, you know, curiosity is not the right word. But it's like, it's like, oh, and by the way. Yeah. You know, and I think as humans, you know, if you have any heart, you feel empathy, but then you don't really know what to do with that. Absolutely right. And that's why I said in preparing to talk to you,

in this context, it's like, how do we, how do I, how do we, how do we, how do we sort of put it in context? Because really what I'm interested in is your, is your great gift with food, you know. Yeah. But I can't, because you're an artist in my eyes, how does it not affect your artistry? Yeah. Well, I honestly, you know, I struggled with that for a long time. Can you slow that down a little bit and explain how that works? So I had a great conversation with the New York Times.

Kim Severson, and she interviewed me a few weeks ago, and she gave me to the answer that I was looking for for 30 years as to, you know, this tragedy in my life, I always struggle with the idea of had it not happened, would I be where I am today? And I can't say that I would be. I don't know if I would be. I think everything that happens in life is usually for a reason,

and it does go on to shape who you are today. Yeah. And if my parents were still alive, I don't know if I'd be living in Chicago. I don't know if I'd have the drive that I have. I don't know if, you know, if I'd be so successful. And she said, you know, that was their last gift to you. And I never thought of it that way. And it was something that I was looking for.

I was looking for the reason. So I think all that energy, I kind of just took what happened and shifted it and full bore focused into my art. So it's like a singular focus? Is that inaccurate way to? Was it the way of, it's like I got all this stuff I've got to sort through if I can just focus on one thing. Yeah. Yeah, because I didn't want to be alone and I didn't want to go home at night.

and I was working and I was already, I already knew I wanted to be a shop. What better place than a busy kitchen, right? Yeah, exactly. So when everybody went home, I didn't want to go home. Because going home meant I had to face reality. Wow. And that's happy. And that's hard.

So why not just stay and do what I love to do? So let's start creating things. That's where my creative process started was with no one around. So walk me through this point of, okay, it's, the next day, I got to go on with my life here. And, you know, you're still a very young person. And then how do we end up at Charlie Trotter's, like, you know, four or five years later? And, you know, in this community of Chicago, Charlie Trotter is like, he's the god.

Yeah. Legend. Beyond legend. Food god. Yeah. That was me making a decision to continue with college and continuing what I started. I've always been a man of my word. And I was going to do what I started.

set out to do and I was going to finish what I want once I, once I started, I was going to finish it. Yeah. So I had another year or so left of college and my focus just became all food, all everything, everything about food. Like an obsessive. Obsessive. And then, you know, of course, this is right around the time when the internet was out, starting to come out. And then every single day I would obsessively look up Charlie Trotter to see like new menu ideas, new menu changes. And my friend at the time, Are you here, that you're here in... No, I'm still in Ohio at this point. Oh, and he's still in Ohio.

You're looking him up. Wow. Finishing college. At this point, yeah, I had already spent two weeks at his restaurant, and I knew exact, I knew this is where I wanted to be. What was it about what he was doing that registered in your mind is like a form of the future? Does that make sense of the way, Matt's? Yeah. It was, for me, it was like the discipline level that was in that kitchen.

the talent of each cook, the precision, the quality of ingredients, just stylistic. If you don't mind a compliment, because I've been in your kitchen a few times. I'm always impressed. Maybe it's the rock star problem, but as someone who's been in the music business, I tend to look at people's worlds not so much with who they are, but who's around them.

Yes. And I'm always impressed that you surround yourself with incredible talent. Right. So I always see that as a compliment to you because if you were insecure, you'd be the king and everybody else would kind of down here. And I'm sure you've seen those kitchens. Absolutely. Yeah. I've been in those kitchens before. Okay. Again, I don't know about that world. It's only an observation. Yeah. But I'm always impressed by the level of talent that every time I've been to your kitchen, it's like you got like an A-team in there with you. Yeah, it's important. And you can feel that, again, not my world, but I can feel that. that pride of ownership in your kitchen. Sure. So whatever you're bringing, they feel that. Yeah. And they trust you to take them there because everybody's on their own journey.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. So anyways, but I'm saying it's cool because I've seen it on the other side. That was your inspiration. I've witnessed it. That's great. That's amazing to hear.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if there's a question there. Yeah, no. No, I don't think there was. But, so anyway, so. But how do we, how do you end up working?

with Charlie Trotter, that whole. So again, in this town, it's like that's up until kind of, let's call it, your generation brought in this other way of looking at restauranting. Yeah. The restaurateurs and, you know, you know, the Melmans are obviously, you know, huge. Yeah. Huge here and have a ton of influence in this community.

And we do love our food, as you know, you're in Chicago. Of course. People always say, why do you think Chicago is such a food town? I guess we got nothing to do for seven. We're stuck inside. How we got to do is eat and watch football. That's it. That's it.

So how do you kind of work your way into that world? So when I was in Ohio, still in college, my good friend who also was a chef at the time, Regan Coyvisto, Rigan said, you know, you're obsessed with this guy. Why don't you go work for him? And I'm like, I don't even know how to get to the guy. Yeah. They, you know, I've messaged them. And there's got to be like, I don't know. got to be programs and things by which people would go to, right, apprentice or whatever.

Yeah. And you're in Ohio. And I'm in Ohio. So he's like, you have a phone number? I said, yeah, I've got it off their website. He calls him. And I was just like, oh, my God, what the hell just happened? He called him and he got the right person on the phone and said, here's what you have to do. You have to come and spend a week at the restaurant, work for free where they call it a stage. and, you know, that gives us an opportunity to see who you are, how you fit in with the team, and see if this is where you want to work. So it's kind of a double way of interviewing. My interview, their interview as well.

And I went there, I ended up spending two weeks there. I was in total love with it, came back to Columbus, finished school, and the moment I graduated, I moved to Chicago. That's a cool story. It's like, I had to be here. So I spent the next three and a half years there, a little over three. years there. Yeah. Did you have a sense then that, okay, this is what I want to do? I mean, you must it, right? You're, you're, you're, yeah, I wanted every, I wanted to know everything about that

restaurant. I spent a year and a half in the front of the house. I spent, really, the other time in the kitchen. I wanted to know everything. I spent time answering the phones, taking reservations. I wanted to know everything. If this restaurant is one of the best restaurants in the country, if not the world, I want to, that's what I want. I want to know everything about it. So I inserted myself in all these positions. That was so important. It was so, so important. So this isn't my naivete.

What do you guys call, you know, like people ask me coming to Chicago, where should I go eat? Yeah. And I always recommend that they come to you. And, but I never know what to call it. And, you know, so if it's one punter talking to another punter, it's like, they do the 20 course. Yeah, tasting menu. Yeah. But what do you guys call it?

I mean, we are a tasting menu. I mean, I would say tasting. Like in the early days of alternative music, no one knew what to call it. Yeah. We call it, I mean, there's some people call it a digestation menu. Okay. A restaurant. It's a tasting menu restaurant, format, whatever you want to call it.

We just say, you know, we are a tasting menu format restaurant. We don't do a la carte. Basically, you sit down and we give you the experience. you don't have any other alternatives. Was there a lot of historical anteceded for that? Because it seemed around the time you rose and some of your original partners kind of rose in the international, not just just Chicago restaurant scene, but in the international scene. And I started hearing about it from all the fancy people here that like to spend money.

But point is, is suddenly it seemed like kind of appear out of nowhere. Charlie introduced it. So Charlie opened his restaurant in 87, and I say he introduced it. I think he introduced it to the Midwest. There was a couple of restaurants in the West Coast that were doing it, and of course, in the East as well in New York. But Charlie introduced it. He opened with an Alicart menu, and then he started shifting it to go on,

okay, you pick one, two, and three courses. And then it became a tasty menu only, but then it evolved into like three or four different menus. So you had what they called the grand menu at the time. Then they had the vegetable menu. Sure. Then they had the kitchen table menu. And then you could riff off of all those

and kind of just do your own thing. But your crew seemed to bring in this other thing. And I'm struggling for the right words because I'm not a foodie per se. But it was a more radical way out. You know, the classic thing somebody would say, and I'm not saying that you coming out of one of your restaurants. It would be like, I had the bubblegum, sushi.

Yeah, the more like avant-garde style, like molecular. It became a talking thing in the community. Yeah, the molecular movement around 2000, 2003. Okay, so that aside, I think up in that time frame. Yeah, that was, I had just left Charlie's at the later end of 2003. And I moved to a restaurant called Trio in Evanston. That's where I met, Gran Atkins. I ate there back in the day.

Yeah, so Gran Atkins was the chef there, and he was recently from the French laundry. And he was very much into the molecular movement that was. coming out of Spain at the time and the Faron-Adria brothers were the leading force in that whole movement of molecular astronomy. What was your first reaction to that kind of movement? What was your first kind of intuitive take on it? It was super interesting. I mean, it's something we had never seen before and it opened up so many possibilities of creativeness and very thought-provoking dishes. This is totally like, again, a naive to take question. But like, when when you're sourcing like this mushroom from this place like how do you like how do you find

that information like is it is there like talk among chefs like oh there's this new place that we're getting mushrooms right yeah like what's the back channel version of how you figure that out are people from food distribution companies coming to you and saying check this out because they know you're kind of kind of lead the market right so it's a little little bit of both, actually. It's, um, it's chef talk. It's purveyors or farmers coming to the restaurant, but, sorry, when you said chef talk, it's like, because, you know, what rock people talk, it's just a bunch of shit talk with some information. Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's like, I'm you talking to my buddy. I just suddenly saw a bunch of chefs talking. So, yeah,

I just saw a vision. Well, majority of it is. And then there's like, oh, yeah, by the way, yeah, this guy sells me, uh, amazing quail. So, um, it starts that way, but it also for me, like, it's always been very important about the relationships, relationships with the people and the connection I have with the farmers. Is it a trust thing that you build up over time? Like, you know, they're not going to give you something that's inferior. Right. Because if you're online and you're building these intense menus with, I mean, in a tasting menu, I mean, how many moving parts do you have in that? I mean, you have 15 courses, each one of those courses of anywhere from five to 10 different ingredients. So that makes sense to me. So if you, if you're relying on this person,

and for your mushrooms. Yeah. They can't mess with you because you can't be caught out. Not at all. And you, people, with your restaurant, how people book out like six months. Three months out, yeah, three months out. But yeah, you're right. It's, it is the connection.

So the farmer, it is having that relationship, that deep relationship. I mean, I have, I was with Farmer Lee. I've been buying from him since 94. And these are great relationships because he's always going to give me the best product. but then when he has the neighbor has rhubarb in height of the season, he's saying we have rhubarb. This lady down the street has the most amazing rhubarb. How many pounds do you want?

So it's spider webs out over time through all these different people and you just start connecting the dots. And not every year that we buy from the same farmers and foragers, you know, we spread it out. We have, I mean, we have 200 plus contacts of, That's what I'm saying. People we get food from. Yeah.

It's intense. But it starts with the relationship. It's so important. I know it's not this simple, but when I've been in your kitchen, usually at the end of a great meal, and you've got all that activity and all those people, how do you even begin to build those teams? Is it the same thing? It's just, is it word of mouth, people you trust, he came or she came from this school?

Like, how do you begin to build those teams at peak? Sometimes they can come through that avenue, but most of the time it is people arriving at the back door or sending their resume, although we don't really look at the resumes that much. It starts with that moment of having them stashed at the restaurant. Spend a week or a few days with us at least. You're sensitive to that because that was you. Yeah. And it's so important because it is a great way to interview somebody. Because if you think of like, you know, I can try to relate this to you touring, like the first night,

The first week is great and you're like full energy. But by week two, week three, you're like slowly going downhill. And then by the end, like, you're kind of just over it. We kind of feel that way with someone who's coming to the kitchen. The first day, great. Second day, great. Third day, the hours are starting to hit them. The fourth day, the hours are really starting to hit them.

By day five, it's Saturday night, it's 2.30 in the morning. They got another hour worth of work. how passionate are they about it now you know you're really making the right point for me because sometimes people will focus on a musician's proficiency on their instrument which obviously is a huge part of the job of course but just as much as that conversation on the plane having a meal and catering it's that dynamic of the relationship that like i know you're going to give me your best right and if you have an off day, I don't suddenly have to start thinking, oh, where are we going? I just know you're just having an off day. You're having a bad day. There might be something going out at home. You really have to

trust that in the aggregate, that person's consistently going to try to show up. Absolutely. And give you their best. So that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. So part of that is also making sure that they can gel with the team, you know, can they communicate with others. Are there not just like this single person that can't work with others? When you jumped in your, with both feet into this, world and, you know, working with Grant, obviously, and then doing your own thing. Did you have a sense that your particular crowd was ushering in this kind of radical take? Was there any rebellion in it or was it was just like, this is where the market's going and this is what's exciting?

Was there a sense of a greater thing happening? Well, I always lead back to the community. What I think we just spoke about Chicago, you know, seven months out of the year, we're forced to be kind of indoors. We have such a great food community in the city that they allow the chefs to kind of do what they want to do. So if you have a voice and I call it my culinary voice, like I have something to say through my food, they allow me to do it. Just as they allow you to do your music through your voice and your interpretation of what you think is great. I don't know if it's a working class thing or a Midwest thing, but I think the reason so many people end up being successful in New York or L.A.

that come out of Chicago, I think it has a lot to do with that sort of working class ethos, which is like, if you're going to commit, I'll kind of follow you. Yeah. I don't know what that is. Yeah. Something I almost have to think more about. Yeah.

And so that makes sense to me when you say that. Yeah, they do trust you and they do allow you to kind of do and be creative. And I don't, because I often say, like, I don't know if Grant would be successful with Alinea. I don't know if I would be successful with Ever and Grace. If I put it in New York or put it in L.A. I don't know if the cities would react the same. The clientele would act the same. Honestly, certainly here.

Absolutely. We're sitting in my, my cafe, and I get asked all the time, oh, you should put one of these in New York. And I'm like, I don't think it would work in New York. It's too insidery. Yeah, right. We basically build our own culture. And if you like it, great. And if you don't, okay, well, let go down the streets.

Yeah. It's, it's, I don't know what that is. I mean, us as Midwesters would almost have to sort of think it through a little more. Yeah, we'd have to get somebody else's opinion from outside. Psychologists, we'll put a, somebody else analyze both. Right. Well, you both had trauma in your life. That's why you went to the arts, yeah.

So, um, as you're building up these, these, you know, these incredible intense menus, is it still for you kind of a 20, 24-7 obsessive thing because that's what it feels like to me whenever, you know, I come see you, do what you do because there's so much detail. You know, I'm lucky enough. It's got to be a full-time job, right? It's, it is, but it's not, right? I, I'm sorry, I always go back to music because that's my second love in life. I think of it as like writing, being able to write a record four times a year.

Okay. And each season is a new record for me. So it's a buildup? So it is a buildup. It is kind of for me, it's like a place and time where I'm at in my life, where I'm at where we are seasonally in the menu. So if we're thinking of, you know, we're coming into the fall season now, things certainly get a lot darker and heavier because it gets cloudy and there's less sunshine in the city. Yes, I'm nodding my head. We go into this depression mode of like, oh, wintertime's coming upon us.

And we know what it's all. We just know we have to... Here comes the stew. Yeah, here we have to get deeper and darker flavors. So we started shifting that way, but... And that reflects everything on the menu. Okay. But is it...

Sorry, interrupt you, but is it, is it, is there, explain to me why it's a, why is it not six times a year? Or, you know, is there, is a, is it a host effector's economic? I can only do so much. I have to kind of... We do it four times a year specifically to stay within the season. Okay. Realistically, I think of seasonal, seasonality, 52 weeks out of the year because things go so fast. I see.

Yeah. If we, if we have to play in the boundaries of what the seasonal is, we stay in that three-month window. Okay. Here's our three-month window, the next three months. And if you prepare a menu for Paul, and do you still leave yourself room to tweak it as you go? Oh, yeah. Every day. Every day. So is it your own sense of it?

Is it customer feedback? How do you know, like, I got it, but not quite, and I need to. Yeah. I'm glad you asked that because I don't rely on any feedback from the guests. And I say this with the most gingerly approach. I don't really care. I don't. Take it or leave it.

There's a million restaurants out there. And I only say that because, and it doesn't come from an ego standpoint either. It comes from a place of my confidence level in the, and the food that I cook and knowing the behind story of what goes into making each dish, the time that it takes each dish before it makes it way to the menu. Yeah, okay. Sometimes we'll go down the whole path of creating a whole dish that we'll never see the menu at all, just because it's not good enough.

At least we don't think it is. When you say we? My chef to cuisine, sous chef, like the key people that I kind of depend on to help curate menu and help taste and, you know, it's not just all about my perspective. It's got to be their input as well because they're cooking it every night. I'm not there every single night. I saw this, I think it was a clip I was watching of you, but you said, you owe it to yourself to be great at something. How did you arrive at that? Like, is it, you know, like, I think it's important we ask successful people. Like, how did you get, how did you arrive at that as a thing? Like,

it sounds easy, right? Like, be great at something. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, you're a living testament like well i i think it's let me say what i'm sorry what's interesting to me about what you do is is it is a higher wire act and there's no like there's no off day there is no off day okay right we know what i mean by i do know like i can have a bad gig and i'll be probably all right yeah but in your world there is no five nights a week um we're gone you know 60 guests tonight at 60 people that are going to judge and have an opinion about the food and they all do yeah and they all do um i kind of last my train of thought but with that no it's just it's it's it's it's the grind of the gig like you were saying about when people come in like yeah they got to really want

that grind yeah they do long hours like what's a normal day for you on a work day um i mean my day's a little different than what their day would be their day would be noon to to noon to midnight 1 a.m. My day starts earlier because I'm just that guy. I get up early. But I don't, I'm not at the restaurant until one in the morning. Sure. I'm there until I feel the last.

But even like for your, I mean, a 12, 13 hour grind. That's a day. Yeah, that's consistently. That's, if anything less than that, I feel like it's, I didn't do any work. Yeah. And sometimes it's just catching up on emails. It's not necessarily like in the kitchen grinding ground.

What would you, for someone like me that doesn't really understand food culture, like what would you want people to understand about what is like when you have that kitchen? Like you said you got 60 guests, like the kitchen's flying, you got to be timed, everything's like, I mean, it's like clock in there.

Clockwork, yeah. What would you want people to understand about that? I guess maybe the better question would be, what is so important to you about that level of commitment to food that you want them to understand. Not just like, oh, it tastes good. That's the obvious. Yeah. I think because I've made it my life, I've made it who I am. And I think maybe that comes back to what I lost my train of thought on a few minutes ago, which was you have to, you owe it to yourself to be great at something. Okay. And, you know, nobody woke me up every morning and said, get up, go do this. You've got to be great at something.

And it just became this feeling, this energy within my brain of just like, nobody's going to ever push you to go and do something. If you're not practicing guitar every day, you're losing muscle memory. You're losing dexterity. You're losing everything. If you're not picking it up, if you're not practicing that. But no one's pushing you to do that. Yeah.

But what do you want people to understand? Like, for me, it's. a curiosity because I'm not a gourmand, you know what I mean? I'm, I mean, I'm just as happy to eat a good sandwich from my cafe. Yeah, and I am too. Right, and I know that about you. So I'm saying, what do you want people, sometimes I think it's a, and maybe this is a middle class Midwestern question, you know, it's like when I was a kid, we used to go to the Art Institute and you'd have somebody stand there and try to tell you why a painting was important. Oh, yeah. And your 10 years only go, I don't like the painting. Right. Yeah, it doesn't resonate with me. Right.

What is it that you want people to understand about that level of sophistication, that level of dedication to food? What is it about that you're so attracted to that you've made it your life's work to convert that to people? Right. Well, I love the beauty of simplicity. I love the beauty of a sandwich, but I also know, like, we can take that sandwich and elevate it in a hundred different ways tomorrow today. So it's like, is it looking for the most sublime experience? Is it a form of joy? Is it artistry all of the above?

Yeah, allowing the creativity, the artistry of what you chose to do to kind of shine through. And I guess it's also giving, showing somebody that you can do it. I guess maybe that's what it is. I don't know. Okay. I never thought about it that way. Sorry. I appear to ask you the tough question.

That's good. I like that. No, because it's, it's, because I find sometimes I'm, you know, I'm laboring away in a studio over stuff that I just know people don't care about. Yeah. But it's important to me. But I think it's those subtle things that make your stuff so great that no one else catches and you catch it and that's at the end of day you have to be happy. Here's what does that do for you?

Is it a sense of pride ownership? Yeah, 100%. I know it's like signing a painting at the end like this is my freaking painting. Like this is what I do. Right. I mean, if you don't get it, that's cool, but this is my painting. That's who I am. At the end of the day, when I say we all have to be great at something, like that's a,

representation of who you are. Your music is a representation of who you are. My, my food and cuisine is a representation of who I am every single day. And I want to be proud of it. I want to be, I want somebody else to be proud of it as well. And I want them to be excited about it. Yeah. I'm, I hate, I hate when people do this to me, so I'm apologizing it depends. The setup on the question is always, some people say, right? So, because in explaining at times, like I said, sometimes people will ask me, I've come to Chicago, I want to have a great, and I'll send them to you. And, but I try to explain it, you know, they get 25 courses, you know, whatever. And for people who don't get it, they kind of go,

I know. So not that you need to refute that kind of misunderstanding or criticism, but what would you want them to understand that they, maybe they wouldn't? What, what, what, what are they missing if they don't, if it doesn't resonate with them the first time, what are they missing? I think they're missing, you know, the restaurant is built on an experience. And, you know, the tasting menu format has been around for so many years that it's ironic that we still have to tell people, educate people on what it is. And when you say, oh, you're going to get 15, 20 courses, but they're only going to be this big and you're going to, everybody immediately thinks that they're going to leave hungry and there's. Yeah, somebody, I was talking to.

two the other day. We were talking about this style of menu, and they were making a joke about how they went to a hot dog stand afterwards because they were still hungry. That's the running joke. All going to get a piece on the way home. And I get it. There are a lot of restaurants out there that serve you 10 of these small little bites, and then you're like, okay, the perception of value is way out the door. And you leave angry and you leave stopping somewhere else to get something to eat. But it is an experience at the end of the day that's what we want you to enjoy not only, it doesn't necessarily have to be something you're celebrating or it doesn't have to be a birthday or an anniversary. You know, a lot of people just want to have those moments of having somebody take care of them.

Yeah. Not having to make any decisions. And that's what the tasting menu does for somebody where you walk into the restaurant. You don't have any choices to make that night other than do you want to drink or you not want to drink and sparkling or still. You want coffee at the end of your meal or you want tea. Those are really the only, the other thing else is you're kind of in our hands, and that's what, that's the beauty of it. So I'm not sure when this all started, and I'm sure there's always been a culture of the chef as rock star, but certainly in the last 20 to 30 years, it's turned to a gig. Yeah, it is.

You watched it as somebody from outside the system who came into the system, and now you've been sort of anointed into that. What's your sort of take on the general idea of the chef as rock star? thing. I mean, I don't, I don't, we're definitely not, we don't live the rock star lifestyle. We certainly don't make the money that the rock stars make. Um, you know, there, I, with the food network when it blew everything up, I think it educated a lot of people, um, that was not in the food business. And they started glamorizing the chef because they could make all this great stuff. Yeah. You know, um, so yeah, I was on both sides of it. I've been on both sides. it was never a thing.

Well, Julia Child was this. That was it for us as a kid. Yeah, somebody I watched. I remember Sarah at Live used to do the sketch for Stan Ackwright, maybe. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we had a handful of them, but there wasn't not like it is today.

Yeah. Now it's like every channel, every, everywhere you look. Do you roll your eyes at some of it? I'm not asking you to be critical to anybody, but you sort of go, oh, gosh, this is a big much. Yeah, a lot of it is. I'm not the biggest fan of, like, the game show the ones that kind of turn it into a reality series of because it's not it's not what we do every day

you know i know there's a level of commitment to the tv and they have to be entertained and so i get that side of it too so i'm less critical about that but for me like i've always taken my craft incredibly serious and you know you see the guys that are winning these competitions and then all sudden, like, they're put on this level of somebody who spent 30 years in the business grinding to get where I am to somebody who's just an overnight success. And so they miss everything in between. So I'm not, I know my fundamentals and my foundation are so much more honed. Yeah, I think that's maybe part of where it gets a little lost in translation to people when

you try to say, you should try this. because most people have never tried like that level of tasting menu. And I think that's part of it is the trendiness of some of that stuff, I think gets confused in their minds. Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's like, it's hard to separate. This is the serious version. Yeah, because it's like the TV personality is not really the chef.

Yeah. I'm not a TV personality, chef. I'm a chef chef. Have people tried to kind of bring you? I know you've done some television stuff, but I mean, given your place in the culture now, if people try to kind of franchise you or made you offers to kind of become that type of person. We've been down that road. And I've done a couple of ones that I felt were the more tasteful ones.

I'm just not going to go out and do whatever somebody offers me. I want to make sure it aligns with the brand and aligns with everything that I've worked towards to get where I am. Is that just strictly, I got to keep my quality control and this is my brand. Yeah. Yeah, that money is attractive. but it's, this is where my bread's butter. Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's, euphemism. Yeah, it is about the brand because I think once you start, uh,

diminishing the brand and it, and you start, can you define your brand at this point? I mean, it's, I think it's ultra luxury high end, um, re, ultra refined, yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, something, you know, I put myself out there. If I'm going to connect with other people, I want it on this, I feel what I feel is the same level of luxuriousness that. somebody would pay for a piece of jewelry or, you know. So for the punters in the room like myself,

walk me through the Michelin Star process. Because the one thing I do know, and I know you a bit personally, and I've met other people along the way, this is the big stress in the business. Is that fair to say? It is, yeah. Yeah, it is. I remember talking to somebody about how they'd lost a star or something.

Yeah. And they felt it was unfair. It is because. And how it hurt business. and so just for just somebody watching home that is interested in what we're talking about but doesn't have that sort of knowledge. Explain the Michelin Star sort of process

from somebody who actually lives it. So the process, they shop your restaurant the entire year, depending, I guess, from what I understand, depending on the level of where you're at, you're where restaurant is currently at, and if you're on the verge of achieving more, they'll shop your restaurant more.

And, you know, when I started out in the restaurant world, Michelin was not in the U.S. You know, they've been in the U.S. less than 20 years. And as a young cook, you look to Europe to the three Michelin stars. Like, that was the Pentechal chef, was somebody who obtained three Michelin stars because there was. Wasn't there some legend in, like, the south of France or something? Like this, I feel like I'm probably, there are a few legends.

There was somebody that was like three stars in some small town. Or is it? I'm just probably making that up. Yeah, they're, I mean, they are everywhere. They could be just one in a random town that has like 40 people in it. Yeah, I've heard those stories too. Yeah. And it becomes that destination place, right?

It becomes like, that's the whole idea where the Michelin came from. It's like, go to this place. But you have, as a restaurant tour, do you have to apply to get them to look at you for a Michelin start? Or they just open the doors? Do they, is it, do you know that people are coming in or is that sort of a mystery process? It is a mystery. That's their greatest thing that they say.

say is like we shop anonymously. It could be, could be in a two top. It could be a single diner. It could be buried in a six top, a Michelin inspector. It could be the whole tables of Michelin inspectors. You just don't know. Does that cause anybody any kind of like detective feel in the back? Yeah. And that's why the restaurants do some of the, what our restaurant do, does the homework on every guest and name that are in the reservations that night because we're trying to search out any weirdness. We call them spiders. We try to search out anybody that has a fake name.

You can't find anything on social from them. And it's something that we just pay closer attention to. They could be absolutely nobody, and they usually are. But they've done a good job of hiding their identity. And that's curious to us because, you know, that's what they're notorious for is, like, hiding their identity. All the food critics, they always incognito. Oh. So, yeah, gaining those stars is something you have to work towards.

And you have to work towards them every single year. So they're not there for you to keep. That's the thing, sorry, but that's the thing that's sort of fascinating to me is like, once you get, say, one mission on a star, you don't get to keep that. No. That's like, is it a year-to-year process? Yeah, every year they come back and shop yoga. Is there a day where it's like the stars are announced? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, my God. That's got to be a stressful way. It is stressful because you're like, you know, it's usually an over. for us in Chicago. And leading up to Chicago, you know they're shopping. Before when they were just printing the book, before now it's all digital. Before, there was kind of like you got a sense of like, all right, well, they got to get it in print.

They got to print the books. They got to ship all the books. So they're probably done shopping us now. We had that window of opportunity like, we got to be on our game. Yeah, I get you. Because now we can kind of relax a little bit. You know you're not shopping. We just received the award.

words, but so fascinating. It is, it is. Like, you have to be on every night, every table, we don't know. That's what I mean about the, you can't have a night off. It's hard to, yeah. That level of expectation. Yeah, it's the consistency that they're looking for. They want to know, like, they had a phenomenal meal tonight if they come back in three weeks or even tomorrow night, is it going to be the same experience? Or were we just, like, hitting everything tonight, you know? Yeah, because it's like a gig, right? Yeah. With all those moving people, There's just nights where it just doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't work.

It's just one of those things. I'm asking this semi-jokingly, but what's your feel on gourmand's? And I would define gourmand as people who are like super foodies. Yeah. Like my wife's a foodie snob. And you guys talk that language, whatever that is, you know? But like the gourmand is sort of a different thing. It is.

I have one friend who's a gourmand, and they will literally get on a plane, fly to another country, get out of train to go to some village and God knows where to eat at a Michelin Star restaurant. That is mind-boggling. It is. When we got our third star, it changed the entire dynamic of our dining room. It was all of a sudden it was everybody else but Chicagoans. Really? And they, most of them did not speak English. And they were coming in for one or two nights hitting one or two restaurants and disappearing again. Wow. And it was like that for years.

And just the gourmand's. It's those people that just travel, they want to see the newest three-star restaurant. They want to see. Are they a more demanding customer? Or in any ways, they're your greatest audience. How do you? I think they're a little bit of both.

I think the ones that are demanding are also some of our greatest clientele, because it keeps us, pushes us. It continues to make sure we're on top of thing. In my world, we call them super fans. Yeah. They're the ones that know the B-side. Exactly.

I played this song once in 2009. Right. Yeah, the same ones. Okay, this has just popped in my head. You've got to have people to find you on the street and they want to tell you how to book your menu. There's got to be that guy or girl. Am I imagining that? How to book the menu?

Or like, hey, you know, A to your restaurant. Yes. And you really should. Yes. There's got to be that. There's always somebody. There's always somebody. Even on a nightly basis, there's somebody that has like zero filters.

And it just comes out and you're just gone, okay. It's the weirdest thing. I know you've experienced it too. It's the weirdest feeling. Like, I'm sorry, but I spent 30 some years cooking food and you're talking. telling me. I had an experience the other day where somebody, I can't remember what it was.

It was like they started, oh, I was outside a train station somewhere in Europe, and I met a fan on the street, and they said, oh, I'm coming to your show tonight. And they said, can we take a picture? I took a picture. So as we're taking a picture, a guy goes, hey, are you going to play these songs tonight?

Wow. And I go, you know, as long as, as we're standing here, do you want to write out the set list? Right, exactly. You want to just write it for me? So bizarre. It is so bizarre. Yeah. Okay. Last little bit. And by your own admission, you know, what you're doing is this upper, upper tier of

food and service. And I think it's worth saying, as somebody is eaten at your restaurants many times. It's not just the food. The service is exemplary. Your staff is fantastic. and everyone's always so great. It's a wonderful experience, not just to dine, but to also be treated so well and looked after. I know you have, you know, during the pandemic, you opened your hamburger spot, but like what's your thought on,

does the super high-level food community have any duty to serve the masses? Does it make sense? Yeah. I think the interest, I can only speak for myself, I think the interest starts with I love being able to cook at that level. And I know it certainly hits a certain clientele. And it limits our restaurant, right?

But we're fortunate enough to be serving 60 people a night and doing what we do. But I also have this other interest that, yeah, I want something less demanding. So that gives me the opportunity to open places like Rev Burger or after. that is... Sorry, because for people would know, talk a little bit about the burger joint you opened during the pandemic, because I think that's a great story.

Yeah, we were in a place where most businesses were. We had just open ever. I mean, we were, well, pandemic hit, and we were in mid-construction still. So we had to figure out a way that, how are we going to get these doors open? Nobody knew what was going on.

Kept chugging along as if, you know, this was going to go away quick. Of course, it didn't. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Yeah, exactly. So then we were fortunate enough to open the doors and we got, I think, three months underneath our belt. And then the city came back and shut us back down, the entire city down. We had the same experience here.

So now we're sitting with, you know, 50 people and employees that now we're, by the way, responsible for. Tell me if I'm wrong. You got this A team around you. if you let them back out in the market, they're going to go find another job. They're gone. They're not going to go sit at home.

You're right. You're right. So how do we pay these guys? Because, yeah, we had a great amount of people we didn't want to lose. Like, we're just starting. I'm recalling one conversation we had once, but what really struck me about it was how much you cared to make sure that your employees stayed working.

Yeah. That was part of your inspiration. It wasn't just like, what am I going to do? You're like, I owe it to these people to kind of keep us together. Yeah, that's a heavy burden to sit on your shoulders when you're, you know, because a lot of them has, they have family and children. Yeah. They have to provide for themselves. And we just now open and we're only three months old and now we're closed.

What do we do? So we pivoted really quickly with this burger plate concept called Rev Burger. And we started serving them out of the restaurant because at the time, that's all we had. So night after night. Then it took off. Then it took off. It was phenomenal. I mean, we were selling out of burgers every single night.

It was awesome. And the idea was the greatest burger you've ever had, right? So I'm a vegan, so I'm jealous of all this. Yeah, I mean, it was, for me, it was like, I didn't want to, everybody kind of expected a fancy, oh, a chef burger and like, no. There's no way you're making a bad burger. I'm not doing that. Like, I just want, like, a great simple burger.

That's it. Yeah. And I don't even eat burgers that much. Yeah. It's like rarity that I will have a burger. But I felt like if you Google very quickly, like, the highest food quantity of people. people eat hamburgers and pizza. Wow, this is Chicago.

It's like a no-brainer. Like, let's do it. So we did the burger place, and then we finally got to a place where we moved that across the street into a building where we kind of did a standalone. I think it's just such a cool thing. Yeah. Okay. Last question.

If the early 2000s ushered in, at least in American food culture, this idea of the tasting menu and, you know, the rise of the chef rock star, what is the future? of food at that level. You must have another vision in there. Or is this top speed and, yes, you can change the food, but like, this is it? Does it make, is there, is there, is there a different thing that can be had? Yeah, there is. And are we 3D food?

I mean, like, what is the, what is the, what is the, what is the, what is the chef chat shit talk in the back, you know? Well, I think it's elevating the casual dining, you know, elevating the fast. food portion of it. Because I think what we see trending is always when we hit the lows of lows countrywide, worldwide, is that the ones that survive are the upper echelon because there's always money to be spent there. And then the fast food chains, they're always going to win because it's cheap. It's easy. The middle is vulnerable. The middle is always the most vulnerable because you don't really need to go out and have a nice meal. Well, and there's always going to be another. Italian joiner. Exactly. So those are the ones that suffer. So everybody is pushing for this fast casual

concept. I certainly would as a vegan, I certainly would love to see a higher end vegan fast food if that's any. Yeah. I mean, we do a version of that here at my cafe, but where it's not a chain, you know. Right. And I think something that's franchisable. Exactly right. And that's something I think is a heavy focus in worldwide, well, maybe not worldwide, but at least in the U.S. certainly seems doable that if you wanted to make a high quality, like with your hamburgers, if you were able to work it out where the quality level was consistent, I certainly for Middle America with how many people we have there eating poorly, if you get up the grade of what they're eating and, you know, the digestive part of it all where everybody would benefit and have a better

experience. Right. Because for many people, and because we grew up in that world, working class families, I mean, they just don't have the time sometimes, you know. The time or the, or the finances to do that. I mean, that's why I think a lot of them lean towards the fast food because you can feed your whole family for 20 bucks, but if you try to go to the grocery store, you're going to get three things. Yeah. At least now, it's like, if you try to get anything healthy for a family for $20, you're not even a loaf of bread and but there's no, not much more. I'm sorry, I'm just sticking out of it for a second. There's no, I don't know, is there like, it's like when you go to like Disney World and they do like futuristic food.

Like, is there any futuristic food that we should know about? Not like, not like dipping dots, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's got to be, I don't know. I think there's always subtlety. I saw this clip where you were, you were shaving tuna. Yeah. And then freezing it and putting it in like curly cues.

Is there some new technology that we? we should know about no we you know we we explored that in the early 2000s with the molecular side of it right that and i think people got tired of that so quickly like give me just real food like i don't want your smoking mirrors and and you're giving me something that's orange and you're calling it orange but it tastes like a granny smith i've had a few i've had a few of those yeah you know they're trying to trick your brain to eating beats it's fun but it's it's uh my opinion is someone who eats those types of places sometimes. It's fun, but it's like a one time.

Yeah, you're doing it one time and you're done. That's it. Like an amusement park ride. It's like, well, that was fun. Yeah. I don't need to go on the velociraptor six times in a row. It's just not happening. Okay, well, I need to do it.

I need to do my research. There's got to be something. I don't know if there is anything. I'm not sure. Well, you would know. That's kind of why I'm asking you. Yeah, I think it's a lot of the chefs are. Do people show up at your door and sort of pitch you on new technology?

They, they pitch their, ingredients on stuff that they're doing with technology. But does the guy show up with like a machine and like, this is the... No, I haven't had any of that in a long time. It's been a long time. There are new stuff that's out there that, you know, before like, what do you call those machines that spin super quick? Yeah.

In a doctor's office. Like they spin blood or whatever? Yeah, exactly. So five years ago, that wasn't available to a cook. Okay. or to a restaurant. But now they call it a Spenz-all. Okay.

And I guess it's been longer than five years, but it's a machine that you can take a puree, that's just called strawberry puree, and you put it in there, and then it just spins at RPM rate, and it extracts. So you can get a beautifully clear strawberry juice, water, whatever you want to call it. And then the pulp is also incredibly intense, but it's all red and... That sounds kind of cool. It's fun. I mean, there's a lot of applications that you can go.

down the different paths with it from the cocktail world to the food world and achieve a lot of different things. Like, you know, distillation is another one that people are messing with a lot now. What's distillation? I mean, you could literally take water and dirt and put it under vacuum. And as you heat it up, it starts to vaporize and then it goes through the same way they make alcohol, they distill it, and it drips down this clear water that tastes like dirt. I mean, that's a bad example, but any food you want in there, you can do all the hot peppers, right? You can do the habaneros and the stuff, and it'll get the flavor without the spice and the, oh, I guess.

So you can really get incredible flavor through things like that that are really, really, really concentrated that then the chef can add or to a drink or just little bits, things like that. I mean, those are always fun to introduce into the menu. All right. Well, I think we end on, it tastes like dirt. that stuff. Yeah. We talked to all this high flute and stuff. Thank you, Curtis. Thank you. I have pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you.