
Deglazed Industry Podcast
An In The Bizz (ITB) Podcast with chefs, owners, servers, bartenders and people that have worked the bizz and their experience working in it. Deglazed is a podcast bringing you life behind the scenes in restaurants. Get to know the people that handle your food. WARNING. Kitchen Jokes/Language7
Deglazed Industry Podcast
Deglazed Chef Jullian Part-1
Meet Chef Julian, a Florida kid who's spent nine years grinding through every corner of the restaurant industry – from starting out baking with his grandma to culinary school to cooking in California and back to commanding the kitchen line. This multi-talented chef brings more than just culinary skills to the table; he's also a songwriter and music producer who channels the same creativity into his art as he does into his cooking. Julian is truly "one of us" – a veteran of the restaurant trenches with the kind of authentic humor and unfiltered insights that only come from someone who's lived every aspect of the bizz. In this episode, he shares his wild journey through the industry with the wit, stories, and kitchen wisdom that make him the perfect guest for Deglazed's behind-the-scenes look at restaurant life. Warning: Kitchen jokes and language included – just the way we like it.
Yeah, drink whatever you want over there, bro.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, shit. It's still got some in there. Oh, yeah. Worst case scenario, I'll sleep on the grass.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you can sleep right there on the casting couch. Yeah, on the casting couch. That's why it's here. Is it clean now? Yeah, man. We haven't casted anything on it
SPEAKER_00:yet. We haven't casted. I can make that happen. You can be the first.
SPEAKER_01:You can be
SPEAKER_00:the first. I can make it happen. I know. a lot of people in Miami. I'm talking about you, but
SPEAKER_01:okay. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:whatever. I'm being casted?
SPEAKER_01:Why not? You could sub
SPEAKER_00:it out. What do you have to do tomorrow? What do you have to do tomorrow? You know what I have to do tomorrow. You work with me. We're
SPEAKER_01:offering the spot, bro. I
SPEAKER_00:got a giant burp coming out. Oh my God. Let it rip, bro. There you go. There you go. It just kept coming. Love it, dude. It's like you ever felt it in your chest and it just hurts? Oh my God. I love
SPEAKER_01:those, man. I
SPEAKER_00:love them, but I don't like the fart version of it because then you start the question. Is this a fart?
SPEAKER_01:Is it a fart? You know, at my age, you don't trust a fart, man. Or waste a heart on. Here
SPEAKER_00:you go. Last night, I had a giant fart on my couch. No clothes. Try to treat it like a penis and put it directly in front of you. One
SPEAKER_01:fist away from
SPEAKER_00:it. Oh, you're talking about the mic. I was so confused. He's looking
SPEAKER_01:for a penis. One
SPEAKER_00:fist
SPEAKER_01:away. One fist away. Get it where you're comfortable. Now, he can also, if you're not comfortable We all got ADD. Oh, I got the H in it.
SPEAKER_00:ADHD. He's got the hoe
SPEAKER_01:in him. You don't get to hear the clap. You'll hear it later. You'll hear it later. As they say. We'll give it to you again. You got the clap?
SPEAKER_00:We'll give it to you again. Yeah. You're going to give me the clap again? Again. We just gave it to you twice. Dude. Can you not do that? But here's the thing, bro.
SPEAKER_01:If you already have it, you can't get it twice. So I don't understand that. That's not how that works. That's not how that works. If you already have it, if it's in you right now, you
SPEAKER_00:can't get the clap again. I've been tested too many times. Yeah? How many times have you had it? Have you had it? Actually, I don't know what a high number is for that test. One.
UNKNOWN:One?
SPEAKER_01:That's high in my book. Now I don't want to expose my number. That'll knock you out of the game for at least the night.
SPEAKER_00:I've been tested four times. Only three times has it been negative. The first time was only 19 expected. Dude, shit happens,
SPEAKER_01:bro. At least it goes away. At least it's not one of those
SPEAKER_00:that stays. I thought it was a tumor. I I was like, oh no, there's a tumor in my balls. No. No, it was the clap. Fuck yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01:It was the clap. I'll take a clap over a tumor any day. Nah, that's a
SPEAKER_00:disco. There it goes. Is that a Blazy Susan paper? Oh, I don't know. For a second, it looked pink. I was like, yes, Blazy Susan. It came from the dispensary. I don't know. Yeah? Oh, it was pre-rolled?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:All right, so introductions. You know me. I'm Low. Everybody knows Low. You hit it already? Yeah. What the fuck? Hit it again? You know what happens. I'm going to sit here being quiet.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, go ahead. Nah. Scoot. Hey, I'm Scott. He's Scott Scoot. It's been a minute since we've done a podcast. It's kind of fun. Yeah. No, I'm good. Thanks.
SPEAKER_00:Introducing... A.K.A. El Estudianti.
SPEAKER_01:El Estudianti.
SPEAKER_00:As he is known by the Spanish folks at our job. A.K.A. Juliano. Juliana. Juliana is better than Juliana. A.K.A. Julio. Julio. A.K.A. J.Dia. Wow. There's a lot of names. A lot of A.K.A.
SPEAKER_01:You got to at least keep one to the chest, you know, so that... They're not all
SPEAKER_00:going to be on your police report. The only ones I keep are Jules, Julian, and J.D. That's it. That's it? Yeah, that's it. You don't let anybody else call you anything else at work? At work? I mean, they can call me whatever. Baby. I'll let it happen. What's up, babies? Baby. They're all shorter than me. I'll let it happen. Babies.
SPEAKER_01:That's fair. That's
SPEAKER_00:fair.
SPEAKER_01:Lo and I had a whole day when we first met at the first restaurant we worked at where we called everybody, actually probably about a whole week, where we called everybody babies. What's
SPEAKER_00:up, babies? How you doing, babies? What restaurant was this?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, right over here. Yeah, it's
SPEAKER_00:Rick and Barrel. Rick and Barrel. Yeah, and I worked there, too. Who worked there?
SPEAKER_01:When? He knows.
SPEAKER_00:He knows. He knows him. I know Kyle.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, you know Kyle? He who shall not be names.
SPEAKER_00:I just named
SPEAKER_01:them.
SPEAKER_00:Did I get in trouble?
SPEAKER_01:No, it's all good. We're just fucking around. We've talked about bringing Kyle on the show. Yeah. And then we decided we just can't keep the
SPEAKER_00:levels. I would have been like, you're going to bring him on the show and then he's going to listen to past episodes. That sounds very familiar. I'm going to have to keep adjusting the levels. Constantly.
SPEAKER_01:If you ever notice, Kyle talks louder and louder and louder.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. They're more
SPEAKER_01:excited to get. Yeah. And the longer the sentence goes, you know. But love me some Kyle. See him over at the... I go over to Abaco all the times it's right here you know
SPEAKER_00:i would go i got some real good restaurants
SPEAKER_01:and a lot of fun bars man i'm not gonna lie it's a good time over there
SPEAKER_00:i only know the stuff i'm there because i did a delivery for like produce
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:at a yankee peddler i don't know if you've heard it i have seen i've seen them
SPEAKER_01:around yeah
SPEAKER_00:yeah i did that for like two years and uh i only wanted it because i wanted to stay away from cooking for like
SPEAKER_01:dude i feel that bro
SPEAKER_00:yeah how long have you cooked
SPEAKER_01:for
SPEAKER_00:i've been cooking since i was 17 so that makes it nine years now
SPEAKER_01:that's that's I mean, you're young and you've got a lot under your belt.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I'm trying my best so far. It's like, it's weird. Cause that, that's when I started professionally. But when I started like cooking, cooking, like actually trying, I'd say like 14, but that was all baking. Oh no shit. Yeah. Cause it wasn't. Do you like to bake? I fucking love to bake. I just hate to do it professionally.
SPEAKER_01:That's fair. That's fair.
SPEAKER_00:And it's like, cause bacon just takes so, so fucking long and you're just like,
SPEAKER_01:You actually have to measure and fucking weigh.
SPEAKER_00:That part I actually love. I love accuracy and shit. I love using the scale. It makes me feel like my dad because he was a drug dealer.
SPEAKER_01:That's funny because I just took my weed weighing scale over to my sister's to make... My old roommate from culinary school lives in Tampa. I went to visit her over the weekend. She gave me half her sourdough starter. I'm making sourdough focaccia at my sister's right now.
SPEAKER_00:I fucking love focaccia. I had to
SPEAKER_01:come home And grab my weed scale to measure out all my, you know, my flower and everything to feed it, to get it bubbly, you know, and get it going and
SPEAKER_00:stuff like that. I did the same thing in California whenever I had over because I'm the only one who does it professionally. And they're like, yeah, but I don't know. I have a cup. That's it. So I just go to a smoke shop and just buy a scale because I know I'm not going to find anywhere with it.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you go to like Williams-Sonoma or even like, you can even go to like fucking Target. Target's got them now. That's true. They've got like the, and it's like what? Weed scales? Well, you can use it. It's a digi. It's just a big, but it's a fat digi. Oh, they're just regular scales for people? At pet shops, like you get like the little travel one, right? The little silver travel one. You can get the big one so you can actually fit a bowl on it. Is that like the jewelry bags? Well, that's totally different.
SPEAKER_00:The jewelry bags. Yeah, that's like
SPEAKER_01:your little grand baggies. Jewelry bags. Like you snap them to open them. I
SPEAKER_00:always called them coin bags. Coin bags. Coin bags.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's what they're actually called, right? Yeah. Allegedly. We
SPEAKER_00:all dealt drugs at different times. Allegedly. Allegedly.
SPEAKER_01:Allegedly.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I know they're jewelry bags. I used to sell a lot of jewelry. You sold jewelry? I sold jewelry. A lot of jewelry. You're making it sound like it wasn't jewelry. A lot of nose jewelry. It was jewelry. Was it real? It was nose jewelry. I used to sell a lot of
SPEAKER_01:lung jewelry. Oh, I get it. Jewelry. But I didn't use jewelry bags. I used, you know, gallon bags.
SPEAKER_00:It took me a whole second to realize what was going on here. It's just there's more and more terms. Oh, my God.
SPEAKER_01:From what dispensary? You should, you know, we'll try to get them to pass money.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't get it from any dispensary. Oh. I found that. Who likes free stuff? And I said, eh. It's free stuff. Julian likes free stuff. I love free shit. We'll take care of that. Fell off a truck. We'll take care of that later. You make every normal thing so suspicious. I know, right? It's like, oh yeah, I'm buying milk, but I didn't get it from that store. I didn't get it from that store either.
SPEAKER_01:I just found it. Because it's not pasteurized. Yeah, it's not pasteurized. Everything Lowe does is illegal. Yo, these are nice eggs. Where'd you get them? I can't help it. From my neighbor's chicken.
SPEAKER_00:I can't help it. I just found these eggs.
SPEAKER_01:These are rooster eggs. Did you even know they made them?
SPEAKER_00:You got a giant ass ostrich egg. drag. Just like, where are you finding this? I just have it. I just have it. I found it. Do you want it or not? This is the second to
SPEAKER_01:last pterodactyl egg. Do
SPEAKER_00:you want it or not? What's going on? Sometimes I find shit, sometimes I don't. And when I find shit, I show it to my friends. Don't question it.
SPEAKER_01:And if one of
SPEAKER_00:them wants to buy it from me, I got
SPEAKER_01:it. Oh my God. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, I hate bacon, dude, man. I do it, though. I like to do it because I like the product. And I'll stick it up. If I could, you know, doing what I like to do. I like to just wing it. I'm shooting from the hip, dude. I'm a hotline fucking chef. I mean, I can write recipes. I can make shit consistent, yada, yada. But if I'm cooking at home and enjoying it, I want to just taste it and go, you
SPEAKER_00:know. You can't taste test it in baking. You just got to wait.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. You can put it all together the best you can measure and go, I taste the salt. That's good. But after that, yeah. I mean, right now, I'm letting this shit proof. I didn't have time to wait, so I'm letting it proof all night in the fridge, dude.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Hopefully tomorrow will be good. I'll smash it down for the last one. Fucking olive oil to fuck it out of it. Yeah. I'm going to stop and buy some good flaky salt for the top of it. I've been using pink Himalayan and I set like the grinder on the biggest, you know, to get like chunky salt in there. But I mean, it's not going to be the same as like big flaky sea salt, you know, like makes all the difference in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I don't use the Maldon sea salt anymore. There's a Jupiter salt farms or something. It's like a local brand. They sell it at Yankee Peddler. I got this. It was just like, I'd say a pint of flaky salt, and it's by$18 or$21.
SPEAKER_01:Damn. I'm not going to be using that. That's expensive. Yeah, I know. That's a lot.
SPEAKER_00:Which is why I only use it on special occasions. I don't use it on everything. But I've had... One container. I've had it for like two years so far.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, snap.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so special
SPEAKER_01:occasions. You don't have a lot of special occasions then, huh?
UNKNOWN:No.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, my God. No, man, I've got to create a special occasion. This could have been one. You could have brought it. We could have just tried it, bro. That's true. I mean, we'll just have to have you
SPEAKER_00:back with your salt. Like I said, you've got to wait for bacon. But yeah, the thing I like about baking is mostly because I love science as a kid.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I just like to see shit react. Right. So I just find the numbers cool. I nerd out on baking, basically.
SPEAKER_01:You ever make beer or wine or anything like that?
SPEAKER_00:No. I don't trust, not myself, I don't trust my environment. all the time. Where it's like, you know, let this type of formation happen without you cooking it, like wine, beer, stuff. I don't trust it because if I have roommates or family there, I don't trust them to go near there
SPEAKER_01:I mean, fair. You could build your beer and just shove it in the back of your closet. Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean. I
SPEAKER_00:don't trust my closet either. I don't know
SPEAKER_01:what's back
SPEAKER_00:there. Everything's in there and I don't know what's in there.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, it's all sealed up, dude. You'd be fine, dude. It's all sealed up. I mean, if you like science, that's like your ultimate science because you basically do it all the way you think it's going to work, all the right measurements. You close that shit up and you wait 30 fucking days and you come back and you're like. Dear God. Let's see. Let's see if I make good flavors or not.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I just got the patient for two days. That's it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the thing is, that's the key, though. You get yourself four or five barrels, and every week you make one. So every week, starting in a certain amount of time, you get to drink a whole barrel of your own beer. It's a slow start, but then after that, you actually take one day to make your beer. You sterilize everything, and then you put it all together, and then you learn from what you do right and you do wrong. Pretty soon, you're just like growing weed. Pretty soon, you're harvesting every two weeks, or you're harvesting your beer every week. Yeah. I
SPEAKER_00:mean, I don't know. That's the
SPEAKER_01:key to moderation. I've done it a little bit. I'm not great at it, you know, but I appreciate it. It's like whiskey or wine. Whiskey, wine, and beer are like, you know, vodka. Like tequila is kind of the same way, but vodka and certain other things are just chemical, really. You know, I mean, rum, tequila, whiskey, wine, beer. It's all like, you know, like... ancient Chinese secret, so to speak. I
SPEAKER_00:like the shit they do in the stone mill. What was it? Not tequila, mezcal. That's one of my favorites. Smoky. I think the reason why I like it the most is because most people don't like it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, dude. I'm with you on that. That's why I like scotch. A lot of people just don't drink. Because then I don't have to share.
SPEAKER_00:It's just here for me.
SPEAKER_01:That's fair. That's good. It's just here for me. It's a selfish drink
SPEAKER_00:is what you're saying. But then it's like, I like to impress people in food with like, if you don't like it, I'll find a way to make you like it. Cause for me, it's like, uh, I was thinking that way when, uh, I moved to California cause I hated rice. Yeah. I hated most fish, but I fucking hated salmon the most.
SPEAKER_01:I hate salmon.
SPEAKER_00:I hated seaweed. I hated avocados. Love it. Uh, and then I had sushi, which has literally all of that in one piece. I fucking loved it. Raw salmon though.
SPEAKER_01:I hate cooked salmon, but raw salmon is delicious.
SPEAKER_00:I also hate cooked salmon.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Unless it's on like, some funk and like a Japanese based, like medium, medium, that type of shit.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Where it's like mayo, sesame oil, rice. Then I like it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:You want to know something funny? I used to make with any leftover salmon we had, I'd cook it all off and I'd make like a spinach, bechamel, and salmon lasagna. Oh my God. Salmon lasagna. And that shit actually fucking, it's killer, bro. Like I'd eat that too. Like, cause all the fat takes up all that oil, you know? And like, you don't get that oily fish flavor.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. For me, I don't know what it is. It's not that I taste fishy. Almost every time I eat cooked salmon, it tastes like metal. I don't know why. Whoa,
SPEAKER_01:trippy.
SPEAKER_00:And it's like, is this like a me thing or is this the type of salmon I
SPEAKER_01:get? Are you picking it up out of the pan? Because that just works with the flavor of the salmon.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But I always say so like, it feels like I'm chewing on aluminum foil, but it's fleshy.
SPEAKER_01:Fleshy aluminum. Yeah. It's like you're... Like a fucking, what would it be like?
SPEAKER_00:Eating a Terminator.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, eating a Terminator, exactly. Yeah. What part of California did you live in?
SPEAKER_00:I lived in Los Angeles, more specifically. For the first part, North Hollywood. Okay. And then for the last part, in like San Fernando Valley. What years? It was between 2018 to 2019, right on the cusp of 2020. And I was there for my culinary apprenticeship because, what was it? I have been doing cooking for about two years before I moved there. I was tired every day. I was kind of basically thrown into the fucking, I forgot the phrase. You're just thrown into the fucking fire or
SPEAKER_01:whatever. Yeah. Or deep end.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I worked at pistache. I didn't know anything about pistache. And at the time they were like the best Parisian restaurant in the County. I did not know that. I just saw restaurant. Yeah. And they, they look like they're doing good. And it's like the most stereotypical, like Gordon Ramsey ask as in like, Think of every bad stereotype in the kitchen. That's happening there. Really? Yeah. The food is really good. The food's really good.
SPEAKER_01:You're talking like everybody's cutthroat and backstabbing
SPEAKER_00:each other? It's more like the chef and the sous chef are very, very aggressive, hard, and mean.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And the rest of the people tend to be... Everyone else is Guatemalan. And I was the only... Floridian there that wasn't the chef of the sous chefs.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. They were from Florida.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They were from Florida. And it's like, Every single stereotype of the insults a chef could throw at you, they feel it at me every single day.
SPEAKER_01:That's also part of being like my extern, like, you know, like apprenticeship, like you're talking about, it was the same way. Like my chef literally and sous chef hazed me to the point where like, they'd just be like, I mean, I've said it before on the podcast, like he'd be interviewing somebody like who came out of a great restaurant, but, oh, we got everybody great here. You know, we got Lowe over here who's been cooking for years, can do anything. Then we got Scotty over there. He just fucking sucks. And he just, and I just feel like, Chef, I'm right here, dude. He's like, yeah, I know you're right there, dude. And
SPEAKER_00:they sound so serious. I can't tell.
SPEAKER_01:No, he meant it. And I did suck. But I mean, I also stuck it out. And that's what they're looking for you to do. Because it's a hard biz. They want to see if you got heart for it or not. But dude, yeah, well, good for you. You made it through, right?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. I made it through for two years. I was going to quit at one point. And then one of the sous chefs, the nicer ones, he said, but you'll learn a lot here. I know about chef and you'll learn a lot. He was right. I did learn. More there than I did in culinary school before that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Where'd you go to school? I went to fucking Lincoln Culinary.
SPEAKER_01:Where's that?
SPEAKER_00:It was on 45th near fucking I-95.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It was basically Lincoln Institute. Yeah, I was going to ask. It's like
SPEAKER_01:same as like Lincoln Diesel,
SPEAKER_00:Lincoln Welding. And it used to be Palm Beach Culinary.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I went there for about six months. It was supposed to be a year. Yeah. But they closed down because somehow a hotel had enough money to tell them, we want to buy your building. You're done. And so they were done. Just shut down a whole school. They just shut it all down. All tuition. Did you finish? school. I did not get to finish school. I only went halfway.
SPEAKER_01:Did you like what you did? Did they give you your money back? I loved it. I loved it. Did they give you your money back?
SPEAKER_00:My favorite thing is that not only did they give me my money back, all the equipment that I had and all the equipment they were going to give me, they just gave it all to me.
SPEAKER_01:Nice.
SPEAKER_00:So it was basically, I just got free equipment.
SPEAKER_01:So you got six months of education. Yeah. And free knife bag, free- Free chef's coats, free
SPEAKER_00:aprons. What classes did you take when you were there? It was a- Like health and safety, food science. No joke. My favorite part was the first where they help you get serve safe within the first week. Cause I was like, oh, thank God. I actually do need this.
SPEAKER_01:That's actually cool. They didn't do that for my, for my school.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They, uh, they train you. And if you don't get serve safe, then you get a license that says you can only cook here. Then it was basically just all the basics you can learn. And then we were finally about to reach baking. And then after baking, it was going to be international.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that's right when they closed it down. Oh,
SPEAKER_01:that's so lame,
SPEAKER_00:bro. I think like my favorite part was that they always have labs you can just walk into.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like for halloween was it they were showing you how to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen cool and they said obviously you're not going to be able to just buy liquid nitrogen anytime you want so i'm going to show you how to do it with dry ice instead oh my god tricks man that shit is my favorite trick to do when it's like i want to really impress someone with a just a simple thing but it doesn't look simple it's just yeah i'm gonna blend up dry ice which is very fucking aggravating. You think your shit's going to explode. And now you got powdered dry ice. And then you just make any ice cream base and you just go teaspoon by teaspoon.
SPEAKER_01:And just whisk it in?
SPEAKER_00:In a stand mixer. Yeah, with the paddle attachment. And you just got to be careful because if you do it too fast... too much carbon dioxide, then you got exploding ice cream all over your face. All over. It's
SPEAKER_01:kind of hot. Yeah. It's all over my face. That shit just Bellagio'd on me.
SPEAKER_00:But if you go too slow, then you have nothing. If you go at just the right pace, all right, then you got amazing ice cream. And it has like a Pop Rocks effect where it's like, it feels like it's Soda Wee. or it's popping in your mouth, you get those bubbles in there. But if you want more regular ice cream, just let it sit in the freezer for two days. And then it's like, oh my goodness. That's cool as fuck, dude. I thought ice cream in your body was a bad thing. Carbon dioxide? Well, it starts to evaporate at a very room temperature temp. So it's going to all evaporate. As long as you don't have it in a super, super tight, air-concealed vessel, because then it might explode. Now you're just making bombs. You just put some parchment. You just put some parchment. But you're swallowing this. Cover it
SPEAKER_01:up. That's air. That's trapping air. That's trapping air,
SPEAKER_00:ain't
SPEAKER_01:it?
SPEAKER_00:You're a walking time bomb. Like a
SPEAKER_01:duck. Like a duck eating Alka-Seltzer. You're a walking time
SPEAKER_00:bomb. That was so discarbonized. I'm just obsessed with ice cream.