Erick Williams on His Chef Journey, Making Great Food and the Business of Restaurants

Adrienne and Joe are back for another episode of The Chef’s Cut, and this time they’re joined by longtime friend and James Beard award winning chef Erick Williams. They find out how he came to be one of the most respected chefs in Chicago, including what brought him to the kitchen at Virtue Restaurant in Hyde Park. Plus, we discuss: Review Review: Takeout complaints at Virtue (spoiler: they don’t do takeout at Virtue) The worst customer behavior Erick has had to endure at his new establishment, Cantina Rosa Walk-In Confession: A last-minute steak run gone (almost) horribly wrong Erick’s work as a mentor for young chefs and leadership for growing restaurants The people and experiences that changed his trajectory as a chef Follow the show: @chefscutpod Follow Erick: @cheferickwilliams Follow Adrienne: @chefadriennecheatham Follow Joe: @insta.flamm

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Adrienne Cheatham?

  All right, Joe Flamm, welcome back and welcome back to everybody else. This is the chef's cut and I am Adrian Cheatham.

• 0:09Joe Flamm?

  And I am Joe Flamm and I'm pumped for this week, Age.

• 0:13Adrienne Cheatham?

  I know, me too. Joe, what do we have going on today?

• 0:16Joe Flamm?

  Man, we have a good friend of mine, good friend of yours, chef Eric Williams on the pod today. He, of course, James Beard Award winner. I think we were both at the after party for that one.

• 0:26Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:26Joe Flamm?

  Late on 53rd Street. He is the owner of Virtue Restaurant in Hyde Park, Daisy's Po'boy, Mustard Seed Kitchen, and his newly opened bar Cantina Rosso, which is fantastic. So, we're gonna be chopping up with him. We're gonna be talking everything for restaurants, hot takes, and you know he's gonna have some opinions about some reviews.

• 0:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  I can't wait to get into it. Let's go.

• 0:55Adrienne Cheatham?

  Thank you so much for joining us, chef Eric. It is so good to see you.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Uh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

• 1:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  Are you live at Virtue right now?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Oh, I absolutely am.

• 1:05Joe Flamm?

  Super pumped to have you here, chef. Thanks for taking the time. I know you're a super busy guy. You've got lots of restaurants here in town. You've got lots going on, so taking a few minutes to chop it up with us. I appreciate that always. You're always one of my favorite people to talk to. I love when I see my phone ringing your name on it. I know I'm gonna have a quick run-through-the-wall conversation with you and it's gonna start my day off right. So, it's always a good time when I start my day with you.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Well, the feeling is absolutely mutual. So, you happen to be one of my favorite chefs, hands down. And not just because you're a great guy, because you can fucking cook.

• 1:37Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, that is so awesome. Chef Eric, one thing I want to know, as somebody who grew up in Hyde Park, what made you open Virtue in Hyde Park, the heart of it, on 53rd Street?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  That's a, that's a long story. I don't know if we have enough recording minutes to really get into that. But the abbreviated story is, I really feel like Virtue was a blessing and I feel like it was, it was my life come full circle. I was a rebellious kid growing up. I got into a lot of trouble, not a little, but a lot of trouble. My parents... They literally didn't know if they were gonna lose me to the streets. Um, and, and there was a point in my life where I would have been cool with that. And so to make the transition from that lifestyle into this,

• 2:32Speaker 02

  you know, loud, rambunctious space in kitchens, where chefs have more agency than God. Um, it was interesting and I've had some moments in restaurants that looking back, I'm not so proud of. Um, but there have been a few legitimate threats to chefs who decided to kind of cross a line that in my world, that was a line you probably shouldn't cross. And so it took, it took all of the nineteen years at MK for me to flush a lot of the hood out of me and, and figure out a way to code switch in kitchens.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Which is different than, you know, having fine words to, to enunciate and communicate. Um, it's, it's understanding, you know, if somebody's shoulder checks you, that they're really just trying to get to the dishroom.

• 3:29Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  They are not trying to test your niggas, you know?

• 3:35Adrienne Cheatham?

  Uh, they didn't step on your shoes on purpose.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, and, and so, you know, you, you guys get it, right? Like, so I stepped on your shoes in a club. We're growing up, like, that was, that was sacrilegious. So I have done a lot. And part of, of my experience, which, you know, you've given me a lot of credit, Adrian, but the truth is, for those listening, Adrian has a lot of insight. And because she doesn't own a restaurant, doesn't negate her from fully understanding how restaurants operate, because she is a chef and different from the chefs that just went to culinary school. She was knighted, like so many of us, in kitchens.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  And understands the management and all the nuances of recipeing and and the deliverables of creating delicious food that can be executed for one or thousand. And though that's the criteria that we work off of. That's no shot at any person that went to culinary school and does not know how to physically run a operating kitchen or a high performing kitchen. Or an eighteen seat omakase style situation. And so I've talked to Adrian over the years about everything from cookbooks to private chefing.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  And on that note, I, when, when MK closed, wow, nine years ago, I had built through the restaurant, a very solid following in Hyde Park of, of clients that literally carried me the year that MK closed. I was making more money doing private catering and private events than I made any salaried year. Um, and I was working probably a third of the physical man hours. And my family was scared, quite frankly, so they called a lot to see when I was going to start back working again, because they didn't, they didn't quantify that as work.

• 5:49Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right, it's not a job.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, um, I was like, if this ain't working, I don't know what is, right? And I get a phone call from a gentleman who had owned a restaurant in the neighborhood, and they asked if I would be willing to be the consulting chef of the space that we're in now. And so I entertained the deal. And the deal turned into something else because there was more opportunity than than was presented in the beginning and that opportunity was literally a godsend and that was the beginning of them opening their first restaurant.

• 6:24Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's so crazy because I grew up like literally I grew up on 52nd and Dorchester, which is maybe four blocks from where Virtue is and my mom was the manager of Mellow Yellow for over a decade. She was a host, a waiter, the manager there and I grew up in the non-smoking section at Mellow Yellow. Ernie, the bartender, would make me Shirley Temples while I did my homework and then when my homework was done, I got to mop bathrooms. I got to bus tables. I got to run food. But I used to walk by where Virtue is today. There was a real estate office at the corner. And then next to that was a barber shop. So where the main dining room is, used to be a barber shop right there and there was a guy named Ishmael

• 7:06Adrienne Cheatham?

  who would cut all the hair of all the cute guys in the neighborhood. So me and my friends, like we would, when we did the 53rd Street stroll as kids, we would always walk by to see who Ishmael was cutting up that day. Just be like, ooh, is David in there? Ooh, is Michael in there? Who's over there getting their haircut today? And now it is one of my absolute favorite restaurants in Chicago. And it gives me an excuse to like feel nostalgic about Hyde Park, but also see the growth in the neighborhood. And then when Marcus opened Red Rooster in Harlem, it really changed the neighborhood. It brought more people to dine there. It went from being so residential to like having real credibility as like there's a great restaurant to anchor this neighborhood.

• 7:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  And that's kind of like what Virtue did to Hyde Park because it always was this kind of bubble on the South Side. But Virtue made it like a destination neighborhood and really brought a whole bunch of like credibility to Hyde Park where you don't just live there and then you go to eat in other parts of the cities, but like you can live and dine well in your own neighborhood.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Well, I'm really, really happy to be a part of it and um if it hadn't been for that phone call coupled with that customer base, there's no way um I would have been in Hyde Park. I I would have much sooner been in River North than on the South Side.

• 8:27Adrienne Cheatham?

  I mean, that's a win for the South Side. I think I can, as a Hyde Parker and Chicagoan, I can say that is a win for the South Side.

• 8:34Joe Flamm?

  Big biggest win for the South Side since oh five right there.

• 8:40Joe Flamm?

  The next one I got for you, Chef Eric, as we do, we call it review review. And it's basically, it's our chance to clap back at the keyboard warriors out there who come in with their one star atrocities. And we get to give them a piece of our mind about how we feel about their review.

• 8:57Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Joe Flamm?

  So I had one from Virtue that I saw today that might be, it is my biggest pet peeve of one star reviews. But it was someone who was very upset because they left a one star review at Virtue because they wanted, they went to your host head, they tried to order takeout and you were not doing takeout. So they had a terrible time and they were absolutely done with your restaurant. And I just like, it's like, you wanted something they weren't offering. Like that's not, you didn't eat there. You can't review a place you got no service from. If you went to a tire shop and tried to get your brake stud and they were like, no, we just do tires.

• 9:43Joe Flamm?

  You're like, I hate this business. It's like you went to the wrong business. You went to the wrong business for the wrong thing. Like it drives me out of my mind, you know? It's like, I went to the paint store and they had zero table saws.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 9:59Joe Flamm?

  It's like, well, what the fuck did you expect?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:02Joe Flamm?

  Like this is, this is a, like, listen, if you eat there, you have a bad experience, you don't like my food, you don't like what we do, like, I'm sorry.

• 10:11Adrienne Cheatham?

  Fine.

• 10:11Joe Flamm?

  It can't be for everybody. It's not how this shit works.

• 10:14Adrienne Cheatham?

  And that's crazy. Like if you want takeout, go to Rage and Cajun across the street. It's been there since I was in elementary school. Like literally go there, go anywhere else.

• 10:22Joe Flamm?

  Also Chef Eric owns a restaurant that's around the corner.

• 10:25Adrienne Cheatham?

  Around the corner.

• 10:26Joe Flamm?

  That does takeout. I've been there. Takeout's fantastic. It's awesome. They do it seven days a week, but Craig can outtake out. You can get it. You just walk your happy ass around that corner. Do a little research, figure it the fuck out. Act like you're a grown up who's ordered food before ever in their life. As opposed to like walking into a business being like, oh, do you do takeout? They're like, no, it's like, well then fuck you.

• 10:51Adrienne Cheatham?

  And the fact that they would actually leave a review because they couldn't get takeout from a restaurant that doesn't do takeout.

• 10:58Joe Flamm?

  Right.

• 10:58Adrienne Cheatham?

  Like, you're a child.

• 10:59Joe Flamm?

  It would have taken less time to walk around the quarter, order full takeout from Daisy's, get that takeout, drive it home, eat that whole meal, than to write a review about how you're upset that this restaurant that doesn't offer this thing didn't offer that thing.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  So I am fortunate enough to have worked just enough years, right? I'm on the cusp, just enough years where someone else reads those reviews. The team does not like when I read them because I get personal responses that are very thoughtful and hate-filled. And so, um, I generally don't respond to reviews. And, and I read one recently for another concept, uh, our bar, where someone stated that I was skinfolk, but not kinfolk, interpreted I wasn't black.

• 11:54Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Um, I, I just looked the part.

• 11:57Adrienne Cheatham?

  Cause you opened a tequila bar and mezcal and slightly Mexican.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Because I opened a tequila bar, it was because my team did not accommodate their growing party from six to eight during a busy slot. I, I didn't say a word. I was drinking water. Uh, like literally I was standing in the corner drinking water. I was about to go home and was checking emails and, and because I didn't recognize their blackness and meet their energy and their needs, you know, in a busy bar. And so I almost responded and then I thought, why give win to these clowns? So, you know, I think most of us have heard this saying, and Lord knows I would, I like, I don't, I don't have any tattoos, but if I got one, this is the one I would get on

• 12:44Speaker 02

  my forearm just to remind me when I get ready to text. My grandmother used to say, if you argue with a fool, the ugly can't tell the difference of who's the fool, because nobody with good sense argues with fools, right? And so, so why do I, why would I, you know, reduce my brand? To match somebody's energy, that's a clown, total clown. And so Jeff, you're right, you're a hundred percent right, right? Why, why do people think that they're so entitled? That they should show up in my business in the name of support? And then ask me to do a thing that we don't naturally do. And the key word is natural, right? There are moments when we go out of our way to do a thing.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Someone says that, that eats at our places on a regular basis. Right, that they're trying to facilitate someone in their family who has cancer. This has happened multiple times throughout my career. And people still come to our stores. Because the, what they thought was gonna be their last meal. And like stage for cancer treatment. Turned out to be a meal that they remember. Even though we all know that cancer patients can't taste. They just love the idea that they were able to eat the meal, right?

• 14:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  And cancer didn't do what it was supposed to do. Right, in that scenario, and they're still living. And those people come back and support. Those are moments when we wanna go above and beyond, right? Where I want to displace my entire kitchen. The grandma who celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday and expecting her food to be hot? You know, people like hot food. They don't like heavy food. They gotta blow it on the fork. If they can't blow it on the fork, they send that shit back, right? So I gotta make sure grandma who's ninety-nine is celebrating her birthday. And looking forward to that candle and her cake, right? Make sure that her food's right. I got a kid in the corner that we're getting ready to heat up. And get just barely past cold English peas.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  So that the kid can use motor skills at the table. And be entertained while they eat their food and play with it. And then we've got a reviewer in another corner, a legitimate reviewer. Who has graciously come in to try to help spread the word. Or the good news of what we're doing. We're trying to make sure their food is perfect. Along with the other two hundred diners. Right. And for some strange reason, you think that your need to go home and sit on your couch and eat. In a restaurant that doesn't do that, supersedes all the important folk. Who committed, made a reservation. And sat down in our restaurant. And wanted to support us. is probably less important than your damn entitlement.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Man, the hell with these people. And so, um, I had the good fortune of working in a restaurant. Where we learned how to fire customers. And so I wasn't trained. As I said, the way chefs are generally trained, I was trained to run a business first. The reason why. We don't do takeout. Is because we had a, our fair dose with all of our friends of doing takeout. And in-service dinner, you know, all a cart meals during the pandemic. And we realized. It makes our cooks worse. They have a hard time dumping things in a box. And then plating things for the people that are in the dining room. It throws off your motor skills and your rhythm. At some point.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  The stuff that's supposed to get dumped in the box is getting dumped on the plate. And the stuff that's supposed to be in the box is cuter than it should ever be. It doesn't need to be that cute, it needs to be placed properly, that's it. And stop dumping stuff on my plates, man, these people pay a lot of money to sit in this dining room. Throw on the short rib on the, on the edge of the plate, like it goes in the center. On top of the spinach, on top of the mashed potatoes. And there needs to be a little cute ring of the onion gravy around, man. And don't serve broken onion rings. So, there's my rant. You asked for it.

• 16:48Joe Flamm?

  I loved it, I loved, I loved every minute of it. That's, I've, I've been looking forward to this all week, chef. I was like.

• 16:53Adrienne Cheatham?

  He really has, you have no idea.

• 16:55Joe Flamm?

  I can't wait, I can't wait to do review review with Eric, like I want it. Like I.

• 16:58Adrienne Cheatham?

  He was like, I want to do this segment.

• 17:00Joe Flamm?

  I was like, put it in my veins, like I need it.

• 17:02Adrienne Cheatham?

  And we're also, we started, Joe proposed the idea, and so we brought it to IG. And we asked people if they thought that restaurants should be able to review guests. Just like Uber can review passengers. And so Joe and I are on a personal campaign. So we want the stories like this because this is showing what people are like. And we're trying to get all these platforms to allow that to happen, so you are helping.

• 17:30Joe Flamm?

  This is, this is my mayoral campaign. This is how I'm gonna run for, for mayor of Chicago, is the idea of that, you know. Businesses get to review their, their, their guests coming to the door. That and if you, and if you double park on a, on a Tulage Street, you get a thousand dollar fine the, the second time you go to jail.

• 17:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  Come to New York with that platform, please.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:50Adrienne Cheatham?

  So yeah, Chef Eric, that is, I love that. I'm here for all that smoke. Um, that's exactly the, the reaction Joe was predicting too.

• 17:57Joe Flamm?

  I loved it, man.

• 18:01Joe Flamm?

  All right. So one of my favorite segments we do of this is we call it, uh, walk in confession.

• 18:06Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yes.

• 18:07Joe Flamm?

  And this is just where we like to share stories of like when we were coming up, when we had those days even now where it's like you run to the shop where it's like shit went completely sideways and nobody knew. And like whether you got through it, whether it was a disaster or one of those mistakes you made as a young cook that you were just like haven't thought about for 20 years. You were just like, you thought it was going to be your last day on a line, but you somehow got through it and lived, uh, lived, lived to fight another day. And you can, you'll laugh at now at least.

• 18:38Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah, we've all got those stories and we've, we've heard some good ones from Kristin Kish, from Eric Ajapong, from Joe, from me. We all have these stories and it's like, I can't believe I did that. But when you're young, you don't know what you don't know. We all know Chef Eric Williams. We know the mentor. We know the man behind virtue leadership. We know all the things you do now, but a young Chef Eric Williams or line cook Eric Williams, was there something that you look back and you're like, I can't believe I did that?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Um, interestingly enough, I was the fixer in the restaurant for all the chefs. I think we had somewhere around four or five chefs at MK before I got there. Um, and in my years prior to MK, which was a lot of years, I was just too green for them to give me a lot of leeway in the first place. And keep in mind, I started MK on the salad station and worked my way through to partnership. So I can't give you a lot of fodder around, you know, like throwing away the stock.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  And saving the bones, which I've seen done. Someone leaving the, the, the, the stock pot a touch too high and getting, we got to work the next morning. Realized we could burn the restaurant down because that they literally had burned through the pot. There was a hole in the bottom of the pot. First time I had ever seen that.

• 20:12Joe Flamm?

  Oh.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Uh, but I can honestly tell you, I, I didn't, that wasn't me. The things that I did were things that most chefs probably have not done. Like I have literally almost run over a prostitute speeding down the street to go get steaks. Uh, because, because the steak count was off. And the cook did not tell anyone that he was running low. Everybody in kitchens knows that you count from ten, right?

• 20:47Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yep.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  And, and you count backwards. Every single time a order comes in, you count backwards until we eighty six it. And, and ten is never ten, ten's always eleven.

• 20:57Joe Flamm?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  If you're counting from ten, you always hold one back.

• 21:00Joe Flamm?

  Sand back the shit out of it.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Yes. And so the chef had run out of steaks and we had steaks on the board. And I went to at the time, Stockyards Packing. And that area was sketchy as hell back then. And, and it was dark, like it was really dimly lit. And I, I literally had to slam on my, I was, you know, like I'm on a side street on a dimly lit block. And, you know, I'm a young cook, I gotta get these steaks back. And so I'm speeding, like I had to be doing like seventy down a side street and there're no cars there. There's nothing there but trucks that are parked, right? And at this time, like they're not even, you know, they're not even working.

• 21:42Adrienne Cheatham?

  They're parked, but they got people in them.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  There was some ladies working and I didn't realize that there was traffic outside of the cars. Cause it didn't look like there was gonna be much foot traffic and I, I literally almost killed somebody. And, um, that's probably the craziest story I got.

• 21:57Adrienne Cheatham?

  That is primo, primo walking confession right there.

• 22:01Joe Flamm?

  That is a top tier snapshot of Chicago history too of like what those meat placking places used to be. Uh, just like, you know, pick up some steaks, almost ran over a prostitute, you know? Just a, just a, just a Wednesday night at MK.

• 22:18Adrienne Cheatham?

  We're sponsored by San Pellegrino. So we have a segment that we call the mentor moment, which Joe is going to kick off with you.

• 22:25Joe Flamm?

  So chef, like I know, I think one of the most impressive things you do besides just outside of your cooking is your leadership. You know, through the virtue leadership program, I think you have been a mentor to so many. But one of the things we kind of talk about that we like to always ask is like, you know, who are some of those people for you coming up who kind of showed you the way as far as like coming up being a chef who really defined it for you? Because you know, the crazy thing for me is like, I knew who you were when I was 21. Like when I was in culinary school, you were running MK two blocks away from school. Like, we all knew who you were. So it's like, I've always been watching from afar what you've been doing. I'd always been impressed by it. I'd always been just enthralled with it. But you know, now that, you know, being able to actually call you a friend, I think

• 23:08Joe Flamm?

  it's, it's cool to be able to ask you, you know, who were those people along your way? Who you felt really shaped you?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  First of all, thank you. It's really weird for me to think that when you were 21, you knew who the hell I was. It's also a little weird to me because I was such a knucklehead back in those days. I'm a bit more grounded. And so, age has served me well. Let me just say it that way. But that being stated, interestingly enough, I wasn't directly connected to any chefs back in those days that would have mentored me outside of the space. And if you can remember back to that time, family trees were much more prevalent and important. If you didn't go through a certain crew, you know, like, they

• 23:59Speaker 02

  didn't talk to you. You know, so in this town, you know, if you weren't part of Joe Ho's crew, or if you weren't a part of Trotter's crew, like, you didn't have access to those guys. And what I did is I watched Trotter's crew from afar.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  And um and I followed those guys closely. And much like our experience, they didn't know I was following them until until many years later. And I I legitimately watched how Trotter built this team. And um those guys, they hung around. And kitchens were harder then. The cooking wasn't harder. The environment was was tougher. The expectation to, you know, work twelve hour, sixteen hour shifts was very common. Working through pain at every level was common.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  It was also extremely common for chefs to work a full day and then turn around and clean the kitchen for another two hours. Um I mean, like polishing copper.

• 25:05Joe Flamm?

  Well, I was gonna, I was just gonna say polishing copper. Like that is, I still like, I don't want to copper anything anywhere around me. Cause I'm like, I'm I'm not polishing anymore copper. Done with it.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  And so um I I use those guys as a as a pseudo guy to like what what the standard was in terms of commitment. How long should I stay, you know, when's lo- when when is it long enough? And in that cycle, you know, it was very uncommon for chefs to be in a place less than two years. But five years, four years was a lot. And I wanted to quit a lot of times, but those Trotter guys, man, they they didn't, they they didn't quit. Like, it was crazy. When you talk to them now, they're like, maybe we stayed too long, but. A lot of who were around for a really long time.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  And um inside the restaurant, I learned the business um as a chef in reverse. So I wasn't the best cook, I wasn't the fastest cook. Um and I don't even know if I aspired to be at one point. Uh because I didn't believe, I thought that MK would be a means to an end. I I wouldn't have, you couldn't have asked me and gotten a straight answer back then on on if I wanted to be a chef. And Michael taught me the ins and outs of the restaurant business.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And I became very comfortable with understanding inventory and um the processes of inventory, um prepping, organizing a kitchen way before I learned how to put my first dish on the menu. These days, guys are gunning to get their first dish on the menu and they have no idea how much it costs.

• 26:55Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Right, and what it takes.

• 26:56Adrienne Cheatham?

  Or how to read a P and L.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Well, the P and L, that's, that's, that's like something cosmic, you know, they only do that on Mars. So, yeah, it's, it's those nuances and I learned that stuff from Michael. So, and Michael still talks to me to this day about challenges and problems and, and, and his take. Sometimes I forget how we did a thing. And it's kind of like family, you know, like grandma's recipe never gets old. You may have a new take on it, but the base of that, that recipe never gets old, right? You make a three, two, one crust the same way. It's never four, two, one. It's not four, two, two, right? It's three, two, one, period, right? And so there are approaches in business that just don't change.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  And if you find yourself changing and getting too creative, they got all these like tax laws that help put you right back where you were.

• 27:49Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, and I think, you know, it's one of the great things I appreciate about you. And I think, you know, chef, when you talk about how back in the day, it was everybody was separate, right? These conversations weren't had. So many of those chefs don't know these things because people didn't talk about it. And, you know, you and I have always had, I feel like a very open relationship with it where we talk about rent. We talk about percentages. We talk about, you know, everything because like we're better together. And when we share that information and it's like, there's no, you know, I mean, there's no part of the French Laundry cookbook where Thomas Keller breaks down, you know, what his payback structure was for his investors. He doesn't break down, you know, what kind of labor percent he was trying to shoot for when he ran in,

• 28:30Joe Flamm?

  like how he did projections year over year from year one of the French Laundry to year fifteen. I feel like one of, one of the things that drives me most insane from media or people, whatever, where they say like, oh, this restaurant just wants to make money. It's like, no, this restaurant has to make money. We don't have an option. If we don't make money, we don't restaurant. It's over. It's done. There's no dollar amount that they give you for a good fucking idea. You know what I mean? And it's like, so it drives me insane where they're like, oh, they just want to make money. It's like, no, we have to make money to be able to do it. Because like rent's still gonna be due tomorrow. And if I put up the greatest dish, and I think it's so cool, and you know, you both are texting me like, wow, that dish is so awesome. It's like, that's great, but if nobody buys it, I'm still fucked.

• 29:14Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yep. And that's so crazy because our industry is built on knowledge, but you have so many people that don't share it. And Chef Eric, you're one of the few people that does. So questions about all types of things, not even, I don't have a restaurant. So questions like, we talk about stuff that are not necessarily restaurant related, but industry related, because it's a food industry. And you can still provide so much information that helps me in different areas of my consulting, different areas of things that I do and events. And so many people gatekeep that information. You know, I remember working for chefs who did not want to tell me how to like, manage the food costs at the end of the day. I'm like, it's trying to sneak behind their back to get the invoice totals and try to like,

• 29:58Adrienne Cheatham?

  learn that myself, because some people look at it as they don't want to be replaced by a cook who's ambitious, or a sous chef who wants to move up. And you've never been that way, so I really appreciate that.

• 30:10Joe Flamm?

  Thank you for all your time, man.

• 30:11Adrienne Cheatham?

  Thank you so much for joining us. As always, for everybody in the industry, you are one of the biggest sources of inspiration and support that we have, and we really, really appreciate you.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Well, thank you, but don't give me too many compliments. You guys gotta get some other chefs on here after me. And it might not, they might start saying no, it's like, ah, you guys like that other guy too much. Very ego-driven and very territorial. Um, but I would be remiss if I didn't say, and, and simply because we led talking about business, and me learning that first. It brings me a lot of, of joy and, and raises the bar in terms of respect that you guys are doing this podcast and doing it together. Uh, it shows leadership and collaboration in a form that's a little unique to us. Usually when we're doing podcasts, we're doing them for someone else to earn a living.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  And we're always telling our stories with someone that doesn't fully understand. So they're getting paid to be entertained and own our stories. And to be able to share this in the community. With the community and by the community means a lot to me because I can see how two people that I really admire and adore have an opportunity to kick this thing wide open in a way that's uniquely authentic and genuine to our industry. So, thank you both.

• 31:34Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh, that is so wonderful.

• 31:36Joe Flamm?

  Thank you, Chef. Appreciate you, man. Appreciate you.

• 31:39Adrienne Cheatham?

  Get you out of here. We know you have a ton of other things to do today. I can see all the clipboards and dry erase board behind you, so we know.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  In the opinion, right?

• 31:48Joe Flamm?

  Another, another great episode. Such a fun time, so.

• 31:52Adrienne Cheatham?

  Joe, where can everybody find you?

• 31:54Joe Flamm?

  You can find me in real life. I'm at Rosemary Chicago Boulevard Steakhouse in Il Carchofo. Find me online at Insaflam. Age, if they're trying to keep up with you, even though they can't, where you at?

• 32:06Adrienne Cheatham?

  I am on IG as Chef Adrian Cheatham, and you can check out the Sunday Best Cookbook. You can also check out our IG for the Chef's Cut Podcast, where we'll have polls and clips from all our new episodes. So be sure to check it out on Apple, Spotify. Follow and subscribe so you never miss a new drop, which happens every Tuesday.

• 32:27Joe Flamm?

  Well, I'm Joe Flamm, and for Adrian Cheatham, this has been the Chef's Cut.

• 32:32Adrienne Cheatham?

  Life beyond the past.