The Tim Ferriss Show - #156: Joshua Skenes -- Playing with Fire

Episode Date: April 30, 2016

"The answer is either yes or no. If it's 'no,' then I have to start over." - Joshua Skenes Joshua Skenes (IG: @jskenes) has become famous for his use of fire. As chef-owner of Saison in San Francisco (three Michelin stars), he has classical training and loves his high-end Japanese Nenohi knives, but nothing captures his imagination quite like the open flame. The back of his business card sports three words, stark on ivory stock: Play with fire. In this episode, we explore his obsessions: simplicity, food, and martial arts. We became friends during the collaboration of The 4-Hour Chef, and this was a long overdue catch-up. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Headspace, the world’s most popular meditation app (more than 4,000,000 users). It’s used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace’s free Take10 program — 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It’s like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive, and it’s had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free for a few days and see what I mean. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And this episode, I am speaking with a friend I hadn't caught up with in a very, very long time, Joshua Skeins. And that was my dog yawning in the background. Otherwise known as Josh Skeins, Skein, depending on who you ask, S-K-E-N-E-S, Instagram, at jskeins, Skeins, has become famous for his use of fire. As chef owner of Saison in San Francisco, which has three Michelin stars, one of the very first restaurants ever in San Francisco to receive three Michelin stars. He has classical training, which of course you would expect and loves his high-end Japanese Ninohi knives. Check them out. But nothing quite captures his imagination like the open flame. The back of his business card sports three words, stark on its ivory stock, play with fire. That's what the back of his business card says. And in this episode,

we explore three of his obsessions, simplicity, food, and the martial arts. We became friends first during collaboration for The 4-Hour Chef, where he taught me about all sorts of incredible things. And this was a long overdue catch-up over lots of different types of tea. So I hope you very much enjoy it. And if you have not yet checked out Five Bullet Friday, every Friday I sent out a free short email, five bullets of the coolest things that I have found, discovered, uncovered that week, then you should check it out. It is free and has a 70 plus percent open rate. So people are loving it. It is found at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash Friday, all spelled out fourhourworkweek.com forward slash Friday. And without further ado, here is

Joshua Skanes. Joshua, sir, welcome to the show. Thank you. It is. It has been so long since we actually hung out. Yeah. Yeah. It's been too long. Uh, and in fact, it's been probably, uh, what's five years really?

Probably that we've actually spent any sit down time together because the way we connected originally with the, when I was doing research for the four hour chef and visiting the, the older location of Saison, uh, brings back a lot of memories. And before I get to that though, I want to know, do you still have, what does the back of your business card currently say? Uh, I haven't picked up a business card in like four years. Um, so maybe i got the older version yeah no i think it used to i think the one you're talking about used to say play with fire play with fire play with fire was the old one that was some uh one of the guys who does his

name is jim ales really really you know amazing creative designer does the all the stuff for the monterey bay aquarium uh and he thought we should write play with fire on the back because that's what we do. And we're going to get into a number of different facets of our shared interests. Of course, we're sitting in my house. It's filled with Japanophile paraphernalia everywhere, saddles and armor and whatnot. Completely different from my house. Completely. But at the first location that I visited of your restaurant,

you had a wooden man right there. I would say, what, 15 feet from where you did... From where you seat people. Yeah, from where you seat people. We used to throw a blanket, like a little cashmere blanket, and I'd just cover it up from the guest. But then we started leaving it uncovered, and it's very interesting to see people's reactions. They loved it. So the martial arts and the cooking seem to go back a long way. What are your earliest

memories of either? Well, martial arts, I've been doing that for as long as i can stand so i don't i don't you know my earliest memories are you know like four years old in the backyard you know my friend's kicking me or something in the stomach i don't know we've got an argument uh but uh but in cooking it's kind of the same way i don't know you know there was really no um there's no direct uh path to um starting cooking you. I have pictures of me when I was probably four with a little chef's hat on, floppy Chef Boyardee hat, and mud pies. So it was always something that was maybe of interest to me. This is a super common question, I'm sure you know, and I can never answer it really properly because I just don't, I have no idea.

It was just always there. But it was ever present. I mean, in the sense that you grew up in Florida, correct? Yeah. I think it's just an interest, right? We're drawn to things as humans sometimes and that happened to be something I was drawn to. When were you formally introduced to a specific martial art uh i think i was uh six or so uh and that was a tong su do no kidding my hometown florida yeah yeah and i and

i started with tong su do and uh you know my parents got me into it i think i'd always been into it i'd express some desire and so uh and then I'd expressed some desire. And then from there, Taekwondo. And then from there, I went to Northern Chinese martial arts and went to Changchuan and the various things from there. So it was all – it just – I'd done it off and on and jumped around from martial arts to martial arts. So there's so many different ones that I toyed with. And the play with fire, to return to that for a second, how do you use fire in your restaurant? Because that was one of the things that really drew me to engaging with you when I was looking at sort of cooking as a metaphor for learning, but also life in a way, because you're exploring all these different senses.

And when I visited your restaurant, I brought a friend of mine, Jeffrey Zurofsky, who's run many different restaurants, worked as a line cook in many very well-known restaurants. And he said it was one of the, It could have been the intoxication of the 80s music that was being played at the time. It could have been the wine pairings. But he said it was one of his top, I think, three meals that he'd ever had. And the fire... Oh, we're not doing very good then. We got to get that up to the top. Yeah. That was a long time ago.

And the fire always struck me. How do you use fire and why do you use it so much? Well, I mean, how is every way, but why I think is, I mean, literally everything on the menu has been touched by fire somehow. And there are so many different ways that we've kind of explored cooking with fire. It's not all barbecue. It's not all grilled. It's all these kind of, you know, just ways that we've come up to cook with that are based on what the product needs, right? I think really great cooking is based on what the product needs. So if you get a fish in one day, it has a certain taste, a certain texture, a certain, you know, amount

of moisture inside. The next day it changes. So you have to change your cooking based on that. So, you know, we approach, you know, the fire the same way, you know, to really base it around finding great products, amazing products, kind of the best thing in local existence. And then employing a technique that makes those products better, right? But they still wind up as what they are. So that's just in taste in general, and that's temperature, texture, and flavor. So let's talk about just state of freshness for a second,

because this is also something that you made me think a lot about. For those people who hear what sound like coffee mugs, that's exactly what you're hearing. So Josh is armed with a glass or a bowl, glass or a bowl, I should say, a mug, a half glass, half bowl, a mug full of green tea and black tea. And I have some as well. But the question of freshness. So I was reading about, and I've never seen you do this, but Ikejime and going through a traditional Japanese butchering process from live fish to using pretty much every component of said fish, right? Which is an art form in and of itself people tend to assume fresh is always what you want how would you how would you educate them or what are your thoughts on the subject because you also just to i guess provide some of the punchline i mean age a lot of different types

of food yeah how do you think yeah i mean you know so you have to look at it like this every everything has its moment when it tastes its best. And so it really becomes about understanding products and then learning, you know, what period of time those products are best in. And so, you know, for some fish, like a big, you know, fatty fish, it's not right after you kill it. Well, let me take that back. It's actually a little complicated. It's one of two things generally for fish. Like as soon as you pull it out of the water, you kill it, you hack off a slice, and you eat it right then and there within the first 30 minutes.

It's kind of like hunting, right? Like you have a window. Like you can eat it within the first 30 minutes or so, and it's really great. It's still tender. It hasn't set into rigor mortis yet. Or you can really take it into its sweet spot, and that can be a week, a day, six months even for some things. It just really depends on the product. What about, I was going to say pigeons, but I guess I should say squab.

Do you age squab? Oh, yeah. You do, right? Yeah. I mean, it depends on the time of year. It depends on the diet. And that's the whole understanding of products things is you have to really kind of, you know, get a grip on what they're eating, you know, how much fat is in the meat. You know, did you – if you shot it and, you know, BB went through the breast, then you probably shouldn't age it.

You should probably eat it the next day or something. So there's a lot of factors that contribute. I would say two weeks on a squab or a pigeon, either one. And let's talk about the hunting for a second because we're sitting here and right to our or my left, you're right on this couch. There's a caribou mounted on the wall, which some people could actually see and might have seen on a show called Meat Eater. I actually went with a guy named Steve Rinella, who's also an avid cook. I love that show. He wouldn't consider himself a chef, but he's actually a really good cook. Yeah.

And he took me on my very first hunt, which was white-tailed deer in South Carolina. And I always grew up with a very negative association with hunting because on Long Island, where I grew up, you would find just beer cans littered all over the place and injured deer on our property and across the street and so on. There's just a lot of negligent hunting. But Steve showed me a very different side. On Long Island? No. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine the responsible denizens of Strong Island? And I'm sure there are great hunters on Long Island also. But the point being that Steve showed me a very different diametrically posed responsible approach and took me through the entire process of field dressing and whatnot. And my experience was with the whitetail deer, which I felt no guilt about whatsoever. And actually, this right here, and those who don't have a visual because you wouldn't, I'm picking up a tanned skin that's over the side of my couch. It's from that first deer.

So I want to make these into gloves. But we used everything. And we also have Chester, who is Joshua's dog here, a little Frenchie with a brindle coat. And his hunting collar. And his hunting collar. It's my bird dog. It's pretty vicious You gotta be careful sometimes When did you

Did you start hunting When you were really young Or did it come in Yeah I mean I did in the woods You know I never I never picked up a gun

To hunt Until I was Just a couple years ago And so Up until then When I Growing Well let's go back to florida growing up in

florida you know you're just surrounded by swamps and alligators and wildlife in general um you know there's you spend most of your time in the woods somewhere you know whether it's a park or or the woods or something so it's just you just can't help it i mean kids are especially being a kid there growing up there's like i think it's might be the most dangerous place on earth besides maybe Australia. And I mean, there are alligators, crocodiles. I think it may have the highest variety of poisonous snakes in America. Big water moccasins, huge rattlesnakes, alligator gar, you know, alligator gar, fish that look like alligator mouth that grow 10 feet long. huge rattlesnakes, alligator gar, you know, you know, alligator gar, fish that look like,

you know, alligator mouth that they grow 10 feet long, snapping turtles that can take your hand off. And just all kinds of other shit like giant spiders. It's, it's, you can't help but kind of be in the woods and hunt and, you know, rummage around and gather. And, and my dad was always big into that. So yeah, that's how I grew up. And. And he would take me over to this – he had a Native American friend of his named Silver Fox. And so there was always this ethos of using what you kill and hunting ethically or fishing or just doing anything ethically, right? Being in the woods, kind of being one with nature. So that's how I grew up. And the product side of that has always been a part of my cooking and part of my thought process.

And in fact, I went from that to the big city to being vegetarian to being – or pescatarian to vegetarian to vegan. And then finally back to hunting again after becoming chefs. What led you from – what led you out? Was there any particular moment that led you out of veganism or realization or i taste taste oh you know what you know what it was actually i just remember there so there was i i was training again uh i i i took a brief moment off of training when i went to school um and this was uh fci or Culinary Institute. It used to be called back then. It's now called the ICC or something. Right.

And back then it was a bunch of crazy old French dudes, some very well-known French chefs. In New York City. Yeah, in New York City. And so I went into school being kind of a vegetarian in culinary school. That's tough. And I remember tasting this meat and i was like god this is fucking disgusting this is like you know like because it's commodity veal right you're talking about you know uh feedlot cows and stuff and that's really nasty stuff and uh so the point

was is that i i had a dream one night and i was vegetarian at that point not vegan anymore um and i i was in a river. I was standing in a river, and I just reached down in, and I grabbed a giant squid out, and I just bit into it and bit a big hunk of the squid out. And so then I woke up. And the next day I woke up, and I had this craving for salt and pepper squid. And so I went and got salt and pepper squid, and it was the best thing I've ever eaten. That's how I got out of it.

And that was it. That was the gateway. At the time, you were training in Bagua or what were you training in? Yeah, Bagua. Can you describe that for people who are not familiar? So the typical path to Chinese martial arts as a kid, when you start very young, you start in like long fist, right? Which is a normal, either southern or northern, you know, you pick what's best for your body type. So if you have longer, you know, limbs, then usually long fist is the way to go. So, and then you can kind of choose after you do that for your years of basics. And once you get

through your years of basics, which, you know, take, you know, 10 years or so, then you can kind of start to choose what you want to really kind of specialize in or what you have aptitude towards, um, depending on, you know, not just your body type, but also your, your sensibility and your movement. And, uh, and so, uh, I chose internal martial arts, which is the family of, uh, three Taiji, um,yi, and Bagua. And so I chose all three of those, right? And I started in Taiji because my teacher in Florida was a student of Chen Xiaowang, and Chen Xiaowang is a really amazing Taiji teacher from Chen Village in China. And I just traced up the lineage from there. So when I left Florida in high school, I just traced the lineage back and started doing Xingyi and shingyi and bagua and bagua was always very interesting to me um and then i got just and i just specialized in bagua and then when i moved out that was i don't know 10 years before i moved here and i moved here about 12

years ago um and and then i moved out here and i traced my lineage back to the last surviving member of Fu Style Bagua. And his name was Liang Xiaoya. And he just passed away a couple years ago. But I studied with him for about 10 years until his death. I was supposed to describe Bagua, right? Yeah. So Bagua, I mean, it's one of those, it's kind of this esoteric martial art and it's really hard to describe. I don't know that there's a really, a two-sentence description for Bagua, I mean, you know, it's one of those, it's kind of this esoteric martial art, and it's really hard to describe. I don't know that there's a really, a two-sentence description for Bagua.

But if I could, it would be evasion. And I think it's kind of the art of evasion, but there's all these kind of prerequisites to that. And I think that it's really hard, even more hard to describe, because most of our understanding in America of really high-level Chinese martial arts is total garbage. I don't know if there is even one, to be honest with you. Well, I mean, you could probably count them on your hands, right? Right. To get really good Chinese martial arts. That would be effective.

But in terms of healthfulness, it's a really amazing thing. So you kind of walk in circles until you get dizzy. And then you're no longer dizzy anymore. And then you learn how to do these little patterns where you go back and forth and up and down. And it teaches you basically to have a very supple, strong, flexible series of movements that can react at any time to someone else's movements. And kind of almost confuse them if you will or or just evade just enough to where you always have the angular uh upper hand and uh because when i've when i've thought of bagua and i i don't i know very little about it even though i lived in

in china for six months in 92 and went to two universities there in Beijing where I studied something called Da Cheng Quan for a period of time. Did you go to Beida or where did you go? No, I went to, there's one called, oddly enough in English, Beijing Normal University, which is Beijing Shifan University. And then there's Beijing Capital University

of Business and Economics, which is Shodu Jingmaan University, and then there's Beijing Capital University of Business and Economics, which is Shoudu Jingmao University, but they call it the Jingji Mao Yi University. So those were the two. And with Bagua, I remember seeing someone practicing, and the Ba, I guess, is eight. I don't know what it refers to, but there's some relationship to, are they the trigrams of like

is basically like uh um is the eight trigrams right yeah the eight trigrams and so somehow this relates back to uh a philosophy um of you know the beginning of everything it's a binary system essentially to where there was there's a there's you know the the beginning of everything. It's a binary system, essentially, to where there's, you know, the void. It all starts with Wuji, right? And then there's the void, and then there's one and zero and one binaries. And then it builds from there, and I don't really know.

That wasn't my purpose for studying things. I never really, I never understood it, and I still don't today, so. The cosmology aspect of it. How has, if it has, the martial arts affected how you think about food cooking or vice versa i think it affects everything i think it affects the way that you really think and act and everything you do and and i mean you know the just overall the ability to be more peaceful with your surroundings but i I think that in cooking, I think it's the essential nature, right?

We're a restaurant. I mean, if you were to ask me what Saison is, I would say it's a restaurant. And what kind of restaurant? Well, it's American food. Because there's no, you know, I think, and that's the part where martial arts kicks in because you're not – it's meant to be the essential parts of things in life and where you're stripping away all of the unessential to get to the essential. Right. And so that may be taste, maybe the actual dish itself in the restaurant where you just have what's essential on the plate. You have a beautiful piece of wild deer or elk or whatever it may be,

one that I hunted in a good place at the right time of year. And you just age it just enough to get to its sweet spot and you just barely grill it and you just put a beautiful sauce on the plate, right? And that's the essential part of what pleasure is, right? And so that's the same with the service, right? I mean, here's the description. It's very simple. It's very basic. We want to get in, give the person their food, get out, let them have a pleasurable experience, right? So all of it is kind of reflected.

The whole philosophy of the restaurant and everything else is reflected through those kind of principles. I think that's very martial arts right oh it is yeah well i mean i think that the you know they're parallels in all these things and the reason part of the reason i wanted to have you on is because i know you have this deep love and obsession with the chinese martial arts and internal martial arts and so i've been fantasizing in part myself of doing... Sorry, I just keep laughing because Josh's dog, like a prairie dog, keeps popping up because he wants to get on the couch.

Justin, get up here. I'm going to take a picture of this. But I've been fantasizing about doing a second podcast. I don't think I'm going to, called Side Gig. Because I think that what we do as the primary activity, as people view it, is so informed by what other obsessions we might have and vice versa. So the question of reducing and simplifying, I think, transfers across all these different areas, right? You look at people who are really world-class as athletic coaches.

There's one track and field coach I remember. I think he was Dutch who said, you know, do as little as is necessary, not as much as is possible, right? And you could apply that to your food. You could apply that to bagua. Anything, really. You could apply that to life. Sorry to destroy your couch. No, that's all right.

Chester's having a nervous breakdown uh what do you think has made saison unique and successful as a restaurant well i mean i i i i i think that at the end of the day it was about that actually that just the philosophy the ethos of the restaurant and because you know it started with just the food. Asking myself a series of questions about what I thought about the food and the quality and the essentialness of everything. And I think that triggered everything else. And that was really starting and saying, okay, you know, when we first, before we even started Saison, it's really just my thought process about how to create good food.

And is this, let's say I'm making a dish and I eat, I eat it and I get to it and I say, is this really the best version of this thing that I've ever eaten or ever put in my mouth? And if the answer, it's either yes or no. And the answer is no, then I have to start over. And I have to really think through the reality of what, and just keeping yourself grounded and thinking. And what is the reality of if, you know, Mr. Joel Robuchon came in or something, what would he say?

Or what would the best chef in Japan say? You know, and so it was that kind of process that I think is is certainly influenced by martial arts and that's that's how it all started i guess how have you responded when what is your internal dialogue or self-talk like when you get say a review from a critic that you wish were better. We don't get those anymore, but I hear you from a lot of people. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just kidding.

I want you to correct my timeline if I'm wrong. I'm going to use my flawed memory to try to just paint a picture here. So we connected when you're at the old location, much smaller location. We kept in touch, hit it off. You ended up then developing the new location, which I wanted to invest in purely. And this is the only time, I don't know if I ever told you, this is the only time I've ever done it where I made the investment viewing it like, this is going to sound silly maybe, but a patron grant in a way because i enjoyed your work so much i just wanted to see what you would do next and so it's like what it's

i cared more about you being able to continue to experiment and refine what you were doing than i cared about ever seeing that come back now uh the restaurant's done extremely well but that was the reason for doing it and then then the, uh, I remember one point there was, it wasn't a bad review, but it wasn't like a flawless review that came out and we had a little bit of communication and there, you didn't really say anything and you just went heads down. And then it was like a, maybe a year later that you became, is it one of the two restaurants ever to receive three Michelin stars in San Francisco? In San Francisco, yeah. In San Francisco. So we were the first along with one other restaurant. Yeah, Bennu, right?

Yeah, right. And when you get either an imperfect review or a great review what what do you say to yourself well i mean you know reviews are you know the whole whole media it's a great validation some ways to hard work but at the end of the day you know if uh those things didn't exist you know asses in the seats are really what what make you enjoy your life right and and so um, you know, for that reason, it's just, you have to just, I mean, there's learning tools there. You know, you get a bad review, then you have to really think about it. Is this really true? You know, it's important to, you know, take in what's real and discard what's not, right?

Because we know the media is, it can be a little silly sometimes. So, or inaccurate, let's say. But there is also a lot of really knowledgeable people out there who have traveled the world. And I don't know. To be honest with you, I don't think about it anymore. I don't think about it anymore because when I see people come in the restaurant and really have such an amazing time, that's what's kind of special to me. That's what makes it worth it. It's very simple in a way. I'm a simple dude in many ways. Well, I remember the first time I did a, I guess, I'm not sure if I would call it a chef's table.

I think it was a chef's table dinner at Saison. And there were a couple of simple, and I was looking for things that I could share in the four-hour chef, right? Things that people could try, test themselves. And one of them was so simple, but so well done. And I want you to describe it. I don't remember the name, but it was effectively a piece of cling wrap on top of a, not a martini glass, but a very nice piece of glassware. Oh, the magic bowl.

There we go. The magic bowl. The magic bowl. Can you describe this? And then a piece of food suspended on top. Yeah, yeah. So it's just like, it's been around for a long time, but it's basically just, you stretch a piece of saran wrap over the top of a glass bowl, or any bowl really for that matter, where basically you stretch it far enough around the edges so that when you rip it off,

the top seems like it's floating on air, right? So you can't really tell that there's saran wrap there. And yeah, people love that. It looks like the food's floating. You put a piece of food on top of the saran wrap, it looks like the food's floating. Yeah, it's just, but it's a very, I'd never seen it done. Now it's floating you put a piece of food on top of the saran wrap it looks like the food's floating yeah it's it's just but it's a very i'd never seen now i think it's totally ridiculous and i would never do it again well but it was fun at the time it was fun so what are you experimenting with these days what are you most excited to work on or experiment with

uh i it's it's products you know as as time goes on you know just like if you practice your you know your martial arts over and over again you you do that one throw you know millions of times if you can and then that's when it really starts to get interesting it's the same way with cooking like you do you repeat the same process over and over and over again thousands and thousands of times and you start to you know get a little better understanding of it and then another few thousand times, and you start to get a little better understanding of it. And then another few thousand times go by, you start to get a little more better understanding of it. And then maybe you start to look at your products

a little differently. You start to chase down better products. You're a little bit less salt. More natural flavor comes out. It's such subtle little differences. But that's really subtle little differences and, but that's really what makes up really, really great cooking is just all of those little tiny things done really well throughout a process that you've repeated,

you know, thousands and thousands of times. Well, it makes me think of Bruce Lee, right? I mean, and I'm going to butcher the quote, but along the lines of,

I don't fear the man who's practiced 10,000 kicks one time each. I fear the man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times. Right, exactly. Well, that's really what it's about because that's from martial art. I mean, you know, the more I talk about it, the more it comes back to really just martial arts and practicing. Because we used to, you know, we used to, when I was young, we would practice the same throw for hours and hours and hours again. It was just do that throw over and over and over again. That's all we did.

And do it until we could just do it no matter what, right? Until it's default until it's, uh, you know, you go through those isolation drills where you basically isolate everything that you do in your arsenal. And then you do it so many times that it's there when you need it,

no matter what. Right. That's, that's, uh, same with cooking, right? Same with anything. Make it part of your on, no matter what. That's same with cooking. Same with anything, I guess. Make it part of your on-demand repertoire.

What's that? Make it part of your on-demand repertoire. You can call it when you need it. If you were to think of some of the biggest influences or mentors, they don't have to be from cooking, but in your development as a chef, as a cook, who are some of the names that come to mind

or people that come to mind? You know, I don't know. It's a great question. You take influence from everywhere. This is another question that happens sometimes that I can't ever answer. I'm sure there are a ton of them, but I'm not going to let you go with they're,

they're everywhere. I'm going to, they are everywhere, but I, but I'll give you, yeah, just, I'm looking for any, any specific lessons learned.

So for instance, I'll give you an example. One of my friends who, who used to work at one of Danny Meyer's very first restaurants. No, it wasn't at Danny. Well, he did do that, but he worked with this very famous French chef at one point. And so he wanted to... He ended up teaching this guy, Jeffrey, how to move through the kitchen without being underfoot and getting in the way of everyone else. And he would always say to me, go Jeffrey, you were like my dick always between my legs. And he would yell at him,

but he, that is one of the lessons that he'd learned was just how to navigate moving between line cooks and so on. Right. And so like in the school of hard knocks, I'm, I'm, I'm like running through my head right now to try to find an example and i

and you know i think what the problem is with me is that i don't remember shit my memory is absolutely terrible and and uh in many ways because i think that my process is uh feelings and shapes and you know here's uh here here is uh uh an image that triggers a memory here is a you know a feeling that creates a thought and i guess that's the same for everybody i don't know but but um maybe it's just that my memory really sucks it could be but if i if i really could i mean if i could if i could look at mentors then then it would have to be probably one of my first martial arts teachers in Florida, Chinese martial arts. His name is Cam Lee. And he was just, he was this guy who was this shorter, stockier dude.

And he would just practice everything that he preached he was a living example of of everything real around him and truthful and kind of sincere and honest and um but he was also you know real badass on the side like he he would i mean like he could just throw you to the ground it just there was just no but he wouldn't ever unless you're training. Right. And so, uh, he just embodied this kind of peacefulness and, um, healthfulness and patience and all these things. And I don't know, I lost the patience a long time ago, so I didn't really do well with that example. But, uh, but, uh, but in many ways, you know, I still look back to him, you know, all the time, just, just based on those simple, you know, kind of simple examples that he provided that are, you know, simple to say, but really hard to do.

Yeah. You know, the, uh, what, what have been some of the toughest times for you professionally or personally? Opening Saison was both a great time and a, and great time and a really tough time in the beginning i mean we're you know we're we were in an alley right when we started it was one day a week um and we started it because uh i was i was unhappy in my my you know consulting job that i was doing um i was i wound up being broke after spending all my money in 2007 or whatever it is. Um, you know, 2007 was a very kind of a prosperous year, uh, for money for me.

And I made a bunch of money, but then I wound up, I thought it was just going to keep coming. And then all of a sudden everything crashed. I was like, oh shit, I screwed this one up. So I said, you know, if I'm going to be broke, I'd rather be happy and broke than, than, you know, miserable and broke.. So that's why I started Saison. It gave me the, the, uh, kind of like courage to just say, you know what, fuck it. I'm just going to jump out on my own here and just do what I really want to do, what I really believe in. Um, and that started as just a simple thing, one night a week, you know, in a, in an alley really. Right.

Now the one night a week, was that because you were renting the space from someone else just for once a week and that's what you could afford? Or was it that that was the only way you could really prepare? Well, there's no deposit, so that's why we could afford it. Yeah.

No, but we started it with like 10 grand, right, of our own money. It was $10,000 and that was it. There was one opening in this event space um which was the old saison and and we just you know sunday nights at saison we started sunday nights at saison i just wanted to cook again um and and so we we went we we bought some pots we bought some plates and we we we got we went jumped into it yeah what. What were the hardest experiences in those first few months for you? Oh, right.

So to get back to your original question, we started this thing inside a cafe that I'm sure they're going to be very angry once I expose all this, but there's this cafe and they just had really bad practices and we worked out a deal to where we would do our Sunday nights, but they would always get in the way. Or some of their workers would come in and just touch our food and shit that we spent three months trying to perfect. Oh, my God. Or we would have these beautiful ferments that we made from three years ago. What are ferments? Well, just like pickles or something. Oh from like three years ago what are ferments well just like oh like fermented something let's say the pickles or something you got a pot of pickles in the backyard that i've had for you know seven years that have been aging carefully and now

they're amazing and then you know you got this knucklehead coming in and like spilling shit on top of them oh god and uh and the dish pit was shared so the dish where the dishwashing happened was shared between the old saison and the cafe and it was just a nightmare and the place would flood every year with sewage water and we have to rip everything out throw everything away start over um i mean it was just it was it was it was like the most volatile place ever um so it was i mean you know what's funny about that is that the day that we were moving out, you know, we got all our investments to move to the new location. Um, that was like four years ago now, I think. Um, and, and the day that we were moving out, it was, we had finished

service for the night, you know, great last service. We hired movers, everybody came in, packed everything up and it was probably four in the morning or five in the morning by then. And we're just waiting. And we fell asleep. I fell asleep on the, you know, on the stool outside, just waiting for the movers to show back up because they needed to go get breakfast or something. They were supposed to just take all the shit. And then all of a sudden, I woke up to somebody screaming, shit, it's flooding. There's fucking water everywhere.

And within 15 minutes, whatever the system was on Folsom Street is really the worst infrastructure in all of San Francisco. And within 15 minutes, we were under three feet of water back there because there was a gradient and it went down. And from the street level, it was approximately two or three feet higher than the back of the restaurant. And so all of our stuff that we packed up was completely soaked in sewage water. We got pictures of, like, Mark Bright, you know, the sommelier, floating on a barrel, on a wine barrel out in there, you know, with a little lasso in his hands that he made.

It was just ridiculous. So that was how we ended uh that's how he's ended the old space and we just threw everything out and started over so in a situation like that catastrophe strikes uh how do you contend with that mentally yourself i mean is there a person you call do you just go fucking smash on the wooden man for 17 hours straight what do you do i i just i i just it's all internal it's all just i just uh i was just thinking to myself you know i was just kind of exasperated and and i because i lost all my old books from like culinary school oh man um like every note

that i'd ever taken for for um you know 10 years or so or 15 years was in that flood. Like all of my notes, all the ideas of like, uh, any, any, uh, thing that was truly unique to my thoughts. You sound like me. I've just got like bookshelves of notebooks.

Yeah. So all those just gone in sewage and all the ink was running on them. And I was like, that, that was the, everything else is replaceable. But that was really, truly the thing where I looked at it and I was like, fuck, I just had to sit down for a while.

And, but, you know, we're moving into new space. So there's a positive spin. I was like, you know, fuck it. We're just gonna start over. And it's the same thing we started with. It's all up there somewhere. I know not those exact things, but you just got to start over. Well, I remember something very similar happened to a guy I had on the podcast recently named

Cal Fussman. So Cal is one of the most masterful interviewers I've ever met. He did the What I've Learned series, probably 60% of it for Esquire magazine. So he's interviewed everybody like Gorbachev, Clooney, like you name it, it's everybody. And at one point he'd been working on this piece for like a year and a half. And it was in the basement of some, I think a relative's house.

And then it flooded and he lost all of his notes for a piece he'd been working on for a year about becoming for a day, a sommelier on top of the world trade center because it was because nine 11 happened and like interrupted everything. Of course, I mean, huge tragedy. He wasn't sure he should even work on it.

And the advice that he was given by, I guess it was a mentor who just said the good shit sticks. It's like, sit down and write it. He's like the good shit sticks. What did you, uh, what were the best decisions that you made with the new space?

So in a way, I mean, you get this flood, notes are gone. You're starting from, I mean, scratching away, right? You have to buy. I think it was starting over, actually. I think the best decision I made was just to say, okay, screw it. Let's really start over. Let's just completely empty our cup here and really think about now and what is really valuable. What's really valuable to me now?

What's honest? What's sincere about what we're doing? And let's do that. And that's really still the driver to Saison now. When you have people come in, when you hire people to cook at the restaurant. Really, Chester keeps farting right in my face. Right in your left armpit. He's a passionate little puppy. Very passionate. Yeah, he's out cold. So this, it looks kind of like a little pork chop and there there's there is uh

i went pig hunting uh i go all the time but i went um in last month up north and here uh and out like to the west of red bluff near minnesotan national forest got it um and uh and there are pig dogs um on one of the hunts and and they're all in the truck and so we were walking by i walked by with chester and they thought he was a pig i think because they were going fucking crazy in there and they were barking at him and he stopped and looked at you it's it looks kind of like a little he does does look like a little porker pork chop but anyway so when you when you bring someone in you have a very very high level or you have a very, very high level. You have a very, very high standard at Cezanne. What training or pep talk or anything do you do with these people?

We give them the silent treatment as soon as they walk through the door, basically. You give them silent treatment? Silent treatment to see if they're going to crack, yeah. Okay. No, no, I'm just kidding. We don't. I mean, just I do, but my staff doesn't. My team doesn't. You know, I guess in terms of training, you know, there is –

I went through a long period of just like the old school, you know, mentality of like zero patience, you know, kind of here is – here's what, you know, I don't know, just that old school like abusive mentality of cooking. Drill sergeant. Yeah, it's all drill sergeant. You know, that kind of military ridiculousness really, right? But that's evolved into over the years of just, you know, going back to kind of the martial arts thing and, you know, just kind of remembering, you know, that patience from my teachers and just from what martial arts does in general. So now it's really like I like to, you know, if I can create the, you know, the Google

of restaurants, then that's really a nice thing, right? It's a great goal for me in terms of having a really exceptional workplace. And, you know, granted, I don't really know anything about Google at all. So it could be terrible. I don't know. anything about google at all so i could it could be terrible i don't know but maybe from the outside who was it that uh i was just listening to somebody talk about uh um you know from the outside everybody's trying to get in and from the inside everybody's trying to get out i don't know i think some podcast or something yeah but i can i can see that i mean the i know i have a lot of friends at google though and uh it seems

to be pretty exceptional yeah so so that's really the goal. The goal now is really mentorship and how we can create this kind of package on the inside to help our team navigate through some really difficult and enigmatic environment. Because there's always a gray area when you start at a new place, right? You don't really know everything that you need to and even if you are a great cook let's say and you start in a new kitchen at a very high level then then there's going to be things you don't know every chef has a different way to do things every restaurant has a different sop for something and and so i wanted to create a practice yeah yeah and uh standard operating procedure yeah yeah and and so I wanted to create really this app, essentially,

that will allow people to operate every moment of their day like Subway. Subway actually sucks, but I got a funny story about Subway later on, I'll tell you. And so it gives people this huge influx of information so they can be successful. So that's kind of the way we operate now. We want people to be mentored through the process. And, you know, in return, they develop loyalty to that kind of, you know, patience that you give them. And then they wind up, you know, really learning something that's tangible because I want these guys to come and work for us and spend a few years there. And it really takes five years or so to

really learn about cooking at a certain kind of cooking, certain level. I don't want to use level because I sound like a dick when I say that, but I just want to use a certain type of cooking. And I want them to be able to type of cooking. And I wanted to be able to walk away with something really tangible where they can contribute or recontribute. And since you brought it up, Subway. Tell me the story. I don't know. I might go to jail after I tell you the story. I used to work in Subway and there was always like a little manual and I was probably 15, 16 probably when I worked there. And we would, I don't know if I should tell this story.

We can cut it out later if you change your mind. Let's go over it. We would – it made me think of Subway because of their manual, their operating manual. So my second memory from Subway would be us learning how to block out the cameras by standing in strategic positions, putting bubble gum on the end of a coat hanger, and fishing $100 bills out of the safe in the floor drop. So we did that for about a week, and then I think we all got fired after that. Because nobody knew what happened to the hundies. It was like, what happened there? hundies it was like what happened there wow that's some real like oceans 11 action at subway who knew that was my time so my

contribution to subway i you know i've always wanted to ask you and i've never asked you do you what's your opinion of francis malman if any i don't know if you even know who i'm talking about i know who you're talking about i don't I don't know enough about him to really give you my opinion. I saw the Chef's Table episode that he did that I thought was really cool. I love that series. And he's very philosophical. But it's funny. It's cool. It's beautiful to see what he's doing out there in nature. Obviously, he's a legend. He's been around for a long time i don't know enough about it though to really say anything meaningful but but um but i i think it's amazing you know looking at like him out in patagonia and there's like just pulling trout out of the lake and i mean that for a chef that's the ultimate right you know i that's actually something i've been working on for

years and years is just to get myself to the woods just so I can stay in the woods. I can gather. I can hunt. I can fish. I can cook. I can eat and just be happy. And that's kind of really my goal of happiness is just to be out there in the woods and just, you know, look, here's a root. I'm going to dig it up and I'm going to cook it and it's going to taste great.

And we're going to have some wine together and we're all going to celebrate and have a great time. And that's what I'm looking for. So I don't know. I don't really know enough about them. He likes to burn shit. He likes to burn shit. That's why – Burn shit everywhere.

I don't really – I don't like burnt food like that. Okay. So you don't like – so you're talking like the charring. Yeah. I mean I like food that has a delicacy to it. So it's very like – I like food that is – you know, you got to think in terms of volume, right? If you put on like what's that uh like heavy metal band like guar or whatever or not you know you turn it just pick something like that it just

turn the volume all the way up in the house and you're just then there's that's like guy fiore right yeah right he's that's he's guar on level 10 okay so then you take so then you take um let's just use a really restaurant that I really love in the mountains of Kyoto. And they serve all wild foods from around there. Really delicate. The broths are under-seasoned by our Western standards. And, you know, it's all about natural taste. But there's an incredible beauty to that food.

Then that's a volume one, right? And so that's really what we're looking for in our world of cooking, right? So I don't like the level 10s. I like the level twos, you know, around there. Yeah, I would love to just be a fly on the wall. Maybe sometime we'll get down to Patagonia and have a couple bottles of Malbec with Francis. But what struck me, there were a handful of cookbooks that really inspired me when i was working on the four hour chef which was very confusingly to most people a book about accelerated learning kind

of disguised as a cookbook but seven fires which was by francis malman because he had the fancy french training right but he chose to go back to a lot of basics and but like refine them to such a degree that they were highly highly advanced from a kind of a technical level right and then i think it was just mission street food or mission chinese just a beautifully well put together book a handful of others there was another one uh on hunting and forging from the uk the name which i'm blanking on at the moment river maybe river cottage man so the escape those are cool the tv show is what i was my kind of like fantasy escape for all the first i was an escape from river cottage or escape to river cottage by hugh fernsley whittings hall like the i think that's his name most british name ever uh incredible

books but that TV show. For people who fantasize about getting out of the city and going back to the land and hunting and foraging and fishing, I highly recommend the first season of that series. I've got to check that out. I don't know what I'm talking about. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Do you gift books to people? Like historically, have you given books as gifts?

If so, any of that come to mind? They're all different. I mean, you know, the one that I just gave out in most recent history was there's an old bar book. It's called Cocktail Techniques. And it's from an old, have you seen that one? It's a little tiny book. And it's from the, I think it's the guy from Bar High Five. He's like, you know, in Tokyo.

Yeah, sure. It's just about pure craft and technique it's just called cocktail techniques yeah it's cocktail techniques i think and i think that's the guy could be a different guy but but uh really cool books i just gave it that it was out to a bunch of my staff um but uh uh the the other one is the art of tai chi chuan and it's it's or the dao of Taijiquan. And it's by a guy named Zhou Sung Hua I think his name is.

Something along those lines. But it's a really amazing book on Taiji and it has a lot of epiphanies in there because he started Taiji when he was 40 something because of his bad health. So he was like on his deathbed or

something along those lines he got cancer or something like that and he uh he apparently you know went through he started from being completely unhealthy and then took his journey through taiji to to become uh one of the foremost experts in america on taiji and he traveled the world and uh starting at 40 yeah and and of course within a few years just like everybody else that does taiji they become fixed essentially more or less right as long as you're consistent in your practice you do it the right way and you practice it for health and you every i've seen a lot of people over the years like you know car accidents or whatever um so uh that's one of my other favorite books because there's a lot on the application process and

the actual martial part of Taiji, which is really almost non-existent in China too. It's still almost non-existent now because everything's kind of sport-based. Ever since, I suppose, martial arts became inessential once you know the the you know firearms were were created then that was the downhill of of uh you know hand-to-hand combat right well is it uh those downward trends yeah it was like in necessity is the mother of invention right it's like once you don't have that as a necessity yeah everybody's like oh thank god i could just shoot this guy i'm like i don't understand in a horse stance for 18 hours a day. When you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind?

I don't have a person. To me, success is living what brings you joy. And I think doing whatever process brings you happiness, I think, is what success to me. And that's really all it is, right? Because at the end of the day, it's freedom that matters. And whatever that freedom is to each individual is kind of what's important. So for me, it's just being in the woods. At some point, I'm just going to disappear. I'm going to be in the woods. I'll see some,

like the Montana Freeman, I'll just have some holdout skeins. Now, I'm embarrassed to say, hold on a second. So I've only heard you say your last name once and it made me think that I've been saying your last name incorrectly for as long as I've had your name

written anywhere in front of me. Everybody does. Well, okay. So my family, we grew up saying it's Skeins. Skeins. But in Scotland, they say Skein. Skein is the proper way to say it. So the silent S.

I guess so, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Maybe they say Skeins too. But you say Skeins. Yeah, we say Skeins. Skeins. Skeins.

All right. What is the most joy that you've felt in the last three months, six months, recent memory? Well, for those last six or three, six months, I've actually been working on a big deal for the company. And so it would have to have been last week when I closed the deal because I could finally breathe again. I read so many legal documents in the last six months that I feel like I could be a lawyer. It's mind-numbing. It's so miserable in every way possible. But it's nice to get it done.

Can you talk about that or not yet? No, I can't talk about it yet. There's a lot of exciting stuff to happen here. Very, very exciting things. And, and, uh, you know, this whole woods thing is something that I've been thinking about for years and years and years because, um, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that, um, to really get to the highest level of your craft of cooking, you need to be submerged in the woods and it'd be surrounded and isolated by the wild really to, to really reach a certain point. It's the water, it's the water it's the air it's it's the the way

the air tastes when you're there it's everything contributes to that it's the products of course so but that's an ultra geeky level of it you know it's like there's it's only for a handful of people that really enjoy that kind of thing but most people enjoy being in the woods so if you could pick anywhere outside of the u.s to immerse yourself in the outdoors that way, where would you pick? Outside of the U.S., I guess my whole life is just a few things. It's, well, I mean, besides family, the only thing that I really, uh, you know, give a shit about are martial arts and cooking. And it's not just cooking.

It's just, it's the whole process, the whole act, the whole commune with nature, uh, you know, being out in the wilderness and being able to hunt your own meat. Uh, and it's not about the killing. It's about the, the, um, the sustenance that we get and kind of the feeling that we get from being part of that process. Also, it's like the consciousness and the reverence in a way of having to go through the entire process.

Yeah, you have to treat things differently once you experience killing another thing, another living thing, especially when you kill a big animal like an elk and a deer. There's a very different feeling from shooting a bird or something, right? Even though, you know, the bird, I didn't, you know, start doing that stuff until later.

So to me, they're all the same. But yeah, you walk away with, you know, as a cook especially, you know, knowing that you're not going to waste a single piece of anything on that animal. And I think that's very important because a lot of our – this ties back into a way bigger conversation, which is about just our commodity food processes in America. And we are full of disease and shit because of the way that we eat and the way we treat our food. There's feedlot cattle and chemically induced vegetables and crops. And most of our food sources now are products that we use on the commercial market or have zero or almost very little resemblance to what they originally were.

And so that's even more reason to just go to the woods. Get out of here. So where would you, if you had to pick a spot outside the U.S. to... Oh, sorry. I missed that. No, no. It's okay. I get off on these tangents.

It takes one to know one. So I can realize... You can keep me in line. I can realize that. You know, I don't know. I was just looking at British Columbia. My picture, my perfect place would be mountain streams, where the mountain streams meet the ocean, really.

And that's kind of the perfect place. So British Columbia has a lot of that. I want to experience the four seasons. I want to see snow. I want to see the flowers in the spring. I want to have a bear walk through the woods and potentially eat my goat. There's a cycle there. There's a cycle of life and a cycle of things that don't exist in a city anymore.

And we're so removed from just everything, really, in a city in a lot of ways so so um i don't know location wise i mean i love you see is a good choice huh i think yeah it looks amazing up there i was just looking at buying um there's a there's a hunting territory up there that i wanted to buy and um it was really cheap and so we can maybe we can go in on this um there was i shit not. There was a 250-square-mile hunting territory. And the center of that was, I think, 200 acres or something like that. Right. And there's cabins on it. It's on a lake in the stream.

And it was $500,000. Wow. So, you know, I mean, so naturally, like, okay. Before this podcast goes out. Let's get out of here. I dated a very lovely woman whose family was from BC. So I ended up spending quite a lot of time up around Victoria and some of the more rural outskirts of Victoria. Stunning. I mean, it's, and we, we, we wanted, I mean,

you had to be cognizant of bears and so on and so forth. And I spent so much time trying to track down, of course, firearms are very difficult to get ahold of, but this was while I was doing also the sort of refinement on the four hour chef and I wanted to go rabbit hunting. And I spent so much time trying to track down high-powered pellet guns. And then I was like, well, maybe I'll just slingshot. I should just call me. I'm like, stick to my safe. But it's a beautiful part of the world. I did a road trip, for those people interested, with my brother,

because I'd done so many trips between San Francisco and LA, right? San Francisco South, I think it's very common. I'd never gone north. So I did a road trip with my brother from San Francisco and LA, right? San Francisco South, I think it's very common. I'd never gone north. So I did a road trip with my brother from San Francisco all the way up the coast to Whistler in Canada. And stopped along the way at all these lumberjack houses and so on in Oregon. Saw the dunes that inspired the book Dune. I think also in Oregon, the Avenue of the Titans and so on. It's amazing up north.

It really is. It's gorgeous. It's amazing up north. It really is. It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous. If people search, for those people interested, search my last name, I think Gems of the Northwest or something, I highlight 16 different stops that we made. I spent a lot of time last fall going up into Hat Creek and all those falls up there.

Oh, so many waterfalls. It's amazing up there. Yeah, it's incredible. A lot. Shasta. Especially up around Shasta. Shasta is apparently like one of the vortexes in the world, whatever that means. Yeah.

I don't know what that means. That's what I heard. Worth exploring. Do you have, what does your morning look like? What are your morning rituals? And let's say, not necessarily when you in hyper-legal due diligence mode, but let's just say when you're not covered in that kind of stuff. When I'm at peace again?

Yeah. What does your morning look like? Hong Kong milk tea and tai chi, to be honest. What time do you wake up? It's always different. I'm very inconsistent with that. I'm like, one day it'll be 1 p.m., the next day it'll be 5 a.m. Got it. be 1 p.m., the next day it'll be 5 a.m. Got it.

It just depends. But I do, I love the morning, and I, if I had my perfect scenario, it would just be a cup of tea and some tai chi and then get on with it. Got it. Do you, what type of tea? Hong Kong milk tea.

Hong Kong milk tea. Hong Kong milk tea, yeah. What is it? So Hong Kong milk tea is like there's a mixture of black teas. Every place has their own brew. Different types of leaves. It could be Darjeeling or Ceylon or whatever. And then you essentially soak it in water and you overbrew it in some ways.

There's a very high ratio of leaves to water. And then you mix it it in water and you overbrew it in some ways. There's a very high ratio of leaves to water. And then you mix it with evaporated milk. And some people put sugar or sweetened condensed milk in there. I just take it straight. But it's something that I grew to love in Hong Kong. It was just an amazing thing in Hong Kong. It's addictive. It's highly, highly addictive.

So that's what I drink in the morning. And then the Tai Chi, how long would you practice that for? What type of Tai Chi? I've gone as short as like 37 seconds in some mornings to like three hours. It just depends. It depends on the time. I usually do like a couple sets. I do like one set, maybe a slow couple sets.

That's it. Just to get the blood flowing and to to rebalance yourself because there's a lot of like one of the things about doing um doing these forms for the with the intention of fighting and not with the intention of performance or health is that you you develop a certain kind of like stability in your body and legs and i've noticed that start to go away over the last few years with just being busy and stuff like that and uh you feel it in your knees like i went like when i was especially going hunting and stuff i was like wow this this would have been super easy you know for me a few years ago but now i feel like fucking chris farley it's like

the worst it's really hard yeah i. I noticed this very recently also doing, I mentioned when we were just making tea before we started recording, getting into gymnastics training, which I'm doing with an incredible coach named coach Chris Sommer, who's the former national team coach. And we're doing, for the first time I'm doing remote coaching. So I'm sending him videos, he's reviewing, we jump on the phone, et cetera. And one of the series that I've been doing and I need to start doing more consistently is this knee sort of prehab rehabilitation series. It's all body weight that focuses on

strengthening, say the ACL, the cruciate ligaments, et cetera, these different types of weird looking squats. And I did them for say three weeks, just once or twice a week, took me five minutes each session. And it was incredible how more, how much, uh, more stability I felt in my knees doing any type of movement, uh, any type of, of walking, hiking, jumping. And it highlighted for me that that must mean my knees were fucking unstable as hell beforehand. If like within two or three weeks, I felt a huge increase in stability, which I guess is a symptom of just sitting down too much. Uh, also the way we move to, you know, I mean, our, our, our Western, you know, patterns of movement, a lot of ways are not, um, uh, well, I guess everyone's pattern of movements are not very – they're kind of just like up, down, left, right, computer, bar, dinner. There's not a lot.

There's not a lot of couch, TV. There's not much lateral. There's not a lot of torsion of different types. And rotational exercise is pretty much out the window for most folks. So then when you encounter that in any capacity and it's forced upon you, then you get injured. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say there's some of the, like the way,

in Bagua they isolate some movement patterns. Mind if I have some of your tape? No, for yourself. And it's really just kind of an exercise in balance and being able to learn power versus resistance. And you have to— What do you mean by that? Well, okay, so let's say that you are um practicing um a you know a stance let's say just for for lack of a better example um without going into too much detail and and that stance you feel very stable in that stance while you transition

to another stance and you're you know undulating or rotating or going up and down changing levels but that's without pressure, without resistance. So let's say you take that same technique or stance or whatever, and then you pressure test it and apply another human being to push on you or try to throw you while you do that same thing. So you basically are pressure testing the reality of some of these movements. And you have to, I i mean before you do that you have to have a lot of you know time and solo practice with those movements or stances and you know repetition and stuff so you actually

don't rip your knee out of socket or something so just don't go doing this at home until you practice a little bit but but the thing is is that it it brings a sense of reality to it because that's always the problem with chinese martial arts that you see is there's no reality to a lot of shit it's never very silly it's never tested under the no circumstances in which you would need to use it yeah or or against bigger people that or against real violence or against any of those things that you would uh you would need to actually make something truly effective and uh and so you know that it but the point was is that it develops your, you know, all of your connective tissue and all of your body.

And I'm pretty sure the only reason that I can still walk is because of my early years in martial arts and all of this kind of stance work and transition work and, you know, that kind of like twisting and turning of the body and like taiji and internal martial arts it's very helpful for the body i think that i think there's something there and my interest in tai chi at one point was pretty close to zero just because i was so focused on the harder fight sports like muay thai and so on brazil Jiu-Jitsu. And in the last, say, five years, my interest has really been piqued by a friend of mine named Josh Waitzkin, who's been on this. I'll just have like a podcast, small world story real quick. So I get this text at one point

from Matt Mullenweg, who's the, I guess he's the CEO of Automatic right now and was one of the lead developers of WordPress. And he goes, I was walking with my girlfriend through New York, Central Park or somewhere. No, it wasn't Central Park. It was near the water. And he said, we saw this guy doing some weird martial arts stuff right on the water. And so I was commenting on it and how it looked really beautiful to my girlfriend. She said, well, you should walk up and say hi. So he walked up and said hi. And it was another person who'd been on the podcast, Josh Waitzkin doing Tai Chi. Now, Josh was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, this movie about this chess prodigy, which he was when he was a kid. But he was a push hands world champion. And then after that became

the first black belt under Marcelo Garcia, who's like the Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky combined of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And I always associated Tai Chi with non-martial applications, right? But he uses this and has prescribed it to his parents who've seen fantastic results for rehab, prehab, just life stability and well-being in general. So even though he has a tremendous amount of experience with BJJ at an extremely high level, he still does the Tai Chi on a regular basis, which has made me think that I should probably make space for a practice of that type. I'll tell you what, there's a lot more to it than most people give credit for because the reason is that there's no good Tai Chi really anywhere.

And Josh would agree with you about that. Yeah, and just imagine if you had no good Jiu-Jitsu anywhere, and then everybody would make fun of it because these guys would just get on the ground and get stomped. Yeah, right. But if it's the same thing,'s the same the same would apply to any kind of system and and so but once you if you if you really you know happen to be lucky enough to stumble upon someone who's truly really great at the martial side of tai chi then you know it's all

it's kind of like this immovable mountain thing and and you know my take on it is that in terms of like real mark real uh applicable martial arts which means being able to defend yourself against someone who's using real violence i'm not talking about sport um which is still very difficult right i mean that's not but uh but to really be able to defend yourself against real violence is a different kind of ball of wax, right? And oftentimes that requires less of a lot of things than a sport would, right? You don't need to train for 20 hours a day to be able to get to that point. You don't have to have amazing cardio necessarily. A lot of things go out the window due to this kind of ability to evade.

And evasion is not in a large circle. It really can be a very small thing. Like let's say you, a simple example would be, let's say that you practice standing with your knees bent a little bit to the point to where you would fall over the first day. And for 20 years, you practice that same kind of standing against somebody trying to push you over. Well, eventually you get to the point to where you can't be pushed over. And you went through a series of different opponents and different people trying to throw you over. But that's all you practice forever.

And so Taiji develops that kind of skill when it's done in the martial sense. But then you're able to mobilize it. So you, let's say you take the static, you know, starting point of being immovable. Immovable doesn't mean you're actually immovable. It means you're adjusting your body to the other person, right? And to their force that's coming towards you, you're adjusting a little bit, right? And it's not this whole, there's a lot a lot of like you know hokey pokey shit out there on people that don't really that say a philosophy but there's no real applicable uh you know reality to it um so uh that's one thing and the other thing is just kind of the the um ability to evade like if you're if you have, let's say you take,

you know, a Thai boxer who, Muay Thai guy who can kick really fucking hard. And a guy who practices kicks every day is a professional Thai boxer. What we have to realize is that the distance, there's just a distancing thing, right? At the point of impact of anybody's kick or punch or attack is one place.

Once they release that intention. Once the intention leaves the mind and goes into the body and the action is created and it's traveling towards your opponent, there's an intended target. If you can change yourself from being that intended target, the origin of that, and reroute yourself only a few inches, then all of that force goes away right and so it's a it's a it's a simple kind of thing to say but you know just to be able to do that with one punch or one kick takes a lifetime to learn right um and i'm not saying i know these things i'm just saying that that's there's a couple simple truths that I've learned from it that are – that's a couple.

So, yeah. So I think that Tai Chi is very applicable because, you know, I go out and practice with – over the years, I've practiced with some really amazing MMA guys, some really amazing jiu-jitsu guys. And you see a translation from this kind of traditional martial arts, but only very little. It's not like overall. You know, you can't just go get in the cage. But there are some really great things that I think that it would be really interesting to see. I would love to see professional fighters

start to explore that a little bit. But the issue is that to even get remotely efficient at those kinds of things, it takes at least 10 years of daily practice. Yeah. Right? And so that might be the challenge. By then your career is over. Is it a time budgeting issue? efficient at those kinds of things, it takes at least 10 years of like daily practice. Yeah. Right. And so that might be the challenge. By then your career is over.

It's a time budgeting issue. The, uh, how old are you now? 36. 36. What advice would you give your 30 year old self if you could place us where you were and what you were doing at that time um i you know i i think uh i think it would be to um take a step back right take a step back really slow down and really uh really think through what really you know matters in the long run right because we're we're, you know, a lot of times. And what were you doing at the time when you were 30?

Well, but I guess that actually my 30-year-old self, that's different because that's when I just started Saison. Yeah. So I was doing the same thing I'm doing now, only in a more kind of ridiculous way. But, I mean, my 20-year-old self, 25-year-old self. Sure, let's do 25. Yeah, you know, 25-year-old self, 25-year-old self? Sure, let's do 25. Yeah, you know, 25-year-old self? Yeah, I mean, I think it would be to just really take a step back and not get caught up in anything stupid.

Because, you know, a lot of times when we're chasing success or what we think is success, like trying to, as a chef, you want to build a big name. You want to, you know, get three Michelin stars. You want to get the accolades. But ultimately, none of that shit matters. It matters in the beginning, and it certainly matters along the way. But if we all just take a step back and I think there's a bigger lesson to be learned

for the way that we operate as a society is to really focus on what really matters to us and is what genuinely makes us happy, then we'll travel down the right path, right? And we won't get sidetracked by, you know, tits and ass or whatever, you know, fame and sports cars and all silly shit that you don't need. Unless those are the things that really make you happy. Well, I mean, look, cup two of those three do make us happy. But I mean that, you know, if what really makes you happy is getting in the woods, then you focus. You're able to really take a step back and focus on quality maybe. If you want to be a cook, you want to be a chef, what kind of chef do you want to be a you know a chef with real quality and skill that's respectable you

know respected by the world you know for your your ethos or something so just you know i would say um get your head out of your ass probably that'd be my summary what were you what were you getting just what were you distracted by or focusing on at 25 that you shouldn't have been um all right oh my uh my parents-in-law don't hear this um uh it's just like two people listen to this podcast you're fine um yeah i mean i was just i was just cooking uh oh actually you know i was a chef at a restaurant called shay tj uh i don't know the place in in Mountain View. It's been there for like 30 years. And I shortly after that got poached by Michael Mina to do some development work. I opened a restaurant for him down in the St. Regis in Orange County as a temporary gig and then went to work

with him on kind of the, just to learn business from him, right? I wanted to learn some business. I didn't know anything about business at all. And I wanted to see kind of how that operated and functioned as a restaurant group. So a lot of it was like Vegas and partying all the time and just ridiculousness. I mean, we would go out after work and go home at sunrise and wake up at 4 p.m. and go back to the kitchen the next day and just immediately need a whiskey because you're so hungover. It was the only cure.

Hair of the dog. So that was a good few years of my life, just kind of going crazy. Because all I did was train, so I didn't do that when I was younger. I had a period in my teenage years where I was a lunatic and then i i went back into training around 15 and pulled out of that and then uh and then i didn't really even drink until i was 25 um after i got my chef's job um and so you know a couple a of make-ups for lost time. Yeah. I feel like oftentimes reflecting back on my high school career and college experience that if I had not had competitive sports, I mean, who, I would have ended up in skid row or in a gutter, God knows where. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, if I didn't have martial arts, I'd be dead in a gutter. Yeah, for sure if i yeah if i didn't have martial arts i'd be dead in the gutter yeah for sure yeah uh where would you like to have food that you have not yet had food um the exciting food to me is you know the original peoples of whatever location. So if we go to Australia and have some aboriginal traditional food and kind of explore that side of things in nature, and the same thing with anywhere else. So if you go to any country or any place

and kind of exploring the natural foods that existed before commodification took place. That's what's very interesting to me. I was playing with, I had a lot of fun messing around with it. There's a guy named Cliff Hodges who's also in The 4-Hour Chef. He makes his own bows and arrows like from scratch and his haunted black bear with his, I guess they're osage bows, I want to say. They're incredible.

But he introduced me to cooking on fire. So he is a outdoor survival expert and taught me how to build debris huts and whatnot, knows how to track. Really interesting guy. You'd get a kick out of him. Lives in Santa mountains and he uh where was i going with this oh he introduced me to acorn meal and making things out of acorns which i looked into at one point uh it represented for certain indigenous uh north american tribes a substantial portion of their total calories, acorns. Yeah. And I got really interested in leaching acorns and making things out of acorn flour. They're delicious. Yeah.

Acorns are delicious. Yeah. Really, really good. I mean, that's the thing about our foodstuffs now is that there's so many amazing things. And that's kind of what Cezanne does at the moment is that we're just exploring what's here, the native foods i mean what is what exists really at a at a really you know incredible uh quality and uh there's all kinds of shit here there's i mean like we get you know we set up a program with fishermen where we get only live fish in our tanks right they bring us fish that's alive or we don't want it and um

that way we can kill it a certain way they kid you may um and control the process and and same thing with like all the commercial fisheries uh or or the the vegetables the produce we have wild kiwis in the woods of marin there's wild kiwis yeah i mean there's acorns there's ginseng root growing, there's berries, there's all kinds of crazy shit around. There's diamond turbo in the waters here. There's pink scallops, there's monkey face eels. So we're exploring. Those are some funky looking things, man.

And they're really delicious, too. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like you just cook it, let's say you cooked it like unagi or something, right? It's delicious. Yeah, so there's all these amazing things around in each location around the country. And the Pacific happens to be amazing because of the ocean, but the cold climate of the ocean. But that's a very exciting kind of food, right? To just really kind of look at what's around us, like really explore what's around us.

It's nothing new. It's been done. It was being done before all this other shit was being done. And so, but that's really where great food comes from. Great food comes from not from growing it on a farm, but from really exploring the wild and finding, you know, that kind of reference point for flavor, right? Like you find the, you find the best fish during the best season or the best bear after eating the blueberries during the right season. So there's all these. And the same thing with produce and all that other stuff.

So that's a very exciting way to cook. Pretty soon I'm going to have a restaurant that only does that. It's going to take six hours to get to. And maybe i'll just do it for one table night and uh you know maybe you're part of the hunting process who knows or you know go out and catch our trout i'm in yeah if you need if you need a guinea pig to uh to take it for a test drive count me in the now you you did this makes me think a little bit of an experiment that you did i'm not sure how recently this was, but the chef's table rotation that you did with, help me out with the name here, Jiro.

Jiro, yeah. But not the Jiro that people would associate. Not the Jiro, that's Suki Bashi Jiro. Yeah, that's right. But Jiro, who was cooking, I guess, previously in Novi Valley. Is that right? Yeah. But he was trained in Tokyo.

He was a sushi chef in Tokyo. And I just love his sushi. He has that timing. He has a sensibility to the flavor of his sushi. And unfortunately, in San Francisco, there's no good sushi at all. And I really wish there were, but there isn't. And so that's why I fell in love with his sushi because it was so delicious. The rice was a little warmer, had the right texture, the thickness of the cuts of the fish,

the way, the direction in which you cut against the grain or with the grain, the balance of the seasoning, just everything was there. And so for a period of time, I don't know how long it was, but he would seat how many people per night? Eight people. Yeah, so I built this little, for those who don't know, I built this little chef's counter out next to Saison.

And it was, or behind Saison. And it was eight seats and there were no turns. There was no real commodity to the situation, I guess. No turns meaning somebody wouldn't get up and get replaced by another diner. Right, exactly. And in today's real estate, for the cost of renting a place, paying for labor, all these other things, insurances and taxes and all that shit, you have to do more than one seating, right? You have to get as many people in there as you can, which is a very sad state of restaurants,

especially when you're trying to do things that are really amazing or give people a great experience. So this was just a little eight-seat workshop, essentially. And so he cooked in there for a little while. We would do some collaboration dinners. And it was really great. But then I realized, we're still in the city.

There's only so much you can do on a busy street with a dump truck driving by. So I've been working on some new stuff. One day I'll be able to tell you about it. And why the 80s music? You always have great 80s music playing playing at least in my experience so far uh what's it just fun it's about it's a restaurant that's in the it's pleasure it's about pleasure

it's about enjoyment it's about people coming in i know not everybody's gonna like 80 music but the substantial majority of our our subset of diners that come in like, you know, that kind of 80 music. And it's just fun. Yeah. That's the only reason. It's just about fun. Speaking of fun, Molly just got on. So Chester is going to have playmate here.

There she is. Oh, tail smashing the cups. We almost went for a yard sale with the cups. Yeah, so it's really just about the whole reasoning of Saison was about the essential nature of a hospitality experience. The food being what we talked about earlier, the 80s music being fun, the things you pick up in your hands feeling good, the seat being comfortable, the service being warm and real. So that's kind of why the 80s music came about. What I love about the 80s music – Plus we have a couple glasses of wine.

Well, I was going to say that I've taken a few friends to Cezanne, and they've always had questions about the 80s music and then they get a few dishes in, maybe a glass or two of wine, and they're like, you know, this music's perfect. I really think this music is extremely suiting to this experience. And I always have to ask people when they, because I've been in San Francisco for so long

and I get questions about places to go to eat and I always have to ask, you know, what's your budget and what's the occasion? Because Cezanne's, you know, it's a higher end. Higher end, I mean, I'm grasping for a better adjective. It's expensive. It's an expensive place. Comparatively to other places.

Yeah. It's comparatively expensive place. But for an anniversary or something like that, or just a special experience, I think it's always been my go-to. On the opposite end of the spectrum if i'm like if you want a really filthy delicious burrito in the mission then i think el farolito if you want to like also have a conversation with a couple of meth heads then that is the spot to go is my preferred choice of meal no conversation yeah yeah and

our dogs are playing folks but uh so Joshua, we could keep talking forever. Where can people find you online on the socials? Learn more about what you're up to. I think your Instagram is fantastic. Also, if you want to see a lot of very, very peculiar and delicious ingredients, then that's a good place to see you. But where can people find you? Yeah, Instagram is jskenes. J-S-K-E-N-E-S.

I almost forgot my answer. Jskenes on Instagram. Or on Twitter, I think it's SaisonSF. SaisonSF. And the website also is SaisonSF.com. And I will put all this in the show notes, folks, including links to anything that we might have mentioned. Our dogs are having a blast.

Speaking of joy. So you can find the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. Josh, thanks for taking the time, man. Thanks for having me here, man. We'll have some,

let's go hunting and have some wine in that order. And to everybody listening, we're going to play with the dogs. And until next time, thank you for listening. We're going to play with the dogs. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest

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