Three-Time James Beard Finalist on Building a Hospitality Empire Ep. 208

Chef Brian Lewis is the founder and CEO of Full House Hospitality Group and a three-time James Beard Award finalist for Best Chef Northeast, with nominations in 2018, 2022, and 2025. A Culinary Institute of America and Johnson and Wales University graduate, he apprenticed under Jean Louis Palladin, Marco Pierre White, and Eric Ripert before becoming the founding executive chef of Richard Gere's The Bedford Post Inn, which earned Esquire's Best New Restaurant in 2009 and an Excellent review from The New York Times. In 2015 he founded Full House Hospitality Group, which now operates The Cottage in Westport and Greenwich, Connecticut, and OKO in Westport and Rye, New York, with 125 employees across four locations.

This episode opens with a story about a job interview that most chefs would have walked away from. Lewis did not walk away. He secretly prepared an eight-course meal before anyone asked, controlled the entire tasting, and landed the role that gave him what he calls a PhD in opening and operating a restaurant from the ground up.

How he built Full House Hospitality Group around a single principle: only expand when operations can thrive without you in the room

Why empowering teams with genuine autonomy inside defined guardrails is the only leadership model that scales across four restaurants and 125 people

How strategy and psychology replaced technique as his primary tools when he made the shift from chef to CEO

André Natera and Brian Lewis cover the identity shift required when a chef stops being the creative voice in the kitchen and starts leading other chefs to express theirs, the role of kindness as a non-negotiable management standard, navigating reviews and social media pressure across multiple concepts, and the research trip to Japan that preceded the launch of OKO. The episode closes with rapid fire kitchen gear, stocks and dashi minimalism, and the chef Mount Rushmore.

Guest

• Brian Lewis on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/brianlewischef/
• Full House Hospitality on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/fullhousehg/

Links

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• Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef