EP78: A Taste of LA: Chef Johnny Sanchez at Kendall's Brasserie

Today, we dedicate this episode to the unsung heroes, the chefs, service workers, and firefighters of Los Angeles and the Palisades. To the chefs and service workers: Thank you for nourishing our communities and creating spaces that bring us together. To the firefighters: Your courage and dedication protect our homes and neighborhoods. This is our heartfelt thanks to those who serve behind the scenes and on the front lines to keep our community thriving and safe. We invite you to support those affected by the Los Angeles fires—check the link in our show notes for more details. 

The episode features a captivating interview with Johnny Sanchez, an experienced chef with a background from Le Cordon Bleu. Johnny discusses his culinary journey from renowned restaurants like 555 East Steakhouse and Disneyland’s fine dining to his current role as the executive chef at Kendall's Brasserie in Los Angeles. He shares engaging stories about his inspirations, the intricacies of culinary school, the collaborative culture in kitchen environments, and his personal challenges, including overcoming alcoholism. Tune in to gain insights into his philosophy on hospitality, leadership, and the art of creating memorable dining experiences. Join us in supporting those affected by the Los Angeles fires – find more details in our show notes.

00:36 Meet Johnny Sanchez: Culinary Journey

01:17 Early Cooking Memories

03:58 Culinary School Experience

13:27 Starting a Culinary Career

20:42 From Phoenix to California: A Culinary Journey

21:04 The High-Stakes World of Water Grill

22:29 Learning the Ropes in French Cuisine

23:11 The Importance of Structure in the Kitchen

26:03 Hospitality Meets Technology

27:14 The Value of Restaurant Experience

35:36 Rediscovering Passion Through Sobriety

38:37 Kendall's: A New Culinary Adventure

41:46 Wrapping Up: Reflections and Future Plans

We invite you to support those affected by the Los Angeles fires
Donate to LA Redcross: @redcrossla 

Connect with chef Johnny:
@chefjohnnyblaze
@kendallsdlta

Season2

Transcript

0:52

Today we dedicate this episode to the unsung heroes and the chefs, service workers and firefighters of Los Angeles and the Palisades. To the chefs and service workers, thank you for nourishing our communities and creating spaces that bring us together. To the firefighters, your courage and dedication protect our homes and neighborhoods. This is our heartfelt thanks. To those who serve behind the scenes and on the front lines to keep our communities thriving and safe. We invite you to support those affected by the Los Angeles fires. Check the link in our show notes for more details. Today's guest is Johnny Sanchez, a seasoned chef with over 15 years of experience who started his culinary journey at Le Cordon Bleu from key roles at renowned restaurants like Le Cordon Bleu. 555 East Steakhouse and Disneyland's fine dining establishments to leading kitchens in Arizona. Johnny has mastered high end cuisine and diverse culinary styles. Now as executive chef at Kendall's Brasserie in Los Angeles, he's redefining dining experiences with his creative vision. Johnny, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Michael. I'm excited to be here for sure. I'm thrilled that you're here. Let's get into it and let's start out. First of all, tell us about your hat. This is my little shout out to Chula Seafood in Phoenix, Arizona. A good friend of mine, John Heflin is the owner there. They operate out of San Diego and Phoenix. A little bit of both worlds for me, California and Arizona, but honestly, just an awesome company. They operate about four restaurants in Phoenix as well, like fish market, restaurant kind of stuff. And just Really cool, creative stuff. They're known for their swordfish and they've done everything with it. Like chicken fried steak, banh mi's, burritos. Like they've touched everything. So just super fan of them. Wow. I love swordfish. I absolutely love it, especially when it's fresh and it's done. You can overdo it. Growing up, my parents would just. My mom would just cook it hammer. It's just hammered. Always afraid of getting sick, which is ridiculous. But, just fresh swordfish there. Oh, anyway. So tell me about the first dish that you remember cooking growing up. The first dish that I really remember cooking growing up was probably my version of my grandma's. My Nana's beef tacos, ground beef tacos. That's what I loved. It was like, she calls it her, you know, it's like her bootleg of Taco Bell. She always talked about they couldn't afford to take all the kids to Taco Bell, so she would make it at home, it's just ground beef and everything like that with the hard shell. But when I was in high school, I didn't know how she made them. So I literally just. stuffed the ground beef into the tortilla deep fried them. And she was like, no, I fried the shells ahead of time and then put the meat in it. So that just became like my version. So I have my version. She has her version, but they're both like super nostalgic to me. It's just comfort food. Cool. Wow. So as you were growing up, did you cook with anyone as you were growing up? As I was growing up, I don't really remember. I cooked with my grandma a little, both of my grandmas were a little bit, my mom's side and my dad's side. But I wasn't that interested in it. I know I have like my favorites. Like I loved my grandma, Mary's chicken tacos. I loved my Nana's ground beef tacos and her breakfast, like steak and eggs. Like those were things that I remember. So you have your favorites of, what, you know, my mom's seven layer salad that she made for every get together. Those were the things that I remember. But I didn't really focus on them really much in my youth. That wasn't, I didn't really have that passion early on. It was always in a background. It was like kindling to the fire. You know, I loved food network growing up. I love shows like Emeril and even the early Bobby Flay's, the early iron chef, those were big for me, just watching TV. I, in my younger years, but it wasn't until after high school. And when I was in college, going to school for something completely different I didn't like that industry anymore. And then it was just, what do I want to do for some reason at that point? I think chefs were being portrayed as rock stars and there's more cooking shows were becoming mainstream. You're having stuff on Fox with Gorden Ramsey, like all these things are in the mainstream now. So this kind of lifestyle is in the thing. And I was just like, Oh, that seems cool. Give it a shot. And. That's how I ended up in culinary school. I just fell in love instantly. So culinary school is probably where I got really hooked, where the hooks were like sunk in and I was like, I can see myself doing this. Okay. And I love it. No, that's so cool. And you went to Le Cordon Bleu. I have another chef from all the way from Batam, Indonesia that went to Le Cordon Bleu. I think London or Switzerland or something like that. And yeah, he's incredible. So I always, Run into people from Le Cordon Bleu. There's a couple others as well, but he's the one, Gunawan Wu is the one that really stands out in my mind. What was it like going to cooking school? I know it was a while ago, but can you paint a picture for our listeners and everyone? For me, it was, it was real fun. It's like the foundation of learning how to work in a team because there's, yes, there's a lot of stuff that you do individually, like in culinary school, but at the same time, it's like working in a restaurant, like you all clean together. You guys, you're all. Station next to each other. You're talking to those camaraderie and stuff like that. I feel like that's where it all started to get built, was culinary school. Cause I had never worked with a team like that big in any other kind of career thing that I've done, you know, where you're working with people like that. it was a lot of fun. You're experiencing. You know, if, if you haven't worked in a restaurant before, you're experiencing being able to read recipes, learning how to Mies, gather all your products. You're learning how to work efficiently. And it's, it is fun at that point, but you're not dealing with orders. You're not dealing with all this stuff. So there's not all the pressure that you get when you work in a restaurant, but you're taking the time to learn the stuff. And some people need that foundational. Some people can just pick up and their hands know how to move and work and they can be taught stuff. But some people need that foundation. And I think I was. One of them, because I had never, I worked at a pizza place in high school, but I had never really done anything like serious cooking. I needed those foundational skills. I needed to know how to learn recipes, learn how to taste and just learn the basic knife moves skills. And yeah, that, that was great. And I enjoyed, I enjoyed my time at culinary school for sure. Cool. I also went to culinary school. I went to South Seattle community college. It was one of the top three culinary schools. Community colleges in the country. I think when I went, and did they, did La Cordon Bleu have both a pastry program, like a baking program, and then a cooking program? There was a small, yeah, so there, Le Cordon Bleu had several programs that you could choose for when you signed up. And unfortunately Le Cordon Bleus are no longer operating in the United States, but there's just the original one in Paris, I believe. But at the time there was, there were all over the place. I remember there was one at Scottsdale when I first moved out there, Pasadena and Hollywood. So there, there were, I remember Atlanta, I think they were, they were all over the country. But as far as like the, Curriculum, like I chose, which was like the Le Cordon Bleu and the Associates. So it was, I think I did 10 months, like of actual, like on campus stuff. And there was a small little portion of baking and pastries in there out of, Oh, wow. There's two to three months of that. They really did teach a lot. So you like, you had your fundamentals class and then you study, then you would do fundamentals too. And then it was like baking one and baking two. And that was more of like the savory, making breads. Pie crust, stuff like that. And then it got into the pastry portion, which was obviously more intense, the cakes and like all the frosting, software and all that. I have no patience for all that stuff. Yeah. You're either all in or there's very few people that like. Go both, but there are some that are pretty, pretty amazing. But yeah, I just, there was a little bit of that. And then, then you got into like your international equity. Cool thing about the cordon bleu is what they did have like classes that were prepared to get you ready for going out into the industry. So they have receiving class where like you got the orders from CIS, picked off the list and then you filled carts for, yeah, it was like a purchasing thing. And I thought that was. Cool. Yeah, that was, it was cold. We were in a one year, I think I was just 21, 22 at the time. Maybe, but you're a young kid. You're in a walk in pretty much for four hours of your day. It's like being at work. And then they did have a restaurant, two restaurants at Capitol, and it's like just. The cafe that you could work in there. So you can either work in like the prep and production kitchen would be doing like the big bashing of stuff for them, or you could actually work the line or they'd have people work in the counter. And then they had a fine dining restaurant on campus too, that like some of the more honored students got to work in and it was four nights a week. They had service for four to seven or whatever they were doing a little bit more. technical stuff than the rest of us. But those were the things that were available there. Yeah. I just loved that portion of school because it was like, you got to try a little bit of everything. You, obviously you learn, I would say it's probably 75 percent of the rest on the job. Just getting to work under great chefs and people that have been doing, you learn a lot of different ways, but you have to be very adaptable. You can't just be stuck in your, cause a lot of chefs are like, I don't care how you did it somewhere else. This is how I want it done. That's true., that's the wake up call from cooking school. That was my wake up call. They're like, I don't care if you went to cook. I didn't go to cooking school. You're gonna do it this way. There's jokes and memes about that. every new cook that you hire, he's back at my place. But it's either back at my place here, we did this where news or when I staged at Noma. Yeah. Totally crazy. Or, and they're like, oh, that's how we did it. Yeah. Cool, man. That's not how we do it. Love that because when I ask this question, sometimes it brings back the memories that I had and I always glorify them. I'm like, Oh, it was so much fun. But you know what? It is hell too. Cooking school was hell. It was stressful. I had to wait tables. I'd never waited tables in my life. See that frightened me. It was part of the program. You had to do it. It was all part of the program to graduate. Two weeks, every rotation. So you could do burger bar, you could be sauté, you could be sauce station, the next two weeks, you're out there bussing and waiting tables in the casual dining. The next two weeks you're out there bussing and waiting tables in fine dining. We did flambe. I had to do a flambé table side, table side flambés. That's awesome. French service, picking up the rolls with never done it before. We had a guy that worked for Canlis, which is a very fancy restaurant in Seattle, Washington, where I live, like top notch, probably Michelin star, but we don't have any Michelin stars here, but I'll never forget it. Kevin was an amazing guy, comedian, fine dining waiter at Canlis. Really superior. And he's demonstrating a flambé for everybody. And he's telling a joke and he caught his sleeve on fire and it was the coolest thing to see because he just put it out and everything was fine. So calm. He was just so calm about it. Like he didn't care and he made a joke about it. That's how it was, right? Yeah. You need to fail, especially in cooking school, because that's where you really learn and you have the opportunity to make a mistake and who cares? Yeah. You don't want to fail the grade, but you want to fail the experience so that you understand how to succeed. I think. And that's what to me it was all about. But we had a pastry program that was almost two years long. And then we had a cooking program that was almost two years long. So I did the cooking side, but we had an amazing pastry program. They did ice carvings. They did all kinds of stuff. But you're bringing back all these memories. Oh yeah, and I don't even think about it that much anymore, but it is fun to think about. Because when you're a culinary school kid, you come out, you have this, I think it's partly the school, and then partly because you're young and dumb that you come out and you're like, Oh, I'm like automatically a sous chef. A lot of people don't realize you start out from the bottom. You start out as a line cook, or if you go to a kitchen, Great school, like CIA, Hyde Park or Napa. Then you come out and you're like a Comi chef, some like really nice restaurant in Napa or something, but you start from the bottom. You don't come out as a chef. I think a lot of people rush, rush that want to, you gotta learn so much. And you're. Totally right. You got to fail. You got to fail a lot, but it's so funny. We talk about it a lot in the kitchen. Like when I've worked at new restaurants, like that first night where I just get beat up, where it's like that hard service. And that's like the one that I'm like, okay, now I know this place and now I know how to do it. It's like at every restaurant, once you get beat up for the first time where you actually feel it and you're like, wow, that was rough. After that, it's, Oh, okay. You just need that, you know, that teacher. It's crazy. So those that are listening right now, listen to this advice, because if you've gone to cooking school or you're just getting out of cooking school, you want to have an open mind. You want to be listening to your manager, your chef, the person that you're going to be working with. You want to be realizing that you have to pay your dues. You really have to pay your dues not going to come out as a sous chef. Out of cooking school, so go in with an open mind, come out with an open mind. I think that's the best takeaway from this great advice and insight, Johnny. So as we move forward, take us a little bit through your career. So you graduated from cordon bleu. What happens next? So I graduated from cordon bleu and that was around the time that I moved to Arizona. I moved out there for a girl. Oh yeah. That's how it always goes. Right. I just tried to start finding something and we actually didn't last very long in Arizona for the first go round. I went back and forth between Arizona and California for a while, my mid twenties and early thirties. I was always like trying to figure out which one was best for me. So we started out in Arizona and I just started out just small, little, it was a chain upscale burger place. And then they ended up opening a location in Huntington beach right after I opened one with them in Phoenix. And they were like. Hey, we need some help in Huntington beach. And I was like, all right, I guess I'm going back. So it was like back to California. And it was after that time I didn't end up very long with them, but that's when I got my shot with Disney. I applied for the job in Napa Rose, which is the fine dining inside the Grand California Hotel at the Disneyland Resort. That's where I really, like the bug hit me of I want to be like these cooks. I want, you know, like when I got, there wasn't that much, they didn't hire all the time. I think when I got hired, I was like the first person to get hired in the kitchen for a year. And then you had guys that were still working the stations for 10 years when it first opened. But now you're just, you're learning from these people. And we, I remember we changed the menu. Chef Sutton had a, a Vintner's like tasting menu and it changed pretty much almost weekly just that tasting menu. So that was like the first time we didn't have like recipes for this stuff. It was like the whole kitchen was like, we were all in the same pallet. We were all on Chef Sutton's pallet. And he would give you like a guideline, all your ingredients, your technique and whatnot, but you make it. Have him taste it and then you taste it with him. And then he's more salt, more lemon, more herb, whatever. And it was always that it was always more salt, more lemon, more herb. And he had his herb blend, which was like thyme, chervil, parsley. It was called the Napa herbs. And that went in everything. I remember, I just, I remember it was like, if you thought it, you're going to taste it and he's just going to be like, he's going to tell you exactly what you already knew. Salt. And that's, that's where I learned a lot. I still think back to those days and I've been thinking back to them recently because that was like a classically French trained kitchen doing California inspired wine country food. So there was a lot of inspiration from other nationalities and stuff. And I've been thinking back to those menus. I know I have a bunch of those printed out menus somewhere that I've saved for my younger days. And I I want to take a look at them to get re inspired to do my take on stuff. The other day I needed to make a soup for Kendall's and I was like, I have no idea what to do. It was like, I needed an hour. And I remember , his mushroom cappuccino, which was like his signature dish. It was this really rich, like cream of mushroom soup. And then we would make this savory truffle, lemon thyme foam, put the foam into a big espresso cup, and then you pour the soup over it, and it would It would look exactly like a cappuccino, basically. And so I was like, I remember what was in that. I never made it, but I tasted it so many times. Like I can, I remember the flavor profile distinctly. So I made it and I had a couple of guests in the restaurant who just like absolutely went nuts for it. And I was like, it's literally like a mushroom soup, which is really nice. and, but You think about those times, those are like the inspirations that you have. If there's something that you did very younger on, you want to see how, how far you've come. And Disney, yeah, that was my big, where I learned a lot. And then I ended up moving back out to Phoenix, Arizona and started working with a lot of the bigger, Restaurant groups, Algeo hospitality out there was a big one. I worked at the W hotel in Old Town Scottsdale for Sushi Roku. Sushi Roku operates out of California, Nevada and, Arizona. It's going with all those big groups. And there was a lot of camaraderie in Phoenix. There's a lot of chefs that collaborate and work together. It's a very tight knit back of the house, kitchen, hospitality, bartending community. Like the industry life in Phoenix, Arizona, Scottsdale is. It's pretty amazing. Everybody gets along and everybody really likes to show out with each other. There's a lot of that out there. And I ended up just becoming great friends with a lot of these people and we all just really supported each other. You know, if I got the call, like one of the, I think one of my favorite restaurants, you know, working, in Phoenix, was a place called Hush Public House, in Scottsdale. I opened it with my friend, Chef Don Ruggiero and Charles Barber. These people are guys that Charles, I had never worked with before, but I worked for one of the same restaurant groups he did. So I knew all the same people Charles did. Dom and I were young sous chefs together at a restaurant called Chelsea's Kitchen. And we just remained friends. And I remember we were like the younger sous chefs when we first started there. And we were like nerded out about food and we would try to make specials. And we would, that's where we were like, Our friendship started. We would, we just had a really good chemistry where we could kick things off of each other. And the end result was always something really cool. And we were from different backgrounds. Dom was this Italian, Italian food background where I'm California and I'm kind of the Mexican background. But Dom was, worked at really good restaurants. He's went to culinary school as well. And when we met in our career, we were, young and upcoming. And then we got to open a restaurant together. I was the opening sous chef for them at Hush Public House. And that was some of the coolest food and being there from the very beginning, doing all the R& D and seeing it, that talk about learning, like having to learn, like opening a restaurant is one of the craziest things I've ever done. I've done it like, I've done it like six times and I always say, I'm never going to do it again. I'm never going to be part of an opening team. I helped do it twice. I helped him twice and I can, Oh, it is nightmare. But what you learn and what you come away with is unreal. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of the hard parts about it are that it is not, most of the stuff's not your fault, right? It's just things that are out of your hands. Right. That just slow you down, slow down, put, grind things to a halt basically. But that was, that was such an awesome experience with Dom and Charles. We spent, even when the restaurant was just still in construction, we spent eight to 10 hours together talking about our plans, our things. And then you can talk about all these things. You can talk about all your plans, but like in reality, like you have to be realistic to the space and what you got. yeah, I remember we had the tiniest walk in, we had the tiniest prep area. And. But we made it work, we absolutely made it work. And it was like some of the most fun and best food that I remember being a part of. We won best new restaurant, Phoenix magazine, that, that first year, you know, right after I left and it was, it was awesome. And then I ended up getting to work on another project with Charles, Aftermath Kitchen, opened that with him as well. And again, Opening a restaurant, it was the exact same thing, craziness. And it's always like craziness, wait, and then you're open. And then it's just, and then it's just nonstop. You have a couple of months and you're like, where did that time go? so that was, you know, Phoenix for me. And then I decided to come back out to California and I ended up working for a King's Seafood Company, which is, you know, big restaurant group. I think they have a, I think closest to you would be up in Washington. Oh, they have something and they have something in Washington. Okay. I'll remember exactly. It's a water grill. Yeah. It's the water grill. Yeah. They had a water grill up there, but I ended up working at one of water grills, flagship stores in Orange County in South coast Plaza. Just this was, this is where I learned just how crazy busy some places can be. Yeah. It was. I've never, this was 700 covers a night, crazy. And I had never ever done anything like that where the kitchen that I'm going to be running, you know, has 14 cooks on the line. I've, I came from places where seven's a lot, like seven cooks. Like you've got a lot of people, we had 14, like on the line at water grill. And it was absolutely crazy, but to be able to do high quality food for 700 people in a four hour span, I really admire that company. That's where I got to see like a very organized. Corporate restaurant group, like what they can do, you know, they had streamlined, you know, they owned their own distribution company. you know, they took care of like only they took care of their, only the restaurants, obviously we use Cisco and other things too, they, a big part. They distribute their own seafood. So they go, they cut out everybody else. They go right to the, to the fisheries. They have their own warehouse. They cut everything in house and then just send it out to the restaurants. I really admired all the systems and stuff that they have. Cause yeah, I've worked in kitchens where you have absolutely no system. I know it's like anarchy, but I worked in a French restaurant where the guy was Polish who owned the restaurant and passed himself off as French and I would do all the work and he would take all the credit at lunch. And he'd go out to the dining room and take all the credit. And I did the prep. I did everything, but it was, there were no systems. It was just fly by the seat of your pants, but I learned so much about French cuisine. It was incredible and frustrating at the same time. Oh, a hundred percent. And it works. Like you said, it works. Sometimes it's not sustainable. It's not a system. That's the key. So why people leave all the time? I used to, I left every six months sometimes because there was no structure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And some people thrive in the structureless, but, but then they only strive in that environment. Yeah. When you get somebody who came from like absolutely nothing to like, like having to do like health department logs all day to change your sandy bucket every four hours, all that stuff. They're like, what is this? Or they're like, yeah, I already do that. But I was like, yeah, but now you have to write it down. Like you have to log it. You have to show us that you're actually doing it. You have to build, you also have to build Something for the employees to feel good about for the benefits, but also the culture and it's the industry has changed so much from what I remember because it was brutal and I know it still is in a lot of places, but to me. I just couldn't believe how we were treated and people would put up with it because either that or you move on, but then a lot of people would move on. But if you provide them retirement, if you provide them something, some goal, a management structure or possibly the path to becoming a chef, a great mentorship program. Those are the kinds of things that I see people stay in those places, the people I've interviewed. That's why they stay. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so funny you say that because you don't know why we stayed and I don't know why I stayed in the kitchen in the beginning and I didn't get health insurance. I just, I felt at home. I'll be honest. I love the sound of like silverware in the dish pit, like the little click of plates when they shake a bus tub, it's got a bunch of forks in it. Like those sounds are like, that's like back water raindrop background for me. I hear it all the time. So it's, I love those noises. When I go to a restaurant, I kind of tune into that. If I'm walking to the restroom and I'm passing the dish pad or I'm passing the kitchen, like I hear it, it just sounds very familiar. But you're right. When I first started like 15 years ago, the culture was Different, I could say, you could say toxic in some senses, but I, I don't know why we put up with it. We just did. And you just shook it off. And there were, there were different ways that people went about it. Some people, they were totally hard, brutal on y'all shift. And then after they crack open a beer for you and service is over and it's just service, I wasn't mad, it's just service. But then there was just some people that they just beat you down the entire time. And. That's like pretty much the only relationship you had with them. And you just kept at it because you learned a lot. You learned how to do something new. You were doing really cool food. Like you, the juice was worth the squeeze. And I can say, yeah, I grew up in that environment and I learned a ton and I've seen how hard it is for people that maybe a little bit earlier than I did. But. Can't pivot away from it now and can't don't know how to treat people the way they want to be treated now It's very hard for them. I don't want to interrupt you, but that's where my passion lives is how to get people So I work in technology right now yeah, and I when I left the industry because there was a drive by shooting and I was assistant manager in Napa Valley and I Was just done. I had reached my limit right my dream fell apart You And I was like, I got to do something else. But then I fell into technology and I didn't look back. I wouldn't say it's not hard. I wouldn't say it's easy. It's hard. You have to constantly study. You have to constantly keep up on the technology. But what I did was I brought hospitality into technology and I've been really successful because of bringing the restaurant business, the restaurant, the essence of that. Is hospitality. If you really get it, if you really get it, that's the essence of the restaurant business. And I brought that into technology and I got promoted and I was successful because no one else had that edge. No one really understood that. Some people might be on the wings going, I got to do something else. Remember that the skills you learn in the restaurant business are life skills. They are absolutely critical and they separate you from so many other people. A hundred percent. And you know, there's this big belief in the restaurant industry that like, you know, everybody should have to work in a restaurant. After college or something, it should be like the RV, like mandatory service in a restaurant because people don't, people out there don't realize how they treat people. For some reason, there's something about a restaurant that just, I don't know what it is. It brings in some kind of entitlement when you're eating, when some people are eating. I've had great guests and I've had all these things. And I'm always from the, I, when I hear people complain about certain things like prices or people that are returned or they've, they've been to the restaurant before, it's A restaurant for you is a choice. It's not a necessity, but you can cook at home. You can get sustenance and all that. A restaurant is an absolute, you know, a choice. It's, you know, you're eating there because you can afford it. You can, if you don't like the price of this, there's a restaurant that has a price for, you know, we are here because We're not like a, you know, whatever. I just, I really, that's the one thing, but at the same time, you can't say that to somebody, it's, it's absolutely something that you can't say. You could think it. yeah. You're not going to walk out as the executive chef into the dining room and tell one of your customers that in front of all these people, you've just reversed marketed, you've just reversed marketed. Yeah, I get it. But I love hospitality, which exactly what you're saying is we don't, I, we don't know, we know that we're crazy and we're doing this. You have to be crazy to actually be sustainable in this industry. You have to be able to handle the ups and downs and just, or every, everybody knows every Sunday brunch service is going to be a terrible day for everyone. And it's everywhere. We know it, we know it going into it, but we still are like, get there. And with that glimmer of hope that this Sunday is going to be different, but it's not, but I think we actually do stay there because we do taking care of people. We like people eating our food. We like to make good food for people. We like to be get like service goes. Long way. And I don't think front of the house always gets the credit they deserve. Cause when you have an amazing server, like if you're a regular, they remember your birthday, they know your kids, all this stuff, they have conversy, those servers. I always wonder those servers are the ones that, Hey, they gave me like a 500 bottle of champagne for my birthday or like Christmas, they gave me like. 500 bucks because those people make an impact, they make an impact on somebody else's lives. And at the end of the day, I think that's why we do it. And that's why I do it. That's why I want to open a restaurant. I want to be hospitable. Yeah. There's certain things that are going to be certain things that are there for my ego, obviously like my menu. And sometimes I'll be like, yeah, probably unless you have an allergy, I'm not going to do modifications, stuff like that. But at the end of the day, I want to serve people. I want to make food. I want to make people happy. Yeah. Voice for chefs for me is serving people, right? It's It connects me back to the restaurant business. It's like a drug in a way. It's, it's hard to explain, but I feel connected to something that I lost years ago by doing this because I get to talk about cooking school. I get to learn about this opening of a restaurant. I got invited to a VIP dinner for this brand new restaurant opening called Vivian's Bistro. That's fantastic in downtown Seattle in the Grand Sheridan Hotel. And all these chefs came in. To the VIP dinner from all over Seattle that I idolize and I shook their hands and I talked with them all because of my friend, who's the executive chef. I'll give her a shout out. It's chef Donna. She is amazing. And she has Taiwanese cuisine. That's outstanding in Seattle. But anyway, what is your philosophy when you talk about hospitality as an executive chef? How do you not manage, but how do you lead people successfully? You know, I think it all just comes down to respect. You have to respect everybody. You have to, I just like to give it to them straight. But if somebody's not doing well, You can't pretend like they're doing okay, if they're not going to learn, if you don't correct their mistakes. But you can do it respectfully. I had the sous, growing up, I had the sous chefs to me that were, when they were trying to show me a new way of doing it, there was like a lot of sarcasm. Right. Same. you know, and, I don't know that worked for me, but I could tell, I could tell where it didn't work for other people, you know, or people would get mad or people shut down and they stopped talking or whatever. I really, I think my biggest philosophy as managing a team has always been to manage the personalities. You don't manage everybody the exact same. There's some people that you constantly have to pat on the back to keep them, to give them that drive to keep going. There's some people that. Don't need all that all the time. Just need it occasionally. There's some people that you need to constantly be on and pushing or for it to get the best results out of them. There's some people that you can be sarcastic and some people you have to coddle, but you just have to really, you have to get to know your team. Like I said, luckily enough, I have worked for a couple of like actual like groups where culture is a big part of management training. And I've taken bits and pieces. From all of those things, like King Seafood's biggest thing was the bank account theory with your employees. Like every time, you're talking to them or finding out about something in their lives, getting to know them personally, getting to know the person you're making deposits, you're showing that them that you care, you're making, and then like, when you have to go into a tough situation, like reprimanding somebody for something that they did. Or, asking them to pick up a double shift on a day that's supposed to be their day off, you're making a withdrawal, but you have to have enough of those deposits in there where the withdrawal, the negative doesn't, , outweigh all the groundwork that you had to do. I've taken, bits and pieces, from all those. And I just think it's your spend. More time with this group of people, most of the time than you do your own family. You have to work holidays. You guys work nights, you guys work weekends together. So you literally have, you have to care about what's going on in their lives and just realize that everybody has a life outside of the restaurant. It took a long time for me to realize that because in my younger years, You get called on your day off, you just show up, right? Don't take that time for yourself. You can work seven days in a row. You can do 13 doubles. Those are normal for us that are not for the rest of the working society. They don't, they don't understand. I guess my next question for you is, are there any people along your journey? That really influenced you, like really took you under their wing or did something in your career that really helped it snowball? There's a lot. I'm just going to like rail off a bunch of people. Go for it. It's Chef Andrew Sutton at Disney was who I learned a lot from. Just like I said, I learned a lot really about fine dining and cooking. When my time with him at Napa rose and just seeing somebody who was just so creative and just always, I, that was the first time I was like somebody that was always ready with the next step, with the next tasting, seemed like he had endless ideas of what he wanted to do. Yeah. Don Ruggiero, who we opened Hush together. He's an amazing chef. He's got some really good restaurants in Phoenix, Scottsdale area. Charles Barber, again, huge in Phoenix, Scottsdale with Aftermath and Born and Bread, there's so many people out there like John Heflin from Chula. I'll be honest with you. I was my biggest, Roadblock all the years. I, I used to drink a lot. I was a partier and I couldn't handle it, but that was my escape. That was what I did. And I got progressively worse. And I jumped around a lot because I'd play the victim or they're overworking me, they're over there. I was never accountable for the things that I could have improved on. I was always talented. I was always. Good night. When I was on it, I was on it, but a hundred percent, I always shot myself in the foot or I always just created a roadblock for myself. I was my own worst enemy. A lot of people along the way tried to help me out, but I've been free of alcohol for about 14 months now. And this is like the first time that I'm, it's so much easier. Like the stress, the stress, the stress doesn't stress me out where I'm like, I want to quit, you know, like every time, every time things got hard somewhere else, I drown my sorrows in In my booze and do stupid things. But then I'd always think, Oh, I don't need this. Or your mind just thinks that way. now I'm more about positivity and stuff like that. And things are not always going to be easy. The easy, the hard times don't last forever. It's not always going to be like this. Things are going to change. What brought you success in your sobriety for people that are listening? Cause I know that a lot of people struggle with this in the business. You know what? You just have to find something that works for you. Some people do AA, some people do rehab, some people do a mixture of things. Some people do church, some people can do it on their own. For me, it was a mixture of stuff. I did, I did, I do AA. I'm not as active as I used to be, for a long time, I was going to a meeting every day. I did 90 meetings in 90 days. I got a sponsor. So I think it's, you know, having a sponsor. Sponsor talking to people, going to meetings, you know, just realizing that other people out there from different walks of life and different careers do exactly the same thing. That helped me. And you're right. It's very hard to be sober in the restaurant industry. It's just, it's part of the thing. One of the things that has helped me a lot is I still go out a lot. I go to dive bars, I go to bars. I just, I love the industry. I love all that. But I'm very, I'm a very big proponent now of. Non alcoholic cocktails that taste like the cool things that I used to drink things that taste like Negroni's and not just sugary Mocktails as they say I you can the I think what's helping me is because I know I can have fun Without it. I could go to somewhere and still be the exact same life of the party person without the booze And you wake up without a hangover. So you have more free time Oh God. Yeah. And you have more, you know, better, better sleep. my health is so much better. You don't realize how many calories you drink in beers or anything like that. And then when you stop, it's just crazy. but it's, it's also been so much better for my mental and for my work. I feel you know, I care more about learning about food. Again, I found the passion again. I have more time now to read cookbooks, a deep dive, to look up all these recipes and stuff like that. And it's just been the people that knew me that I've seen me now, it's a year out basically are like, Okay, like maybe this time it's, maybe this time it's the real, the real deal. And I feel that way too. I absolutely love where I'm at and I love being in the kitchen. And I found that whole like passion all over again. And I think that's, that's exactly why I go out more. I love this industry. I love the hospitality industry. I like to see the cool things that everybody else is doing. And then it just sparks ideas. It's awesome. So tell us about Kendall. Let's talk a little bit about that. And then we're going to wrap up. Yeah, absolutely. So Kendall's is at the music center in downtown LA. It's like a very big cultural performing arts center in downtown Los Angeles. That's been there since I believe like the sixties and Kendall's is one of the restaurants that we have for basically we're driven by the shows. We're there for the patrons. Kendall's is a French inspired brasserie. And I just say French inspired because people always say They want French food, but they don't really want French food. We're doing, we're doing French inspired with California ingredients. We want to keep that California vibe. And California to me is just being able to get awesome produce and fresh fish. It's just every, we have everything. I hate to say that. That's why I love to live in California. I love working in like downtown LA. It's it's always, it's noisy, hustle and bustle, but you're in the middle of everything. Ken, so Kendall's been there for a couple months now, he went through a menu change and we're working it. I, my team is not the most experienced chefs. I'm trying to show them something new and I want them to grow with us. And this is just our first menu together. I told them our spring menu is going to be more technique involved, better plating. But we're going to, it's going to be more in depth. I want to see who wants to learn and who's going to be like, Nope. I don't want to do this, but very excited to be a part of Kendall's. The restaurant's been there for a long time. We've had people that have been eating there since the eighties and nineties going to shows at Dorothy Chandler pavilion and going to the operas and all that stuff. It's a challenging place to work because you're driven by the shows. Quick, real quick turnaround, but we're trying to become, you know, not just a show restaurant. We want to step it up. Just people in the neighborhood can come. We want to get established, maybe a little bit more regulars and stuff like that. My menu was just simple, but good food. We're just, we're brining things. We're taking the time and making, there's processes and steps, chicken liver mousse, and like our duck confit. We're taking the time. Brined for 24, salt cured for 24 hours. And it's slow confit. After that, our chicken is brined for 24 hours before we slow cook it and then crisp up the skin. It's really, it's simple food, but we're just trying to do it correctly. You also have seafood too, right? Yeah, we have mussels and we have just a regular salmon dish we've talked about getting oyster nights going and stuff like that, doing some stuff. I very much would like to start doing a little bit more raw fish presentations. I really like in the summer and stuff like that. I gravitate toward like ceviche and crudos and stuff like that. Those are like my. I guess you could say it's like signature dishes. I like to do, agua chiles, ceviches, crudos. I think that's probably like my favorite dish to make because you, obviously, you're trying to work with what fish you have, but you just, But you can put so much different technique onto a, to a ceviche or something that people don't think about. Like I think about texture. So I'm thinking about what could I put in there as a crunch and what kind of sauce and all this other stuff. I really am looking forward to doing some of that stuff at Kendall's in the near future. Cool. Johnny. Chef Johnny, I just want to thank you for coming on the show, and can you tell us how we can find you at Kendall's? Yeah, we're at, Kendall's is, like I said, at the music center in downtown la. I do have an Instagram, it is Chef Johnny Blaze on Instagram. Kendall's as in Instagram as well, like Kendall's, DTLA. We're going to try to start posting more pictures on there. I think we got the new menu. We have some really beautiful pictures that I'd love to share with everybody, but I pretty much share a lot of what we do at Kendall's. I always show pictures of the family meal all that. That's a little, a little bit of the back of the, This behind the scenes stuff I show on my story, but I'm looking forward to making some more stuff to put out there for Kendall's. I love it. I love it. Thank you again, Chef Johnny, for your time and your stories and sharing your journey with us. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I've never done podcasts before, so it was a great, awesome first experience. Good, good. That's our goal. So I'm really glad.