763: The $100 Million Restaurant Man with Kevin Boehm of Boka Restaurant Group

24:21Oh, that's a really good question. I mean, there's a lot of cities I like. I mean, I've always thought that Austin is cool. Yeah. Maybe saturated, though? A lot going on there? Maybe. Maybe not? I don't know if it's saturated yet or not. I mean, they have a huge tourist and just lots of people going there. I mean, honestly, like, I love Montana. No way. Cool. You know, and so I love just driving through it and seeing all those little towns. So I often daydream about having a relatively slow record store, bookstore, coffee shop, and maybe a little lunch counter in Montana. In Montana, you can get there.

25:00I think that's me at 73. Nice planes can get you back and forth in places that matter. I think keep that number, that 300 million grown a little bit. You'll get there. I think I'll be 73 years old and the service will not be quick. And people will just have to be okay with it. I think that that is a wonderful goal. And I'm one of those guys that says something like in my, you know, in my old man voice that's like, good food takes time, people. Just sit there. Stetson? You'll wear a Stetson? I'll wear a Stetson and I'll be like, hey, I'm sorry, son, there's no electronics in here. Put your phone down.

25:36I mean, by the time you're there, you're a young guy. We'll probably need that. Like, doctor prescribed. Like, you need to slow down. Like, this is, it's like spa is going to, it's like a version of Westworld where you have to go. Film reference, RTV reference. I feel like we can do TV on it. Oh, yeah. No. All right. Let's talk about the memoir. You know, Kevin, why write it now? Well, I, you know, a book agent had seen something that I had written about my mom in Esquire. And, you know, he was like sent me an email and was like, hey, I liked what you did there. Did you really write it? And I was like, yeah, I did.

26:13You know, that was not my publicist. I guess this is the first question of a responsible agent. Yes. And he was like, well, come see me sometime. And I go and, you know, it turns out he's, you know, the guy behind Devil in White City and Tuesdays is Maury. And he was like, pitch me some ideas. And I pitched him some ideas and he hated all of them. And I was like, I do have something very personal. And I told him and he said, that's your story. Why don't you just write and see if we can find the story together? And he was like a good, he was like an A &R rep from the 1970s. He's like, we don't need to get a hit song right away.

26:45Let's develop you and see what happens. He goes, let's find the story together and see. He goes, you've written a lot of things that are a thousand words. You've never written a hundred thousand words. That's a beautiful first conversation with an agent. Yeah. A lot of agents kind of forget that part. They do. And he was right. Yeah. I needed to go through that process. Yeah. And, you know, he brought me back and said, let me tell you everything that's wrong with your book. I mean, which was a bummer. I mean, that's part of the process that we live here at Penguin Random House and part of this, these long marinated projects.

27:18I caught up with you in L.A. and you were telling me a little bit of your story. And honestly, Kevin, like the book is about restaurant culture, but it's also about your own personal story, as you mentioned, and tapping into that personal side. How do you describe the book? It's three stories. Yeah. The first story being the story of four damaged people, one of them being me. The second story is how all of that trauma and shame and guilt and pain led me to the restaurant business and why that saved my life and also why it almost killed me. Yeah. And then the third story is a redemption story and a wellness story and how rock bottom is a gift and how I could throw the kitchen sink at being happy in the same way I threw the kitchen sink at ambition.

28:14Yeah. So you can't deduce that from the preview. Substance abuse is part of the story, part of the narrative. And I think a lot of folks listening to the show may be struggling. And I just want to be serious about this. It's like, what can you say to the industry, somebody who maybe they think they're struggling with substance abuse? Yeah, well, I think there's a couple things here because mine were tied into two things, which was both being bipolar and then not grabbing the low-hanging fruit of both medication and therapy and finding therapy in other ways. and so in you know I think too many people will concentrate their whole life on taking care of their vessel and go into the gym and working out and wanting to look good and they do not spend enough time changing the recipe of their lives as the evolving creature that they are because Because I change and am different every single year, and my recipe needs to change.

29:17And so, and I see this in people. I watch people go through their lives, and I've worked with people for a long time who've not changed anything, and they don't know why they're not getting the response they want. For me, you know, it took me 51 years to be a happy person. And that's way too long to wait to be happy. Yeah. And if I have any regret in my life ever, it was waiting so long to A, stop drinking, B, to get medicated and have therapy. You know, there is a better way. I heard Rob Lowe say the other day in his podcast, he was like, I thought when I stopped drinking that I was never going to have fun ever again.

30:02And there was a certain, to a certain extent, I thought the same thing. And it ain't true, man. I've had the happiest three years of my life. I always thought that I would find happiness in a crowded place, in a big stadium of people or a packed restaurant. And I actually found it sitting in my house, writing my book, listening to Miles Davis and drinking green tea one night, all alone. And I'd been medicated for a few weeks, but it hadn't caught on to me yet that my medication had kicked in and that my life had changed. And I was like, wait a second. I've had this sustained feeling for the longest time I ever had in my life.

30:43Yeah. And I'm alone and I have no FOMO and I feel so good. I, I, I relate, you know, I think I stopped drinking a decade ago next month and, you know, working in the industry in a different way in media, but still being kind of in that world. you think that, you know, we, we, you think that you need, you know, alcohol to, to, to enjoy restaurants and enjoy, what we talk about on the show all the time. We have such fun, you know, picking it apart and just being out in restaurants. But I think I had a similar revelation, like, you know, being N.A. at a restaurant, you know, but it makes you focus on the restaurant more and the food.

31:23Yeah. There are people that don't always want you to change, though. There's a part in Tequila Sunrise where Mel Gibson's telling his cousin, And he's like, the thing is, you know, for those who don't know, Mel Gibson's a drug dealer in the movie. He goes, nobody wants me to quit. Mac's wife doesn't want me to quit. She likes the checks. He goes, my clients certainly don't want me to quit. You know, he was trying to quit and they didn't want to. There was a certain amount of people in my life still that was like, I freaking love tequila Kevin. I don't want that guy to go away. He's a blast. There was a night, I didn't have a drink for a year and a half.

32:05and I decided to celebrate with my partner because something great had just happened and I had a bottle of wine. I felt really good with him. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna go to my friend's birthday party. And I went and she was pouring shots of tequila and I took a, and she's like, she goes, are you drinking? And I took a shot and she grabbed by the face and she goes, yes, I love drunk Kevin. And it was this really kind of ugly moment. And I said to her, I go, I said, she goes, I think most people love drunk Kevin except for drunk Kevin. Yeah. And that was, and that scared me straight. That's the last time that I really.

32:42Wow. You know. That little interaction. That was the last big buzz for me, man. Wow. Well, with alcohol, but there's been so many more buzzes, you know. Lots of beautiful buzzes out there. I'm glad we could connect on this topic because I think a lot of folks, you know, think about these, you know, think about balancing their lives and think they can kind of edge a little bit and have drinks here and there. But when you need to quit, you need to quit. Some can, some can't. I'm lucky enough that if like I was with my daughter turned 21, I can sit and have one glass with her and I don't want to have 17 of them.

33:21But I know there's... Yeah, I know there's different people. I mean, I'd like to get your take on this. You know, we work in food in wine and spirits and like we we we we celebrate producers and like i like to have people who make alcohol on the show it doesn't bother me like i i think it's important to appreciate it but i mean it's this is your life i mean how do you work amongst all of this you know all this that's alcohol you know i think that the good news is it's like at least in the shitty chicago and the people that i know or know me well there's not as many people who are like hey, go get him a drink.

33:56Because that was happening for a while. But that always happened because I never drank during service. I would drink after service. So that was never a problem for me to say, hey, no, no, no, no, no. But it still happens every once in a while. And there's people that are idiots. Like somebody the other day was like, hey, I hear you're boring now. I'm like, whatever, man. That's so bad. Never say that. I heard you're an asshole. Truly. You can't read the room. I feel you, yeah. But I think on the flip side, we talk a lot about the sobriety of the younger generation. And you would know more than anyone about, because you're looking at your P &L every month for your restaurants.

34:36Are you seeing younger people drinking less? Yes. I mean, complicated topic for you because you want to run, you have a lot of employees. And I mean, honestly. They love the mushrooms. They love psilocybin. Yeah. And they're like, wow. And I don't feel bad the next morning. Yeah. So these alternatives you're seeing more of. So how do you address this in your restaurants? I don't think it's something that we need. We haven't had to address it to a point to where it's drastically affecting the bottom line. That's cool. I think it's a positive trend. And, you know, it's funny. What's the expression?

35:20I've worried about a million things, some of which actually happened. like that's that's one of those things that I mean I think you just need a slight shift we still sell a lot of alcohol I mean it is America after all we like to drink we like to celebrate and like to imbibe so so it's maybe a little bit less than we we tend to report that this this decline I mean maybe in certain cities there's less I see more drop offs I see wine staying pretty flat and liquor going down that's what I see too as well yeah I think the liquor companies are in a world of hurt with their businesses as well. And that's why you see, obviously, these macro breweries getting into NA more and more.

36:00Well, I wonder if at some point, like right now in this country, you can't have edibles and a liquor license in the same place, right? Yeah. So I wonder if at some point there are going to be psilocybin beverages and that sort of thing, and they're going to incorporate those things into restaurants. Major unlock for the restaurant industry, if that could happen. and thinking about bringing the culinary expertise to mushrooms and cannabis. Totally. But doing it, I think it's just really hard to regulate. And you obviously, with alcohol, your servers all know how to regulate, but it's a different world.

36:40It's a different beast. You have to retrain everybody. Yeah, and like, you know, dosage for cannabis affects people so wildly differently. And I think alcohol is maybe a little bit more narrow, but I think you're right. I think it would be a big boost for the restaurant industry. Totally. Watch this Cheech and Chong's movie on what not to do. I know that's true. How do you think your book stacks up in this season of so many restaurant people, restaurant adjacent memoirs? You've got Keith McNally, Drew Nieperant, Graydon Carter. I would put Lori Wolver's terrific memoir in it as well. I mean, and we've got yours.

37:15And like, I think they're all very different. But there was like a little bit of a bubbling up of these stories. There was. I mean, I think Drew's is very specifically a restaurant story. You know, mine has very different pillars. And Drew Key's book's very entertaining. Like, I think mine, the restaurant story might be the B story in mine. Yeah. And so I was out to write a memoir, not a restaurant book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, those were the bad ideas that I pitched, that I pitched David. You know, fun fact, you know, Will Gadara and I actually wrote a book proposal before my book and before Unreasonable Hospitality that no one wanted to buy.

37:58Yeah, it's funny how that works. It's a book about pre-shifts. And we basically would, one of us would tell a story and then we would tell a coordinating pre-shift to it. And it was, and we would just, we went back and forth in the book. That was the idea. We couldn't, we couldn't, yeah, we couldn't get that one over the hump. A pre-shift story. Pre-shift story. We basically said at the beginning, all businesses should be doing pre-shift. Yeah. wouldn't that be a beautiful thing in an office if somebody got up at the beginning of the day? Because pre-shift is really, here's all the information you should know about our company today.

38:31Here's something inspirational that I'm going to tell you that allows you to optimally serve people or sell people. So I think everybody benefits from the Newt Rockne speech every once in a while, right? And so that was kind of the idea. But for my book, I wanted to tell my restaurant stories, but I also wanted to tell people, okay, this is who I really am. Here's the avatar that I built. Here's who I really am. Where he came from in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. And at the beginning it was like, okay, whether this gets out to the public or not, I want to write the story. And then it just happened to be something that found a publisher in a home.

39:09I still think the pre-shift story could be good. I think it's good. Like lean startup and standup culture. I think there was that moment of like the 15 minute standup to start the day, but that was like more of a technical book about productivity. But if it's a book about storytelling and how we could all benefit from like a little bit of a story at the beginning of the day from our leaders in a company, I'm into that. And I look at most of the themes that we had in those pre-shifts were universal. You know, the pre-shift that I've told the most times, really the lesson out of it is we're all doing cover versions.

39:43What are you going to do to make your cover version unique and I you know and and it's like I always said you know the Beatles are the standard bearer for every song they ever did until they did with a little help for my friends and then Joe Cocker did it yeah and it didn't even sound like the same version and they even said it was a better version of the song so very few of us have a completely unique job love that analogy it resonates completely with me do you still do pre-shift at your restaurants every once It's been a while. I did one last night, actually. I was at Ellen Yin's restaurant, a fork in Philly.

40:19And she goes, want to do pre-shift? And I'm like, you're damn right I do. I love Ellen. Give me the mic. I love Ellen. I love that restaurant. I love that they kind of reboot the head of that restaurant. What did you talk about? I told just a couple little restaurant stories. But I said, I go, hey, the book, one of the reasons the book is so important to me, I was like, two things that I needed in my life. originally when I opened up a restaurant, I got this huge dopamine rush from opening a restaurant that fulfilled me, but it would wear off after a couple of weeks. And then I figured out, wow, I can play these little cameo roles in people's lives and change the temperature.

40:55So I'm going to look for where I get to insert myself, like that great little cameo role in a sitcom where the guy comes in and steals the scene and jumps out. And so I just kind of told him a couple of those stories of the way I did that. And I said, so tonight, you know, consider me a part of service. You know, when Ellen and I aren't up there talking about the book, I'm going to go and touch tables and talk to people. And so I hope I'm a worthy teammate on the floor. I'll try to stay out of your way. I bet it was a joy for everyone involved. That's really fun. Last question. I want to ask you about the dream restaurant concept you want to do, like on your mood board.

41:32what's the one that you've been just wanting to do could be cuisine could be city could be real estate i mean i'm leaving this pretty open-ended that's that's really interesting and not the montana the montana restaurant sounds very cool i think that i would really love my first restaurant was six tables yeah i'd love to do the six table restaurant again um and it be like a three or four person operation you know i like i i talk in film and music a lot and like the the restaurant that inspired my first restaurant was this little restaurant i went to called josephine's and it was a three-person restaurant i read about it in the book and i was like i was like there's every once in a while there's a band that only has three people in it like cream or nirvana yeah um and the amount of sound they can put out the police yeah and i was like if you have a cook a swing person and a server in a restaurant, you can still, with six tables, have a really incredible restaurant.

42:37And there's never any loss in like communication or anything. Three people that are pouring over everything. And it might only be open three days a week, but I think I'd like to do that again. And I, I love restaurants that, that are built around the identity of the chef less than they are about a very specific concept. Something that was out there for a long, long time, like, you know especially in the 90s you know you if you went to a great coons restaurant you're going to have great coons food right or you're or keller or colicchio or any of these people and and so we're doing a restaurant like that with with brian lockwood right now used to be at emp and it's people like what kind of food is it like i don't know it's brian lockwood food man that's like that that that that little corner of american contemporary food was just about that guy um and so i'd like to do that that's really special yeah six six tables i mean do you have real estate in mind?

43:28Do you have a location? No, never thought about it. But it would totally be off the beaten path. It'd be a little bit hard to find. See, that's the way you need. And it'd be secretive. It has to be a little exclusive, as you were saying earlier. Super exclusive. Like, almost hard to get to. Like, you go down a path and you have to open a gate. Northern Michigan, man. There you go. You have to solve a riddle to get through the gate. Oh, the puzzle master. Yeah. You filmed the, you were on the bear. Mm-hmm. Man, what was that like? Like, I mean, I feel like we've had some actors from the show and people from the show on.

43:59But, you know, we haven't had anyone with a walk-on. What was that like for you? Well, my trailer was in between Olivia Colman's and Joel McHale's. So when I showed up, and Olivia Colman's a freaking badass. Yeah. And I saw her, and she was, oh, hello, how are you? This is how sweet she is. I said, hey, my name's Kevin Boehm. And she was like, oh, I know who you are. She had no idea who I was. But she thought maybe she should know who I was. So British. So she was trying to be lovely. And then, you know, and Joel McHale was great. Now, the thing you don't realize, though, is like, so I watch Olivia Colman do her little monologue that she does in that episode, and she kills it.

44:36She has three takes. They're both, and they're incredible. But then your scene comes up, and everybody's watching you. And I'm like, what the hell? I got to shoot a free throw, and Jordan's got to watch me. Did you get a little nervous? I got a little nervous. Yeah. I'm not a big nervous guy, but I was pretty nervous there. And also, Jeremy's a great actor, so you're just kind of feeding off him. But I think Chris is pretty brilliant because he just kind of put in the script, it just basically said, Kevin runs into Carmi in the hallway. And Carmi asks him about how the restaurants are going, and Kevin says something.

45:11And then Kevin says something, you know, what does he say? Kevin says something about how hard restaurants are. And so then he just said, so what do you want to say here? and they were, oh yeah, that sounds good. And what would you say here? He wanted it to be real. And so he was kind of like, so I was like, you know, I've been, I said something like, you know, I've been an adrenaline junkie my whole life. You had it in the chamber. What a line. You were ready for it. Because I was writing the book at the time. So I was like, I've been an adrenaline junkie my whole life and I don't think, but I don't think I want to pay for it with my sanity anymore.

45:44And so that was a real, that was something real for me. I love that. That's the way they created the show. Did you help Coco and Chris with some of the restaurant stuff? No. You know, Coco used to work with me. No way. She was a sous chef at GT Fish when we opened. Oh, no way. That makes sense. So I knew her from back in the day. Yeah. I mean, there you go. She had some restaurant. Some of your restaurant may have been in the show in some ways. I mean, you're a fan of the show, I would imagine. It's great. Yeah. It's great. They're genius. A lot of chefs won't watch it. it is there is some triggering to it that's what i think i think stefano stefano secchi was like i'm gonna watch that yeah it's like it's like yeah i live that why do i need to see why do i need to see more of that you know i was a guy in the early days who i loved almost crashing the plane just so you know just to pull the nose up just at the last minute because i would get this huge adrenaline rush from it.

46:45And when I watch it, I remember that old me. I don't like that anymore, but back in those days, I wanted to feel it. I wanted to be so amped at the end of the night that it was like, oh, now we go have drinks. Until you get the reward. And you were kind of like, I needed to have that adrenaline pop to get that last reward. That's a lot of that restaurant culture. Kevin, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining us. No, my pleasure.

47:12A KFC tale in the pursuit of flavor. The Colonel made his$10 Tuesday bucket so full with eight pieces of juicy, crispy chicken or tenders that it might just last you till Wednesday if you've got that kind of self-control. I mean, some people want leftovers. Others are more into right nowers. The Colonel lived so we could chicken. Ten bucks, eight pieces, one big deal with KFC$10 Tuesdays. Prices and participation may vary. Taxes, tips, and fees extra. Fabio Trebocchi, welcome to This Is Taste. Matt, thank you. Thank you to have me on. Honor to be here. Well, this is a long time coming. You're a real Washington, D.C.

47:51legend. And you've had restaurants down there for a long time, and we'll get into them. I knew you when you were cooking in New York at Fiamma. I just want to jump in like right away like what was that time like in your career because like you were really like I mean really acclaimed restaurant really important restaurant and you really I think made a name for yourself at least in the national press with that restaurant New York is in my heart and I love it who doesn't and that was a particular time of my career and hopefully in the future there will be a New York comeback You know, I left a lot of my desire to be in the city there.

48:35I haven't forgotten, even though my career has taken me to D.C. again. I've been here for a while now. No, no doubt. And like Fiamma, you know, 2008, it closes. It's like the financial crisis is really a big reason. It wasn't certainly because of your cooking. So there you have it. You know, you basically express what happened during that period. You know, Fiamma was a fantastic restaurant. It was a tremendous opportunity for me. I was fortunate to work with an incredible team, and we put our heart and soul into it. We love the city, and we love the opportunity to be on the city. So we were really taking it seriously to the point that we strive to do our best work.

49:19and thanks to the hard work of everyone, not just me, Siamma did turn around into a good early success. But, you know, despite the passion behind, we couldn't control the economy. And that did it, you know, as it did it to most of the restaurants or to a lot of other restaurants, unfortunately, on that period. I think, you know, New York always recovered fast from periods like this. But that one was a historical tragedy when it comes to the financial sector and has heavily impacted the markets of New York. I remember, you know, being on, I remember very well when it happened, when it was announced.

50:01I think a lot of people, including ourselves, that we were in denial, that we were already in a recession until, you know, it was announced. And when it was announced, it was real, but the damage was already live and kicking. And I couldn't forget at that time, you know, seeing our host team being nonstop at the farm, known for reservations, but for cancellations. Yeah. And it was heartbreaking. You know, we had a strong emotional bond together, a professional one into the entire team. And so it was, you know, there were tears to see it go. just when we turned around the corner, just when we kind of got the first results of our hard work and we were striving for more and to improve what we were doing.

50:51But still love New York. Things happen, lesson learned, you know, thicker skin. And I still have a lot of friends there that I'm glad that I met during the period. Absolutely. And I would love to have you back in New York. Well, let's move on to D.C. I want to talk about when you're not working at all of your restaurants, you have many. Where do you like to go out in Washington, D.C. for fun? Depends on the occasion. If I'm not working, I like mostly to enjoy the family and cook something at home for them. It's very important. You know, I didn't lose their Italian DNA. but um if i have to go out you know it's restaurants where uh i uh i rather want to see because maybe they just open or where i know the chefs and and we've cooked together on the past and things of this nature amongst those today there are many i mean you see dining scene is booming and there's a lot of new restaurants uh all the time um but i really like the work that is done at Causa, which is a Peruvian cuisine that is elevated to fine dining level.

52:03The chef is absolutely wonderful, Carlos Delgado. And then at the Dabney, Jeremiah Longhorn, which is really elevating mid-Atlantic cooking to fine dining levels. From the Stephen Starr Group, I have a particular love for Occidental, which opened just about a year ago now. It's an historical restaurant of Washington, D.C. with a lot of the politics happened. There's a lot of history on those walls. And he has managed to revamp it to his former glory. So it's a wonderful restaurant. On the classics, for a special occasion, it's the Inglis of Washington, which is about 30 to 35 minutes outside Washington, D.C., where Patrick O 'Connell is a legendary chef from this area, has been having that restaurant for more than four years.

52:50you know three star currently two star but the michelin star and um beside the level of michelin level which is uh it is uh you know certainly rewarding his his operation uh inspires me every day because of the level of hospitality the fact that you get transported to forget the rest of the world around you for at least the hours that you're there uh and it's magical what else obtain into an area outside Washington, D.C. There are more. We could go all day. I mean, Washington, D.C. is really happening. I love the city. It's really thriving, and I love that. Well, I want to hear a little bit about your background.

53:32You grew up in the Marquet, and it's a region of Italy that's less known. It's not Tuscany or Emilia-Romagna. and I just want to know it's one of these regions that you have really, really represented in your cooking. What do you have to teach about this style of cooking in this region? You know, coming from a region that is less known outside of Italy, I started to see over the years as a privilege because I'm bringing something that is less known. You know, in a daily basis, I encounter guests that are very knowledgeable about certain areas of Italy that resonates a lot more than the Marque, my region, such as the one you mentioned, like Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, South of Italy, Sorrento, Amalfi Coast, Venice, Rome, Milan, etc., etc.

54:20And where all of those areas are absolutely stunning and extraordinary, Marque is what I call sometimes a best-kept secret. It's pure, and it has a little bit of every one of those regions into some elements of their land and their sea and the coastline, and also when it comes to food. Clearly, my roots and my soul is in Tulemarque. I grew up there. I was a son of a sharecropper. So my early childhood was surrounded by farmland and picking vegetables at the right moment and deciding, you know, and seeing things growing that we would end up eating and having that culture just because it was a way of life.

55:02and the lifestyle that my father wanted to have. I didn't know that it was giving me a major education. Over the years, as I get to talk a lot about the market with a lot of people, it's interesting that a lot of them have discovered the market on their own and they're now going frequently. They find more peace into our region and they're still discovering a lot of inland treasures when it comes to the Apennine mountains and when it comes to art. You know, we have anything from Gioacchino Rossini to Piero della Francesca in Urbino. Our coastline are beautiful and the diet is embracing both seafood and land products, right?

55:50So it's a complete diet that moves around the season or the seasonality of the year. So I'm very proud of the market. I still have to explain today what is that. You know, I use, I learned how to quicken the answer. I was in East of Rome, Adriatic Sea. Yeah, yeah, East of Rome. East of Rome, Adriatic Sea. I think at one point, a time ago, I was laughing with Peter Kaminsky, a wonderful writer that did the only book that I wrote about the market. And I did it on purpose because I wanted to really, you know, have something that people can take home and read about this region and where I come from.

56:29and at one point we were brainstorming the title of this book and we were considering calling it East of Roma I mean it's really really I mean it's East of Rome it's also like East of Florence in some ways too you could say you know it's right on the coast and it's really one of those regions of Italy I've personally not been to and I really want to go and give us a dish or two that you feel is really representative of the area so there is there is the simplicity and the straightforwardness of the most pristine seafood. I'm talking about product-driven cooking now, not elevated fine dining interpretations.

57:10By the way, there's a lot of great chefs in the market nowadays, a lot of Michelin stars that have arrived into the market. There's one three Michelin star. Dear friend of mine, we started cooking 30 years ago together. When it comes to seafood, it's the straightforwardness of the preparations. And whatever the fishermen are bringing back at bay, from the simplicity of the perfectly grayed langoustines to having a more affordable type of fish like the Adriatic mackerel, simply cooked in charcoal with a squeeze of lemon and extra virgin olive oil. Inland, you have anything that you can desire when it comes to poultry, best lamb, artichokes, mushrooms.

57:51You also have black truffles and white truffles. and some of the traditional dishes the prize le marke is actually an italian story and it cannot get any better than that when i say that because it was uh created out of the many invasions that italy had over centuries and to celebrate one of the invasions italians started to turn the negativity into positive and they uh created this dish in the market that is called vinci's grassi a name that still today needs to be justified by history of its true sources. There are many theories behind us, anything that is Italian. But it's basically a lasagna made with what people had at that point, right?

58:34And originally there were chicken livers inside and mushrooms and things of this nature. Very different than what we think about the lasagna ourselves today, or what is a lasagna from the Emilia-Romagna region and things of this. But eventually became a staple for the region and is absolutely delicious. Gets done still today as a commemorative dish of the past. What a great combination, putting chicken livers into lasagna and baked pasta. I think that's terrific. Think about a very little sun-kissed lasagna because tomatoes were still not available, right? BC, before Christopher's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

59:17And cheese and layers of pasta. And really, you know, it was actually produced from an Austrian invasion of the Marque region and the mid-region of Italy. Because the troops that were needed to be fed and, you know, everybody was working into what mostly was the foundation of the economy at that time. And it was agriculture, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm lucky to be, you know, from that region. I learned a lot from my father's way of life. from his friends living on the farms for the appreciation of ingredients since I was a little kid. You know, I never, I don't remember going to supermarkets or to grocery stores.

59:54We were always shopping on farms. It's amazing as a chef to be raised on a farm like that. Well, let's talk about your career. You worked in some interesting places, Moscow, London, Marbella, New York, and then DC, of course. Serious cities. I mean, Fabio, you've been around the world. I have to ask about Moscow. What is that experience like? It was definitely formative, if I can use that word. I was in my early, early 20s and, you know, only speak Italian to basically go around Moscow searching for ingredients and be in the kitchen cooking and talking to all the other team with the presence of a translator all the time.

1:00:43So it was interesting. And I was representing actually a dear chef that I worked for to learn from him in Italy. We had a joint venture with a Russian partnership to open this restaurant that was just more than a restaurant. It was also a private club, a casino, and so forth. We're going back. We travel back in time here. So I'll have to take you back to the mid-90s. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. That's a crazy time, my man. That was a crazy time for the Soviet Union, if I can call it that way, as a memory of that period. And there was just the opening up of the gates, I guess, for external markets.

1:01:26And I experienced something that I had never seen before and I haven't been since. So I don't know what it is like today. I still have friends that work there and that build their own business there and so forth. they even became citizen uh dual citizen of italy and and russia but what was very formative was the um the search for ingredients okay i seen too extreme i see i seen lines of people lining up for a bread um and it was the most uh basic bread and and i'm talking about poverty here Okay, extreme poverty. And then the most prestigious ingredients coming from Rangis in France, one of the biggest markets that feeds throughout Europe, direct flight to Moscow and landing with, you know, every delicacy that you can possibly imagine.

1:02:17Okay. But that came at a price. Okay. So there is a huge difference between wealth and poverty. And I didn't encounter much of in between. Okay. and then i i think i was extremely young and i saw a um so people of my age really um craving for freedom and to everything that inspires them with freedom of any act of life okay what is uh you know entertainment recreations or things of this nature it was also high pressure because we were under the pressure of opening something completely new in less than favorable conditions, if I can say that. Eventually, we did it, and it was a successful opening.

1:03:09But it gave me very, very fast an idea of how to work and what challenges to be ready for when I work outside of what I used to know at that time, which was only working in Italy. Let me ask you, mid-90s, private club casino, Moscow, what are the characters like? I mean, who's your clientele? I mean, this is an interesting... I can tell you that we were in a movie quality scenario.

1:03:41I was part of the pre-opening team into the opening team. Therefore, I saw the restaurant being built out and I looked at the co-check. and I asked, what are those little bank safe-like little boxes for? We're picking up coats here and scarves and gloves and whatever people need. Only after the opening, I realized that it was for guns, kalashnikovs, knives, and things of this nature. Yeah, you want to be the only one providing knives in a restaurant. Yeah, you want to leave your weapon at the door. Leave your weapon at the door. So, I mean, you're young, so you're kind of probably dumb in some ways.

1:04:24But did you realize that there was some real, you know, shady characters hanging out there? i did and we got warned we got seriously warned um we were the i hope i'm expressing that correctly when i pronounce it we had we had a serious warning uh and as up from our russian side ownership that uh if we were having a position of being threatened by anything we just have to mention who we're working for yes so there i realized that i was in a in a reality show but you know sometimes i don't i don't talk often i'm glad you asked you know it's been it's been more than 30 years so it's fine to talk about it today but um yeah in in that period at a high velocity encounter the reality of what that was like you know and um the crime the crime association with this the presence of um oligarchs and people that dictate you know the future of anything and anybody that surrounds them the way also um the way also our russian team members were treated into the into the into this complex with casino restaurants bars and and and the restaurant they were um they were very quite bad i don't know how else to shoot yeah i would imagine i took i took the protection of some of the some of them if not the entirety of any of the um of the russian uh culinary team that i was leading um because i felt that you know they will look after me to be protected okay yeah and when some of the inspections were happening in the restaurants and uh to hear that people paycheck they were diminished because there was damage on the tiles on the floor or on my table was dented things of this nature right i told the owners with the with your translator take it off my paycheck not my team um Look, restaurants are places of wear and tear.

1:06:24Things break. There's a use of it, and there's no reason to take it off. The works there, or pretend that that's the reason to cut somebody's paycheck. And I thought that was very unfair. But it was interesting to see what happened to the team after I had done that. I gained their respect, basically, overnight. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Smart move, especially for a young chef to take that role very seriously as a leader in the kitchen. But Matt, also a foolish move because if I knew who I was dealing with and what he could have done to me, maybe today I would have been a little bit different. Yeah, again, young and maybe a little naive.

1:07:05But I was 21, so it's fine. That's okay. That's crazy. They can chase me if they want. Let's fast forward to D.C. How do you end up in Washington, D.C., of all places, and really start to build this empire of restaurants? So I need to go back a little bit into right after Moscow. I had dear friends of mine from Italy that we cooked together as young chefs that moved to New York. an opportunity was presented to me to come and work in new york on the um on at the end of 1995 for a restaurant group that um still exists today and is was founded and built in in um in milan about a hundred years ago now the name is bice b-i-c-e it used to be one in midtown manathan and has been there for many, many, many years.

1:07:59There's still one in Palm Beach right now. There I know of. Maybe there are more. So it was great because I could go back to Italy from Moscow and then close the chapter of their experience and then move to New York where this company trained me for about a month into their way of managing the restaurants and recipes and menus and all that. Then they moved me to D.C., where they were crazy enough to give me the executive chef position, not speaking a word of English or Spanish. And I had to have one or two executives who shared for me that they were able to translate or to manage orders and things of this nature.

1:08:44I learned how to speak those languages by being forced to do it and be on the environment very, very quickly. And that restaurant, Beecher, Washington, D.C., is today Fiola. Fifteen years later, I took my first restaurant ownership after 15 years that I worked there under my own first restaurant name, Fiola. And today is still there. But going back to how that's how I really started into the United States in Washington, D.C. and then Biche after about two years of Washington took me to Marbella for another opening that they wanted to do and that's how I opened a Biche restaurant in the south of Spain in Marbella inside of a wonderful luxury resort called Puente Romano That's a nice place to open, I mean you go from DC winters to like the Costa del Sol I mean not Costa Brava and for chefs that love Seafood is a toy saras of seafood.

1:09:49Everything you can wish for and dream of about putting on a plate for guests to enjoy is there. It's in the coastline. I moved quickly to London right after that. And I stayed in London for about three years where I opened two restaurants. One was called Grissini. This was inside the Hyatt-Calton Tower at that time in Cavagone Square in London. near Sloan Street. And then I opened an independent restaurant called Floriana for about another two years. So that gave me a little bit more of a European experience between south of Spain and Spanish cooking that eventually reappeared into my career with the opening of Del Mar, one of my Spanish restaurants.

1:10:36And then I've been in London, which is influenced by everywhere in Europe and all that. Made it back to Washington after I left when I came on the mid-90s to work for what really became something of my career in the beginning of the career in the States, a restaurant called Maestro at the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson's Corner. I stayed there for seven years. And there we were able to... Another challenging environment, right? Right after we opened a few months later, 9-11 hit us and we had to transform the restaurant into something different for a period of time. That's challenging. Also, Tyson's Corner, not really known for great restaurants, I have to say.

1:11:23No. And I always loved those challenges. Yeah. Because we built a restaurant there thanks to the wonderful team that I was, again, fortunate to work with, with a shared vision and the support that we had. There was a strong economy at that point in that region and for this hotel to support the fine dining restaurant. And we became a total destination over the period of seven years. We worked collectively very hard for accolades that eventually came. This is how the lead top of the career in the United States was James Beard. mid-atlantic was uh best in chef food and wine jeans you know and that's great i mean that's that's that's that's you know really really cool that you were able to win those awards while operating in tyson corner which is not again not well no yeah it had to become a destination to convince people to drive and go to tyson's corner you know i mean i'm going to share with you that that area between tyson's corner mclean it's about 25 minutes outside washington dc but it's a very um there's a there's a big concentration of wealth okay um and there is a at that time there's a lot more restaurant right now at that time there was a need of a restaurant so that people can go to a restaurant of this caliber without having to traveling for 30 or 40 minutes so that kind of played in our favor not becoming a destination and providing something that in those years was not really there yet yeah then i moved to new york um i worked for beer guest Steve Hansen, wonderful leader.

1:13:05I learned a lot for running multi-unit restaurants at that time. And that's the story that we started with today with Fiamma, right? Yeah, yeah. And Fiamma, short-lived relatively speaking, but you really made a mark and really ran into the problems of the recession, the Great Recession. But, and maybe coming back. I love that you opened with that, Fabio, that you might be coming back I'd love to come back. Love New York. Love to come back. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we talk to Italian chefs here a lot, Stefano Secchi, Michael White, Missy Robbins. I mean, it's a really – Andrew Carmelini. I could go on.

1:13:46I mean, there's so many great Italian restaurant groups and restaurants, single operators, et cetera. And really, the thirst and interest in Italian food is only growing in New York. And I'd love to see you here. Thank you. Thank you. It will happen one day. He's on my bucket list. Yes, yes, yes. So let's, to close, I want to ask you about your restaurant, FIOLA. You're on Pennsylvania Avenue between Capitol and the White House. The address is a statement. Really is. You're right in the mix. Has this physical location led to, I don't know, some backroom dealings? I mean, I know you're a private guy and you can't really tell us too much, but tell us, like, what's the dynamic like having that address?

1:14:35Well, the dynamic changes every four years. Right, right. To be generic, but also give you some directions of what's happening. Yeah, let's not do generic. Let's do details. Like we got, you know, we got Secretary of State doing some work in the back room. I opened Fiola right after New York, and so it was at the beginning of 2011. When we started, it was a luxury trattoria. We didn't have the capability of putting on the map another fine dining restaurant and so forth. Over the last 15 years, we transformed it into a dinner-only, tasty menu-only, five days a week-only fine dining restaurant. but it didn't start it that way um as a restaurant there is as that location is no stranger to have politician lobbyist congressmen coming to die all the time okay there is a privacy there is a silent code of um omartha that that needs to be respected so that they can feel safe okay and uh they can feel safe they can also feel that their business is being not overlooked into and and they They can come to the restaurants without being worried about anything.

1:15:58But like anything that is under this scrutiny, there's always going to be some challenges every now and then. It depends what's going on in the political environment of D.C. and therefore the United States. This hasn't happened in a while, but we can have protesters at the door because a dignitary or a politician is dining with us inside. and restaurants become licensed lifeguards. And we're not really. We're there to do what we love, but it doesn't include security details. But yet, it's part of understanding of what it is like to work in Washington, D.C. At the same time, there are D.C. type of events that impact the restaurants, such as this one, in a positive way.

1:16:46The Obama that used to come often, and they celebrated their anniversary on the rooftop of Viola, and it was a two-top only just for them. And that has given us a lot of sense of pride collectively for everybody that worked there. We're not anymore the everyday go-to type of restaurants that we started 15 years ago, so it's becoming more of an experience. And therefore, less of this is happening. because we attract now a guest that is there for experiencing an Italian sign-diving experience, right? Do you get the Italian diplomats, the Italian dignitaries coming to you? That must be, I would say, probably a point of pride of your connection to Italy and, of course, your skills.

1:17:38Absolutely. If they don't entertain at the embassy, where sometimes they ask us to go there and provide the catering for it, then they come in and using our restaurant. Not just Fiala, but also Fiala Mata, which is my other restaurant that has dedicated to the coastline seafood cooking of Italy. That is, in a nutshell, what's going on with this. And I'll say that we have to navigate in Washington towards the periods and to the impact of the political world. Our business itself can be impacted by if a Congress is open or Congress is closed. Or if it's shut down during the summer for a few months and things to this nature.

1:18:22But there is also the presence of the private sector business traveler that comes here to do business with the government. and it's a guest of our restaurants, collectively starting from Fiora to all of our restaurants. Yeah. I mean, I was just down in D.C. this past fall and dined in a couple of restaurants, and it seems you get congressmen and obviously lobbyists, but you also get the big corporate folks. It's such an interesting dynamic. I think many listeners here on the show maybe don't even know about D.C. as having this complex and pretty exciting restaurant scene, and you're really at the center of it.

1:19:00Yeah, we have to be careful, you know, when we're creating a power scene in the dining room and who we're sitting next to. Well, I mean, you have to read the papers. You have to be reading your Politico every day to make sure you're not putting rivals next to each other. Matt is in the job description of every front of the house manager. Read the paper. Yeah, read. Today is more read your phone and watch the news first in the morning, okay, and all that. I mean, it's so well. We just want everybody, you know, look, we, we, we in for everyone. Okay. I think at the table, there is no left or right.

1:19:34And, and, and we're there to, we're neutral to the environment because we, we do what we, what we have a passion for, which is, you know, providing with the experience you need all the time you need it. And, and with an extreme level of sensitivity towards hospitality. So, um, we welcome everybody and we hope that we'll be having, you know, an experience with us. There is no, there's no conflict. However, we have to always be careful. You know, the show is being set up. Okay, Elvis is that. Everyone knows in D.C., you know, there's red, there's blue, but all operators just understand green. Fabio Trebocchi, this has been a really great conversation.

1:20:16Thank you so much for joining This is Taste. Thank you. Take care.

1:20:23This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skirzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.