4:00

On Sunday morning, I woke up to shocking news

4:02

that someone we both knew and loved, Jamal

4:04

James Kent, the shooting star chef and

4:07

proprietor behind the single Michelin-starred crown

4:09

shy, the two-starred foodie

4:11

temple saga and their sister cocktail

4:13

bar Overstory, recently named the third

4:15

best such establishment in North America,

4:17

a devoted husband, father of

4:20

two boys in their early teens, and about

4:22

his kind, generous, authentic, and just fucking cool

4:24

a guy as you could ever hope to

4:26

meet here on planet Earth, had

4:28

suddenly and inexplicably passed away at

4:31

the age of 45. Jamal

4:33

was widely seen as a budding sherbet

4:36

global restaurant tycoon with ambitious expansion plans

4:38

underway throughout New York, across the country,

4:40

and around the world. When

4:42

I opened up Twitter to see what the food

4:45

world reaction to Jamal's passing was, the first of

4:47

countless thunderstruck expressions of regret that I saw was

4:49

a tweet from Danny, hailing him

4:51

as one of the brightest lights shining in

4:53

the hospitality industry and as

4:55

quote an exceptional chef, restaurateur, and

4:57

mentor to so many. Those

5:00

words of course could also be applied to Danny Meyer,

5:02

which makes him the perfect guest with whom

5:04

to mourn our loss and at the same

5:06

time count our blessings here on

5:08

Empolitik with John Heilman in 3, 2, 1. Often

5:15

times you go to a fine dining restaurant

5:17

and you have this little piece and you

5:19

feel like you leave hungry and I want

5:21

people to like roll their sleeves up, tear

5:23

things, share, fight

5:26

over food. Breaking bread is something that's

5:28

really important for me and we want

5:30

you to leave feeling like full and happy. One

5:33

of the earliest fine dining restaurants I went to, it

5:36

didn't feel like it was for me and I was in

5:38

the industry for maybe 10 years and I worked at a

5:40

high level. I felt like I had to sit

5:42

up straight and I felt like I had to whisper and

5:44

we want people to come in and have a great time,

5:47

drink more than they should, eat a little more than they

5:49

should and we're two Michelin star restaurants and

5:51

we work at a high level but we also are a

5:54

place that you can come and like let

5:57

your hair down, wear whatever shoes you want,

5:59

Jordans preferably. And I

6:01

want people to feel comfortable, I want people to feel welcome.

6:03

I think those are the most important things with our restaurants.

6:06

Hey, so that's a little audio

6:09

of Jamal, James Kent, the

6:12

late, great now who passed away suddenly over

6:14

the weekend. We're here with Danny Meyer, kind

6:17

of a legend in the hospitality business and

6:19

the restaurant game and it's actually in New

6:21

York. And it's funny, Danny, thank you for

6:23

taking the time. When

6:26

I woke up on Saturday, I knew Jamal pretty

6:29

well and I didn't see the

6:31

news on Saturday night. I saw

6:33

it on Sunday morning and yours was the first tweet that

6:35

I saw and I realized that there

6:38

was this outpouring that was just beginning from people

6:40

in the business about this guy who was a

6:42

beloved figure in addition to being kind of a

6:44

fast rising star. But

6:46

actually, the reason I played that

6:48

clip is because it reminds me of young Danny Meyer.

6:51

There was some of the stuff I've

6:53

heard you say about why you started

6:55

Union Square, Catholic Cafe, which was, there

6:57

wasn't a restaurant for me in my late

7:00

20s and we made a restaurant that would

7:02

be for our generation. That's the kind of

7:04

stuff that Jamal, James talked about a lot.

7:08

Where did you hear the news and what did you think?

7:10

I was in Aspen this weekend for the Food and Wine

7:13

Classic and we were there for a whole lot

7:15

of reasons. One was

7:17

that I was

7:19

on a couple industry panels out there,

7:21

but Gramercy Tavern is celebrating its 30th

7:24

birthday and Food and Wine did

7:26

a beautiful spread in their July issue

7:28

and they had us cook a

7:31

celebratory 30th anniversary

7:33

dinner with, we've only had

7:36

two chefs in the 30 years of Union

7:38

Square, excuse me, of Gramercy Tavern and

7:40

that's Tom Colicchio and Mike Anthony. So

7:42

we did a dinner which was a

7:44

collaboration with Tom, Mike Anthony

7:47

and then our first pastry chef, Claudia

7:49

Fleming and our current pastry chef, Karen

7:51

Damasco. It was

7:53

an amazing, amazing night. So right before

7:57

I was going to the dinner, I

7:59

got a a text from Gramercy Tavern's general manager,

8:01

William Carroll, and he said, look, I just

8:04

don't want you to get taken

8:06

off guard by this, but we just got

8:08

some really shocking news. And

8:15

yeah, it stunned me. It stopped me in my tracks.

8:18

And then we got to the

8:20

dinner about an hour ahead of time so we could, you

8:22

know, work with the staff of the hotel and all this

8:24

kind of stuff. And

8:27

the conversation with

8:30

the editor of Food and Wine Magazine was, should

8:35

we be announcing this at the dinner? And I said,

8:37

I don't think so. I just think that this

8:40

is about a celebration and there's just no

8:42

reason. First of all, I bet that half

8:45

the people in Aspen had not heard

8:47

of James before. And then just

8:49

because we were really upset about it, we

8:52

needed to put on a good show. And so that's what we did.

8:54

And I thought about

8:58

it all night after the dinner, probably it

9:00

was one of those nights where you're just

9:02

having all kinds of weird dreams and waking

9:04

up and he was in a

9:06

lot of them. And that's when I woke up

9:09

quite early the next morning and I sent that

9:11

tweet. I just, I don't

9:13

usually tweet these days, but I

9:16

just kind of felt like I wanted to express

9:18

something and I did. I

9:22

know Danny Garcia, who was

9:24

going to be, is the executive chef

9:26

of one of the many things

9:29

that James had in the pipeline,

9:31

this new restaurant opening up

9:33

at on Park Avenue South. And

9:35

he was at this, this, the

9:38

Aspen event, which is a pretty

9:40

big deal in the business, right? I mean, just for

9:42

people who don't know that the Aspen summer thing for

9:44

is that this is the thing where a lot of

9:46

leaders in the industry will come together every summer for,

9:48

for, for talk and eat. Yeah, you know, it's a

9:51

brilliant thing. It's been going on for over 40

9:53

years. I've probably been to 28 of them

9:55

through the years. I was always teaching wine

9:57

classes, etc. But it's a brilliant,

10:00

kind of combination of chefs

10:03

and restaurateurs on one hand but also

10:06

really really avid restaurant goers on the other.

10:08

A lot of

10:11

wine producers and food producers are there

10:13

so it's just a great combination of

10:15

people. You know I just spoken that

10:18

day to a guy that the James

10:21

was going to be collaborating with

10:23

on another restaurant on

10:25

Wall Street. Gregory

10:27

who's from Portland, Oregon

10:31

and so we were

10:33

just talking about him that day and how excited they

10:35

were and I said you couldn't have picked a better

10:38

guy to be partnering with and you

10:40

know. Yeah

10:42

how long did you know him? How did you know

10:44

him and how long did you know him? Well I

10:47

met him for the first time probably in

10:50

I'm going to say probably 2006.

10:52

I don't really

10:55

know what I'm talking about but he was a quickly

10:58

rising sous chef at at

11:01

11 Madison Park and

11:03

he was you know

11:05

it was a great team. Daniel whom

11:07

was the chef still is. Abram

11:12

Bissell and James

11:14

were pretty much the two fast rising

11:18

sous chefs at the time really

11:20

really close. A young Tom

11:22

Allen was there Tom is now the chef

11:24

at the Modern and

11:27

James was just such a good guy.

11:30

It could have been 2009-2010. I just can't he

11:33

was there for a handful of years. It may

11:36

have been the restaurant he was referring to in the clip

11:38

you just played by the way but

11:42

he was there's a story that

11:44

I don't think most people would

11:46

know and that is that our

11:48

jazz club at the

11:50

time Jazz Standard which was right below Blue

11:53

Smoke both of which had

11:55

to close during COVID unfortunately but

11:58

he James Jamal

12:00

James Kent was incredibly helpful

12:02

to us because his grandmother

12:05

is Sue Mingus and Sue was

12:07

married to Charlie Mingus. And

12:10

yes, so we needed

12:13

to have a full time

12:16

Monday night big band gig and it

12:18

was James who connected us

12:20

via his grandmother with the Mingus big

12:22

band who was the house band

12:24

every Monday night at jazz standard. And

12:28

wow. That's amazing. That's incredible. I have

12:30

no idea. Most people wouldn't ever know

12:32

that, but he was so happy to help

12:34

and we were so happy because how would you

12:37

know that his grandmother was Sue Mingus? You

12:39

just wouldn't. Yeah. I

12:42

mean, the story of this guy, I mean, I met him

12:45

not until actually I think Crownshy opened up

12:47

at about 20 in 2019 and I was

12:49

living in Tribeca and there was not that

12:51

far from where they opened up. But,

12:54

you know, a guy did not grow up with a lot of money.

12:56

He grew up in the village. Was a New York kid, hip

12:59

hop kid, loved to tag graffiti, was a

13:01

kind of a street kid and had not

13:03

a rough childhood, but was not

13:06

to the man or born in any way. And

13:08

the sequence of things as he gets into the

13:11

food world of his mother says,

13:13

you know, hey, go meet this guy in

13:15

our David Boulet. He was 14 years old.

13:18

He ends up volunteering and ending up in

13:20

David Boulet's restaurant. And from there, he goes

13:22

on this progress of, you know, Bobbo, Jean

13:25

Georges, 11 Madison Park. I

13:27

mean, I mean,

13:30

that's in the end of

13:32

the whole cuisine. That's quite a run

13:34

for a young chef. And

13:36

then, you know, he goes on and was making his way

13:38

now. It's just I'm not sure there's

13:41

anybody, the combination of his talent

13:43

and his just good

13:45

guy. He was a great,

13:47

gentle, great, kind,

13:50

inclusive, the absolute opposite of

13:53

the asshole celebrity chef with

13:55

the no machismo. None

13:57

of that. None of the stuff that we character what we think

13:59

of. in that, in the

14:01

caricature. Um, I guess that's what's

14:03

so stunning about it. And 45 years old and

14:06

was just on this incredible, and

14:08

we really had a tiger out by the tail. I mean,

14:10

you've, you've had a tiger by the tail in your career,

14:12

Danny, and he's, you know, what's going into business with LeBron

14:14

James and was opening all kinds

14:16

of things all over the country and soon all over

14:18

the world. And to have him struck down this way

14:21

just seems like it's certainly inconceivable to me. I know

14:23

death can come anytime, but man, I've

14:25

just been kind of bewildered and thunderstruck ever since

14:27

it happened. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right with

14:29

it, with what you just said. And, and by

14:31

the way, I was also struck with the

14:33

clip that you played earlier. I

14:36

never went to crown shy where I was

14:38

not overfed and over poured, I might add.

14:41

And so he was very, very

14:43

consistent with what he said. He,

14:46

and you know, it was so much fun

14:48

to see him. I'll never forget the first

14:50

time I went there to see how he

14:53

let his hair down from all these, you

14:56

know, really refined places that he had trained

14:59

and all that training was definitely

15:01

on the plate, but he

15:03

did it in a way, you know, the

15:05

chicken had its little claw out.

15:09

He, he wanted it. And he did everything

15:11

except having that chicken give you the finger while you're eating

15:13

it. But you know, he wanted

15:15

to make, he always had the chicken

15:17

give me the finger while he was at it. He wanted to

15:19

make it clear that this place was going to be fun and

15:21

good. And it didn't have to be one or the

15:23

other. Did

15:26

you ever have a chance to eat at saga? Never did. No.

15:31

Um, you know, you have a restaurant

15:33

down in fight. I, a manhatta, which is also how

15:35

many, what floor you want? We're on the house up

15:37

on your, it's in there now. I believe now. I'm

15:39

looking at the statue of Liberty right out the window.

15:42

I'm also looking at the top of the Trump

15:44

building on wall street, but I'm going to focus

15:46

on the statue of Liberty for now. But,

15:49

um, yeah, we look right

15:52

at the top floor. We're

15:54

on the 60th floor. And

15:56

I think saga is roughly the

15:58

same level. 60

16:01

second floor, exactly right. And you could see the Trump

16:03

building. He's just on, I think on the other side

16:06

of the Trump building from where you guys are. I

16:08

mean, that restaurant, you know, it was a

16:11

$300 price fixed meal as

16:15

refined as any meal in the city. And,

16:17

you know, he's got his, he just retained

16:19

his second Michelin star up there. And yet,

16:22

you know, you could walk in there

16:24

wearing anything. You know, he didn't care, you know,

16:26

he would, if you walked in there with a pair of high

16:28

tops, he'd be wanting to know, you know, he'd

16:30

be comparing his with yours. And,

16:32

you know, he was playing hip hop. And,

16:34

you know, back in the day, you'll recall,

16:36

it was incredibly controversial, you know, when

16:39

Bobo would play metal, rock in

16:41

the dining room. And Mario would be like, I don't want

16:43

four fucking stars. I just want to be able to play

16:45

the music I want to play. And that restaurant, you even

16:47

saw him to be, he'd play hip hop all night. And

16:50

it was as refined a meal as you could eat in New

16:52

York city. And yet it still had this sense of playful youth

16:54

and energy and kind of casualness that, you

16:57

know, it was a really interesting mix of high and low and

17:01

it felt very generationally

17:03

right. Yeah. I

17:06

love that. I love that. You know, actually

17:08

that was one of our big goals when

17:10

we opened Manhatta, which was also in 2019.

17:15

We had to close it for two years. I'm sure

17:17

they had to do the same thing there because no

17:19

one wanted to go up an elevator and you certainly

17:21

weren't doing outdoor dining on the 60th floor. But

17:24

our goal was when we

17:26

actually opened Manhatta and we

17:28

were doing all the staff training, we papered to the

17:30

windows because

17:32

I wanted people to be running a restaurant

17:34

that you would want to go to even

17:36

if it didn't have this great view. And

17:38

I think that both of these two restaurants,

17:41

again, I went to Crounchai many, many times,

17:43

but never Saga. I think they

17:45

both had in common saying, we want to break

17:47

the rule that just because you happen to have

17:49

a good view, that it can't be a place that

17:52

you go regularly. It doesn't just have to

17:54

be for anniversaries. It doesn't just have to

17:56

be for tourists who want

17:58

to see the city. can also be a

18:00

place for locals. And on any

18:03

given night, I know at

18:05

Manhatta, it makes me feel great because

18:07

the people here look

18:09

like they live downtown Manhattan, and that's

18:12

where we are. Totally.

18:15

I'm gonna play one more, another one, one

18:18

more James Kent clip here, which

18:21

is an interview he did with a

18:23

brand called Bandit Running, which he

18:25

had become this avid runner. And the lead

18:28

up to this clip is, he

18:30

is working at 11 Madison Park and has

18:32

a panic attack. He thinks he's

18:34

having a heart attack, checks himself into the ER.

18:37

This is a decade ago and sort of says,

18:40

I thought he was dying. And

18:42

the doctor sends him home and says, no, you're just having

18:44

a panic attack. And at that point, he starts to focus

18:46

on wellness and

18:49

running his diet and exercise

18:52

and other things. But

18:55

the way he talks about it in

18:57

this clip gets to some larger issues,

18:59

some larger issues and things about

19:01

the culture in the restaurant world that I'd love to

19:03

hear you talk about. So let's listen to this, slide

19:05

number two. So

19:08

I think that like the caricature of

19:10

a chef is

19:12

the Anthony Bourdain,

19:15

alcoholic, Gordon Ramsay, whole

19:17

chef, for me, that's a caricature. You

19:20

know, that's like, that's not like what the industry

19:22

is, but then it sets standards, like that's your

19:24

goal. Like, hey, I want to be like Gordon

19:26

Ramsay or I want to, you know, reading, you

19:28

know, kitchen confidential, like let me do drugs and

19:30

drink and act like a, you know, you work

19:33

till the hot hours of the night and

19:36

at the end of the night, like you need to let your hair down. So

19:38

what else, what else you do? You go get twisted. You

19:40

know, it's like, and I did that as a young

19:42

cook and I was super unhealthy, man. I was like

19:45

overweight, stressed out, broke,

19:47

exhausted. Like my day's off, I'd sleep. I'd literally go out

19:49

on my Friday night till like four in the morning and

19:51

I'd lose the next day. I'd wake up at five o'clock,

19:53

I'd eat pizza. I'd go back to sleep. It's just like

19:55

not a real way to like exist. And I'm 44, I

19:58

have kids, you know, like it takes

20:00

time. to mature, having these conversations about

20:02

that panic attack, which I like was

20:05

afraid to tell people about. Now I

20:07

tell everyone, I'm like, I don't care. I was

20:09

like, you gotta panic attack. I've rained the best

20:11

restaurant in the world and all the stress and

20:13

anxiety that went along with that had

20:15

bottled up in me and I like was

20:18

losing it. And I'm like, if I could

20:20

teach my team to deal and cope and

20:23

work through things in a better fashion, you know,

20:25

it's just better for our, you know, community. So

20:28

we don't know the cause of death of

20:31

James at this point, but before we came on the

20:33

air, you were talking about issues

20:36

that we both know, you know better, way better than

20:39

me, have been in this business and have run multiple

20:41

restaurants and I've seen it up close, but stress,

20:45

those are the lifestyle, long

20:47

hours, the drug abuse,

20:49

alcohol abuse, bad, just

20:51

bad personal, taking

20:54

care of one's body and depression

20:57

and all that stuff. Just talk, I guess, a

20:59

little bit about how

21:03

much that image that he just,

21:06

picture he painted himself and the way in which he seemed

21:08

to over the last few years, he's been running marathons. He'd

21:11

seen him kind of gotten out from underneath that, but

21:13

just talk a little bit about how much of that is

21:15

just a kind of endemic problem in the business, especially at

21:17

a place like New York. I

21:21

mean, unmistakably, it's part of our, it's

21:24

part of this, you know, the way people

21:26

work in the restaurant industry, but I

21:29

also think that as someone who leads

21:31

a restaurant organization, we

21:34

have to be aware of that and we

21:36

have to make sure that we are actually

21:38

actively fueling a lifestyle that

21:40

is counter to that, because

21:43

it's always, I don't care who

21:46

you are, you cannot run a busy

21:49

restaurant and not have stress

21:51

be part of it. It just is, the show

21:53

goes on, there's

21:56

always unexpected things

21:58

happening. People

22:01

are late for their reservation, order

22:03

from one of the suppliers didn't

22:05

come in, the fire

22:07

alarm goes off, the

22:10

ansel system starts spraying white stuff all

22:13

over the grill right in

22:15

the middle of service, the health department walks

22:17

in, and meanwhile you're trying to, you

22:19

know, and there's invariably a restaurant

22:22

critic in the audience right when you're doing that,

22:25

or there's someone just taking a picture on their

22:27

phone, and this stuff is stressful. The

22:30

other thing, which is a positive part of

22:34

our industry, is that people

22:36

spend a lot of their waking hours together,

22:39

and a lot of people get

22:41

close, and so, you

22:43

know, it's not like there's a

22:45

basketball court right outside the restaurant to

22:47

go blow off your steam, oh, and

22:49

it is 1130 at night or whatever,

22:53

when the cooks get off their work, so what do they

22:55

do? Something that you

22:57

heard James say there adds up, so

23:01

what can we do? We can talk

23:03

about things like four day work weeks, we

23:05

can talk about things like closing

23:08

for certain holidays, we

23:10

can absolutely mandate

23:14

an amazing family leave policy where

23:16

it's not just the birth mother

23:19

who gets time off paid, many, many,

23:21

many weeks paid, but we also insist

23:24

that birth fathers do the same thing.

23:27

There's things that we can do to counter it,

23:29

but I will say that it

23:32

is endemic to our industry, that there is going

23:34

to be stress. The other thing that we can

23:36

do, and we do do, is

23:39

to have free counseling and

23:41

an anonymous counseling, and everyone on

23:43

our staff knows that there

23:46

is, and we encourage people to use it,

23:48

that there is a hotline that

23:50

we pay for, and we

23:53

don't ever know who makes the calls, but we do

23:55

know how many calls are made, and

23:57

it's, it's It's

24:00

substantial. If

24:04

you give people the opportunity to share

24:06

what's going on and to ask for help, which

24:08

is the most important thing, people actually

24:11

take you up on it. So I

24:14

don't think any of us in this

24:16

industry is capable of taking an

24:19

otherwise stressful work

24:25

situation. And it's

24:27

almost like saying, can we eliminate the ocean

24:29

of its waves? And the answer is no.

24:31

But we can teach people to be much

24:33

more effective surfers and not get knocked off

24:36

their surfboard all the time. One

24:40

of the things about seeing all the

24:42

reaction to his passing, in addition to

24:44

famous people, the Alla Dukasas and the

24:46

Deja Blues of the world, you've just

24:48

seen this outpouring of less known younger

24:52

chefs and Sues and Comdes

24:54

and Comes and saying

24:57

how much you kind of touch their

24:59

lives and that this thing of seeing

25:02

him try to deal with all

25:04

that, the stuff that he laid out in that clip in

25:07

a constructive way with running and starting

25:09

a running club as a cultural thing

25:11

around the restaurants that he ran. It's

25:14

kind of inspiring. And I wonder when you have

25:16

a leader like that, and

25:18

Danny, you are in some respects one

25:21

of the kind of paradigmatic leaders in the

25:23

business who's built a huge

25:26

and successful hospitality

25:28

group, he was about

25:30

to go off and start five restaurants

25:32

at the Prandt Tom building downtown, plus

25:34

a thing in the Domino Sugar Factory,

25:36

plus a thing, this restaurant on

25:39

Park Avenue. He's tied, did his open stuff

25:41

up out on Santa Monica

25:43

Pier. He's teamed up with Maverick Carter and

25:45

LeBron James. He had all these things in

25:47

the pipeline. If you have an

25:49

inspirational leader at the middle of an enterprise

25:52

like that that's just about to take this

25:54

giant step up, is

25:56

that how for

25:59

an organization? Is it

26:01

tenable to think about carrying

26:03

on when

26:06

the visionary leader has gone or to those

26:08

– and I'm not asking you to predict

26:10

the future, but how do you go forward

26:12

when the central figure who animated

26:14

so much of the vision is suddenly

26:18

and shockingly gone? It's

26:20

tough. I mean, I've never experienced

26:22

that kind of rapid growth in my

26:25

career. Remember, it took me

26:27

ten years to open a second restaurant, to

26:29

go from a unit square cafe to a

26:31

Gramercy Tavern. It took five years to open

26:33

a second Shake Shack. Now

26:35

there's 550 in the world, but we

26:38

didn't have a second one for five years. And

26:42

so I don't know how to go that fast. Look,

26:44

I've been at this now for close

26:47

to 40 years in my career. And

26:49

we still – at this moment, we

26:52

do not have a full-service fine dining

26:54

restaurant outside of Manhattan. And

26:56

we will at some point, but even

26:58

so, the kind of pace

27:01

that you just described would

27:03

be tough if

27:06

you had the inspirational leader at the

27:08

helm. I

27:10

don't know how an organization keeps up with

27:12

that, because it's not just – you

27:15

know, there was no way James was going to be at

27:17

all of these restaurants at the same time. No

27:20

human being can be. So he was going to have

27:22

to be also, in addition

27:24

to his culinary inspiration, he

27:26

was going to be building a team

27:28

of operators and human

27:31

resources and finance and real

27:33

estate and purchasing

27:37

and marketing and all that kind of stuff that

27:39

you need a whole team to do. So the

27:41

good news is that I

27:44

don't really know enough about the organization

27:46

he was building except that people really,

27:49

really wanted more of him. If

27:53

he built up a pretty solid

27:55

team beneath him, they should

27:57

be able to carry on. And my guess is

27:59

– that he was not the

28:01

only culinary game in town also because he

28:04

and all the restaurants you mentioned and I certainly

28:07

I I only worked with him at 11

28:09

Madison Park but they all

28:11

had a pretty deep bench of

28:13

culinarians and so yeah you know

28:15

when when

28:17

he left 11 Madison Park there were others to

28:19

take his place when Abram Bissell

28:22

left of 11 Madison Park there were others to take

28:24

his place by

28:27

the way I do have to point out the very

28:30

very close relationships that he had

28:32

with all of those other cooks

28:35

that he worked with and I and I

28:37

promise you when you look at

28:40

the outpouring of love upon losing

28:42

James huge huge number

28:44

of cooks are in that I know that I've

28:48

been in touch with Abram Bissell

28:51

who's just completely stymied by this

28:55

I've been in touch with Tom Allen the

28:57

chef at the modern Tom was was

29:00

James's Comey for

29:02

the Bocuse door and those

29:04

guys won the right they won America and

29:06

then they finished 10th in the

29:08

world but Tom you

29:11

know incredible Tom is just

29:13

completely he's peace paralyzed

29:15

with this news right now the

29:17

relationships he had with cooks was

29:20

incredibly strong and hopefully what that means

29:22

is he was doing that in

29:25

his own company so my guess is there's gonna

29:27

be one or two or

29:29

three people to take the mantle but you

29:32

know he's a pretty singular

29:34

guy there was one James sadly

29:38

tragically true Danny

29:40

that's right there was only

29:42

one Jamal let's take

29:44

a break here to do some business and

29:46

when we come back we'll talk some more

29:48

about restaurant culture the state of the hospitality

29:51

industry and more with Danny Meyer on in

29:53

politics with John Heilman so stick around TuneIn

30:01

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TuneIn app to start listening. And

30:32

we are back with Danny Meyer. And Danny, I

30:34

want to hear from you on one more issue

30:36

related to restaurant culture. And to get there, set

30:39

it up. I want to play a

30:41

clip from season one of my favorite.

30:44

And I'd argue pretty strenuously the best

30:47

scripted television show the past few years,

30:49

The Bear. A flashback scene

30:51

in which Carmi, played by Jeremy Allen White,

30:53

is in the kitchen. And on

30:55

the receiving end of some serious abuse. Ugh.

30:59

Ugh. Ugly stuff at the hands of

31:01

a fairly sadistic executive chef at

31:03

an unnamed temple of fine dining in New

31:05

York. Widely seen by those in the

31:07

know to have been modeled on a restaurant

31:10

that you started long, long

31:12

ago. 11 Madison Park. Let's take a

31:14

listen to that. Why do you hire fucking idiots? Do you

31:16

like working with fucking idiots? I'll do better. Say yes, chef.

31:19

Yes, chef. Can you not handle this? Is it too

31:21

much for you? Answer me. I

31:24

can handle it. I can handle it, chef. 12, 10, 36.

31:26

Fire, 8, 13, 36. Don't fuck with

31:28

my town. Sorry, chef. 8, 13, 14. Why are

31:30

you serving broken sauces? Why? I

31:32

get it. You have a short man's

31:34

complex. You can barely reach over this fucking table, right?

31:36

Is this why you have the tattoos and your cool

31:38

little scars and you go out and you take your

31:40

smoke breaks? It's fun, isn't it? But here's

31:43

the thing. You're terrible at this. You're no good

31:45

at it. Go faster, motherfucker. Keep going faster. Why

31:47

are you so slow? Why are you so fucking

31:49

slow? Why? You think you're so

31:51

tough? Yeah. Why don't you say this?

31:53

Yes, chef. I'm so tough. Yes,

31:56

chef. I'm so tough. Say fucking yes, chef.

31:58

I'm so tough. Yes, chef. You

32:00

are bullshit. You are talentless, say fucking

32:02

hands. Hands! You

32:05

should be dead. Okay,

32:08

so that's a pretty brutal clip. A

32:12

lot of people in your business, when the bear came out, they were

32:14

like, this is the first show that's ever really

32:16

gotten restaurants right. And

32:19

all of the PTSD of anybody who's ever worked

32:22

in a kitchen, that a lot of people kept

32:24

me for like, even where

32:26

some of the details weren't accurate, they felt

32:28

like emotionally, that level of stress was accurate.

32:31

Is that an accurate picture? Not of a love medicine

32:33

park, I'm not asking you to sort of say about

32:35

that, I was sort of half joking about that, but

32:37

is, at least in a period of

32:40

time in the New York, at the high end of

32:42

the New York restaurant industry, that kind of thing, is

32:45

that the kind of thing that one saw in some

32:48

kitchens? To your knowledge? Well, not mine, because I wouldn't

32:50

put up with it. And, Well,

32:52

of course not. No, but I

32:54

mean that, I mean that. You know, and James

32:57

on that earlier clip talked about the caricature

32:59

of Anthony Bourdain from Kitchen

33:01

Confidential, something I don't think I've said publicly

33:04

before, but Kitchen Confidential

33:07

is a big part of why I

33:09

wrote Setting the Table. Because

33:12

I said that, I

33:14

don't deny that there is that part of

33:16

our business where, you

33:19

know, there's just awful kind

33:21

of hazing and, a

33:23

lot of this came, I think, because in New

33:25

York City, especially, the early

33:27

restaurants that got all of the acclaim

33:29

here were mostly French. They's, eel

33:32

this, law that, loo that,

33:34

and they were hierarchies. And,

33:37

and there was all that yes chef stuff. And

33:41

that still exists, by the way, but yes chef does

33:43

not have to be, or

33:45

we, or whatever they say, that doesn't

33:47

have to be an abusive kitchen. And

33:50

I wanted to show with Setting the Table that,

33:53

there's another side to our industry, that doesn't have

33:55

to be that way. But

33:59

it exists. It exists for sure. I'll

34:02

never forget going to a French restaurant with

34:05

Audrey for one of our anniversaries or

34:07

something in New York City. Love

34:10

the restaurant. And

34:13

I was, and everyone's really nice to us,

34:16

and I'm walking to the men's room at a certain point and

34:19

you had to walk by the kitchen to get to the men's

34:21

room. And the kitchen door

34:23

swings open and I guarantee you that

34:25

I heard exactly what you just heard

34:27

on that bear clip. And

34:31

the chef was yelling at one of the waiters. And

34:35

literally, literally within,

34:37

this all happened in

34:39

an instant, the chef who

34:41

was screaming at this waiter walks

34:44

into the dining room and immediately

34:46

changes who he was. Now

34:49

he's going up to tables and guests and

34:51

treating everybody really, really nicely. And I went,

34:54

how can any personality change that

34:57

quickly? And also, how

34:59

is that waiter going to feel when they leave the

35:02

dining room to go talk to a table? They're going

35:04

to feel awful. Somehow the

35:06

guest is going to feel like something's

35:09

a little bit wrong. At that same

35:11

restaurant, just two years

35:13

before that, we

35:16

were seated at a table, not

35:19

a good table, and we're not very picky about

35:21

it, but the

35:23

owner came up and recognized us and

35:27

then started berating his maitre d right

35:29

in front of the other three tables

35:31

next to us saying, how could you

35:33

seat them on that table? Move

35:36

them right now. And I'm

35:38

going like, yeah,

35:41

we're fine. We're okay. It's okay. Cool.

35:44

Because now not only does the maitre d feel awful,

35:46

but how about all the other people? And now, right.

35:49

So there's it. All that stuff

35:52

exists in different

35:54

restaurants, and yes, it

35:56

could be that stress creates it. You

35:59

know, it goes. go see the

36:01

movie Ratatouille sometime or whatever. As

36:05

long as this is a business where

36:07

people, there's inherently stress,

36:11

there are ambitious people running restaurants,

36:15

and they're doing it under the microscope of

36:21

a good or bad review that could either

36:23

make or break years and years and years

36:25

of investment, it

36:27

all adds up. There's just no question about

36:29

it. There

36:32

was a culture, and I

36:35

often, one doesn't

36:37

want to elide or obscure the

36:40

reality, which was that the culture

36:42

of tough guy, big

36:45

drinking, big

36:47

personality, macho chefs,

36:50

celebrity chefs, and some

36:52

of these people were

36:55

slash are friends of mine, but

36:58

in that era of the aughts and into

37:00

the teens, I would say up until the

37:02

Me Too thing happened, you had, and people

37:05

like Bill Buford, who kind of, when he wrote about

37:07

it, kind of glorified some of that behavior when he

37:09

wrote about it with Mario Batali and other things. And

37:11

then there was this kind of wreck, in

37:14

heat, and there was this kind of reckoning

37:16

that happened, I think people

37:18

would say. Do you think the toxic, that

37:20

kind of, what people perceive as some combination

37:22

of toxic, masculine,

37:25

misogynist, there were

37:27

some, there

37:30

were some cases that were really egregious, some cases

37:32

that were less egregious, but there was a

37:34

correction, it seems to me. Do you think that

37:36

that correction was, there

37:39

was, there's still more to do, that

37:42

there is, that it was overstated, that it was

37:44

understated? Where do you think that, was that a

37:46

good thing for the industry? There was that

37:48

correction? Were there people who got canceled or shouldn't have

37:51

been? Just talk a little bit about whether you think

37:53

the industry's more healthy. You're asking a lot of questions,

37:55

so. As far as. I know, I

37:57

know, I'm giving up, I'm taking however you want

37:59

to take. Or.

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