Burnt Hands Perspective
This is a raw and unfiltered look into the pu$$ification and state of the restaurant industry as a whole, powered by longtime friends Chef/Owner Antonio Caruana and former bartender turned News Anchor/TV Host Kristen Crowley.
Representing all aspects of the industry from the front to the back of the house we will dig into the juiciest stories and pull from decades of experience in one of the sexiest and most exciting industries in the world...the food and beverage industry.
From international chefs, sommeliers, industry pros, and so much more, this show will cover all of it without a filter. You turn up the volume; we'll turn up the heat.
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Burnt Hands Perspective
Ep. 20 - From Hotels to Food Truck to Brick and Mortar: Chef Kyle's Culinary Evolution
This episode features Chef Kyle, owner of Satè, who shares his transition from working as an executive chef in a hotel to launching his successful food truck and opening a new restaurant. We discuss the challenges posed by COVID-19, the importance of community support among chefs, and the critical role of service in the dining experience.
In this episode:
• Chef Kyle's culinary journey from a stable job to entrepreneurship
• The impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry
• Insights about starting and operating a food truck
• Importance of community support within the culinary world
• Chef Kyle's approach to building a loyal customer base
• The crucial role of exceptional service in dining experiences
Help support local restaurants, share your culinary experiences, and help foster a stronger community in the restaurant industry.
Connect with Chef Kyle at https://sateexperience.com/ to follow his fresh perspective on the culinary world, infusing Southern, Asian, and New England influences into every dish he crafts.INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/sate_experience
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I'm trying to get like the ice ASMR thing going on. Let me tell you who's sitting here and what's going on, tell us who's sitting here today. I'm going to tell you about this. Cheers Chef Kyle. Folks, welcome to the party. Let me tell you how I know him Great to be here.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you how I know him. Before the chef world this is only years ago, right, I don't know this I used to every club I went to every group of people I went to. Here comes homeboy. I'm like what is this guy Remember in Braveheart when he was laying on a thing and he looked out and he saw his girl going through the crowd. Like that's what he reminded me of.
Speaker 3:I see you all the time, that's it.
Speaker 1:Circles. It's all about circles, circles. And then from there is when I realized you were the chef of the truck, and so on and so forth. And then we built a rapport, and you come to my wine dinners and now we talk to each other on a great level. Yeah, so we were cool before we even knew we were fucking cool.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's the best part of it. That. I think that gets lost. People forget that chefs are just people.
Speaker 1:It gets lost amongst chefs too, because a lot of the chefs nowadays are in it for the wrong reasons or maybe the different reasons, and they came in it different. You can tell how each chef came into the industry by how they attract to each other.
Speaker 2:For sure you know what I'm saying and I know, there's a lot of chefs out there that I don't have an attraction to whatsoever. You are not my people. You can go over there. Yeah, they're not my people, not your people at all. So who is this?
Speaker 1:You tell us, man, tell us what you got, tell us who you are.
Speaker 2:We've gotten this far in Tell America.
Speaker 3:Chef Kyle folks, I'm the owner and operator of Satay a new American experience as well as Satay Kitchen, which is my food truck. It's been a crazy ride to get to this point, but it's freaking awesome. We're coming up on our one year anniversary for the restaurant next month. And I couldn't be more proud of the team and all the success that we've had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and already been great accolades. You've already won awards. Crazy, right yeah.
Speaker 3:So Coastal Virginia Magazine's best new restaurant of 2024.
Speaker 1:This motherfucker right here beat me out for best chef in coastal Virginia this year, don't worry about that I beat him last year.
Speaker 2:That's okay. Let's put that on and make sure that's on camera.
Speaker 3:Check, check Got it, but no, it's awesome. Man, we're rolling, things are good and I'm just happy to be here and be a part of the show and get to kind of chop it up with my brother.
Speaker 2:We got some new satay merch. I know how to butter people up. This is the first time we've gotten merched out on a show. This is freaking awesome.
Speaker 1:Brand new, just dropped this week. Check that out. Plug.
Speaker 3:Plug life.
Speaker 1:That's it, baby. I love it. So check this out, man. You have this story right. You got the story of you started out back in the day. We'll get to that. So bring us up to date a little bit on how you got into it, where you went quick rundown, quick history, and then get to the truck thing you just mentioned 100% so graduated Johnson Wales University in 2003.
Speaker 3:Great school.
Speaker 1:My father came here in 1970-something and he went to that school from Italy Excellent.
Speaker 3:And I tell people all the time school is only what you make it. You know, I've seen a lot of great folks that go to culinary school and they come out and they're just a shell of themselves. They don't really have any direction.
Speaker 1:They're just as lost as they were before they came here, they were hoping for a miracle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's not what school's about. If you're willing to grind and put in the work and the effort, then schooling is awesome. So, graduated, that first real job as a sous chef was at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Hampton, virginia. It's attached to the Hampton Roads Convention Center. Yeah, and then three years later, I became the executive chef. So that was in 2008. And at that time I was the youngest executive chef that our company had. John Q Hammond's Hotels was the company. We had 84 hotels, all different brands, across the country.
Speaker 1:Were you the exec of all locations.
Speaker 3:No, just that location, but I was a part of this corporate core group that we would meet twice a year. We'd go to the Chicago Food Show things of that nature, great show, and we would meet twice a year. We'd go to the Chicago Food Show things of that nature, Great show and we would make decisions for the rest of the brand Gotcha.
Speaker 3:So there was an Embassy Suites guy, a Hilton guy, you know whatever other hotels we had, and we would get together, link up, go to all these shows and kind of make decisions, talk about buying power. You know we're into a hotel that big. You know there's thousands of French fries, right A hotel. We're not cutting our own fries, so they make us try 50 types of French fries.
Speaker 3:And then us little six or eight guys would say this is the fry we're going to use across the board, and then the sales rep will say okay, we'll give you all this buying power. Now the case is $15. Everyone has to pay $40 and things of that nature.
Speaker 1:Buying power is huge, man 100%.
Speaker 3:And we did some numbers there. My last year we did $7 million in food and beverage, which is rocking the world. But we had the ability to do catering for 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 people and I really tried to pride myself on not being a typical hotel restaurant. We had a restaurant. We had a catering facility. I never wanted to be oh, that's a hotel, it's not going to have good food, right, because we hear that all the time in the industry. So we kind of wanted to set ourselves above and so literally the same kind of food that I'm cooking now at the restaurant is what we had at that hotel. But because it was a hotel, a lot of people didn't really know about us. A lot of people didn't really know about us. I did a lot of stuff to help us out. I would go on TV and the Hampton Road Show and enter these competitions anything I could to shed some positive light on the hotel.
Speaker 1:You have to do that. You've got to brand what you're doing. If you believe in it and you really strongly believe in it, you have to take the chances and take the risks to do it 100%. No one's going to see what's coming out of your pan if they're not on the other side of the table to eat it. And they need to know what you're about, man, and I'm a full believer of that. So when you went from there, you went to that, and then what happened?
Speaker 3:That dreaded fucking word came along.
Speaker 1:So then, COVID hey, hey, let's hear it again for the millionth time in the fucking life.
Speaker 3:And COVID came and obviously for the hotel people that put our industry in the toilet. You know you couldn't even meet with more than 10 people. Our model was doing dinners for 500, 1,000.
Speaker 1:So that was all out of the question.
Speaker 3:So my entire team got furloughed. The hotel kept me on as long as they can. I was actually in the laundry room man. I was folding towels and cleaning rooms. I'm like I'm a chef man. What the fuck am I doing, you know, here in the laundry department?
Speaker 1:Surviving, surviving, surviving, literally.
Speaker 3:So we had about 150 employees at that hotel and during that little bleak era there we ran it with 12 people.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:And I was one of those 12. I made it as far as I could, and then they're like chef, we just can't afford to pay your salary anymore. Like that's the honest truth.
Speaker 1:You know that's bottom line. Yeah, yeah, like everybody. Yeah, this is the great depression.
Speaker 3:Get your ass on the street, hoe, so uh I went home and hung out for a couple months and then the wheels started turning. Okay, what am? What am I going to do? Because, I can't survive off of this $600 a week or whatever. Life is crazy. You get to a certain stature and then that's kind of your life. So when you don't have anything, you're appreciative of that, and then you get a little bit more. You're like oh, I like where I'm at.
Speaker 1:Then you get a little bit more oh, I really like where. I'm at.
Speaker 3:Going backwards is never part of the plan Never part of the plan no going backwards is not part of the plan.
Speaker 1:We fight daily to not go backwards, man.
Speaker 3:So I kind of just had to say, all right, what am I going to do? And I said, how about a food truck? So for years I had been really apprehensive on becoming an entrepreneur. I knew the kind of commitment it was going to take, I knew how much work it was going to take and I had a really good thing going at that hotel.
Speaker 1:And this is where I want to stop you for one second because this goes back to where I said you have a unique, you have the unique story. This is a guy who had to go down. You need to come up. Here comes the food truck. This food truck craze has been nuts since COVID. Yes, it just started getting a little bit before then, but nothing like it was with COVID. Covid was where it really got an opportunity to pop. Yeah, so you took advantage of that. Right, tell me about the food truck life, man, because I wonder how much food you have to sell out of a fucking truck to be relevant enough to pay your bills and be happy about it A lot, a lot right.
Speaker 3:The food truck grind all seriousness is like no other. I've been a chef my entire life and the food truck the last three years was the hardest I ever had to work.
Speaker 1:So meaning you've got to load the fucker up getting the propane right, making sure you every now you've got to plug it in to keep your stuff, your prep, every day. That's my concern. Hold on, wait a minute, you're on the permits.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going the permits.
Speaker 1:You started in the middle of the story. The permits and the inspections and signing off and am I good to go? I just did all that for my catering truck. It's a nightmare. They don't make it easy at all and each city wants their own permit, their own fire code and everything else. It's a nightmare, man. Did you ever want to let the thing on fire and just ghost ride that fucker down? How?
Speaker 3:many times I thought about going back to the hotel.
Speaker 1:I didn't go back to the hotel. It's fine.
Speaker 3:This is awful, oh my God.
Speaker 1:But just the conditions that it's never clean enough. You can never get it. It's just so much happening in such a small spot. Listen if it's 95 degrees outside, it's 120 in the food truck Minimum, and it's 120 in the food truck, Minimal.
Speaker 3:And then somehow this I don't even know how this works, but we would do our biggest client, the Newport News Shipyard, right. So we'd go there, do lunch every day and we'd do breakfast as well, Breakfast on the water. It's 25 degrees outside. I'd have on four hoodies, mittens.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, Three pairs of socks boots and you're not cooking fast enough, yeah, and the line is just backed up and it was crazy, but that's what I had to do to kind of like make this dream, or at that time, a nightmare, but Chef, it made you, but it was your step.
Speaker 1:It made you, another step to making you where you are.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:That's a struggle you're never going to want to go back to, so you're going to work harder for it, right, 100%. So we all have that story. So the food truck really is. It was was the inspiration for you to motivate yourself to get onto your next adventure, which is where you are now.
Speaker 3:Six months into that food truck, all I could think about was how the hell am I going to get off this fucking food truck? It was that miserable? Like if your day starts at 4am to do? Breakfast at the shipyard, and then you have lunch, and then you do dinner at a brewery, and then you don't get home until 10 or 11 o'clock at night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's brutal. Sounds like me here.
Speaker 3:It's like I got to get out of this truck and so at that point it was everything I could do. How much blood, sweat, tears, energy I could put into it to get to the restaurant piece. And I kind of put myself a plan together. I said I'm going to get this done in three years and literally we nailed it in three years. I started my food truck September of 2020. I signed the lease on my brick and mortar the end of August 2023.
Speaker 1:So so you got through COVID on the food truck. Basically you started it in the food in covet it. It amped you up to get something going on 100. So without that covet which I'm going to talk about that for a brief moment, because everyone talks about covet on the other way of how it fucked everybody up yeah, if it wasn't for covet I wouldn't be where I am. Covet was fucking great to me. I fucking had no problems with covet. I had little bit of we had a little bit of this uh organization and not understanding what was going on, cause it was new to everybody. But if you were, all this COVID did to me in the restaurant industry was fucking thinned out the herd. It weeded out the people who weren't supposed to be there and the ones that were sucking off the environment anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Cause, once COVID came around, you were either an organized restaurateur and chef or you were fucking not, and that was what proved it True. And anyone who didn't make it through it is only because they didn't have their proper shit together.
Speaker 1:They didn't have their invoices right, they didn't have their employees right, they didn't have their taxes right, they didn't have anything right. So, with that being done like that, man, people didn't get out of COVID. Are the ones who were saying COVID ruined me, it wasn't a fun time? Man, don't get me wrong. I'm not fucking sitting there saying it was great. But if it wasn't for COVID, you wouldn't be where you are. Nope, you might still be in the hotel.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, if it wasn't for COVID, I wouldn't have the opportunity to be where I am, because the government did come back if you had your shit right and helped you out. Granted, I'm still paying, having anything to pay back, though, if I didn't have it. So it is what it is. You've got to play the fucking game, and right now I am able to purchase some of the best prime meats, the best Wagyu's I can make, the best foods and everything right now, because all the other people aren't buying it, because they don't fucking exist anymore, because they weren't even supposed to be here in the first place. You know what I'm saying? I agree, and I don't want no demise in anybody. So anybody who's in the game strong right now, they got my back.
Speaker 3:There, you go.
Speaker 1:They got my support. You know what I'm saying. I got their back and if you don't belong here? If you didn't belong here, it's obvious. Man COVID was the cleaner, it was the eraser man. You know what I'm saying, if you made it through COVID it anyway.
Speaker 3:You know what?
Speaker 1:I'm saying that's how I'm feeling about COVID. I love it.
Speaker 3:You know what?
Speaker 1:I'm saying All I did when COVID was. I just fucking worked my ass off, still with a line of cars down the street and I was literally cooking in a wife beater you were churning food yeah we would drive from Chesapeake to Norfolk to go pick up to-go food, at least once.
Speaker 2:And I think we saw community come together too. Quite a bit Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So I had reservations three days in advance, full booked on COVID for cars coming. They were going to pick up on their pickup times and we were just me and two guys that I worked for that were just stuck by my side. We were in there fucking just getting it. They're still working for me today. You know what I'm saying and they're still rocking and rolling down there in Norfolk, they're still doing.
Speaker 3:I just don't want people to get the wrong impression, like I get asked all the time because they see me. Oh man, you were so successful with the food truck. It comes with a lot of work, yes it does, and so if people think that, oh, I can just start a food truck and I'll make it, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it took all those years I had of experience cooking for 3,000 people and organizing a kitchen properly to be able to say, okay, now let's minimize it to a 7 by 16 foot box, let's put these anchovies in a can and let's rock and roll.
Speaker 3:You know, at our best we can do about 130 to 140 people in 90 minutes. So at the shipyard we're fucking rolling.
Speaker 1:You're rolling, we have 45-second ticket time. That's a lot.
Speaker 3:Credit card. What do you want? Credit card? Swipe it. Give you your card back.
Speaker 1:Here's your food. Hand you your sandwich. That's crazy. Who's next that's?
Speaker 2:amazing, that's rolling, yeah, that is.
Speaker 1:And people are like experience and tons of work and grinding bro. Yeah, and not only that. Let's not forget the most important part of it all you still have to have a passion for food? Yeah, because that food right there will kick your ass.
Speaker 3:If you let it, it'll fuck you up if I didn't love what I did, there's no way I would still be. There's none. There's no way I love it.
Speaker 1:You can't you break down mentally if the only thing that keeps me going sometimes during a rush, when we're going balls to the wall and shit just keeps on coming in and you know the ticket times are backing up, the only thing I keep going is just slow down and put it out right. If they're gonna fucking wait, let them wait for a good fucking meal. Bingo, at least let them wait so bingo so it's, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a matter of how much passion you have for what you're doing or how much passion you have for the money you're making. The money's not always going to be there, bro.
Speaker 3:The food has to be.
Speaker 1:Because you always got to rely on the food to be right. You know what I mean. If you do the food right, the money will come, man Stop worrying about fucking money 100%. You know what I'm saying and the money, the awards, all that shit, it's all perks of hard work. No one's paying more. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:I couldn't agree more. There's no one walking in.
Speaker 1:So when you get to the now, you open up your new restaurant, which is a huge thing, because you took that risk. You left. You obviously had investors who believed in you, or an investor who believed in you. You had a position or a situation and you're out there in Newport News.
Speaker 3:Yeah, newport News City Center.
Speaker 1:City Center. So you came into an area that is already kind of known, with restaurants that already had their anchor there. So that's a risk in itself. To be the new kid on the block, yeah Right, but you're hanging tough.
Speaker 3:You got to believe in your product. See what I did there. I like that. I like that. You got to believe in your product. Though you know I always tell people that if we're going to do like a little competition or whatever it is, it's like we may not win. But do you believe in your product? Did you feel like you put out the best dish that you could today? And if the answer is yes, then you have nothing to hang your head on Like, hey, you did what you thought was good. You stood by your product. You're proud of that dish. That's all you can ask for, that's all that matters, right, and that's what I did.
Speaker 1:The awards that come typically, you don't see them coming Typically in the head and you're like holy shit, that just happened. You know what I'm saying. It's like when I just won that award for the chef of the year in Richmond.
Speaker 3:That was one of the best accolades in the state. Phenomenal actually. I love that for you.
Speaker 2:He's like oh, I'm nominated.
Speaker 1:I had no idea, so that just came from nothing more than my team and myself just constantly fucking grinding.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 1:I accept it and they accept it. We accept it. You know it's part of what you're doing, because if you don't focus on it, it's when it's going to come faster.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you focus on that's the only thing you're trying to do all the time, you're going to fail. Oh yeah, mentally you're going to fail because it's not about that. It's a lot. There's only one award, but there's a million things to do. You, you know that's where we're at with it. So did you have any struggles opening your restaurant, your new one? Coming from the food truck, Then you had to slow down to get into the truck. Like you said, you condensed. Then you have to get out of that fucking mindset to expand.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now you're given a budget, you're given a, you're given a um investors.
Speaker 2:How'd that budget go? How close were you to the budget?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were and think that's the one I'm going with. There's one next to it. That's better Always. Well, we can just squeeze it out of the budget, right?
Speaker 3:And as long as that budget keeps coming.
Speaker 1:You're good, but regardless, you're doing great now. So give me an idea of what is your typical day like as a chef, now that you're a year into it coming up which I won't be able to be at, that party, which I'm really bummed about. I think me and her are going to be at the World Food Championships in Indianapolis.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I'll be a master judge for that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to miss it too. I really want to be there, but your first year, how are you feeling about it, man? What are the strongest points? What do you need to work on?
Speaker 3:What do you think is going on there? So I think those first few months of having the restaurant was more about getting everybody to kind of buy in on what we're actually doing here, what the culture is. We did a good job of establishing that from the very beginning. In the hiring process I was looking for particular people, not just the best cooks, because I feel like I can train someone to be a good cook In your kitchen, you should be the best cook, exactly.
Speaker 1:So there you go.
Speaker 3:So I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for someone who's moldable, who's passionate about food, things of that nature, and I think we did a good job. But in any new business you're going to have some hiring that doesn't necessarily pan out. So after the first three months we sort of kind of fell into a rhythm. The staff really stabilized and I'm really proud of that. Our front of the house team does an incredible job. They really make my life easier, because that's not my strength, right, my strength is in the back of the house, and so to have people on the front of the house team that I can trust and I can believe in and I know that they're always going to put what I believe is right first, which is taking care of the customer that to me, is the ultimate goal. You know, I think we're always in good hands. If I say, something that I kind of am glad that we've made happen is just our consistency and our repeat guests. Right now we have about 50 to 60 guests that we're seeing every week.
Speaker 1:That's great Same ones.
Speaker 3:And then we probably have about two dozen guests or so that we're seeing multiple times a week two, three times.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:And to me that is awesome.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's the biggest compliment, absolutely it's a pure testament of what you're doing.
Speaker 1:So when these people come in right, I always praise the front of the house. To me, the cooking is the passion, it's the heartbeat. The kitchen is the heartbeat of the restaurant. We get it right, yeah, but the rest of the body is out there and nobody sees what's in the back of the house until they walk through the front first. And once they walk through that front door and the front of the house is so important and so crucial that they represent or misrepresent your fucking passion like that.
Speaker 1:Yes, like that they can fuck up your damn second like that man, and if we're in the back putting in all this work and effort into making perfect food but yet they're not getting the right service from the get-go or they didn't get the right vibe or someone sent them down the wrong path of energy, you know what I'm saying? It automatically comes down on the food Period, even if they have a bad review on most of these Yelp things and all that shit. You're going to see, it's going to be a thing that says the waitress didn't greet me, right. We sat there with our water cup empty. The food was okay. If it was the other way around, it would have been the food was great. They got my water full every time. So they always are going to attack the food, even if it was good, just based off what the front says. You don't ever see a thing that says the service was great, but that food was fucking garbage it's very rare.
Speaker 1:you do see that sometimes, but it's kind of odd. Usually the fucking fault comes from the front. The front of the house is so important and to put the trust that you do into the front of the house is another huge risk, because you don't know what they're doing, because you're cooking. So hopefully everything's going the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 3:So I'm a really big believer in I'll go to a restaurant that has outstanding service and mediocre food before I ever go to a restaurant with great food and lousy service. Because I don't really, unless I'm coming to Luce.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I don't have the If you don't get both at the same time let me know. Throw me a bone.
Speaker 3:I don't have this thing where I feel like I'm going to go and get blown away by the food, Because I always believe in my skill and my ability right. So, I'm never going in thinking, oh, this food's going to wow me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I am going in and I'm paying attention to the service.
Speaker 2:You want a quality meal. How is this service going to be delivered Like Hooters?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you ain't going there for the wings most of the time it's, and so I'm just really big into that and I stress that to my team weekly hey guys, we got to make sure we're not dropping the ball up here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a fucking.
Speaker 1:It coincides, bro. It's very important that people understand that. So do you have any future? It's hard to see the future right it is. So you're stepping into now. I know you're picking up a lot of more cater, big caterings and things like that, because that's that's kind of where we're going now. That's getting back into your original, so you have a play on that, because your hotel days right.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. So I'm very comfortable in that element. You know doing catering for large groups. You know there was we'd have this one crazy December Saturday every year never failed. Christmas parties galore, right, and we would have 14 or 15 parties. The smallest was 150 people, the largest was a thousand, and out of the 15 parties we'd have 12 menus and I'd be cussing out the sales team for selling all those different menus oh yeah, you want to fight them all.
Speaker 1:Just fight them right to the fucking face.
Speaker 3:But I'm very comfortable in that like it would end up being like me and the two dishwashers putting out the last party because all the other cooks were doing action stations in other rooms and all this stuff, Like we had endless space at that convention center.
Speaker 3:So I'm really looking forward and I'm excited about these new catering opportunities. We've really been pushing that. That's cool, you know doing some catering for the Virginia Living Museum for Ferguson. We're getting ready to do our fourth wedding coming up and those are some good venues, those are good events, man.
Speaker 1:So you're going to do it right. You're going to draw people into that brick and mortar we have.
Speaker 3:Hampton University's largest donor event coming up, it's on site during their homecoming weekend, the president asked for me specifically, and so we're just going to go out there and do what we do. Congratulations, that's amazing. Good fucking work, dude. I love it, you're representing Hampton Roads.
Speaker 1:Right, you're helping out the community. It's hard being a chef these days, man trying to rebuild that chef communal experience that we used to have, even back in the day when I used to cook in other spots in other cities. There would still be a. We'd either have a really healthy competition, but we'd always have each other's back. Yes, and I'm starting to see now that if I have anything to do with it, if I have anything to do with it, I'm trying to get more community going again with the chefs and getting things together and putting things together and instead of me saying, don't go to that dude's fucking restaurant, come to mine. I said no, go to his Next week, come to mine. I his Next week, come to mine. I want that because without variety, how am I going to be better than you if they don't have nothing to go to?
Speaker 2:You don't even know, this how am I going to show you up if they don't know your problem?
Speaker 3:The number of people that I have sent here is astronomical. I have a list in my notes section.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you, man Thank you.
Speaker 3:It's all what I believe are the best restaurants in the 757.
Speaker 1:Well, you're on mine. I have it out there for sure. I send people all the time.
Speaker 3:It's like you got to go see Tony man it's phenomenal.
Speaker 2:That's all love.
Speaker 3:I don't have to tell you that I've been doing that for four years.
Speaker 2:I never told you that have to tell you that I've I've been doing that for four years. I never told you that, but same here. That's what I believe you're expecting shit either, so it's not like yeah so I don't know you as a like in the kitchen, your personality type, now chef has told me that you, you are out and about a lot like he would see you on the scene and very a lot of places are you?
Speaker 3:chef kyle is a little bit different. So yeah, this shit, how do you balance?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:And how are you in the kitchen? Are you that social in your restaurant? How?
Speaker 3:does that go? I think touching tables is important to me and the feedback that I've gotten from my guests is that it's important to them. Now there is a little bit of a blurred line where I feel like sometimes people come in and now that is the expectation. We've actually had some negative reviews written because I didn't go to their table.
Speaker 1:This isn't a joke. Many years ago I had to put a thing up where there was and I'm not. This is truth. This is just the way it was. There was a time that so many people wanted in Norfolk that so many people wanted to come inside and take a picture with me that I had to literally stop doing that between certain hours and tell the cast I can't stop cooking Because the kitchen is part of the dining room, so people would just walk up. Can we get a picture with you? Can?
Speaker 2:we get a picture. I can't stop cooking.
Speaker 1:So at first it was really fun and it was nice, but then I started burning shit, Ticket time started getting fucked up and once you come up and take one, now the next person and I get it. I'm honored man.
Speaker 1:I am totally honored and I don't understand it. I'm just a fucking cook, right. But I understand that. It says it right on your fucking hat man. Yeah, an American experience. And sometimes we forget that this. They're determined to be entertained and that's one of their levels of entertainment. They want to post that they were there. They want to post that they were there with the chef, me and you. And I can understand it because I've been to restaurants. I go to French Laundry and Thomas Keller walks through. I want to take a picture with him. I'm not going to lie to you, the man's a fucking culinary genius.
Speaker 3:Why wouldn't?
Speaker 1:I. He's ascended to a level that I could only imagine. He's just a little example. I'm talking about local people like that. If I go to your restaurant, I want a picture with you, Just because we're in the same struggle. I want people to see we support each other. I want to be able to look at it one day and go look at that 20 years ago, what motherfucker didn't have gray hair?
Speaker 2:He's coming in now.
Speaker 3:You guys welcome Welcome to our world 20 days later he's got gray hair.
Speaker 2:Like the presidency, it just happens real quick.
Speaker 1:I'm saying, man, you get handicapped. You don't even fucking realize you can't walk no more, you need a hip replacement. So how does the coming up in this, the party life? So I'm all about the party life? Sure, I'm all about the party life forming and molding this industry. Mm-hmm, because this right here is an extension of everybody else's party. Yeah, so everybody's coming in here, and whatever level you're partying at is irrelevant.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:It's still an extension of someone else's party, so at some point in time we become victim of that party because we are entertaining them in the party, and then it becomes our party after. So, really, in the long term of things, we've been partying since fucking 2 o'clock in the afternoon, if you think about it because we've been working on someone's party right.
Speaker 1:The name of our customers that come in is a party of one, a party of two. It's in, brained it's, it's drained in us. But what? What do you do as far as when you have um, when you have as we get older and age, you still find yourself in that zone, or you you backed out of that no, I think, um, it's just phases of life, right?
Speaker 3:uh, so 15 years ago, that's really what I wanted to do, you know, and obviously I was always working my ass off because that's always been the number one priority. But the moment I had a second of free time, I was leaving the peninsula and I was coming over here. And I think, just as you get older and priorities shift, you realize that well, it's sort of the same thing that I've been doing. Like I could pretty much tell you who's going to be there.
Speaker 1:How many are?
Speaker 3:they going to have. You know, you know the deal. And so I think when I went into this restaurant, piece most of that kind of subsided, just because I couldn't do both, I couldn't be all in on making the restaurant the best that it could be and still trying to have like a personal life. Now we're 11 months in and so I wouldn't say the foot is off the gas, but now at least there's some opportunities. You know so a buddy of mine, he turned 50 this weekend and so I was able to go and celebrate with him. I'm just some milestones like that that in the previous two years I would have been like I can't do it, so I can't.
Speaker 1:I look back at what, the way I used to do this madness, and I look back on what I used to do and didn't realize that I was in the kitchen so much that it wasn't even work, it was life. So I was partying at work.
Speaker 3:Right, you would consider work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was partying in the place.
Speaker 1:I'm employed because it was my life, so we'd go through a phase of coming in hungover, get lit, get lit up, whatever however you had to do that. Get lit, get lit up, whatever how we had to do that. Then get drinking while we're working while working, because we had to catch a buzz before we get out, because by then everybody's already caught up.
Speaker 3:They're already drunk.
Speaker 1:You're trying to catch up to them yeah, so there's been times I've been so drunk my sous chef now. We used to get so fucking drunk together working back in the day. There was a couple times we were on the floor. I couldn't move, laughing drunk, just wondering what the fuck am I doing here? Room is spinning, I'm holding on to the thing and I'm cooking people food.
Speaker 2:I couldn't even imagine doing that at this point in time.
Speaker 1:But luckily there was someone else paying the bills at the restaurant someone else paying me. It wasn't mine, Totally different story. But even just waking up like that, I couldn't even imagine now.
Speaker 2:How you'd feel It'd take how many days? To recover.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh yeah, that's a rip.
Speaker 1:Now don't get me wrong, I'll smash my shots at Jaeger and my tequila and shit while I'm cooking. Still, I like doing that, but to get to a point where I'm buzzing or drunk, couldn't even imagine that while I'm working and cooking and being responsible for other people's entertainment and time and money, you know what. I mean, they trust us to do it, but holy shit, I encourage anyone coming through to just get fucking crazy while you can.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:While you can, unless you're on my clock, don't do that in my kitchen, but when you were, I'm going to call you guys and tell them get fucked up. Tonight you can do one shot, that's all right, I'll go down. Watch the ship sink. Please don't do that.
Speaker 2:It is a fun experiment though.
Speaker 1:I bet, oh, it's funny, yeah, but man, we have some good times. I don't know how we made it through. I have no idea. I really don't know. You used to get fucking right too when you were working.
Speaker 2:Oh God, it was fucking terrible. I don't even know. I don't there. We were there drinking, so we're there seven nights a week.
Speaker 1:Seven nights a week Till 3, 4 in the morning.
Speaker 2:I had a day job so I was still working Monday through Friday and would be right back at the bar at 5 pm working and drinking all night. I mean, there was whipped cream involved. There was a lot of things that happened at the edge that people don't need to know about.
Speaker 1:Wake up and more whipped cream stuck to your hair and your face and shit, yeah, and you're like thank God, we didn't have a camera In 99, I was like a bar Norfolk guy.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that was another part.
Speaker 2:That's a whole other problem.
Speaker 1:I was down at time At the end of the night we would go down, open up the kitchen restaurant, invite people from the bar until 5, 6 in the morning when the baker would show up, there would be fucking. It was a nonsense.
Speaker 2:Plates of Italian food, plates of everything.
Speaker 3:How are you here now? Don't worry about that. Listen, you're asking a lot of questions. We do the answering around here.
Speaker 1:How am I here now? I don't know, bro. That's the funny thing. That's the whole point. How am I here now, exactly? You get your wake-up calls. You know what I mean. You get your wake-up calls, you get your ups and downs, you get your quick realizations.
Speaker 2:You had that.
Speaker 1:There's not many cooks or kitchen people who can come through my kitchen with an excuse or a fucking story or a reason why they were late. You can't fool me.
Speaker 3:Jack no.
Speaker 1:We don't?
Speaker 2:Well, it's like your kids. Like your kids, you're not going to sneak out because I've done every play in the book there is nothing you can get past me, and my kids know that, so I'm pretty good about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean typically, when someone has COVID 15 times in a fall season there's probably a time to go get a frigging radiation or something. Do you ever?
Speaker 3:get the COVID Google search pic.
Speaker 1:They're like I do have COVID. It's like a few years ago.
Speaker 3:That's the same pic they've had on the internet for three years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's okay, but no, it is. But this industry teaches you a lot. It's someone else's hand, it's a woman's hand with fingernails and shit.
Speaker 1:That's my nurse. That and shit, that's my nurse, that's my nurse. So, coming up, man, I know you have some advice for people. Let's talk about that. I mean, we could sit here all day and chop up all these stories and I love doing that, man. But you know, the point of the show to me is to really get back into the environment of the restaurants, man, to bring it back to life.
Speaker 1:The glory, the glory of it, to make people proud of it. You know there's so much people talking. You go online people talking about how we don't pay people. No, we don't all not pay people.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Some people don't pay people and they're typically not around long. This industry is fucking great. It's a great building block for people. It's a great building block for people's lives, whether they stay in it or not. I think there was a time in a long time decades went by where everyone that was anyone that had a job started as a busboy a waitstaff or something. The industry is huge and it should be celebrated.
Speaker 3:So one of the things I'm most proud of this year we had a busser. He was the valedictorian of Demby High School in Newport News this past year and for the whole year as he was a valedictorian and then through graduation he was working for me as a busser. And just getting to know him and this super smart kid he's pre-med at UVA, got a full ride and every now and then I say look at you, man, all those brains, and now you're here bussing this person's fucking table.
Speaker 3:But it means something. It taught that young man something.
Speaker 2:You know it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I think that it's missing these days, like starting from something and having to deal with the customers and hospitality and what it means. Empathy, empathy, yeah. All that shit Starting on the fucking.
Speaker 1:You can't climb a ladder if you're not starting. The first step, man, yeah, and that's the first step to reality is, yes, you too can bust someone else's fucking table just like that. You could be a doctor one day, and maybe one day you may have to go bust a table, you don't know what the fuck happens.
Speaker 2:Well, what's to? Say, I mean everyone should do it, because it just teaches you. I mean, my daughter works here, okay, and she's going to be a doctor.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 2:And so this is where she will get the chops to do anything in life and I wouldn't have had my jobs if I didn't the restaurants. I literally went from being a bartender to being a news anchor. That happened because one of my bar customers sat there and said wow, you can talk a lot without messing up. I think you'd be good on television. I was like go fuck yourself, because I have a fear of public speaking. I will never do TV.
Speaker 2:I did TV for 18 years because of being a bartender, and that was because I was professional, I was well-spoken, I showed up, I worked hard and that leads to so many opportunities that I don't think people realize the amount of opportunity this business presents. Because we all like to eat, we all like to drink, we all like to have community, so this is literally the only thing everyone can share in this world is the joy of food and being a part of it. So it has been the biggest conduit for, I think, all the success I've had in my life.
Speaker 1:It's great Me too. Obviously I love the hospitality industry. When people walk through the door, you don't know where they're from.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They all come in with different. They have a whole different reason for being alive. Everybody has a different reason for coming in here, right? Well, the reason is to eat, but they're all coming in with different avenues that they've come in on, yeah, and you never know who the hell you're talking to. You never know what the fuck's going on. And the fuck's going on, and we have the biggest open door to that, where the opportunity is endless and we have. It's just crazy. So I'm all for the, the restaurant industry. I'm all about it. Appreciate you being here. For sure, we're going to do some more stuff in the future. Soon I want to come check you out out there. Matter of fact, me and her are going to start doing a little bit of restaurant type of reviews I love it um we're gonna do a tour we're gonna do a tour.
Speaker 2:We're gonna call it a tour.
Speaker 1:We're going to do a tour. We're going to call it the tour, not so much a review, but a tour, just to show people what's up out there. We're going to have a different twist on them. We'll show it when it's time, but maybe you'll be the first one we stop at.
Speaker 2:I better be the first one and tell everybody where they can find the restaurant 694 Town Center Drive, city Center, new center, newport news.
Speaker 3:Uh, it's just been an honor, man, hang out with you guys. It's been. It's been a blast. The restaurant's rocking the world right now one year anniversary party is coming up next month, november 8th, uh, and we're just looking forward to to what's next. You know I think we got some expansion plans, maybe in the future. Uh, as a chef, tell me about it. You had Luce for how many years? Seven, eight, before this opened.
Speaker 3:Ten years before this opened. Did you know after a few years that you wanted to open a second one, or what was it?
Speaker 1:I didn't want to open up a second restaurant, and this restaurant is under construction.
Speaker 2:They're outside, not the inside the outside.
Speaker 1:So I do have. The answer to that question is I didn't necessarily want another restaurant. I wanted a bigger experience, I wanted to broaden my, I wanted more out of myself.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 1:So my restaurant, luce, was so small that I was starting to get fucking confined. I was starting to get claustrophobic meaning metaphorically for my expressing where I wanted to go with my food. I didn't have the equipment. I wanted to grow. I was learning more. I was traveling Europe and I was working with a lot of Michelin chefs, which isn't so much my goal, but a lot of the techniques are. There's a lot of things out there that I want to experiment and experience. I just couldn't do it in that little place. So it wasn't a matter of me wanting to open up another restaurant wanting to open up another restaurant. It was a matter of me wanting just a bigger fucking kitchen. And then the opportunity came by people walking to the door like we just spoke about and when that opportunity came, it was a difference between going from this big to jumping into a fucking huge thing.
Speaker 1:We're talking about a million dollar operation in time to a multi-million dollar startup operation over here. So it was very stressful. It was a huge risk. I did want more. Yes, did I think it was feasible for me to go get another restaurant? No, I didn't at the time.
Speaker 1:Now with education, now with timing, I'm ready for two or three more restaurants because I know how to do it. Of course there's a break on that. I'm not going to go do that, but I'm always ready for more. I'm ready for more. So this podcast right here is a good outlet because it kind of feeds into the me wanting what's out there, it allows me to talk to you, and feeds that wanting to go out and get more.
Speaker 3:Scratch that itch a little bit.
Speaker 1:Scratches an itch exactly. So is there more for me in the future? Absolutely, man. I'm doing a lot of things right now and with her help on this it's amazing, with your help being here, with your help being in the community, gives me drive to fucking work harder. You know what I'm saying when I see a guy chomping at the bit to fucking take that chef of the year away from me there's eyes on you, brother.
Speaker 1:It's fucking time to roll. It keeps me rolling and I wish all the best for everybody. Yeah, this is my year. Next year, I want someone else to come up and make it their year. Yeah, because it's already my year. I had my year, so I'm going to continue on doing my best to support the community, support the growth of it and support the restaurant industry, because Hampton Roads man, we've got to get on that map outside of this area because there's some phenomenal chefs, phenomenal restaurants and we have a huge food scene here.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. That's that man.
Speaker 2:We're on a mission. That's what we're doing.
Speaker 3:So is this the point of the show where we do the?
Speaker 2:read the bad reviews. I see you brought your own bad review.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I'm like well, he's always reading all these reviews. No, I know yeah.
Speaker 2:I saw him Let me see, let me see Not only did he bring merch, but he brought a bad review.
Speaker 1:You brought your yeah review, yeah right, so have you responded to these?
Speaker 3:yet online. So my restaurant manager, Mr Brian, he takes the brunt of that for me because I'm afraid I might actually respond how Tony eloquently does on this podcast.
Speaker 2:Tony is not the nicest. I don't have time to respond to all of them. For the most part, I want to make something really clear, right.
Speaker 1:I am 100% about reviews. You cannot function without them. There's good ones, a lot of them. We wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be 5, whatever, 5.4, 4.9, whatever on every fucking platform if we didn't have the good reviews. The bad reviews are just as important. I'm going to go with this one, but when you take a percentage of the bad reviews, there's actually a smaller percent of bad reviews that are actually helpful and useful and something that we can use as a tool to fix. If you listen to every bad review and take it to heart and take emotion on it, you're going to be fucked. Now, when they're literally saying something that you need to pay attention to and it's written out nicely and it's written out plain to see.
Speaker 1:You need to address that review. That's the truth. However, somebody got mad because you didn't fucking have the horns blowing with the red carpet out, because they wanted to bring balloons and we don't allow balloons in here. So now they're going to terrorize your whole fucking thing.
Speaker 3:Ours is confetti. We had confetti recently. Fuck the confetti.
Speaker 1:I don't do confetti, no balloons nothing, he doesn't even allow a birthday balloon in this because, listen man, we are a white tablecloth restaurant. If I'm sitting here and there's a balloon next to me, that's not my party Like hitting you in the head. It's not my party To know what's going on table. Fucking D5 over there is not everyone else's business. They didn't come here for your party, unfortunately. I'm sorry. I'm glad you did okay.
Speaker 3:I love it.
Speaker 1:by the way, Take the fucking balloons home and Do the balloons later, put them in the car. But we're not going to have balloons at table five because the people at table three might be celebrating a fucking or suffering a funeral Sure or a loss, and maybe not here for your party and it's got to be fair across the board the fucking food is the party man. The food, the wine, the experience, that's going to take center stage. You know what?
Speaker 2:I'm saying you want the party to be in your mouth, amen.
Speaker 3:So, look, I was devastated. Everyone's coming. The first time that we got a non-five review.
Speaker 2:Okay, party in your mouth and everyone's coming. We had 50 reviews.
Speaker 3:We were open for like I don't know two months or something. We had 50 reviews. They were all fives and then I thought the world was going to end the first time.
Speaker 2:I got a non-five review. It always hurts. Yes.
Speaker 3:And then everyone's like chef, did you really think you were going to go your entire life without you know five? This is what makes it fun.
Speaker 2:All right so I'll read through this one Go, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or we'll let Tony respond.
Speaker 3:No, I'm going to respond too oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll both respond.
Speaker 2:We'll both respond to Marianne. So Marianne, all right. So Marianne reviews a lot. She left 317 reviews and posted 1,098 photos on Google.
Speaker 3:She's a super zone. She needs a life.
Speaker 1:She's a serial reviewer of everything.
Speaker 2:Okay. So the restaurant had great IG marketing reel. However, place looks more hip and cleaner in the reel than in person. A total letdown. Service was next to non-existent. Our waitress moonlights as a bartender, so she didn't come back by to check in. She didn't give us a bread basket. We had to literally ask if we can have some after we saw the folks sitting next to us at the end of our table enjoying some. Too bad.
Speaker 2:The champagne butter was promising. Our water wasn't refilled twice, so I don't know what that really means. We asked for separate checks. It took 10 minutes minutes. Then we found out the bills were wrong. I was charged for a caesar salad. Friend ordered it, took the waitress another 15 minutes and oh, there she was tending the bar again. I would give a one star. The only saving grace was the shrimp and grits, which was a solid 3.5. The veggies were too chunky, though not finessed. My friend who ordered scallops says hers were so-so. So food three out of five, service one out of five, atmosphere two out of five. So we can break it down as we usually do. So I'm sure the reel looked great, you have great marketing on your Instagram.
Speaker 2:Good job to your team.
Speaker 3:Shout out to those guys.
Speaker 2:Shout out to the team. Obviously that looks good. All the time Service non existent. So waitress and bartender we don't know what night of the week this was, but there are a lot of people who pull several roles in a restaurant. It's right there is the problem.
Speaker 1:The service wasn't existent for her momentary need. But it's obvious the service was existent for somebody because she was doing the waitstaff and doing the fucking bartending. So take that with a grain of salt, Plus you're new.
Speaker 2:Someone called in that night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean. This is within the first year, so you have to go through your ups and downs. So maybe the bartender wasn't there on time, or maybe she wasn't there that night, or maybe somebody was doing two jobs in one because they had to get through that night.
Speaker 3:Maybe all of a sudden, there was an influx of people on Thursday night and where we used to do 70, we a hundred.
Speaker 2:And now you know, yeah, so she was, she was mad with that and then, obviously, you know well, you can talk to the food part. So the veggies were chunky and not finessed I don't know how much more finessed I mean look my style.
Speaker 3:There is a picture southern and asian cuisine there's a photo. That particular dish is meant to be rustic to me. Yeah and uh. That's how I intended to come out. That's where you cook, so that's how you cook it. That's the way you cook it, so it is the way you like it and it looks good to me. It looks great.
Speaker 1:What I think is this man? You have it says here, right here too bad, the champagne butter was promising that right there, throws my whole when I do these reviews, by the way, that white chocolate, champagne, butter is fucking money. Why is it too bad? It was good, right, why. Why is it too bad? It was good.
Speaker 3:Too bad. It was good Because you wanted to give me a one.
Speaker 1:Because you wanted to give me a one Damn those shrimp and butter.
Speaker 2:It's too bad.
Speaker 1:So you're hoping for a fucking demise right out the gate? So there's probably a level of hate going on here and just understand what it is that this chef is doing. Man, If he's got chunks of fucking, that looks good to me.
Speaker 3:It looks good, so that really wasn't the bad part, but for them to give you, it's the number two salad dish on the whole menu. So I don't know, of course.
Speaker 1:Things happen in restaurants. The number one is the shrimp and grits with no vegetables.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, oh my God, oh my god, so yeah it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we all have to expect time delays um, this is and this one is good, so, uh, this is oh, you want me to read okay, this one is great.
Speaker 3:This only because we have to jump on this really quick sorry, we're going over week, so this was 42 weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, hiawatha pierce.
Speaker 2:We're just gonna say your name, because, why not?
Speaker 2:If you go see this show come at us, it's fine. So I'm just going to jump ahead. My wife called Saturday at 11, made reservations for 5. At 1, we get a call informing her that a reservation was canceled. They were overbooked. We were disappointed. Sometimes that happens. My question to the person who made the reservation was you had a tablet, you ahead of time? They never tried whatever. Just tell them we're overbooked. We've been to a lot of higher-end restaurants and if something came up with our reservations, some type of accommodation would have been offered Not at Satay. So we didn't get a chance to go and now we will never attempt to go again. This is one of the main reasons I don't support black businesses a lack reasons I don't support black businesses, a lack of professionalism. So that just went all the way there. So we are generalizing. My blood pressure was through the roof.
Speaker 1:Did they really say that oh?
Speaker 2:yeah, I didn't see that on that the first time, so let's just go with the stereotype generalization first, but their name is Hiawatha, so we're going to guess.
Speaker 3:Let's give them at least that.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna guess yeah, yeah, okay, but you know you're gonna call out your own.
Speaker 3:People, it'd be your own.
Speaker 2:So how is the fact that there was possibly some delay in the system? Could have been a lot of things going on that you Know, so yeah.
Speaker 3:I dug a little deeper into this. Oh okay, Because I really wanted to know.
Speaker 1:Oh, you got to know now, so apparently Called out a whole race.
Speaker 3:It was the first week we were open Five o'clock reservation.
Speaker 1:You people suck, it's a.
Speaker 3:Saturday night right, and they called to make a two-top reservation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we put them in. Then she called back to add people to the reservation.
Speaker 3:Oh so that's not in the review.
Speaker 2:Of course not. No, it's not in there. Why would she put that in the review? Oh my goodness, yeah, or he, whoever, whoever, hiawatha, yeah, this is my wife Could be either, okay.
Speaker 3:So then it became our fault because we weren't accommodating.
Speaker 2:Because you didn't have room for more than the original recipe. This is why I don't support black. This is why I don't read the reviews.
Speaker 1:That is fucking ridiculous. Don't read the reviews. Let me see that thing again. I gotta read that again with myself. Okay, let me see.
Speaker 3:That is something it's wild out here. It's real, that is crazy. Lack of professionalism yeah, but your words are fucking right on par with Lack of professionalism that let you come to the restaurant and then tell you when you got there that we couldn't see you. This is fucking crazy. I love it.
Speaker 1:Hey, Hiawatha, why don't you go fuck yourself? How's that sound, Hiawatha? Yeah, we'll say it. Yeah, fuck you dude.
Speaker 3:I like that.
Speaker 2:Fuck off, that is um.
Speaker 3:Clown. Yeah, fucking Are you kidding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know right. Yeah, so the tablet is straight.
Speaker 2:You got that rock tablet like Moses you know they're chiseling.
Speaker 1:The two was a five. Oh no, you chiseled wrong. Come on man, god damn.
Speaker 3:People have no, I mean well one, people have no chill anyways, but they have no patience 2,024 people talking about nonsense and you have the ability to comment and keyboard and have no one standing in front of you you'll say anything.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can go read the responses here I'm trying to stand in front of them.
Speaker 1:I want to call them out we invite them in.
Speaker 2:We're like, come meet me back, we'll meet you outside in the garage and have a conversation about it, and I think honestly there needs to be a little bit more of that, but that's really sad. That was fun.
Speaker 3:Shout out to him though we're doing 900 covers a week. We're rolling.
Speaker 1:Come on back Hiawatha, give it another shot, support, support.
Speaker 3:Support the best new restaurant in 2024.
Speaker 1:We had a great time talking to you. Man. I support black restaurant. I'm telling you what Hiawatha, you're a punk man. This is great. I support black home restaurant. I'm telling you what Hiawatha, you're a punk. That's some bullshit. I don't care if you're black either. I'm calling you out. You know what I mean? That's crazy. That is straight crazy, man. You hear this shit?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, All right.
Speaker 1:Well, that was a fun way to end the conversation you right on, chef, take it easy, we'll talk to you soon we look forward to doing much more in the future and, as we say, ciao for now.
Speaker 3:Here's some more success from a burnt hands perspective.
Speaker 1:Burnt hands perspective check us out, hit subscribe, give us a fucking follow, share it, love it go after Hiawatha online. Hiawatha, stay the fuck off the podcast clown. Ciao for now, ciao for now.
