George Poll on Building Distinctive Dining Experiences from Long Island to Miami

George Poll has spent decades building some of Long Island’s most celebrated restaurants. Alongside his brother, he’s crafted iconic dining experiences from Bryant & Cooper Steakhouse to Toku Modern Asian, blending culinary creativity with sharp business acumen. Recently, George took his expertise to Miami, where the journey to open Toku wasn’t exactly smooth sailing—facing all the challenges that come with launching in a new city. 

This episode is a masterclass in the fine balance between tradition and innovation, the intense planning behind every design choice, and the hurdles that come with launching each new restaurant. Through stories of teamwork, resilience, and a relentless drive to improve, George offers listeners an unfiltered look inside the restaurant business.

George Poll is an alumnus of BU School of Hospitality Administration’s first graduating class and serves on the school’s Dean’s Advisory Board member. George also played on BU’s football team, which is no longer, but that story is for another podcast! 

The “Distinguished” podcast is produced by Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. 

Host: Arun Upneja, Dean
Producer: Mara Littman, Executive Director of Strategic Operations and Corporate Relations
Research and Content Creation: Lu Lan
Editing: Isabella Laikin
Sound Engineer: Andrew Hallock

Music: “Airport Lounge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

This is Arun Rupnaja, Dean of the Bugh School of Hospitality Administration and the host of the Distinguished Podcast. I'm excited to welcome George Bowl, an entrepreneur who's never been afraid to speak his mind, winner of the Alum of the Year Award from our school, and a key member of our advisory board. George has spent decades building some of Long Island's most celebrated restaurants. Alongside his brother, he has crafted iconic dining experiences, going from Bryant and Cooper's Steakhouse to Toku modern Asian cuisine, blending culinary creativity with a sharp business acumen. Recently, George took his expertise to Miami, where the journey to open Toku wasn't exactly smooth sailing. Facing regulatory delays and all the challenges that come with launching in a new city. George doesn't sugarcoat his opinions. Whether it's about the highs and lows of running a restaurant empire or the road box put in place by local authorities, you can expect an honest, no-nonsense conversation today. We'll dive into what it really takes to thrive in the restaurant industry, the hurdles he has faced, expanding into new markets, and how he has managed to stay at the top in a business known for its high failure rate. So get ready for some candid insights, high octane conversation, and maybe a few stories you weren't expecting. Welcome, George, the Distinguished Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Thank you very much, Dean.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

It's amazing to have you here. We've been talking about this for quite some time. So it's I'm so happy that you're finally here.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah, but you you set that uh bar pretty high for me. I don't know if I have as uh much insight and as much information as you want. A bunch of stories, I'm sure, but we'll see where you take me. I'm gonna go on on your journey, and I'll let you lead the way.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Aaron Powell I think people are gonna love your story. So okay, but let's start with uh the first thing is you have so many restaurants, and um most entrepreneurs struggle with maintaining quality while scaling up, creating new concepts. So how do you do that? How do you keep the quality in every single restaurant that you own so high?

Why George Never Just Replicates the Same Concept

SPEAKER_00 2:35

So my father always taught us quality. Quality, quality, quality. And a lot of my restaurants or our restaurants. When you have quality, you don't have to do much to it. There's no hiding what it is, it's it's the best. So I remember one of my uh first classes here at BU, I had a professor Joe Curly. And he says, Do you have to have good quality to be successful? And right away I raised my hand. I have the answer to that one. And he says, you know, yes, yes, uh, he didn't know my name at the time, I guess. It was like the first day. And uh and he said, Professor Curly, yes, you have to have good quality to be successful. That's what I was raised on. And he says, No, you don't. And I was like, he's blowing my mind. And he says, for those that remember, I don't even know if you know, there was a chain called Howard Johnson's. Yes. And they were all over the highways across America. And they were known for for their uh fried clams. Now in New England, fried clams includes the belly, but these were just strips of fried clams, and they were lousy. But he said they were consistently lousy. Consistency. And you're talking about this as 40-something years, and he said it was going to be on the test at the end of the year, and it's still in my head now. Consistently fulfill the expectations you've created. So if your expectations are a greasy spoon or is a lousy restaurant, it has to be consistently that way. Because if a customer comes in one day and it's great, and one day it's not, you're gonna fail. So I still believe in consistently having good quality. But uh it was a great, great learning experience uh that I got here at Boston University.

unknown 4:20

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

I can attest to it. I've eaten at many of your restaurants consistently high quality. Thank you. But I'm also, again, uh another question which is very confusing. When restaurant is create one concept and they're very successful, they want to just take it the easy way, replicate the hell out of those restaurant concepts and just keep making more and more of those.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Oh, I wish I.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

You don't do that.

Expanding at the Americana: The French Bistro That Needed Work

Acquiring George Washington Manor and the Birth of Hendrick's Tavern

Navigating Historical Preservation Rules and Bureaucracy

SPEAKER_00 4:46

No, no, no. Don't say I don't do it. I didn't do it. Well, you did, yeah. I didn't do it, but oh, sometimes, especially if you want to have investors or people want to give you money, they want to see that you've been successful in many different markets. My brother and I, it just we had a restaurant and uh and we had Brian and Cooper Steakhouse. And there's uh one of the top uh grossing shopping centers in the country called the Americana. And it's one sh it's one light away, it's one traffic light away. Big, very high-end shopping center. And the the owner of that center um had space, he's he was redoing it and putting in Gucci and Prada and all these heavy-duty stores, but there was no food service, and he wanted to have a high-end restaurant, and uh he put in a restaurant from New York, and there's so many things. I can't give you 40 years of knowledge in in one sitting, but we met the owner, the chef of this restaurant that he put there, very well-known chef from New York. And he says, these people don't know what they want. Actually, he said, these effing people don't know what they want. And my brother and I shook our heads, they're like, oh boy, he's in trouble. Because we grew up in this area. I know I knew my area. So it failed. And the owner of the shopping center came to us and what was what do you think we we should put here? Well, I'm not gonna put another steakhouse a block away. So we thought and we thought, and uh we saw a concept somewhere else in a shopping area that did well. It was uh an Italian idea. So we decided to put an Italian restaurant there. And the restaurant that we took over had a kitchen in the basement. Well, we had ideas of doing hundreds of meals. Well, you can't be just putting in a heating place. So we took a larger part of the kitchen, we made the kitchen larger, which left him a smaller space in the back. So he says, Well, what can you do with this? Because I can't I can't sell this. So we put a to-go uh area there because the center didn't have a place to even get a cup of water. So uh we opened up an Italian restaurant. People said, Well, what do you know about Italian food? Well, in the steakhouse I serve meat, I serve fish, I serve chicken, I serve pasta, I just have to serve chicken, meat, pasta, just done differently, which is what Gallissa and I uh do. We we we find the food that we like and we have a chef make that. And uh we opened up an Italian restaurant, and it was a big hit. So big a hit that people don't usually go to shopping centers at night. The landlord was so thrilled that we were filling the parking lot at night, which is it leads people to look in the windows all night long. The stores are closed, but people I'm bringing in hundreds of people there, and they're looking in the windows, and he loved it. So he had another restaurant in the center. In the same center. And oh, I I wanted you guys to run it. I said, Gil. I said, I said, we have the Brian and Cooper, and now we have an Italian. We're gonna we're we're going the same well over and over. We can't do another restaurant. My brother turns to me and says, Well, someone's gonna go in there, might as well be us. I said, Oh boy. So we we thought, what are we gonna do? What concept are we gonna do? What's what's well at the time uh Asian was was becoming popular. There was no boo in the city, which was really at the time. Now there's numerous uh well-known uh Asian restaurants, but we're gonna do Asian. People came to us. What do you guys know about Asian? Well, you're gonna serve steak, and you're gonna serve fish, and you're gonna serve chicken, and you're gonna serve noodles. Just have to figure out. So uh we went around and found things that we liked, and we've traveled and we've traveled the the world, my brother and I, and and traveled all over, and we we go out eating and trying the things that we like. You know, our restaurants aren't chef-driven. If a chef leaves, the people get all, oh my God, you lost your chef. My brother and I, we say that we're we're chefs of taste. I know if it's right or wrong. I know what it's supposed to taste like. It's your job. I hire the chef. It's your job to make it the way I want it. I don't know how to do it, but you better know how to do it. So uh we opened up a uh an Asian restaurant, Toku, and thank God it's a big success. But we had to, so now we're becoming multi-concept guys, but and we had to work at it, but it's a lot easier just to repeat your same concepts. You're taking a chance going to different areas. These are all at least my own customers from people that know us. You want me to keep going? Sure. Oh my God. All right. So about two miles east is another shopping center that this that this landlord owns. And uh and it was more of an 80, it was built like in the late 70s, early 80s, and and he wanted to redo that center. Because the center that we're in, that I was telling you, the Americana, it was built in the 50s. When I was a kid, there was a bowling alley and an ice cream store and a Tom McCann's, and it was just a regular shopping center. He's he's he's the one who elevated it. He had a supermarket there. Everything out, Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton. It's the it's the Madison Avenue of Long Island, and it's very it's actually in Billy Joel's song, The Miracle Mile. It's it's a famous area. Well, two miles east, there's this little shopping center that has a deli in it, and another supermarket, and he was going to start changing that. So I comes to my brother and Gillis and I. I want you to put a restaurant here, it's a nowhere's land. It's not, it's not in an area that we know that's further east, and it's not in Manhasset where we have our three restaurants. No, no, no, no, no. I need, I want you guys there to start redoing it. I'll build you a basement, and we're gonna, oh my God. What are we gonna put there? We're not gonna do another Asian. We're not gonna do so uh we decided we saw um a restaurant in New York called Pastis. It's more of a bist show and light fair, but it's all night long kind of a thing. And uh we designed a beautiful, all our restaurants are designed unbelievably to their concept. Our steakhouse was designed by a classic steakhouse designer that we knew from that did New York. Um the Asian is spectacularly great. We won awards for architecture. The Italian restaurant is gorgeous, actually designed by uh the man that does most of our restaurants, Peter Nimitz, right here in Boston. So we go and we design a French bistro, you know, French top, uh bar top from custom-made in France, brought it over, tile floors, the whole, the whole thing. Well, it didn't do too well. People didn't take to the fair, and it was taking time for to get the food out of the kitchen, so we had to work. We had to work on the kinks and this and that, and the chef left, and uh we but we we stayed with it and we figured out we may Americanized it a little bit, and thank God that one's doing well. Okay, so we're doing pretty well. Plus, we already had a casual steakhouse from the 90s uh in East Meadow. Then uh, because you want to know about why we have so many different concepts. So now we're uh we're trying to redo this this French Beast Show and try to tweak it. And a catering hall between the French Beast Show and Bryan Cooper in a town called Roslyn became available. 500-seat catering hall, different rooms though, not one big hall. It was a 200-seat and 250 and 50 here, um, big parking lot. There's no parking in that town. This had big parking. My brother said, come on, and we can own the property. I said, That's about what are we gonna do here, Gil? It's an old, it was called George Washington Manor, and it looked like and George Washington was actually there. There's a part of the building. Talk about dealing with towns and and and and bureaucracy. Oh my God. So let's talk about, we'll talk about Hendrix for five minutes. So we buy this catering hall, George Washington Manor. Part of the building is from 1740. Oh, wow. George Washington actually had breakfast there for real. I don't know if he slept there, but I know that he had breakfast there. So it's called uh and it was white with these different rooms, and it had a hearth and and pictures of presidents on all the walls, and very, very um old style. And really, my customer a fruit cup out of out of a jar for dessert. I mean, so and when I grew up, catering halls were where you got married. We knew a catering hall that we almost bought that did four weddings on a Friday, four weddings Saturday morning, four weddings Sunday night, four weddings a Saturday night, four weddings Sunday morning, four. They were making money in the 60s and the 70s. But even myself, I got married in Greece. Now everyone gets married all over the world. And catering halls, you know, they'll they'll they'll they'll want you to take$5 off there and throw in this and do that. The band's okay. The band they're gonna spend money on, but the restaurant, the food, we don't need that. We'll cut down. So my brother says, let's we're gonna make it a restaurant. It was also a chess move because other restaurants were seeing, okay, these poles are making money out there. People coming from New York, you know, maybe another steakhouse is gonna come, or maybe someone else is gonna come to our area. So it's like to stop. That's the only other place a really good steakhouse can go. But it's down the street from Brandon Cooper.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

So my brother tells me let's let's open. We we buy the property, we have run this, this, this, this, we turned it into a restaurant. And now we we wanna we wanna renovate it. We have to renovate it. And it's in a historical town.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

George Washington ate breakfast there.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

He ate breakfast there, but uh it was a Mexican restaurant 30 years before that. In the 70s, it was a Mexican restaurant, but people don't know that. It yes, it it was it's George Washington Manor, who's catering. So uh we had Peter Nimes designer. We always brought New York out here. You know, when I grew up, when you want to go out, you went to New York City. We're about 30 minutes out from New York City. And and like uh the uh uh our landlord from the Americana, he brought New York and style out here. That's what my brother and I have done. We brought New York out to Long Island. You know, the reason why we did the steakhouse, and I think I'm jumping back and forth now, was because my brother used to live in the city, my brother Gillis. And he and he saw during highs and lows and recessions, the only restaurants that were always busy were steakhouses, because you went to steakhouses to celebrate, you went to steakhouses to have a good time, you went to steakhouses to have a good drink. So that's why we we built Bryan and Cooper. So the Hendricks uh we're gonna, we we had our designer bring like uh there's restaurants downtown in the city that are dark and and warm and they had a fireplace and like not down and dirty, but just places that seem they've been there a long time. Now, even though it's George Washington Manor and it's George Washington, and the building's been there a long time, it didn't look that way.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

It looked like so you have to modernize it and then you have to make it look old.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Okay. Right. Because modernize it. So now we have to go get a design and and get a but meanwhile, I'm still not making it at the French Beast Joe, Bar Fried's. We're tweaking that as we're doing this new project and buying the property and borrowing money, and now we have to go to these guys to build it. Well, you start opening up walls. I mean, we opened up one wall where there was an office, we were going to put bathrooms, and then the foundation wasn't there anymore. It was, it was, it wasn't, there was nothing holding up the wall but the other two walls. So you had to pour a foundation, and then another wall they opened up. And these old wood beams are twisted. You had to get steel to hold up the roof. I mean, on and on. We took out uh, or someone took the around one of the fireplaces upstairs, the the upstairs there was a fireplace, and they took out the mantle because they were going to do some work. Well, when they took off the mantle, it was so old it disintegrated. The town wants to know where the mantle is. What do you mean you want it? It disintegrated. We want it. In case someone else bought it from us and wants to put it back, we had to keep it. But but there was nothing to keep. I mean, because everything we were doing, the color of the paint had to go to the town. It has to be a historical color. Okay, my designer dealt with that. He has he has to deal with that in Boston. So he he he knew his way around that. There was a door, there is a door that faces the town. That if there was a fire and I have to run through that door in an emergency, I'd be decapitated. So we go to the town, we're gonna raise the door. Oh no, you're not. No, you don't understand. It has to be handicapped and it has to be raised for a fire. Oh no. Historical Trumps, ADA and fire. I mean, I've never heard of these things in my life. So they had to go through all these things. The windows have to be, we had to put it back the way it looked because they had a picture from the 1800s or 1900s of what that the the building that's original. The building that was original now has uh parts that made it a restaurant. There's a long catering room, there's another long room, but the original building that's still there, we had to really not touch too much. The other buildings, because it was all add-ons. We put in a bar and we put in uh uh event space and upstairs.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

But now this is 500 seats still? Oh, yeah. Five and no parking.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

No, plenty of parking. We have the only parking in the Oh yeah, we have parking, we have seats, we we have an outside area now. Uh it's beautiful. It's called Oh, so I changed the name.

Renaming the Manor: The Woman Who Shamed Him on the Street

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I changed the name, Hendrick's Tavern. Hendrick. Hendrik Underdunk is the man who owned it. He had a printing press there, he had a uh a gristmill there, he supported the Revolutionary War, which is why George Washington came. Well, this woman's walking through town, and I'm outside looking at the sign going on. Shame on you! Shame on you. She shamed me. Shame. He took down the president's name, the president of the United States. I said, it's it's it's Mr. Under Dunk's house. Um, I'm honoring the village. I'm honoring shame on you. Oh my God. So long story short, thank God that restaurant's doing well. We we tweaked uh the bar freeze, that's doing well. So so again, oh, but the Hendrix is literally like walking from here to the football stadium to my other steakhouse. So we didn't call it a steakhouse, even though it's primarily steaks and and other items and some things from our other restaurants. It was called Hendrix Tavern. Hendrik Anderdonks? Hendrix Tavern. And it's very warm. Oh, have you been there? I've been there, yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

There's a BU event you hosted there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Oh yeah, BU in our VIP room downstairs that has its own parking lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was I was there.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

So, George, I cannot even imagine anyone winning any argument against you. So do you do you does he ever win arguments?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

I think he's an older brother, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr. He's an older brother.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

I think that's why uh Do you let him win and then do what you want anyways?

Expanding to Miami: Opening Toku at Aventura Mall

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Well No, no, no, no, no, and I don't want to make anyone sound bad, but we uh uh We have another brother that we were in business with in another restaurant, and he's done very well. He's successful, he owned the boathouse in Central Park, he now owns Gallagher's in New York, he owns Gallagher's down in Miami, but he was a middle brother. Gillis is my is the oldest, then my brother Dean, and then myself. And there would be discussions of how to get things done, and some people want to do it their way, and that's the only way. So um we we thought it'd be better that we all stick together because we all have our strengths. But we ended up uh separating. My brother Dean does his own thing, and my brother Gillis and I stayed together when it was just Brian and Cooper and Majors. And he and I have my brother Dean has done well and we've done well. But as far as the uh who wins and who loses, I think. Between you and GitHub. I think that's what really makes it a nice team. I think when one of us is really, really like it's gotta be this way. You know, I might not agree, but let's do that. Or if I really feel but if we go back and forth and he really thinks this is this, and I really think this is that, then we just leave it however it is, because it's too much to fight of. I mean, listen, it's so we we listen to each other and we kind of do too much of the same thing. I mean, I handle for instance the wine. Uh I let him handle liquor because I'm not a licorice, so I don't know anything about really so he handles that, but everything else from real estate deals to regular deals to a pasta dish to uh to you know what knife to use. We we look at it all together and discuss it together.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Aaron Ross Powell So let's talk about recent expansion to Miami. Aaron Ross Powell So Toku, you're opening uh second toku there. You opened a second to open. You already opened it. Um in Long Island, you know the people, you know the rules. How was it in opening it in Miami?

Construction Nightmares: Gutting the Grand Lux and Starting Over

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Um You're very right. The not even being in New York City, having uh five or six restaurants within two or three miles of each other. Yes, I know all the people in the city, I know people in the town, I know you know how to get my liquor license. Yes, it is different, but you hire experts. Uh uh my brother found a space down there that he really spoke to him, and he showed it to me that uh in Aventure, a big it was a Grand Lux Cafe, and he felt, oh, there's a big toku, big, big, huge, big toku. Our toku does unbelievably. But the ceilings are like we have a small little Buddha in the back. This one he saw a big Buddha. We're gonna have a big Buddha, and we're gonna have uh display on the Buddha, and we're gonna have a big bar. The Grand Luxes are big. So we go into the uh we we make a deal with with the with the mall. It's it's it's not inside the mall, it's outside, it's uh it's on the outside, it has its own own entrance, but it's part of the Aventura Mall. Very, very uh uh large mall, one of the better malls in the country. It has up, it has it, it it's it has a lot of people go to that that mall. And they've asked us before to be in in other sections, but this one spoke to my brother. So uh, okay, we're gonna do it. And the landlord will give us a little bit of money to help put it. But it has a lot of, it has a kitchen already. It has a kitchen, so you don't have to put a new kitchen and has a bar, but we're gonna move some wall. We don't want to spend a lot of money. We want to spend a couple of million dollars just, you know, facelift, make it look nice. You know, the free they have refrigerators. Yeah, they have everything, they have the plumbing. Well, they give us the set of plans for grand locks, what and they're called they're called as built. As built. You know what an as built is? These are final, the place is built, this is what was okayed by the town, stamped everything. Everything's to code. Of course, 20 years old, but this is what well, as we we start doing a little bit of the construction that we want to do, the uh our our people and our contractors, well, the pipes aren't where they say they are on the on the uh on the plans. And certain waste pipes don't go to the where they're supposed to, and then there's new laws and regulations. So the new so uh there's something in Florida called Durham that takes care of where your wastewater goes and your grease chest, and you had to open up the the parking lot for that, but that has to do with the town and not the mall. And you need an engineer to come in, then we have to rip up the floors, the bathrooms we're gonna redo anyway, but uh and we had a very, very uh uh uh uh um a designer with uh it was a different designer. We tried someone different uh that that does we tried it on the designer, and it was a beautiful design, but I'm like, I I want to leave the air conditioning where it is. You're moving walls and openings, and then with the kitchen, the the the refrigerators really weren't that good, and the line's not how we want to do it, and the way the air comes in and the units, because it's Florida and it has salt in the air, the units have to be changed. Well, I ended up we usually sometimes when you go into a shopping center or something, they give you a vanilla box. Well, we had to turn it in. We had to take everything that was in this Grand Lux and gut though. So I had to pay for the gut. I had to pay for putting things back. Then our design, then we're trying to um what's the expression? Uh evaluate uh and evaluate value engineer the design. And here's the design. What's gonna it's way over what we want to spend. Way! All right, let's let's how are we gonna do this? And I'm coming up with ideas. Well, it costs as much for that as for the original idea, and you like the original. Days figuring things out. Then we have a mirror on the ceiling in the bar, and it has to be screwed in, and the the inspector comes and the screw, he wants to know how is the screw and how it's gonna lock, and then and when the inspector comes, so you can't work until that inspector comes, and that guy, if you're not working and that guy is not working, put it up the ceiling. Well, you can't lay the floor until the ceiling's up, and you want to get open by a certain day because the contra the your your lease says you have to open by a certain day, and now they're holding, oh my God. And then uh how long did it take you to to open it? I I don't remember. Listen. I think you put it away from your memory, I think. How long did it take? I'm gonna tell you how long it took. Another brilliant thing that my brother always tells me, and I say it back to him. We always say when we look at these j projects that we do, like Hendrix. Hendrix, did that kitchen? The kitchen was so old, we had to take all the equipment out and put a new floor and waterproof it and make it brand new, brand new kid, brand new um uh uh uh um air system and vents, everything's new. And then we're gonna clean the equipment and put it back. And my brother turns to me and says, You're gonna put that dirty old equipment in in our new kitchen? I said, Gil, you're killing me here. And he says, Well, if not if, he says, when we're successful, we're gonna close for a week to buy put new equipment. So we put new, so we spent the money and bit the bullet and did that. Well, same thing, same thing here in uh in Toku. So, same thing. We're going through all these issues and all these problems. And my brother always turns to me, or when he's down, I always turn to him. One day there'll be people eating here.

How George Thinks About the Downside Before Any Deal

SPEAKER_01 29:28

So I guess that's a very important concept of having people come and eat in this beautiful place you've designed and the experience that you're creating. I guess that's very important to you, right?

What Keeps His Passion for the Business So High After Decades

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Well, uh, you know, when we were doing uh Cipellini, the Italian restaurant, and we're going through the again. We know our designer's great. We know Peter's great. We know the design's right. And we know how to make we know how to make good food. Even our chefs always said, you know, it has to be Gillis and George good. Has to be good enough that even when I'm full, I want to take another bite. So that's not the hard part. So but when the landlord wants us to move the wall, you know, six inches, to me that's mind-blowing. Like my landlord, he he he was Mr. Castagna from Americana, who's no longer with us, but great, great guy. To him, moving a wall is nothing. But restaurant, he asked us, we were about a month out from opening, where's the menu? I want to see the menu. And I looked at him. I I don't worry about the menu. Menu. I know what to do. I know how to make a menu. I know what people want. I know what I want, and I think that's what people want, and it's worked out. But moving that we have to move this wall six inches? You're kidding me? To me, it's so I don't know if that answers your question, but I I I think when we're always scared, brother and I'm it's in the there's no guarantee. But you try to put the most things, you know, when when we decide on a deal or we decide on on what we're gonna do, we talk about, we and we always talk about the downside. What's the downside? Well, if it doesn't work, how much money are we gonna lose? Or if it doesn't work, is it gonna change our lifestyle? Or if it doesn't work, well, it can't not work at all. Some money is gonna come in. And these are the do we have parking? Do we do we have can people come? Is it in the right area? I mean, we had a restaurant in um the three of us at one point, there was a majors we had in Florida. And the entrance to the sh to the center, we we were a freestanding restaurant in a um in a business area where there were uh uh buildings. And it was, you can see it from the highway. But when you're coming down the main road, by the time you saw the sign and you saw the restaurant, you turn in, you were turning onto the highway. There was no sign at the beginning of the business center, and they wouldn't let us have a sign. And these are the things over the years you learn. It was a big detriment. All kinds of they wanted to come to us, but they it was a pain in the ass. Once they were on the highway to come back. So they would just say, ah, forget it. And there were other issues at that time, and we were learning and growing. But there are things that you learn. You want as many things on this side of the, there's no guarantee, but you want as many things on this side of the of the ledger to say, all right, this is a good good chance. This we should be okay. And if you do okay, and then you do better, hopefully you keep going.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Aaron Powell, I was going to ask this question, George. You are clearly highly motivated and passionate about food. And I have traveled with you a little bit in every place you want to go, try out new things. How do you keep your passion level so high for so many years?

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Aaron Ross Powell What makes me I'm just a passionate person. I can be I'm just passionate. I'm passionate. If this water is really good, I'm gonna say, Arun, have you had this water? It's I'm passionate about music, I'm passionate about life, I'm passionate about love, I'm passionate about my children, I'm passionate, I could be passionate about art, or I may say, that's the ugliest piece of you know what I've ever seen, but I just that's the way I am. As far as how do I stay passionate in this business, this is what I know. You know, my friend made fun of me. You were saying how I we go out and you see I'm always looking, I'm always looking. Always, I'm always working. And my friend, my best friend Peter, we're talking about again in the 70, 79, where we would go to the diner and they burnt the water and they put the water down like this with their hands on the top of the glass. Big no-no. You don't put your fingers where people put their mouth. So I go like this to my friend, I said, ah, I can't drink that water. And he like made fun of me. He says, you know, you're always you're always picking, you're always looking at what's going on. So one day he comes to my restaurant and and and he's in the fur business. And a lady was walking by, and as she walked by, he just stuck his hand out and he just felt the fur. She walked by and he says, I knew it was fake. I knew that was a fake. And I said, Oh, oh, when it's what you do, it's okay. But when it's what I do, so yeah, I'm always looking, I'm always trying to get new ideas. Every time I go away, my phone, I'm taking pictures, I steal menus. My brother says, You can see it online. I said, No, I need the what the paper is. I have to see the time, the way that sometimes they don't put the prices online. I I want to see, I want to feel, I want to smell, I want to, I want to taste, and then I want to give it to you. Then I want to give it to you. If I love it, I want to give it to you. So maybe maybe that answers that. Maybe just a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

It absolutely does. To wrap up, I have some few fun questions for you, Jar. You have so many restaurant concepts. If you could eat at only one of them for the rest of your life, which one would it be? Oh my God, that's that's not a fun question.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

My standard answer, which is my true feeling. I have with my brother built these babies. We had babies, these are our children, they are. Down to the the grout. What what color grout in the ground? I mean, it's it's they're all our favorites. And and uh it's gonna be a long obviously, all my answers are very long to your questions. I had a customer one time at Toku ask me, what's your favorite thing? And the person next to him, oh, he likes everything, because you know, yeah, he's the owner. He's like I I do like everything because I put it on the menu. Chef didn't put it, I put it on the menu. My brother and I, those are our favorite things. That's why they're there. Okay. So so to answer the question fairly. They're all like I always tell people, how do you do how which is your favorite child? You can't pick your favorite child.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

I was that's what I was gonna say. I'll make it easy for you. Tell me who's your favorite child. I don't have a favorite child.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

But I am gonna answer the question in the one way.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

When I leave the country, and my wife and I, we go traveling or we go somewhere, or we're gonna go to Greece or London, wherever we go in the world, when we land, and we finally we're on our way home, we have to get a port I have we gotta have the steak and potato. It's American. We we go to Brandon Cooper and we get steak and potatoes and the salad and mashed potato. And so I do miss that a lot when I don't have a nice big age steak.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

I know that since you make the menus for all your restaurants, so everywhere in the world you go, is there a dish that you've not yet replicated that you've really enjoyed somewhere and you want to come back and put it in one of your restaurants at some point?

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Aaron Ross Powell That's a fun question because I I see things all over. All over. And it's so funny you asked me that question. I I I think see things, then I forget, and I take pictures of it. And I'll look at pictures from uh it was shockingly seven years, oh shoot, I didn't oh I want to do that. I've been now that I have an assistant, I send her the pictures and remind me of that. But the one dish that comes to my mind, I was in south of France, I want to put this in Bar Frites. So someone remind me out there on the podcast. I saw mussels. I we made great clams reganata, great clams regonata in in in a few of our restaurants. But it was mussels uh just don't know how you would do that. Do you have to cook the mussel first? Because we were on a beach in in Saint Chile. But uh that dish I sticks in my mind as that's something I like to do in one of the restaurants. That's amazing. That was a good that was a good fun question.

Closing Remarks & Credits

SPEAKER_01 37:44

George, it was an absolute hoot to have you on the podcast. And I look forward to the tip of the iceberg with me. It is on the tip of the iceberg. We're gonna do many more. Really enjoyed having you. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks for having me. And thank you for all the support to the school. You're on our advisory board. Your picture graces our walls here. Thanks for watching. First graduating class. First graduating class, part of BU football team. Ah, don't stop me. That could be a whole hour just on that. Thank you. Thanks for asking. Thank you. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Special thanks to the team who produces this podcast, Bara Littman, Andy Halleck, and the entire team at Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. To keep up with distinguished podcasts, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. You can also learn more about our undergraduate and graduate programs at Boston University School of Hospitality Administration by visiting bu.edu slash hospitality.