"Summer Series: From The Beach With Bobby Flay”

bringing you our Summer Series from the Beach. Eas Friday will be publishing short and intimate conversations that I've had with some of the top talent in the food world. And even beyond, the conversations you'll here for the next six weeks were recorded pool side at the w Hotel and South Beach as my friends and I enjoyed great cigars and magnums of rose as we discussed our past, present and future. Without further delay, please enjoy Summer Series

from the Beach with Chef Bobby Flay. But I'll tell you something that happened there. So every night I always felt like I was literally drowned and I was sweating in the worst way because I was just trying to keep up in the restaurant was busy, and this guy walks in. He's like, is this the chef? And the owner says, yeah, this is Bobby Flay. He looked at me and he goes, are you okay? And I was like, yeah.

It was Jonathan Waxman. He had just open Jams And then I went to work for Jonathan for three years after that. So you quit this job and went to Jonathan. I went to work for Jonathan. I threw away the title and the better than average salary and I went to learn how to cook. Was he was the first person to teach me about good food. It was a different world I didn't know existed. I didn't wow. Jonathan Waxman was on I think it was on the Upper east Side in the seventies, Jams seven. N Who else

was working there with you? Oh my god? I mean honestly, I worked at Jams and Buds and HuLos, which was a French biech show. I worked in all the restaurants. Every single cook there, Jeffrey was like unbelievable. I mean, any one of those people could have run their own restaurants. Everybody, everybody, Jonathan was a West Coast chef and he just come to New York time. Was the first person to bring California ingredients in cuisine, and that's where I learned all

about the Southwestern ingredients. The first time I saw a blue corn that wasn't in a bag and all the fresh and dried chilies. That's how I got intoxicated to open Mason Rill. I mean, we're talking probably fifteen years way ahead of its time. I mean, you're talking about the eighties, mid eighties, mid eighties. So Jonathan really seems to me, like for me, it's not just for you. For a lot of people, he was the like kickstarter

for a lot of incredible careers. Yeah, and and Jonathan has the same attitude today that he had then, which was like he was like very laid back. It's hard to believe, no, No, seriously, like really laid back. And he was just like, um, so let's let's take like some like acacia honey and put some like lime in it and make a dressing and then put some rugle on top of the chicken. All right, Bobby, all right,

that's what we're gonna do. Like that's literally how he creates dishes, you know, it's insane, but he does it the same way today. I don't think he's ever gonna have a heart attack at all. He's just gonna fall asleep on day and that's gonna be the end of him. It's the South severid a diet to South Severda dinet, right. So that was like an incredible turning point for you. And then tell me about Miracle Grill and how that

sort of happened and when when did that happen? Because Miracle Grill to me, was like where you were sort of discovered even though you've been working your your butt off. Miracle Grill was a restaurant in the East Village when the East Village was not a safe place to not at all, I mean. And I had really started to discover that I love Southwestern ingredients based on working for Jonathan. And I was working as a line cook just to make a living in some kind of like cheesy restaurant.

And the person on the line next to me said she was opening a restaurant, so I just thought she was a chef, and it turned out she really wanted to needed a chef, and she wanted to open a Mexican restaurant, and I said, well, I'd like to be considerate, but I'm not cooking Mexican food. I'm gonna I'm gonna cook something called Southwestern. And she's like, what do you mean and I said, well, it's a contemporary version of

what xkan ingredients. This was eight that's that's incredible. I mean, that's and anyway, long story short, she said, we're hiring a seush chef. We've already hired a chef. The chef was a woman from Arcadia who had worked at Arcadia and she was gonna hire her and I said, well, let me cook for you. So I cooked her basically food that I learned cooking at Buds, which was Johnathan southwestern restaurant that I cooked at. And they were like, we'd like to offer you the sus chef job. I said, no,

I don't want it. They're like, what do you mean. I was like, I want to be the chef somewhere and they're like, okay, well we don't have that job. Two days later they called me they're like, all right, we want to offer the chef job. So that was the beginning of Miracle Grill and I was the chef there for three years. Three years and when did you

get there? Who walked in? Jerry Krashmer walked into Bar and Grill and came in and ate dinner and on the way out because Miracle Grill just had like a little like window, like a little diner window, you know, that was the kitchen. It was three of us did everything. And he looked at me and he said how old are you? And I was like, I'm twenty two, twenty three at the time. He's like your twenty three. I said, yeah.

He goes, you're just a baby and walks out after you're eating, didn't say it was great, nothing, And then like three days later, I get a phone called, you know, somebody wants to talk to you about opening your restaurant at twenty three. What kind of deal did you say? And how did you know what a non disturbance? How did you know what all the how did you know what kind of deal the cut for yourself? Because I'm

still trying to learn that. Well. My dad, my dad has always been really good in business and always has always like you know, sort of kept me in line in terms of like his his like motto is like, you know, just do the right thing. You know what that means just do what you're supposed to do. Don't try to make every nickel, you know, the whole. That's his very conservative flat which has been really an important part of my life, and it just it makes you

stay the course in the in the right way. And Jerry was really excellent to me because he's like, look, here's the way it's gonna work. I'll never forget this. He said, we're doing this together. I'm gonna take care of the financing. I'm going to sign the bank loan. You're going to create the menu. We're gonna design the restaurant together, and I'm going to get you the ink. That's what he said, the ink. Yeah, he kept his word. He kept his word, and you kept your word exactly.

And we we got along because we were both total native New Yorkers. And uh. He said, I'm gonna give you a salary, and I'm gonna give you five percent of the restaurant to start, five percent to start, and then i'm gonna give you five percent over the next three or four years until you get to twenty. But

you work into it. You don't have to put up a penny, and you'll you'll make an Okay, living salary wise, so you can like live like a human being, but you're gonna have to work to make your make your living. Jerry has been in It was an amazing mentor to me. Is he still a partner of yours? Yes? He still is a partner of mine in Mason Villa in Las Vegas. Yes, and everything else. You are you and Lawrence your other partner me and Lawrence was Jerry's son. That's an incredibly

generous deal if you ask me. Well, but like it's a smart deal on his part too. And I think about that when I'm talking to people that I'm hiring. You want people to be happy. I mean, it's not worth it like to try to beat. Like I always say in negotiation. I like negotiating, I do it all the time. But and the thing about a negotiation, at the end of the day, both parties have to be happy and have to have a little pinch because otherwise, if somebody just absolutely beat you to a pulp, you're

not You're not gonna be happy about it. It's not gonna work. You're gonna wake up every morning, go work a hundred hour weeks and feel like ship worth because you don't have the right deal structure, and you're gonna resent it every day you walk in and you're gonna think about it, and then you then you become a bad partner and you get then the problems happen and you can't get out of this, you can't get out of that. It's just awful. It's very rare to find.

I think talk about performers, it's really very hard to find a partner that really understands that where you're gonna do this. I'm gonna do this together. We're gonna we're gonna make money, but we're not gonna make it right away. We're gonna do something great together. That's hard, especially in New York City because it's so expensive. And then also I met Lawrence Jerry's son day. Well, he's been my business partner and best friend for thirty five year. It's incredible.

I mean, you don't find that. You don't find a business partner that that lasts that long that you can, you know, go through the wars and and five the victories. So how old were you when you opened the Basic Rill? Your first five you're a chef partner of one of the most successful restaurants in New York City. You didn't know yet what was going to happen. No, you sort of blew the lid off of food because there was no one in New York City. I remember specifically that restaurant.

Nobody serving what you were serving, not even not even close. Maybe on the West coast, Mark was not in the East coast. Well. Actually, Arizona two oh six, Brendan Walls did a really create great job. I mean honestly really great. But that's two restaurants out. I mean that's kind of like, you know, and what's happened now is like every corner is served is trying to like replicate some of the

stuff you did. I remember coming to your restaurant and I just opened probably the Royalton, and you know, I was doing kind of upper level French food and I would watch the food coming out of the kitchen. You would do numbers there, you would I'm like, how do you do all these covers? Three and four harder covers?

And we couldn't believe it. And you said to me, the difference between my cuisine, Jeffrey, and your cuisine is you do this and I do write this, which is like two steps versus six steps I mean, your food is so beautiful and intricate. Well yeah, but we try to do it like that. But it's really come down to, like I think today your food obviously gotten simpler over way simply because I want to simpler. It's not because old the light did go off, but it was, like

it's called the labor light. You're performing now as a twenty five year old with your own restaurant, and then the greatest thing that ever happened to you was probably someone walked in the door from Food Network. How'd that happened? Food Network? Okay? First of all, Food Network was a startup cable channel in Midtown, right. They had a studio on I'm gonna say, like street. No, the first one was like on thirty eighth Street and like eleventh Avenue, and they were like it was ugly. I mean it

was ugly, and they had no money. So basically, if you didn't live in New York and couldn't get there by taxi, you were not going to be on the Food Network. They were not flying you in from l A to be on Food Network, that's for sure. They had no money. So it was David rosen Garden the beginning, who was it well. David rosen Garden was there, and then Robin Leach had a show with a woman named Kate Connolly who was his sidekick. It was not a good show. I'm just gonna say that. And when I

say it wasn't good, it was. It was really kind of funny because Robin would go to the Knicks game. He was a huge Knicks fan, and he would come after having a couple of cocktails in the Nick game. Like the show was on at the eleven o'clock or Midnight Live for an hour and he would have like ce celebrities on because who's gonna go at eleven o'clock on four on thirty eight Street and eleven for the

Food Network. Nobody even heard of the Food Network and he would interview them for like forty five minutes and then the last fifteen minutes. Could you imagine a fifteen minute food segment on the Today Show? Was never this huge?

It's so much can go wrong. He had this sidekick, this incredibly upbeat, very beautiful woman named Kay Connolly, and she would do the food segments with the chef would be a chef like from New York somewhere, would like basically take the subway to get there, and they would do this these food segments, and so I did a couple of those, and then Kate and I, you know, got a little friendly and we started dating, and then uh, we had a kid. That's exactly how I went. Obviously,

like so serendipitous. It's like it's opened up so many amazing doors in my life. It's crazy. I don't know, I think any other chef that owns horses, race horses. Where did that happen? My grandfather, Willie Flay, Willie fla he took me to Saratoga And if you haven't been to Saratoga Springs, beautiful during this during this race meat, there's really something very magical about It's a beautiful place.

And so not everything about horse racing is Saratoga Springs, but that's the thing that we all gravitate to and try to think about in that business. And now, I mean, I'm in the business. We breed horses. Where do you breed horses? Kentucky? Kentucky? So describe like how that how that works? Because it sounds so daunting and expensive and like complicated. Yeah it is, but it's like a puzzle.

It's a giant puzzle. First of all, the love of the animals number one, and they are just such so majestic and powerful and like my favorite thing to do is actually be in Saratoga like five or six o'clock in the morning watching the horses work out, drinking a cup of coffee. Like to me, that's I look forward to that all year long, Like that week on my schedule is blocked off my calendar. Like there's basically nothing

that can interfere with that at all. And so, yeah, it's a complicated thing because a lot of people don't know about it. It's almost like you relate to this. If you don't play golf, you don't understand the love of it. Okay, right, you and I love to play golf. When you hit a golf ball correctly, there's nothing like it. It's been a while. You try to explain r exactly. You try to explain that to somebody. It doesn't play golf like they look at you. Cross side. Horse racing

is the same thing. That whole business. Really you have to become part of it. But when I take people to like the Belmont Steaks, but they always take about people every year and they've never been to a horse race where I take them to Santa Anito or some of these beautiful race tracts with Saratoga. They then become addicted to it, and not in a bad way. In a way that is, they're interesting, much more interested in learning about it. That's kind of incredible. I mean, that's

have you ever been to horse races? No? No, I haven't, first of all, and the big race is Jeffrey the fashion is it? So you're like, that's something that you love. We started off talking about performance. Obviously you performed at such a high level of TV directing everything. Opening restaurants and opening restaurants are severe on the body as well as on on the mind. But I think that really

the one of the hardest things. I I know, we've known the same chefs for whatever, and we see what happened, but the wear and tear physically is just tremendous. How do you protect yourself from that? I know you're you're you're runner and you have written some books about fitness and health, one of the first chefs ever, by the way to do that. What's your daily routine? Well, I just came from Polies class just now, that's where I was by the way, plates fixed my back fixed it

fixed it really. I only started really doing it not too long ago, and it's I am now addicted to it. Yeah, because what happens is a chef you're hunched over. And also in general, guys do not stretch. They don't and so you need something to be stretched you, whether it's yoga or the to me pilates is so that's the first thing. You don't run run you do run well. I run less now, but I I've always been a runner.

When I was in high school, I was a distance runner, and then after I got out of school, I continue to run my entire life. I've run for marathons. But there is a lot of wear and tear to to running every day. And there's a lot of wear and tear standing over cutting boards for thirty five years too, and your neck in your back. I mean, it's just you know. So I'm an early morning person, so I get up very early, and the first thing is I do is I put my gym shorts on and I

go do something something running. So now it's pilate, sometimes yoga, I don't know. Because it jumps starts my day. It makes me more productive, it opens my eyes up for the rest of the day and it just helps me be creative and productive. You also watch your diet. I remember about ten years ago you dropped quite a bit of weight and wait and you just I asked yourself what you do when you said, basically, I eat half as much. I hate the same thing. I just eat

my horses different. It's fascinating. I have a philosophy where I eat three quarters of what's on my plate as as opposed to all of it. That's number one. So less caloric INTAKEE calories in, calories out. I mean, let's face it, that's a big part of staying in shape, right. Number two, if it's not good, I don't eat it. And that's a mistake that a lot of people make, including myself, where it's like you just eat it to eat it, even if it doesn't taste good, Like, why

should we eat something that doesn't taste good? We have those choices, we do. And then here's a big one for me. Late at night. You can't eat late at night. Listen, when I was at Mason Grill and we were like rocking and rolling and we thought we were invincible. We would go out after service at midnight, go to Blue Ribbon and eat steaks and fried chicken and drinking bottles of wine till three o'clock in the morning. Not sometimes

all that's no problem. You wouldn't gain announced, yeah, no, no, no, it got out of hand. I gained weight. That's where I would get out of out of shape. I can't do it anymore. You can't eat it late at night. You can't