Turning the Table - Geoffrey Zakarian’s Early Life Influences (Part 1/3)

wonderful guests. During this first episode, Christopher and I dig into some of my early influences, from studying economics and urban planning in college to eating my way across France as a young adult. It's been a lot of fun for me to sit down with Christopher and reflect on all the things that shape me into who I am. And I hope you all have as much fun as I did. And with that, i'd like to introduce you

to Christopher. Chris take it away. Thanks for having me, and listeners, thanks for putting up with me chatting here with Jeffrey. Mine is not a voice that you may have heard before, but we're going to keep the focus on jef free because we hear it. I aren't thought he's done a really terrific job of digging into the backgrounds and the lives of his guests on this podcast.

But as Jeffrey said, we're turning the tables, and we know it's such a treat to get to know Jeffrey as a personality, as a chef, as a family man, as a businessman. There's a lot to dig into. So I hope you learned something new about Jeffrey z Carrian on four Courses. You really like to dig into the early days of people's lives, the formative moments that brought them the success that they now enjoy. I wanted to talk to you about some of your studies at Worcester

State College. You know, economics was a big focus for you. I would like to know why the interest in economics, Why that was what you chose to put your energy and attention into in those early days before you became who you are now. That's a great question, and you know, I I tell people on first past it was always fascinated by the stock market, and my brother was an investment banker or investor, and so as a kid growing up, I sort of came away with a lot of like paper.

Back then it was everything was on paper, so we'd leave stuff around. I read it, and then I had my own charts, and I grabbed the stock Market. I read that back of that page that no one reads, with all the little fine printed. It's still if you read any newspaper, they still have it printed. And in there that the last two or three pages of the Wall Street Journal, whereas I mean, it's like three thousand

companies listed. Every day they're up there down there, and their pe ratio there there changed their year to day earnings. So I used to read that stuff. I don't know why. I just think that for some reason, I found it fascinating that someone would track this, and um, I grabbed onto that uh probably with one hand, nut both hands. I grabbed onto that pony and I wrote it a bit. And I went to school, and you know, when they say what's your major, I I picked economics because obviously

my all those papers lyning around. I did that. But I actually went to what's just State College, But in between I changed over to University of Massachusetts. So I actually bounced back and forth between Worcester State, which I spent a year at and I left and went to U Mass. I spent a year U Mass. I didn't like it, and I came back to Worcester State and I graduated. So I had a double major I had

at Worcester State. I major urban studies, which is the study of how cities form and how they come about, what do they create, and how that relates to say people and how people move and how people react to cities and density and what that does to the psyche is a fascinating sort of thing to study. And so

I had two majors. So the economics was just something I held onto and I guess I carried it over to the restaurant industry, because you know, you cannot own or operate a restaurant unless you know that it's all about making money at the end of the day. How how shallow that sounds, but it really is because you cannot support two or three people in their families that they come with it. You can't feed them or give them a paycheck unless you have a break even or

you make money. So I know that answer the deacon I was question, but it is in my blood and it's probably going to stay in my blood. I really I really enjoy the way that things break down to basically, at the end of the day, there's an economic reality that every single situation that we choose for ourselves. I think, Jeffrey, having gotten to know you over the past couple of years and working on this show and having been to some of your restaurants, that makes a lot of sense

to me. You know, economics is the study of how we value things and the systems that are put in place to grow what's valued. And urban planning, like you said, is really about how people use space, how spaces are built for people by people, and how those can kind of get in the way of people sometimes. And that it really makes me think about you know, those first

two or three months when you open a restaurant. You design a space the way you think people are going to use it, and then all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute, all of our servers are congregating over in this corner. Every time a guest walks, and we thought they would walk past this mural, but eight percent of people end up walking past these tables. We've got to change the layout of the restaurants. We've got to

make a human space so so to me. This makes almost as much sense as someone who says I went to culinary school, I staged, I cooked and that's all I know. Yeah, and I did that and you did that too, so I did so. I mean, it's great that you just mentioned something that is so spot on, Chris, and I want to talk about that for people who are interested. You know, when we open a restaurant, you absolutely hit on the head by saying like, okay, this is you know, the seven menu items at twelve, appetize

that this is gonna be the home run. This These fried Arti chokes are unbelievable. People that killing you order all these fried Arti chokes, and then you look at the menu before you open you like, you know what, I think we need an option for like someone who watches a simple green vegetable and it's not enough there, there's too much fried stuff. When you know, you you work through that, you know, and it's totally guess. It's a complete and utter guest. There's absolutely zero science to it.

The science starts after the restaurant opens. Then you start collecting data, but before it opens, you have zero data. You have what you've done in the past, so you have the abundance of data from other operations, and that data is only worth so much unless you're going to open the exact same restaurant, and still that data is

still worthless. But when you look at this restaurant, say yes, you know we have some we need something green, and one of your cooks will say, hey, chef, you know we're doing this dish with asparagus rarioli and we have a lot of asparagus tips left over. Let's make like a soup. And I'm like, great. We come up with a soup and they taste it, and you know, we do a chill soup. It's basically like a throwaway to

get rid of something that you have to use. And guess what happens That asparagus soup that you give zero thought to is the best seller. And that's that's what happens on the formative side with the culinary of it. So you're all the effort and tasting you put into those artichokes turn up to be the least selling artichokes. So you put all this work and guess what you do?

You take it off the menu because not selling, So you can't buy artichokes, have them ready to go and they're expensive and just not sell it's not worth it. So there's an economic value of that food, you know. It's like you've gotta move versus the sales. So there's artistry, yes, but if it's not selling, you've got to change the artistry because otherwise you're gonna be locked in this. You're gonna be swallowed up by the black hole of debt and you can't pay your bills, you can't pay your

sales tax, and you get into the spiral. And that's because you're like, no, it's perfect, I love it. It's my favorite. It's a signature dish. The signature dishes are made by what the customer orders, end of story, and you have to really grapple with that. So that's what you're talking about. Spatially. I think it happens in a restaurant spatially and also formatively with the food. And I am a real crazy person. Anyone who knows me. When I walk into a restaurant, we rehearsed this before we

start building. I'm like, Okay, I'm walking in spatially, and where's the bar. It's gonna be on the right, it's gonna be right over there. Why on the right, because no one goes left to a bar. It's just whatever are gene for walking into restaurants is the bars right

there on the right. And the best way to walk in is to walk in through a revolving door because you get glimpses of something, you get excited, then you're forced to not look again and you can't wait to see it again, and then you come in, So it's a double excitement. That's why I love revolving doors. It's like a peak. It's like a you know, someone lifting their shirt up at at a marti gras, You're like,

oh my god, let me go see that again. So that's kind of like a rather rough representation of what it means. But when the bar is on the right, it's just think the sensibility is to go right there. Your brain wants it over there. And so we actually practice walking in with the architects and we spray paint where the bar has to start with spray paint. Okay, that's close enough, started here, and then we start putting up like fake walls, like where's the bank at going

to start? Where's the line of sight? All that before anyone draws one thing, because if we don't get that right. It's really critical. You can't undo it. I mean, it's we can. You can shut the restaurant down and undo it, and it's not a good thing. Keith McNally opens Bauth his arm pests. I mean, he's great at this. He actually builds i think one scale models of the restaurant. Well they're very expensive, but he builds them and he says, well,

that's not right, that's too close. So he knows what the restaurants gonna feel like before he spends three million dollars opening a restaurant. He might spend a few extra dollars, but it's really important so that that spatial element combined with the element of surprise that the customer decides And yeah, they do decide whether they like the restaurant or not, but you've got to convince them when they walk in that it's human. It's wow. Everything has put at the

right place. The tables are the right height, the chair heights. Are fanatic about chair heights. Probably the worst thing ever is when you have a chair that's too low. You'll never go back to that restaurant eating like appear like a baby, like you feel like a kid. The table has a little lower than your elbow, so it's almost lower than normal, and that feels right. So you can sit like this and talk. Even if you're six too, it doesn't matter because we all sit the same. If

it's too low, it's uncomfortable and you won't go. So that's a good tip for folks at home. Right if you're having people over, don't all sit down on the couch. If you want to have a nice conversation, gather around the table, get cozy. Gotta choose, and you gotta choose chairs a little shorter, probably sixteen to seventeen chairs off the ground, with shorter legs. All these little things are so human they have nothing to do. Notice we haven't

mentioned money. We haven't mentioned the quality of the food. We haven't mentioned the silf. We haven't mentioned his artistry, his viewpoint, his what he's wearing, where he gets his lettuce from. None of that really is Germane until all of these other things are put that person at ease. And I guess that urban landscape spatial planning is something

that I'm very very aware of. So you gotta get in that restaurant, feel good about where the door is, feel good about the bar, feel good about the table height, feel good about the person is where he's directing you. And then when you get in and the lighting is loveliness, warm and there's enough of it and it's uplit, you're halfway there and you haven't even looked at the menu yet. So it really is about taking care to make sure everything is done correctly, and then people will naturally come

back again. I think that people like an environment almost more than the food. Not to derail talk from your your restaurant exploits, but you know, it's clear that you have to be a planner to succeed as you have, but you also have to be flexible to succeed as you have. So I want to go back to some of your earlier days too and and ask you. After college, you traveled around France for a year, and that's something that a lot of people do, and it's something a

lot of people dream about doing. I want to know what kind of traveler you are when you did that. Did you plan it all out? Did you have your list of things you wanted to do or were you adaptive? Did you kind of take things as they come on this journey abroad and diving into the culinary world of France. Well, here is what I planned. I planned economically doesn't have any money, so I think it was I had twenty five or thirty dollars a day and I don't remember

exactly how much, but it was not a lot. So I had to really, you know, take it as I go, and it was. It was terrific. So I was there sightseeing, you know. I end up in the Italian Riviera in Monton, which is sort of like the Boca Grand of France. It's very elderly population and so do where they go to sort of retire and enjoy the their golden years. Uh. And I didn't know that, but it had really inexpensive

hotel rooms and it was really sort of beautiful. And I could go hop on the train and go to Ventimiglia or the Italian Riviera and one day and come back and I could just do that, so like, let's go to all these places. I used to hear about watching a lot of James Bond movies, so I had a little bit of a crazy James Bond thing going on in my head. I'm sure a lot of people in my age did. And the culture is everything really the culture is what I had really was drawn towards. Yeah,

the food and all that it was. It was breathtaking because they've been doing it for four thousand years. You know, we've been doing it for three hundred years, so you can't compare. And people say, well, it's so much better over there, Like, it's not better, it's different. It's it's different because they have passed down traditions for three or four thousand years that we are only beginning to understand and we can copy. But that's why everything feels different

in Europe. So I I had a blast, you know, and it was very scary. I didn't speak French, but I quickly learned how to make my way around. A lot of people spoke English to me, and you know, a smile goes a long way, you know. They really loved a lot of people say I don't like Americans. I didn't find that at all. Maybe it was just an age thing that I sort of had, you know, my different colored lenses on back then. But it was

a delightful experience something I'll never forget. What it brought me and the views I have now are very much borrowed from that time abroad. One of the things that I've really enjoyed on the podcast that you do when you talk to your guests as you you ask them to share some of those formative smells and tastes and memories of those sense memories, um and I think that's

always been really evocative. That's a great part of your show and it's also a great thing to do when you're sitting around a table with a bunch of people. It's a great conversation starter. And you, Jeffrey is a

professional conversationalist. You already know that, but you know as you as you think back to this time jetting around, whether you're hanging out with with the French and Italian retirees or pretending to be James Bond, what are the smells, What are the sounds, What are the what are the tastes that that really bring you back? What is that trip and that time in your life? Taste? Like, So, when I asked people what was this smell? The smell is the first thing. The taste is the second thing.

The memory comes right out. It's like they can spit out where they are, what room they're in, what floor they're on, and if you can describe where you were you can bring up some emotions. Everything is a memory, and all tastes relate to memories, and those are the most vivid memories you have. I believe, at least I have.

And I think that as long as I've known, I've been cooking for memory, and I've been cooking for the memory of my aunt and my mom's food that they used to cook me all the time, because I grew up in a family that just we you know, we cooked everything and it was great. We didn't go out to dinner a lot. We didn't have the finances to do that. But between my my mother, who was a terrific Polish Russian cooking, my aunt's four of them who had amazing cooking skills, are all Armenian, and they made

every single thing from pickling. They grew the cucumbers, they pickled the peppers, they jarred everything. It was just it was a remarkable thing. I had no idea, you know, I didn't know us is what it tastes like, This is what a pepper tastes like, jarred and perfect, And I couldn't believe when I tasted the lesser equivalent, like wow, that's just awful. So you grow up like that by four or five years old, you're very much spoiled, and I think in a good way, very much like probably

my children are today. But those memories, they don't linger and then go away, like clothes or homes or moving or friends that you don't get in touch with. They stay with you forever. I'm still looking for that bite of lentils that I my grandmother made with fried onions. I'm still looking for that sweetness of the blueberry pie that my mom did, like there was so luscious. I still look for these things, and I collectively have thousands of these memories because I was surrounded by all these

memory builders. I imagine having that. So I carry these tastes and memories with me to this day. And I when I went to Europe and I tasted some things, there were so many tastes in Europe that made me think of my my mother and my aunts. It was so specifically, almost remarkably similar. It was the way they treated the ingredients. So there's this old world, real fresh done from scratch, not imperfect, but so valued and so warm and yummy. And wow, you know, I was a

good God. Then I turned the trip into after a few months into an eating trip, and I found the Michelin Guide, and I started going around trying to like, where am I gonna go? Am I gonna go? Am I gonna go? And this was all on my head. So that very moment where I saw this happening and I was eating this food and feeling this was why I came back and decided to go to Colony school. So it wasn't that I was planning on being a chef, it's the chef part of it sort of found me.

It found me, so that ancestral memory that I had sort of out of complete coincidence, just discovered by by eating.

And then luck came my way. I went to a casino and gambled, having never been to one, living out a fantasy and Monte Carlo Casino, Um, I want a lot of money for a twenty year old, and um I decided to sort of spend all of it on food, and I did, and I got my Michelin Guide, and I learned what a Michelin star wars, what a toko was, what a cross hatch on forks were, and I learned about the Michelin Guide because it really wove its way through all of Continental Europe, and I ended up spending

every week that one of one at least one three star restaurant. I needed lunch because it was the cheapest. It was a prefixed menu, and I had one suit and I would wear to lunch. I would order the prefix, I would have some wine, I would own a more stuff.

I would just eat everything. And I really really saw now that construct of cultural element of food, how they treat food, the restaurant business, the front of the house, at the back of the house, the dignity of the chef, the toke, the white, the owner, the in a play with the staff, that formality, all that, that dance, that bell at and you know, I was like, oh my god, this is what I want to do. I fell in

love with the theater. I must admit. The food brought me back, right, It brought me back to memories of that taste and where it was, and I was like, this is incredible. This is like my mom and my cousins and my aunt's cooking. So that was okay. It didn't really dawn on me that this is something I could do for a living. What really really excited me was the theater, and I started to understand the cadence of it. You know, usually it was the the husband

was a chef and the wife was in front. You get ready, your prep, you have a family meal, you sit together, you meet, and then you open the doors and it's like a curtain going up. And I saw that. I saw the curtain before I saw the act. I loved it. I loved everything about it. I loved the napkin up seat pulling, the naming, how do you see people? Where do you see the stations? It was like a Broadway show and it was absolutely the most intoxicating part

of the business. So there I was at the end of that trip having all these I think I ate an eighteen three star restaurants and that was and UM. I came home and I told my parents I don't want to go to get a degree at the graduate degree in economics. I want to be a chef. And I really was not happy about that. But I went to see i A in Hyde Park and I announced myself pretty boldly and they said, UM, something to effect that will we can put you on a list. We

have a two year waiting list something like that. I said, I, I I, that's too long. I was taking to the director of admission. But I had a journal of what I was doing and where I went and what I ate, And I'm like, I have this journal. I've been doing this for a year now, and I don't think anybody on your staff or any of the teachers here of eating in any of these places, let alone collectively. So I was very i would say, forward and obnoxious. They said,

I'm so sorry. You know, well, we'll call you if something opens. I think it was a month, not even a month. I got a call and they said, we have something open. Can you be here in two weeks. That it Jeffrey. I loved it. As a twenty year old who comes across a windfall of cash through gambling, your immediate reaction to that was, now I'm going to eat really well, I think that's that's that's really indicative. It's it's great, and I hope I never thought of that.

I never thought of that. Especially, you know, you studied economics. You were the kid reading the boring back pages of the newspaper. You could have taken that money, come home and joined the bank. But the food is what trew you in. You know. I should have, actually, Chris, because compounded compounded, you know we're probably sitting on my jet having a cocktail. Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses with Jeffrey Z Carrian, a production of I Heart

Radio and Corner Table Entertainment. Four Courses is created by Jeffrey Z. Carrion, Margaret Scarrion, Jared Keller, and Tara Helper. Our executive producer is Christopher Hesiotis. Four Courses is produced by Jonathan Haws Dressler. Our research is conducted by Jescelyn Shields. Our talent booking is by Pamela Bauer at Dogtown Talent. This episode was edited and written by Priya Mahadevan. Special

thanks to Katie Fellman for help as recording engineer. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.