It was until I left school and I started working in a restaurant and working with my hands that, you know, my life came alive. I take those things that I learn and see and experience and I make them part of my life's work. And I also think that if you work in a restaurant, like it teaches you about life. You saw this man who worked around the clock and he still does. I mean he's such a great role model. He leads with kindness, he leads with work ethic. Bobby, we were talking one day, he's like, you keep doing that and you keep being your authentic self, you're gonna win. This is what he said. So 100% what I did and I ended up winning. First of all, I love Bobby Flavio very much. I've loved him on The Today Show. I love him here and now. Bobby Flavio, everybody, check out Bobby's triple threat. Bobby, you're not filming a show with him. You're like being coming friends with him. Food business and the restaurant business has been great to me, right? It's been such an important part of my life. I'm in a really good place right this second. For lots of reasons. It gives me that momentum to keep striving to be better, to learn and to look for the next adventure. But I feel like I'm now directing my own life. Bobby Flavio has been a great mentor for me. Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Flavio! Bobby on the beat. Everybody welcome back to another episode of Bobby on the Beat. My co-host is gonna be my mentor, Jonathan Waxman. A legend in the food world. Jonathan has done so many things on both coasts, both the west coast and the east coast. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about my experience working with Jonathan. I always say that Jonathan was the first person to teach me about good food. We'll talk about his influence on my career. There's been a lot of chatter about cheese steaks lately. Obviously, Philadelphia is the home of the Philly cheese steak. For a very, very long time, there was pats and genos. They were right across the street from each other. Now there's been a whole lot of new places open. One of the places is a place called Angelo's, which is getting a lot of attention in Philadelphia. People talk about the bread there as being an important part of it. Like any sandwich, the bread is really key, of course. He teamed up with Bradley Cooper and opened a cheese steak place called Danny Coops in New York City. So, Philadelphia transplanted in New York was only one thing to do. We got to send Jimmy B. Bobby on the beat. Jimmy B., America's Food Critic. We're outside of the viral sensation Danny and Coops. It is home of the New York City cheese steak. You no longer need to get on the term pike, drive south, and head to Philadelphia. It's right here in our backyard. I've been here twice already. It's excellent. The business model is even better than the food, possibly. They do one thing, the cheese steak. There's no options. You go to Philly, you need to go wit, whiz, with, without. The option here is how many do you want and do you want it with sweet peppers or hot peppers on the side? Every single sandwich is the same. It's a really good cheese steak. Has to have great meat, onion, cheese. The bread needs to be perfect. I don't like a lot of extra crap on it. Keep it basic. Quality meat, some sauteed onions, and some cheese. I think they use the Cooper Sharp here. Bradley Cooper owns part of this with Danny, whose family has Angelo's, I believe, in Philadelphia. Another great cheese steak and pizza place. Let's try it out and make sure that my memory serves me correctly. Place is crazy. Call the cops. We're inside waiting in line. Notice. No menus. Three hot pepper on the side. One sweet and one non. You guys get the bread from Philly? You make it here. You bake it here. Have you guys been here before? This is my first time you just told me about it. I've been working here for like four years. Hey, Danny, you're up. Batter up. Oh, it's serious. Yeah, you're going to be happy with it. Hot, sweet, cheese steak. Look at that thing. It is perfect combination of cheese, onion, and prime rib. That's it. Very simple. But I'm sure it's going to be excellent. Look at this thing. Wow. I'm going in. They scoop the bread out a little bit up top and it still falls out. They pack these things. It is unbelievable. Right amount of onion, cheese to beef ratio. The bread is the key. It's nice and crispy. It holds the sandwich. I'm going back in. This is craveable. You might wake up in the middle of the night. I wish you had one. It's worth the wait. It's worth the wait if you were standing outside in 20 degree weather. Only thing I can say is you don't have to go to Philadelphia. They got a really good cheese steak. And this is as good as you could possibly ever, ever have. Thank you very much. Canadian Coops. Best cheese steak, period. Bobby on the beat. You can tell that Jimmy really liked it. I've been there a couple of times. It's really good. They have one item. Cheese steak. Hot peppers or sweet peppers. That's basically it. Makes everybody's life a lot easier. So if you know that you want to have a cheese steak and you're in New York City, it's definitely the place to go. Let's get to the main event. Let's welcome Jonathan Wastman. But before I do that, make sure you hit like and subscribe. Okay. Let's go to Jonathan. All right, Jonathan. What's up? Hi, Bobby. I'm so glad you're here. I always say you're the first person to teach me about what good food is and was. You're not going to remember this. I was the chef of this restaurant called Brighton Grill. I totally remember everything about it. You do? Totally remember every little detail. For some reason, I guess as I get older, I remember, I forget short term stuff, but I do remember things that happened a long time ago. Not everything. It's all, it's segmented. But I remember the owner of the Brighton Grill. Stephanie Gast. Stephanie Gast. I didn't really know who she was, but I heard that she was. She had the guest name, which was. Yeah, the guest name. But she was really nice and she kept bugging me to come to the restaurant. So one day, I said screw it. It was like a Monday night. I like it about nine o'clock. How the fuck do you remember this? Totally. And so I went down there and honestly, I don't remember who I went with. Cheers, by the way. I made you a margarita. Thank you. I want to tell you what, I made you a margarita and I made you some guacamole. Before you jump into that story, let me show you how I made it. Bobby on the beat. All right. Here it is. Here's the guacamole and as a bonus, you get a margarita too. First things first, we're going to get some ripe avocados. These are from California. Nice and ripe. Make sure that they're ripe. And just to note, you won't see a tomato anywhere nearer this recipe. So if you add tomatoes to your guacamole, this one's not for you. Okay. First, everything into the mocha hat they first. And then we're going to mix it just once. So the avocado that I just diced up in the shell. Now we're going to dice some red onions. Very, very finely diced. If you can't find red, white is fine, but I like the red ones. They look prettier. And then I'm going to also dice up some chilies. These are jalapenos or serrano chilies. I like serranos better, but if you can't find those, jalapenos are fine. Of course, you need a whole bunch of fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped. I mean, not everybody's a cilantro lover, but for guacamole, it's a must. And then I'm going to roll the lime just to make sure that all that juice comes out. A little salt, a little pepper. And now we're just going to mix it one time. Okay. And then we're going to just to stay nice and chunky. So just crush it with the back of a fork. Leave a little chunky, a little avocado oil on top because we're making guacamole. Why not avocados? And now for the margarita. Silver tequila, some Cointreau, some lime juice, just three ingredients. Nothing else, no simple syrup or anything. And then what I like to do is actually take some of the zest of the lime and put it in there as well. Shake it up with some ice cubes and a shaker. Put a little salt on the rim if that's a guarantee. Shake it up. And then pour the delicious margarita over that ice. Make sure you have tons of ice. You can see the little lime zest specs in there. It just gives it a little extra flavor. And there it is. All you need, guacamole and a margarita and get some chips too. Bobby on the beat. I'm going to tell you why so we have to, but I want to hear the story. I made you guacamole because in any restaurant that I've worked in with you, you always used to make me make you guacamole so that you could eat it. But it's a defining dish, isn't it? Isn't it? Don't you think? I completely agree. And I have very strict and hard rules about it. I probably learned how to make guacamole working in buds. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. One of the first times I learned how to make it like in the real way. But had you ever had it as a kid? I had it, but it was terrible. It was always terrible, right? Yeah, I always had it as a kid and it was pretty awful. But anyway, so I went over there. I think I sat down with Stephanie and her boyfriend, I think. She goes, you want to see my chef? I said, yeah, sure, why not? And she took me into the kitchen. It was late. It was late. And there was this skinny guy with a t-shirt on and a chef coat. And it was you. I was sitting on a pickle bucket upside down. You know, those big five gallon pickle buckets? Upside down in the corner, literally like out of breath. And you weighed about 110 pounds. Yeah, I was 19. Yeah. And you got up and you were really nervous. And you came over and you were really nice. You shook my hand, said hi. That's the extent of the conversation. I don't remember anything else after that. But I do remember you came to see me. I don't know how many days later. I'll tell you what happened. I was at a party at the French Culinary Institute and Gail Arnold, who was your chef, the cuisine at Buds, was there. And she said to me, I worked for Jonathan Waxman. And I was like, I just met Jonathan the other day. Can you please give me a job? I don't want to be the chef. I'm not ready to be the chef of anything. All I want to do is cook. And she was like, I don't know. And then I talked to you. And then somehow she decided that she had room for me in the restaurant. And she hired me to cook at Buds. But I remember you coming to see me. Yeah, I remember you came to see me at Champs. Do you remember that? Yes. I remember, I said, why do you want to leave your chef job to come work for me? And you said, I'm not really ready to be a chef. No. And I'd like to learn. I said, well, didn't you go to culinary school? He said, yes, I did. I said, well, what am I supposed to do? And you said, I want to learn more. I want to get better as a cook. And I said, OK, fine. So I gave you the gale. Yeah, so I went to work at Buds, which was your Southwestern restaurant. But Jonathan, the way I became the chef at Brighton Grill, I was hired as one of the cooks or like a junior sous chef. And the chef got so drunk in the first 10 days of the restaurant opening that they fired him. And they gave me the keys to the kitchen. And I was like, I'm not ready to be the chef here. I had worked at Joe Allen's and I went to culinary school. That was it. How was working at Joe Allen's? It was great because it was crazy. Yeah, it was always busy. It was so weird because at Joe Allen's at eight o'clock at night, it was empty because everybody was at theater. Right. So it was busy before and after theater packed in the prime time of what you would consider prime time for restaurants, empty. Literally staff meal would be eight o'clock. Interesting. It was crazy. That happened every night. That way. Exactly. And then Matt and Aza. And how was Joe? He was great. Joe was always in the restaurant. He was just always around. My very few interactions with him were always just wonderful. Yeah, he was the nicest guy. He's just the greatest guy. And he mentored a lot of people. Well, he gave me my tuition to go to culinary school. He handed me the check, the full check to go. How much was that? Do you remember? $6,400. You know, it's funny. My tuition to go to La Verenne in 1976 was $6,300. That's crazy. That was a lot of money back then. Of course it was. It's all relative. Yeah. You know where I'd never been until about three weeks ago? Michaels. You never went to Michaels? Never once. Not in LA? I went to Santa Monica. So you and Michael McCarthy opened that restaurant what year? Michael started building the restaurant in 1978. Yeah. We opened in, I think April of 1979. And that's where it all kind of started. Actually ironically, Brooke, my girlfriend worked there as a sous chef. The reason I got to Michaels was I wanted to come to New York because I was a chef in the Japanese. So you went to Alice Waters first? Alice Waters. And then I wanted to go work at Lutess. I had this thing in my head about working at Lutess. Before I went to New York, I said, I'm going to go to LA because I hear this thing's happening in LA. And I went to LA and I talked to someone, I can't even remember who I did. And they said, you got to talk to this guy, Ken Frank. Ken Frank, right. So Ken Frank was the wonder kind of LA at that point. Worked at a restaurant called La Guillotine. Only in LA would you have a restaurant called La Guillotine. And I obviously had closed. Somehow I got in touch with him. I don't know how I did it because, you know, there's no cell phones. There's no internet. Somehow I got in touch with Ken and he goes, I'm going to be working at this place called Michaels and Santa Monica. It's going to be a great place. Why don't you go talk to Michael? So I drove out to Michael and I met Michael and it was in the whole patio. How old were you then? I was 28. 29 or something? I was 28. And I went to see Michael and in the office was this gorgeous British woman named Sally Clark. Oh yeah. Did you work there? She worked there because she and Michael have been friends from Paris and I fell in love with her instantaneously. It was one of those like, you know what that's like. I know anything about it. So I went and I talked to Michael in this dirt pit that became the patio for Michaels. He said, I want you to come work for me up. But I hired this guy to be the chef, Ken Frank. And I said, I'm not ready to be a chef anyway. So I said, why don't you come and be a suit chef and her kids. So I said, fine. So I went back to Berkeley, packed my stuff up, my van and drove to Los Angeles and that's where we opened Michaels. How we opened Michaels. So Michael and I were incredibly close. We tried to get the restaurant open and finally got the restaurant open and then it became this crazy success. What was the food like? So Michael had gone to culinary school in Paris. It's a professional program. It was created for foreigners. It was a year and a half, year program or something. It was all done in French, but Michael spoke French because he had lived in France. Ferrandi was called. That's what the French culinary institute was based on. Exactly. There you go. And so Michael went back to Colorado and he'd worked in some sort of continental restaurant and then he got this idea to open this restaurant and he wanted to make it sort of this deco-style restaurant, but he wanted to make it what he called New California, Brazil. No one really had an idea what that was about. So anyway, so Michael opened the menu. He shows me this menu and it was based, it was this new focusing restaurant in Paris that Michael really liked and it was this dish he put on. It was B-Purée with scallops. It was kind of weird, but anyway. And he wanted it on the menu and then Poulifri. He's kind of stole Jean-Bretje News menu a little bit or borrowed. And I looked at the menu and I didn't know how to be a chef, so I didn't know how to make a menu. Anyway, so we opened the restaurant with this sort of, I would call it a continental menu. And slowly but surely we evolved the menu. And then I started bringing all these like different vegetables and things from the region. Arigoverte, which people had never seen before in Los Angeles. I bought frog raw that came in a can from Rougier. So it was really like French Brasserie food. It was really French Brasserie food. But then we just evolved it. It was crazy. When Michael's first opened, people just brought me stuff. And that really was the source of what I did. And then of course I started eating in different restaurants. But remember I had the vocabulary because I had worked at Chépe-en-Yves. I had gone to Girode in Switzerland and those were kind of my two major influences. Was that a great restaurant? It was the best in the world. Best restaurant I ever went to in my life. Really? That's amazing. He went Alice called it. She called it a little museum of French food. That everything was perfect. So then why did you move to New York? Because I was at Michael's for five years. And during that time Michael wanted to open up at Michael's in New York. He wanted to open a branch. Yeah, which he did at some point. Well, he took, Michael started, and I started going to New York. Not with Michael, but separately. I used to go with Mark Miller and people from Chépe-en-Yves and Solly Clark, other people. And I loved New York at that point. Anyway, so what happened was that Michael found this place on 55th Street. It's an Italian restaurant. And he started negotiating it. 1981, I believe. And so I was getting ready to be by Coastal at that point. And he came. And I was ready to do the deal. I guess they had a fight about the Italian wine list or something stupid. It was just, you know, it was an eagle issue. And Michael passed, and the guy passed. But I kind of had the Jones to move to New York. Now at that point I was dating Sally, and she wanted me to move to London. So I was caught in between New York and London, LA. So you were still dating her for all those years? Yeah. But that was a time where I was completely crazy because I bought a Ferrari. Yes, you did. I did buy a Ferrari. Bought a Ferrari. And the Ferrari was in London. Don't even ask why. I was stupid. So Sally and I, we had the best summer because we'd drive around in the Ferrari. And I used to scare the sh** out of her driver. We had a fun. And then my friend Craig Schiffer got a sign. He became the head, co-head of Lehman Brothers in London. And he had a month off before he had his artwork. He goes, I got money. You have the car. Let's drive around Europe. And we spent the July of 1983 driving in my Ferrari around Europe, eating and having fun. Where'd you go? Everywhere. We went everywhere. But the place that he loved the best was Jurida. And I kept going back to Chippenese, too. Chippenese was my other sort of source of inspiration. And there were other places in the world that I went that I really loved. This is a really funny story. So once when I went to visit Sally in London, we went to this restaurant. It was a Greek restaurant. And we had for lunch, I swear to God, a bottle of Romani Conti Romani Conti 1945. Now it just sold at auction for a close to a million dollars. You paid 100 pounds for that. What? In 1981. Isn't that crazy? Was it good? It was delicious, of course. But, you know, who knew? But who knew? And then and all this other crazy stuff happened. But who are your investors for? For jams, for jams. Marvin Souther and Larry Shuffling. So Craig didn't invest. He didn't really have money in those days. Yeah, I remember when jams opened, I didn't work at jams very often. Like I worked out like a handful of times when you asked me to like fill in for somebody, but I was working at Buds and Hulos, your French bistro. So you didn't really work at jams very much? Very little. I started working at Buds because Gail gave me a job as a cook. And I was just like every single person in your kitchen was a baller. I mean, every single person could cook their brains out and, you know, could go be the chef of a restaurant the next day. I mean, I was so intimidated, but it was also incredibly exciting. I'm seeing fresh and dried chilies, blue corn meal. Like this is before blue corn chips were in a bag. I had no idea what this. Nobody had ever seen anything like this on the East Coast. Yeah. And I was mesmerized by it. And everybody around me that you assembled in these kitchens were unbelievable cooks. And so everybody just learned off of each other. I mean, you like you set the tone and then it just kind of went into into action. And also like I remember the idea of cooking on real mesquite as opposed to like just lighting a gas grill, like nobody had ever done that in New York for sure. You know, those Montague grills to this day. I'll never forget them. Yeah. I only tried to burn down like three restaurants. The Ansel system did go off a lot. I can promise you that one night I was working at Bud's and the Ansel system at Jansmen off and you made me go over there and clean it up. But that was cool. Well, I remember once at Melvin, I were having drinks at 21 Club and I got a phone call. Those days you got phone calls from Gerard. He said the fire department's here. Your exhaust system went on fire. Luckily, the building didn't burn down, but they destroyed the restaurant by whacking away at it. Oh, that's right. I remember that. I totally remember that. Anyway, let's see if you remember this. I worked at Bud's for like a year or something. And then I said to you, I want to move to California. And you're like, what? I was like, I want to go work for Wolfgang. You're like, okay, fine. So you like made a phone call. Wolfgang basically didn't give me a job. They didn't have, they didn't have a job for me. So I came back like two weeks later. And I was like, I said to you, I was like, I need a job now. And you're like, well, I gave your job away at Bud's. And you're like, do you want to work in my new French bistro? Hulos. I was like, okay. And that's, that's where I went to work with Stephanie and Paul Del Favreau and all those people and Gerard. And that was an amazing experience of me because you're cooking in the middle of the dining room. Literally, it's like a table. It was a cutting board with some, with refrigeration underneath it. And the, and the stoves were behind you and the, and the diners were right here. So you were literally cooking in the middle of the dining room every night. And it was just an amazing place to, I mean, I really learned a lot about really simple French cuisine there. It was amazing. It was a beautiful restaurant. But you know what we used to do? We used to, it used to be closed on Sundays and we would get the keys from Gerard, who was the manager, and we would go in and cook all day long on our day off. Like we would like make duck confit and we would make, we'd make frog gratin rings, like all the things that took time. We just, even on our day off, we wanted to go and cook there. It was a great, it was a fun kitchen. I know, but like, I kind of feel like that doesn't happen anymore. Yeah, it doesn't. I think, you know, that was the passion for it. I think the spirit of that really came from my time at both Sheppanese and Michaels. There's so many people around of a like mind or, you know, that a like passion. I think passion was the most important part that everybody was so excited to be part of this movement that they realized it was a movement. I will tell you that you opened my eyes to a play. I was going to quit cooking because I was just like, yeah, because you have to remember I dropped out of high school. I went to college, I went to culinary school while I was working at Joe Allen's and I was working in restaurants where the food was really not about, it was not about the food. They were just about being busy restaurants. And so I was just like a technician and I didn't really, I wasn't really excited about what I was doing. I was, you hadn't eaten in a really good restaurants. Not really. Not really. You didn't have anybody that was an influence on you. Like my dad would like take me to the test of my birthday, but I didn't know what I was eating. You know, it's just like, you know, I wasn't excited. Didn't, it didn't spark anything. It's not really. No, it didn't. Cause I didn't even know what I was eating. Yeah. And so, and when I got to your places, I was just like mesmerized by it. And then I remember one night, it must have been like, like the meals on wheels event must have been happening that week. And in the kitchen, like you brought in like Alice waters, Wolfgang Puck, Jeremiah Tower, Dean Fearing, Steven Piles, Mark Miller, all at the same time. I was like, these are all the superheroes of cooking. Like, and they're eating my Mesa plato off my station. You know, like I was blown away. I was like, I don't know. This is, oh, this exists because I didn't know that that existed before, before I worked for you. Yeah. Um, I remember one time at Hulos, this is like, it's amazing, the small moment you remember you were on the phone and the phone in the kitchen had a very long cord and you were walking around. So the kitchen was tiny, but you were kind of walking around talking to somebody on the phone and I was cutting mushrooms. Like Grumini's or something. And I was cutting them really loudly. That, that, that, that, that, that, that was probably aggravating you because you probably couldn't hear what you were, who you were talking to. And without saying a word, you had the phone in your ear like this and you grabbed my knife and you went like this and you, you took the knife and you just went like this to show me how to quietly cut mushrooms. But it's one of those moments where like, I'll never forget it. I mean, I still do. I still do that to everybody. Yes, you do. I said, of course I do. What's your recollection of me being in your kitchens? But we had that crazy deep fry station. I didn't design it to be difficult. I designed it to be economic that that one person could really handle a lot of the different dishes. I said to Gail, I said, is Bobby ready for the fry station? She goes, I don't think so, but I'm going to do it anyway. So I said, well, are you sure? And she goes, yeah, I'm going to bury him. I said, Gail, that's not the right attitude. Yeah. You know, what you want to do is you want to nurture him. You don't want to bury him. I'm in the pool when he can't swim. I remember watching you go to that station that night. And I just, I didn't want to babysit you and I didn't want to go and hover over. And I said, because that was Gail's job anyway. And I, but I did it out of the corner of my eye. I was watching and it's, and you weren't daunted by it. But I could see you were scared. Of course. You were, you were, there was like 10 things. There was like 10 things. And if you didn't have your, it's like a, the post station at Barbudo. It's not for the faint hearted. Right. Unless you are incredibly dexterous and incredibly organized. And, and more important that you have to have timing of the kazoo, because if you, you got to be able to start one dish, finish another dish. You have to be able to turn your back on dishes. That's what people don't think, really understand about professional kitchen. That you have to have eyes in the back of your head. You have to have a kind of a, you have to kind of a, a way of, of sensing what's going on. And I think that's why, you know, really good cooks have incredible timing. They don't need timers. If you also don't, you have timers in your station. No, I have in my head. You also have to have a sense of knowing when the dish is going to be done. This is the way of one. I mean, I, I don't like talking about a lot, but I'll, you and I can talk about it. Cause I think you understand what I'm going to talk about. I think musicians have the same thing. I think actors on stage have this, where you form a bubble around yourself, especially like when I do TV and stuff. I'm in my own little world. Everything else around me stops. Really? 100%. And when I'm cooking, I feel the same way. Whether I'm cooking at home, cooking at the restaurant, cooking on TV, it doesn't matter. I'm in this little bubble. And I think that's what happens when you're on the line, that you get in your own little bubble. It's like a pianist on stage at the Philharmonic. If they think about the audience, about the rest of the musicians, how do you think about what you're doing? You can only think about what you're concentrating on. Right. So you create this little, a little world. And that world is your world and you own it. Being able to cook on a line like that is just, it's a true art. It's like anything in life. I think that, you know, people that run companies, they're in their own bubble. They're, they create their own little environment that if they're worried about everybody else in the environment, no, they have, they know how to delegate. And that's where I think delegation is so important in cooking. You dabbled in all these, like you started with California cuisine, you brought it to New York, then you did Southwestern food, then you did French food. But ultimately you landed in Italy. I mean, with Barbuto, right? I mean, that's been like your longest running restaurant. Yeah, it's funny how that worked out, but it wasn't planned or anything. And it wasn't, it wasn't a passion, Bobby. It wasn't? No. It was a kind of a weird evolution. What happened really was that when I was at Michael's, I started eating at Italian restaurants. Barbuto to me has a lot of similarities to the River Cafe in London. Well, I think that was a big influence on me. But, but if that goes way, way before that, you know, Michael and I would go out to lunch at Valentino. And that was the first time I had, you know, you guys had a lot of fancy lunches. We did. You used to fly to Paris for lunch. You know, that was, that was, that wasn't a champs, but. You guys were fancy. We were kind of bougie, but we didn't think we're bougie. We were just having fun. I remember going to Italy when I was in cooking school. I went to the Italian Riviera. And my socks were knocked off. And at that point all I had known was French cuisine. But then I go to Italy in the midst of my, my career at La Verenne. And I kind of fell in love with this really simplistic food. I didn't really think that it's something I wanted to do. And what happened was when I, because I took a hiatus basically from after table 29 till I opened up Washington Park, you know, I was executive chef for ARC and I did consulting for Nakedonis and different things like that. But I didn't have my own restaurant basically from 90. Four to 2001, after 9-11. So for that six year period, I was kind of a little bit of a nomad in terms of, you know, my style and stuff. And when I went to Washington Park, I opened it up and I made a mistake of Washington Park. It wasn't a mistake. I, I, I resurrected jams in terms of stylistic stuff. And people moved on. And I hadn't moved on too. I didn't realize it. And I still, I still love that restaurant, but at the same time, I live in the Upper West Side, this Italian couple moved in upstairs for Bricer Ferry and Alessandro Ferry. It is funny. So I don't know if you know this, but Sally, my wife had invited them. They had moved in on Christmas Eve and she invited them down to have, have caviar and blinis with us in Champagne. And I had never met them. So they came down and he's this big burly, hairy, funny, Italian guy. And he's a tiny little Italian wife. And a week later, Sally goes up, you know, we're kind of stupid. Alessandro Ferry is the greatest ballerina in the world. At that point, she was. And then a week later, she goes, we're doubly stupid because Ferry is the greatest fashion photographer in Italy. At that point, Fabrizio started coming into my apartment. She was just coming to walk in our door, we never locked in. Right. He's sitting, sit down and have dinner with us, you know. And he goes, Jonathan, I want to show you the space that I have on Washington Street. I said, what is it? He goes, why this place called Industria. And in Industria, I have a little cafe. I said, what's, so what does that do with me? He goes, well, you're a Washington park. You can come and just operate the cafe. I said, no, I'm not interested. He kept bugging me and bugging me. So finally I decided to look at it and I take Jimmy Bradley with me and we walk up Washington Street. We must have been tried back someplace. We walk up Washington Street and we get about two blocks in there. He looks over and goes, I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole. Because of location? Location, whatever. You know, Jimmy, Jimmy, yes, you know, always something pithy to say. Anyway, so a month later for me, so just bug me enough. I said, screw it, I'll just do it. I said, what kind of food do you want to do? He goes, we're going to do Italian food. I said, I don't do Italian food. I do my style of California style food. He goes, you cook exactly like my Roman grandmother. I said, no, I don't. He goes, yes, you do. He's all the meals I've had at your house. He cooks simply. That's how my grandmother cooked. So he convinced me. So he's a good salesman. And that's how that's how Barbuda started. And I know a lot of people like Miss That Space because they had the garage doors that would open in the summer and this and that. But I actually love the space that you're in now. Me too. I actually like it better. I do too. I like it better. And also the space on Washington Street, Bobby, the drains didn't work. The garage doors, not just two-legged animals walked underneath them, but four-legged ones did too. The exhaust was terrible. We had to share bathrooms with all the models. Not that they're terrible people, but they're just way too many people for those bathrooms. They got to in a day. The basin was 600 square feet and you hit your head in the rafters. We had no storage for anything. And you know, on a Sunday afternoon, Jen would call me up, said, well, I call the plumber again. Our drains are overflowing. And I felt like, you know, it was always a problem. It was always a problem. And you just continue to open more restaurants. Like, when are you going to stop doing that? Okay. Number one, you have one kid. I have three. Okay. Let's just start with that. So the, there's a multiplicity factor there. Make them get a job. My wife is, is much younger than I am and she's going to live a lot longer. So I need to have a wonderful nest egg for her to live on. Okay. Does he think restaurants is the, is the answer? Well, I don't know what else to do. What are, you know, I can't pick my tarbonne, but again, it's our playing and it makes the money. I'm looking at much different deals now. I'm taking a note from the sky, Bobby, flay about how to do management. License deals. License deals. And to be truthful, knock on wood so far. So good. Yeah. You know, your reputation is amazing because everybody loves working with you, but you work in your own very specific way. So let me just tell you what you used to, what you used to do to me. You'd say to me, I'm at the pool at the, at hotel, the marquee hotel, whatever it was called. Bella. Okay. Sorry. The Bel Air hotel. I'd fly into LA and we were cooking for 1500 people, you know, at Wolfgang Pucks on the back lot of Universal Studios, a huge event. And like for me, as one of your cooks, like it was a big deal that I was asked to do it, you know, I'd get a free plane ticket to California and I'd stay in a hotel room and I'd cook with all these amazing people. So you'd be at the pool drinking a margarita and you'd be like, all right, we've, you need to go prep the food. It's 1500 people. And I'm like, okay, what are we cooking? And you're like lamb chops. I was like, okay, where's the lamb chops? They were while they're at Spago. And I was like, okay, what do you want me to do with them? Well, go there to Spago, like in the middle of lunch, you asked me to go there and just cook this, ask them if you can get on the grill for a little while and like, you know, mark them off. I'm like, okay, great. But like, what are we serving it with? And you were like, go to the farmer's market. This is like the day of the event or the day before you're like, go to the farmer's market and find some acacia honey. And find some greens and like this, let's make a salad with the honey and some dressing and grill the lamb and that's going to be our dish. Like that's literally the way you come up with food. It's crazy. Do you know that you continue to do that to this day? Yeah, I know. Well, listen, there's something so romantic about it. That's what I love about cooking with you is because you're not, there's no formula, like you just get passionate about something or an ingredient, which is how it all started at Michael's, right? All these ingredients. Shut up my back door. Exactly. And so you have this thing about like, there's amazing lamb that we can get in LA. So we're going to make a lamb dish and that's, that's how you start. Yeah, remember, you have to remember when I was in Chapanese for a while, Alice made me her forager. I was a terrible forager, but I did it for LeBon. And I would go out to the, the point raised to the, where the salmon came in. Right. And the salmon boats came in, and I would go out and I have to choose the best salmon for that for the next day. And I said, that's really what cooking is all about. Your appreciation of the ingredients and how to, how to actually cook them. It's a, there's a very romantic thing there that I think it probably stems from your being a musician. I mean, I just have these like, memories of you talking about food and ingredients and how you were going to cook them or how you did cook them. That they, they stayed with me for like, basically forever. You know, what you put in your body, I think it's makes, is who we are. It's something that to me is magical. You know, that if you eat really great things, I think you have a better chance of thinking great things. We can right there. That was amazing. Thanks, Bob. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. Great stories. Always good to see you. Continue. Good luck with Barbutto and of course, Bartizio. I need to, I need to make it to Bartizio because it sounds like my kind of place for sure. Make sure you hit like and subscribe. I'll see you next week. Bobby on the beat.
