The Restaurant Guys

James London Innovative Dock to Table in Charleston

• The Restaurant Guys • Episode 95

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The Banter

The Guys provide suggestions on what restaurants should do if they don’t have a pastry chef. Mark points out why you should not take dieting tips from Francis.

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys are *on location* with chef James London of Chubby Fish. They talk about the operations and dining experience of his jewel-box restaurant and how dock-to-table benefits everyone…except the fish.

The Inside Track

The Guys dined at James’ place the night before this podcast and were blown away by the meal! They also marveled at the wonderful blend of southern hospitality and northern hustle. 

“ When you go in and you see a service at Chubby Fish, it's almost like watching ballet. It is the way that they spin and they dance and work with each other seamlessly,” James London on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2025

Bio

James London, a Charleston native, came up cooking in barbecue and Southern restaurants in South Carolina. Once he graduated College of Charleston he made the leap to New York City where he enrolled at The French Culinary Institute. After graduation James worked with Chef Josh Dechellis before becoming the Executive Chef at Niko in Soho.

After his time in New York, James went west to San Francisco where he led the kitchen at The Elite Café, a Creole restaurant in Pacific Heights.

James eventually returned to Charleston where he and his wife, Yoanna, opened Chubby Fish, a dock to table seafood concept. Chubby Fish has garnered a Best New Restaurant nod from Bon Appetit, was ranked #7 Restaurant in the US from Food and Wine Magazine, and a James Beard finalist for Best Chef Southeast 2024.

Info

Chubby Fish, Charleston, SC

https://www.chubbyfishcharleston.com/

Life Raft Treats “Not Fried Chicken” Ice Cream on Goldbelly

https://www.goldbelly.com/


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the-restaurant-guys_2_03-10-2025_164444:

Hello everybody and welcome. You are listening to the Restaurant Guys. I'm Mark Pascal and I'm here with Francis Shot. Together we own stage left in Captain Lombardi restaurants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, and the finer things in life. Hi, mark. Hey Francis. Happy to be here today. I'm always happy to be, I'm almost always happy to be here. so I'm excited about our guests. It's one of the shows we recorded down when we were in Charleston. Yeah. We, we did a bunch of good shows down there. James London's restaurant was Outrageous Chubby Fish. It was great. Yeah. Uh, his bar's name was Seahorse right next door. Yeah. Good stuff. Uh, just opened, A really great place. So, so we'll have more Charleston lore. Uh, but one of the things that's happened is it, we've had a lot of time to spend. Outside, we have to spend all our time together anyway. Yep. Um, too much. Way too much. Um, but we gotta spend a lot of time, like on an airplane, hanging out, waiting, going to different restaurants and talking to people. One of the best things about the restaurant guys is it, you know, it gives us perspective and I love to get outta the area and go down to a place like Charleston and talk to people who run different sorts of restaurants. Sure. And to go, you know, one of the things we do when we travel. Is we gained five pounds. It's what? Because it is a thing. Well, but here's the thing. We were down there for the Charleston Wine and Food Festival at the time. Right. And we were gonna be there for four days. And there are a lot of people we wanted to see in Charleston. And we did a couple of podcasts. Yep. But we also had to meet this guy for a drink at his bar and meet this, and we ran into. The chef of a restaurant who's the daughter-in-law of a regular customer here whose husband, the son of the regular customer, is a chef at a restaurant in town. At another restaurant. Yes. So she'll be like, oh, you gotta come over to this restaurant. And of course everybody sends you food and you know you have to eat it. Not that it's a chore, but wherever you go, it's a drink or a bite or whatever. And it's wonderful, but it's, it is wonderful. And I, and I love it and I love meeting new people and I Love You know, coordinating with, with people I've known before, but you definitely do that. You go from restaurant to restaurant to cocktail bar. To cocktail bar. Yeah, to restaurant to restaurant to cocktail bar to restaurant. To cocktail bar To cocktail bar. To cocktail bar. Okay. Okay. I get it to country. Music bar. Yeah. So one of the things that we do when we're there is we get perspectives for our own restaurant. we have, you probably can't see it,'cause this is mostly audio file for our podcast. Mark, I brought you a treat. I brought you, I brought you the banana muffins that our pastry chef Maria made for staff meal. For family meal. And I want you to have one of these and tell me what you think of it. Okay. Crumbly. Perfect. I think it's, I think it's crummy. Hmm. That's what I think of first, but in a good way. Right? Ooh, so soft and perfect. Yeah. But the muffin top has that little crisp mm-hmm. Edge on it. I haven't even tasted it yet, but I can feel the difference in texture, which I love. Hmm. Crunches. I don't know if you can hear that in the microphone. Hmm. Beautiful. Now this is what we. I currently have four staff meal. Mm-hmm. It was wonderful that Maria made this, but we had a banana bread for the restaurant. Mm-hmm. That we ran as a dessert. We have a very high quality ice cream machine where we make specific ice creams and chocolates, and we've got Maria in the back who's one best desserts in Central Jersey, several years in a row now. Right. and it's great that we have that, but when we opened the restaurant, when we opened stage left our first restaurant, we had a guy who was a savory chef, and he is like, I, I don't desserts. Mm-hmm. Like so many chefs who do savory. Yep. If you're not in the restaurant business, you may not realize that. Pastry and Sav savory, they're different. Setss chef and pastry chef, they different skill setss. We actually, and often people don't have a talent in both. Mm-hmm. There are some and um, we are blessed. I brought these muffins'cause we're blessed to have Maria and to be able to do a variety of different things. But I was struck down there by how many people had Great. You knew they had someone in the kitchen who's making pastry. Mm-hmm. But what was more interesting to me was the restaurants who did not have a dedicated pastry chef. Yeah. And some of them get it right and some of'em got it wrong. That's absolutely correct. And when you don't have a dedicated pastry chef, take one or two things, make them really well, and I don't care if they're chocolate chip cookies. Yep. You know the fresh baked chocolate chip cookies give me go. Great order of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. And maybe you can make a pecan pie. Yep. And have that beer only dessert and have them be great. I remember when we first opened, Dan Rothman was exactly that. Right? A savory chef, not a dessert chef. Mm-hmm. And. You know, we had four or five different desserts on the menu and they were all pretty simple. And I actually remember, so we had a chocolate mousse crepe, right. And basically Dan made a chocolate mousse. He stabilized it with some whipped cream. Mm-hmm. But a really good chocolate mousse with really good chocolate, but pretty simple recipe. Right. And a chocolate crate. And to order. You got your, your room temperature chocolate crepe with your cold chocolate mousse in it. It was delicious. It was tasty. It, it satisfied you at the end of the meal when you were craving chocolate or sweet. And it was lovely but really simple. we had a New Orleans bread pudding, which you could have gotten out of any cookbook mm-hmm. With a bourbon sauce. Yep. And we had uh, orange tool cookies with a Moscar Poe MOUs and a Cre Mosco Poone MOUs also, and a cre creme brulee, which is actually. The, a lot of people screw that up. Yes. So be careful with the creme brulee.'cause you gotta get that exactly right. But I think we offered a few desserts. We offered them really well, and we saw the restaurants that did that. Mm-hmm. And it didn't detract from the meal at all. I mean, I, I enjoy the meal. Yep. And then I had this lovely little taste of something in the end and I thought it was great. But I think when people got too ambitious, it's okay not to have all the desserts in the world. It's better. Have two really good ones. So, but I want to. Talk to everyone who listens to this show because if you listen to this show, there's something about Francis and me, but in this particular instance, I'm gonna talk about Francis. Oh my, uh, that you need to know. Um, you can start a conversation with, you know, we're we, we just got back from, Charleston and you know, we ate and drank a lot and we gained five pounds and 45 seconds later. Hand me a banana muffin. Okay? This is our vocation, man. This life literally in the, in, in, there's, you're talking about gaining five pounds and you put two banana muffins in front of us. You know, my views are of going on a diet are informed by the musical Annie. Tomorrow. Tomorrow? Uh, we'll, but not tomorrow. Mine, mine are, are, are from Oliver, please. May I have some more? Alright, so we'll do all the diet after the banana muffins, but I just thought that was an, an interesting insight that we walked away with.'cause if you have a small restaurant out there and Pastry's not your thing. Better not to do the intricate basic food. Cook a bake a really good cake, just make it fresh and awesome and go with one or two freshness and ingredients. Focus on those things. honestly, I almost feel that way with savory as well. I'd rather go to a restaurant, simple, fresh, good ingredients, a hundred percent, then. Fancy schmancy and you get half of it right and half of it wrong. A hundred percent. Well, we have lots more food insights coming to us from Charleston with James London, who's a fascinating guy. We had a great time. Fascinating guy. And the restaurant is special. Yeah. Anyway, so you'll find out more about that on the other side. You can always find out more about us@restaurantguyspodcast.com.

Francis:

Hey there everybody. Welcome back. We are talking to you from the City of Charleston, our guest today is James London. He's the chef and owner of Chubby Fish, as well as a cocktail bar seahorse, two of the most talked about places in all of Charleston. We had dinner there last night. But not only is he our guest today, but we are his guest because we are talking to you from his establishment.

Mark:

Yes. James London, welcome to the show.

Francis:

Thank you. Yeah, man, we had dinner at your place last night. It was, we've heard all about it. And when we're coming to Charleston, we we're definitely gonna go there for dinner no matter what. but it was great to have you on the show. it's the first time we've met, but I've read so much about what you're doing and it's really cool. Well, it's a big honor to be on your show.

Mark:

Oh, thanks man. I'm really glad we had dinner here last night because, you know, we read about the restaurant, we heard about the restaurant. but being there was a real experience and I think I. A really different vibe than a lot of the other Charleston restaurants, which I thought was interesting. Charleston's all about the southern hospitality and it's all about, taking care of the guests and that's great and we certainly got that vibe in your place. But at the same time, there was kind of this, and please don't take this the wrong way, this Northern Hustle. Okay. Yeah. People moving and there were people waiting and everybody was cognizant of the fact that, People were waiting for things.

Francis:

Well, and I just wanna point out that it was your staff was hustling and moving. Yeah. But nobody felt rushed. Exactly. The guests didn't feel rushed.

Mark:

it

Francis:

was something to watch.

Mark:

it was a great amalgam of those two cultures in one little space. and it's not a big space, right? So obviously you're trying to accomplish a lot of big things in this relatively small space. But what a cool thing you've created, how.

James:

it was a long time in the works. I started cooking, down here in the south, in South Carolina. Started working in barbecue restaurants and, cooked through college. Went up to New York City, went to San Francisco, came back. So, you know, I had all these different experiences and, at the end of the day I knew that. Charleston had the best seafood that I had ever worked with. Yeah. Um, in all those different places. And I knew that Charleston needed a spot that really represented the seafood, the quality of the seafood that we have. and then, just the diverse experiences that I had along the way. And so, when you talk about that northern hustle and the way that the staff all kind of works together and makes it happen in a very small space, a lot of that. I owe that to my wife and my partner. yo-yo. she worked in the John George organization. Yeah, yeah. And, and we had worked together for, I think it's going on 17 years now, where we've been partners, myself in the back and her in the front. And so we communicate, without speaking with eye contact. Yeah. Over time, the whole staff has adopted that. And so, when you go in and you see a service at Chubby Fish, it's almost like watching ballet. It is the way that they spin and they dance and work with each other,

Francis:

seamlessly. when you see a great bartender, when you see a great kitchen, staff do that, it's great. Mm-hmm. mark and I haven't seen that as much since Covid in the front of the house. Mm-hmm. And we, I think people have struggled to regain the standards that you used to see that a lot in great restaurants in New York and around us. Absolutely. before Covid, but that really hasn't returned. And it was nice to see it last night,

Mark:

been down here, but. Smaller than the original stage left was. when they call it a jewel box, it's a little jewel box of a restaurant and the restaurants, the tables are close together. But you didn't feel like you were on top of each other at all. Yeah, and the acoustics of the place were great. It the place had a great vibe to it.

Francis:

Yeah. You know that what you said about the nonverbal, Communication and ability to work in the place. we should talk about the restaurant doesn't take reservations, which is uncommon for Charleston and common for most places. You gotta come here, you stand online, you put your name in and you go someplace. tell us about that, how that works, why you chose to do it, and how Charleston reacts to.

James:

So we don't take reservations. we have a line outside and the line generally starts between three 30 and four. so they're queuing up the doors open at five o'clock. The host comes out with her book and, The line starts moving. And so people who want to sit right then and there, they will escort them inside, right? People who want to come back later, they'll give them a time to come back. Okay? They'll take down their phone number, and their name, and the guest just comes back for their six 30 slot or their seven 15 slot, whatever it may be. the reason we went with that is a, we knew we were extremely small. Chubby fish is a thousand square feet. So we knew that it would be a tough reservation to get, and I didn't necessarily want a type of, the type of restaurant where two weeks out or a month out, people had to be on the computer at noon and clicking with their mouse. Right? And part of that is because. I don't plan that far in advance. Can't? Mm-hmm. I can't plan that far in advance. Right, right, right. And so I knew that I would never be able to go to this restaurant if I was somebody from the outside looking in. And I knew that I wanted a place where if I showed up on Saturday into Charleston and I wanted to come in that night, that. I could literally stand in line for 30 minutes, 45 minutes,

Francis:

right.

James:

And be able to come in that

Francis:

night. Mm-hmm. it strikes me that it also provides a spot for locals because if you. Have that place that's being reserved. People are reserving from all around the world for when they're coming to Charleston.'cause they have planned that far ahead. Mm-hmm And it becomes the place that while you're super hot, no locals could get in. And then if you ever become not exactly that darling of the international press anymore, the national press, then you're off the locals radar.'cause you had a place they couldn't ever get into before. Totally.

James:

And and now we live in this day and age. People can buy and sell their reservations. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I

Francis:

hate that.

James:

And I, I, even back in 2018, I kind of felt that's probably the direction that we,

Francis:

yeah.

James:

I never wanted that with chub fish. I wanted it to be like the democratic spot where everybody could come in and be able to get a table that night. I will tell you that

Mark:

until last night, I hated the idea. Yeah, I did. I'm seriously, I'm too old to stand on lines. This is what I'm thinking. I'm too old to stand on lines. I wanna have a reservation. I wanna know what I'm doing. but like you said, there's an opportunity to go there, meet your hostess. by the way, your hostess brought us a bottle of wine. We had a lovely time outside. it was very, very nice. It's

Francis:

also different in Charleston weather than it's in New York City. Exactly. Whether to be out on the sidewalk, but

Mark:

yeah. In New York, we probably would've had to think through that really hard. Right. But at the same time, just like you said, you can come stand online for your 15, 20 minutes to get to talk, to get on reservation for that. Mm-hmm. Works. You stood online, but you're not waiting an hour and a half for your table necessarily, right? You are going to another place and having a cocktail maybe coming next door to your own, place, and having a cocktail here while you wait. It's not the same. as. Standing on a line in front of the restaurant for three hours hoping you're going to get in. it was a very different vibe than that. Right.

James:

it does put some people off. Yeah, sure. You know, some people are just, they see the line and they're immediately, oh, well we can never get in there. Mm-hmm. Um, we're not even gonna try. But no matter, and we don't stay, we don't stand in line. But you know what it does is. It also, the people who do queue up, they

Francis:

all really want to be here. Yeah. Yeah. and the thing is, no matter when you have a small space like that and you're facing overwhelming demand, You don't have enough spaces for everybody who wants to go there, when they want to go there. So no matter what you do, somebody's gonna get mad. Right. So that can't mm-hmm. That can work. And I, and I also wanna point that a lot of places that don't take reservations, especially in a small place like that. The no, no shows in taking reservations costs a restaurant money because you have a line and you are that popular. As soon as somebody gets up, somebody else gets a table. So in a service to the community, you are seeding more people, which is also a service to yourself. But if you take reservations, if you are 10 minutes late to your reservation, or the other party finishes 10 minutes early, or they finish 10 minutes early than you are 10 minutes late, that means there reservations means there are seats empty even without no shows all the time, and then there are no shows as well. So you know. I, don't love the idea of standing online for a restaurant. I'm like, I'm not doing that. I'm too old for that. But I see it and last night it was great and I especially like it. If you can serve me a glass of wine while I'm waiting makes it much nicer.

Mark:

Yeah. we shouldn't spend any more time talking about anticipating, getting in with one small exception. What's different in your restaurant? Sorry. One of the many things that was different in your restaurant is your hostess was clearly one. In most restaurants you go to the hostess is a person who's been assigned to send these people to table 52. These people to 33. Yeah. Yeah. And she is escorting and saying hello and being lovely, but is not commander of the ship. And I really felt like your hostess had a command of what was happening in your restaurant at all times. And again, was communicating with the servers and the other people who were working inside. It was clearly a management position. Absolutely.

James:

and that's how it always is at Chubby Fish. and it has to be like that because, as you were saying. If somebody's 15 minutes late for their reservation. the great thing about our style is that we always have butts and seats. Mm-hmm. Yeah. if somebody's not there for their time, there's another person that's there for that time that can slide in and we'll make it work like that. But that person at the door has to be a key player. They're the conductor. Yeah. And so they make sure that we get those four or five turns a night if we don't. If we don't get four or five turns, then, it was a bad night. so that person is so keyed in to the entire flow of the restaurant. They know where every table is during their meal. Yeah. And, they are, I. Conducting the orchestra.

Francis:

And I have to say, it was very, it's a very reasonably priced place. I mean, and I think you know, that's a way that you keep prices down is be sure there's always of us buting a seat. I, the place was amazing. I wanna talk about the food because we've, yeah, we've restaurant geeked out about our, about operations. and so for those of you still listening to the podcast, the food is freaking awesome. First of all, we found that the food down in Charleston is always great, especially the.

Mark:

In

Francis:

most other places.

Mark:

I wanna ask one quick question. You said something earlier, you found the seafood in Charleston to be the best in the country. I think that's gonna surprise a lot of people. You worked in New York, you worked in San Francisco, two of the greatest seafood cities in the country. How is Charleston a better seafood city than those two fantastic places with great markets?

James:

I'll go through several reasons. One is that we buy directly from the fishermen. We don't have to go through a middleman, we don't have to go through a warehouse. our seafood does not have to go from the dock to a warehouse, a hundred miles in, in shore and then come back out to us. We buy directly from the fishermen. They drop off a cooler. It's their entire catch. And so. Take out all the different species from that cooler and then figure out where it goes on the menu for that day. Mm-hmm. the other reason that Charleston's better is diversity. We have so much diversity in terms of species. And the reason we have that is because where we are located, we're directly between the South Atlantic fishery and the Mid-Atlantic fishery. And so we're basically getting double the species Of anyone else, anywhere else in the country. and so. even to this day, I still get species that we haven't played with before.

Mark:

Oh, that's great. I mean, I used to go to the fish market for our restaurant, at three o'clock in the morning when we could buy direct that way. And what I'll say is you noticed. This week everybody has grouper. This week everybody has black bass. This week everybody has red snapper because that's what's running, because that's what's running in, in your local water. So it's really cool. And something I didn't really realize about Charleston, I asked the question'cause I didn't know the answer. that you're working basically two different fish habitats.

James:

And I knew like on the coast you have this. These seafood markets that are, at all these different little cities along the coast. Santa Barbara, San Diego, Sausalito, et cetera. And they were all, near a commercial fishery and they all had. What was caught that day on the board and then the off cuts, so the Salmon bellies or, the lean cod collars. And I was like, Charleston has incredible seafood, but we have nothing like that. Mm-hmm. And so that's where the whole idea for chubby fish really hatched.

Francis:

by you have nothing like that. the unusual cuts or the unusual, what people will refer to as trash fish and don't use that wasn't used a lot in Charleston before you got here.

James:

Here. No, I won't say that. there was certainly, abundant seafood. Mark Maka, really started the. quote unquote trash fish. Mm-hmm. Um, and Mike Lata, the chef from Fig in the Ordinary. Mm-hmm. really jumped on board and so, was working with Golden Tile Fish and Trigger Fish and. these lesser known varieties that fishermen knew about, but the dining public and the chefs weren't utilizing. Yeah. And so, those, they really

Francis:

paved the way for people like us. It's interesting when you talk about trash fish, I'm always alarmed when someone comes up with oh, this new trash fish is actually very good. And then it's not trash fish anymore and you can't get it. And we fish it out of, existence, like Chilean sea bass. Oh, it's Patagonian tooth. It's disgusting. Oh no. Chilean sea bass. It's delicious. It's delicious. Almost driven out extinction. But like when, Tom Valenti started cooking, we were gonna go way past your time. We're old guys.

James:

Oh,

Francis:

I know, I know Patina. So Tom Valenti, I worked, patina, started, using lamb shanks.

Mm-hmm.

Francis:

And lamb shanks. You could buy'em for like two bucks because No, it was like, no one can do with that. He made them famous and now they're like, it's. It's no longer a, a trash cut, no

Mark:

longer butcher's

Francis:

cut.

Mark:

but one of the things that I still feel like we're not taking enough advantage of, there are a lot of invasive species, lionfish, down south the car Asian carp, the Asian carp in the Mississippi, the, snakehead fish, right snakehead the sea robins in bay that we would catch all the time. Are perfectly good if you can use them, if you can take the extra time to butcher those fish.'cause they all have weird, because the rea reason, they're trash fish, right? They all have weird bones. They're really hard to deal with for one reason or another. they spoil quickly. Whatever the problem limitation of that fish is each of them have it, but they can be overcome. And instead of fishing fish into oblivion, we could be. Making all these great changes to the, to these ecosystems. And I feel like we don't take enough advantage of that. I mean, we were bringing in Asian carp for years and then, our supply got cut off and we had no way to, to bring them in anymore.

Francis:

But do you find that the trash fish are harder to work with?

James:

It depends, if we're, something like conquer eel, that's a

Francis:

tough fish

James:

to work with. Why is

Francis:

it tough? what makes it hard to work with?

James:

So it's, it has the typical eel bone structure mm-hmm. Which is, On a smaller eel you can go through with a knife and basically cut through the bones. Okay. And basically tenderize those bones. Right. With a con eel, you're talking about an eel that is four to seven feet long, uhhuh, and those bones are sturdy. Mm-hmm. So. If you cut through'em, it is just gonna wind up in somebody's gum. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. It's, not, not pleasant. So what do you do? Pleasant. So what we do is we take it, we cure it, so salt and brown sugar, and then we smoke it over hickory, into big chunks. And then from there we can basically just pull the meat off, And work the, for the most part, The lesser utilized fish, they all pretty much have the same bone structure. a round fish is a round fish. A flat fish is a flat fish. Yeah. Yeah. my whole philosophy on seafood is it's all incredible. It's all delicious. Once you figure out how to use it, once you figure it out is

Mark:

exactly right.

Francis:

So when you get the fish, is it commercial fishmen that are coming and you have a contract with them and you go to their boat and you agree to buy a certain number of pounds of rent, whatever comes in. So what

James:

we do is we basically have fishermen who come to us, commercial fishermen, and they say, here's my cooler. And we agreed to buy the entire cooler. and so their commitment to us is, this was caught today or the day before. Uhhuh. Our commitment to them is. We'll buy the entire catch and we'll figure out how to put it up on the end. How many pounds is that? It can sometimes be an awful lot. So, so that's where

Francis:

smoking comes in and curing comes

James:

in and that sort of stuff. And so we have to be creative with our techniques. And this is, this goes way back to my barbecue days of smoking. And so, we're smoking and preserving. A lot of this fish. and so we have certain dishes on the menu. For instance, the, last night we were running a smoked tile fish curry. And so for that, on days when we have a tile fish guy who's going out or he's going out deep, he's bringing us, black billed rose fish squirrel. In this particular instance, it was probably about 300 pounds of golden tile fish uhhuh. So for us, we filet all those golden tiles. We stack them up in cambros with, salt and brown sugar, equal parts, uhhuh, and then we, rinse that off, let the pellicle set overnight, and then we smoke those over Hickory. Once they're smoked, then they'll keep for. Two to three weeks. Sure. They won't keep that long in our kitchen just because we're going through so much volume. Yeah. But you have the safety margin, but we have the safety margin. Yeah. you know, in seafood, seafood can be a great money maker, but you have to be extremely creative with it. Yeah. You have to be able to utilize the entire

Francis:

species. Have you experimented at all with the people who are like dry aging tuna? Have you seen that? Mm-hmm. Have you ever played around with that? We do. tell us about that, because we're curious about that. We don't do that, but mm-hmm. Mark and I look sideways every time we look at one of those fish smokers. Like, I don't know. Should we, should we do it? You tell us.

James:

Oh, absolutely. the reason it's born out necessity, right? When we get, the tuna that you folks had last night, that was a 400 pound fish, right? and so when we get that fish in, we have to hang it and let it dry. And we have to do that because we don't want it to spoil us.

Francis:

yeah.

James:

because that fish is gonna be with us for a week and a half and we don't have the room to necessarily ice it down. so we hang it, and we just let it dry age in there. I

Francis:

think

James:

what, whatever you did.

Francis:

Yeah, it was so good. It was spectacular. Let's, let's talk about dinner. Okay. Yeah, it's, so we went with Julie and Jennifer for dinner last night, but you know what, let's take a quick break. come back in just a moment and, uh, we'll talk more with James London about actual food that you can eat and that'll be a great time. You can find out more about us, as always at restaurant guys podcast. Do com. Welcome back. James London is our guest, and we are at his house down here in Charleston at Chubby Fish. We had a great freaking dinner last night and we were talking about the tuna before the break. your stuff is really inventive and really playful and fun. there was one critic who wrote about you that said, you know, was prepared to call it hokey, except it's so delicious. It works, right? It's kind of joke that. It better be funny'cause it, and it is, it better be delicious. the tuna we had last night, tuna on toasts and an unassuming name tuna with the, it was outrageous tuna. I mean, so tell us about it.

James:

Yeah, so that's, talking about that tuna, that's that same tuna. and this was the Toro. so this was all the sinewy parts, that, weren't gonna make great seared toro portions. So we scraped that and so that was just tossed with a little bit of white soy, some olive oil, a couple drops of collabion chili salt and lemon zest. And then we took the, tail and we made a todo sauce outta that tail. The todo sauce, the to sauce made the difference. It absolutely,

Mark:

yeah.

James:

and then. Kate, the woman who was working the door, Uhhuh, her husband bakes our bread for us. so it was a beautiful loaf of, heirloom grain sourdough. I gotta tell you something, your bread was great. We have had great

Mark:

bread down here. Yeah. Really good bread. the bread was special. The bread was special, and we'll talk about it again on, in a couple of dishes that we had. it definitely. Was alarming. you knew you were having a really special loaf of bread that mm-hmm. Somebody cared

Francis:

for. So I, I wanna talk about another dish.'cause, and we don't normally do this. We've done a lot of podcasts and we don't go through a dinner. It's just not a thing that we do. But I, I want to,'cause yours was really interesting and I wanna talk with you about it. the brilliant dish, and brilliantly presented dish. Was your shrimp basically, almost like it tasted like a bang, bang trip kind of thing on top of channel bones of bone marrow. Perfectly rendered down, sitting at perfectly atop some bread, which would allow the marrow that spilled to the side to go on the plate below. And then when you're done, you can eat the bread that it's soaked up into as if they were

Mark:

holding up two canoes. Yeah, right. The bread was there as if they were canoe stands, but like Francis said, so, so for. I love marrow, but it's got to be warm enough that the marrow is soft and spreadable and delicious. And when you make it warm enough to do that, some of the marrow's gonna run out of the channel bone. Yeah. Yeah. when it ran out of the channel bone and onto the plate there released two. Stands? the lon, yeah. Canoe stands, yeah. Yeah. There of this delicious bread that we were talking about earlier. Soaking that, that liquid marrow back up again, becoming part of the dish again. Okay. It's not stealing. It's not stealing. If I tell you I'm going to take it right? Oh yeah. We're gonna do that. Sorry. Does that, does that, does that count as stealing? I mean, right here, I'm telling the whole world where I got the idea for the dish because it was mind blowingly extraordinary. Can I tell you the origins of it, please? That's, that's why we're

James:

here. All right. So I wanna say two years ago. It was also during Charleston Wine and Food Festival and uh, drew Neon had come down. Okay? Right. And so he's sitting in the corner table. somebody orders Nobu style shrimp. Okay. That was the order that came into the kitchen. That was the order that came into the kitchen, or it was a, a waitress who came up to me and said, Hey, somebody's asking if they can get in a tash room. So Drew comes up to the kitchen. I. Shakes my hand. He's on his way out. I'm sitting there with a bowl of shrimp, right? Temp fried shrimp. Mm-hmm. I tossed it with some creamy, spicy mayo. Right. Um, and I'm pleading it in a bowl. And I said to him, you see what you cost?

And,

James:

and he, he laughs and walks out Then I have leftover shrimp and we had a single piece of bone marrow that was too thin to sell. So I had told them, don't sell that, grab a new one. So I had this shrimp and I put it on the bone, and I ate it with the bone marrow, and I put it on a piece of toast and I said, all right, tomorrow we're gonna do a different, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how, that's how that stuff comes about.

Mark:

I salivating as. So good.

Francis:

Yeah. And visually striking and really cool. Is that a signature of yours is that always on the menu?

James:

That has been on the menu for, two

Francis:

years now.

James:

Yeah.

Francis:

Well, awesome. With fish, so we should tell people about the dessert, which is not fried chicken, and why it's called not fried chicken. it comes to you and it looks like you've got a piece of fried chicken, but it's not, what is it? So it

James:

is a chocolate cookie bone Inside it is waffle ice cream. And then it is rolled in Doce che and then corn flakes in ine and it looks like a piece of chicken. And

Francis:

then you eat it and it's ice cream.

Mark:

If you were a kid in the seventies, like I was, when good humor was actually really good, it had a combination flavor of the toasted almond, far from the good humor truck and the chocolate acl, which had the little surprise in the middle. I concur. And that was the, that was the feel of it.

Francis:

I concur. your playful, not fried chicken dessert,

James:

I can't take credit for the not fried chicken dessert. Okay. That is Cynthia Wong. Okay. Who is an amazing pastry chef here in town. and her company is called Life Raft Treats. Okay. so you know, when we open Chubby Fish, I. I knew how small of a restaurant was. I knew how small the kitchen was. I knew that the way that I was gonna go about it was we were going to partner up with a great pastry program. And so I had initially set up a pastry, I had set up all these little ice cream sandwiches that were made in LA and were gonna be shipped to us Okay. On pallets. And then my distributor said, Hey, we can, uh. Driving to the restaurant that I was hanging out at while I was waiting for chubby fish to open. And I saw Cynthia out on the corner in front of a CVS by the college, and she had a little igloo cooler, an umbrella and a a-frame sign. so I stopped. I bought one of each dessert, right? Went back to my car. I took a nibble off of each of them, and I walked back over and I said, this is my deal. I need. Dessert for the restaurant, and this is absolutely amazing. It's exactly what I want. And she said, all right, let's meet tomorrow. And then she came in, we shook hands, and then she's been with us ever since. Great. And she works

Francis:

for you? No, she has her

James:

own company called Life Raft Treats. Okay. You can find them on GoldBelly and she will send you buckets of not fried chicken. That's amazing. Anywhere, anywhere in the country.

Francis:

And she has a commercial kitchen that she makes.

Mark:

A lot of people realize it's two different skill sets to be a pastry chef and to be a chef. Right. A savory chef. Those are, that those skills are different, but I think not a lot of people realize is there's also different kitchen setups. There's also different equipment. Yeah. There's also things that you need if you wanna make your own pastries. That if you're in a thousand square feet, make that really hard to be extraordinary. Francis and I were at a restaurant not too long ago and had a great meal and fah desserts. Yeah, yeah. They were phoned in and they just, they did not match. Restaurant, it was because somebody was a chef, right? and he made wonderful food. But the pastry portion of his program Right. He didn't farm it out He didn't farm it out. Right. And he was just trying to make things that weren't as good as the rest of his food. Yeah. Where this was, I didn't know you didn't make it

James:

links with. With our menu, with our style, her, the not fried chicken, that's the only dessert that stays on the menu. Mm-hmm. Everything else is constantly

Francis:

rotating. Love it. So, all right, we have to, talk about your cocktail bar. So this is new venture for you. When did you open the cocktail bar? So we opened the cocktail bar six weeks ago. Mm. Wow. Tell us about that. we're cocktail bar guys ourselves. So talk to us about why you did that. What's the state of cocktails in Charleston? Are you making your own craft cocktails? Are you doing historical cocktails? What's your why? I know it's good business, but what's your mission with the cocktail bar? So the mission with the cocktail

James:

bar, you know, we could have done something that was easier. We could have done a diet bar. Mm-hmm. We could have done, Low stress, but we really wanted to push the envelope. We really wanted to give Charleston something that, we felt, Charleston really deserved. Charleston has this idea of being this great drinking town, and we really wanted a cocktail bar that. Swung for the fences. Yeah. And so, I brought in Christian Fa, who's crazy talented. he has this approach to cocktails that's very much the same as I approach food in that we're both striving for perfect balance. Yeah. And so he's very adamant about making sure that everything is super balanced and. So he's just done a really bang up job. Yeah. So how many seats do you have in the cocktail bar? so right now we have 28 seats downstairs, Uhhuh, and then we are gonna be opening up the patio, next week, and that'll give us another 24 seats. That's awesome. That's great. That's awesome.

Mark:

it's, it's a different facet of the business for sure. But you don't strike me as a guy who takes the. I'm fortunate I get to do a lot of traveling. Nice. A. Charleston is since the pandemic, the most affordable restaurant city that I have been to, period, between the price of cocktails, between the price of the food, you go to Miami and it's a 25%, service charge, but that doesn't include the tip and it's, it's already an expensive, just, there's none of that down here. If you were serving your food in New York City, I would expect to pay 60% more. Yeah. Yeah.

Francis:

60 is 60% the right number, maybe. Yeah. And, and it goes for wine and cocktails too.

Mark:

it is a very affordable city. do you have any insight as to why or how that's happening? Well,

James:

you know, in New York I would have to charge more because my costs are more. And the perks of being in Charleston are that. The rents are cheaper. Mm-hmm. And, locals won't necessarily say that, but from somebody who worked around the country and came back, the price, when I first started leasing Chubby Fish, the price of that rent was the same as my one bedroom in San Francisco. Yeah. Wow. I mean, that, that feels

Mark:

right. I mean, that, that makes total sense.

James:

So, you know, if. Worst game to worst. I could always just live wasn't. as scary, I think of a decision. Oh, that's interesting. As other places. Yeah. And so we don't have to, charge an arm and a leg as long as our costs are covered and as long as we're able to put something into the bank.

Mark:

Yeah. And I know turning the. And that's just the way it is. so being able to, you're talking about five and six turns, what a difference that can make to the prices you need to charge.

James:

No, absolutely. And, and again, going back to utilizing the entire product, we don't throw anything away. so even, on the. Poached Black sea bass that we had last night. the bones are smoked. And the bones are used to make the broth. the tuna collars, we serve those, last night at our popup with Camico. Mm-hmm. And so we're able to utilize the entire product and by doing that, Those off cuts, those are paying for the fish. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So

James:

the filet is the cream on top. Right, right, right. And so we're paying for the fish with. Stuff that normally goes into the rubbish bin.

Mm-hmm.

James:

And so that's how we're able to keep our costs down to a point where, you know, as a diner it seems very much affordable, but for us, like we're doing just fine.

Mark:

do you think your customer's more open-minded? Do you think that maybe that's part of the, part of what you're able to do?

James:

It's the most open-minded clientele that I have ever cooked for.

Francis:

Really

James:

more so than New York and LA they're more narrow up there. How so? So like in,

Francis:

where are they open-minded?

James:

I, the off cuts are the things that fly out the door. Oh, great. so, if we have. Fish bellies on one night or with, if we have grouper tails on one night, those are the things that first turn, they're all gone, 15 orders of group tails. I love that. That's

Mark:

fun,

James:

mark. That's great. Can we move to Charleston?

Mark:

by the

Francis:

way, it's not outta the question. Uh, Julie, Julia's over there, gimme a thumbs up. She wants to open the restaurant in Charleston. You know that. the other thing that being affordable in the way that you've just described ma, makes sense to me now. I've seen a lot of the great restaurants and a lot of the great restaurants we read about are individually owned by the working chef or the working bartender, or the wor working mare d or a combination thereof. And I think you see less and less of that. I mean, we own our own restaurants now for 30 years, but that was a long time ago. But a lot of the restaurants that you see opening up, if you're opening in New York or. Philadelphia, even, you've gotta have some serious money behind you, which means there's gotta be investors or a corporation or somebody. It's very hard to have, okay, you and your wife and a small group of core people. You open a place, you own it, it just makes it a more homey feel. And I, that's what I get throughout Charleston. Is that, is the restaurant seen in Charleston? Better now than it was emerging. how's it different than it used to be? Or is it just always been this way and we didn't know about it?

James:

No, I think you've seen a, massive shift. you know, when I first started in the business here, it was a lot of, I won't say corporate restaurants. It was small restaurant groups. And, those were. The groups that you know, very much ran the dining scene in this city. And over time you've had, cooks who used to be here, who have left gained experience, gained other flavor profiles, techniques, et cetera, and then came back and yeah, we've seen a lot of that. And the thing is. Charleston has a really great lifestyle for somebody who is in our industry. Mm-hmm. We have the beach right here. You can buy a home here. which you know, is impossible to, to do in New York. Yes. or San Francisco. but, you know, I'd say almost half my staff right now. Own their own home. Wow, that's great. That's great. And it's, it's amazing. and we're able to pay these people. more than they would be making in the major market cities because we are not paying the same rents. Mm-hmm. We're not paying the same mortgages. and we're able to offer, the full array of benefits and it's just a really great place to be in our industry. We have the beach right there. You can have a boat like it's great if you like golf. There's tons of golf there. Tons

Mark:

of

James:

golf,

Mark:

great

James:

weather.

Mark:

you know, people will say all the time, and I hate this expression, it's just business. And it strikes me that you treat your business very much the way we treat our business. It's not just business. It's personal. Yes. Okay. It is personal. This is the, I could have opened 10 restaurants, I could have opened 20 restaurants by now. There's been lots of people who offered me money and said, come do this, come do that. I love being in my restaurants. I love that. I'm there two hundred and twenty five, two hundred fifty nights a year still. I love knowing the people who come into my restaurant. I love meeting the new people who come into my restaurant. I love it. It's personal, and I totally get that vibe from you and I and I love it. And your place feels good. Thank you. Thank you.

Francis:

to build on what you said, We often feel like, oh, the owners of this place must be nice guys or nice women. Because like when you walk into Ryan and Corey's place mm-hmm. When you walk to Patello or Ember and Eagle, you are like, oh, this place is owned by nice people. Be because it has infused throughout the staff, and the same's happened in your restaurant. So we just wanna say thanks for being on the show. Thanks for great dinner last night. Yeah. Really, really

Mark:

special.

Francis:

Learned a lot. Thanks for coming today, man.

Mark:

Thanks for having me.

Francis:

Rock on.

Mark:

So we've had a lovely time here talking with James London from Chubby Fish and Seahorse Cocktail Bar. It's been a great show. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as we have. we are the restaurant

Francis:

guys. Find out more as always@restaurantguyspodcast.com. See you next time.

the-restaurant-guys_1_03-25-2025_135009:

Hello everybody. Welcome back. That was a great interview with a great chef, James London from Chubby Fish. we belabored the point while talking to him, but that was really a tremendous meal. and the cocktail bar next store was great. It was super fun time. I can see why people will want to move to Charleston, South Carolina. It was one of the great. Restaurants in a great city that I've been to in a long time. Yep. Charleston. Charleston was so much fun. There were great bars, great cocktails, great food. Everywhere you turned. Was it great? It was great. I think it was, it was great. You're grating on me right now. Uh, no. It was super walkable. I mean, I get it. And the, cost of living, at least for now is. Reasonable. It is so reasonable. And the people were so nice. I mean, the people that, that's the thing. Yeah. The people in there are so nice. We had a great time. Recommend Charleston as a destination, whether there's a Food and wine festival, or the Wine and food festival, or not. It's very best. We'll be going back soon. You can count on that a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Well, thanks for spending the time with us and listening to our, tales from afar we'll see you next week. I'm Francis Shot. And I'm Mark Pascal. We are the restaurant guys. Find out more@restaurantguyspodcast.com.